Donald Trump's second presidency delivers a diktat a day

At a televised town hall in 2023, Sean Hannity gave Donald Trump a chance to dispel fears that he’d abuse power if given another spin as president. Trump sort-of obliged: He’d be a dictator, he said, just “for Day 1.”

Supporters insisted he was only joking with his use of “dictator.” Critics took him seriously; he had, after all, tried to stay in power after losing reelection. And they scoffed at the idea that Trump — a “wannabe dictator” and “fascist to the core,” according to the general he made the nation’s top military officer in his first term — would be content with a single day of power regardless of Congress, the courts, federal law or the Constitution.

The critics, including retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, were right. And the joke, alas, is on all Americans, as well as millions abroad who look to the United States as the global bastion of democracy and stability.

In the two weeks since Trump took the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution (he didn’t put his hand on the Bible), it’s been a diktat a day, often more than one. Thousands of protected federal employees have been sacked or threatened with job losses, funds mandated by law were frozen and efforts are afoot to shutter departments created by statute.

The nation is in the midst of a rolling constitutional crisis.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-02-05/donald-trump-executive-power-dictator