Tag: U.S. Constitution

Appeals court dismisses Emoluments Clause lawsuit in win for Trump

The Hill logoThe 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia alleging that President Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, finding that they did not have the standing to sue the president.

The ruling is a major win for Trump, who has frequently sought to prevent others from reviewing his private financial records.
And it’s a sign that other lawsuits alleging similar violations of the Emoluments Clause — including one brought by more than 200 Democratic members of Congress — will face an uphill battle in succeeding.

View the complete July 10 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

Donald Trump tells Putin journalists are “fake news”, something Putin doesn’t have to put up with

Once again, Donald Trump is envious of Vladimir Putin’s government-controlled media in Russia. Just what an American president sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution should do to defend the American people’s freedom of speech and the press.

Trump says supporters might ‘demand’ that he serve more than two terms as president

President Trump on Sunday floated the possibility of staying in office longer than two terms, suggesting in a morning tweet that his supporters might “demand that I stay longer.”

The president, who will kick off his reelection campaign on Tuesday with an event in Orlando, has previously joked about serving more than two terms, including at an event in April, when he told a crowd that he might remain in the Oval Office “at least for 10 or 14 years.”

The 22nd Amendment of the Constitution limits the presidency to two terms.

In tweets Sunday morning, Trump also voiced dissatisfaction with recent news coverage of his administration, calling both The Washington Post and the New York Times “the Enemy of the People.”

View the complete June 16 article by Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

The ungodly Constitution: How the Founding Fathers ensured America would not be a Christian nation

When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, almost no one in politics or everyday life went around proclaiming, “I am a Christian.” If indeed you were a Christian—that is, someone who considers Jesus Christ the Messiah—you identified yourself as a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Baptist, a Catholic, and so on in excelsis in order to let others know where you stood in the vast American religious landscape.

Calling oneself a Christian today, by contrast, has a special, politicized meaning. For most people in public life, this self-identification suggests a particular form of conservative Christianity, a brand of religion that seeks not only to proselytize but to impose its values on others through the machinery of the state. The huge exception to this rule is President Barack Obama, who has been forced by the birther-paranoids to advertise his credentials as a Christian in order to refute the lie that he is a “secret Muslim.”

Once upon a time (until around 1980, actually), the appellation “Christian” used to mean “right-wing Protestant,” as a consequence of the historic animosity between many forms of American Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church. That is no longer true, as demonstrated by GOP primary hopefuls Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, the darlings of Protestant fundamentalists, although they personify the cliché “more Catholic than the pope.” (In Gingrich’s case, the relevant pontiffs would be certain medieval and Renaissance vicars of Christ who produced numerous children through extra-pontifical liaisons.) Santorum is in fact a Catholic fundamentalist—unlike the majority of American Catholics, who do not accept either the notion of papal infallibility or the Vatican line on sexual behavior. Liberal Catholics, well aware of the political meaning of Christian in American politics, generally call themselves plain old “Catholics.”

View the complete May 5 article by Susan Jacoby of Free Inquiry on the AlterNet website here.

Trump Needs A Lesson In Constitutional Government

Why His Effort to Defy Congress Is Unlikely to End How He Wants

Donald Trump thinks that he can thumb his nose at Congress because the federal courts will protect him. But that’s not the way our Constitution works. It’s also not the way the courts have held in cases going to the early days of our Constitution.

But since tens of millions of Americans take Trump’s words as gospel, let’s look at the facts, starting with Trump’s blanket declaration of noncooperation with House inquiries.

“There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan,” Trump told The Washington Post Tuesday night in declaring that cooperating with House investigations is not going to happen.

View the complete April 26 article by David Cay Johnston on the DCReport.org website here.

In remarkable exchange, Trump offers startling view of role of free press

Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Ever since Donald Trump set the tone for his presidency by berating the press for accurately reporting on his paltry inaugural crowd size and attacking the media as the “enemy of the American people,” journalists and commentators have tried to persuade Trump to take two things seriously in his role as president.

First, that the role of the free press is to hold the powerful to account. And second, that President Trump’s attacks on the news media have dangerous consequences, both at home and around the world.

In a remarkable new exchange, the publisher of the New York Times pressed Trump at length on both these points. The results were startling. Trump displayed only the dimmest awareness that his attacks on the press might be having severely negative effects, while repeatedly reverting into a tone that alternated between megalomaniacal self-congratulation and self-imagined victimization, and largely refusing to accept responsibility for those consequences.

View the complete commentary by Greg Sargent on The Washington Post website here.

Trump violated the Constitution when he blocked his critics on Twitter, a federal judge rules

The following article by Brian Fung and Hamza Shaban was posted on the Washington Post website May 23, 2018:

A federal judge in New York ruled on May 23 that President Trump may not block Twitter users, because it violates their right to free speech. (Reuters)

President Trump’s decision to block his Twitter followers for their political views is a violation of the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, saying that Trump’s effort to silence his critics is not permissible because the digital space in which he engages with constituents is a public forum.

The ruling rejects administration arguments that the First Amendment does not apply to Trump in this case because he was acting as a private individual. In a 75-page decision, Judge Naomi Buchwald said Trump, as a federal official, is not exempt from constitutional obligations to refrain from “viewpoint discrimination.” Continue reading “Trump violated the Constitution when he blocked his critics on Twitter, a federal judge rules”

The corrosion of support for First Amendment principles started before Trump. He’s supercharged it.

The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website October 23, 2017:

THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump celebrated Sunday that his campaign to delegitimize the free press is working.

President Trump arrives back at the White House yesterday after playing golf at his club in Sterling, Va. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

The president touted a Politico–Morning Consult poll published last week that found 46 percent of registered voters believe major news organizations fabricate stories about him. Just 37 percent of Americans think the mainstream media does not invent stories, while the rest are undecided. More than 3 in 4 Republicans believe reporters make up stories about Trump.

“It is finally sinking through,” the president tweeted.

The first rule of propaganda is that if you repeat something enough times people will start to believe it, no matter how false. Trump uses the bully pulpit of the presidency to dismiss any journalism he doesn’t like as “fake news.” This daily drumbeat has clearly taken a toll on the Fourth Estate. Continue reading “The corrosion of support for First Amendment principles started before Trump. He’s supercharged it.”

Watch: Sessions won’t say if he’ll jail journalists

The following article from the Associated Press was posted on the MPR website October 18, 2017:

Democratic Sen. Al Franken is accusing Attorney General Jeff Sessions of “moving the goalposts” in denying his interactions with the Russian ambassador.

In a testy exchange, Franken confronted Sessions about his testimony in January, in which he said he had no communications with Russians. Sessions later had to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia after it was revealed he had conversations with the ambassador. Franken says his explanations of those interactions continue to change.

But Sessions, visibly frustrated and voice rising, called Franken’s line of questioning unfair. He says he answered the question as a surrogate of the Trump campaign. Sessions says he may have discussed Trump’s campaign positions with the ambassador but insists he did not have a continuing exchange of information with him. Continue reading “Watch: Sessions won’t say if he’ll jail journalists”

Trump Is the Reason the Constitution Has an Anti-Corruption Clause

The following article by Sam Berger was posted on the Center for American Progress website October 17, 2017:

President Donald Trump listens during a meeting, September 21, 2017. Credit: Evan Vucci, AP

The investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign’s involvement in the Russian attack on the U.S. election system has garnered significant attention. But, more quietly, another effort to limit foreign influence over our government continues apace.

On Wednesday, a federal district court in New York will hear arguments in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Trump, in which the plaintiffs argue that President Donald Trump has violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, an anti-corruption clause that prohibits government officials from receiving anything of value from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. While these cases are just beginning, the ongoing investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia have made clear that the problem of foreign influence in this administration is both very real and very dangerous. Continue reading “Trump Is the Reason the Constitution Has an Anti-Corruption Clause”