For the first year of his second term as U.S. President, Donald Trump and the grouping called his Cabinet, have been ruling the United States unconstitutionally through a series of “emergency” orders and decrees, and executive orders. To do this, Trump falsely labels regular situations emergencies, and then uses laws which apply to emergency conditions, which give him enlarged power. This bypasses congressional debate and scrutiny, making it nearly impossible to stop what he is doing, giving him near dictatorial power.
In Germany after the Reichstag Fire in February 1933, there was the issuance of the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) of March, which ceded Hitler’s government the power to pass laws without approval of the parliament, bypassing the Reichstag and President.
Two of the important laws that the Trump administration is abusing are the National Emergencies Act (NEA) of 1976 (enacted September 14 of that year), and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 (enacted December 28 of that year). The NEA, which came in the wake of the Watergate incident, was actually implemented primarily to check the President’s unrestrained power and establish an arrangement whereby the President had to state the reason for the emergency he was invoking; and it gave Congress the power to constrain the President (though the powers given to Congress are very limited). The IEEPA was passed to permit presidential emergency declarations only in response to threats originating outside the United States’ borders. (After the September 11, 2001 attack, President George W Bush issued an executive order, under the IEEPA, to block the assets of terrorist organizations.)
The Trump administration distorted these laws. On April 2, 2025, President Trump declared the U.S. trade deficit a national emergency, under the IEEPA Act. The trade deficit is parlous, but it does not qualify as an emergency, such as a devastating national flood, serious disease pandemic, or military attack by a foreign country on the U.S. Trump wanted to impose his crack-pot trade policy, but knowing that this had no chance of getting through the Congress, which under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution has the “sole authority” to lay tariffs, invoked the IEEPA. He acted on tariffs. On April 2, Trump imposed a 10% baseline tariff on nearly all imports from all countries, but imposed a 34% tariff on China, a 20% tariff on the EU, etc. He called this “Liberation Day.”
On July 6, Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the administration would impose an additional 10% tariff on nation members of the BRICS, because allegedly, they were “anti-dollar,” and in fact, because they were pursuing physical economic development. On August 27, 2025, the Trump administration enforced an additional 25% tariff on India, raising the total tariff on India to 50%, because India refused to stop importing Russian oil. The tariff impositions—there were several more—had nothing to do with the U.S. trade deficit; they were raw economic warfare.
This caused inflation, damaged the U.S. economy, and so forth.
On immigration, President Trump used the National Emergencies Act (NEA) to declare migrants an “invasion” and thus a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, multiple times. This permitted Trump to redirect funds from the U.S. budget to the border wall, and deploy military personnel to support immigration enforcement, from which derives the so-called power to deploy ICE forces. Trump used duplicitous maneuvers on top of this. In April 2025, Trump declared a 60-foot-wide strip of federal land that spans three states on the southern border of the United States, including California, a “military installation” to address the “emergency” of immigration. This was done, because the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the U.S. from use of the Army, Navy, and other military forces for civilian law enforcement purposes. The “military installation” is a complete deceit and hoax, for which some state governments are suing the Trump administration. For the moment, Trump is using “emergency” decrees to move forward.
The effect of Trump ruling the United States through this fraud, can be seen in the number of pieces of “enacted legislation” passed by the U.S. Congress. In 2025, according to GovTrack.us, there were 232 pieces of enacted legislation (including via “incorporation") passed by the U.S. Congress. In 2023, there were 307 pieces; in 2021, there were 617, etc. 2025 is the lowest level in over 50 years. This is because the Trump administration governs by dangerous emergency decrees.
