|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By Leslie Nichols
On January 2, 2025, Donald Trump was the 45th individual to take the oath of office as President of the United States. That oath is set forth in our Constitution, Article II, Section 1: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Developments over the first 100 days of this administration raise serious questions whether President Trump took the oath “without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.” Some of these developments are as follows:
- He has failed to disclose his tax returns or signed the conflict of interest statements endorsed by all previous presidents in recent decades.
- He has consistently violated, to his great personal financial benefit, the emoluments clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 9),
- He has declared, “One who saves the nation violates no law.”
- When asked whether every person, regardless of legal status, is entitled to due process of law, he responded, “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.” After his attention was directed to the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which states, “no person’ shall be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” he responded, “I don’t know, it might say that.” He then deflected by saying due process would take time, “two or three million trials” and involve “thousands of people that are – some murders and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on earth.” All talk; no due process.
The president has required loyalty oaths, not to the Constitution, but to himself. He has attempted to punish the free and independent press that publishes news with which he disagrees. He has authorized actions that have snatched people off the streets of America and deporting them to be held in foreign prisons … persons with no criminal record or pending criminal cases, citizens and non-citizens alike.
During this first hundred days, the president has pardoned hundreds of individuals, including violent insurrectionists, who had been found guilty or pled guilty, after having been accorded due process of law. The president and his acolytes ignore our Constitution, turn on our allies, initiate trade wars, use the levers of government to punish perceived enemies, seek to take over long established institutions (Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institution, NPR, PBS, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities), all part of the president’s plan that he alone can “save America.”
Aggrieved parties have sued the administration in courts over the nation, and judges, appointed by presidents from both political parties, have ruled against the administration. The response has been to malign judges in violent and extreme language, all intended to defeat an independent judiciary.
How history records these times is up to us. We must not give in to authoritarians. Support our independent, free, and courageous press. Subscribe to print media. Read, think, inform ourselves. Defend the rule of law, our courts, and the legal profession that are guardians of our Constitution. We must defend institutions long established to protect against the abuses we are witnessing today. These institutions cannot defend themselves. They need patriots at this time of peril.
We must stand up. Speak truth to power, persistently, forcefully, and respectfully. Petition our government. Assemble and peacefully demonstrate in support of justice and fairness for all. The president and his attendants harass, threaten, disparage, bully, and ridicule those with whom they disagree. They underestimate the American people. We must oppose this ill treatment by engaging with, respecting, understanding, educating, and, yes, sometimes disagreeing with others, and demand that our elected representatives do the same. Let us recall why our founders ‘ordained and established’ our sacred Constitution. E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.” Let us live to the high aspiration set forth in our Pledge of Allegiance: “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
Judge Leslie C. Nichols is a Mountain View resident who served as Santa Clara County Superior Court for 25 years.
Kudos to Judge Nichols for clearly expressing what many of us feel. And kudos to the Mountain View Voice for publishing it. This is not a time to silently acquiesce as Trump and his appointees ignore the law, attack the innocent, and manipulate the economy for his personal gain. Here’s an event where we can gather to protest: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/786416/