Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

by David Frum

When President Trump banned travelers from certain Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, he was exercising a lawful power of his office. It’s well-established law that the president has power to bar “any class of aliens” both as immigrants and as nonimmigrants and to impose on their ordinary comings and goings “any restrictions he may deem appropriate.”6 Some argued that Trump violated the Constitution by imposing a restriction that disadvantaged adherents of one religion from traveling to the United States. But the Constitution applies only to Americans. The Supreme Court ruled as recently as 2015 that the president could deny a visa to an alien for no stated reason at all! Aliens have no due process rights against the United States, and no First Amendment rights against the United States.7 Yet the courts have shredded Trump’s travel ban anyway. In the words of the first of a series of federal judges to rule against the Trump administration: the courts could not overlook “significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor.”