Trump is breaking all the rules, but America is pushing back

With President Trump making trade deals right and left in Asia, we wonder whether he is fiddling like Nero while Rome burns. Inflation has ticked up to 3 percent, as economists predicted, and it may even spike higher as the full impact of reciprocal tariffs weighs in. 

Pundits on all shades of the political spectrum are worried. Fareed Zakaria sees a “crisis of faith” in our institutions. David Brooks deplores the “rot” in our democracy, and Peggy Noonan sees the exquisite equilibrium of the Constitution eroding and wonders why Congress is allowing this.  

Our problems at home are manifold. Some of Trump’s political enemies are awaiting trial on dubious indictments by a captive Justice Department; other dissenters are said to be under investigation and may be indicted in the near future.  

The Federal Reserve’s independence is seriously compromised as Trump contemplates placing loyalists on the board there to push his political agenda. 

According to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the United States has killed 57 individuals in attacks in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The dead were aboard alleged narco-trafficking speedboats in international waters. 

Before any of that happened, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) explained the problem neatly, noting that the Coast Guard can readily “shoot out a motor and disable the vehicle, board it, and… grab all those people. Show everyone all the drugs that they have secured.” So far, we haven’t seen any drugs. 

Trump is in business. His family stands to profit handsomely from advising ventures selling drones and unmanned aircraft carriers to the Pentagon. No wonder Trump snickered in Indonesia when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim praised him saying the world needs leaders who are willing to “break the rules.” 

Ibrahim might have been referring to earlier “hot mic” conversation at the Gaza peace summit in Egypt between Trump and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, discussing the Trump Organization’s business ventures in Indonesia, including the planned luxury resort complex in Bali and the golf course near Jakarta. 

Not to worry how sleazy this conversation appears. The president is exempt from our conflict-of-interest laws.

Armed National guardsmen, there in theory to preserve “public order,” occupy the streets of Chicago and Portland, even though courts have ruled that the deployment is illegal, and the deployments are based on misleading administration videos. The matter of deployment is before the Supreme Court on its rocket docket.  

The situation gives rise to the scarier question put to Hegseth, whether the establishment of multi-state National Guard rapid response forces to be “trained in crowd control and civil unrest and deployed in all 50 states by April of 2026” is underway. Hegseth was non-committal on the question. 

But Trump’s executive order calling out the National Guard in the District of Columbia entitled, “Additional Measures To Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia,” allows for this providing that “the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.”  

 Nationwide deployment? Guardsmen on American streets for no reason? It’s terrifying. 

Mind you, this is just the beginning, and there is much other cause for alarm as masked ICE agents snatch alleged migrants off the streets based on their skin color, and the Supreme Court says it’s OK.  

Will armed to the teeth guardsmen be needlessly deployed at polling places for the midterm elections, intimidating voters who seek to exercise their franchise? You can count on it unless the court intervenes, and the Trump administration argues it can’t, out of deference to the executive. 

Natural born citizens of the United States are denied the rights and privileges of citizens while the courts dither over their status, dwelling on absurd technicalities to deny them their clear constitutional rights. 

Clemency is extended to an admitted fraudster George Santos because he supported Trump in Congress. A pardon is issued to a crypto billionaire who invested heavily in an enterprise of Trump’s children. And, lest we forget, there are the carpet pardons granted to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, some violent criminals. 

Migrants are deported without due process of law in many cases in violation of a court order. Law firms and universities are threatened with extinction for exercising rights guaranteed by the Constitution. 

The government has been shut down for weeks, creeping up on the longest shutdown in American history, with 900,000 federal employees furloughed while neither side appears willing to compromise. 

Astonishingly, the demolition of the East Wing of the White House has provoked louder noises than almost anything else. To a traumatized generation, symbols are important. And Trump’s willingness to destroy this national landmark without consulting Congress or an appropriate commission makes us wonder whether we really are in an autocracy. 

Noonan wonders generally, “Isn’t the executive assuming powers of the Congress here?”   

Why is there a sigh of relief when Trump has an off-again, on-again moment  and declares that for now he will accept the two-term presidential limit of the 22nd amendment? He says he would not run for vice president because it would be “too cute”  

What have we come to with all this creeping autocracy as Trump’s approval ratings sink like ticket sales at the Kennedy Center? Americans throughout the country have said they want “no kings.” They want no uncrowned autocrats either. Bring back checks and balances. 

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast “Conversations with Jim Zirin.“