Constitutional conservatives: Put up or shut up

First they came for the immigrants...

Martin Niemöller

I’m sure all of those people who put “Constitutional conservative” in their online profiles are about to rise up in arms. The Trump administration crossed the line yesterday when it ignored two court orders. Administration officials defied a judge’s order to halt a flight taking a planeload of immigrants to El Salvador. They “willfully disobeyed” another judge’s order when they refused to halt the deportation of a Rhode Island doctor.

The administration has been pushing constitutional limits since the beginning. They’ve taken over the power of purse, usurping the Constitutional authority of Congress. Now, they’re ignoring the judicial branch. So much for checks and balances.

The Constitutional crisis is real. Anybody who spent the last decade claiming to be a Constitutional conservative needs to either stand up for the constitutional order or admit it was all just about guns, racism, and xenophobia. Own your shit and quit lying to yourselves. Recognize that if Jesus (the brown one) came back, you would be the ones clamoring for him to be flown to a Central American prison without due process. Otherwise, quit calling yourself a “Constitutional conservative.”

Trump and his cronies are going after easy targets as he moves to abolish constitutional limits on the executive branch. The administration claims the immigrants were members of a Venezuelan gang, but there’s no way to verify their accusations since there was no due process. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele mocked the judge’s order, tweeting, “Oopsie…too late” after the plane arrived in his country. White House communications director Steven Cheung boosted his post.

The Rhode Island doctor was a Lebanese citizen who was working on kidney disease research at Brown University and had been living in the U.S. under a visa for six years. She was also Muslim. So was the Palestinian activist and green card holder that ICE swept up last week.

None of these deportees are sympathetic to MAGA. Trump and his allies are trying to cast the argument in xenophobic terms instead of constitutional ones. Democrats are defending terrorists and criminals while Trump is trying to rid the country of undesirables. They believe they can win the battle of public opinion and hope to win over the Supreme Court.

The deportations are the beginning of normalizing the deterioration of civil rights. If people turn a blind eye to their abuses now, they’ll pay less attention as they get more brazen. Trump is already calling media outlets “illegal.” It’s not hard to imagine him calling for the arrest of citizens with little cause. It’s also not hard to imagine Kash Patel just following orders.

Martin Niemöller’s quote seems especially relevant today:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Niemöller was a Lutheran minister who initially welcomed the Nazis, overlooking their abuses of power. He had a change of heart as Hitler embraced a radical and historically incorrect version of Christianity that claimed Jesus was an Aryan. Just a few years later, Niemöller was arrested and put in a concentration camp until the end of the war.

It’s not too late for Constitutional conservatives and supposedly principled politicians like Thom Tillis to see the light. For the rest of us, keep up the fight.