Checks and balances
Our beloved country teeters on the edge of autocracy.
The checks and balances that are foundational to democracy are dismantled as President Trump declares himself the source of all federal law, refuses to obey the orders of courts that have ruled his executive orders illegal, and threatens the few Republican members of Congress who dare question his decisions.
One of the first things the president did was to fire inspectors general for 17 federal agencies. These IGs had saved taxpayers billions by rooting out actual waste, fraud and corruption, in contrast to Elon Musk, who parrots “waste and fraud” as a pretext to excuse DOGE’s undiscriminating hatchet.
Trump apparently wants lapdogs, not watchdogs.
Then he fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency protecting the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions. That paved the way for the president and Musk to fire more than 30,000 federal employees as of Feb. 22, without regard to merit or expertise or due process.
More than 80,000 VA employees are to be fired by August, and countless others as well.
Trump also purged the leadership of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps for all three branches of the military, lawyers who provided advice about the legality of conduct under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Trump’s purge is an ominous confirmation of his stated desire to use the military for domestic purposes, including violently suppressing lawful dissent.
Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves.
Katherine Kennedy
Port Angeles