Trump is throwing basic Constitutional rights out the window - and the Republican majorities in Congress and the Supreme Court are letting him get away with it
One way the cops could go about suppressing drugs would be
to stop most of the Black and brown people they see on the streets (at
gunpoint, since drug dealers might be armed), lean them up against a wall,
frisk them, and search their pockets, wallets and handbags. The police could
also force their way into every house on the street to search for drugs.
The great majority of people frightened, humiliated and
invaded wouldn’t be criminals. But the police would likely seize some drugs and
arrest some dealers.
Can they do that?
The United States Constitution affords a clear answer:
No.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution provides, “The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . .”
This means you’ve got a right to be left alone unless the
police present evidence showing that there’s a strong chance you’ve committed a
crime, and a judge issues a warrant.
The Fourth Amendment was the Founding Fathers’
response to invasive royal officers
Not too well. For years, right-wingers attacked these rights
as “technicalities” for freeing criminals when the cops ignored the Fourth. But
those who wrote our Constitution knew alleged crime could be an excuse for
abuses, and they valued security from searches and seizures highly. Indeed, the
King of England’s defilement of such rights was “one of the driving forces
behind the American Revolution itself,” the Supreme Court has explained.
“The Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s
response” to law enforcement “which allowed British officers to
rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal
activity.”
The abuses that provoked the American Revolution are no
longer ancient history. In the name of fighting “chaos” and an
imaginary crime wave, Trump has launched a broad assault on the Fourth
Amendment as part of substituting a Trump-loyal, federal militarized force for
local civilian control of law enforcement.
Trump has openly
proclaimed his militaristic intentions, threatening, “Chicago
about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” ICE commandos
conducted a military assault on a five-story apartment building in Chicago.
There was no attempt to persuade a judge that anyone – let alone everyone in
the building – was likely a criminal, and no judge issued any warrants.
Trump’s lies and his war against the American people
and our Constitution
The ICE agents seized everyone in
the building. They pointed guns in the faces of citizens, handcuffed them and
held them for hours. “Photos of the aftermath,” reported Time, “show toys and
shoes littering the apartment hallways that were left in the chaos as people
were pulled from their beds.”
Trump’s excuses for militarization are falsehoods. For
example, a Trump-appointed federal judge recently held that
Trump’s claim that Portland, Oregon, was “war ravaged” was “simply
untethered to the facts.”
In his September 30th speech to 800 generals and admirals,
Trump asserted “America is under invasion from within” and signaled his intent
to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
The Chicago apartment building action occurred the same day, and may be a model
of the “training” Trump favors.
When Donald Trump apes George III, we must respond accordingly: No Kings!
In recent months a series of national demonstrations have
challenged Trump’s lawlessness under the theme, “No Kings!” Aptly so.
The assault in Chicago was what the Framers of our
Constitution feared and what they hoped our Bill of Rights could thwart. But a
Constitution is not self-defending.
As Trump muses over
an unconstitutional third term (“A lot of people want me to do it”), uses
the summary
execution of alleged drug smugglers as a model of military power,
and invokes
pretend uprisings to justify federalizing the National Guard, the
danger is real and imminent. But we defeated a King in 1783 and – if we all
recognize the danger and are prepared to stand up for our democracy – we can do
it again.
Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning. He's also a longtime contributor to Progressive Charlestown. His writing can also be found on his Substack, Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman.
