The year is 2020 and we are in a war with the Covid-19 virus. The Donald has access to emergency powers contained in 123 statutory provisions that address a broad range of matters, from military composition to agricultural exports to public contracts. Welcome to the Inauguration of Don Jon-ump's "Police State" in America.

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The Donald recently declared "When somebody's the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that's the way it's got to be."

A range of legal scholars and government officials weighed on Trump's latest rant and claimed that, "neither the Constitution nor any federal law bestows that power upon the POTUS.

"We don't have a king in this country," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Tuesday, adding, "There are laws and facts even in this wild political environment." He rebutted Mr. Trump's claim by citing a line from Alexander Hamilton, observing that presidential encroachment on powers that the Constitution reserved to the states would be "repugnant to every rule of political calculation."

Wasn't Alexander Hamilton the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury in 1789?

The year is 2020 and we are in a war with the Covid-19 virus. The Donald has access to emergency powers contained in 123 statutory provisions that address a broad range of matters, from military composition to agricultural exports to public contracts.

Congress, concerned about the ramifications of the president's access to emergency power, passed the National Emergencies Act in 1976. Under this law, the president has complete discretion to issue an emergency declaration but he is required to specify in the declaration which powers he intends to use, issue public updates if he decides to invoke additional powers, and report to Congress on the government's emergency-related expenditures every six months.

Let's see he has six months and then has to report to Mitch McConnel.

April 13, 2020 - Hours after accusing Democratic governors of a "mutiny" for signaling they would ignore any presidential order to reopen their states amid the coronavirus outbreak, Donald Trump backed down from the threat after claiming his "authority is total".

April 13 + 6 months = October 13, 2020. Trump needs to wait until May 13, the 2020 Election is November 3, 2020.

Let's say the crisis at hand is, say, a nationwide coronavirus pandemic. The president can activate laws that allows the executive branch to take extraordinary action under specified conditions, such as war on the coronavirus and domestic upheaval from a nationwide social distancing and lockdown orders to contain the pandemic, regardless of whether a national emergency has been declared.

During the Eisenhower administration Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADS) were put in place to ensure continuity of government in case the Soviets launched a nuclear attack.

Peads are draft executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress that are prepared in advance of anticipated emergencies. The Government Peads are kept from the public but the peads drafted from the 1950s through the 1970s were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Peads would not only have authorized martial law but suspended habeas corpus, revoke Americans' passports, and allow the roundup and detention of "subversives" identified in an FBI "Security Index."

In 1987, The Miami Herald reported that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North had worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to create a secret contingency plan authorizing "suspension of the Constitution. FEMA would take control of the United States with a declaration of martial law during a national crisis," with the appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments.

Attorney General William Barr will now decide whether to rein in or expand some of the more oppressive features of the Peads. [1]

Trump in the latest episode of the Covid-19 Reality TV Panic Demic series has found a way to get re-elected in November so that he can keep himself and his family out of prison.

Political advisers looked at the polling results that showed that voters overwhelmingly preferred to keep containment measures in place over sending people back to work prematurely.

Trump realized that a majority of Americans want to accept painful consequences nowin the form of social distancing and an economic downturnto limit COVID-19's long-term effects.

Historically, a president's approval rating benefits from a crisis, the "rally around the flag" effect, and then inevitably drifts downward. Pollsters and political scientists have observed a "rally around the leader" effect for decades, with popular approval of a president going up in times of crisis.

Initially, Trump received good marks (50% approval) for his handling of the pandemic, and his overall job approval ratings also increased but Mark Mellmann, a Democratic pollster points out that "Looking at poll averages, there is no clear impact on Trump's overall approval rating and we aren't seeing the kind of rally around the president effect, that we see in cases of international crisis.

Team Trump must wage its election campaign war as if the last three years of his presidency did not exist. Another veteran GOP presidential strategist wrote, "Nothing else Trump has done matters." Approval Ratings Amid Crises: Comparing Trump, Obama, Bush

The daily 2-hour press briefings are intended to show the American people that Donald is in charge and winning the Covid-19 battle.

Trump and Steven Miller very likely understand that the current crisis is fundamentally more consequential and damaging than the September 11, 2001 attacks and 2008 financial crisis combined. Unlike today, the entire economy in 2001 and 2008 was still functioning and most Americans went on with their life.

Therefore to demonstrate that Trump is in charge he and Mike Pence are telling us that "In the long history of this country, the authority of the president of the United States during national emergencies is unquestionably plenary." Plenary means "unqualified; absolute," according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Constitution bestows specific powers on the federal government while reserving the rest to sovereign state governments, however, when Pence refers to the "long history" he isn't going back to Andrew Hamilton, he is talking about 1962.

John F. Kennedy ended what was left of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, when he signed Executive Orders 10995 through 11005 in 1962.

10995 through 11005 allowed the government to seize and control all forms of communication and their infrastructure (voice, data, media), energy (electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals), transportation (vehicles, aircraft of any kind, highways, seaports, and waterways), designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration and of course all food resources and farms.

A president can now declare martial law and direct FEMA to take control of local, state, and national governments using "National Police Force," formally referred to by the name of Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force (MJTF). The MJTF is comprised of specially selected US military personnel (Blackwater) and foreign military units carrying United Nations ID cards.

"Posse comitatus,"the principle that the military should not act as a domestic police force, has deep roots in the nation's history, and it is often mistaken for a constitutional rule. The Constitution does not prohibit military participation in police activity nor does the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 outlaw such participation. [2]

Trump looks up to murderous dictators and since he took over the White House has shown a contempt for any limits on presidential power and the democratic rule of law. During his 2016 campaign, he made it clear he might not accept the electoral results if he is not elected POTUS. [3]

We want to believe that the limits set by the Constitution and Congress, enforced by the courts, will keep him from ending our democracy, but will they? Emergency powers allow the president to engage in conduct that would be illegal during ordinary times.

Our democratic laws and institutions will not protect us from Trump's excessive impulsive authoritarian personality and his conviction that he has better answers than anyone else.

The moment the Donald declares a "national emergency," a unilateral decision, then he can sidestep the many legal limits on his authority and more than 100 special provisions become available to him, including Executive Orders 10995 through 11005.

He can activate laws that allow him control domestic unrest, freeze bank accounts, deploy troops inside the country and shut down electronic communications, i.e. take control of U.S. internet traffic to block access to certain websites and make sure pro-Trump content are the top search results.

Trump knows the internet poses a threat to his re-election. In August he tweeted that the search engines were "RIGGED" to serve up negative articles about him. "I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they're really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful,"

If the government were to take control of U.S. internet infrastructure, Trump could accomplish directly what he threatened to do by regulation.

Congress amended Section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934 to allow the president to shut down or take control of "any facility or station for wire communication." Wire communication in 1942 meant telephone calls or telegrams. We are living in the digital era, not 1942. The implications of shutting down "wire" is not the same as hitting the world wide web kill switch and giving Trump control over U.S. internet traffic.

Trump's friends in China, Russia, and Iran have control of the internet content but for him to attempt an internet coup, lawsuits would follow and our First Amendment rulings will probably prevent from taking total control of the Web, but keep in mind that Trump would not need complete control to stop any organized political opposition.

The First Amendment, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh

Throughout history the Supreme Court was willing to allow encroachments on free speech during wartime. Geoffrey R. Stone, a constitutional-law scholar at the University of Chicago, "The progress we have made is fragile, and it would not take much to upset the current understanding of the First Amendment." The Supreme Court a number of times has either upheld such actions or while the crisis is in process finds a way to not review them.

All Trump would need is three more Supreme Court justices to allow him to exercise his presidential power over their commitment to our individual liberties.

Do you really believe that Trump won't declare an emergency for the sake of holding on to power and keeping him and his family out of jail? [4]

The rule of law, the Supreme Court, congress and the senate might not be able to save us from King Don Jon-ump.

The modern constitutions of many other countries specify when and how a state of emergency may be declared and which rights may be suspended, but the few paragraphs in U.S. Constitution dealing with threats are assigned to Congress, not the president. There is no comprehensive discussion for how to deal and govern during an emergency.

When Trump decided that he was in charge and not the governors he was attempting to exhibit leadership on a scale equal to Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent during World War II or George W. Bush's programs of warrantless wiretapping and torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

How he is perceived at managing the war on the virus is all that will matter in November. The Chinese and the WHO will get the blame for the suffering of countless Americans and endangering lives around the World.

China for releasing the virus to launch their new silk road to kill the US economy, the WHO, that failed to provide adequate warning about the coronavirus.

Trump will take credit for the millions didn't die and even if the economy is still in free fall, he will argue that it could have been worse and if he had been allowed "Total Authority" then we would be back to "normal."

No one will remember or care about his missteps in handling the coronavirus pandemic that "caused unnecessary death and economic disaster" in the United States, because millions aren't going to die.

"The longer this goes on the more likely that it will help him on Election Day," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster.

Trump now refers to himself as a "wartime" president, labeling Covid-19 an "invisible enemy."

He has already shown that he is not afraid to be viewed the same as the dictators he looks up to around the world. He sent thousands of active-duty soldiers to the southern border to terrorize a caravan of Central American migrants, announced plans to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive order, and tweeted that "ILLEGAL VOTING" is real and that the police need to "strongly notified."

Trump will declare martial law, suspend the presidential election, arguing that voting was a threat to public health.

The idea of tanks rolling through the streets of U.S. cities seems fundamentally inconsistent with the country's notions of democracy and freedom. Americans might be surprised, therefore, to learn just how readily the president can deploy troops inside the country.

Welcome to the Inauguration of Don Jon-ump's "Police State" in America.

Breaking News

President Trump said Wednesday that he was considering taking the unprecedented step of adjourning both houses of Congress in order to make recess appointments to fill government posts, citing the emergency created by the coronavirus outbreak.

"If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress," Trump said at a Rose Garden briefing of the coronavirus task force. "The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do."

Noting that the Senate, which has the responsibility for confirming executive-branch appointments, had "left Washington until at least May 4," Trump said that "the Constitution provides a mechanism for the president to fill positions in such circumstances, the recess appointment, it's called."

Footnotes

[1] The Obama administration's intent to review the Peads has now passed to the Trump administration. It will fall to the attorney general to decide whether to rein in or expand some of the more frightening features of these peads.

[2] The Insurrection Act of 1807 provides the necessary authority. As amended over the years, it allows the president to deploy troops either upon the request of a state's governor or legislature to help put down an insurrection within that state or he can deploy troops unilaterally, either because he determines that rebellious activity has made it "impracticable" to enforce federal law through regular means, or because he deems it necessary to suppress "insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy" (terms not defined in the statute) that hinders the rights of a class of people or "impedes the course of justice."

When Chicago experienced a spike in homicides in 2017, Trump tweeted that the city must "fix the horrible 'carnage'"" or he would "send in the Feds!" To carry out this threat, the president could declare a particular street gangsay, MS"13to be an "unlawful combination" and then send troops to the nation's cities to police the streets. He could characterize sanctuary citiescities that refuse to provide assistance to immigration-enforcement officialsas "conspiracies" against federal authorities, and order the military to enforce immigration laws in those places. Conjuring the specter of "liberal mobs," he could send troops to suppress alleged rioting at the fringes of anti-Trump protests.

[3] What Happens If Trump Refuses to Step Down If He Loses the 2020 Election? What If He Contests the Voting Results?

[4] TRUMP 'CRIME FAMILY...BELONG IN PRISON,' SAYS 'THE ART OF THE DEAL' GHOSTWRITER

(Article changed on April 25, 2020 at 01:58)

Authors Bio:

I have been honing my craft as a writer since I graduated from Princeton University. I have been a newspaper reporter, a book editor and a Hollywood scriptwriter. My humor has been published in a number of publications. I have written two novels but neither of them were good enough to be accepted by a reputable publisher. I have been married to an outstanding woman for 20 years. We have three children.