By Thomas B. Edsall
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
“I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Donald Trump told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on March 4. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
How much power would Trump have in a second term to enact his agenda of revenge?
I asked Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, how free Trump would be to pursue his draconian plan.
Tribe replied by email:
Read the full article for free here:There is little doubt that Donald Trump could impose authoritarian policies that endanger dissent, erase the requirements that ensure at least a modicum of the consent of the governed, and are downright dictatorial while acting entirely within the literal scope of the law although, needless to say, in flagrant defiance of its spirit. Neither the Constitution’s text nor the language of the federal statutes and regulations in force create guardrails that Trump would need to crash through in a way that courts hewing to the text would feel an obligation to prevent or to redress.
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