Marc Murphy :: Drawn 6 years go today. It was rejected and called unfair and alarmist.
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At 100 days—it is still a coup.
April 30, 2025
Robert B. Hubbell
The media landscape is littered with analyses of the first 100 days of Trump's second term. Indeed, this is the third newsletter I have devoted to aspects of the 100-day mark. (See At 100 days, we have them on the run! and The grassroots gets its 100-day report card--and it is very good!).
I return to the topic because I believe that the media is largely missing the point in assessing Trump's performance at 100 days. The simplest, most direct explanation of Trump's first 100 days in office is to view his tenure as an ongoing coup attempt that seeks to overturn the Constitution and democratic norms.
That statement explains virtually everything Trump has attempted during his first 100 days in office. But instead of acknowledging that grounding truth, the media resorts to euphemisms and “just so” stories that imply rationality, coherence, and legitimacy in the actions of a mad king who seeks to become the state—“L'État, c'est moi.”
The most common sane-washing of Trump's first 100 days is that he is seeking “to expand the powers of the presidency” or “to reshape America.”
While there is a kernel of truth in both articulations, they omit the existentially significant qualifier “by overturning the Constitution.” Failing to include the unlawful means by which Trump seeks to “expand the presidency” or “reshape the nation” is journalistic malpractice of the highest order.
A lesser form of journalistic malpractice involves cataloging the various executive orders signed by Trump and tallying the dollars cut by DOGE while failing to mention that virtually every order and cut violates the Constitution.
Most stories that center on “the list” of things Trump has attempted in his first 100 days do not include a single sentence noting that most of his executive orders have been successfully challenged (thus far) in courts across the nation.
Does it matter when the media omits that Trump's orders are universally regarded as unconstitutional and unlawful?
Yes.
Why?
Because failing to acknowledge that Trump's actions violate the Constitution diminishes efforts to resist his unlawful actions by reducing them to mere policy disputes or “horse-race politics” stories. See, e.g.,
CNN, Democrats mark Trump’s first 100 days with speeches, sit-ins as party looks to project strength against administration.
ABC News, Dems say Trump's first 100 days gives them better chance of flipping House in 2026
PEW Research, Ratings of Trump and Key Policies 100 Days Into Second Term.
But there is more—the cognitive dissonance being experienced by most Americans who understand that Trump is seeking to overthrow the constitutional order by violating laws and ignoring court orders. When they see their political leaders “go along to get along” in the insular institutions of the House and Senate, they are bewildered.
For example, on Tuesday, fifteen Democrats (and one independent) joined with Republicans to confirm David Perdue as US Ambassador to China. See The New Republic, 16 Democrats Just Voted to Confirm Another Trump Appointee
Even as Trump claims that the Constitution and the rule of law no longer apply to him, Democratic Senators are still voting to confirm Trump's nominees—harkening back to an era when it was “impolite” to offend the president by voting against a nominee with a pulse and full head of hair.
Have Democrats not learned the lesson of Marco Rubio—a notionally “reasonable” Senator who has become the most depraved Secretary of State in US history, presiding over the deliberate starvation of millions of children and the deaths of tens of millions of people around the globe from easily preventable diseases?
The normalization of Trump's lawlessness is bewildering for the grassroots movement that is (again) serving as the last bulwark of democracy. I confess I frequently feel like I am living in the Kafka novel where a human-sized insect is living in the bedroom, and all anyone wants to talk about is how much the grocery bill has increased since the insect took up residence.
We are experiencing a coup. For the second time in our nation’s history (the first being November 2020 to January 2021 under Trump), we are living through a coup attempt.
That is a remarkable and exceptionally rare state of affairs. Virtually nothing else should matter. Every instinct should be on high alert, every evolutionary defense mechanism should be triggered, every collective memory burned into the unconscious survival mechanisms of clans and tribes over millions of years should be screaming—“Danger! Not again!”
There are occasional exceptions to the media’s failure to discuss Trump's ongoing coup. In Monday’s NY Times, the op-ed page collated the views of 35 constitutional scholars across the nation. With few exceptions, they described Trump's actions as unconstitutional and unlawful.
And yet, on Tuesday, the framing of the first 100 days by the Times’ editorial board is that Trump is “attempting to reshape America.” That anodyne description omits the essential qualifier “by attempting to overturn the US Constitution.” [I haven’t read the 15 opinion pieces that follow, all of which appear to be critical of Trump, but none of which seem to assert that he is engaged in a coup.]
There are hundreds of examples of Trump violating the Constitution in his first 100 days in office. Rather than describe how each of his actions violates the Constitution, I note the following broad principles:
The Constitution prohibits the president from doing the following:
Withholding funds appropriated by Congress.
Closing or suspending the work of an agency, department, or program established by Congress.
Violating laws enacted by Congress to protect civil servants from arbitrary or politically motivated terminations.
Punishing private institutions based on their political speech (such as law firms, universities, and broadcast networks).
Violating court orders.
Ordering politically motivated investigations and prosecutions by the DOJ, FBI, IRS, FTC, etc.
Denying due process to migrants and citizens alike.
Denying the writ of habeas corpus to migrants and citizens alike.
Imposing tariffs without congressional oversight or review.
Repudiating obligations assumed by international treaties.
That short list encompasses virtually every unlawful order and action undertaken by Trump in his first 100 days. But the list does not capture the cruelty and inhumanity with which those constitutional violations have been effectuated.
No retrospective analysis of Trump's first 100 days that omits either the unlawful nature of Trump's actions or their perverse cruelty is worth the electrons used to record and transmit the story.
We are engaged in a great battle to determine whether the Constitution will endure in the face of an ongoing coup attempt. That thesis should be the start of every story about Trump's first 100 days. And every story should conclude with the heroic efforts of grassroots activists and ordinary citizens who have risen to the defense of the Constitution.
The story of Trump's first 100 days in office is that at the 100-day mark, it is still a coup.
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
