The scariest word in America is ‘post-Constitutional’ | Will Bunch Newsletter

America lost one of its greatest and most underappreciated heroes Monday when the Rev. James Lawson Jr. — the most important civil rights leader of the 1950s and ‘60s that too many folks have never heard of — passed away at age 95. As a Nashville college professor and disciple of Gandhian non-violent protest, Lawson swapped ideas with his friend the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., developed workshops on non-violence, and taught future leaders like John Lewis and Diane Nash. I’m happy he lived a full life, but sad to see the wisdom of that era fade away.

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The couple of hundred thousand souls who still pick up the print edition of the Washington Post probably didn’t grasp the importance when they saw the headline on the top left of Page 1: “Trump ally maps out a muscular Oval Office.”

“Muscular”? What an interesting choice of words. Is there going to be a rowing machine next to the Resolute Desk? Is Donald Trump, a well-known fan of the Village People, hiring some really buff guys to bring him his Diet Cokes if he wins in November? How about a presidential fleet of vintage Camaros, the ultimate muscle car?

When I took to X/Twitter to discuss the Post’s headline on Monday, I charitably noted that newspaper editors who write headlines often have to find words that fit a tight space. Several folks quickly responded with a word that would have been a much better fit for this profile of Christian nationalist Russ Vought: “fascist.” Vought, former top aide to Trump 45, has now taken a lead role in mapping out the authoritarian blueprint for a possible Trump 47.

The vast majority of people who found reporter Beth Reinhard’s eye-opening article on the internet also got a headline that was a lot less wishy-washy: “Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-Constitutional’ vision for second term.” It swaps out the weasel word “muscular” for a term that neither I nor you probably had heard before: “post-Constitutional.” It is the scariest word in America right now.

Simply put, Vought — who’s crafting the details for a wannabe president who is definitely not a detail guy — thinks that a “woke” liberal order has already shattered the 1789 U.S. Constitution written here in Philadelphia, which would liberate Trump to essentially make his own rules if he returns in January. Here’s how Vought himself describes it: “We are living in a post-Constitutional time” — a claim he repeated on X/Twitter just last month. Insiders say the 48-year-old who believes he is on a mission from God could end up chief of staff in a second Trump administration.

“Post-Constitutional” is, of course, just a euphemism for dictatorship. How would this work in practice? In recent days, Trump has promised that on Day One he would wipe out large swaths of federal spending that has been authorized by Congress for programs that he doesn’t like such as the World Health Organization or green climate initiatives.

At the peak of the Watergate scandal in 1974, the antics of Richard Nixon prompted Congress to pass a law banning such so-called “impoundments.” The Post, in a separate story, notes that Trump hopes the next Congress will relax the current statute to hand him more power, but even if it does not he is likely to act. That would set Trump, Congress, and people who believe there still is a Constitution on a collision course with the U.S. Supreme Court, which hasn’t been winning any awards for its judicial impartiality and fairness recently.

And that’s just one authoritarian power for a Trump presidency proposed by Vought, a longtime fiscal expert on Capitol Hill before rising to become Trump 45′s budget chief by the end of his term. The current head of the Center for Renewing America and major drafter of Project 2025, the 900-page autocratic blueprint for a second term, has also supported Trump calling up the military to put down protests on or after Inauguration Day, as well as a Justice Department that would be loyal to the revenge-minded Trump in freeing Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists or prosecuting political enemies. A massive reversal of civil-service protections would bring to Washington an army of Trump fanatics to make it happen.

Vought wrote in a 2022 essay that the American right needs “to put on our shoulders the full weight of envisioning, articulating, and defending what a Radical Constitutionalism requires in the late hour that our country finds itself in, and then to do it.” He’s said that might involve workarounds like declaring undocumented migration an “invasion,” given Trump as commander-in-chief a pretext to call up the military. It’s all in line with other thought leaders on the far-right who claim “woke” liberalism is so entrenched a “red Caesar” is required to overthrow it.

The clueless print headline writers at the Washington Post aren’t the only folks who don’t seem to grasp the dangerous moment we are in. This weekend, I hopped in the car to run an errand and found myself lost in a remarkable episode of NPR’s This American Life in which host Ira Glass and his correspondents mused about Trump’s promise of “retribution” and what that really means. They talked to people who’d crossed Trump during his presidency like ex-press secretary Stephanie Grisham and key impeachment witness Alexander Vindman and their families about their very real conversations about leaving the United States if the Republican wins in November.

Growing up as a boomer, I learned the story of my parents’ close friend who’d been forced to flee Hitler’s Germany as a young child, as so many did. The idea that America is now becoming such a nation gave me chills. Like most of us, I wasn’t around in 1932-33, but I read a lot, and currently I’m watching the Netflix docuseries Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial — and it all looks so damn familiar. The fervent nationalism of the dictator’s large rallies. The promise to rid the country of the “out” group. The fecklessness of the elites who let the Nazis happen. And the evil banality of the men who surrounded Hitler.

Men who look and sound exactly like Russ Vought.

But hey, it sure feels normal out there. The Phillies (mostly) can’t stop winning, they’re off and running in the Belmont Stakes, and you just threw some burgers on the grill. After the Post article, the number of voters who have no idea who Russ Vought is, or what he’s planning to pull in January, probably dropped from 99% to 98%.

But at least maybe a few more folks understand that the Constitution isn’t just a relic under glass, but a living pact we have to fight for. And if we lose, maybe someday our grandkids will come to Philly to learn about what happened at the National Post-Constitution Center.

Question: What actual power does Congress have to check SCOTUS? — MaryD (@MaryDare9) on X/Twitter

Answer: The complicated answer is...some. The Founders presumably saw impeachment as the best tool for reining in a wayward justice, and certainly Justice Clarence Thomas’ roughly $4 million to $6 million haul in billionaire gifts merits both impeachment and removal (and Justice Samuel Alito’s displays of bias deserve attention, too). But that’s not happening without any Republican votes. The partisan divide also makes it unlikely that legislation mandating a real code of ethics for the Supreme Court could pass (preventing the awkward situation of the High Court then ruling on the bill’s legality). Likewise, the justices could probably ignore a subpoena from the Democratic-run Senate Judiciary Committee, but key players in the corruption of the court, like Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow, couldn’t. There’s no excuse for the Senate not to investigate the downfall of one of our branches of government.

Last week’s question about how Democrats and President Joe Biden’s campaign should respond to Donald Trump’s felony convictions drew a spirited response, and it wasn’t surprising that everyone wanted a more aggressive stance. Jonathan Bell wrote that “the key is that the ads should focus on that fact that he was found guilty not by Joe Biden, or Jack Smith or a cabal of witch hunters, but by 12 of your peers.” Several of you felt Biden is constrained by his long Senate career, which Daniel Hoffman argued “reflects a desire to engage in civilized conduct, but it is a grievous shortcoming when opposing a lowlife such as Trump.”

📮This week’s question: All of America seems to have an opinion on whether basketball phenom Caitlin Clark, who has brought massive ratings and attention to the WNBA, was wronged when not picked for the U.S. Olympic team this summer in Paris. What do you think? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer. Please put “Caitlin Clark” in the subject line.

Let’s be honest: Even if you love public education and what it stands for, like I do, you have to agree that Pennsylvania’s classrooms have 99 problems — crumbling or moldy roofs, lack of air conditioning, lack of textbooks, lack of teachers, etc. Many of these problems are symptoms of the same disease — chronic lack of funding, made worse by inequities that fall hardest on the lower-income districts. In Harrisburg, armed with a landmark state Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers are finally starting the difficult debate over how to fix this. The last thing we needed was for hip-hop legend Jay-Z to become our 100th problem.

Last Friday, much of Pennsylvania, but especially its education activists, were stunned by a viral tweet from hip-hop’s XXL Magazine that the Brooklyn-born superstar was in a Keystone State of mind, that his nonprofit Roc Nation “will spearhead an educational campaign in Philadelphia that helps students K-12 from low-income households secure about $300 million in scholarships to attend the city’s private schools.” Whoa, Hova — that is way too generous! Except...wait a minute. A closer read shows that Jay-Z (reported net worth: $2.5 billion) isn’t the one spending $300 million; that would actually be you and me, the Pennsylvania taxpayer. Because what the artist formerly known as Shawn Carter is really up to is holding a few Philadelphia pep rallies for a bill in the state Senate that would create the Pennsylvania Award for Student Success (PASS), which would offer cash scholarships for low-income kids from underperforming public schools to attend private schools.

In other words, a school voucher program — our variation on “school choice” programs that are increasingly popular in red states despite a considerable body of evidence they do little or nothing to improve student performance. In fact, Michigan State University researcher Joshua Cowan, who has extensively studied voucher programs, reports that student outcomes decline, perhaps because of low-quality schools that suddenly pop up when the government spigots are opened. States like Arizona that recently launched large voucher programs are facing surprise deficits, even with much of the money going to kids who were already in private school anyway. The proposed Pennsylvania program is more limited, but it doesn’t change the basic math: The more money that states waste on vouchers, the less that’s available to improve the public schools needed to broadly grow our middle class.

It’s hard to understand why Jay-Z backs a program mainly supported by Republicans and especially with big bucks from Pennsylvania’s richest man, Jeff Yass, who was photographed with Jay-Z at an event not long ago. But the good news is that this musical interlude didn’t stop the (barely) Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania House from voting Monday for the real schools fix, an $864 million hike for public classrooms that would be a down payment on the state Supreme Court’s ruling. This plan’s fate in the GOP controlled Senate is uncertain. If Jay-Z comes back down the New Jersey Turnpike to muck this up, we’ll have to send out the hypocrisy-sniffing dogs.

It’s the 16th anniversary of writing about one of the greatest honors of my 43-year career in journalism — the time that the late, not-so-great Rush Limbaugh called me “a wacko” on his national radio show. It stemmed from another memorable moment, my one and only personal encounter with Barack Obama, who’d come to the Daily News offices seeking an endorsement in the 2008 Pennsylvania primary. I asked whether an Obama administration might prosecute Bush administration figures for the torture that occurred at Gitmo and CIA black sites. Despite a rambling Obama answer that tried to have it both ways, Limbaugh blasted me for posing the question, calling me “a Stalinist” and a liberal activist who wasn’t really a journalist. You can argue whether he was right about that, but I think his rant proves how worried the Bush crowd was over being called to account for their war crimes (spoiler alert: they weren’t). Read this whole thing: “Why does Rush Limbaugh hate America (and me)?)”

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