Destroying the Rule of Law

By Rob C

Art by Nick Anderson

TL;DR

Imagine the U.S. Constitution being handed off to a playground bully, who uses it to wipe his butt and then hands his friends the keys to Fort Knox. That’s where we are.

Under this administration, the Constitution isn’t a safeguard—it’s a doormat. From trampling due-process to turning federal troops loose in American cities, from persistent violations of the Hatch Act and making billions from his own policies, to unilateral killings at sea and tariffs that toss Congress’s power out the window and tax the American people into poverty—this is a presidency waging open war on the rule of law and demanding that only he makes the law. This isn’t just a broken system, it’s a dismantled one.

Due process—your right to be treated fairly by an independent judiciary, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, has become optional under this presidency. Whether you’re a citizen, an immigrant, or just a protestor in the wrong place at the wrong time, the moment someone is “suspected” by our , they can be denied a fair hearing, indefinitely detained, or worse.

And speaking of worse, consider these facts: The Posse Comitatus Act—the 1878 law that bars the U.S. military from acting as police inside U.S. cities—has been repeatedly violated. 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines federalized, used to back ICE and law enforcement in LA. The judge called it a “national police force.”²
It’s not about enforcement—it’s about power, and the American people are the target.

Domestic deployment isn’t a response to problems, it’s an attempt to normalize troops in the street.

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The Hatch Act prohibits federal civilian employees from using their official roles to campaign for partisan elections. Yet at least 13 senior officials in the administration were found to have done exactly that. Kristi Noem has tried to force airports to run propaganda videos blaming Democrats for the government shutdown despite the Republicans controlling all branches of government. No serious consequences followed. So the law exists—but the consequences don’t.

But wait, there’s more. On the high seas off Venezuela, the U.S. military struck “drug-smuggling” vessels, killing dozens without any evidence, without charges, and without due process. UN human-rights experts called it “executions without due process.”⁴ Across the Caribbean, the President asserted unilateral power to kill—no trial, no investigation, no transparency. Execution by executive fiat. Your life—or someone else’s—becomes an afterthought.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to levy duties and trade policy. Yet without a vote, soaring tariffs were declared unilaterally by the President, turning trade into a personal cash register.⁵ He’s treating Congress like a spectator and the people like his personal piggy bank. The separation of powers is more than a philosophical concept—it keeps the tyrant in check. Remove it and you have a king.

This isn’t some collection of loosely related scandals. It’s a pattern:

The rule of law is being systematically dismantled—from elections to trade, from protest zones to foreign seas. These aren’t isolated incidents; they form a pattern. And if the pattern holds, what we’ll have is not a republic but an autocracy dressed in stars and stripes.

The next time someone says “this can’t happen here,” show them the deployment orders, the strike footage, the tariff proclamations, the campaign ads on White House servers. Because we’re not just losing rules; we’re losing the notion that the rules apply to everyone. And if the law doesn’t apply to the powerful, it doesn’t apply at all.

When your government starts ignoring its own rulebook, you’re not experiencing a glitch. You’re witnessing a overthrow of the rule of law.

God Help America.

✍️ By Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet

References

1. Federal judge rules Trump administration’s use of federal troops in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act. Reuters+2Reuters+2

2. U.S. judge blocks Trump administration’s use of troops in California. Reuters+1

3. OSC report: 13 Trump officials found to have violated the Hatch Act. Government Executive+1

4. UN human-rights experts say US strike on suspected drug smugglers amounts to extrajudicial executions. The Guardian

5. Constitutional analysis: Tariff powers and executive overreach. Reuters