EDITORIAL Coequal branches of government in trouble

Most Americans took a civics class when they were in junior high or middle school. But apparently, a frightening percentage of us doesn’t remember what we learned.

President Trump has moved with lightning speed to enact his program — and to be fair to him, no one should be surprised. He promised that on “day one,” he’d act as a dictator, and given the flurry of executive orders he’s churned out, he’s been good to his word. Some of them are highly questionable in terms of legality, but the wheels of justice are turning slowly. The judicial branch was caught off guard, and Congress, as usual, seems paralyzed to do anything but draw hefty paychecks off the backs of the American taxpayers.

A question that everyone should be asking these days is whether Trump has the right to defy orders rendered by various courts. Indeed, this is a germane question regarding any president, past or future. When that question has been posed on social media and by traditional media on forum discussion, many conservatives have been hesitant to respond. Perhaps it’s because they know they would have to add a number of qualifiers and are afraid they would be misunderstood.

We can only hope that a lack of response by a generally gregarious crowd does not mean they believe Trump – or anyone else in power – should be able to defy the courts, because if that’s the case, these folks are sanctioning the collapse of our democratic republic.

The same is true if they simply believe Trump or any other politician can do no wrong so they should, in fact, ignore the courts. That’s what Vice President Vance seems to suggest the other day while urging Trump to ignore orders. It’s true that some on the bench overstep their bounds and try to set law, rather than interpret it, and that, too, should not be tolerated.

The United States was founded on the basis of three coequal branches of government – the executive, the judiciary, and the legislative – with an unofficial fourth branch being “the press,” which is charged with a watchdog role over the other three. It’s widely known that this particular executive branch is bent on destroying any media that don’t comply or are critical of its agenda or behavior; that has been specifically and openly stated. Doubters need only refer to what the Associated Press reported last week: “Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.”

If Americans put all their trust, and all the power, in the hands of one person, they are setting us up to have a “president for life.” It’s alarming that some people seem to want that, and also believe the media and general public “have no right” to criticize Trump, and would like to see those who do so in prison. Some are convinced anyone different from them — with a different color of skin, religion, sexual orientation, outlook on human rights — doesn’t deserve to exist. That’s simply wrong.

Politicians — either Trump or anyone else — should not have carte blanche to do anything they want. No one deserves that kind of trust — or adulation. That is not the American way, and anyone who falls into that category is no patriot.