by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
President Donald Trump has pulled a fast one against the US Constitution, if not quite and not yet a coup d’état.
“We have an idea of coups being external military assaults on the government,” a US constitutional law professor has reported. “But self-coups take place within the government, from within the executive branch in particular.”
Without the force required for a putsch – not yet, because the Insurrection Act is in Trump’s reserve powers and may be invoked — the officials advising Trump’s actions claim Article II of the Constitution provides him with “unitary” executive power to freeze or impound funds legislated by the Congress, dismiss state employees, and order the armed services into action. Since February, the President’s lawyers have prepared for the Supreme Court majority Trump appointed in his first term — and will add to if he can soon — to rule that “as this Court observed just last Term, Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions on subjects within his ‘conclusive and preclusive’ constitutional authority”—including the President’s ‘unrestricted power of removal’ with respect to ‘executive officers of the United States whom [the President] has appointed.’ ”
Last week, in a telephone interview with the Atlantic Monthly, Trump announced: “I run the country and the world”. In a follow-up face-to-face interview with the magazine on April 24, Trump told the Kiev regime and its European allies that he was ready to support them but not necessarily to accept that Vladimir Zelensky will continue in office.
He was also telling President Vladimir Putin to accept his terms for ending the war in the Ukraine, and not to tarry at testing his powers to escalate his military support on the Ukrainian battlefield and to add sanctions to stop Russian energy trade between China and India. .
Putin’s reply, announced on Monday (April 28), is a test of Trump’s powers. Declaring a new three-day ceasefire between May 8 and 11, Putin said that “in the event of any violations of the ceasefire by the Ukrainian side, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will give a proportionate and efficient response. The Russian side reiterates its willingness to enter peace talks without preconditions, with a view to eliminating the root causes behind the Ukraine crisis and establishing constructive interaction with international partners.”
In the first sentence, Putin told Trump to prove he can order the Zelensky regime to obey the ceasefire. If he can’t — if there are Ukrainian violations as there have been during the March 18-April 18 energy infrastructure ceasefire and the April 19-20 Easter ceasefire — Putin is saying that Trump’s term sheet, delivered last Friday by Steven Witkoff, is worthless.
In his second sentence, Putin told Trump to address the “root causes” with the NATO allies and other “international partners” by halting the NATO advance eastwards on all fronts, not only in the Ukraine; and by lifting the sanctions imposed on Russia and its partners since 2014. Without Trump’s demonstration that he controls the other powers, Putin is exposing Trump’s peace proposals as the continuation of war by other means.
Putin’s language was also directed domestically to those of his advisors who have recommended he accept what they concede to be Trump’s “bad deal”.
In the Kremlin debate, their reasons are that Russian military forces are unprepared for the offensive to achieve the Kiev regime’s capitulation; that the splitting between the US and the European powers has never been so favourable to Russian interests; that the Russian oligarchs want a return to business as usual; and because the intelligence assessment of Trump is so unstable, there is no telling what war plans Washington will follow in the sequence they have been signalling.
Retired Army General Keith Kellogg, who has retained his presidential appointment because he reflects powerful elements inside Trump’s circle, has dismissed Putin’s response.
“A three-day ceasefire is absurd,” Kellong told the White House outlet Fox News on Tuesday (April 29). “What the president wants is a permanent, comprehensive ceasefire — sea, air, land, infrastructure — for a minimum of 30 days, and then we can extend that.” Referring to what he said is Ukrainian agreement to a 22-point term sheet negotiated with the Europeans last week, Kellogg added: “When it comes to the Ukrainians, I’m very comfortable with where we are at right now…Russia is not winning this war. Russia has not made major advances in the last year and a half. They have not taken the city of Kiev, the capital. They haven’t pushed to the west of the Dnieper River, which is a major obstacle. They haven’t taken Odessa… They haven’t really moved anything. They’ve moved by metres, not by miles…President Trump has it exactly right, and where he wants to get to…The president has this one right on the money, and that’s where we want to go to.”
Before the podcast discussion later today with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern, follow the seven charts. Take note of the last one – this shows that despite growing disapproval by US voters of the President’s performance in office, most Americans think Trump’s policy towards Russia is “too friendly”. This sentiment is holding strong at all education levels, for blacks and Hispanics, and across all age groups, except for the middle-aged (50-64). The most anti-Russian Americans recorded in this new poll appear to be Harris voters and black protestants.
1. TRUMP’ S 142 EXECUTIVE ORDERS IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com
For the full texts of each executive order, and the comparisons with predecessor presidents since 1937, see the Federal Register. For year-by-year data and annual averages for executive orders since George Washingbton, see https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
2. TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDERS BY POLICY AREA
Click on source to enlarge view:https://www.dw.com/
For more details, read this.
3. PRESIDENTS’ EXECUTIVE ORDERS IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS, 1933-2025
Source: https://www.npr.org/
4. CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS
Source: For texts of laws and enactment details, see
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/
For text of laws and enactment details, see: https://www.congress.gov/
5. FEDERAL COURT CHALLENGES TO PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS
Source: Maggie Haberman, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/
For details of each case, the court papers filed, date of filing, the court, and the outcome so far, click to read.
6. FLOW CHART OF LOBBY PROJECTS TO EXECUTIVE ORDERS IN TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
7A. TRUMP’S DISAPPROVAL RATING GROWS, ESPECIALLY WITH INDEPENDENTS
Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/
7B: APRIL 18-22, 2025 – WASHINGTON POST-ABC NEWS-IPSOS POLL
Source: https://docs.google.com/
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