On May 27, masked agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in unmarked vehicles removed nearly 40 undocumented immigrants from the Island with the assistance of other federal agencies. It is inevitable that they will return to Martha’s Vineyard in light of President Trump’s recently enacted “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes an astounding additional spending of $170 billion on immigration enforcement and detention.
According to Just Security, which analyzes national security issues, “The $170 billion price tag for immigration enforcement … is more than the annual expenditures on police by state and local governments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia combined.”
This is all part of the trend since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. He has seized and deported undocumented immigrants even if they had no criminal record. His ill-conceived decision to send the National Guard to Washington, D.C., to combat crime, which has declined to its lowest point in 30 years, is part of his harsh response to the cities he dislikes. These include Chicago and Baltimore, with Black Democratic mayors. He has threatened to send the troops there as well.
Miles Taylor, chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration, who spoke two years ago at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven, told MSNBC on August 23 that we may be “trending toward martial law.” Should President Trump declare a national emergency because of crime, national security, or other made-up reasons, he might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. He could then mobilize the U.S. Army to “assist” civilian government to quell “unrest” that may or may not exist.
Taylor, like many former Trump officials who have appeared disloyal to him, is under investigation, and he may be prosecuted, along with those in the first Trump and President Biden’s administrations who have declined to display loyalty to Trump. Trump also extorted law firms and universities to change their hiring practices, threatening to end their ability to gain federal contracts. And, in the case of universities, he has demanded they reduce or end acceptances of international students. He wants them to terminate their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Meantime, he ordered some corporations to allow the U.S. to take up to a 15 percent interest in their companies, including a cut of their revenue. These include most recently a 10 percent interest in Intel, the computer chipmaker. Other companies he has targeted — and he has promised more to come — are U.S. Steel (10 percent interest), Advance Micro Devices (10 percent interest), and MP Materials, a rare-earth mining company (15 percent interest).
This is a flagrant denial of a free-market economy. It is state-managed capitalism that we might see in China, Russia, or Turkey. Others might call it federal extortion in exchange for cash or other demands. In these cases, the Trump administration threatens to withhold grants, subsidies, or federal contracts that Congress authorized unless these entities do his bidding. This is the closest the U.S. government has come in its nearly 250-year history to engaging in a racketeering shakedown.
Let’s be clear. Congress makes the law, under the Constitution’s Article I. The president enforces the law under Article II, or is more clearly “to take care that the laws [passed by Congress] are faithfully executed.” President Trump has subverted the authority of Congress, which is unwilling and unable to withstand his assault on its constitutional powers. He makes his own laws by executive order — some 192 since Jan. 20 as of this writing — and then enforces them.
Because Congress will not stop him, some federal district courts have. The administration has appealed all of them to higher courts. The Supreme Court will soon have to determine whether he has overstepped his executive authority. To date, the court has temporarily allowed many of his executive orders to remain in place. This is because a majority of the justices want to wait until the litigation is exhausted on appeal before they will deal with the merits of each case.
That could take a long while. But the time will come.
The cities, universities, corporations, and law firms that the administration has targeted have all responded alone, in isolation. They must now create a united front to oppose these constitutional violations.
All Americans who believe democracy is worth saving must stand together and say, “No, we will not have this as the last gasp of American freedom.” More demonstrations like the June 14 “No Kings Rally” on Five Corners, or the most recent Labor Day rally, are vital. We firmly believe in the words of the Constitution’s Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
We can do no less for ourselves, our children, and generations to come.
Jack Fruchtman, who lives in Aquinnah, is the author of “American Constitutional History: A Brief Introduction” and “The Supreme Court and Constitutional Law.”