The Atlantic's Tom Nichols accused Trump of using the military to "kill anyone" he wants and claimed that authority could be used by him to remain in.

And he is now saying, I am going to acclimate the American public to the use of military force anywhere I deem it. Appropriate under any circumstances, and I may well, the president may be thinking, I may well have us in a war by the time the elections roll around, which will enable me to say any opposition to me and my party is basically treason and unpatriotic.

  • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    23 hours ago

    But that’s what he does, he pushes the boundaries until he finds resistance, pulls back, then tries again later. If it weren’t for the court rulings against him he probably would have gone full “Marshal Law” already.

    Also note that many of those rulings came from lower courts, some got partially reversed at the appellate level, and others got temporarily reversed at the emergency level at SCOTUS. At some point, SCOTUS will make the official rulings, on the record. That’s when the real shit will go down. There are three ways it can go down:

    • a full repudiation of the Adminstrations’s position. Not very likely, given this court.
    • a full embracing of the administration’s position. This would be the point historians point to when American democracy died.
    • a narrow ruling against the administration, which the court takes great pains to imply doesn’t set a larger precedent. Don’t believe them! This will be identical to the one above.

    Once this happens, no matter what the ruling is, the Administration will claim it as a victory and go full dictatorship. The nature of the ruling will dictate what institutions can do to counter it.