Writing in Maine’s largest newspaper, the Pell Center’s Colin Woodard warns the U.S. is in witnessing an effort to consolidate an authoritarian regime
Nationhood Lab Director Colin Woodard argued that the U.S. is in the midst of a constitutional crisis and an effort by the incoming administration to consolidate an authoritarian regime in an essay in a recent Sunday edition of Maine’s largest newspaper, the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram.
“When the president breaks laws or violates the Constitution in such a manner, our system provides two remedies. The first is that the U.S. House impeaches him or her and the Senate votes to remove them from office; it’s clear that the Republican majorities in these chambers today will not do this,” Woodard wrote in the essay published Feb. 15, referencing the illegal closure and impoundment of congressionally-allocated funds at USAID and other federal agencies. “The alternative is that the illegal moves are challenged in court and blocked by judges, who order the lawless acts reversed,” which is what has been happening in recent weeks.
“Which leads us to the biggest question of all, the one every American should be focused on: Will an administration that has so brazenly flouted the law do as the courts order? And what if it doesn’t?” Woodard added. With the U.S. Marshalls Service controlled by the president — who could order them not to enforce judge’s arrest warrants for contempt of court — we could very quickly be in a post-constitutional environment, where the executive is no longer bound by law.
Nationhood Lab, a project of Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, focuses on counteracting the authoritarian threat to American democracy and the centrifugal forces threatening the federation’s stability. One pillar of the project seeks to develop, rigorously test, and disseminate articulate a renewed civic national narrative for the United States.