This 60-minutes segment on how Germany criminalizes offensive speech on the internet is worth a view:
“Trump Suggests No Laws Are Broken if He’s ‘Saving His Country'”
President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his attitude as he tests the nation’s legal and constitutional boundaries in the process of upending the federal government and punishing his perceived enemies.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.
By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
Nonetheless, the sentiment was familiar: Mr. Trump, through his words and actions, has repeatedly suggested that surviving two assassination attempts is evidence that he has divine backing to enforce his will.
He has brought a far more aggressive attitude toward his use of power to the White House in his second term than he did at the start of his first. The powers of the presidency that he returned to were bolstered by last year’s Supreme Court ruling that he is presumptively immune from prosecution for any crimes he may commit using his official powers.
During his first weeks in office, Mr. Trump has signed numerous executive orders that pushed at the generally understood limits of presidential power, fired numerous officials and dismantled an agency in clear violation of statutory limits, and frozen spending authorized by Congress without clear authority. Many of his policy moves have been at least temporarily frozen by judges.
Such moves include trying to unilaterally rewrite the definition of birthright citizenship — a right enshrined in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment — to exclude babies born to undocumented mothers, and mass firings of public servants, ignoring civil service protection laws. He has all but shuttered the agency responsible for foreign aid, dismissed prosecutors who investigated him, and fired Senate-confirmed watchdogs without giving proper notice to Congress or justification.
Mr. Trump’s team has embraced an expansive version of the so-called unitary executive theory, a legal ideology that says that the Constitution should be understood as forbidding Congress from placing any limits on the president’s control of the executive branch, including by creating independent agencies or restricting the president’s ability to summarily fire any government official at will….
“Venting at Democrats and Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash”
The demoralization and fear gripping blue America in the early weeks of President Trump’s administration have left liberal groups and their allies struggling for cash, hurting their ability to effectively combat the right-wing transformation of the federal government.
The small-dollar online spigot that powered opposition to the first Trump administration has slowed to a trickle as shaken liberal voters withhold their donations.
Charitable foundations that have long supported causes like voting rights, L.G.B.T.Q. equality and immigrants’ rights are pulling back, devoting time to prepare for expected investigations from the Republican-led Congress.
And some of the country’s biggest liberal donors have paused giving, frustrated with what they see as Democrats’ lack of vision and worried about retaliation from a vengeful president. Some Democrats say a few of their reliable donors are now openly supporting Mr. Trump, or at least looking to curry favor with him.
Fund-raising slowdowns are common after a presidential defeat and before marquee midterm races fully begin. But interviews with more than 50 donors, strategists and leaders of activist organizations show that many Democrats believe this year is different.
While Mr. Trump has not taken action against any liberal groups or lawmakers, Democrats worry his frequent threats of retribution during the campaign have led to a chilling effect on the charitable foundations and nonprofit advocacy groups that have long been pillars of the country’s civil society.
Jeff Skoll, a Silicon Valley billionaire and a longtime friend of Elon Musk’s, said there was “an awful lot of pressure” to side with Mr. Trump.
This month, Mr. Skoll, who has donated tens of millions to Democratic candidates and causes in recent years but said he did not vote in the 2024 presidential election, posted a photo on social media of himself standing with Mr. Trump backstage at the inauguration. On Friday, he had breakfast in Palm Beach, Fla., with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, where they discussed the prospect of Mr. Schumer’s using Mr. Skoll to back-channel ideas to the president, Mr. Skoll said.
Mr. Schumer recalls the conversation differently, according to an aide, Allison Biasotti.
In an interview, Mr. Skoll acknowledged his unique position, saying he had heard from many others who were frightened to fund opposition to the administration.
“There are people who were absolutely against Trump, never Trumpers, who fear that they’ll be retaliated against and they’ll have to leave the country,” Mr. Skoll said. “Folks who wish to oppose him — it may take some time before they gather up the courage.”
The result is a political environment that is strikingly different from 2017, when money poured into Democratic causes, fortifying existing organizations and seeding a flowering of new groups to fight different parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Now, some of those same organizations are struggling to survive, in part because few new major liberal donors have emerged since 2017. Groups that support L.G.B.T.Q. rights, promote gender equity and champion other progressive causes have cut staffing and announced that longtime leaders are leaving.
End Citizens United, a left-leaning group that aims to overhaul campaign finance laws, laid off its six senior staff members last month as part of a restructuring. Run for Something, which works to elect liberal down-ballot candidates, laid off 35 percent of its staff late last year. And GLSEN, a group dedicated to protecting L.G.B.T.Q. students, laid off 25 people last month….
Elon Musk Says “60 Minutes” Journalists “Deserve a Long Prison Sentence” after Airing Critical Report; Where are the Free Speech Organizations on the Right Condemning this Intimidation of Journalists by Government Official?
“Morning Digest: A Georgia Republican says he alone can raise unlimited sums. His rivals have other ideas”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones hasn’t yet announced his long-anticipated campaign for governor of Georgia, but he’s already taking advantage of a state law allowing him to raise unlimited sums of money—something none of his would-be rivals can do. And despite a previous ruling clamping down on this one-sided state of affairs, Jones insists he can spend this windfall in his quest to win next year’s Republican primary—a question that may wind up back in the courts.
Jones, who is one of Donald Trump’s top allies in the state, enjoys this advantageous position thanks to a 2021 law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp authorizing powerful new entities called “leadership committees.”
Candidates for statewide office are limited to accepting $8,400 from individual donors for the primary and the same amount for the general election. They’re also barred from fundraising when the legislature is in session. By contrast, there are no such restrictions for leadership committees. These groups, unlike federal super PACs, are also allowed to coordinate directly with the campaigns they’re supporting.
The law allows the sitting governor, lieutenant governor, and leaders of both parties to create these special committees. Everyone else is out of luck, though nominees for governor and lieutenant governor who don’t currently hold those offices can establish their own leadership committees after they win their party’s nomination.
Kemp took advantage of the law he signed during his fight against former Sen. David Perdue in the 2022 GOP primary. Both Perdue and Democrat Stacey Abrams, who couldn’t yet form leadership committees, argued that Kemp had an unfair advantage. Federal Judge Mark Cohen barred the governor’s committee from spending money until he won the primary, but he did not invalidate the law.
Kemp went on to beat both Perdue and Abrams, and he’s continued to utilize his leadership committee to advocate for allied candidates—including Trump. State Democrats sued to strike down the law last year, but they dropped their suit after Cohen ruled they lacked standing to bring a challenge.
Jones’s committee, called the WBJ Leadership Committee, finished January with $2.6 million in the bank. (The lieutenant governor’s full name is William Burton Jones.) Cohen’s ruling against Kemp in 2022 would seemingly bar his allies from spending that money on his behalf in the upcoming primary to succeed Kemp, but unsurprisingly, he and his rivals sharply disagree on whether it still applies.
Attorney General Chris Carr, who launched his own campaign for the GOP nod in November, believes the answer is no. A strategist for Carr—who does not have access to a leadership committee—told the Associated Press that Cohen’s earlier decision means that cash raised by WBJ “cannot be spent on anything that furthers his Republican primary campaign for governor.”
Carr, it so happens, defended the law in his capacity as attorney general against the challenge brought by Perdue and Abrams, calling their attempt to restrict leadership committees a “nakedly political effort.”…
“This Is What the Courts Can Do if Trump Defies Them”
Trevor Morrison and I have published this essay in the NYT today on a question many people are asking.
The NYT gave us a lot of space, given the importance of the issue, which makes excerpting the piece difficult. Here are a few excerpts:
Are we heading toward a full-blown constitutional crisis? For the first time in decades, the country is wrestling with this question. It was provoked by members of the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, the influential director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, who have hinted or walked right up to the edge of saying outright that officials should refuse to obey a court order against certain actions of the administration. President Trump has said he would obey court orders — though on Saturday he posted on social media, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”…
The fundamental principle of the rule of law is that once the legal process, including appeals and stay applications, has reached completion, public officials must obey an order of the courts. This country’s constitutional traditions are built on, and depend upon, that understanding…
The courts rarely issue binding orders to the president, so these orders are not likely to be directed at President Trump personally. His executive orders and other commands are typically enforced by subordinate officials in the executive branch, and any court order — initially, it would come from the Federal District Court — would be directed at them.
If officials refuse to comply, perhaps at the direction of the president, the courts would be likely to issue further orders, with increasingly strict and specific requirements such as a due date.
Traditionally, courts have not rushed to invoke the most aggressive measures in response to executive branch resistance, but have moved gradually, as a form of negotiation. …
If a court is met with extended and clear recalcitrance, it will most likely take that as definitive evidence that the government is intentionally refusing to comply. Government lawyers who make misrepresentations to a court about the government’s actions could face serious professional discipline, including potential disbarment. So, too, could any other administration officials who are lawyers and participate in defying a court order.
The court may consider holding the noncomplying officials in contempt of court. Merely threatening executive officials with contempt can sometimes be enough to induce sufficient compliance to de-escalate the situation….
If the noncompliance persists, the courts can issue fines, which could be directed at the agency involved or against specific officials. The courts can also bar officials from seeking indemnification. No fine would be financially meaningful to Elon Musk, of course, but, like the president, he must implement his policies through subordinate officials. The courts could also order aggressive measures in the underlying litigation to punish the government.
A more consequential step is for courts to hold the offending officials in criminal contempt and to refer the matter to the relevant United States Attorney’s Office for prosecution. Mr. Trump might direct the attorney general to prohibit federal prosecutors from proceeding with any contempt charge, but one way around that problem is for the court to appoint private outside counsel to prosecute the contempt charge, a practice the Supreme Court approved in a 1987 decision. Still, there are limits: The president retains the power to pardon anyone ultimately convicted of criminal contempt, and President Trump has not been shy about using it.
Even in the absence of a finding of criminal contempt, a federal court can enforce a finding of civil contempt by ordering the immediate jailing of the offending officials to induce compliance with the court’s order.
A finding of civil contempt is not a criminal conviction, and judicially imposed sanctions to enforce civil contempt (including fines and jailing) are not criminal sentences — so they are not covered by the president’s pardon power. Still, to carry out the jail order, some federal law enforcement agency with arrest authority would need to be involved….
Here again, the president may raise the stakes by ordering line-level U.S. marshals not to enforce the court order, or direct the head of the Marshals Service or the attorney general not to issue such an order.
Yet even that question reveals something important about the dynamic at work here. Executive branch defiance of the courts is not a simple, one-time-only decision. A prudent court will give the government officials covered by its order multiple opportunities to comply with the order, and will escalate things only when the officials by their own actions (or inaction) make their defiance clear.
The other side of that same coin is that as matters escalate, a presidential administration determined to flout court orders will have to do so repeatedly and publicly and will need to continually expand the circle of federal officials who are in violation of the law — perhaps to include even the U.S. marshals themselves….
At that point, there is no question we would be in a constitutional crisis, and the courts could well run out of options. Here, the resolution of an ultimate confrontation between the branches, which would dominate the news, would also depend on the response of a range of actors in the public more generally.
An administration that was openly ordering more and more government officials to flout the courts and the law would most likely face significant costs outside the judiciary. The U.S. economy enjoys a “safe harbor premium.” The longstanding stability and certainty of our independent judicial system guarantee reliable protection of contract and property rights, which in turn enables long-term investments by the U.S. business community and attracts immense foreign investment in the economy.
The chaos precipitated by so radically destabilizing the judiciary and the rule of law might well have serious economic consequences, including in the stock markets. Foreign investment would likely flee the country; the dollar would fall. This would bring added pressure on the White House to comply with the courts and on Congress to demand such compliance.
Judicial independence and the stability of the rule of law take generations to establish in a credible, durable way. A foolish administration that seeks to defy the courts for short-term political gains or simply to show its “dominance” of other institutions would soon seek shelter from the whirlwind it would undoubtedly unleash.