Trump’s America: The Rule of Power, Not Law

Almost a decade ago, I was fortunate to have met and lectured on the rule of law, alongside the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg at the World Justice Forum in The Hague in the Netherlands. She was kind and warm and welcoming; all of the things you hope your hero would be. She was in her early eighties and physically frail, but her mind was sharp and precise; still nimble and eager to learn, the hallmarks of a truly great thinker and jurist.

 

We spoke about how to reach the world with stories that underscored the importance of the rule of law in a world where fewer people understand what it means and far fewer understand what it means to live without it.

 

As our brief time together ended, she took my hand and held it, thanking me for my work in educating a new generation about the rule of law. She passed a few years later. It pains me to say this, but I’m glad she didn’t live to see our nation’s rejection of the rule of law principles we once held dear.

 

Once upon a time, America styled itself as a nation governed by the rule of law; a place where no one, not even the president, stood above the law. That mythology is dead. Under the continued rule of Donald Trump, America has shed its democratic skin and revealed the raw machinery of power beneath. The United States is no longer a nation anchored by the rule of law. It is a nation governed by the law of the ruler.

 

Trump’s second term has confirmed what many feared: the rule of law was always conditional and Trump has shown the nation how easily it can be dismantled. The courts, once seen as a check on executive overreach, now resemble rubber stamps for his agenda. Trump-appointed judges flood the system, while state courts that challenge his authority find themselves threatened, defunded, or sidelined. Investigations into his finances, campaign crimes, and abuses of power have either been quashed or buried beneath layers of executive privilege and loyalist interference.

 

In this America, the president does not answer to the law. The law answers to the president.

 

Under Trump’s reign, justice has become a weapon turned inward. Law enforcement, the Department of Justice, and even the FBI now function as instruments of the regime, targeting political opponents, journalists, immigrants, and activists. Trump’s enemies are harassed, audited, detained, and defamed. His allies, no matter how corrupt or violent, are pardoned, protected, and elevated.

 

The law has been hollowed out and filled with vengeance.

 

Trump’s America is not only lawless in its politics but in its economics. Deregulation is no longer policy: it is doctrine. Environmental protections are obliterated. Worker safety laws are nullified. Consumer protections are ridiculed as “communist.” Trump’s corporate backers are no longer merely donors; they are co-rulers, writing the laws that benefit themselves while the public is told to be grateful for the crumbs.

 

Regulatory agencies are now shells, staffed by lobbyists and profiteers who turn a blind eye to disaster until it’s profitable to act.

 

Civil liberties in Trump’s America are a memory. Protestors are branded terrorists. The press is the “enemy of the people.” Anti-protest laws criminalize assembly, and mass surveillance is normalized under the guise of security. The First Amendment exists on paper only; in the streets, it is met with tear gas, drones, and riot police.

 

The message is clear: dissent is no longer a right; it is a risk.

 

The United States is no longer a democracy. It is an oligarchy with a figurehead king. Trump rules not as a president bound by law, but as a monarch who has weaponized the system against his critics while shielding his own corruption. The rule of law has collapsed into the rule of Trump.

 

Unless Americans tear off the blindfold of willful ignorance and confront the machinery of corruption head-on, the nation will rot into a hollow parody of itself; a place where justice serves the king, not the people. The rule of law will not restore itself. It will not awaken politely. It must be seized back by citizens with the courage to demand it, fight for it, and dismantle the thrones of those who mock it.