ArcaMax

Republicans are in power, so Democrats are back to pretending to care about the Constitution.

As Democrats struggle to attack Trump 2.0, the national propaganda press is pushing a new narrative.

Earlier this month, a New York Times newsletter posed the question, "A constitutional crisis?" Three days later, The New York Times reported, "Trump's actions have created a constitutional crisis, scholars say."

Whenever you see the phrase "scholars say" in a news report, tread carefully. It's very likely to be a poorly disguised opinion piece. The article's slant depends entirely on the "scholars" interviewed by the author. In this case, many other scholars would say Trump is returning the government to its constitutional limits.

The left quickly picked up this line of attack.

"What is a constitutional crisis? And why some scholars say we're in one," a Washington Post analysis read.

"Are we in a constitutional crisis?" an NPR headline asked.

"We've got our toes right on the edge of a constitutional crisis here," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said.

Sounds scary, at least until the left has to define its terms. The New York Times called on Erwin Chemerinsky, law school dean of the University of California, Berkeley, to do that. He objected to Trump "revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views."

That list doesn't show a constitutional crisis. All it really shows is that Trump is keeping his campaign promises. No wonder Trump's popularity is riding high.

Trump's move to end birthright citizenship is already winding its way through the courts. The Supreme Court will almost certainly decide the issue. And anyone who thinks Trump's move is without historical basis needs to study the issue more. Regardless, Trump has already said he'll abide by court decisions.

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," Article II of the Constitution states. It'd be a constitutional crisis if the entrenched bureaucracy could stymie how a president wanted to run executive branch agencies. The president's power must include the ability to fire employees and control discretionary spending.

The last item seems to be a reference to Trump's executive order "to combat anti-Semitism." Trump has vowed to "quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses." Deporting immigrants who support a terrorist group is common sense.

While the concerns about Trump are misguided, the propaganda press is inadvertently right that the country does face a constitutional crisis -- from Democrats.

In January, former President Joe Biden proclaimed on X that a new amendment had been added to the Constitution. It hadn't. The Biden administration weaponized the Justice Department to go after Trump, his leading political rival. The Supreme Court struck down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. He then proceeded to cancel debt for millions of borrowers anyway.

"The Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn't stop me," Biden bragged.

Leftist authors routinely call for dismantling constitutional provisions, including the First Amendment, the Second Amendment and the Electoral College.

"We're living under a flawed Constitution. Let's start fresh and rewrite it," Chemerinsky wrote last August. Yes, that's the same guy The New York Times cited as an expert to explain how Trump is creating a constitutional crisis.

Democrats don't view the Constitution as something to protect and respect. They view it as a club to wield when their opponents gain power. But they openly ignore its limits when they're in charge.

Remember what happened with the filibuster for presidential nominees. Rules that only one side follows are hard to sustain.

Democrats' duplicity is the real constitutional crisis.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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