DEATH TOLL FROM THE SLAVE TRADE

THE AFRICAN HOLOCAUST

60 MILLION DEAD AT THE HANDS
OF WHITE CHRISTIAN IMPERIALISM

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"The largest slave trade in the history of the world was created by white Christian Europeans.   Before it was over as many as 60 million Africans would be killed for the profit of white Christian imperialism.   A key reason for the high death toll was the tidal wave of war and desolation that the slave trade unleashed into the heart of Africa.  Huge numbers of people died being marched to the coasts of Africa from the interior as well as in an endless series of wars produced by the quest for new slaves.  Millions more would die in concentration camps at both ends of the sea journey, and significant numbers would die due to the appalling conditions on the slave ships.

The financial profits of this slave trade helped build the economic foundations of America.   It was not just the south.  Northern business interests made huge profits too.

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It is difficult to estimate the exact death toll that resulted from the transatlantic slave trade. There weren't exactly people measuring these numbers at the time. What we looked at are historical estimates of how many people may have died in capture, during the voyage at sea, and due to disease, starvation and back breaking labor in the New World. But what is certain is that the slave trade was a genocide against the African people. The transatlantic slave trade was also the largest, long distance coerced movement of people in history. 

The estimate of the number killed during the transatlantic slave trade varies anywhere between 6-150 million. The official UN estimate is 17 million (UN). However, we ourselves would be inclined to agree the figure of 60 million,  given all the variables here, including the fact that during the entire period of the slave trade, Africa's population did not increase. Some may argue that this is because Europe had advanced medicine and technology, while Africans didn't. Yet during this era Asia wasn't exactly at a sophisticated, technological level either. But their population nearly doubled. We believe the stagnation of Africa's population is a byproduct of the transatlantic slave trade. 

AFRICA'S POPULATION STAGNATES DURING TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

	1600	1700	1800
Europe	111	125	203
Asia	339	436	635
Africa	114	106	107

(Population figures in the millions. World population by region.)

The transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through the 19th century. The vast majority of those who were enslaved were deported to the New World, mainly on the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Most of those captured were West Africans. The numbers of Africans brought to the New World were so great, that they became the largest number of immigrants to be brought to the New World before the late 18th century. By 1820, nearly four Africans for every one European had crossed the Atlantic, and about four out of every five females that traversed the Atlantic were from Africa. 

This was not the first time in history that Africans were kidnapped from their homes and enslaved. Europeans and Muslims engaged in the slave trade for centuries before the colonization of the America's. Yet the transatlantic slave trade further bled Africa of its people and resources. While it was not the only slave trade in Africa, it was the largest in terms of sheer volume and intensity. 

As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:

The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean. [1]

The number of lives lost in the procurement of slaves remains a mystery, but according to the author of American Holocaust, it is likely that the number of slaves who died in procurement is equal to the number who survived. A database compiled in the 1990's put the figure for the transatlantic slave trade at more than 11 million people. For a long time an accepted figure was 15 million, although this has recently been revised downward. Patrick Manning, the author of "The Slave Trade," estimates that about 12 million slaves entered the Atlantic trade between the 16th and 19th century, and about 1.5 million died on board ships (others have put the estimate of ship deaths at 2.2 million), 4 million died inside Africa after capture and many more died young. These estimates also do not cover how many slaves died in the New World. [2]

THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE OCEAN

Aboard the ships, African captives were packed into tight, unsanitary spaces for months at a time. Many slaves who tried to starve themselves to death were force fed. These conditions also resulted in the spread of fatal diseases. Other fatalities were suicide, and slaves who escaped their fate by throwing themselves overboard. The slave traders would attempt to fit anywhere from 350-600 slaves on one ship. The journey typically took anywhere between 2-4 months, and during this time enslaved people were chained naked in rows on the floor of the hold, or on shelves that ran along the inside of the ship's hulls. 

SLAVERY IN THE NEW WORLD

A vast majority of the slaves brought across the Atlantic were imported into the Caribbean and South America. Only 6 percent of African captives were sent directly to North America. And yet by 1825, the U.S. had a quarter of the blacks in the New World. In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil, the slave death rate was so high and the birth rate so low that they could not sustain their population without importations from Africa. Rates of natural decrease ran as high as 5 percent a year. While the death rate of U.S. slaves was about the same as that of Jamaican slaves, the fertility rate was more than 80 percent higher in the United States. The U.S, unlike other nations, had a self sustaining slave population for more than a century and a half. And the domestic slave trade in the U.S. continued even after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History).

HALF OF ALL ENSLAVED INFANTS DIED IN THEIR FIRST YEAR OF LIFE

Children suffered very high mortality rates in slavery. Pregnant women were not given much of a break from their work in the fields. They still performed three-quarters or more the amount of work of non-pregnant women. Infant mortality was high, twice as high as southern white children. Half of all slaves died in their first year of life. A major contribution to this high mortality rate was chronic undernourishment. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History).

DEATH AND DISEASE IN THE NEW WORLD

Death due to disease and malnourishment was also common, given that slaves were fed a low nutrition, purely starch based diet. Common symptoms of disease among enslaved populations included: blindness; abdominal swelling; bowed legs; skin lesions; and convulsions. Common conditions among enslaved populations included: beriberi (caused by a deficiency of thiamine); pellagra (caused by a niacin deficiency); tetany (caused by deficiencies of calcium, magnesium, and Vitamin D); rickets (also caused by a deficiency of Vitamin D); and kwashiorkor (caused by severe protein deficiency). Diarrhea, dysentery, whooping cough, and respiratory diseases as well as worms pushed the infant and early childhood death rate of slaves to twice that experienced by white infants and children. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)

No one knows the exact number of slaves who died in the New World. Yet in American Holocaust (1992), David Stannard estimates that some 30 to 60 million Africans died while being enslaved. He claims a 50% mortality rate among new slaves while being gathered and stored in Africa, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean, and another 50% mortality rate in the first "seasoning" phase of slave labor. [3]

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RELATED WORLD FUTURE FUND REPORTS

Slavery and Reparations   Christianity and Slavery   War Crimes and Democracies

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USEFUL LINKS

African American Slavery Death Toll (Necrometrics)

The Atlantic Slave Trade (Wikipedia)

TIMELINE: The horrors of the slave trade through the centuries (Mail Guardian Africa, 3-11-15)

Malcolm X's daughter on Juneteenth: 'We're in denial of the African holocaust' (The Guardian, 6-19-14)

International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (The United Nations, 3-25-08)

African Holocaust (2005)

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FOOT NOTES

[1] Elikia M’bokolo, "The impact of the slave trade on Africa", Le Monde diplomatique, 2 April 1998.

[2]  Patrick Manning, "The Slave Trade: The Formal Dermographics of a Global System" in Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman (eds), The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 117-44

[3] Stannard, David. American Holocaust. Oxford University Press, 1993."

DEATH TOLL FROM THE SLAVE TRADE

'This Ain't S*!' The TRUTH About Trump HBCU Executive Order EXPOSED | Ro...

Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘life and death implications’ | Trump administration | The Guardian

Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘life and death implications’

"Trump team’s slashes to US health department threaten popular program that combats elder hunger and isolation

Victoria Namkung

Annie Jones receives a delivery from Meals on Wheels in Houston. Photograph: Annie Mulligan/AP

The Trump administration’s slashes to the Department of Health and Human Services is threatening Meals on Wheels, the popular program dedicated to combatting senior hunger and isolation. Despite decades of bipartisan support, Meals on Wheels now faces attacks from Republicans whose budget blueprint paves the way for deep cuts to nutrition and other social safety-net programs as a way to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

It’s a move anti-hunger advocates and policy experts warn could have disastrous ramifications for the millions of older Americans who rely on the program to eat each day.

“It’s not hyperbolic to say that we’re going to be leaving people hungry and that this literally has life and death implications,” said Nicole Jorwic, the chief of advocacy and campaigns at Caring Across Generations, a non-profit that advocates for ageing Americans, disabled people and their caregivers. “This is not just about a nice-to-have program. These programs are necessities in the lives of seniors all over this country.”

While it is still unknown exactly what will be slashed, the blueprint sets the stage for the potential elimination of the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), a key source of funding for local Meals on Wheels programs in 37 states, and serious cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) and Medicaid, which would increase food insecurity and hardship and steeply increase demand for Meals on Wheels services. The entire staff who oversaw SSBG have already been fired, according to reports.

If Congress takes away SSBG funding and weakens other programs, seniors who rely on in-home deliveries or meals in community and senior centers to survive would receive less help as Meals on Wheels community providers would be forced to reduce services, add people to waitlists or turn seniors facing hunger away altogether. Some program operators who are already making tough choices about who to serve due to strained budgets and rising need have said it feels as though they are “playing God”.

“We’re talking about lives here so it’s worrisome to me,” said Ellie Hollander, the president and CEO of Meals on Wheels America. “Some of our programs are already operating on razor-thin budgets and are pulling from their reserves. [If funding goes away], it could result in some programs having to close their doors.”

In the US one in four Americans is over the age of 60 and nearly 13 million seniors are threatened by or experience hunger. Meals on Wheels America, a network of 5,000 community-based programs that feeds more than 2 million older Americans each year, has been a successful public-private partnership for more than 50 years. The Urban Institute estimates that the number of seniors in the US will more than double over the next 40 years.

The Older Americans Act (OAA) nutrition program, which supports the health and wellbeing of seniors through nutrition services, is the network’s primary source of federal funding, covering 37% of what it takes to serve more than 250m meals each year. The exact mix of local, state, federal and private funding of Meals on Wheels’ thousands of on-the-ground community programs varies from provider to provider.

Under the orders of the Elon Musk-led unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, 20,000 people at HHS have lost their jobs in recent weeks, including at least 40% of the staff at the Administration for Community Living, which coordinates federal policy on ageing and disability. Since many of those staffers helped fulfill critical functions to serving older Americans through the OAA, some Meals on Wheels programs are worried about funding disbursements, reporting data and the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise.

HHS has said it will reorganize the ACL into other HHS agencies, although how that would happen is unclear. The co-chairs of the Disability and Aging Collaborative, composed of 62 member organizations that focus in part on ageing and disability, said in a recent statement: “This disruptive change threatens to increase rates of institutionalization, homelessness and long-lasting economic hardships.”

Since experiencing multiple strokes that left her cognitively impaired and at risk for falls, Dierdre Mayes has relied on Meals on Wheels Yolo County to deliver meals that are the 64-year-old’s primary source of nutrition. “I’m really thriving off of the meals I get,” said Mayes, a Woodland, California, resident who also receives $20 a month in food stamps, which she uses to purchase cases of water. “The best part about it is I don’t have to go anywhere to get them.” For Mayes and other homebound older Americans, the program is a lifeline.

The uncertainty around Meals on Wheels’ future is causing stress for seniors who are worried about how federal cuts, layoffs and tariffs will impact their daily deliveries. The non-profit FeedMore WNY, which serves homebound older adults in New York’s Erie and Niagara counties, said they’ve been hearing from fearful older clients as word of other recent cuts circulated in the news.

Catherine Shick, the public relations manager for FeedMore WNY, said they served 4,775 unique Meals on Wheels clients last year and that demand for their feeding programs increased by 16% from 2023 to 2024, a trend they expect to continue. “Any cut to any funding has a direct impact on the individuals who rely on us for food assistance and any cuts are coming at a time when we know that food insecurity is on the rise,” she said. “We need the continued support of all levels of government, as well as the community, to be able to fulfill our mission.”

In addition to delivering healthy, nutritious food, Meals on Wheels drivers, who are primarily volunteers, provide a host of other valuable services: they can look for signs of cognitive or other health changes. They can also address safety hazards in the home or provide pet support services, as well as offer crucial social connections since drivers are often the only person a senior may see in a given day or week.

Deliveries have been shown to help keep seniors healthy and in their own homes and communities and out of costly institutional settings. Republicans in the House and Senate have said their goal is to reduce federal spending, but experts say cutting programs that help fund organizations such as Meals on Wheels would instead increase federal spending for healthcare and long-term care expenses for older Americans.

“If people can’t stay in their own homes, they’re going to be ‘high flyers’ in hospitals and admitted prematurely into nursing homes,” said Hollander, “all of which cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually versus providing Meals on Wheels for one year to a senior for the same cost of being in the hospital for one day or 10 days in a nursing home.”

Experts agree that even before the cuts, Meals on Wheels America has been underfunded. Advocates and researchers say OAA hasn’t kept up with the rapid growth of the senior population, rising food costs or inflation. One in three local programs already have waiting lists with many programs already feeling stretched to their limits. For more than 60% of Meals on Wheels providers across the country, federal funding represents half or more of their total revenue, underscoring the serious damage that could be done if cuts or policy changes are made in any capacity.

“It feels like a continuous slew of attacks on the programs that seniors rely on to be safe, independent and healthy in their own homes,” said Jorwic of Caring Across Generations. “Everything from cuts to Meals on Wheels to cuts to Medicaid, all these things that are being proposed and actively worked on being implemented, are a real threat to the security of aging Americans.”

Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘life and death implications’ | Trump administration | The Guardian

Opinion | A Road Map of Trump’s Lawless Presidency - The New York Times

A Road Map of Trump’s Lawless Presidency, According to 35 Legal Scholars

April 28, 2025

Rose Wong

By New York Times Opinion

"In his first hours back as president, Donald J. Trump did an extraordinary thing: He made a direct assault on the Constitution. He declared that his government would no longer treat U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants or children of lawful, temporary immigrants as citizens, as the 14th Amendment commands.

You can draw a straight line from that executive order on birthright citizenship to his administration’s revocation of visas, the detention of foreign students and the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, to a Salvadoran prison and the subsequent refusal to try to extricate him in spite of court orders. Mr. Trump is claiming far-reaching but dubious powers, pushing or exceeding legal limits without first bothering to determine if they were permissible, as past presidents generally did.

Times Opinion recently reached out to dozens of legal scholars and asked them to identify the most significant unconstitutional or unlawful actions by Mr. Trump and his administration in the first 100 days of his second presidency and to assess the damage. We also asked them to separate actions that might draw legal challenges but are, in fact, within the powers of the president. And we asked them to connect the dots on where they thought Mr. Trump was heading.

We heard back from 35 scholars — a group full of diverse viewpoints and experiences, including liberals like U.C. Berkeley’s Erwin Chemerinsky and Harvard’s Jody Freeman; the conservatives Adrian Vermeule at Harvard and Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge who directs Stanford’s Constitutional Law Center and is a member of the Federalist Society; and the libertarians Ilya Somin at George Mason University and Evan Bernick at Northern Illinois University. Many are among the nation’s most cited scholars by their colleagues in law review articles.

From all of their responses, we constructed a road map through Mr. Trump’s first 100 days of lawlessness, including his defiance of our judiciary and constitutional system; the undermining of First Amendment freedoms and targeting of law firms, universities, the press and other parts of civil society; the impoundment of federal funds authorized by Congress; the erosion of immigrant rights; and the drive to consolidate power.

This road map largely draws on the scholars’ words, which serve as bright red warning lights about the future of America:

More important than any specific example of unconstitutional conduct is the overall pattern. The depth and breadth of this administration’s disregard for civil liberties, political pluralism, the separation of powers and legal constraints of all kinds mark it as an authoritarian regime. That is the crucial thing to see.
— David Pozen, professor, Columbia Law School

They seek a massive increase in presidential power, which if fully achieved would potentially undermine most of the constitutional separation of powers and create an elective monarchy or a quasi-authoritarian state. If they prevail, it would be terrible for the rule of law and liberal democratic values generally. But they can be stopped and hopefully will be.
— Ilya Somin, professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

The disregard for law is itself part of the agenda. They do not seem to care whether they violate the Constitution and statutes, make mistakes, do irreparable harm. That recklessness itself sends a message.
— Jody Freeman, professor, Harvard Law School

Our Constitution is written on ancient paper. Its effectiveness, durability and power depend upon people embracing its commands today, with good faith and with good will. If and when one actor disregards or disparages those responsibilities, it is imperative that other actors step up and demand fealty to constitutional norms, lest the spirit of the Constitution be lost. We are in perilous waters.
— Dawn Johnsen, professor, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University, Bloomington

Not all of our legal scholars saw every Trump action the same way, and one saw the problem as lying more with the courts than with the administration. But there was abundant assent that the president is trying to operate without limits and that the rule of law and especially due process are being profoundly tested and challenged. This guide through the first 100 days is by no means exhaustive but rather reflects legal issues our 35 scholars highlighted repeatedly or with the gravest concern.

Let’s start with what many of them flagged first: ending birthright citizenship.

No other issue united our legal scholars, as a group and across ideological lines, more than Mr. Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship, which they assessed as flagrantly lawless in nature, with little hope of succeeding in the courts.

But the fact that the president has taken on this fight speaks to his tenacity in trying to upend long established rights and, in this case, a Supreme Court decision that has stood for 127 years.

Federal courts in three states have issued temporary nationwide pauses on Mr. Trump’s order. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to modify the reach of those injunctions, which would allow the president’s executive order to go into effect in some or even many parts of the country. But this battle is likely to be a mere prelude to one over the constitutionality of the order itself.

It’s more than unconstitutional — it’s anti-constitutional. It’s an effort to erase from our constitutional history and law one of the greatest struggles for human freedom in American history and reconfigure the Constitution into an instrument of domination.
— Evan Bernick, associate professor, Northern Illinois University College of Law

The reinterpretation of birthright citizenship is a challenge to one of our central constitutional principles: that there shall be no hereditary underclass in America.
— Kermit Roosevelt, professor, Carey Law School, University of Pennsylvania

It would call into question the citizenship of more than a million children and likely many more adults who were born here to parents not authorized to be in the country. The result would be chaos.
— Ann Carlson, professor, U.C.L.A. School of Law

I am confident the courts will reject the president’s claim that children of illegal aliens born in this country lack birthright citizenship.
— Michael McConnell, professor, Stanford Law School

From there, it’s a straight shot to deporting people without due process.

The case of Mr. Abrego Garcia has put a klieg light on the Trump administration’s contempt for perhaps the most fundamental guarantee of the Bill of Rights: due process under the law. It means the government must provide a person — and that is any individual, not just a United States citizen — with notice and an opportunity for a hearing before stripping him of life, liberty or property.

But it is not just the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia that is alarming. He was among 238 migrants declared “alien enemies” under a rarely used 1798 law that allows the government to quickly deport citizens from an invading nation. In other cases, the Trump administration cited a seldom used provision of a 1952 law to target international students who protested the war in Gaza on the ground that they pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy. By using a broad interpretation of what constitutes a threat, critics say the Trump administration eroded constitutionally protected rights to due process and free speech.

The State Department also revoked the visas or student status of over 1,500 international students and recent graduates, generally without providing clear justification. This lack of transparency provided little recourse for students or universities to correct or appeal these decisions. On Friday the Trump administration, in an apparent about-face, announced that it will restore the legal status of hundreds of students as it works on a new system for assessing and terminating student visas. But officials said those students may yet see their status and their visas discontinued.

If the administration can simply spirit people outside the United States in violation of the law and then disclaim any power to bring them back, then no U.S. citizen is safe from similar actions.
— Shirin Sinnar, professor, Stanford University Law School

These events should terrify all of us — not just noncitizens. If the executive branch has unfettered discretion to deport anyone it asserts is an “alien enemy” and then claim to be powerless to rectify the “error” once the person is removed, even citizens are at risk.
— Amanda Frost, professor, University of Virginia School of Law

The president is pushing to have a system of enforcement that is free from any constitutional or statutory constraints and untouchable by the courts. The actions also sweep broadly to strip lawfully present immigrants — and even natural-born U.S. citizens — of their status.
— Ingrid Eagly, professor, U.C.L.A. School of Law

Due process dates back to Magna Carta; it is the essence of liberty. Without it, America is not a democracy as freedom itself is at the arbitrary whims of a malevolent ruler.
— Kim Wehle, professor, University of Baltimore School of Law

The lawless attacks also have targeted law firms …

In February Mr. Trump began targeting top law firms that he has accused of helping to weaponize the justice system against him by representing clients or causes at odds with his agenda. He has forced them to bow to his demands or see their federal contracts summarily terminated and their lawyers lose security clearances and access to federal buildings that they need to represent their clients. Jenner & Block, one of the firms targeted, has argued in court that the order violates the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause and the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel. “It goes beyond the president’s constitutional power” and “is authorized by no statute,” the firm said. One federal judge has called a similar effort against another law firm “a shocking abuse of power.”

So far, to avoid reprisals, at least nine firms have promised to provide roughly $1 billion in top-tier pro bono legal advice to causes Mr. Trump embraces. More than a few of these scholars likened this coercive scheme to extortion.

Few things are more terrifying in a constitutional republic than a president exercising retributive power without constitutional restraint. The president’s retributive actions obviously violate a remarkable number of constitutional provisions. This cannot be tolerated.
— Barry Friedman, professor, N.Y.U. School of Law

In terms of the sheer number of constitutional violations, the orders targeting individual law firms for retribution are hard to beat.
— Kate Shaw, professor, Carey Law School, University of Pennsylvania

It would be difficult to imagine a presidential action more undermining of the foundations of our system of constitutional democracy.
— Martin H. Redish, professor, Pritzker School of Law, Northwestern University

And universities …

Universities have similarly come under attack. Mr. Trump has threatened to pull billions of dollars in federal funds unless campuses knuckle under to his demands on hiring, admissions and curriculums. Many of the scholars framed these attacks as part of a larger war on civil society and brazen violation of the First Amendment and procedural protections.

The question we must really ask ourselves is whether we are free to hold and espouse ideas with which the administration disagrees? It would increasingly seem that the answer is no.
— Derek Black, professor, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law

The attacks on law firms and universities are legally indefensible violations of the First Amendment.
— Micah Schwartzman, professor, University of Virginia School of Law

Universities, law firms, public schools, et cetera, are being attacked because of their political views: their opposition to the president, their adoption of D.E.I. policies, their liberalism more generally. These moves flout the cardinal rule of the First Amendment, which is that the government can’t punish people because of their political speech. — Nicholas Stephanopoulos, professor, Harvard Law School

And The Associated Press.

For the past few months, the White House has sharply reduced The Associated Press’s access to Mr. Trump because it declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the name that Mr. Trump designated for it. A.P. journalists were excluded from the small rotating group of journalists who routinely cover events in confined spaces at the White House, including the Oval Office and Air Force One. But recently the White House, on a few occasions, allowed A.P. journalists into such events after a Federal District Court judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the exclusion violated the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

A judge appointed by President Trump ruled that his exclusion of The Associated Press from the White House press pool for refusing to adopt the new nomenclature of “Gulf of America” was unconstitutional. No surprise — except perhaps to those who think that judges routinely vote with the party of the president who appointed them.
— Michael McConnell, professor, Stanford Law School

This is a violation of the First Amendment: Trump is punishing members of the press for what they publish.
— Suzanna Sherry, emeritus professor, Vanderbilt Law School

Using money as leverage is key to Mr. Trump, even if the Constitution stands in his way.

Mr. Trump wasted little time in challenging Congress’s constitutional power of the purse to control government spending. On Inauguration Day he signed an executive order freezing foreign aid and funding for energy programs. He has impounded billions of dollars, despite a 1974 law that limits the president’s power to withhold those funds and requires him to follow specific steps to delay or rescind funding. He has called that law a “disaster” that “is clearly unconstitutional” and “a blatant violation of the separation of powers.”

But in fact, many scholars see the president’s actions as a further effort to arrogate power to the White House at the expense of Congress.

Refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress violates separation of powers in usurping Congress’s spending power and violates the Impoundment Control Act.
— Erwin Chemerinsky, dean, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

No other modern president has tried this on such an enormous scale. If allowed to stand, it would enable the president to both seize control over hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds and coerce state and local governments by imposing grant conditions not authorized by Congress. All of this also violates the Constitution — both federalism and the separation of powers.
— Ilya Somin, professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Deploying tariffs at will is suspect, too.

The president’s tariffs are facing numerous legal challenges, including a lawsuitcontesting levies that Mr. Trump announced on China in February and later expanded. In imposing the tariffs, the administration invoked a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows a president to regulate imports if the president declares a national emergency.

He argued that tariffs were necessary because U.S. trade deficits have “led to the hollowing out” of the nation’s manufacturing base, undermined supply chains and made the country’s “defense-industrial base” dependent on foreign adversaries. But the 1977 law had never been used to impose tariffs, and it is unclear whether it authorizes them.

Most important is the coming showdown over the president’s asserted power to impose, rescind, raise and delay tariffs on imports. The administration can point to broad statutory language authorizing specific import restrictions under emergency circumstances, but the president has no inherent constitutional authority to tax imports. No statute expressly authorizes the president to impose tariffs for the nonemergency purposes of raising revenue, improving our long-term balance of trade or winning unrelated concessions on miscellaneous issues.
— Michael McConnell, professor, Stanford Law School

Issuing tariffs under dubious legal authority without Congressional authorization … could pull the entire world economy into chaos and recession and undermine the U.S.’s position as global financial leader and a haven of economic stability by destabilizing Treasury bonds.
— Ann Carlson, professor, U.C.L.A. School of Law

Then there’s the firings at independent agencies.

Independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission were created by Congress with regulatory authority over their domains. Their leaders are appointed by the president but operate independently from the White House. This arrangement, as the Heritage Foundation argued in its blueprint for a second Trump term, “makes them constitutionally problematic in light of the Constitution’s having vested federal executive power in the president.”

And that is why these agencies are now in Mr. Trump’s cross hairs as he seeks to extend and strengthen his hold on the bureaucracy. The president has already summarily fired members of several independent commissions without cause before their terms were up, in violation of the law and a 1935 Supreme Court decision. But the judicial winds may be blowing the president’s way. Many of these scholars expect the Supreme Court will side with Mr. Trump.

This is consistent with the views of some conservatives both in promoting the unitary executive theory and advocating for the dismantling of the administrative state.
— Barry Friedman, professor, N.Y.U. School of Law

When Trump fired the heads of these independent agencies, he overrode the deliberate choice of Congress to deny presidents that power. That threatens the balance of power established by the Constitution’s creation of three branches of government. As the framers knew — and tried to avert — concentration of power in the hands of one branch (or worse, in the hands of one man) was a sure path to tyranny.
— Suzanna Sherry, emeritus professor, Vanderbilt Law School

Now let’s turn to actions within Trump’s authority.

We asked these scholars to offer examples of significant actions by Mr. Trump that have received legal criticism but were within his writ as president, regardless of whether they agree with what he did.

As a starting point, Professor Johnsen at Indiana University noted, “Presidents possess enormous powers to change policy.” Another scholar, Derek Black at the University of South Carolina, made the argument that legitimate exercises of Mr. Trump’s authority may simply be obscured by the sheer breadth and velocity of his effort to impose his will on the government and the country.

He has done 1,001 things, a large chunk of which appear facially beyond his power. But when we get into the facts, surely many would be within his power. We just need the facts to know — and he must justify certain actions based on facts.
— Derek Black, professor, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law

Much of what the administration has been doing — far more than his critics are willing to acknowledge — is within the president’s rightful prerogatives, or at least within a reasonable interpretation of the law, whether I like it or not as a policy matter.
— Michael McConnell, professor, Stanford Law School

Not everyone agreed on the particulars, but among the actions some scholars pointed to as being within Mr. Trump’s power or likely to be upheld by the courts were:

• The pardoning of the Jan. 6 rioters

• The creation of the Department of Government Efficiency

• The terminations of civil servants using proper procedures

• The canceling of some government contracts, grants and programs and the sequestering of certain funds

• The firing of independent agency heads and inspectors general

• Certain deportations in which the government has invoked national security as a concern

• Certain efforts within the government to eliminate D.E.I. initiatives

• Appointments within the Justice Department that have been criticized as politicizing the department

• Some tariffs

All of which brings us to Trump and the courts.

More than 200 legal challenges have been filed so far against the administration’s actions since Mr. Trump returned to the White House. With the Republican-controlled Congress broadly compliant with the White House agenda, the courts are left as the last fortification against administrative overreach. But will the judiciary, in the end, be up to the task? And will the White House comply with judicial orders?

Courts have limited power to enforce their orders — judges rely on the executive branch to do that — and some federal judges have complained that the administration has ignored them or slow-walked compliance.

In a worrisome comment in February, Vice President JD Vance asserted that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” He made a similar argument in the past. Moreover, the president and his allies have demeaned judges who have ruled against the administration and called for their impeachment. In a striking development on Friday, F.B.I. agents in Milwaukee arrested a state court judge on charges of obstructing immigration agents.

All of this has led to concerns about whether court orders will be ignored by the Trump administration or the courts will be undercut by Congress, which controls their budgets and can, under the Constitution, largely dictate which cases federal courts can hear — and can’t.

Last month the House speaker, Mike Johnson, raised the possibility of eliminating some federal courts. “We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know,” Mr. Johnson told reporters. “We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things.”

The president of the United States, in brief, takes the position that he is not bound by federal statutes and does not have to obey federal-court orders. The constraint dimension of the rule of law, accordingly, is not met at present in the United States.
— Aziz Huq, professor, University of Chicago Law School

It’s too early to assume that the Supreme Court will roll over for him or that he will directly disobey a Supreme Court ruling.
— Daniel Farber, professor, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

The impression of a constitutional crisis is misleading. That impression was initially created by overreaching district judges selected by plaintiffs, who obtained temporary victories and leveraged those victories in the media. If there is a crisis, it does not arise from the actions of the administration but instead from a slew of highly aggressive judicial decisions that have transgressed traditional legal limits on the relationship between the judiciary and the executive branch — limits the courts respected during the Biden administration.
— Adrian Vermeule, professor, Harvard Law School

And finally, we end at … the Big Picture.

What do Mr. Trump’s lawless actions add up to? And where do they suggest the president is heading? We concluded by asking those questions to our legal scholars, too.

Having surrounded himself with sycophants, Trump feels unconstrained by the Constitution and federal statutes.
— Michael Dorf, professor, Cornell Law School

President Trump appears to be seeking simultaneously to engage in selective but ruthless enforcement of the law and to dismantle the general governing capacity of the state. … This would constitute nothing less than an authoritarian system under which civil society is significantly diminished for fear of targeted retribution and the government lacks basic indicia of trust, up to and including in the conduct of elections. We have much to fear.
— Jamal Greene, professor, Columbia Law School

Our constitutional system is on a knife’s edge.
— Jack Balkin, professor, Yale Law School

We are witnessing the broad expansion of presidential power and the system of checks and balances starting to break down. This has serious implications — we are heading to a constitutional crisis (although some say we are already there).
— Rose Cuison-Villazor, professor, Rutgers Law School, Newark

Trump’s assault on the role of lawyers and judges as defenders of free speech, the rule of law and the concept of government under law is an existential threat to American constitutional democracy.
— Burt Neuborne, professor, N.Y.U. School of Law

The use of the levers of government to exact retaliation for private vendettas — sending people to foreign prisons without due process, dismantling agencies and refusing to spend appropriated funds and pervasive retaliation for the exercise of First Amendment rights … are the actions of an authoritarian government, not a liberal democracy.
— Katie Eyer, professor, Rutgers Law School, Camden

The politicization of the Justice Department strikes me as the most disturbing. Trump is using his power to direct the conduct of individual criminal prosecutions. He is firing line attorneys he deems as insufficiently loyal. And he has installed loyalists as chief prosecutors.
— Daniel Epps, professor, Washington University School of Law, St. Louis

Even if Trump were stopped dead in his tracks tomorrow, it would take years, probably decades to undo the damage and regain public trust, rebuild our civic infrastructure and rehabilitate the rule of law. — Jon Michaels, professor, U.C.L.A. School of Law

I think it is fair to conclude that the U.S. constitutional system is on the verge of an authoritarian takeover. “Authoritarian constitutionalism” is not an oxymoron; unless the Trump takeover is repelled, our system will retain the familiar constitutional forms while becoming ever more illiberal, undemocratic and corrupt. The fight to avoid this fate is already being waged in the courts. That is a necessary first step. But to achieve more lasting victory against Trumpism, the country will need a massive amount of political opposition, as well as a major program of reforms that respond to the legitimate grievances Trump has been able to exploit.
— David Pozen, professor, Columbia Law School."

Opinion | A Road Map of Trump’s Lawless Presidency - The New York Times