“In this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow,” Judge John Coughenour commented on Trump’s efforts to undo birthright citizenship.
When Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) offered federal employees the ability to retire early in exchange for continued pay until September, it referred to the offer as a “fork in the road.” Employees could either take the deal or face "significant" reforms, layoffs, and an expectation that they be "loyal." Putting aside the offer’s legality, the message was clear: either take the deal or face uncertainty and possible termination.
With each week, Americans are facing more “forks in the road.”
The Trump administration, backed by his Project 2025 allies, continues its assault on the rule of law—facing little opposition from Republican leadership, including here in Virginia.
The latest move? Slashing already-appropriated National Institute of Health (NIH) funding for research institutions tackling cancer, infectious diseases, and dementia—institutions like the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Virginia Commonwealth University. In the Commonwealth, this is significant; these three universities alone will bring over $400 million in research to the state this year. The funding supports 7,684 jobs and generates $1.73 billion in yearly economic activity. But in other states, including many that voted for Trump, the stakes are even higher. Places like Vanderbilt Medical Center in Tennessee, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Ohio stand to lose millions as their research is placed in jeopardy.
Trump tried this before, pushing to cut NIH overhead funding in 2017, but Congress rejected it. Now, he is bypassing Congress altogether, issuing what is likely another illegal executive directive to do so. Republican statewide leaders remain on the sidelines, either complicity silent or, in the case of Virginia Gov. Youngkin, embracing the cuts as “common sense.”
Few would argue against finding greater efficiencies in our research institutions. But does this slash-and-burn approach make sense? And is it even legal?
That answer may come soon. Arguing that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 prohibits the administration from changing overhead rates without congressional approval, twenty-two state attorneys general have sued to block the cuts. Not one Republican Attorney General, including Virginia’s own Jason Miyares, has joined them. A federal court has ordered NIH payments to temporarily resume—but only to institutions in those 22 states. Research institutions in other states, including Virginia, are now on the outside looking in. Their funding—and their ability to deliver groundbreaking research—is in jeopardy. Will Virginia or other Republican AGs join the lawsuit? Don’t count on it.
A SLOW-MOVING CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
Many of Trump’s early moves have stalled as the result of dozens of lawsuits in court. But to assume his agenda has been seriously compromised would be a mistake and misunderstand a larger scheme aimed at the heart of our institutions and even democracy itself. The playbook is simple: create disruption and force dilemmas. Begin with an issue with broad public appeal—like government efficiency or cuts to universities. Then, issue a directive that goes far beyond what is necessary, sidestepping Congress in the process. Trump’s far-reaching directive to freeze funding to a wide swath of nonprofits is a classic example. The opposition is left to respond by press releases or filing lawsuits. If courts uphold Trump’s edict, he wins. If the courts strike down Trump’s directive, he then attacks the judiciary and appeals, hoping for a favorable ruling from a higher court. If all else fails, quietly ignore the court order—as happened when federal funds for some programs remained frozen even after a judge ordered their release.
Throughout the debate, Trump’s allies continue to assert the power of the Presidency, attack our institutions, and suggest that our democratic process and Constitution do not work as intended. What results is an increase in anger among large segments of the electorate that question democracy’s ability to deliver on its promises, or who believe that Trump is merely trying to root out the malingerers in a bloated federal bureaucracy. Whether this amounts to a “coup” can be argued, but the pattern is clear: Trump is actively undermining the institutions that uphold democracy. The real question is what happens years from now when legitimacy has been further eroded and the damage is irreversible.
GOP IN LOCKSTEP
As Trump tests the rule of law, Republican elected leaders remain silent or endorse his actions.
Nine of the 10 states most dependent on federal funds as a share of their total revenue both voted for Trump last fall and have Republican-dominated legislatures. While California is the biggest loser, Texas, Ohio, and Florida are in the top 10. Few GOP leaders have shown any concern about his actions.
When Trump issued an executive order targeting the federal workforce—145,000 of whom live in Virginia—Republican Gov. Youngkin dismissed concerns, calling the federal government "bloated" and saying he expects "job reductions." When the administration proposed that federal employees take early retirement or face "significant" reforms, layoffs, and an expectation that they be "loyal," no Republicans raised questions about whether funding would be available to pay for the buyout. Funding for most federal agencies expires on March 14 and Congress would need to include a special appropriation to make this happen, if it can even pass a supplemental budget to keep the government open by that date. Trump has now ended the early retirement option. Fewer took the offer than expected and we will see if Trump honors his promise.
When Trump attempted to unilaterally overturn birthright citizenship—a direct violation of the 14th Amendment—Youngkin and Miyares said nothing. They were similarly silent when the administration froze federal funds to charitable organizations like Lutheran Services and Commonwealth Catholic Charities, both of which provide services ranging from adoption assistance to food kitchens. Even after 23 Democratic attorneys general sued and convinced two federal judges to halt the freeze, reports surfaced that the administration continued withholding funds, raising the question of whether Trump’s team deliberately violated a court order. And when 11 of Virginia’s 31 federally qualified health centers —many in the state’s poorest areas—reported funding disruptions, neither Youngkin publicly intervened to address the problem.
When Trump proclaimed his disdain for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), stating that it “ SHOULD BE TERMINATED!” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis immediately jumped to his aid, supporting a funding freeze for an agency that has delivered $8.5 billion in relief for twenty-one disasters in his state since 20ll, and suggesting that block funds made to states is a better option than the present arrangement. DeSantis conveniently said nothing about what happens if his state’s block grant is not enough to address the next disaster.
Some red states are even establishing their own government efficiency agencies. Governors in Iowa, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire have done this by executive order, while others are being created by state legislatures like Texas and Missouri. What we have not seen, however, are executive branch freezes of funds previously appropriated by state legislatures.
PROFILES IN COURAGE
Termination of federal employees is now widespread. Reuters reported that 1,000 have been laid off at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and CNN detailed that 2,200 had been fired at the Interior Department. Nonetheless, the Trump train initiatives have significant detractors, some of whom exhibit significant courage in the face of intimidation. When a senior official at FEMA directed subordinates to continue a freeze on funding, even after a federal judge ordered the administration—for the second time—to stop such pauses, four FEMA administrators said no and continued to spend monies authorized by Congress. They were fired.
The most significant resistance, however, is occurring at the Justice Department. When Trump appointees requested that charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams be dropped, seven prosecutors in New York and Washington—including career lawyers overseeing public corruption cases— resigned rather than cooperate, and criticized the DOJ’s action as a “quid pro quo” in exchange for Adams providing assistance for Trump’s deportation actions. These are not liberal attorneys. Instead, many of them are Federalist Society members who clerked for Justices Scalia, Roberts, and Kavanaugh. And their courage provides an example to be emulated.
LITTLE RESPECT FOR COURTS—OR AMERICAN TRADITIONS
Trump has never hidden his contempt for the courts or his disdain for the checks and balances that define American democracy. Now, Vice President J.D. Vance and Elon Musk have taken up the mantle, with Vance claiming that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” and Musk calling the court rulings against the funding freeze “shady” and “absolutely insane.”
Both seem to ignore Article III of the Constitution and the concept of judicial review—a principle central to American law since the early 1800s that allows federal courts to check executive power. There is a legal way to cut spending—it’s called the congressional appropriations process. As the American Bar Association (ABA) put it, Trump’s approach “may appeal to a few” but is “chaotic,” “wrong,” and “contrary to the rule of law.”
In the coming weeks, expect Trump to flood the zone with more “democracy dilemmas”—manufactured crises designed to expand executive power at the expense of Congress and the courts. And Americans will discover if our leaders will fight for us and protect our system of checks and balances so critical to democratic governance. Our “forks in the road” are likely to be many and will require as much courage as we can summon.
Portions of this post appeared in the Virginia Mercury.
David J. Toscano is an attorney and the former Democratic Leader in the Virginia House of Delegates. He is the author of Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives, published in 2021 by the University of Virginia Press and Bellwether: Virginia’s Political Transformation, 2006-2020, published in 2022 by Hamilton Books.
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.