The President is losing a power grab strategy with his action on Harvard, the deployment of military in California, and migrant due process ICE policies. The courts are not buying his use of pretexts to justify his actions. Is Trump using false pretexts to justify military actions to seek regime change and revisit denied court actions, as he kills 11 Venezuelan drug sailors and floods the Caribbean with US military assets in a Wag the Dog scenario and reclassifies drug smugglers as "terrorists"? His most flagrant example of a false pretext is the misuse of revenge on Colorado's mail-in ballot system as a pretext for moving the space command center to Alabama. Trump has been trying to move the center since 2016, but had never tied it to mail-in ballots until now.
One of the tools of terror to force institutions, private and public, to bend to Trump's power grabs is to use unrelated issues in order to get compliance with his policies and to justify anti-constitutional acts of withholding funding. The pretext is false, and courts are not being fooled in recent lower court decisions. Most of these rulings will end up in the Supreme Court. (Oxford dictionary:Pretext: a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason.) I would add that even the pretext itself can be used and abused and distorted, and it can be just as false as the issue and facts to which they are referring are false, as well.("False Pretense"is the word used in common language, but it also has a meaning in the law closely associated with criminal real estate transactions so I am using "pretext" to avoid any confusion.)
Trump's attempt to force Harvard to change their curriculum and admissions polices, contrary to Trump's interests, by using the issue of anti-Semitism, just hit the fan. A judge ruled that Trump's withholding of $2 billion in federal research grants unless Harvard complied with demands that were unrelated to anti-Semitism actions on campus was illegal. Judge says Trump administration unlawfully blocked $2 billion from Harvard | CNN Politics This ruling will be appealed, but in the meantime, the Trump strategy to scare all, including private institutions, engaged in higher ed that dare teach a liberal viewpoint, and the intellectual debate of multiple views, to change curriculum and staff to support his one-sided view, is being stopped. Trump's attempt to control the ability of all Americans at any level of education to hear or learn views other than Trump is also obvious from attempts to force the Smithsonian to remove or reduce references to the ills of slavery in American history and the resulting civil rights movement.
The grand daddy of false pretexts: to deploy military, national guard, or active duty contrary to the Posse Comitatus Act as applied to states' rights, is that there is a "national emergency", a loophole that would give him the power to do it. That one also was shot down in flames regarding the deployment of troops to California, and my also echo in other incidents, including his attempt to hype up the crime issue in blue states, when ignoring the even worse rate of crime in red states. After ruling against LA Guard use, Trump vows more deployments : NPR Next on Trump's plans: send troops into Chicago. The use of federal troops in DC is a different situation, since Washington, DC, is not a state, but is subject to degrees of federal control and home rule.. It is obvious that such a declaration of national emergency serves his political ambitions to pull a trick out of the magic political hat." Democrats are always soft on crime, so fear them, and Republicans are hard-nosed." Watch that controversy to be on the top burner if Trump continues with plans in Chicago and Baltimore.
So far, lower courts have ruled against the pretext of a "national emergency" as a means to circumvent the Constitutional provisions that Trump sees as standing in the way of his power grabs. Many of these rulings will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court. The terms "abuse of power " and"overreach" are too kind. Recent cases are examples of power grabs by strong leaders who seek to wield the same powers as a dictator, ruling by one person who declares what the law is, rather than being established through a democratic process, subject to compliance and interpretations to justify Trump's real power grab attempts.
As a recent example, Trump's order to move the space command from Colorado Springs to Alabama because Colorado defied his newest anti-voter access to the ballot box by mail. Trump says he's moving Space Command HQ to Alabama because of Colorado's mail-in voting system. This is purely a matter of revenge (against a blue state) to favor a supporter (red Alabama). In reality, the location of the space command has always been a matter of politics, since his first term, regardless of any financial or military considerations, and mail-in ballots were never linked to the move until now. The false pretext Trump made in his announcement was not even disguised: He was moving it because of Colorado's mail-in system as retaliation.
In fact, the anti-mail-in ballots argument rests on a false pretext itself. There was widespread fraud, ballot harvesting, etc in 2020, caused by mail-in ballots, when nearly every opportunity in courts (at least a minimum of 60 court rulings), or for John Q Public to provide evidence in the past five years has failed. Conservative group finds ‘absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud’ in 2020 election
Is he now planning military action against Venezuela (yes, we are at war now) to justify defying the Constitution clauses regarding due process and/or breaking international maritime laws and/or force regime change in that country? Trump announced our military attacked a drug smuggling boat, and now he wants to get Venezuela's drug smugglers classified as terrorists, though, why? I suspect it is either to give legal cover to the US violating territorial waters, or to justify his illegal attempt to violate Venezuelan migrants' due process rights by zealous ICE action, already claiming Venezuela was at war with the US. under the Alien Enemies Act. An appeals court rejected the abuse of that act. US appeals court rejects Trump's use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans | Reuters For those engaged in conspiracy theories, it would not be put past Trump to declare the US was at war against Venezuela in order to take even more action against migrant mass deportation, regardless of whether they had committed any crimes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio from Florida has also had a long held desire to end the Maduro dictatorship. Wag the dog, the use of a false pretext for war can even itself be a false pretext. Inventing and provoking an incident is not just a strategy found in literature and movies.
Sometimes, the pretext to justify an action is not due to a scheme or grand plan, but sheer ignorance or perceived opportunity to make a point without knowing the facts. Within the same 24 hours, Trump confused 5-year-old videos with current facts, and AG Pam Bondi tried to cherry-pick examples of dangerous migrants in big blue cities, when the incidents did not happen in the city she claimed they did. It may also happen because Trump has only yes people advising him, who could intervene and correct him before he opens his mouth and sticks his foot in it. Here is an example of that: Trump, watching FOX, did not realize he was watching a 5-year-old video of George Floyd protests and claimed "last night" he saw Portland being destroyed, so it was time to threaten to send the military into the city and put that city on his list to try to oppress. I wonder how many in MAGAland thought that Portland, Oregon, was being destroyed last night? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-threatens-to-send-troops-to-city-he-says-he-saw-being-destroyed-last-night-but-it-wasn-t/ In the same24 hour span, AG Pam Bondi claimed migrants committed horrific crimes to justify military action on blue cities when the examples she used took place miles from the city of Boston. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pam-bondi-takes-aim-at-boston-citing-crimes-from-elsewhere/
