A New/Old Threat To Our American Democracy

Lawrence Lessig, from The Guardian:

It feels quaint – maybe a bit absurd – to remark the fact that Donald Trump has no constitutionally moral justification for his demand that Congress fund the building of a wall on the Mexican border. Such an argument feels absurd when made against this president. Yet it should not be insignificant to Congress.

The president ran on a promise to build a wall “paid for by Mexico”. No majority of Americans has ever voted to support that idea. But that idea is not the notion that is now shutting down the government. A wall paid for by taxpayers is. That wall certainly was a central issue in the 2018 midterm elections. Overwhelmingly, the public rejected it as well. Thus has the president earned public support for neither version of his Mexican wall. Yet he is using his veto power to demand that Americans pay for a wall before he will allow the government to reopen.

And:

[N]o reading of our constitution would ever uphold the view that a president can morally stop the functioning of government, to insist upon a program unsupported by the public or unrequired by the constitution.

And then the argument that should be sticking in the throat of any Republican in Congress (and I'm thinking Senator Pat Toomey, here):

If a Democrat were elected on the promise to establish single-payer healthcare, does she then have the moral authority to shut down the government until Congress nationalizes the insurance industry? Or directly regulates pharmaceuticals? If she were elected on the promise to address climate change, can she stop the ordinary functioning of government until Congress passes a carbon tax?

Works both ways.

And then finally:

Yet Trump is certainly not the fool in this tragedy. The fools are they who enable this constitutional immorality. Those fools are the Senate Republicans, who have placed party over country, and President Trump over the Republican party.

Again, I'm thinking you, Senator Toomey.