by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute:
“This is war.”—President Trump
President Trump’s declaration of war as a justification for using wartime powers to sidestep constitutional protections is indeed a war, but it is a war waged by the president against dissent, against due process, and against the very foundations of our constitutional republic.
This is what it means to weaponize the government.
When the government turns its power against its own people—through surveillance, retaliation, censorship, and intimidation—it ceases to serve the public and instead becomes a weapon of oppression.
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According to the Political Dictionary:
“The term ‘weaponize’ refers to the strategic manipulation or transformation of information, institutions, or social issues into tools for gaining political advantage. This could involve exploiting existing laws, harnessing social media algorithms for disinformation campaigns, or turning otherwise neutral or benign elements of governance into divisive issues for the purpose of delegitimizing opponents or rallying a base.”
Time and again, leaders have stretched—or outright shattered—the limits of power, weaponizing government power through unjust laws, surveillance, or outright suppression.
Each power grab is a step toward the erosion of liberty.
John Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts to prosecute journalists and political opponents.
Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, allowing the military to detain individuals without trail and suppressing Confederate sympathizers and political dissenters.
Under Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage and Sedition Acts were used to crack down on anti-war activists, socialists, and labor organizers, including Eugene V. Debs, who spoke out against World War I.
Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that led to the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, based on suspicions of disloyalty, despite little to no evidence.
Richard Nixon harnessed the power of the FBI, CIA, and IRS, to harass, spy on and sabotage his political opponents and perceived enemies.
Spanning numerous presidential administrations, from FDR to Nixon, the FBI’s covert intelligence program COINTELPRO was used to infiltrate, discredit and disrupt civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and other political dissidents.
In a bid to fight so-called disinformation, Biden pressured social media companies to censor and suppress individuals expressing views perceived as conspiratorial or extremist, especially as they related to COVID-19.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who is setting new records for how far he’s willing to go to retaliate against his perceived enemies and sidestep the rule of law.
Indeed, Ken Hughes, an investigative journalist who spent two decades listening to Richard Nixon’s Secret White House Tapes, has concluded that Nixon’s abuses of presidential power—which included weaponizing the government to “sabotage Vietnam peace talks to damage the Democrats’ 1968 presidential campaign, to time his withdrawal from Vietnam to help his 1972 reelection campaign, and to spring former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa from prison in return for the union’s political support”—pale beside Trump’s abuses.
Trump, who once vowed to end government overreach and the weaponization of the federal government, now openly uses its full force against his critics, dismantling democratic norms, consolidating power in ways that defy the Constitution, and directing an all-out weaponization of the federal government against his perceived enemies, which translates to anyone who dares to oppose him.
If Trump were just a petty blowhard, that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, having populated his administration with individuals more loyal to him than to the Constitution, Trump is getting drunk on power.
The danger is not so much Trump as it is his enablers-to-abuse, the many minions within his administration and beyond who are eager to carry out unlawful orders, defy the courts, ignore Congress’ mandate, trample rights, and butcher the Constitution, all in the so-called name of putting America first.
If this keeps up, America, once looked upon as a bastion of freedom and economic opportunity, will be the last place anyone ever thinks of when they hear the words freedom, justice and equality.
Every action taken by the Trump administration in defiance of the rule of law—whether or not that action is motivated by a legitimate concern for national security—pushes us that much closer to the complete dismantling of our constitutional republic.
