During its first few weeks, the Trump Administration has unleashed a flurry of measures to radically reshape the federal government. Many of these moves are overtly unlawful. This paper identifies the legal problems with many prominent actions: closing federal agencies or departments and removing federal employees, ending the independence of independent agencies, placing employees on indefinite administrative leave, or pressing them to resign.[[2]](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/many-trump-administration-personnel-actions-are-unlawful#_ftn2)
Pretending that the law matters during a fascist coup is not productive.
Claims to illegality are part of the toolset of building the opposition to respond to a coup. “It’s all over, what the law says doesn’t matter” is what’s actually counterproductive.
It’s even more important as during such a coup, the law gets instrumentalized as a tool of oppression. Owning the rule of law to defend democratic intent is necessary to prevent such instrumentalization as much as possible.
Acknowledging the failure of the legal system is hardly a dissuasion from action.
Indeed. We have a vague notion of law at this point with such deep cracks in the foundation.
Mostly, there’s just power. Whatever I can get away with is valid.