by Tyler Rosen
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted on social media declaring himself the king with the caption: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
One may try to pass this egregious post off as simply the unserious ramblings of an unprofessional individual but this is much more sinister. This is not just anyone, this is the President of the United States and not just him at that. The Press Secretary of the White House posted an AI generated picture of Trump dressed up as a monarch with the same caption. The Official White House social media even joined the choir as seen here.
It is impossible to brush these comments off as jest given that they do not come in isolation. Donald Trump has already abused the use of executive orders by signing over 70 since his first day of his second term. These executive orders have been aimed at disrupting departments and agencies of the government he and his unelected assistant oligarch Elon Musk, who gave a Nazi salute during inauguration day, have unilaterally deemed bureaucratic and wasteful. Such organizations such as the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Environmental Protection Agency, National Labor Relations Board, Federal Labor Relations Authority, and many more are on the MAGA chopping block.
In effect, Trump’s executive orders have the objective result of concentrating power further into the executive branch of the US government. An Executive Order which places for oversight power of Federal agencies into the hands of the executive branch. While some of these actions are not going without challenge, the strategy of the Trump Administration seem to be to overwhelm the Federal Courts in what is called in hacking jargon, ‘brute forcing’. Though not all of his executive orders will stick, he is relying on his opponents to choose their battles in order to get some of his most desired orders to fly under the radar.
With open demonstrations and violence by far-right and white supremacist organizations on the rise, the whole country and world must remain vigilant and be prepared to struggle against all assaults on civil liberties and labor rights.
In 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola sent a letter to President George Washington suggesting that he become king of the newly liberated United States to which Washington responded strongly with, “No incident in the course of the war in me triggers painful feelings as your message, that such ideas are circulating in the army, as you expressed it.”
It is important that the American people take the time to learn the history of the American Revolution and the enlightenment philosophy of our Founding Fathers. Their contributions to political thought explicitly rejected the idea of the concentration of power into the executive branch of government.