All posts tagged: US Constitution

The New War on Speech | Aryeh Neier

The New War on Speech | Aryeh Neier

Partway through his second inaugural address on January 20, Donald Trump started listing the executive orders he planned to sign that day. Among others, he said he would “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” designate “cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” put an end to the Green New Deal, start a full “overhaul of our trade system,” set up a “brand-new Department of Government Efficiency,” and reverse “years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression” by signing an order “to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.” Listening to that last statement, I was mystified. There have certainly been periods in American history when the federal government made substantial efforts to limit freedom of expression. But nothing of the sort had taken place in the years preceding Trump’s election. What could he have been talking about? The executive order, which Trump signed that afternoon, offered a clue. “Over the last 4 years,” it asserted, “the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech …

The Lie of ‘Preventive’ War

The Lie of ‘Preventive’ War

In January, during a lengthy New York Times interview with President Donald Trump, one of the paper’s reporters asked him whether he saw “any checks” to his “power on the world stage.” Yes, he answered: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s […] Source link

Trading with the Enemy | David Cole

Trading with the Enemy | David Cole

Friday’s Supreme Court decision rebuffing President Trump’s signature foreign policy initiative—worldwide tariffs imposed pursuant to an asserted national emergency—was extraordinary in multiple respects. In its nearly 250-year history, the Court has rarely ruled against presidential assertions of emergency power. It authorized, for example, the imprisonment of war critics during World War I, and the internment of Japanese Americans and the execution of foreign “saboteurs” without a jury trial during World War II. Yet here the Court directly rejected the president’s claim of emergency authority. What’s more, a Supreme Court decision has seldom if ever had such severe economic consequences for the federal fisc. The tariffs it declared unlawful have generated more than $100 billion in revenue, much of which may now need to be refunded. (The Court left the details of how and to what extent the tariffs will be refunded to the lower courts, where there is certain to be substantial further litigation.)  The decision’s political alignment was also unusual. The Court often divides 6-3, as it did Friday—but rarely with the three Democratic …