Buddy, I have a question for you:
Do you believe in the rule of law?
I ask this question because we elected you to Congress to be our representative among Congressional lawmakers. That’s what Congress is, you know: lawmakers.
Yet in the few months since Trump has been in office, he and his cohort have been breaking existing laws to a degree never before seen in our country.
He has grabbed people off the street and sent them to a prison known for its enslavement and torture. He has cancelled grants to universities solely because they won’t let him control every last aspect of their operation. He has terminated student visas because they have written opinion pieces in newspapers he doesn’t like.
Trump has turned the Department of Justice into a revenge machine, telling it to open investigations on people who have done nothing more than deny his lie that he won the election in 2020.
He has sent people into agencies and they have openly broken security laws, including grabbing data they have no need for or legal reason to have. And when someone has exposed this behavior to you, in Congress, his life was threatened.
If a law firm has defended someone Trump doesn’t like, he has threatened them with dire consequences if they don’t adhere to his demands, all of which blatantly violate the Constitution.
He has gone after universities and threatened them—threatened them!—with dire consequences if the universities don’t give up their freedom of speech, and their own ability to govern themselves. And when Harvard bravely said no, all grants to the university were pulled—even though these grants were for research that help us live better and longer.
Trump has frozen funds that the country has guaranteed, both to agencies overseas and to our own domestic organizations and states. Funds that are necessary for medical care and medical research; to monitor storms and recover from them; to help communities better prepare for storms and other catastrophes; to help schools better serve their students and ensure all of the students are fed and educated equally; to support small businesses and farmers; to help the hungry, the sick, and those harmed by circumstances beyond their control.
He openly and laughingly mocks our judicial system, and I include the Supreme Court in this, though this higher court’s timid responses to Trump’s outrageous acts have not shown it in at its best. But even when they finally pushed back, ever so slightly, he laughed at it. Not only laughed at it, he was joined by one of South America’s most brutal dictators in that laughter. His new best friend.
Now, he threatens to not only send migrants to a brutal life in another country, he threatens to send citizens, too. And we already know he’ll do so without giving anyone the benefit of legal representation in a court of law.
He’ll just send armed thugs into the street, dressed in plain clothes and wearing hoods and driving in black SUVs to grab people off the street and put them on a plane and then hold up his hands and go, “Oopsie! Made a mistake! Well, can’t do anything about it now, they’re in foreign control!”
We were warned that we were approaching a Constitutional crises, when the President of the United States held himself above the laws of the land. We waited in hope, and some fear, to see what he would do when courts intervened.
We now know what he’ll do: disobey the courts. We are no longer approaching a Constitutional crises, we’re in one, and we now wonder if, at the end of four years, will we even have a country left? Will we even be allowed to vote for who we want? Or will we receive notes pasted on our doors, threatening us if we don’t do as Trump asks?
And in all of this—all of it!—not one peep from you. Not one mild expression of concern. Not even a single, “well, we might want to reconsider this.” No, all you have done is appear on radically right newscasts as a way of pretending you don’t need a Town Hall, and then spent the time praising Trump.
So I ask you now, do you believe in the rule of law? You are our elected representative to Congress, to the body of lawmakers that have kept our country free, safe, and secure for 250 years. And as a lawmaker, isn’t it your sworn duty to ensure that laws are kept and not broken? Or is your allegiance to Trump so strong that you don’t care about the laws, or the harm that will come to the people in your district because these laws are broken? All that matters to you is Trump?
It’s a simple question, Buddy: Do you believe in the rule of law?
Sources
Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man ICE mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison?
Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands
How the Education Department cuts could hurt low-income and rural schools
Trump directs DOJ to investigate former administration officials who criticized him
USDA cancels $1 billion in funding for schools and food banks to buy food from local suppliers
FEMA cuts $30 million grant earmarked to improve flooding, drainage issues in Savannah
Public libraries in Georgia brace for federal cuts
Academic medical centers say funding cuts jeopardize health research
A whistleblower’s disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data
Video shows Tufts graduate student grabbed off the street by federal immigration officials
Core Democratic groups are preparing to be targeted by the Trump administration
The Trump administration’s defiance is proving Justice Sotomayor’s point
Lawrence on Trump attacking the rule of law: We are all Harvard. We are all Abrego Garcia.
Buddy Carter is Georgia’s First Congressional District Representative