Just 10 days after Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term, I wrote these words:
The Pine Belt News: “On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of the paramilitary members who had been convicted of (or who had pled guilty to) seditious conspiracy for their part in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. “
Only a week and a half had passed, and I wondered anew how anyone could have voted for Trump. And I wrote: “Whatever the reasons, you got lots more than you voted for. You got the Whole Trump, not just the sliver you voted for. You got his approval for the use of violence to gain political power. The law that applies to you and me does not apply to those members of, e.g., The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers, whose sentences have now been wiped out by the president.”
Richard Conville
But it was not just the paramilitary groups he pardoned.
“Also on Inauguration Day, the new president pardoned all those convicted of attacking police officers in the attempted coup at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was OK for them to assault police officers on that day, but it would not be OK for you or me to attack the police officers in our own cities and towns. With those pardons, the new president legitimated the use of violence in pursuit of political power.”
Reminder: That was only day one of Trump’s second term. What’s gone on since then? For starters, he has declared war on government workers. Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk are demonizing “government workers” — painting them all with the same brush and turning the term “government worker” into a cudgel.
What we are witnessing in the actions of the Trump-Musk axis is a natural extension of the now famous statement Ronald Reagan made in his inaugural speech on Jan. 20, 1981: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
“We have suffered under 44 years of this mantra from Republican administrations.”
We have suffered under 44 years of this mantra from Republican administrations. For nearly as long, it has been echoed by talk radio and right-wing social media. If you buy into that anti-government slogan, the solution, of course, is less government, and Musk is using the laziest and easiest means of achieving that — by firing government workers and eliminating government agencies. That takes no knowledge of the agencies or what the workers do there. And it takes only one skill, subtraction.
Of course there are consequences to such a haphazard approach. Examples abound, ranging from the mundane to the downright dangerous: firing members of the agency that safeguards our nuclear arsenal; firing IRS employees here on the eve of the tax season; firing FAA employees when we already have a shortage of air traffic controllers and a slew of air traffic accidents; and firing National Park employees here on the eve of the summer onslaught of park visitors.
I prefer a rational government, one guided by the rule of law, where the power of the purse is vested in the House of Representatives; or as the Constitution puts it in plain English: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” Moreover, the Congress, not the president or his designee, makes the budget — which the president is obliged to execute.
Article II, Section I of the Constitution reads: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The president is to execute (cause to happen) the laws passed by Congress. Translation: separation of powers.
Article I, Section I of the Constitution reads: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” The president is not permitted, in this constitutional republic, to make the laws; only Congress does that.
President Donald Trump has created a full-fledged constitutional crisis by his insistence on taking over the role of Congress. The citizens of this nation must speak out loudly against his authoritarian takeover of the government. They must pressure their elected representatives to speak out against the president’s actions.
Your and my freedom is at stake. If he can do anything he wants to anyone he wishes, none of us is safe.
Richarde Conville is professor emeritus of communication studies and service-learning at the University of Southern Mississippi and a long-time resident of Hattiesburg, Miss., where he is a member of University Baptist Church. This column was previously published in the Feb. 27, 2025, issue of The Pine Belt News.
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