Trump Consults on How to Rule By Decree

Contributor: Bill Moore

If ever there was reason to vote against Donald Trump for president, the latest revelation that the White House has been consulting with a lawyer about how to sidestep laws and suppress basic constitutional rights is surely compelling.

On July 20, the Guardian reported that the Trump administration has been consulting with John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding, on how the president might try to rule by decree. Reporter Julian Borger writes, “Yoo told the Guardian that he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws.”

In what appears to be a test run of this theory, President Trump deployed armed federal agents to suppress protests in Portland, over the objections of city and state officials, and  he threatened to do the same in Chicago. 

Borger reports that constitutional scholars and human rights activists have “pointed to the deployment of paramilitary federal forces against protesters in Portland as a sign that Trump is ready to use this broad interpretation of presidential powers as a means to suppress basic constitutional rights.”

If you thought your rights were threatened by requirements to wear masks in public places to deter spread of COVID-19, you ain’t seen nuthin yet.

*We're outraged at this