MARCH 20, 2025 – Weeks before the Chief Justice himself issued his two-sentence rebuke of Trump’s recent call for impeachment of U.S. District Court Judge Boasberg, I’d been haranguing inside our house, “What are the Republicans in Congress talking about with impeachment of judges who rule against Presidents Trump and Musk? If you disagree with the decisions, you appeal! Impeachment is the remedy for crimes committed by those judges not orders that you think are wrong.” Repetition of my diatribe had absolutely no effect except to inflate my blood pressure (which, by the way, returned to 116/73 by the time of yesterday’s medical check-up).
The concepts at play here aren’t obscured in the arcana of common law written by the high priests of the judiciary nor in statutory mumbo-dumbo created by legislative committees inside Capitol Sausage Factory, Inc. No. The operating principles driving my repeated harangue and underpinning the Chief Justice’s social media post (affirmed by retired Justice Breyer in an interview yesterday on CNN) are so basic, so fundamental to the rule of law, they should be known and grasped by all adolescent alumni of the (mandatory) American Civics class at Middle School U.S.A—the full spectrum of adolescent behaviors being taken into account.
The call for judicial impeachment in lieu of judicial review reveals an alarming condition inside the very highest levels of our government. Moreover, contempt and disregard for Judge Boasberg’s actual order enjoining the deportation of persons rounded up by ICE is the Constitutional equivalent of Defcon 1. To be clear, the central issue here is NOT who those deportees are or what their alleged status was or what alleged crimes they might have committed. Even assuming the very worst case for the subject individuals—illegal presence in the U.S.; commission of the most heinous crimes imaginable—what’s at stake here is . . . America according to the Constitution.
And what’s the significance of “America according to the Constitution”? By letter and principle of the highest law of the land, we are governed by three co-equal branches of government and therefore, of checks and balances; by the rule of law and not by the caprice of a ruler; by the idea that process in pursuit of a result is as important as the result.
Constitutional scholars, ordinary lawyer-pundits, and retired judges have all scrambled to shore up a system under attack by people who should know better—or who do know better but are intent on upending that system by blatantly anti-democratic means. In either case, the lead assailants are adults who got themselves elected to high office and in a roomful of witnesses, put the left hand on a Bible, raised the right hand, and swore an oath to support the Constitution.
What matters most here is our collective trust in the legal system and governmental structure as outlined in the Constitution. If that trust disintegrates, America will be in freefall without a parachute. Trump—with the essential support of his enablers, opportunists, supporters, and apologists—has already taken a sledgehammer motivated by grift and retribution to the foundation of our system. Pound anything long and hard enough—including granite—and eventually what was once bedrock begins to crumble. Once it starts to go, chips and chunks begin to fly. Soon the attack it produces outright disintegration.
The first big blows were the actions that triggered Trump’s initial impeachment. The second crushing round comprised the offenses that led to his subsequent impeachment. We are now well into the third and most dangerous phase of the attack. As the cudgel swings, rocks split and dust explodes, then settles over the entire land. Coughing, sputtering, wiping grit from our watering eyes, we who see what’s happening struggle for voice and vision. So far, we’ve accomplished little except to run into one another, often with great annoyance, even indignation—to the glee of the disruptors and destroyers. In the confusion, sledgehammers, now joined by jackhammers, slam the system, their wielders hellbent on disintegration of the house that Lincoln warned cannot stand if divided.
What might come of this, no one knows (see yesterday’s post). All the pounding could be overwhelmed by an aerial bomb or unforeseen break in the dam holding the upstream reservoir of our positive traits and traditions. But what could ensue from the third phase of pounding is a sudden collapse of the walls; a wholesale revolution by masses for whom the main issue will no longer be the price of eggs or trans people playing sports or serving in the military but the cost of losing jobs, savings, healthcare, personal safety and so much else thanks to the wrecking ball of Presidents Chaos and Chainsaw with unchecked license from Republicans in Congress. In a full revolutionary scenario the wreckers and their enablers will be the ones on the run.
Meanwhile, my hair’s on fire. If you’re the praying type, pray that I’m wrong.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
