Democracy is dying in the USA

[Lionel Mandrake]

The dean of the UC Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky has this to say in today's LA Times:

Where are we on the path [to authoritarian rule]?

Checks and balances are being destroyed. The quintessential legislative power is control over the purse. But President Trump and those around him have asserted that he can control that by refusing to spend money appropriated by federal statute. The newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, at his confirmation hearings, was explicit that the president could refuse to spend funds notwithstanding a federal law — the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — that prohibits this. And the president already has done this on a large scale, by signing an executive order freezing a massive amount of federal expenditures (enjoined by two federal courts), and by all but eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was created and funded by federal statutes. At the same time, he has asserted the power to spend money without congressional authorization as in the offer of a buyout to federal workers.

Laws are being brazenly ignored. Every dictator claims to be above the law, especially by ignoring the ones already in effect. It is stunning how many laws have been violated since noon on Jan. 20. Revoking birthright citizenship violates the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedents. Firing a commissioner of the National Labor Relations Board and members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violates federal laws that are clearly constitutional under Supreme Court precedents. Threatening to deport those on visas because of the views they express violates the 1st Amendment. And this barely scratches the surface.

A purge of government is underway. ... Court rulings are under attack ... A constitutional democracy is not lost all at once. The Trump administration is obviously testing boundaries that have long existed. I fear the authoritarians in the White House have been emboldened by how much they have been able to accomplish with relatively little pushback.