Episode 2 | FAFO*
In talking to my dad this week, an 82-year-old just-right-of-centrist disappointed with the Republican Party, he asked if he could contribute information to our podcast. He has been writing short essays to friends over the last few years to try and either convince them or commiserate with them about the danger of Trumpism. Below is a segment he shared, which we will call “Letters From a Disgruntled Old Guy.” He and Josh are two of the few people I know who read entire periodicals regularly. They are absolutely information consumers with deep intellectual capacity.
In this podcast, we review the framework that undergirds the mission of this presidency: Project 2025. It’s essential to know the broad categories the Trump administration is trying to dismantle and why. We will follow the impacts of these broad categories throughout. Second, we go way back to civics class and reintroduce you to the branches of government and why they must keep each other in check. Josh described them as a game of rock paper scissors where no one branch ever gets too powerful. Trump is going for the “I have the right to do whatever I want as President” approach. We’ll see how this shakes down, but it ain’t comfortable to experience, that’s for sure.
From the Disgruntled Old Guy:
So, how do we get a constitutional crisis?
Recall on January 6, 2021 that Trump pretty much showed his disdain for our rule of law. Suppose after appeals to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Robert's validates contempt of court and says, "Send in the marshals.” So, the federal marshals work for DOJ. Imagine Ms. Bondi allowing her boss to be handcuffed? Ummm…
Sadly, very few voters follow, much less understand what is going on here. To the Trump administration, this is all just a game. Balance of power and the rule of law is not a concept they care about. Maubury v Madison was long ago, but ultimately the political solution is quicker. A little recent history from the Nixon era gathered straight from Wikipedia:
U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Cox in May 1973 after promising mising the House JudiciaryCommittee that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the events surrounding the break-in of the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. The appointment was created as a career reserved position in the Justice Department, meaning it came under the authority of the attorney general, who could only remove the special prosecutor "for cause", e.g., gross improprieties or malfeasance in office. Richardson had, in his confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, promised not to use his authority to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor unless for cause.
When Cox issued a subpoena to Nixon, asking for copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office, the president refused to comply. On October 12, 1973, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the subpoena, rejecting Nixon's claims of executive privilege. On Friday, October 19, Nixon offered what was later known as the Stennis Compromise – asking the infamously hard-of-hearing Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi to review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor's office. Cox refused the compromise that same evening, and it was believed that there would be a short rest in the legal maneuvering while government offices were closed for the weekend.
However, on the following day (Saturday), Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.
Nixon then ordered the Solicitor General of the United States, Robert Bork, as acting head of the Justice Department, to fire Cox. Both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to Congressional oversight committees that they would not interfere, but Bork had not. Although Bork later claimed he believed Nixon's order to be valid and appropriate, he still considered resigning to avoid being "perceived as a man who did the President's bidding to save my job". Nevertheless, having been brought to the White House by limousine and sworn in as acting attorney general, Bork wrote the letter dismissing Cox.
It took that to finally shake congress enough to convince Nixon to resign. Problem is that Trump has already proven that he is oblivious to a request from congress or the Supreme Court. After Nixon's resignation there was much clamoring about how the system worked. It takes broad support for that. Today I am not sure the support is broad enough, yet Nixon won the election by much more than Trump. It’s interesting to make the parallel here, however. Several judiciary branch resignations have occurred when they were asked to compromise their commitment to the legal process in the dismissal of New York City Mayor Eric Adams with one prosectutor declaring: “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion…but it was never going to be me.” (1)
So, we really do have a burgeoning constitutional crisis that can be handled (or not) in the courts or if the Trump team finds itself in contempt. At the very least, we have a state failure of the highest degree. My dad lived through the Nixon debacle, and I think he’s wondering if history will repeat itself in his waning years.
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(1) https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298040/justice-department-eric-adams-fallout
Other references:
Democracy Forward is the organization responsible for filing injunctions to many of these executive orders
A brief summary of Project 2025
bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking, ˆ2010
FAFO = F*#k Around and Find Out…We are in the finding out phase