Republican party no longer believes in individual and corporate freedom

There are many bizarre aspects to Trump's second term. One among many is this. The Republican Party used to be known for its commitment to limited government, unbridled capitalism, and individual liberty.

No longer. 

With Trump as president, today's Republican Party firmly supports massive government control, federal interference in business decisions, and unheard of constraints on the freedom of Americans. The party that feared black helicopters and jack-booted thugs when a Democrat occupied the White House is fine with them, now that Trump is the occupant. 

I recall the uproar when Republicans claimed that the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, would interfere with the rights of citizens to choose their own doctor and make their own health care decisions. (Well, unless you're a woman wanting an abortion, then you don't have those rights.)

Now, the thoroughly incompetent man in charge of our nation's health care system, Robert Kennedy Jr., is unilaterally deciding what vaccines Americans can get. With Trump's blessing, he recently fired the director of the CDC, Centers for Disease Control, because — no big surprise — she wanted the CDC to make decisions about covid shots on the basis of scientific evidence, not politics.

Several other top CDC officials resigned in solidarity with the director. They were appropriately aghast that Kennedy, who has no medical training, had decided on his own, with zero consultation of medical experts at the CDC, to not recommend covid shots for people under 65 who don't have a serious underlying health condition.

This means that insurance companies likely won't cover the cost of the shots, and pharmacies may not be willing to give shots to people who don't have Kennedy's blessing. So much for individual freedom in making health care decisions. The covid vaccines saved millions of lives during the pandemic. They were one of Trump's crowning achievements in his first term. When covid makes a comeback this winter, many people will die because of Kennedy and Trump. (Covid cases already are increasing, from what I hear.)

While it seems unlikely that courts will be able to stop Kennedy and Trump from dismantling our nation's public health system, along with support for vital medical research, it's encouraging that two recent legal rulings have gone against the Trump administration when it comes to tariffs and deporations. 

Tariffs are a tax. A tax on importers of goods to this country. Those importers then generally pass on some or all of what they've been taxed to buyers of their goods. So tariffs also are a tax on American citizens. Free trade used to be a pillar of Republicanism. No longer. But today an appeals court ruled that the Trump tariff taxes are illegal. 

A New York Times story, "Trump's Sweeping Tariffs Invalidated by Appeals Court," says: 

A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that many of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs were illegal, delivering a major setback to Mr. Trump’s agenda that may severely undercut his primary source of leverage in an expanding global trade war.

The ruling, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, affirmed a lower court’s initial finding in May that Mr. Trump did not possess unlimited authority to impose taxes on nearly all imports to the United States. But the appellate judges delayed the enforcement of their order until mid-October, allowing the tariffs to remain in place so that the administration can appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

…Mr. Trump’s claims of seemingly unlimited trade power have elicited legal challenges from small businesses and states, which said they were harmed financially by taxes on foreign goods that the president had no right to issue. In May, a federal trade court agreed, invalidating many of the president’s duties on grounds that the law did not grant him “unbounded authority” to wage his global trade war.

Today another court ruled against Trump and in favor of individual liberty — deciding that the Trump administration can't deport undocumented people without due process if they haven't recently crossed the border. Here's excerpts from a New York Times story, "Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump's Mass Deportation Campaign."

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from carrying out fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border, removing, for now, one of the cornerstones of President Trump’s campaign to carry out mass deportations.

The case focused on a policy shift announced during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term that authorized the Department of Homeland Security to launch quick deportations, across the country and without court proceedings, of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the country for more than two years.

Such quick deportations, known as expedited removal, have been carried out for decades, but they were concentrated among people arrested at or near the southern border. The Trump administration sought to expand the practice nationwide, to hasten the removal of people arrested deep inside the country.

In a 48-page opinion, Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration had acted recklessly in a frenzied effort to quickly remove as many people as possible, likely violating due process rights and risking wrongful detentions.

…She also forcefully rejected the government’s argument, which has come up in several immigration cases, that migrants who crossed the border illegally forfeited certain protections, such as the right to fight their removal in court. She warned that the argument was so broad that it could easily ensnare U.S. citizens.

“In defending this skimpy process, the government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them,” she wrote.

“Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk,” she added. “The government could accuse you of entering unlawfully, relegate you to a bare-bones proceeding where it would ‘prove’ your unlawful entry and then immediately remove you.”