No, I’m Not F—ing Inured to This!

When an authoritarian's minions deny the legitimacy of judges, it's not the same old Trump bullshit.

1.

At this point, we’re used to a lot of stupid shit.

The president reposts a conspiracy theory thatJoe Biden is a robot, and around twenty million people believe it. The same president insists that an obviously photoshopped image is not photoshopped, and we roll our eyes. His K-addled sidekick spreads lies about USAID, illegally shreds the agency mandated by Congress to exist, and causes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and most Americans yawn.

But there’s one thing I am not inured to, and you shouldn’t be either: the torrent of incendiary lies about the rule of law.

Four months ago, I wrote that “We are currently in Phase One of a three-phase constitutional crisis: Trump and Musk are doing illegal stuff, and they’re getting sued.” Today, we are at Phase Two, “courts decide these cases, Trump loses, and eventually this goes to the Supreme Court.” This has happened. Over 180 judicial rulings have paused Trump’s actions, because so many of them are wildly unconstitutional. And some of these are now headed to the Court.

“Phase Three,” I wrote, is the real constitutional crisis. That’s when Trump tells the Supreme Court to go to hell — which Trump and his lackeys have already been saying in regard to lower courts, like this little gem:

2.

Let’s take this rhetoric seriously, and look at one example of how flat-out wrong, and un-American, this kind of rhetoric is in practice.

On May 29, the U.S. Court of International Trade, which has specific jurisdiction over tariffs, found most of Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional. In response, White House spokesperson Kush Desai, said, “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”

Wrong. It is exactly the job of unelected judges to do that. And the whole point in that case was whether there is a “national emergency” regarding trade in the first place. Which the judges unanimously held that there is not.

And since there is no such emergency, the power to levy tariffs remains with Congress, as specified in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

Others in the White House were less nuanced, and more, well, fascistic.

Stephen Miller — who now that Elon Musk is gone should be the most unpopular unelected human being in America — turned the tables on the whole tyranny thing and said that “we are living under a judicial tyranny.” Even though judicial review is what prevents tyranny. And even though Miller then immediately undermined his own point by posting photographs of the three judges in the case, obviously inviting the MAGA mob to harass and threaten them. Which is what tyrants do.

And then there’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. In a May 29 press briefing following the court’s decision, she attacked the constitutional order (with the help of a right-wing non-journalist toady who fed her softball questions) in ways that are unprecedented and utterly authoritarian in nature. Here is some of what she said (the complete transcript is here):

The president's rationale for imposing these powerful tariffs was legally sound and grounded in common sense. President Trump correctly believes that America cannot function safely long-term if we are unable to scale advanced domestic manufacturing capacity, have our own secure critical supply chains and our defense industrial base is dependent on foreign adversaries.

Three judges of the US Court of International Trade disagreed and brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump to stop him from carrying out the mandate that the American people gave him…

These judges failed to acknowledge that the president of the United States has core foreign affairs powers and authority given to him by Congress to protect the United States economy and national security…

The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.

That statement is a perfect distillation of authoritarianism: filled with falsehoods and a willful ignorance of the constitutional order.

Who decides if an action is “legally sound”? The president? His press secretary? No, obviously: courts do that. That’s their job, according to the Constitution. That’s why they do have a role here. Their whole purpose is to review the presidential decision-making process.

They are unelected precisely because to insulate them (in an ideal world) from the vicissitudes of popular opinion. They didn’t “disagree” with Trump’s tariffs — that is a brazen lie. They found that the tariffs exceeded his authority under the constitution.

Oh and incidentally, two of the three judges were appointed by Republican presidents, one of them by Trump himself. These are not “activist judges,” a slur up there with DEI, CRT, Woke, and other once-meaningful terms rendered meaningless by abuse.

Yes, the American people gave Donald Trump a mandate to be president and use the powers available to him to address America’s economic crisis. But that mandate does not and cannot extend to doing absolutely anything he wants to do, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution says. On the contrary, on Inauguration Day, Trump swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, not ignore it in the name of what he believes to be his popular mandate.

This is what authoritarians always say: the people demand it, the hour demands it. For example, one well-known dictator once said:

Furthermore, I expect the German legal profession to understand that the nation is not here for them, but that they are here for the nation; that is, the world, which includes Germany, must not decline in order that former laws may live, but that Germany must live, irrespective of the contradictions of formal justice. . .

From now on, I shall intervene in these cases, and remove from office those judges who evidently do not understand the demands of the hour.

Yes, the person who said this (and the quote is authentic) was Adolf Hitler.

3.

This is serious shit, not bullshit. It’s treason against the constitution.

Without judicial review of executive and legislative actions, America is not a constitutional republic anymore. We can debate how to describe what it is: ‘fascism’ and ‘dictatorship’ seems hyperbolic, but ‘authoritarian state’ seems too mild. But let’s not get hung up on terminology. Without judicial review, we are no different, governmentally speaking, from China, Russia, Hungary, North Korea, and other strongman regimes where what the Leader says, goes.

It’s been clear for a decade that this is what Trump, and many of his supporters, want. Trump has openly praised dictators and seems not to understand that presidents are still subject to rules, even if they don’t like them. For Trump, you’re either with him or against him; it’s that simple.

Ironically, Trump’s behavior regarding tariffs is a perfect illustration of why checks and balances are important. His unconstitutional fiat was accompanied by ludicrously incorrect statistics. His strategy is to individually negotiate trade deals, but at the same time, he is engaged in massive personal corruption, from his meme coin to the Qatari jet. And the uncertainties he has injected into international trade has grievously harmed the reputation of the United States, which may have devastating economic consequences, as

Paul Krugman

wrote about this week. This is exactly the kind of tyrannical behavior the Framers sought to prevent, because they witnessed it firsthand from England’s deluded king. It is the Madness of King Don.

This is not a partisan issue. This week, the National Review issued a scathing rebuke to Trump entitled “Sorry, Mr. President: If You Want Tariffs, You Need Congress.” And there are credible reports of conservative judges staying on the bench so that Trump doesn’t replace them with ideologues like Emil Bove, possibly the least suitable judicial nominee to be proposed in the last hundred years.

And obviously, the tariffs case is but one example. There are many others. DOGE cannot close agencies established by Congress. The government cannot punish law firms or universities for their perceived political activities; that violates the First Amendment. And all “persons” in the United States — not just citizens — may not be deprived of liberty without due process of law. Indeed, the deportation of Kilmar Albrego Garcia — and the refusal to implement a court order to “facilitate” his return — is, so far, the most brazen of the administration’s scofflaw actions.

And now, packed into the preposterously unserious “Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is a provision that would strip courts of their power to find government officials in contempt. That provision probably won’t get through the Senate, but if it somehow becomes law, it, too, is the end of American constitutional democracy as we know it, at least for now.

And for every egregious statement by Miller or Leavitt, there have been half a dozen by J.D. Vance, who surely knows better, unless he slept through every Con Law class at our shared alma mater. The moral shallowness of this man is so profound, it becomes a kind of depth.

Two months ago, I wrote that in terms of constitutional crisis, it was still a few minutes before midnight. I still believe that to be the case. Midnight comes at Phase Three, when the administration openly defies a decision of the Supreme Court, or flagrantly violates a court order. That hasn’t really happened yet — even in the Garcia case, they’re still weaseling around (witness Marco Rubio referring to the case as “a matter of foreign policy,” which is traditionally beyond judicial review, even though it only because ‘foreign’ when Garcia was deported without a hearing), rather than openly defying the order.

But it does seem like it will happen soon. Maybe on birthright citizenship, maybe on immigration, maybe even on tariffs. At some point, it seems likely that midnight will come. And while no one knows how our system will react, I know what the judgment of history will be.

My advice: Don’t be distracted by the latest Trump absurdities, and don’t confuse them with the seriousness of undermining democracy. Don’t be f—ing inured.

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First, thanks to my editor friends Larry Yudelson, David Wilensky, Rachel Kahan, and Dan Friedman for opining as to how best to spell “f—ing.”

My article on Israel/Palestine and the antisemitic attack in Boulder is here.

The excellent Paul Krugman piece referenced above is here.

Daniel W. Drezner

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