{"id":6750,"date":"2025-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2025\/04\/30\/a-canary-in-the-coal-mine-moment\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T00:00:00","slug":"a-canary-in-the-coal-mine-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2025\/04\/30\/a-canary-in-the-coal-mine-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"A Canary-in-the-Coal-Mine Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interview with David French<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The first months of the new presidential administration have brought an unrelenting stream of headlines\u2014many touching on issues of constitutional law, the role of the judiciary, and the nature of presidential executive authority.<\/p>\n

For some perspective on recent events, Liberty<\/i> editor Bettina Krause spoke with David French, an attorney turned journalist, best-\u00adselling author, and nationally known commentator on constitutional law.*<\/p>\n

French is a New York Times<\/i> opinion columnist who describes his unconventional career path as a \u201clong and winding road.\u201d He was born in Alabama in a conservative Christian family and grew up in Kentucky and Tennessee before heading north to Harvard Law School. After a few years in commercial litigation and lecturing in constitutional law at Cornell Law School, French embarked on a tour of military service in Iraq as a JAG Corps lawyer. He was later awarded a Bronze Star for his service with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Diyala province.<\/p>\n

On his return to the U.S., French spent the next two decades in courtrooms across America as a litigator defending free speech and religious freedom. He also served for a time as president of a free-speech advocacy organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.<\/p>\n

In 2015 French joined National Review<\/i> as a senior writer but left a few years later to help start a conservative media company called The Dispatch.<\/p>\n

Today, along with his regular New York<\/i> Times<\/i> columns and media appearances, French helps anchor the popular legal podcast Advisory Opinions<\/i> and, with host Sarah Isgur, churns out two episodes a week focusing on the Supreme Court and the judiciary and exploring current constitutional debates.<\/p>\n

French describes himself as a conservative evangelical Christian who believes in a \u201cvision of American democracy, in which people with deep religious, cultural, and moral differences can live and work together and enjoy equal legal protection\u201d\u2014and he brings this faith-shaped sensibility to his writing and media work.<\/p>\n

His most recent book is Divided We Fall: America\u2019s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation <\/i>(St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2020).<\/p>\n

Bettina Krause: Since taking office, President Trump has asserted what has been called \u201cmaximalist\u201d executive authority. Depending on whom you\u2019re talking to, this is either a constitutional emergency\u2014it\u2019s time to break the glass and press the button\u2014or it\u2019s just a realignment. It\u2019s simply bringing the role of the executive back to what our country\u2019s founders originally intended, something they called an \u201cenergetic executive.\u201d Can you help us understand what\u2019s happening?<\/p>\n

David French: I think what we\u2019re watching is an attempted constitutional revolution. The executive branch, the Trump administration, is trying to assert more raw authority over the federal government than any other president, certainly in the modern era.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to say it\u2019s as much as Lincoln asserted, say in the Civil War, or maybe FDR at the height of World War II. But in a time of peace and prosperity, this is absolutely the biggest attempted presidential power grab that we\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether you think the system might need reform\u2014and you can put me in that camp; I think there are a lot of things about the federal government that need reform\u2014we should not be reforming the federal government at the expense of the constitutional order.<\/p>\n

The constitutional order is not one that is designed to have \u201ccoequal branches of government.\u201d It\u2019s actually designed for the legislative branch to be supreme. When you read the Constitution, that\u2019s pretty obvious. Congress can override vetoes. Spending can come only from Congress with a bill originating in the House of Representatives. Congress has the ability to fire the president and Supreme Court justices. Congress is not uncheckable, but it\u2019s supposed to be supreme.<\/p>\n

But now the presidency is asserting itself as supreme, and that is not the intended constitutional order. This has lots of negative ramifications, even if you are somebody who thinks there\u2019s a need for reform in the federal government.<\/p>\n

Bettina: How much of what the president is doing is technically constitutional, but is breaching norms and traditions?<\/p>\n

David: We can break things down into several different buckets or categories. One bucket would be just \u201cflat-out unconstitutional.\u201d For example, there are multiple courts that have already ruled against his effort to revoke birthright citizenship. That\u2019s something that would be just flat-out unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s another category that is \u201cunlawful, but the president is arguing that the laws themselves are unconstitutional.\u201d For example, the ability to hire and fire federal workers is very constrained by federal law. Trump can appoint, hire, and fire at will the policymakers, the heads of cabinet agencies, and so on. But the millions of other civil service workers have federal protection for their jobs.<\/p>\n

The president has blown through these protections, which are established by Congress. He argues that because he\u2019s the chief executive, he should be able to do this. This is where you\u2019re going to have a court fight between his assertion of executive authority and the workers who claim that these statutory protections are enforceable.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s a third category, which is \u201cHe\u2019s just blowing through a norm that he can go through because he has the power, unquestionably.\u201d For example, directing our United Nations delegation to vote with Russia and North Korea against Ukraine. That would be where he is, obviously, blowing through a norm. We never have sided with Russian aggression before. But he can do that. He\u2019s the nation\u2019s chief diplomat. He\u2019s constrained by law, but he has enormous amount of flexibility to decide American foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Bettina: You mentioned the courts and the role they\u2019re going to have in working through these issues. Are the courts prepared? How effective a check will they be on those first two categories you mentioned?<\/p>\n

David: That\u2019s a great question. I would say they\u2019re prepared. I would say that the litigants who are involved in the cases have been preparing for these cases for a long time. Some of these confrontations that are now happening in court have been unfolding and debated about for quite some time before Trump actually became president. So there\u2019s a lot of preexisting legal work to draw on, court precedents that already exist. I\u2019d say that in many ways the judicial branch is extremely prepared.<\/p>\n

Now, the judicial branch does not move all that quickly. And so you can see these things unfold\u2014people are fired and grants are cut off\u2014and you wonder why isn\u2019t anything happening right now. Well, a lot is happening right now, lots of court filings are being made, but it takes time to adjudicate these things.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll know a lot more in five or six months. In the meantime, there\u2019s an injunction here, there\u2019s an injunction there. It\u2019s kind of like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.<\/p>\n

The courts are prepared, but they were never intended to be the primary check on a president. That was meant to be Congress. Congress was always intended to be the primary check\u2014it can move more quickly.<\/p>\n

Bettina: America\u2019s Founders seemed to believe that Congress would be jealous of its own strength and prerogatives, and that it would defend those prerogatives. How did we get to the point where Congress is now effectively the weakest branch of government?<\/p>\n

David: It\u2019s been a long, slow decline followed by a precipitous drop off a cliff. As Hemingway once said: \u201cHow do you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a lot of time in the modern era\u2014and when I say the modern era, we\u2019ll peg it to post-Watergate\u2014you had a high watermark of congressional power. Congress had effectively just removed a president. And by 1974 Congress was passing a ton of good government reforms to prevent the rise of another \u201cimperial presidency,\u201d a term applied to Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n

So at this point Congress was at a modern high watermark. And then over time, as America became more partisan, and as Americans became more partisan and more entrenched in that partisanship, the incentives for Congress began to shift. Loyalty to your partisan imperative began to trump your jealousy for your own power in Congress.<\/p>\n

This was a result of feedback that members of Congress were getting from their own constituents. What begins to develop is a dynamic whereby partisan polarization increases to such a point that your median Democrat and your median Republican really, really, really dislike each other.<\/p>\n

And so that means there\u2019s not so much incentive for compromise in Congress. If you\u2019re a Republican and you come back to your home district with a big legislative accomplishment, where you got some stuff for your district, but a Democrat also got something for their<\/i> district, those days of bragging about that were over, because the Democrat got something.<\/p>\n

The partisan imperative and the partisan animosity have just kept escalating. And now it is genuinely the case that Speaker Mike Johnson will risk his career if he asserts his independent authority as speaker of the House.<\/p>\n

James Madison thought it would be different; that if I were a member of Congress, that the idea of my position being neutered so thoroughly would be repugnant to me and I would continue to try to exert the power of my position. I don\u2019t think Madison saw how firmly the partisan imperative would take hold over American hearts, to the point where now the voters say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s all well and good, Mike Johnson, that you\u2019ve asserted your power. Now we\u2019ll take it away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bettina: So ultimately you\u2019re tracing the dysfunction back to \u201cwe the people\u201d?<\/p>\n

David: Yes, 100 percent. And look, I understand the frustration people have, but let me share two numbers with you. One number is 17 million, and the next number is 77 million.<\/p>\n

Seventeen million is the number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the primaries. This was in the Republican primary contest.<\/span><\/p>\n

And 77 million-ish is the number of people who voted for Donald Trump in the general election. You\u2019ll note a big difference in those two numbers, right?<\/p>\n

For Democrats, the difference was even more dramatic. I think there were about 14 million who voted for Joe Biden in the primaries, and then about 75 million who voted for Kamala Harris in the general election.<\/p>\n

So those numbers tell the tale\u2014only a minority of American voters participate in the primary process. Then the majority goes to the polls to vote, and says the same thing every four years: \u201cHow did we get these people? Why is this our choice?\u201d<\/p>\n

If you want better choices, start participating in the process earlier. And don\u2019t just delegate and punt to the most activist base of American politics and then lament the choices that they deliver to you.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to say that politicians don\u2019t bear responsibility for lying or for stoking divisions. Obviously they do. But it wouldn\u2019t work if the American people weren\u2019t so eager to hear it.<\/p>\n

Bettina: I want to ask about the pseudo-\u200bNapoleonic quote tweeted by President Trump: \u201cHe who saves his country breaks no laws.\u201d He\u2019s asserting something here that\u2019s foreign to the American constitutional regime: the idea that sometimes the rule of law doesn\u2019t apply. How seriously do we take something like this?<\/p>\n

David: We need to take it seriously. We are now learning how vulnerable the American system is to a person who wants to be a strongman. We were warned about this by our country\u2019s Founders. The Anti-Federalists looked at the 1787 Constitution and said, \u201cThis document gives too much power to the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a long time we didn\u2019t realize how much the example of George Washington really was a firewall, because he was the first president, and he set the model. This model was one of dignity, restraint, and honor. I\u2019m not going to say that everyone who\u2019s occupied the office has had those qualities of character. But it\u2019s true that presidents have not tended to try to maximize all the power and authority that they could conceivably get under the Constitution.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t really realize until now how much our Constitution depended on an honor system. Now we\u2019re learning. We\u2019re learning that when the honor system doesn\u2019t hold, the constitutional order struggles.<\/p>\n

Bettina: Liberty magazine focuses on religious freedom and other civil liberties. I\u2019m looking at the legal dustup between the White House Press Office and the Associated Press, which has been expelled from the White House press corps, and the issues of free speech and freedom of the press that raises. Can you draw some lines between what\u2019s happening and potential red flags for the protection of civil liberties down the track?<\/p>\n

David: Well, the case involving the Associated Press is very interesting, because as a general matter, if there\u2019s limited office space, or limited space for media, you do have to make choices as to who gets the space that\u2019s available. If you can\u2019t give it to everybody, there has to be some system for allotting the available space.<\/p>\n

But under our constitutional structure, as a general rule you can\u2019t pick and choose based on preferred viewpoint. In other words, you can\u2019t say, \u201cWell, you\u2019re a friendly news outlet, so you get 100 percent access. You\u2019re an unfriendly news outlet, so you\u2019re out of the building.\u201d That kind of viewpoint discrimination violates the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

And so I would say that the Associated Press has a pretty good chance in its lawsuit. Now, I mean, of course there\u2019s going to be some deference given to the executive to determine how to allocate limited spaces. But the administration has been so upfront that it did this on the basis of the Associated Press not wanting to use the phrase \u201cGulf of America.\u201d And that gives Associated Press a much better shot at winning this case, because the administration has been so openly saying that it\u2019s taking this action as punishment for speech it doesn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

And so I think that this is a canary-in-the-coal-mine moment.<\/p>\n

Bettina: I don\u2019t know if you saw the speeches the president gave at the two national prayer breakfast events in February, but there was a lot of rhetoric such as \u201cWe\u2019re going to make the country more prosperous and more faithful to our God than ever before.\u201d Christians pushed Trump over the line in last year\u2019s election. Do they now have a champion for Christianity in the White House?<\/p>\n

David: Well, this is a very interesting thing, Bettina, because there is one particular cohort of Christians who pushed Trump over the line, and that\u2019s White evangelicals. There are other cohorts of Christians who voted against Trump. So Black Protestants, for example, who have a very similar high view of Scripture and who are very similar, theologically, to White evangelicals\u2014voted overwhelmingly against him. Non-White evangelicals were much more evenly split. Catholics, much more evenly split.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very interesting when we break all of this down. What did Trump\u2019s constituency believe it was getting from him?<\/p>\n

And I think what they thought they were getting from him was a fighter. This goes back to something I think is very deeply ingrained in a lot of evangelical culture. And here\u2019s how I\u2019d put it. I would say that an enormous number of evangelicals grew up with a fight-the-world view of Christianity, as opposed to a love-your-neighbor view of Christianity. I believe an enormous segment of the White evangelical church has been caught up in that fight-or-flight Christianity, to such an extent that the fact that Trump is a fighter has connected with them at a heart level. It\u2019s \u201clike calling out to like\u201d\u2014that inclination toward political combat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bettina: So the president\u2019s announcement of a task force focused on eliminating anti-\u00adChristian bias in the federal government bolsters this same narrative?<\/p>\n

David: Absolutely. It\u2019s bolstering the narrative that he\u2019s their bulwark against destruction. Now, the irony here is that the president is defunding Christian charities at a level that we have not seen in a generation. You can go back to Bill Clinton and his Charitable Choice initiative. Or you go back to George W. Bush\u2014his very first executive order was to incentivize faith-based initiatives, because both the Clinton and Bush administrations saw that religious nonprofits were often better at delivering some services than the government or secular nonprofits.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my legal career we fought for equal access to funding for religious groups to serve the poorest and most marginalized people in the world. And we won that fight. And actually, it\u2019s one of the really genuinely good things that our government has done\u2014opened up grantmaking to all nonprofits and NGOs, regardless of their religious point of view. You can serve poor people effectively whether you\u2019re secular or Christian, and you can be funded.<\/p>\n

Bettina: On another front, some religious groups have recently filed lawsuits saying that their First Amendment expressive association rights are being infringed by changes in immigration enforcement policies that are driving down attendance at houses of worship. What\u2019s happening here?<\/p>\n

David: Traditionally there were certain places and locations\u2014churches and schools, for instance\u2014that weren\u2019t the focus of immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

Some of that is changing now to the point where religious organizations who serve migrants\u2014and I\u2019m not talking about hiding migrants, I\u2019m talking about just giving them food, and clothing, and shelter\u2014are now facing punitive government action.<\/p>\n

A number of Quaker organizations have brought suit, and there was a court decision handed down recently in Maryland, and a federal judge has blocked some of the immigration enforcement actions that were taking place around churches.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a very real threat to religious liberty coming out of the mass deportation mindset, because many, many Christian ministries serve the poor and marginalized without first asking, \u201cAre you here legally or not legally?\u201d For the government to come in and begin to take punitive action is a grave violation of religious free exercise under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

* Interview edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interview with David French The first months of the new presidential administration have brought an unrelenting stream of headlines\u2014many touching on issues of constitutional law, the role of the judiciary, and the nature of presidential executive authority. For some perspective on recent events, Liberty editor Bettina Krause spoke with David French, an attorney turned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[366],"class_list":["post-6750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-june-2025","tag-may-june-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}