What Hath Trump Wrought

For President Trump and his allies, the 2024 election was less a vote for a new administration than it was an enabling act for a new sovereign. The public had done more than give Trump the White House the way it might bless any candidate with presidential power. In their view, the vote was akin to regime change, the start of a new Constitution, a new covenant and a new commandment: Thou shalt have no other laws before Trump.

What followed, in the first year of the president’s second term, was an effort to subordinate the entire society to the whims of one man. He did not do this alone. Rather than defend its prerogatives as the first branch among equals, the Republican-led Congress neutralized itself as a constitutional force, deferring to Trump as he destroyed the federal bureaucracy, subverted the rule of law, targeted opponents and rivals with threats and blackmail and governed by executive........

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