Constitution

Beyond the Law: What It Means to Weaponize the Government

by John W. Whitehead March 21, 2025

“This is war.”—President Trump President Trump’s declaration of war as a justification for using wartime powers to sidestep constitutional protections is indeed a war, but it is a war waged by the president against dissent, against due process, and against the very foundations of our constitutional republic. This is what it means to weaponize the government. When the government turns ...

Nullifying the Constitution Won’t Make America Great Again

by John W. Whitehead March 7, 2025

“You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution.”— Seven Days in May (1964) Anyone who wants to put America first needs to start by putting the Constitution first. This should be non-negotiable. Winning an election does not give President Trump—or any politician—the authority to sidestep the Constitution and remake the ...

The Significance of the Eighteenth Amendment

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2025

Every month of the year is significant for a variety of reasons: holidays, historical events, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. However, when it comes to the U.S. Constitution, two months of the year stand out. December is a significant month when it comes to two amendments to the Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and ...

The Deep State Wants to Terminate the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead November 22, 2024

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale This is how it begins. This is how it always begins, justified in the name of national security. Mass roundups. Raids. Indefinite detentions in concentration camps. Martial law. The erosion of habeas corpus protections. The suspension of the Constitution, at least for select segments of the ...

A Dictatorship Disguised as Democracy

by John W. Whitehead November 18, 2024

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”—James Madison Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom, but concentrated power across all ...

Overthrowing the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead September 27, 2024

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln It is both apt and ironic that the anniversary of 9/11, which paved the way for the government to overthrow the Constitution, occurs the week before the anniversary of the ...

The Emergency State’s Plot to Override the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead June 13, 2023

“Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”—Justice Neil Gorsuch We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency. Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of ...

Conspirators for the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead June 8, 2023

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government. To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 ...

The Constitution Has Already Been Terminated

by John W. Whitehead December 9, 2022

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale If there is one point on which there should be no political parsing, no legal jockeying, and no disagreement, it is this: for anyone to advocate terminating or suspending the Constitution is tantamount to a declaration of war against the founding ...

And Then There Were Three

by Laurence M. Vance June 6, 2022

The Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022 (H.R.7691), which provides $40.1 billion for “appropriations for defense equipment, migration and refugee assistance, regulatory and technical support regarding nuclear power issues, emergency food assistance, economic assistance, and seizures of property related to the invasion,” that is, for U.S. defense contractors, recently passed the Senate by a vote of ...

Overturning Roe v. Wade Is a Win for Federalism – and the Constitution

by Scott McPherson May 11, 2022

The Cato Institute has released its latest edition of “Freedom in The 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom,” and it reveals that a spectrum of liberty, from libertarian(ish) to statist, is found across the fruited plains of this country. The freest states are New Hampshire, Florida, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Nevada. At the ...

Overturning Roe v. Wade Will Not End Abortion in America

by Laurence M. Vance May 4, 2022

Just as the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade did not legalize abortion in America, so the overturning of Roe v. Wade will not end abortion in America. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Court held that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The states ...