Just days after former CNN anchor Don Lemon went live – as a journalist – on his YouTube show inside a Twin Cities church while anti-ICE activists disrupted a worship service, President Donald Trump amplified a post calling for the reporter’s prosecution. “A small group of elderly ladies were protesting at an abortion clinic and were given 40 years in prison for violating the FACE Act. I would like to see the same kind of sentence of Don Lemon and the people that broke into the church and did that during services,” read the post that Trump reshared on his social media site.

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The protesters apparently chose the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, is a high-ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official.

Setting aside the glaring factual issues raised by the post Trump shared, that call to prosecute Lemon under the FACE Act is exactly what his Department of Justice is now doing. Late last month, federal agents arrested Lemon, independent journalist Georgia Fort, and seven others on federal charges of conspiring to interfere with “religious freedom at a place of worship” under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. It’s an obscure 1994 law that has historically been used to clamp down on protests outside of abortion clinics. But now the Justice Department is using it to go after two journalists, flying in the face of the First Amendment, on the implicit theory that media coverage of the incident somehow interfered with the religious rights of the churchgoers (which by the way are also protected from government oppression by the First Amendment). If this seems head-spinning, it’s because it is. Trump, once again, is torturing a law enacted for legitimate reasons to shore up his own monarchical power. So what is the FACE Act, what does it have to do with Don Lemon, and does the Trump administration have a case against the former CNN anchor?

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“That is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.”

So spoke comedian Trevor Noah during Sunday’s Grammy awards show, prompting President Donald Trump to post on Truth Social: “Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!! I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.”

Then came the “presidential” threat: “It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$. Ask Little George Slopadopolus [sic]. And others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS! Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!”

There are a bunch of things patently wrong with Trump’s fantasy that he has a serious defamation case against Trevor Noah.

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The horror and outrage over last week’s killing of Renee Nicole Good has centered around the legality of ICE – its rogue violence, the Trump administration’s icing out of state investigators and, on Tuesday, the resignation of numerous Justice Department lawyers after they were reportedly instructed to investigate the actions of Good’s widow at the scene – not Jonathan Ross, the officer who shot her three times, including in the face.

Yet the implications of the incident reach far more deeply, striking at the heart of American democracy’s existential crisis and marking a turning point in Trump’s unprecedented assault on core First Amendment rights – specifically the right to protest, record ICE activity, and express political dissent without fear of government retaliation.

At the time of her death, Good was participating in a community effort to check license plates and flag vehicles residents don’t recognize, use whistles to alert one another of ICE activity, and even drop groceries off to neighbors afraid to leave their homes. The neighborhood in Minneapolis had gone on high alert following a DHS announcement of increased immigration enforcement in the area. Video shows that Good, with the family dog in the car, was pulling away from the scene when Ross shot and killed her.

The Trump administration has called this kind of organized neighborhood activity “domestic terrorism.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem characterized videotaping of agents as “violence” and “doxxing,” while officials have threatened to prosecute those who do so.

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What Good and her Minneapolis neighbors were engaging in was core speech and assembly. Courts have specifically held that the First Amendment establishes a fundamental right to observe and record “law enforcement” officers (if ICE can be called that) carrying out their duties in public. The Supreme Court has stated that it “is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the ‘liberty’ assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” as well, “which embraces freedom of speech.”

That Good was killed for engaging in First Amendment activity protected by the Fourteenth Amendment – and that the Trump administration is backing Ross while maligning Good and her wife – shows how far America has gone down the dark tunnel of fascism. It’s dire. It’s urgent. It’s likely going to get much worse.

To help capture the vastness of the problem, here’s a (non-exhaustive) highlight reel of last year’s blows to the First Amendment:

January 2025

• Targeting Student Activism: Shortly after taking office, the administration issued executive orders to monitor and report “alien students” who expressed “hateful ideology” or “hostile attitudes” toward the country’s “founding principles,” specifically targeting pro-Palestinian protesters for potential deportation.

• Surveillance of Dissent: ICE reactivated a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company whose hacking tools had previously been used to target journalists and refugee rights activists.

February 2025

• Retaliation Against the Press: On Feb. 11, the White House restricted the Associated Press’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One because the outlet refused to adopt the name “Gulf of America” (for the Gulf of Mexico) in its style guide.

• Sanctioning Legal Counsel: On Feb. 25, Trump signed a presidential memo revoking the government contracts and security clearances held by the law firm of Covington & Burling for its representation of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

March 2025

• Retaliatory Law Firm Orders: Trump issued additional executive orders against prominent law firms, including Perkins Coie (March 6), Paul Weiss (March 14), Jenner & Block (March 25), and WilmerHale (March 27). Judges later ruled that Trump’s actions amounted to “unconstitutional retaliation” for representing political opponents and supporting diversity initiatives.

• Defunding Higher Education: The administration canceled $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University on March 7, citing a failure to “police antisemitism,” which was widely viewed as retaliation for student protests.

• Arrest of Student Leaders: On March 8, ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student protest leader, revoking his green card. On March 25, Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Öztürk was similarly detained and her visa revoked in retaliation for an op-ed she co-wrote criticizing the university’s response to the genocide in Gaza. In these cases, the government used a rarely-cited provision of immigration law that allows the secretary of state to find a noncitizen deportable if he “personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.”

April 2025

• Expanded Funding Freezes: The administration halted research grants at Princeton University (April 1) and froze $2.2 billion in funding for Harvard University (April 15) after the schools refused demands to audit academic programs and hiring practices.

June 2025

• Suppression of Assembly: During anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles in early June, police fired over 1,000 projectiles at demonstrators in a single day.

July 2025

• Canceling Public Media: On July 24, Trump signed a bill, which his administration had specifically requested, canceling $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a move that effectively shut down the funding source for local NPR and PBS stations. The CPB officially dissolved on Jan. 5, 2026.

August 2025

• UCLA Funding Freeze: The administration froze over $300 million in funding for UCLA due to the university’s refusal to change policies regarding affirmative action and campus protests.

September 2025

• Suspension of Jimmy Kimmel: In mid-September, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely following regulatory threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who called Kimmel’s monologue about Charlie Kirk’s killing “truly sick.” (He returned to air nearly a week after he was suspended.)

• NSPM-7 and Surveillance: On Sept. 25, a White House memorandum (NSPM-7) directed law enforcement to investigate and “uproot” organizations promoting “anti-fascism” and “anti-Americanism.” By November, the Brennan Center warned that ICE was spending millions on surveillance technology to specifically target political dissenters and protesters. It included up to $25 million for spy technology that monitors social media and cellphone locations to create “day-in-the-life” profiles of protesters, for surveillance drones to monitor protests, and for facial recognition tools to identify participants.

• New Pentagon Policy: On Sept. 19, Trump’s Department of Defense laid out a new policy that requires reporters seeking credentials for covering the Pentagon to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t obtain or use unauthorized information.

October 2025

• App Store Censorship: In October, the White House pressured Apple to remove ICEBlock – an app used to track ICE sightings – from its platforms. Legal experts called the maneuver “censorship by proxy” or “jawboning.”

• Retaliation Against Bystanders: In Chicago, Rev. David Black was on a sidewalk praying when ICE agents sprayed him in the face with chemical “pepper pellets.” (Since Good’s death, Rev. Kenny Callaghan, a gay Minneapolis pastor, reported that a masked agent pointed a gun at his face and taunted him, asking, “Are you afraid now?” after he approached immigration authorities and told them to stop harassing a woman. Agents have been caught on video tackling and arresting other individuals for recording raids.)

December 2025

• Trump Sues BBC: In his latest move to intimidate the free press, Trump sued the BBC in mid-December, alleging defamation over a documentary that spliced together two different parts of his Jan. 6, 2021, “fight like hell” speech. He accused the BBC of misleading the public over the edit, despite the fact that, edits aside, he did explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riot.

Then there was Good’s killing.

In the week since then, the crackdown has only continued. Protesters in Minneapolis have been tear-gassed and reportedly shot with rubber-coated bullets and other less-lethal projectiles. A 21-year-old protester in Santa Ana, California, said he was blinded in one eye after a federal officer shot him in the face with a projectile at close range. On Wednesday, the FBI searched a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of a leak investigation in a move the newspaper’s executive editor called an “extraordinary” action that is “deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work.” And on Thursday, Trump renewed threats to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests.

Just a year ago, and certainly under the Biden administration and pretty much every president before him – indeed, even under Trump in his first term – any one of these stories would have been shocking, front-page news of the “unthinkable.” These days, the demise of the First Amendment rarely breaks through the chaos and cruelty, perhaps because what Trump is doing to speech, assembly, and the press does not seem to be felt by the average American. So why do these attacks on the First Amendment matter so much? Or more to the point, why should people outside of ICE-occupied cities care if the First Amendment dies? The Founding generation certainly understood the stakes.

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In his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia enacted on January 16, 1786 (nearly 240 ago to the day), Thomas Jefferson outlined four reasons why protections for free speech and freedom of assembly are important, which were reiterated by Justice Brandeis in a concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, a case from 1927 involving the right of a white woman to make a speech defending anti-lynching laws.

First, freedom of speech protects freedom of conscience. Jefferson wrote that “the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.” In order to be free, people must be able to think for themselves.

Second, protecting free speech makes representatives accountable to “We the People.” Jefferson explained that politicians and religious leaders, “being themselves but fallible and uninspired,” will always try to impose “their own opinions and modes of thinking” on other people.

Third, free speech is necessary to get to the truth. Jefferson called the truth “the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.” It’s how people know when the government is lying to them.

Fourth, free speech is central to democratic self-government. To limit a person’s freedom to speak, Jefferson wrote, “is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.”

When Jefferson laid out these principles, he undoubtedly had in mind far less severe infringements on speech than death as the consequence of dissent in America. President Trump understands that normalization will be fast. If that happens, this will be the year that US democracy officially dies. It will be hard to go back.

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Kimberly Wehle, Zeteo’s legal contributor and author of ‘Constitution in Crisis,’ is a constitutional law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Follow her on Bluesky.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

Don’t Miss It: Zeteo is hosting a special LIVE in-person event you won’t want to miss: Join Mehdi, Swin, Rep. Ro Khanna, Joy Reid, Jim Acosta, Sarah Matthews, and Miles Taylor discussing Trump, ICE, civil liberties, free speech, the media, and more for a powerful evening at the Howard Theatre in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Jan 20, 2026!

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In the wake of an ICE agent’s grotesque shooting of an unarmed woman – a US citizen – in Minneapolis on Wednesday, it has become chillingly evident that no one is safe in America from President Donald Trump’s 21st-century Gestapo.

Video shows a masked ICE agent yelling “get out of the fucking car” as he attempted to open the door of the SUV that 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was driving before she turned the car in an apparent attempt to leave. That’s when another ICE agent, who had appeared in front of the car, drew his weapon and fired three rounds, killing her.

According to Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director of Counterintelligence for the FBI, who was in charge of agent shooting inquiries when he served as chief Inspector, “the agents should not have even introduced guns into this scenario” because it was unclear “what crime she was committing that justified not letting her drive off.” He told me in a text that “many police departments now won’t even chase you unless the underlying offense is a violent felony.”

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The killing, as well as the Trump administration’s response – wrongly labeling Good a “domestic terrorist,” freezing out state investigators, and attempting to paint the killing as self-defense, despite contradictory evidence – has rightly caused outrage nationwide. As protests grow – and as Trump continues to ramp up his federal immigration operations, especially in Democratic-led states – it’s important now more than ever for anyone in the US to know their rights. But let’s be clear here: as a law enforcement entity, ICE is a uniquely dangerous menace. It’s increasingly evident that special precautions are needed to stay safe despite the technical protections of the law.

Here are five general guidelines if ICE shows up (which do not constitute legal advice):

1. If ICE stops or intimidates you, do not precipitously flee

ICE is only supposed to detain people upon “reasonable suspicion” that a person has committed or is about to commit a violation of immigration laws. But in September, the far-right justices on the Supreme Court held in an “emergency” ruling for Trump that ICE can detain people based on factors like race, ethnicity, or speaking Spanish or English with an accent. So it makes sense, if you believe you are being detained, to ask the agent, “Am I being detained?” If the answer is “no,” calmly leave.

As for well-meaning (and courageous) bystanders, bear in mind that shielding an undocumented immigrant can amount to a felony. Many citizens have been arrested for allegedly obstructing, assaulting, or impeding officers – including high-profile elected officials. Federal immigration law allows agents to make arrests for any federal offense committed in their presence or for which they have probable cause.

Legally, ICE agents are likewise only supposed to stop a vehicle if they have reasonable suspicion that immigration laws are being violated. Routine traffic violations are for local police, not ICE.

All that said, the most prudent and potentially life-saving advice that Figliuzzi gave in light of last week’s tragedy is this: if an ICE agent approaches your car and orders you to get out, “turn your engine off, put your hands up. Ask if you are being arrested and what for. But ultimately comply with reasonable requests.”

2. If detained (even temporarily), you can stay silent

The Fifth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona protect the right to remain silent if ICE agents ask questions. Simply tell the officer, “I wish to remain silent.” In some states, you do need to give your name if asked (according to a 2004 decision by the Supreme Court).

ICE has no legal authority to detain or arrest US citizens. But if an identified immigration agent requests to see immigration documentation, the burden is on the citizen to prove it. (Do not lie, of course, and don’t sign anything that’s put in front of you.) Most people don’t carry their passports around with them, which is partly how ICE has managed to wrongly detain multiple US citizens.

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3. ICE can make certain arrests without a warrant, but it cannot search your home without either a judicial warrant or your consent

The general constitutional standard for making an arrest is “probable cause” that a crime has been committed. When it comes to ICE, probable cause must mean suspicion that an individual is in the US illegally and might try to escape before a warrant can be secured. Under the Fourth Amendment, an officer can alternatively get a warrant from a judge authorizing an arrest. ICE must obtain a warrant to search your home, office, or property (common or public areas do not count). ICE also issues its own civil warrants for arrests for immigration violations (not searches of private property); they do not establish probable cause of a crime, and they are not reviewed by a judge.

If ICE agents come to your home or business, you do not need to open the door unless they produce a warrant that is signed by a judge. They can slip it under the door or display it through a window, but you do not need to open the door until you’ve seen the signed warrant. This is important because there are reports of ICE agents pretending to be local police or probation officers to “trick” people into entering private spaces.

4. If detained, you can ask the ICE agent to identify themselves

Federal regulations state that “[a]t the time of the arrest, the designated immigration officer shall, as soon as it is practical and safe to do so . . . [i]dentify himself or herself as an immigration officer who is authorized to execute an arrest.” That doesn’t mean they must give their names, however.

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5. You can hire a lawyer after an arrest, but whether you can immediately call one depends on state law

The Miranda warnings derive from the right against self-incrimination, which doesn’t implicate the right to make a phone call immediately after arrest. But if arrested, you can say you want a lawyer. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to retain a lawyer, but the government does not necessarily have to pay for one – that depends on a number of factors.

Deadly Force

Bear in mind that this all assumes – probably wrongly – that ICE will abide by the law and respect legal and constitutional rights if you insist on it. DHS’s official policy on the use of deadly force is clear: an officer must have “a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the [officer] or to another person.” The policy goes on to say that “[d]ischarging a firearm against a person constitutes the use of deadly force and shall be done only with the intent of preventing or stopping the threatening behavior that justifies the use of deadly force.” Additionally, NBC News reported that federal immigration agents are trained to approach a vehicle from a “tactical L” 90-degree angle, never from the front.

ICE is also, according to DHS policy, required to “obtain appropriate medical assistance for any subject who has visible or apparent injuries, complains of being injured, or requests medical attention” as soon as practicable following a use of force and the end of any perceived public safety threat.” This, the policy says, “may include . . . requesting emergency medical services, and/or arranging transportation to an appropriate medical facility.”

This did not happen in the case of Good, as video shows a doctor at the scene trying to approach Good after her car crashed into a parked vehicle, leaving her body lodged behind a bloody airbag: “Can I check her pulse?” he said. “I’m a physician!” ICE blocked him from helping her while an agent can be heard responding to the doctor, “I don’t care.” Another said, “Just give us a second, we have our own medics.” Paramedics reportedly did not arrive until 15 minutes later. ICE agents blocked them, too, opting to carry her “limp” body down the street to be loaded into an ambulance.

In a normal world, whether killing Good was justified is a question that would be addressed by prosecutors investigating whether this was a homicide or, in a civil case, whether the officer violated Good’s constitutional rights. On Thursday, however, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) – the entity that would investigate whether this incident constituted a crime under state law – was informed by the FBI that, although they initially envisioned a joint investigation between federal and state authorities, “the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete and thorough investigation.”

In other words, the Trump administration is kneecapping the likelihood that any state charges will be brought against the ICE officer who, after killing Good, can be heard on video calling her a “fucking bitch,” and walking away. DHS guidelines state that “respect for human life and the communities we serve shall continue to guide [agents] in the performance of their duties.” Times have obviously changed. Given that Vice President JD Vance has already declared the officer protected by “absolute immunity” (dead wrong), it looks like Good’s death will only reinforce what his goons already believe: That, like the president himself, they can shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

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Kimberly Wehle, Zeteo’s legal contributor and author of ‘Constitution in Crisis,’ is a constitutional law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Follow her on Bluesky.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

We are making this piece free to all subscribers, given the importance of the topic. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, consider becoming one today to get access to all Zeteo content. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, you can always make a donation to support our work further.

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Insurrectionists. A drug trafficker. Donors. A crypto billionaire he claims to not even know. Donald Trump’s use of the presidential pardon power is completely out of control.

Contrary to popular belief, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not simply hand off an unfettered tool for abject corruption. The fact that it has morphed into just that under Trump has to do with the moral corruption of the system – and the people who populate it.

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The US Constitution was ratified against the backdrop of English monarchical history. In medieval England, there were no jury trials until the 13th century. No constitutional rights. Anglo-Saxon kings seized the pardon power to temper harsh criminal laws with a “royal prerogative of mercy,” particularly in capital cases. In 1249, for example, after a 4-year-old girl was charged with homicide for accidentally opening a door that fatally pushed a younger child into a vat of boiling water, her father sought a pardon from the king, who directed the sheriff to release her from prison.

By the 14th century, the Crown increasingly used pardons as a means of political reconciliation, as well. In 1381, Richard II issued a general pardon in response to the Peasants’ Revolt, granting mercy to the king’s subjects who were accused of rebellion in response to a poll tax.

This dual purpose of the pardon – forgiveness and amnesty – appears in early American history, too.

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Following Democrats’ sweeping victories at the polls this month, hope has emerged that the tide may finally be turning against Donald Trump and his GOP enablers, foretelling an even bigger “bluenami” at next year’s midterms. That hope grew when the Supreme Court signaled during oral arguments last week that Trump might not win his bid to wrest the tariff power from Congress.

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Meanwhile, Republican senators snubbed Trump’s plea to kill the filibuster as a means of ending the government shutdown, which could be read as a rare sign that his grip on the GOP is softening. And although it was eight senators who, in breaking with the Democratic caucus and caving to Republican stonewalling, ultimately ended the shutdown, the government’s reopening meant that House Speaker Mike Johnson had to finally swear in Democrat Adelita Grijalva, more than seven weeks after she won a special election in Arizona. Her signature tees up a House vote on a resolution forcing the release of the Epstein files, which is the one and only issue to have had meaningful political traction against Trump, ever.

If this string of “good” news means that more people feel encouraged and emboldened to step up to help salvage what’s left of American democracy, then historians might one day look back on this period as a fever break. But it’s far too premature for such an assessment. When it comes to the US Constitution, the gravity of the damage is mind-boggling, if not permanent.

Here’s a list of the top five hits to our founding document:

1. What First Amendment?

Trump has gotten away with suspending the First Amendment. The swiftness with which this one fell is truly jaw-dropping.

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Donald Trump’s escalating war on the left – and his critics in general – should send a chill down the spine of every adult in America.

Just in the last two weeks, he and his administration deployed the National Guard to “war-ravaged” Portland, Oregon, over so-called “antifa;” warned a gathering of 800 military officials about “a war from within;” declared that “we’re gonna straighten them out one by one” in “very unsafe places” like San Francisco and New York; used an official government website to announce that “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government;” and issued two presidential orders directing the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement agencies to go after anyone he considers left-wing “domestic terrorists.”

The president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America.

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When it comes to how the framers structured the Constitution, federal judges – especially Supreme Court justices – are an inherent danger to democracy. That’s because, unlike presidents and members of Congress, they are unelected. Their personal predilections have profound effects on the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans, yet voters cannot choose them at the polls. Nor can they fire them at the ballot box. Unless they’re impeached, which is nearly impossible to pull off, federal judges keep their jobs for life – even if they issue rulings that seem to violate the Constitution itself.

Which over and over again appears to be what’s happening with the far-right justices these days, half of whom were hand-picked by Donald Trump personally.

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The latest shocker came down on Monday, in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo – an unexplained 6-3 decision that halted a lower court’s injunction staying the Trump administration from picking up people from the streets of Los Angeles based solely on some combination of four factors, including their ethnicity, use of English, or type of work.

What the Trump administration is doing looks a lot like racial profiling, which, in 2023, the same majority went out of its way to outright ban in college admissions. The Court nonetheless held that to pause this practice for ICE agents would irreparably harm Trump to the point where he is entitled to an emergency order overriding the lower court’s order that immigration authorities temporarily stop doing this until the legality of the policy is sorted out.

Vasquez Perdomo implicates the Fourth Amendment, not necessarily the Fourteenth, but the point is obvious: racial discrimination looks like a one-way ratchet from the perspective of the justices in the majority.

‘Emergency’ Rulings: The Court’s Gift to Trump

Monday’s decision was roughly the 20th “emergency” ruling that this Court has issued to greenlight Trump’s spree of lawlessness since taking office again on Jan. 20.

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Imagine the rule of law as a stand-in for a sheriff in a vintage Western film. Donald J. Trump is the villain.

Trump lifts and points a pistol in the cliffhanger scene. The first shot cracks like thunder, a bullet punching into the sheriff’s chest, snapping him back a step. The second shot jerks the sheriff to the side, his arms flailing as he fights to stay standing. The third bullet is sharp and final, causing the sheriff’s frame to buckle, shoulders lurching forward as he collapses with a thud. The film’s closing frame shows a smoking revolver hanging in the air like a sentence carried out.

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The many bystanders – like most Americans today – stand stupefied and frozen in stunned silence.

The rule of law has been gasping for air since Trump first took office in 2017. But the FBI’s unannounced execution of a search warrant on Friday at the home of John Bolton, Trump’s outspoken third national security adviser during his first term, could mark its official last breath.

From this day forward, we can expect a two-tiered system of laws in the United States.

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Donald Trump’s second administration is outmaneuvering the Constitution and laying bare a gaping hole in the system of checks and balances.

Think about it. Although Congress has the power to dictate how money is spent, the president controls the actual bank account. Although Congress has the power to declare war, the president controls the troops and the drones and the bombs and the tanks. Although Congress has the legislative power to create the federal bureaucracy and dictate the role of federal agencies, the president hires and fires people. Although the Constitution requires due process, free speech, and other constraints on how law enforcement treats individuals, the president controls the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and now ICE.

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The president has all the really serious power and is supposed to play by the rules and only use that power within the limits set by Congress, the Constitution, and the courts – none of which have their own police forces or armies. The president is supposed to check with the other two checks on his power before he uses it. It’s very much a “trust me” kind of system. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 62 that good government implies first and foremost “fidelity to the object of Government, which is the happiness of the People.”

This has worked pretty well for over 238 years because presidents went along with the program. They (mostly) accepted that they’re supposed to defer to Congress’s directions on how to spend money. They accepted that they’re supposed to follow the law before willy-nilly firing executive branch employees. They accepted that they’re supposed to respect the Constitution when it comes to arresting and detaining people or tolerating speech that they might not like. (Generations of comedians have made it their stock-in-trade to make fun of presidents, after all.) Although these presidents made mistakes – some very serious ones – they seemed to share some shred of a common belief in the American experiment and the ideals underlying the Constitution.

The framers didn’t really anticipate someone coming into office who would just flout it all. Then came Trump.

The Enablers

Polling in April showed that a majority of registered voters – 57% – agree that the US is in a constitutional crisis. What that means is somewhat elusive, but the basic notion is that if power is consolidated in one branch of government, rather than separated and checked between the three, then the system is not working. There are two primary reasons why it’s not working now.

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The unraveling of the rule of law in the United States is almost complete. Not only is there evidence indicating that Department of Justice officials lied to a federal judge, floated saying “fuck you” to court orders, and fired a star DOJ lawyer for refusing to play along, but the far-right majority of the Supreme Court – in a ruling that has been widely distorted as mere procedural housekeeping – just effectively suspended the Constitution’s limits for presidents.

If this seems hyperbolic, please read on.

Let’s start with Trump v. CASA, in which a 6-3 majority technically held that so-called “[u]niversal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” The justices accordingly granted a “partial stay” of three injunctions entered by lower courts that had halted Trump’s executive order attempting to outmaneuver the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship by birth. The Court took up the issue of universal injunctions in this particular case gratuitously – on an allegedly “emergency” basis after its traditional term had already ended, the theory being that the Trump administration would suffer “irreparable harm” in not being able to deny birthright citizenship in the interim.

Although the decision is roundly being touted as narrow and discrete, the exact opposite is the case.

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There’s a lot of misinformation swirling around Donald Trump’s invocation of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 US Marines last week in California. Does he actually have the power to do what he’s doing?

It’s important to get this one right. The stakes are too high to just pick sides.

Some on the right have defended Trump’s action and pointed to the protest-related violence in LA as a reason for calling in the National Guard. According to conservative writer Heather Mac Donald in City Journal, the measure was necessary to “protect federal officers and property” as a result of “L.A.’s illegal-alien riots.”

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California Governor Gavin Newsom, however, has sued the Trump administration, claiming that it violated several federal statutes and the Constitution itself by calling up National Guard and federal troops without Newsom’s knowledge or consent. And, on Thursday, a federal judge in California sided with the state, imposing an injunction that directed Trump to withdraw his control over the National Guard. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit paused that order while it considers the matter on appeal, with a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

So what does the law actually say about what Trump did in California?

Thursday’s 36-page opinion by US District Judge Charles Breyer (brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer) is crucial here because it is based on sworn affidavits signed by people in the Trump administration, among others. This is where the courts come in handy. We don’t need to pick sides. The law and the facts are verified for us.

Three core questions are in play:

1. Does federal law allow presidents to do what Trump did in LA?

2. If a law that authorizes such extreme measures exists, was its use warranted on the ground in California?

3. What does the US Constitution have to say about all of this? (Let’s assume for the sake of argument that most Americans still believe that the Constitution remains the law of the land even under Trump.)

Federal Law

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In four terse paragraphs last week, the US Supreme Court quietly took another step towards crowning Donald Trump king of the United States of America.

The case is Trump v. Wilcox, and it involves the wonky question of whether to pause a lower court’s orders reinstating two senior-level officials – Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Cathy Harris of the Merits Systems Protection Board (MSPB) – whom Trump unceremoniously fired. Six of the nine justices answered “yes.”

At first blush, the question in Wilcox sounds boring and insignificant – especially given the Trump administration’s rampant violations of pivotal constitutional guarantees like due process and free speech. Yet the ruling’s implications are far-ranging, reflecting an unhealthy appetite for fundamentally reshaping the structure of the federal government in deference to Trump.

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Just last month, actor and Democrat George Clooney mused, “[E]ventally we’ll find our better angels. We have every other time.” In Clooney’s mind, getting control of the House back in a year will “be a check and balance on power.”

For many people wanting to hear the bright side of things, this kind of message will undoubtedly resonate as the opposite of a call to action. It mirrors the same refrain that has permeated moderate-to-left-leaning politics since Donald Trump’s first term: It’s not that bad. Don’t listen to the hysteria. If you sit back and be patient, it will all work out in the end.

No, it will not.

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Americans’ tendency towards toxic optimism is partly why we find ourselves where we are in the first place.

On the one hand, numerous public figures are rightly warning that unless some sort of radical intervention happens soon, America’s constitutional order could be over – possibly for good. On the other hand, a handful of influential pundits are assuaging Americans that “Trump is losing” the war on democracy, and that once his poll numbers drop a bit more, the Project 2025 experiment will unravel as quickly as it unfolded. Although well-meaning, the latter spin seems short-sighted and potentially dangerous.

The reason has to do with the Constitution’s system of separated powers, which erects two primary checks on the presidency: Congress and the courts.

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Last Thursday, mega-podcaster Joe Rogan broke his allegiance to Donald Trump by condemning the administration’s policy of abducting people from the streets and covertly deporting them to a supermax prison in El Salvador, where the Constitution – including the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment – does not apply.

Over the weekend, I fielded viewers’ calls on this subject for C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, which revealed to me how so many people seem comfortable with Trump’s shocking defiance of basic due process guarantees. As Rogan put it, their argument goes something like this: “[W]hat do you do about all the criminals? ‘Take them all, fucking send them to El Salvador.’ What about due process? ‘No, fuck that.’

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“Well, here’s the problem with ‘fuck that,’” Rogan continued. “What if you are an enemy of, let’s not say any current president. Let’s pretend we got a new president, totally new guy in 2028, and this is a common practice now of just rounding up gang members with no due process and shipping them to El Salvador. ‘You’re a gang member. No, I’m not. Prove it. What? I got to go to court. No. No due process.’”

(Rogan sang a slightly different tune just weeks before the election, remarking in a conversation with Shane Smith, co-founder of VICE Media, that “what we really have to do is make sure we don’t let in murderers, and fucking killers, and rapists, thieves and gang members; and a lot of them are getting through. That’s what we have to be careful about. It’s not just not letting people in.”)

From a legal standpoint, then, how feasible would it be for Trump to dispatch unmarked black vans to pick up US citizens and rendition them to torture prisons abroad? Do special protections kick in for citizens that don’t apply to migrants?

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Late Monday night, the Supreme Court issued two rulings that together connote such gratuitous cruelty that it is difficult to comprehend what could be going on in the minds of the far-right justices in the majority.

In the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, Chief Justice John Roberts halted the lower court’s order directing that the Trump administration bring back a man whom it admits to having erroneously sent to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he remains confined.

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And in Trump v. J.G.G., a 5-4 majority conceded that Trump must give people basic due process before snatching them off the streets under the guise of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. It nonetheless lifted another lower court order halting that practice, on the dubious technical theory that the plaintiffs should not have filed their class action case in Washington, DC. Each individual case, the Court reasoned, belongs instead in the courts located in the states in which they were detained.

Not only is the Court’s rationale legally shaky – as Justice Sonia Sotomayor ably explained in her dissenting opinion to which Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett in large part joined – but it leaves the people whom Trump already denied due process without immediate recourse to vindicate their constitutional rights. The ruling instead requires them to find lawyers who will file separate lawsuits around the country in order to secure the most basic of liberties: freedom from arbitrary searches and seizures of their bodies. This makes it harder for individuals and easier for Trump. It’s a win for a president who fully admits to violating the Constitution right now.

When the Court Made Trump King

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Since Donald Trump took office on January 20, a lot of people have been asking whether the United States is in a “constitutional crisis.” Reviews are mixed. Some (myself included) answer with an obvious “yes.” Others more optimistically say “not yet,” but we could be at some point in the future: If Trump one day defies a Supreme Court order, the argument goes, then America will have crossed the line. Until then, we must simply wait with bated breath and see what the Court does. If it sides with the rule of law, the question then becomes whether Trump decides to respect the High Court’s authority to say what the law is – a power it effectively gave itself in the landmark 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison.

This view is misguided, if not naïve. The country doesn’t need the Supreme Court to declare that the Constitution is itself a valid law. It was ratified as such by nine of 13 states on June 21, 1788.

Although the definition of “constitutional crisis” is not written in stone, it’s not hard to conjure one up. The framers aimed to throw off the yoke of a bullying monarch. The concentration of power in one branch with no operative checks on abuses of power, along with unprecedented intrusions into basic rights like freedom of speech, easily fits the bill.

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In just over a month, Trump has been torching federal agencies created by Congress; abruptly firing government institutional watchdogs and tens of thousands of federal employees on quixotic grounds; ignoring congressional spending mandates; pulling security clearances for private lawyers representing his perceived “enemies”; threatening – and starting the deportation process for international students critical of US policy toward Palestinians in Gaza; and empowering a billionaire to abolish agencies and rummage through Americans’ personal data without any evident legal authorization, transparency or oversight.

But perhaps most telling – and dangerous – is the administration's response to the judge in the case against the deportation of more than a hundred Venezuelans under the wartime authority (which is likely unconstitutional) Trump invoked just over a week ago to expel noncitizens without due process. Not only does it appear the administration may have defied US District Judge Judge James Boasberg’s order to turn around the planes transferring the migrants to an El Salvador prison, but Trump’s Justice Department has repeatedly stonewalled his attempts to get more information about the planes and the migrants on them.

What’s particularly disturbing is that Trump, shadow president Elon Musk, and their allies have repeatedly blasted Boasberg and called for his impeachment – attacks so egregious that Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare rebuke of the president, saying: "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision."

Congress Ceded Power

Earlier this month, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut delivered a jarring speech tightly summarizing the “stunning rampage of open, public corruption” that Trump has also unleashed, including the launching of his personal “meme coin” token that has enabled what Murphy called a “disgusting” pay-to-play spigot for foreign oligarchs, billionaires, and corporations seeking federal influence.

The GOP-led Congress has not only been complacent, but it has also cynically encouraged these transgressions – going so far as to introduce articles of impeachment (at, as mentioned above, Elon Musk’s apparent direction) against federal judges who dare to declare Trump’s actions illegal. The legislative branch of government is no longer functioning as a check on the presidency.

Others are holding their breath for the 2026 midterms, hoping that Democrats will sweep at least one house of Congress. This, again, is naïve. Bear in mind that Democrats held the Senate for the last four years, yet the Judiciary Committee failed to take seriously the glaring threat to democracy posed by the ethical and financial conflicts of interest on the part of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Last December, Senate Democrats managed to issue a feckless 95-page report on this subject – after Republicans had already won back that chamber in November. Now that things have gotten far worse, the Democratic Party can hardly be expected to save democracy, either.

Which leaves the federal courts.

The Court Gave Trump a Powerful Gift

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-Mehdi

Donald Trump on Saturday invoked a wartime relic known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up his terrifying mass deportation effort. You read that right: Trump plans to use a wartime authority from over two centuries ago to help carry out his dangerous anti-immigrant plan in a time of peace.

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Trump claims he’s targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), which he declared a “national terrorist organization” on his first day back in office. In invoking the act, Trump wrote:

“Over the years, Venezuelan national and local authorities have ceded ever-greater control over their territories to transnational criminal organizations, including TdA. The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.”

But the use of the authority will undoubtedly have deeply disturbing implications for countless noncitizens with no ties to that gang because, if properly invoked, it would allow Trump to bypass due process protections. So the ubiquitous legal question, once again, is: can a president do that? The short answer is: technically, probably yes. But it would be a horrific – and potentially discriminatory – abuse of power with incredibly disturbing consequences.

Shameful History

The Alien Enemies Act has a sordid and shameful history. It was enacted as one of four laws that are together known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, which also made certain kinds of political speech illegal, despite First Amendment protections (the anti-sedition laws expired or were repealed before the Supreme Court could weigh in). At the time, the US was mired in an internal political battle between then-President John Adams’s Federalist Party, which favored a strong federal government, and the opposition, known as the Democratic-Republican Party, which was led by Thomas Jefferson, who would go on to beat Adams in his re-election bid.

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Historians trace the Alien Enemies Act to the Federalist Party’s hardball tactics for entrenching power. Ostensibly, it was passed in response to tensions with France. The two countries were engaged in an undeclared naval war. The Alien Enemies Act was passed to stave off espionage and subversion by the French within US borders and allowed the president to arrest, detain, and deport male noncitizens aged 14 years and older based solely on their country of origin and without so much as a deportation hearing. Unlike today, there was no national immigration law or federal national security apparatus in 1798.

The scuttle with the French passed without incident, so Adams never actually invoked the law, which applies only in times of “declared war” or when a foreign government threatens or engages in an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.” Subsequent presidents used it during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. America is not at war with Venezuela today, so arguably, Trump’s reliance on the Alien Enemies Act to bypass legal protections for immigrants – including the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution – would be a severe overreach.

But the statute also enables a president to utilize its mechanism for summary detentions and deportations if there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” – whatever that means.

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As President Donald Trump shamelessly shreds the rule of law – flouting a federal court order, ignoring numerous acts of Congress, and defying the plain language of the Constitution as well as US Supreme Court precedent – his defenders are digging in, claiming that the Constitution’s framers envisioned this kind of power-grab all along. “I have an Article II,” Trump said in 2019, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” He and his enablers are now proceeding as if every president before him, from George Washington to Joe Biden, stupidly got it all wrong by treating the other two branches as if they have any real power.

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But anyone who has seen the hit musical ‘Hamilton’ or watched the 1970s Saturday morning TV series ‘School House Rock’ knows that a war was fought – and won – on a commitment to “No More Kings.” Blinking away that history, Trump’s advocates point to something called the “unitary executive theory,” which suggests that the president has unlimited power to control the actions of the 4 million people that make up the Executive Branch, including firing any of them at any time and for any reason.

Earlier this month, the prominent pro-Trump tech investor Keith Rabois claimed on X that any 9th-grade history student knows that “Article II vests *all* Executive Power in the President.” In a letter justifying the firing of the National Labor Relation Board’s general counsel, Trump’s team likewise wrote that “Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests the entire executive power in a single President, who alone is accountable to the people.” That argument is the unitary executive theory.

But vesting unfettered power in one man would be a monarchy, not a presidency.

What Article II Says – and Doesn’t Say

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