As any college freshman could tell you, the heart of the Constitution – and the reason our republic has endured so long – is the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers so wisely built into the Constitution. They operate on many levels, the most obvious of which are: the president can veto any bill passed by Congress; the Congress can override the president’s veto; the Supreme Court can declare any action by the Congress or president unconstitutional.
Those checks and balances have gotten us a long way, but now Donald Trump is trying to destroy them. In fact, what Trump is doing is worse than Nixon. Yes, Nixon did once tell David Frost: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” But that was part of a 12-interview series Nixon held with Frost in 1977, more than two years AFTER he’d resigned as president.
Yet Trump is making the very same argument today from the White House. On May 12, his attorneys argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that, as president, Donald Trump does not have to obey a judge’s order to release his financial records or respond to a subpoena issued by Congress, nor can he be indicted for committing a crime. While in office, they told the court, the president enjoys “temporary absolute immunity.” In other words, the president is above the law. Trump himself asserted, in a statement that would make the Founders’ head spin, that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power to do whatever he wants.
But even that’s not enough for Trump. Determined to root out of the executive branch any threat to his rule, Trump’s now declared war on independent inspectors general. The first Office of Inspector General was established by Congress in 1976 under the Department of Health and Human Services to tackle waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare. Since then, Congress has added an inspector general as watchdog in every major agency. In the last six weeks, Trump fired four of them: not for wrongdoing, but because they dared disagree with his policies.
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Article URL : https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/press-king-donalds-goal-no-checks-no-balances/ar-BB14iEWO