hey constitution u up?
Or, Vice President JD Vance soft launches monarchy
On Sunday, after a federal judge blocked Elon Musk’s team from accessing U.S. Treasury records, Vice President JD Vance objected, claiming judges “aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.”
This may sound like a technical legal debate, but in today’s post we want to argue that it is in fact a declaration of war on the courts and the Constitution. The vice president is trying to lay the intellectual groundwork for American monarchy.
Vance is just straw-manning with hypotheticals about judges telling generals what to do on the battlefield, but that has nothing to do with the actual situation he is addressing. He’s saying that the president should ignore a court order — something that strikes right at the heart of the Constitution’s separation of powers. And he’s creating a pretext for more couping.
This is exactly what the administration has been doing by issuing unconstitutional executive orders like the one “ending” birthright citizenship (which is enshrined in the Constitution), granting unelected private citizens like Elon Musk power over government agencies and elected officials, usurping Congressional power by shuttering government agencies, and straight-up defying the court orders putting a stop to those things.
It’s a long list! And a lot of it has flown under the radar, or it’s been waved away by those who have faith in the resilience of the system.
But the administration’s actions mean one thing: a constitutional crisis is happening — not in the future, but right now. It’s not about “Can he do that?” but about what Trump and Musk are doing already. That’s not a hypothetical.
Vance is right about two things, however, and they are worth keeping in mind:
The law is political. As Jay Willis writes over at Balls and Strikes, those who fail to see that will “never realize they are getting their asses beat.” That’s what has been happening to American democracy, and failing to recognize that the law isn’t objective is a big part of why.
The law can’t enforce itself. Restraining orders and stays are essential in slowing down the coup Trump and Musk are carrying out, but the legislative branch and civil society have to act to stop them. It’s not going to happen overnight by magic, or just because a ruling was handed down.
Brian Montopoli digs into the Vance monarchical dream and more below:
The constitutional crisis is now
By Brian Montopoli
As any eighth grader should be able to tell you, the concept of “checks and balances” is foundational to American democracy. In our constitutional system, power is shared between the three branches of government: the executive branch (the president, the cabinet, and the federal agencies), the legislative branch (Congress), and the judicial branch (the courts). The Constitution “balances” power between the three branches so no one entity has too much; if one branch overreaches, the theory goes, the other branches can provide a “check” to keep them in line.
But that system is under attack — right now. And on Sunday, the vice president of the United States made a dangerous statement that could telegraph what the attackers are plotting. Let me explain.
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