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Here Comes The Constitutional Crisis
There are a lot of "Will he or won't he?" questions swirling around Donald Trump, the most important
The hope is that, although Bessent is clearly playing along with alot of Trump’s non-sense economic agenda, he is one of the few adults in the room who wouldn’t play along with such a dangerous idea.
Who cares what Bessent thinks if the rule of law isn’t in play. Send him to El Salvador too if he doesn’t go along with the plan.
Hope springs eternal. Did you follow the debate over who to appoint Treasury Secretary? It came down to a battle between Scottie Bessent and Howie Lutnick. They bought off Lutnick with the promise that Bessent would be installed as Fed Chairman at or before Jerome Powell’s term expires, opening up the treasury slot for Lutnick.
Bessent wants the Fed chairmanship so there’s little chance he will stand up against any Trump policy ideas.
He works for Trump and serves at his orders.
Trump thinks capital letters equal LOGIC, JUSTIFICATION, and LEGITIMACY. Also, EXCLAMATION MARKS !!!!!
This certainly seems ruthlessly logical, if the goal was to disobey court orders all along. Now the test case will be “we’re stopping dangerous illegal criminals from coming back.” Who in the general public is expected to have an issue with that? That last section from “Let me” on gets bone-chilling, so thanks again for great reporting.
The section up top was more bone-chilling to me. I’m no Wall Streeter. But I’ve been threatened by cops with guns in my own house for so much as raising my voice a little (so I could be heard over his own barrage of drivel). I’ve got friends and family who are public activists who are in these same crosshairs, on the same kinds of lists. Sure, loss of public confidence in the almighty US monetary system is bad, and I guess this kinda lays that out as a starting place. But it’s not my first worry.
“But when the president does it that means that it is not illegal”
SCOTUS basically confirmed this with Trump v. United States last year. Maybe Roberts will balk at attempts to remove other judges but does anyone think he/at least 5 others will do anything to stop the administration from doing basically anything else.
An opinion piece in The Guardian suggests that Roberts just might step up to try to keep himself from going down in history as the Chief Justice who ended democracy in America:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/18/supreme-court-john-roberts-trump.
The Atlantic doubts that Roberts has the vision or courage for this, though:
“The chief justice is right. Trump’s attack on Boasberg is juvenile, civically illiterate, and perilous to the rule of law. (It was also just an echo of his sidekick Elon Musk’s recent rants about courts.) But the statement is notable for what it leaves out: any acknowledgment of the substantive dispute in the case, which is whether Trump is defying court orders. Roberts seems more concerned about rhetorical attacks on the personal integrity or employment status of judges than he does with systemic attacks on the judiciary as a whole.”
H poses the question as “Do we want to give the President – any President – the unilateral authority to throw anybody he or she wants, including, perhaps, US citizens, onto a plane bound for hard confinement with Salvadorean murderers, with no due process and trip, room and perpetual board all paid for by American taxpayers?”.
Agreed, that’s PART of the question. The other truly terrifying rest of the question is that the people sent to the prison were not named.
The very definition of someone being “disappeared”.
Fifty one seconds, rule book scene from Bridge of spies film.
Needless to say, no one like James B. Donovan will be negotiating at a high level on behalf of the US for some time.
The rule book has always been open to interpretation. Last year in Trump v US the USSC nullified many of the rules that were previously thought to be the most important safeguards of the rulebook itself.
Feel like this movie doesn’t get its due and I’m not a huge Hanks fan.
It’s impossible for me to wrap my mind around our current circumstances. The Republicans have installed a king and an incredibly stupid one at that. The dam has broken and people will have to wake up to the cold reality that the laws they took for granted are no longer relevant.
At the risk of getting myself sent to El Salvador, I hope Father Time does the job that Republicans refuse to do. Even if JD Vance is willing to push the bounds, he does not have the same hold over the Trump cult and it may be our only hope to stop a full-on dictatorship.
I honestly can’t believe it’s come to this. Stupidity and malice are a terrifying combination.
It is happening indeed and faster than most of us expected. Prior to Trump’s electoral victory I announced to close friends my intention to leave the US for fear of a de facto dictatorship, their typical response “it would never happen here,” always struck me as naive in the way only a US born American citizen can be naive. Anyway, I am glad I planned ahead, specially now, as the fact that I am a naturalized US citizen born in Venezuela of all places means the threat of seizure, deportation or worst feels very real, regardless of having been a citizen for almost 2 decades and having zero gang affiliations. I also hold an EU passport which makes me very lucky, I rather face the threat of Putin’s bombs than risk ending incommunicado in a Salvadorian max security prison. For me at least, the American experiment is over.
“naive in the way only a US born American citizen can be naive.” Damn, that’s cold. And accurate.
“That — some manner of debt swap — is part and parcel of a theory which posits a “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” an imaginary (for now) agreement that’d let Trump have his cake and eat it too on a number of fronts.”
To add some context. I’ve read that Mr. Trump toyed with the idea of a selective default his first term but was toweled down by the adults in the room back then. However — a BIG distinction was that he raised the idea not in the context of friends and allies but in the case of US debt owned by China. Perhaps as a chess move against the notion that China might dump their US Treasury bond holdings as a trade deal negotiating tactic. In isolation it was actually an appealing idea.
But it may help explain why central banks around the world have slowly stepped up their buying of gold to replace their dollar holdings in their reserve baskets. Those dollars are not kept in non-interest-bearing accounts. They are typically parked in T-bills or shorter US Treasury notes. Resurrecting this idea would probably ramp up the exodus by other nations which would not be a welcome idea in our bond markets. My God! We’d have to order the Federal Reserve to step in and buy. If Powell resisted, Scott Bessent would be eagerly waiting to take over and do it.
I can’t help but think about David Rogers Webb’s The Great Taking. I mean, sh*t is getting real. Here’s the online pdf for those that have not come across this piece. I’ve read it several times.
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/1ee786fb-3c78-4903-9701-d614892d09d6/taking-feb24-screen2.pdf
H- thoughts? Is this part of the propaganda you speak of regularly? Or is there meat on the bone?
I don’t know. Never heard of him.
Definite Nostradamus vibes. Given this situation, how would one prepare/position? Clearly, clear out any debt on property you want to keep (cars included). But what else? Stash of gold and silver coins? Cash in the mattress?
Oh damn, the rabbit hole. He links out to a similar/identical stance from The Heartland Institute, which is a hub of climate change denialism/activism and related MAGA-friendly ideals. Thanks for the link, I’ll mull this regardless, but sprinkling some salt along the way.
Has a Russian intelligence operation successfully penetrated the White House?
Precursor to Shotgun Diplomacy
Lots of trees to look at to distract us from the forest. It might be that all this destruction of infrastructure and rule of law is the goal. For what purpose? this might be known by Musk, Putin and, to a lessor extent, their Useful Idiot.
Surprised they haven’t used the “Obama assassinated US citizens oversees without due process” defense yet