If you’ve wondered what a severe constitutional crisis looks like, wonder no more. President Trump has created one.
It’s growing more intense every day as he and Elon Musk find new ways to violate the Constitution, federal laws, civil servants’ rights to their jobs and all Americans’ rights to privacy.
Trump threatened to be a dictator only on day one, which would have been bad enough, but he has already wielded his Sharpie incessantly during his first weeks in office. And he’s unleashed Musk to destroy agencies, programs and jobs Congress has created and sustained.
Last year, Trump and Project 2025 foretold the havoc he would wreak on democracy and governance. Republican voters had an opportunity to put the country above MAGA. Too few did, but it was close. Trump claims voters gave him an overwhelming mandate to ignore the rule of law, seize limitless powers and fill the government with oligarchs. But there was no mandate. He received less than 50 percent of the vote — meaning most Americans voted against him.
We are witnessing an outright coup against democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution. Trump has broken the checks-and-balance system, usurped powers from Congress, and won a free pass from the nation’s highest court. He has bullied the Republican majorities in Congress into submission and shows signs he will defy the courts as well.
Every evening news report delivers more bad news for the republic.
One of Trump’s transgressions — his abuse of emergency powers — is getting too little attention. After the oil and gas industry gave nearly $100 million to his campaign and affiliated committees, he declared a nonexistent energy emergency that will create a true energy emergency.
Trump reportedly told oil executives he’d relax environmental regulations and let them drill with abandon if the industry gave him $1 billion. They didn’t take the deal, but Trump delivered a favor anyway. Hours after his inauguration, he formally declared a national energy emergency, allowing oil and gas producers to bypass the usual permitting and environmental requirements.
Trump justified this with balderdash, blaming the Biden administration for “our nation’s inadequate energy supply and infrastructure.” He wants U.S. “energy dominance.” Yet the U.S. is already the world’s biggest oil and gas producer; the industry set production records during Biden’s presidency.
Trump ignores reality. America can’t dominate something it doesn’t control. As energy experts repeatedly point out, the global petroleum market controls supplies and prices. By prolonging America’s dependence on oil and gas, Trump cedes the nation’s energy security to that market and, by extension, its economic and physical security.
Trump promised to fix our aging infrastructure during his first term, but he failed. Biden then worked with Congress to pass a $1.2 trillion investment in energy and other infrastructure and a record $370 billion investment in clean energy technologies.
Trump has now illegally frozen federal funds for modernizing our energy supplies and infrastructure, putting progress in limbo. That is one dimension of our true energy emergency. The other is Trump’s obstinate refusal to acknowledge and do something about fossil-fueled climate change.
So Trump is not only attacking democracy, the Constitution and the fate of the republic — he is also attacking the nation’s quality of life.
We see Trump’s dishonesty in other critical areas. He and his incoming Cabinet officers argue that federal employees should be hired solely on merit. Yet Trump has appointed, and Senate Republicans are confirming, the most unqualified and morally compromised senior government officials in the nation’s history.
In the name of justice, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 men and women convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The most violent are likely to become Trump’s own Republican Guard; National Public Radio reports they already are “whipping each other up online with increasingly dire threats against FBI agents and prosecutors who worked on investigations” of the incident.
Another of Trump’s executive orders declares that Trump is “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.” Yet Trump defames and threatens unprecedented retaliation against those who speak against him.
Trump is defying and dismantling the Constitution’s framework of government. He is replacing the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances among the three branches with a royal concentration of authority.
The judiciary may not be able to stop him. Plaintiffs have already filed a flurry of lawsuits against his actions, but the nation’s highest court is in his pocket, and he has a history of ignoring lower-court orders. We are unlikely to see marshals cuffing Trump and taking him to jail for contempt.
Career federal employees could revolt against illegal orders and firings. The law prohibits strikes by public employees, but they have the right to refuse compliance with unlawful directives. Several have told Newsweek they intend to do so. However, it is a difficult path. Trump’s team would fire them, setting a prolonged appeal process in motion that, again, ends in the courts.
States can defy Trump and implement their own policies. NBC reports, “A growing list of blue-state governors, including several potential 2028 contenders, are already planning legislative sessions, legal actions, and other moves to fight Trump.”
However, there is no substitute for a voter uprising that threatens politicians with losing their jobs. It’s time to launch the 2026 midterm election campaign to install a Congress willing to remove Trump from office. It’s a tall order — removing him from office requires two-thirds of the Senate. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a Democrat supermajority. Instead, it requires a supermajority of senators who put country above party.
Over the next 18 months, the foundations and NGOs willing to defend democracy should launch a coordinated and persistent communications campaign to inform voters of Trump’s impacts on grassroots Americans. PolitiFact’s “MAGA-Meter” is tracking the president’s promises, including the most egregious. But a much larger effort should help voters track what Trump is doing to the things they value most, like their constitutional rights, security from violence, inflation, consumer prices, public health, the cost of health care, environmental quality, climate change, wealth and wage equality, job growth, and so on.
We need an American equivalent of the Arab Spring — an overwhelming and sustained demand for fundamental rights, good government, a healthy democracy and the rule of law. And because a stable democracy and stable climate go hand in hand, their restoration would be a fitting theme for a massive show of voter power on Earth Day this April in Washington.
William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and contributor to Democracy in a Hotter Time, named by the journal Nature as one of 2023’s five best science books. He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan climate policy think tank unaffiliated with the White House.
