War Powers

 The blessing and curse of being a history and government teachers these days is that you are never short of current events to illustrate what you are talking about in class. In my International Relations course, we are talking about the concept of war. What differentiates a "war" from other forms of political violence? This is all more than academic as Trump has basically declared that we are at literally (not metaphorically) at war with drugs. This is taking the form of slaughtering Venezuelans on the high seas without due process.

Now, drug cartels are obviously not sympathetic figures! That no doubt feeds into the Trump/Miller administration's choice to declare war on cartels: make Democrats defend the rule of law by defending the least popular targets. Of course, if you really wanted to punish those who have killed so many Americans, you should probably launch a drone strike on the Sacklers.  

There are a host of analyses today about the fact that it's very much an open question as to whether we are still a democratic republic. Freedom House still lists us as one, but I think that might be a lagging indicator. To the degree that we are still hanging on to our democratic institutions, it's largely because while lower Courts have routinely ruled against Trump, the SCOTUS seems to be using a combination of shadow docket rulings and generally kicking some of these issues down the road until a later hearing. The Republican Congress is supine and worthless. 

However, I can't say that we are no longer a republic. I can say that we are in absolute peril of losing our democratic government if things don't change direction.

This brings me back to the declaration of war against cartels. Governments routinely impinge on civil liberties during wartime. Even acolytes of democratic principles like Lincoln and FDR curtailed rights and liberties during wars. It feels very much like Miller's plan to drag us into war with "the cartels" is a way to aggregate even more power in the White House.

Once "cartels" are the enemy and the enemy is roughly speaking Latin American, you can easily justify the horror show visited upon a Chicago apartment building the other day. Dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night is straight up Gestapo shit and it's unclear if the Courts can stop them, but it's incredibly clear that Congressional Republicans will not. There is no one left to "stand up to Nixon" the way Republicans did in 1974. 

There are a handful of elections left in 2025. Hopefully, Democrats sweep the two gubernatorial races that they are favored in and offer some hope to a beleaguered resistance. The earthquake would be a Democrat winning the special election in TN-7. It's an R+10 district, but that is roughly the margin that Democrats have been overperforming in special elections.

We still have the states, but as Trump decides that he has "war powers" the ability to hold onto some autonomy there will erode.

In the long run, I don't think Trump can govern Blue America. I am not sure we won't face disunion if this continues.