constitutional

The purported constitutional equivalence between criminal trial outcomes and presidential election results will come as a surprise to anyone with a passing familiarity with criminal trials or presidential elections.

United States, which transformed the Richard Nixon “when the president does it, it’s not illegal” adage into an ironclad principle of constitutional law, Goldstein’s logic would turn democratic elections into get-out-of-jail-free cards for anyone who can afford to buy one.

But his choice to do so demonstrates how malleable this country’s conception of justice really is: If a defendant is famous and powerful enough, elite lawyers will write in to the newspaper of record to cravenly argue that, as a matter of constitutional law, famous and powerful people actually shouldn’t be subject to the legal system at all.

“My belief, for anyone who wants to listen, is that the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible, with a radical constitutional perspective, to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy and their power centers,” Vought said on Tucker Carlson's podcast this week, claiming that there was no such thing as independent agencies.

Next, Biden should encourage Congress to retake some of the constitutional authority over tariffs that the legislative branch delegated to the president during much of the 20th century, when everyone assumed that the president wouldn’t abuse such power — an assumption that the first Trump administration proved incorrect.