Former lawman calls defending rule of law mere ‘shameless political theater’ • Nevada Current

Early this week when the Trump administration inflicted chaos on Nevada and the nation by announcing a sweeping freeze on federal financial assistance that even the administration couldn’t explain, several Nevada Democratic elected officials condemned Trump’s action.

Tuesday afternoon, by which time Nevada schools and universities, health care professionals, nonprofits, and even agencies in Gov. Joe Lombardo’s own state government had expressed confusion over what Trump was doing, Lombardo issued a statement pretending he knew what was going on.

It’s impossible for Lombardo to have known what was going on.

The White House didn’t know what was going on.

It still doesn’t.

Team Trump’s self-inflicted befuddlement was underscored when the Office of Management and Budget memo that kick-started the chaos specifically excluded Medicare and Social Security from a freeze on federal loans, grants and other forms of federal financial assistance, but not Medicaid. 

Asked to explain by, well, pretty much the entire nation, the Trump administration said oh don’t worry Medicaid money would not be frozen. Yet the system which distributes Medicaid funding had shown a message earlier in the day saying it was reviewing payments, and might be delaying or rejecting some, because of the OMB memo. 

In other words, along with everyone else, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that administers health care funding for roughly a third of the nation, (and which Trump has nominated Dr. Oz to direct by the way), couldn’t make sense of the memo issued by Trump’s OMB.

The Medicaid example was part of a pattern. From Head Start to Meals on Wheels, as soon as White House officials were asked if federal money was frozen for those programs, Trump officials said oh we didn’t mean that.

By Wednesday, Trump’s White House was still  confusing not only the nation but itself. After a federal judge put a stay on the freeze, the OMB rescinded the memo, but a White House spokesperson said the freeze was going forward, eventually. Or something like that.

It’s no surprise that Trump’s White House had/has so much trouble explaining the impact of its own initiative to freeze financial assistance for countless agencies. After all, actually freezing financial assistance wasn’t Trump’s primary goal.

Contrary to the OMB memo’s assertions, this entire shambolic affair has nothing to do with reining in government spending.

And notwithstanding the memo’s claims to the contrary, nor is it about virtue signaling to the Trump base by attacking “wokeness” and “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.” 

What the needless chaos and confusion and mess is all about is Trump asserting he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants and neither Congress nor the courts will stop him.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress, not the president, controls the power to tax and spend. Trump can’t declare via a nonsensically vague memo that he can override the Congress and refuse to spend money Congress has already approved and authorized for spending.

By attempting to do so, Trump is directly and deliberately assaulting arguably the Constitution’s most fundamental principles — checks and balances and the separation of powers — to make himself more powerful. 

What we are witnessing is an attempt, as historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat phrases it while describing typical behavioral patterns of authoritarians, to “replace the rule of law with rule by the lawless.”

“Shameless,” governor? Do tell.

Nevada’s congressional Democrats condemned Trump’s action with phrases like “an illegal freeze,” and  “this unconstitutional action,” and “President Trump’s latest attempt to build a monarchy.“ 

“Presidents are elected leaders and the rule of law bounds their actions,” said Democratic Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who hopes to unseat Lombardo in next year’s election and is among AGs suing to stop the freeze as well as Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

The state’s Democratic legislative leaders took a somewhat more immediate outlook, sounding alarm at the freeze’s potential impact on state services and calling on Lombardo to “demand answers from the federal government and a reversal of this decision.”

That latter broadside is the one that perhaps most gets under Lombardo’s skin, since Democratic state legislators are those most frequently standing between Lombardo and whatever measure of greatness he might feel is owed him by fate.

But blasting Lombardo for putting his allegiance to Trump ahead of Nevada and Nevadans — effectively what Democratic state legislators are saying — is wholly appropriate. (Imagine Lombardo’s outburst if the Biden administration had made a surprise announcement ending financial assistance for multiple programs without being able to explain how it would work and who it would hurt). 

And as for Democratic objections to Trump violating the Constitution, those outcries aren’t merely warranted. They’re mandatory. 

Democrats, especially congressional ones, have a duty to condemn and resist and thwart Trump when he blatantly tries to usurp the Constitution. (So do congressional Republicans, of course, but after decades of insisting they love the Constitution more than you do, Republicans have decided to go in different direction.)

In the statement he issued Tuesday, Lombardo promised to keep an eye on the fiasco needlessly created by the Trump administration (except Lombardo phrased it differently).

And, Lombardo added, he will do so “despite the shameless political theater on this issue.”

There have been before and there will be again many times when elected Nevada Democrats have performed what can honestly and fairly be called “shameless political theater.” 

Calling out an aspirational authoritarian president for trying to end the rule of law in the United States is not one of those times.

A second federal judge is expected to issue a restraining order on Trump’s attempt to freeze financial assistance by what smells like a royal decree. Trump will appeal. Whether the rule of law will withstand this particular assault — one of several Trump has launched not just in the last two weeks but over the last 10 years and over the course of his entire adult life — remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Lombardo, who has worked tirelessly as a candidate for statewide office to make his career in law enforcement the cornerstone of his political brand, is not condemning but condoning Trump’s attempt to unconstitutionally seize power and replace the rule of law with rule by Trump. 

“Shameless” is too tame a description for Lombardo’s willingness to look away from Trump’s lawlessness. With his latest apology for Trump’s repeated attacks on the Constitution, Lombardo not only demeans himself but offends the integrity of the law enforcement profession he routinely purports to cherish, and puts the whims of a serial liar and criminal ahead of the best interest of his state. It’s deplorable, reprehensible, and disgraceful. Just like the president to whom Lombardo bends the knee.