There are two ‘definitions’ (‘understandings’ would be a better description) of what constitutes a Constitutional crisis. The first is simply that an issue arises for a nation that its Constitution seems unable to resolve. The second is that a nation’s Constitution is not being upheld by the powers it has enabled to uphold it. That is what is happening in the United States right now; specifically since the beginning of Donald J. Trump’s second term on January 20, 2025, but in the planning stages much before that, as we saw in Project 2025, speeches, and documents from before his first term and continuing on.
According to many, both historically and currently, who have lived through the devolution of democracy to authoritarianism/dictatorship in other countries, it is not a slippery slope; it happens quickly, although some of the changes may seem subtle and of little consequence, they are all part of a plan. There should be no surprise here. Trump told us he wanted to be a dictator. Why voters didn’t believe him is difficult to understand. I suspect it’s because so much of what he says is nonsense and said in such a way as not to be serious.
Trump put cronies and idiots in positions of power to do his bidding from the Supreme Court to his Cabinet. (One clever sign at the Hands Off rally was “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA.”) This has enabled him to move quickly as planned and overwhelm those who might oppose him. If we want to continue to have a democratic Republic government, one must act fast, smartly, nonviolently, and effectively. That’s a lot to ask!
First, pay attention to what is happening. That’s unpleasant; I know, for one, I’ve stopped watching the news, but I read it. The sound bites and attempt at radicalizing content to attract audiences and sell ads is nauseating and unhelpful. However you choose to bite the bullet and endure what is happening to our country, do it, but make sure it’s factual. There are a lot of blatant lies, varnished ‘truth,’ and other attempts to mislead from every side.
Back to the Constitutional Crisis: Yes, that is what it is.
First a step backwards to look at our Constitution. Here’s the Preamble with its seared-in-our minds beginning phrase:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
We the people, not a king, president, dictator, chief, members of the legislature, nor judges establish our government. We rule the country by means of elected representatives spelled out specifically in the Constitution to create a Congress of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives, as we all know, which has many powers including legislative and monetary. The Constitution also creates the Executive branch in the office of the President (and Vice-President), how they are to be elected, and limits on the powers of the President. Then the Constitution moves on to the Judiciary, establishing the Supreme Court and those “inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
Further, the Constitution states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” i.e., a representative democracy as has been delineated throughout the document. It also makes clear that all state and federal members of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Finally, it separates power into three distinct branches, basically: Congress with the power to create laws and determine how federal money is spent; the Executive/President to administer those laws; the Judiciary to interpret and enforce the laws.
The point of the three branches and delineation of power was for checks and balances, which we hear a lot about right now because neither Congress (with the Republicans in the majority and the Democrats in disarray) nor the Judiciary (not all as you shall see) are fully using their checks and balances on the Executive branch, which has clearly exceeded its constitutional powers. We have the legislative branch and the judicial branch abdicating power and the executive branch usurping power that does not belong in that branch. This constitutes a Constitutional Crisis.
The Constitution makes clear that Congress has a great many powers, and that the Executive branch is dependent on Congressional approval for many of its decisions, such as various positions within the government, e.g., the Cabinet, Ambassadors, and the like. It is Congress, not the Executive branch, that determines where federal money is spent, as well as determining tariffs, taxes, excises, et al., with foreign governments.
The Constitution starts out defining and delineating the many powers of Congress. A few of these powers are:
- What has become known as ‘The Power of the Purse,’ including regulating commerce with foreign nations.
- To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
- To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court, as mentioned above under the Judicial branch.
- To raise and support Armies, To provide and maintain a Navy, To provide for calling forth the Militia
“The rule of law has been a fundamental value in the legal, historical, and normative order of the United States of America since the birth of the Republic, and remains so today….The Revolution, the Constitution, and the legal institutions of the United States all seek ‘the empire of laws and not of men.’ Despite its mixed success, this search has been and remains the unifying thread in the history of American law. This commitment to the rule of law was most prominently and directly made in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which promises that no person shall ‘be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’ The Fourteenth Amendment added that ‘No State shall. . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ Similar guarantees already existed in the constitutions of each of the separate States of the Union. The Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1780) put this shared commitment simply and clearly when it embraced the universal right to enjoy “a government of laws and not of men. The American Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 70, Issue Supplement_1, October 2022, Pages i26–i38, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcl/avac023
The core of our Constitutional Crisis is exactly how has the Executive branch, i.e., President Trump, violated the U.S. Constitution. Here are a few of the primary issues.
- Ignoring the Power of the Purse. Congress creates the federal budget with these three basic categories:
- Mandatory spending – funding for Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, and other spending required by law. This typically uses over half of all funding.
- Discretionary spending – federal agency funding. Congress sets funding levels for these each year. This usually accounts for around a third of all funding.
- Interest on the debt – this usually uses less than 10 percent of all funding.
The President, and especially an unelected businessperson, such as Elon Musk, has absolutely no Constitutional control over Congressional allocated funding. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
- Ignoring the ‘Rule of Law.’ Although there is no direct use of the phrase “rule of law” in the Constitution, two Amendments, the 5th and the 14th, make it clear, as does the basic wording of the Constitution, that the rule of law is a basic Constitutional principle. The 5th Amendment states: “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; …” See the following link to read the complete 5th Amendment: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
- The 14th Amendment, Section 1 states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27 There are two main points here: The birthright to citizenship, which cannot be ended by a President, and the right to due process of law and equal protection of the laws, which were absolutely not followed by ICE in their attempt to meet the numerical quantities of deportations promised by Trump to his followers, which is discussed as follows in 4.
- The actions of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detaining both legal and illegal citizens and sending several to a foreign prison in El Salvador, for which the corrupt President Bukele of that country is being paid $20,000/year for each prisoner by U.S. taxpayers The first ‘load’ consisted of 261 allegedly criminal illegal immigrants, but there was NO due process. Many of those, we since found out, were neither illegal nor criminals; yet, they remain in CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious prison, in spite of a court order. The Administration, ICE, and Homeland Security continue to disseminate lies about at least some of the prisoners, who should not have been picked up at all. Putting each person through due process would determine who should be deported, imprisoned in this country, or set free. That would be the legal, Constitutional manner to conduct such actions.
- Shutting down USAID, according to U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Maryland, Judge Theodore Chuang: “the Court finds that Defendants’ actions taken to shut down USAID on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAID headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAID Officer, likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways, and that these actions harmed not only Plaintiffs, but also the public interest, because they deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress.” https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/usaid-elon-musk-doge-likely-unconstitutional-order-restoring-agency-systems.pdf
- Freezing funds designated for specific states. In the case by several states v. Donald Trump, et al., in the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the federal Judge, John J. McConnell, Jr. issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), which the Administration has ignored. Both the freezing of the funds and ignoring a Federal Court order are unconstitutional without question. The court order is interesting to read and very clear, for example: “The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO…. Therefore, consistent with the United States Constitution, United States statutes, United States Supreme Court precedent, and the TRO, the Defendants are hereby further ORDERED as follows: 1. The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding during the pendency of the TRO until the Court hears and decides the Preliminary Injunction request.” The remaining orders relate to not freezing any other funding and effectuating the release of the frozen funds. The Administration has yet to do as ordered by the Court. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.58912/gov.uscourts.rid.58912.96.0_5.pdf
As a member of the League of Women Voters (LWV), I was pleased and proud to read the following statement released on April 17 by Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, and Dianna Wynn, president of the League of Women Voters: “It has now been 87 days since the start of the Trump administration. From the flagrant disregard for congressional authority and governmental checks and balances to defying Supreme Court orders to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back home, one thing is abundantly clear: our country is in a constitutional crisis.”
