On July 25, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a radio address to 125 million Americans in which he coined the term “first 100 days.” Today, the 100th day of a presidency is considered a benchmark to measure the early success or failure of a president.
Mr. Trump’s 100th day of office lands on April 30, when the world has witnessed his 137 executive orders, 39 proclamations, 36 memoranda, a few Cabinet meetings, and numerous press briefings. In summary, Trump’s cabinet appointments and seemingly arbitrary, capricious, ad hoc, and erratic actions have created turmoil in the stock market, utter confusion among our international trade partners, and confounded unrest with consumers, workers, small business owners, and corporate CEOs.
Interestingly, a recently published UMass/YouGov poll found that 26 percent of the people who voted for Trump have lost their confidence and appeal for our 47th president.
It appears The New York Times was the first media agency to report, on just the 18th day of Trump’s 2.0 presidency, that Trump was creating a constitutional crisis. That claim has been reported in multiple major news agencies, spoken in town hall meetings, and observed in thousands of public protests with demonstrators from all political persuasions requesting Congress and the Supreme Court to stop our democracy from turning into an authoritarian dictatorship.
On March 25, I sent an e-mail to authoritarian scholar Barbara McQuade (who is a professor at the University Michigan Law School, previous U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and author of “Attack from within”) seeking her expert opinion on what citizens would most likely witness when a constitutional crisis has occurred and on recommended action citizens should take.
Two days later, McQuade replied to my inquiry: “If a president were to deliberately violate a court order, I think we could consider that a constitutional crisis,” and she added, “Citizens can do many things to push back against abuse of power, such as vote, write to their member of Congress, or participate in a protest, but I think the most effective thing a citizen can do is to talk to their friends and neighbors to explain their concerns and rally support.”
Republican Peter Wehner, who served as the speechwriter for three GOP administrations (i.e., Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush) and senior fellow at Trinity Forum — an American faith-based non-profit Christian organization — feels Trump has created not one, not two, but three crisis situations. Wehner stated in an April 19 Wall Street Journal article, “It seems as if we are moving at a rapid speed toward a genuine constitutional crisis, a genuine separation-of-powers crisis, and a genuine checks-and-balances crisis.”
You can decide if any of the following actions and published repercussions put America in the precarious dilemma of being in a constitutional crisis:
- Trump has openly defied federal court directives, refusing to halt deportation flights to El Salvador and return an illegally deported Maryland man.
- Trump has eliminated and/or dismantled federal agencies — like USAID — by executive order, bypassing Congressional authority.
- Trump has claimed the right to withhold or redirect federal funds appropriated by law, undermining Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.
- Trump has fired civil service-protected employees, a violation of federal law.
- Trump is attempting to end birthright citizenship by executive action, a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment.
- Trump has withheld funds from universities without legal justification.
- Trump has revoked visas solely because of the holders’ expressed viewpoints, violating First Amendment protections.
- Trump has attacked federal judges, questioning their legitimacy and authority, which erodes the independence of the judiciary.
- Trump has created DOGE without Congressional approval, challenging the separation of powers.
- Trump has set tariffs on our trading partners as opposed to Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution that grants Congress the explicit power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”
Polling by the revered and non-political Reuters/Ipsos found 83 percent of Americans feel “Trump must obey federal court rulings even if he doesn’t want to” (April 20). Wall Street Journal polling has shown that “voters want to keep constitutional guardrails in place that constrain a president’s power” (April 4).
Keep in mind, as of April 23, there have been 208 legal challenges to the Trump administration’s actions (Just Security – New York Univ. School of Law). Additionally, a probable Trump-related contempt of court opinion was issued by U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg, which, if ordered, could lead to incarceration (Law News, April 23).
If you are concerned about Mr. Trump’s endeavors, consider the advice offered by law professor McQuade: participate in peaceful rallies, support political candidates committed to upholding constitutional democracy, communicate with your two Senators and Representatives about your concerns, and visit with friends about the trifecta crisis that is becoming more evident by political scientists, authoritarian scholars, constitutional law experts, and registered voters like you and me.
Steve Corbin is a Professor Emeritus of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.