Donald Trump is many things, but a gentleman he is not.
That’s a problem for anyone hoping the 47th president of the United States governs like an actual president and not as a monarch, because a shocking number of legal norms are just that: norms. Not laws, but customs. Gentlemen’s agreements.
There’s no law that says a president can’t pardon himself. There’s no act of Congress requiring the Office of White House Counsel to act in good faith. There’s no statute instructing the Department of Justice to be staffed with independent career professionals.
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That means that while most presidents make a good-faith effort to uphold the system and follow legal norms, there’s not much stopping a president who decides to go scorched earth.
Trump’s closest advisers have seized on that fact and hatched a plan to stack the Office of Legal Counsel and the Office of Management and Budget with yes-men and women who will come up with flimsy legal cover for Trump’s most extreme ideas.
Project 2025, which was drafted by some of the incoming president’s closest advisers, also calls for putting the Department of Justice under the president’s direct control.
That would leave Trump free to make good on his promises to round up his political enemies, unleash the military on American citizens, pardon himself for his many criminal charges and deport millions of people with no due process.
We know it’s coming, and instead of watching the rule of law crumble around us, Congress needs to get off its a-- and impose some real, binding checks on presidential power.
Democrats still have control of the White House and the Senate for about two more months. Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives, but it’s a slim one. There are just nine more House Republicans than Democrats, and 16 Republicans are retiring from public office at the end of this congressional term.
Politically, the retiring Republicans have nothing to lose. Financially, some of them are probably looking forward to cushy consulting jobs on the other side. But cushy consulting jobs are easy enough to come by, and one final vote for America as we know it isn’t likely to hurt anyone’s private-sector career prospects.
California Rep. Adam Schiff has already introduced legislation that would stop the president from interfering in his own criminal investigations and limit the attorney general’s ability to quash investigations on the president’s behalf.
It’s a good start, and Congress should act on it—and then some.
Republican pundits are fond of telling us that Trump talks like a dictator, but he wouldn’t act one. Lawmakers should spend the next two months fighting like hell to make sure we don’t have to wait around and find out.
