Since Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration on January 20, the news cycle keeps coming back around to two questions.

Every time Trump issues, or federal agencies attempt to implement, an unconstitutional executive order — one or both of which happen on a near-daily basis — journalists and pundits want to know:

First, will the courts order a halt to the executive branch’s latest   roughshod running over of the US Constitution?

Second, if the courts do so rule, will the administration comply with those rulings?

I find that line of questioning rather odd, since history’s already answered it for us many times over the Constitution’s 230-odd years of supposed rule.

The answer to both questions is “maybe, maybe not.”

American government — legislative, executive, and judicial branches alike — point to the Constitution when it supports their desires and ignores it when it thwarts those desires.

The Supreme Court in particular boasts a long record of changing its mind, reinterpreting the Constitution’s usually fairly clear commands based on deference to both popular opinion and the immediate goals of the other two branches, rendering the interpretation of law most favorable to government actors even in contradiction to that law’s own text, and hiding in chambers when its occasional ruling the other way gets ignored or “worked around.”

We need look no further back than March 26 for an example of how well we can expect the Constitution to fare versus when the Supreme Court weighs its requirements against executive edicts contradicting those requirements.

In Vanderstok v. Bondi (formerly Vanderstok v. Garland — Trump’s appointee to the office of US Attorney General took the case over from Biden’s), the court ruled that:

1. A rogue federal agency (the  US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) may
2. Apply an unconstitutional federal law (the Gun Control Act of 1968) to
3. Objects which that law’s text does not cover and never has covered.

The objects at issue are “ghost gun” kits. They’re not guns. They’re just collections of parts that, with some work and possibly additional components, can be made into guns.

The text of the GCA didn’t cover “ghost gun” kits and, as Justice Neil Gorsuch openly admits in the majority ruling, had no reason to: “[T]he milling equipment, materials needed, and designs were far too expensive for individuals to make firearms practically or reliably on their own.”

Beyond magically reinterpreting the text, meaning, and intent of the GCA, the court also just ignored the plain language, and the clear and unambiguous meaning, of the Second Amendment: “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

In noting that it refers to “a right of the people,” the Constitution’s proscription applies not just to the federal government and all its agencies, but to state and local governments as well.

In addition to being stupid and evil, “gun control” legislation, of any kind, at any level of government, violates the “Supreme Law of the Land.” Period.

Don’t expect the courts to protect your rights. They quit that job long ago.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Effective April 3, US president Donald Trump announced on March 26, Americans will pay a 25% tax (above and beyond existing taxes) on imported cars.

The measure includes “temporary exemptions for auto parts” while tax vultures “sort through the complexity” of implementing Tariff Man’s latest scheme for picking your pocket, but the massive tax hike will eventually also hit US auto manufacturers who rely on imported parts for cars assembled domestically and sold as “Made In America.”

Undetermined: Whether United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain believes the workers he claims to represent are idiots, whether he’s an idiot himself, or both. “These tariffs are a major step in the right direction,” Fain says in a UAW press release, “for autoworkers and blue-collar communities across the country.”

The release refers to the misnamed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a “free trade disaster” that has “has devastated the working class.”

Wrong on all counts.

NAFTA isn’t “free trade,” it’s government-managed trade with slightly fewer restrictions and barriers than prior to its 1994 implementation.

Far from a “disaster” that has “devastated the working class,” both US manufacturing output and the real US median wage are far higher since NAFTA than before — the former by about 36%, the latter by about 30%.

US auto industry employment increased for nearly a decade after NAFTA’s implementation, came down with increased automation, then increased again to about the pre-NAFTA level.

In 1993, the US produced about 11.2 million motor vehicles; in 2023, 10.6 million. That may have something to do with the 100,000-mile average lifespan of a car built in 1993 versus the 200,000-mile lifespan of a car built in 2024.

Yes, many auto workers had to find new jobs once imported vehicles were allowed to compete with American-built vehicles. Yes, that made some of their lives harder and left some of them worse off, at least temporarily and sometimes long-term.

Welcome to the real world, where auto workers aren’t unique and special snowflakes who never have to change careers like the rest of us. The average American changes jobs 12 times in his or her lifetime … and the average American, including one who worked on a Ford assembly line at some point, is more prosperous now than he or she was in 1993.

Trump’s cockamamie tariff schemes might well have been intentionally tailored to undo all that.

Shawn Fain’s fantasy — hordes of new dues-paying UAW workers — will remain a fantasy.

Average car prices, adjusted for inflation, are already nearly 30% higher now than they were in 1993. Trump’s 25% tax on imports, which will result in a near-25% price increase on domestically produced cars and a massive increase in the price of used cars, will have the following result:

Americans will buy fewer cars. Not just fewer imported cars, fewer cars, period. They’ll coax longer lives out of their old beaters and look into other modes of transportation.

Those Americans, including auto workers, will also be paying more for groceries and the various necessities of life.

Enjoy your “victory” bash, Shawn. Neither you nor your union’s members will enjoy the hangover.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

President Donald Trump meets with his cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Thursday, March 6, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

“As I heard it, the president was clear,” someone thought to be deputy White House chief of staff Steven Miller allegedly texted to a Signal chat involving several cabinet members and inadvertently including Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic.

The clarity: US president Donald Trump had supposedly given the “green light” for US military strikes on Yemen, a country upon which Congress has not declared war.

At 11:44 a.m. on March 15, someone purporting to be US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted a “TEAM UPDATE” to the Signal chat, revealing (Goldberg claims)  “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen.” Two hours later, as predicted in the “TEAM UPDATE,” US strikes on Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, began.

Goldberg’s disclosures, after the fact, triggered a combination of “circle the wagons, deny everything” and “condemnation of lax security” responses from within the administration.

Members of Congress are already calling for hearings. Not hearings on the illegal planning and execution of an undeclared war, just hearings on how a journalist got looped into sensitive internal discussions over an application not seemingly approved for use by government actors.

But let’s rewind to something just as important as the illegal US war on Yemen or lax opsec by national security adviser Mike Waltz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top administration officials: Donald Trump’s responsibility for the whole mess.

Trump and friends are all-in on the “unitary executive” theory, under which the president can do pretty much anything he wants because, per Article II of the US Constitution. “the executive Power shall be vested” in his office.

Over time, presidents have increasingly exploited the “unitary executive” theory to build a more “imperial” presidency. Congress, and (if Trump has his way) the courts find themselves relegated to an advisory capacity, especially but not only on foreign policy. Presidents rule as kings, using executive orders and declarations of emergency to have everything their way.

The theory and its results aren’t Trump’s inventions. He’s just building on past practice. If, as some claim, Trump aims for checkmate  and “the end of “American democracy,” the initial pawn to king 4 move was probably Harry Truman’s order for US military intervention in Korea in 1950. Congress quickly backed Truman’s play with funding, letting him get away with war by presidential order rather than congressional declaration … and it’s been a downhill roll ever since.

There’s another side to the “unitary executive” coin, though. If the president’s “executive power” extends so far, so does the president’s responsibility for both the details and the consequences. The Constitution, after all, also charges the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Apart from Goldberg, the participants in the alleged Signal chat all seem to have been chosen  by Trump — vice-president JD Vance as his running mate, the cabinet secretaries as his nominees.

If they messed up, Trump messed up. And just as he should hold them accountable, Congress should hold him accountable.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for Congress to notice the emperor’s unclothed state.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY