(#1,025) The MUMP Regime: Defying Democracy & the Constitution?
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall (R) Giving the Oath of Office to President Andrew Jackson on March 4, 1829.
It goes without saying that many of humanity’s most profound truths are either of unknown origin or attributed to more than one - if not two or three - different philosophers, writers or sages. Take but one example . . . the old saw which teaches “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ask a literate person who is responsible for this eternal verity and you are just as likely to hear the names Edmund Burke, George Santayana and Winston Churchill, one of the most oft-quoted polymaths of the late 19th and 20th century. I myself have come across at least 5 slightly different versions of this lesson:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who do not learn from the experience of history, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who cannot learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Yes, they are all saying pretty much the same thing, but with slightly different words. As to precisely who the original author was no one knows of a certainty. My money is on the Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist and novelist (The Last Puritan) George Santayana (1863-1952), just because he was so astonishingly sagacious.
Permit me to pair this aphorism with an historic phrase all but universally ascribed to America’s 7th president, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). Before typing out the phrase, and getting to the up-to-the-minute meat of this post, I will give you its political background and let you know that “Old Hickory” never said it.
First its background: First its background: In September 1831, Samuel A. Worcester and others, all non-Native Americans, were indicted in the supreme court for the county of Gwinnett in the state of Georgia for "residing within the limits of the Cherokee nation without a license" and "without having taken the oath to support and defend the constitution and laws of the state of Georgia." They were indicted under an 1830 act of the Georgia legislature entitled "an act to prevent the exercise of assumed and arbitrary power by all persons, under pretext of authority from the Cherokee Indians." Among other things, Worcester argued that the state could not maintain the prosecution because the statute violated the Constitution, treaties between the United States and the Cherokee nation, and an act of Congress entitled "an act to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes." Worcester was convicted and sentenced to "hard labor in the penitentiary for four years." The U.S. Supreme Court received the case on a writ of error. The case became known as Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832). The question before the court was whether or not the state of Georgia had the authority to regulate the intercourse between citizens of its state and members of the Cherokee Nation.
The case was argued on February 21-23, 1832; the decision was handed down 8 days later. Writing for the court in a 4-1 decision, Chief Justice Marshall held that the Georgia act. under which Worcester was prosecuted, violated the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States. Marshall argued, "The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community occupying its own territory in which the laws of Georgia can have no force. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation, is, by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States." The Georgia act thus interfered with the federal government's authority and was unconstitutional. Justice Henry Baldwin dissented for procedural reasons and on the merits.
According to American political mythology, upon learning of the court’s decision, President Jackson (that’s him taking the oath of office alongside Chief Justice Marshall in the painting above, defiantly bellowed “Chief Justice Marshall made his ruling; now, let’s see him enforce it!” According to Court historian Jeffrey Rosen, Jackson’s real remark was made in a letter to John Coffee, a well-known planter and state militia brigadier general in Tennessee: “. . . the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.” Truth to tell, Jackson had no desire to threaten Georgia with federal forces or openly challenge the Supreme Court. “Old Hickory” solved the problem by convincing the governor of Georgia to set the defendants (who were Christian missionaries) free. Years later, journalist Horace E. Greeley, who himself would lose in a landslide (286 electoral votes to 66) to Ulysses Grant, who referred to Greeley as “a genius without an ounce of common sense.” Before running in the 1872 election, Greely published a history of the recently concluded Civil War called "The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion, in which he apparently gave the fictive quote about Justice Marshall enforcing his decision.
This bit of the past is meant to serve as prologue for the horror show that has been transpiring over the past 40 days; i.e. ever since January 20, 2025. In just his first week in office, IT signed dozens of executive orders affecting everything from immigration, climate change and oil exploration to health and medical research, as well as eliminating federal diversity programs, directives defining gender and much, much more. And this isn’t even mentioning the roughly 1,500 pardons and commutations he issued to the people he refers to as “hostages” or “true patriots” . . . the people who stormed Congress on January 6, 2021. Executive orders, despite being limited, are not all that easy to overturn. Courts can strike them down not only on the grounds that the president issuing them lacked authority to do so, but also in cases where the order is found to be unconstitutional in substance.
At this early point in the nascent MUMP Regime, when so many Americans are walking about in a collective haze, fearful that Democracy is being eroded from within, about the only positive feeling is that somehow, the Courts — our third branch of government - will step up and become our Knight (or Dame) in shining armor. And despite the Supremes having a public opinion rating just ahead of cockroaches and snails, one must be aware of how the lower courts (both federal and state) have already been responding to the most asinine promises and proposals coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In a trenchant essay by A.P. writers Chris Megerian and Lindsay Whitehurst the two journalists note, A familiar pattern has emerged since President Donald Trump returned to the White House less than three weeks ago: He makes a brash proposal, his opponents file a lawsuit and a federal judge puts the plan on hold. It’s happened with Trump’s attempts to freeze certain federal funding, undermine birthright citizenship and push out government workers.
A word to the wise: although just about every Democrat on the planet, most independents, and a majority of non-MAGA Republicans may be encouraged by the initial round of judicial resistance, the legal battles are only beginning. Lawsuits that originated in more liberal jurisdictions like Boston, Seattle and the District of Columbia could eventually find their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where its conservative majority has time and again demonstrated its willingness to overturn precedent. To date, roughly three dozen lawsuits have already been filed, including those by FBI agents who fear they’re being purged for political reasons, families who are concerned about new limitations on healthcare for transgender youth, and the MUMP Regime’s attempt to freeze as much as $3 trillion in federal funding.
Just this past Thursday, U.,S. District Judge John Coughenour blocked ITs executive order on birthright citizenship, which was intended to prevent the children of parents who are in the country illegally from being automatically considered Americans. The judge described birthright citizenship, which was established by the 14th Amendment as “a fundamental constitutional right” and he assailed POTUS in scathing terms. On the very same day in Boston, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. put a kink in ITs plan to encourage federal workers to resign by offering them paid leave until September 2025. There is a huge judicial problem here: nowhere in the current federal budget are there the billions of dollars required to fulfill this paid leave promise . . . a promise coming from a man who has made a career of not paying bills to those who do work for him (let alone the American people). Congress - which has the sole right to craft and create a budget will not be voting on the next federal budget until October 2025. (BTW: It should be noted that Judge O’Toole, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1995, did not express an opinion on the deferred resignation program; he merely voted with the majority.)
Currently, there are also three lawsuits challenging POTUS’ effort to overhaul the civil service, stripping away job protections from tens of thousands of employees, and giving the White House unilateral firing authority if they fail to “faithfully implement administration policies,” and other lawsuits challenging the administration’s attempts to unilaterally fire a member of the National Labor Relations Board, one of several agencies that are supposed to be independent of the executive branch. A lawsuit to stop Elon Musk’s team from accessing ultra-sensitive data at the Treasury Department yielded an agreement to do so for now.
It makes one wonder if IT (or anyone in his and his BFF’s circle of twenty-something acolytes who hold in their hands the super, super secret algorithmic keys to virtually everyone’s Social Security numbers) is familiar with Worcester v Georgia. Oh perhaps a couple of them have a vague recollection of some president long ago challenging a long-forgotten Chief Justice to enforce a decision that the White House did not like. But I’ll bet you a bushel and a peck that they neither know that the president in question never uttered the words about the Chief Justice enforcing the decision, nor understand that in his own way, that president Andrew Jackson was far more interested in preserving the Constitution than in getting his way.
Nor do they likely know that during his time as POTUS, Thomas Jefferson actually disregarded a ruling (dealing with the Embargo Act of 1807, a drastic - and absurdly self-destructive - attempt to punish Great Britain for seizing American merchant ships. This legal ruling was issued by a single Supreme Court associate justice, William Johnson. (Back in the early 19th century Supreme Court Justices “rode circuit” and traveled to courts around the country to hear appeals.) Jefferson disregarded John’sons decision which rebuked the nation’s 3rd President for insinuating the doctrine of “constructive treason” - a judicial fiction that refers to actions carried out without a treasonable intent, but found to have the effect of treason. Jefferson gave up his fight, thus allowing the Constitution to retain its supremacy. Moreover, Presidents Lincoln and Grant both tried to suspend Habeas Corpus during their 16 years in office, and both suffered defeat at the hands of SCOTUS.
Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)
And let’s not forget FDR who, after suffering a number of New Deal reversals in the nation’s highest court, (most notably, AL.A. Schechter Poultry Corp v. United States . . . nicknamed the “Sick Chicken Case”) set off on his disastrous “Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937,” (known to history as his “Court Packing Plan”), which would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years. One of FDR’s closest advisors, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (whom FDR called "Isaiah,” for his prophetic mien) openly opposed his friend’s court packing plan; in turn, FDR considered Brandeis’ public and private pronouncements to be an act of defiance. Nonetheless, Roosevelt relented; his plan was consigned to the dustbin of history.
When it comes to democracy and the Constitution, we are indeed living in perilous times. The MUMP Regime, guided largely by ultraconservatives from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, are doing their damndest to, in the words of Washington anti-tax salonista Grover Norquist ". . . cut government in half in twenty-five years to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." What all the MUMP loyalists seem to forget is that they - for better or for worst - are the government. Whether or not they will actually reach their goal, and turn over what is left of the federal government to the approximately 756 billionaires who are members of their club, is anyone’s guess. It strikes me that in order for them to fail, it will require Congressional Republicans growing spines, Democrats finding a positive path and purpose they can run on, and a federal judiciary that finally, finally, puts precedent over politics. And as for we, the people, we must pull on our gloves, strap up our protest boots and act in consonance with the lesson taught us by our great British cousin, Winston Churchill:
“ . . . never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to conviction of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy . . . never, never, never, never!”
And while we’re fighting the good fight, let’s never forget the lessons of history . . . lest we are forced to relive them.
Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone