Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist
Millions of Americans are gathering across the country on Saturday — including in Washington, D.C. — to protest the monarchical pretensions of the Trump administration.
In the four months since the last No Kings protests, President Trump has gone even further down the road of claiming plenary authority over the executive branch. He has continued to claim the right to fire anyone he pleases, to cancel or spend federal funds outside congressional appropriations and to launch lethal strikes against foreign civilians without explicit authorization from Congress or evidence of imminent threat to Americans.
The president has tried to leverage the power of the federal government against his political opponents and legal adversaries, sending the Justice Department after James Comey, a former director of the F.B.I.; Attorney General Letitia James of New York; and one of Trump’s former national security advisers, John Bolton. Trump also wants to use the I.R.S. and other agencies to harass liberal donors and left-leaning foundations. He has even tried to revive lèse-majesté, threatening critics of his administration and its allies with legal and political sanctions. With Trump, it’s as if you crossed the bitter paranoia of Richard Nixon with the absolutist ideology of Charles I.
Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
Advertisement