Constitutional crisis

What is a constitutional crisis if not the president of the United States threatening state election officials with prison if they count ballots that under state law they must count? We are in a constitutional crisis involving voting two weeks out from the midterm elections.

Right now, it is only in California.

but it will not stay only in California.

When he said that election officials in California will, quote, all go to jail for a long period of time.

We need to take that threat literally and seriously.

For two years, we have all heard people speculate about the potential for a constitutional crisis.

Let me tell you this.

when the Department of Justice threatens state election workers with felony prosecution for doing their job, when they hint that they may take the law into their own hands and seize ballots, when the president says that those same election officials will go to jail if they count the ballots, that they are sworn to count.

Stephen R. analyzes the tasks facing DSA in today's democratic movement.

The United States is mired in a constitutional crisis.

Not only are the ruling class political parties facing a total loss of popular legitimacy, but the state itself is increasingly dysfunctional.

While a shockingly corrupt administration is trying to make it illegal to even observe its, quote, unquote, "absolutely immune" secret police, the Supreme Court has endorsed a gerrymandering arms race that can only end in the death of competitive house elections in the US.

By building a mass constituency in opposition to ICE and the police state alongside the democratic organizations to house it, DSA can begin to erect the scaffolding of an organized working class with the means to elevate its struggle for democracy beyond cyclical street battles with the police.

Realistically, a third reconstruction is unlikely to unfold between now and twenty twenty-nine.

Present constitutional crisis will reach a different resolution on terms decided by different class forces.

But the urgency facing us is this, wherever the cards fall in the coming years, the new order will either be worse than the present disorder, or it will be an illusory return to normalcy, waiting to collapse into another more severe crisis.

Everywhere.

Well, while we're on America, constitutional crisis

crisisAs a constitutional crisis.

Why?

Talk about injuc- injunctions.

You're not supposed to break the law.

So here we have a judge telling a president what he can and can't do.

That is what we call a constitutional crisis.

But, but, but that's the thing though.

So in theory they could declare that a national emergency and say we're, we have a constitutional crisis which allows us to fix everything all at once with one swoop of the pen once we go into a constitutional crisis, and that, that might be the vehicle that they're gonna allow to happen.

But that would, it would have to ch- it would have to happen though first in order for it to trigger something like that.

In other words, Trump would have to be given the opportunity to say, "Not only did we caught them, but he's right there." You know, like Bugs Bunny in the Yosemite-

That's how you get around this.

Can you all think of any single governor in this country that had the balls to do it? That would force a constitutional crisis that the governor in black and white on the paper it's written in would win.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

There's a difference between the National Guard and a militia.

It really is something, and it's happening so fast.

And, uh, we're also gonna have, uh, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe join us on Donald Trump's latest constitutional crisis.

Will he or won't he comply with a federal judge's order about this network and CNN and Politico? Uh, we'll be getting to all of that.

Yeah, I'll so be looking forward to what he has to say.

Thanks, Jenn.

Thanks, Lawrence.

Well, Donald Trump put us in constitutional crisis mode this morning, a crisis that appeared to pass at 12:20 PM with a surrender by Donald Trump to a federal judge's order that he restore the press credentials of White House reporters who he decided to ban last Friday, including reporters from this network, along with Politico and CNN.

But tonight, Donald Trump appears to be defying that federal judge's order, and our constitutional crisis watch resumes with our first guest tonight, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.

Any appeal is gonna go to the DC Circuit, and this would not be the first time that Trump tries to challenge, challenge an appeals court decision that is not in his favor by running, as I like to say, to hide behind the skirts of mama, which is the Supreme Court justices, that uber conservative six.

I do think it's interesting that today being the kind of day in history that the Supreme Court was created and signed into law is a day that we have seen a constitutional crisis of sorts, where a member of the judiciary entered an order.

An Article Three judge entered an order And then a member of the executive branch of Article 1, for a few hours at least, gave the middle finger to that other branch of government.

Something to think about, right? Because again, there is, in theory, coequal branches of government, although I do love to quote Congressman Jamie Raskin when he says, "That is a fallacy," because in reality, Congress is stronger and more powerful than any of the other branches because Congress is the branch of government that promulgates and creates and passes laws.

The laws themselves are created by Congress, and it's up to the President of the United States to ensure that those laws are faithfully followed.

But we've seen what happens when you let a felon into the White House.

You get a constitutional crisis on the daily, and that's what happened today, albeit briefly, but still.

But it does speak to consistent challenges, consistent examples of non-compliance.