Republicans — including those on Supreme Court — must oppose Trump excesses

As evidenced by the millions of votes he got last fall from independent and moderate voters, the fear that President Donald Trump would become an unabashedly authoritarian figure long seemed overblown. That such rhetoric came from many of the same voices who were fine with President Joe Biden’s abuses of power — refusing to enforce immigration laws, bullying social media giants to suppress criticism of his administration and attempting to cancel $400 billion in student loan debt, for starters — made it sound purely partisan.

But Trump, not his critics, is now making their case. Going far beyond the budget stunts of his first term — such as diverting $2.5 billion in appropriated funds to build parts of a border wall — he no longer seems to see congressional spending decisions he doesn’t like as binding. His administration has shrugged off legitimate court orders and laws limiting executive authority. His assaults on free speech norms come with depressing regularity. It’s not just his threats and extortionate lawsuits against media outlets. His Justice Department seems increasingly ready to harass or even prosecute activists, academics and students whose politics he dislikes. That the president and his family have reportedly made billions in business deals this year may not even make the short list of Trump’s most outrageous actions.

But in recent weeks, Trump has behaved in more unnerving fashion than ever. In supporting the deployment of California National Guard troops to Portland and Texas National Guard troops to Chicago — based on allegations of anarchy in those cities that are gross exaggerations — he is courting a constitutional crisis. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s warning — that Trump could manufacture unrest as a pretext for martial law — no longer sounds like a hysterical bid for MSNBC airtime. If Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, as he has repeatedly said is a real possibility, he could deploy active-duty U.S. military forces and federalized National Guard troops within the United States to do his preferred version of “law enforcement” without needing a governor’s consent.

One of the few Republican officeholders to express public alarm over these developments is Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. On Thursday, he said sending National Guard troops across state borders without the receiving state’s consent was “a very dangerous precedent.” He noted — correctly — that “Oklahomans would lose their minds if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

That’s a crucial point: Future presidents will have the option of using the Trump playbook. This should matter far more to all Republicans — from rank-and-file voters to CEOs, from school board trustees to senators to, yes, Supreme Court members. As Justice Antonin Scalia, a Reagan appointee, wrote in 1997, “The president is not the king.” Here’s hoping Scalia’s successor — Neil Gorsuch — and at least four other justices join in repeatedly affirming this truth in coming months and years.