Does the United States Constitution grant President Donald Trump the power to unilaterally blow up boats of alleged drug smugglers on the high seas?
No.
“The Congress shall have Power To… To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations” reads Article 1, Section 8.
Does the Constitution grant Trump the power to bomb other countries when they may harbor terrorists or have a nuclear weapons program?
No.
“The Congress shall have Power To…To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water” reads Article 1, Section 8.
Does the Constitution grant Trump the power to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles, Washington DC or Chicago?
No.
“The Congress shall have Power To…To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” reads Article 1, Section 8.
Does the Constitution grant Trump the power to make rules for the military, like banning transgender troops?
No.
“The Congress shall have Power To…To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces” reads Article I, Section 8.
Does the Constitution grant Trump the power to raise taxes unilaterally, like tariffs?
No.
“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives” reads Article I, Section 7, in addition to Article I, Section 8 which reads, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises…”
All of the above powers of Congress are now claimed by Donald Trump as his alone, among others. Yet these are the core constitutional powers of Congress, the powers of the purse and the sword. Without these powers remaining in Congress, there is no Constitution and no rule of law, only the Leadership Principle. “Responsibility, however, can and may be borne only by ONE man, and therefore only he alone may possess the authority and right to command,” wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.
Many Americans today repeat the Leadership Principle in defense of Trump’s actions as if it were part of the U.S. Constitution.
The problem is not just with Trump and the Republicans. Those who think the Democrats were good on most of these issues didn’t pay any attention to the Barack Obama and Joe Biden presidencies (see chart below). Just a year ago, it was mostly the Democrats repeating the Leadership Principle in support of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and his drone bombing campaigns.
Yet President Trump has accelerated the attack on what little remains of the U.S. Constitution and America’s vestigial Congress. Like an appendix in the human digestive system, the U.S. Constitution, the Congress, and courts still exist but no longer perform any practical function in American government.
Presidential assassinations have been common since Obama murdered American citizens, including American children located in the Middle East without even a court indictment. (Obama murdered a 14-year-old American boy and Trump murdered an 8-year-old American girl in his first term.) The September 2 Venezuelan boat bombing by Trump represents an escalation in that it was the first presidential assassination in this hemisphere. It wasn’t law enforcement and it wasn’t an act of war, unless by that term one means it was a war crime. Trump’s decision was a deliberate choice to assassinate extrajudicially. And the people celebrating it are celebrating murder for murder’s sake.
Trump’s strike changes the longstanding policy of the Coast Guard and U.S. Navy to disable vessels at sea, putting a round in the engine blocks of fleeing boats in order to apprehend suspects, interrogate them for intelligence and charge them with crimes before a court. Trump’s strike destroyed all the evidence (if there was really any evidence of a crime, as only 2% of people killed in Obama’s Pakistan drone war hit the person targeted). Trump’s strike also prevented the acquisition of intelligence, and he acted as judge, jury, and executioner without any need of a court. It was the act of a third-world dictator, not the chief executive of a free country with constitutional protections against government overreach.
The White House even released the snuff film on Twitter/X as a way to brag about the murders, announcing it would expand its campaign of lawless murder. “There’s more where that came from,” Trump boasted after the strike. Likewise, President Trump has taken a card from his predecessors, boasting on the White House website how he has legislated by executive order.
The historical threat of tyranny has always come from the executive branch. It was from the consuls, not the senate, from which the Roman emperors were drawn, from the chancellorship, not the Reichstag, from which the Fuhrer was drawn, from the generals and not the legislatures from which Latin American dictatorships were once drawn. The executive branch is always the branch out of control. The legislature and judiciary, whatever their defects, never by themselves lead to absolute tyranny. That’s also the case with America today, where more than 99.5% of the federal budget is spent on behalf of the executive branch. The legislative and judicial branches together amount to less than one half of one percent of federal spending.
American support for the presidency is leading America to embrace the Leadership Principle and dragging this country down into third-world dictatorship levels.
