Secret Trump Docs Just Dropped

Newly uncovered legal docs shows the Trump Administration believes the president can ignore laws

On Thursday, a secret Trump Administration legal document became public through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The letters reveal that Attorney General Pam Bondi believes President Trump has the authority to ignore laws passed by Congress, specifically, the law banning TikTok.

Her argument? That the president’s Article II powers over national security and foreign affairs allow him to not enforce legislation he disagrees with, allowing the president to act like a king. This is part of a broader, escalating strategy by the Trump Administration to reshape the presidency into a monarch-like role, unchecked by Congress or the courts.

Presidents can’t just ignore laws. In 1838 the Supreme Court declared that the Constitution does not give presidents the power to dispense with laws, for that is the power of a king. (Kendall v. United States)

The current TikTok bill is deeply unpopular, which makes it a good test case for Trump’s novel legal theory that he can ignore our system of checks and balances. This is yet another escalation of The Trump Administration’s aggressive posture towards executive power. I wrote an article about the 13 Ways Trump Is Turning the Presidency Into a Monarchy, and how unitary executive power is the pathway to a legal coup.

“They are trying to do a moonshot on executive power,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, told the New York Times.

When Trump recently imposed tariffs (a Congressional power), he did so under an emergency powers act that only allows sanctions when there is an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad. When Trump started war with Iran (a Congressional power), he did so under a law that allows this type of action when there is a national emergency created by an attack on the United States.

“The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president,” Stephen Miller, the architect of the Administration’s horrific immigration policies, declared in February.

America is a deeply flawed nation, founded on violence and built on the backs of enslaved people. It also started with the radical notion that people deserve self-determination, that we will be a nation run by the people, not by kings.

Yesterday Trump gave a speech at the Iowa State Fairground in which he kicked off America250, a yearlong series of events to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. The President used his not-so-subtle third term campaign soft-launch to sell the horrific budget bill passed by congress. A bill that includes an ICE budget larger than some countrie’s militaries. A bill that will triple federal funding for immigrant detention centers. I talked about ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ on Wednesday, but that’s not the end of it. Two of the companies that have already been contracted, Geo and CoreCivic, say they have 14 additional unused prisons that could be used for detention in states including California, Colorado, North Carolina and Oklahoma.

More than 50 million immigrants live in the United States today. My Jewish ancestors came here escaping persecution. The stories of immigrants have shaped our laws, our cities, our food, our music, and our national identity. Trump is a master of messaging, he has been using words like “invasion” to convince his followers that these people are a threat to us, and using that as justification for his Administration’s unconstitutional actions. According to the Washington Post:

ICE is now arresting people with no criminal charges at a higher rate than people charged with crimes, according to Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies immigration data.

Trump’s messaging has resonated with his base, the New York Times described the president’s supporters at the Iowa rally, “applauding his efforts to cut off access to social services for undocumented immigrants.” Fox News headlined their video about it “THIS IS PATRIOTISM.”

Conservatives want to define patriotism as taking food and healthcare away from people who are seeking a better life. They want to wrap themselves in the iconography of America to justify cruel and unusual treatment of immigrants. In recent litigation filed by Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife we learned more about the horrendous conditions in CECOT prison, as reported by

Joyce Vance

:

In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.

Trump and the conservatives are going to do everything they can to define this treatment of immigrants as patriotic. Trump will drip himself in gold-leaf eagles and gaudy red hats to declare himself our king. The purpose of this narrative is to convince people that taking away someone else’s freedom makes them safer, and that the man doing it deserves more power, not less.

Sixty-four percent of Americans believe “openness” to people from all over the world is essential to the nation’s identity, up from 57% in October, according to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released this week. The Trump Administration’s actions do NOT reflect the views of the majority, despite their efforts to normalize it.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent in Trump v. Casa, “a constrained Executive—i.e., one who is bound by the Constitution not to violate people’s rights—is a public benefit, guaranteed to all from the start.” Trump and the Republicans’ actions make it easy to forget the reasons to love this country. Easy to get swallowed by the noise, the cruelty, the chaos. But those reasons still exist. Sometimes they’re enormous, like constitutional rights. Sometimes they’re small and strange and wonderful, like a local protest, a community garden, or a teenager registering voters in a grocery store parking lot.

This country is unfinished by design. That can feel frustrating. It can also feel hopeful. Because we are allowed to revise. We are allowed to imagine something better. The American project has never been about perfection. It has always been about potential.

And on this July 4th, it’s important to say clearly: this is not the America I’m working towards. Cruelty is not patriotism. Kings are not presidents. The America I believe in, the one so many of us are still fighting for, isn’t perfect, but it is capable of doing better. And we will. Because this experiment isn’t over.