In the Press

In just a few months, Americans have seen how much harm can be done by an unconstrained president who no longer needs the electorate to achieve his aims. Lawful residents of the United States “disappeared” off the streets and whisked away to foreign prisons without due process. Private law firms and universities coerced into surrendering their historic independence. Unpredictable tariffs roiling markets, raising prices, and wreaking havoc on the global economy.

“What you see here is just an assault on our most fundamental rights, almost in every single sector,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former top aide to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and a conservative critic of Trump who now works with the nonprofit group Protect Democracy. “You pick the thing that you care about — Donald Trump is working at a very rapid pace to exercise, control and command over that area.”

As a former federal prosecutor and a former public defender, we know that Dugan’s arrest was far outside the norm. The Department of Justice charges people with crimes every day, but it does not routinely send federal law enforcement officers to make arrests. Arrests are typically reserved for individuals accused of violent crimes, those considered flight risks, or those likely to destroy evidence or harm or intimidate others.

“The radical idea that the Constitution gives the president virtually unlimited power to fire independent commissioners at the FTC, the Fed, and other similar agencies has no basis in law,” Amit Agarwal, special counsel at the nonprofit advocacy group Protect Democracy, told Newsweek.

“In fact, it ignores nearly a century of settled law that limits the circumstances under which a president can remove commissioners.”

“The president is testing how much the judiciary still meaningfully constrains him,” Ben Raderstorf, a policy associate at the watchdog group Protect Democracy wrote in a blog post titled “there is no rubicon”.

But the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the non-profit group Protect Democracy in US district court in Washington DC, says that federal law requires the OMB to publicly post apportionment documents.

“Congress mandated prompt transparency for apportionments to prevent abuses of power and strengthen Congress’s and the public’s oversight of the spending process,” the suit says. “Absent this transparency, the president and OMB may abuse their authority over the apportionment of federal funds without public or congressional scrutiny or accountability.”

“Anybody who is excited by this president getting more power should step back and think how they’d feel with another president who is getting that same power,” said Alex Tausanovitch, with the pro-democracy group Protect Democracy, in an interview last month on presidential power.