Good morning John.

I don't think this is about USAID. You and I both know that that agency does lots of amazing work, it is a very cheap way to keep the world more stable, and more diseases controlled, and fewer people suffering.

But I don't think that's like the core issue here. The core issue is the extent to which the Constitution matters anymore. This country is founded on the idea that separate branches share power. And while it is frustrating that a narrow Congressional majority seems to have happily given up that power—at least temporarily—it can't actually do that. It isn't allowed to give its power to the president, because the separation of powers is the whole idea that the nation is based on.

USAID was created by a law passed by Congress. It is funded by laws passed by Congress. We all learn in elementary school that Congress has "the power of the purse". Congress decides how almost all money in America is spent—not the president.

The president unilaterally dissolving USAID is illegal. He could have worked with Congress to get them to pass a law to dissolve USAID, which would be the legal way to have it no longer exist, but he did not do that. This isn't a violation of a law that was passed by Congress. It's not even a violation of an amendment to the Constitution. It's in Article I, congress passes laws to determine how money is spent.

And if the president can just walk in and dismantle the work of Congress, that isn't just a refutation of the founding document of the country, it's a logistical nightmare. It calls into a question why Congress exists at all. You can't run a country if everything is burned down and started fresh every four years—obviously. But Trump, or Elon Musk, or whoever seems to want to test the limits of this country and so they are testing those limits.

I don't know if USAID is like a good first target for that, because it's not something that immediately affects very many Americans, so it doesn't have a ton of people here to defend it. But again, I don't think this is about USAID. It's about whether or not the president suddenly has a bunch of unconstitutional powers, and I would simply like to make the case that he obviously does not.

A press release from the White House recently referred to Donald Trump quote "signing an executive order into law". I know this is like nuts and bolts boring Schoolhouse Rock Civics, but that's not how laws get made, and if we don't remember that the country is going to stop working. That's why we had Schoolhouse Rock, so that when people try to do it a different way and then the courts tell them that they're wrong, we all agree with the courts.

I've been thinking this whole week about a line from Ezra Klein's recent essay on on Trump's first few weeks back in office. (Which is also a YouTube video that's good, you should watch it. I'll link in the description.) But the line was "Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president". In the essay, the case for Trump being a legislatively weak president is made pretty clear. The narrowest majority in the house since there have been 50 states. A narrow margin in Congress. He has a higher disapproval rating than any incoming president since we started doing polling.

And so perhaps, instead of trying to create durable change he's governing largely through executive order and also through other untested, probably illegal, unilateral actions. And there really three ways I think to see this.

First, if you're super sympathetic to Trump, you might see it as, "The United States has become so corrupt—is so broken—that we have to stop caring about the Constitution—maybe just for a little bit. We have to let the world's richest man into the treasury so that he can stop payments at his whim. We have to remove security professionals for obeying the law. We have to say that it's okay for the president to take the power of the purse away from Congress, to let him defund whichever parts of the government he would like to defund, because, as he has always said, he alone can fix this"

Second, perhaps there's like a flood-the-zone tactic going on. He's just trying to keep everyone distracted, and confused, and to try everything as fast as he can to occupy the press, and the courts, and the public and to just see what sticks.

Or third, perhaps he is doing this because he wants to change things, but he knows that trying to pass legislation, when he has narrow majorities in the House and Senate, would likely fail—and he hates the idea of failing.

And those second two do look more like the reality at the moment. Already lots of Trump's executive orders have done nothing but be news stories for a moment, before getting blocked as obviously unconstitutional. But the reality is there's two ways of seeing this: either it is okay to ignore the Constitution when your side is doing it, or this is the unacceptable action of people who are not strong enough—either politically or in character—to actually govern.

So the question becomes, if if you don't like that, then how do you make it not happen? And the big way is to simply not believe them when they say that they are more powerful than the Constitution. The reason the Constitution is more powerful than Elon Musk or Donald Trump isn't just the legacy of this nation, or the laws that is bound to uphold, it's that the Constitution is a good document that we collectively believe in. That separation of powers isn't something that somebody thought would be a fun thing to try out, it's a very good idea. It's a good idea that was created by people who had been living under a king and didn't want to do that anymore.

And the result of that—of that hard work, that hard thought, and the creation of that good document—was America. And the times when we have violated those principles are real, and they exist, and they are shameful, and we don't want to be living through one of those times. We do not want to be part of that kind of shame.

And I do think that the law will stand, and I hope that the American people will say "Yes, that was the correct thing to have happen". Not just, "Oh Trump tried to do this, and then the courts blocked him". No! Trump tried to do this, the courts said it was unconstitutional, and I don't like any president as much as I like America.

Already multiple lawsuits have been filed outlining why shutting down USAID is illegal. Trump fans might see that as the Deep State fighting back, but what it actually is is people saying that there is a reason why we have laws, and it isn't just to tell you what you can and can't do. It's to uphold the structures that have upheld this nation for 250 years.

John I'll see you on Tuesday.