How Trump is exploiting an 'impotent Republican Party' to amass 'immense power'

15 May

Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. look on near the exit, during a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Educator Ross Rosenfeld tells The New Republic that Trump is exploiting so-called “emergency” powers to create a permanent dictatorship.

“The office of dictator was created in the early Roman Republic, when it granted a single person — a prominent and trusted citizen — immense power in times of emergency,” writes Rosenfeld.

And of course this power was exploited by the likes of Roman general Sulla, who used that legislative procedure to entrench himself as dictator for life. Julius Caesar later used it to permanently bring an end of the Roman Republic and mire it in a series of dictatorships.

“A couple of millennia later, and half a world away, Donald Trump is taking steps in that direction,” he said, courtesy of complicity and courts.

Woodrow Wilson was the first president to formally declare a national emergency and use this additional power to prepare the nation for World War I. FDR issued three national emergency proclamations, two related to World War II. Then, in 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA) giving presidents broad emergency powers. It originally included a check on that authority by reining in an emergency declaration through a vote, but the Supreme Court overturned that check in the 1983. Presidents soon made emergency declarations a well-worn tool in the White House toolbox.

Ronald Reagan used the NEA six times during his eight years in office. Bill Clinton used it 18 times. George W. Bush declared an emergency 14 times against foreign entities related to terrorism, as did Barack Obama. But since retaking office, Trump has “declared eight national emergencies in just a few short months.”

“He’s used the NEA to militarize the Southern border against ‘invasion’ and to enact tariffs against the entire world,” writes Rosenfeld. “He declared a national energy emergency, even though no such emergency exists, so that he can push through more fossil fuel permits.”

Trump coupled his NEA “emergencies” with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to violate the due process rights of undocumented immigrants “and sentence them to a lifetime of detention in El Salvador.” Trump has considered using the 1807 Insurrection Act to use American troops to deal with a "rebellion" within U.S. borders. Presidential advisor Stephen Miller even considered suspending habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants, depriving them of any due process rights, in defiance of the Constitution.

Suspending habeas corpus is easier with “a Congress controlled by a feeble, impotent Republican Party,” Rosenfeld said. After all, when the Roman Senate suspended due process procedures for Gaius Gracchus they conveniently “shielded themselves from any responsibility for actions taken during the crisis.”

Rahm Emmanuel once said “Never let a crisis go to waste,” and Rosenfeld says Trump and Miller have exploited “Rahm’s rule” to craft a rule of governance that deliberately creates “a continual state of crisis and turmoil, allowing the president to assume expansive emergency powers.”

“Crises lend themselves to authoritarian rule, and often in the aftermath it’s extraordinarily difficult to return to republican government,” Rosenfeld warns.

But what commonly comes after a dictator is another dictator, and Americans made a mistake in “putting a fascist back in office after his first attempt to overthrow the government."

Read the full TNR report here.

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