Stirling Newberry pointed this out, and I agree.
Some of Trump’s Executive Order are clearly illegal, unconstitutional, or both. Trump can’t get rid of Birthright Citizenship and his order goes clearly against the written text of the amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This isn’t open to interpretation. There is no wiggle room.
Trump’s freezing of grants is likewise straight up unconstitutional. Congress decides who gets how much money for what purpose. The President executes Congress’s orders. If Trump can decide who gets how much money for what purpose when Congress has not given him that permission, then there aren’t three branches, but two.
Stirling has a longer article making the case with reference to other executive orders, and it’s worth reading, but these two are clear cut. There is no wiggle room, though many people are trying to find some.
The play here is simple: what Trump’s doing is unconstitutional and illegal, but the Supremes are controlled by the Republican party, so they are expected to ignore the plain text of the constitution and the 14th amendment and find some torturous justification for Trump’s actions.
This is another step along the line to the Imperial Presidency.
You should also be very unhappy about the domestic use of troops for domestic law enforcement. That crosses a bright red line for obvious reasons. Likewise Trump is stepping all over State’s rights.
(Stirling also has a series of articles on the future of the Center Left. They’re worth reading. Remember that he has aphasia, and pay attention to the argument and the ideas, ignoring any awkwardness. Go to the article linked, click on the first article and work thru.)
Trump is also fundamentally changing the role of America in the world order. Rather than being the central hub of treaty network, the imperial core with vassals and subjects who are, mostly, treated well as long as they stay in their place and gave the US their resources, which the US paid for by printing currency. Trump has now decided to end that era, and to fully commit to cannibalizing America’s allies. Odds of NATO’s survival are bad, and it’s a dead letter when Trump can threaten war against Denmark, one of its members. Everyone sees this, but people are so aghast and taken back most aren’t calling it out yet.
There is also a changeover of oligarchic elites. Previously the financial elites ran government. The tech elites are now moving and taking over much of that role. They have different priorities than the old financial elites and instead of being neo-liberals, they are utopian technocratic neo-fascists. They are convinced that they are superior people, even more so than the old elites and that everyone should do as they say. Everyone else to them, is stupid and unfit for power. Government, to them, must be rid of what little remains of its regulatory powers so they can do what they want, unconstrained by legal burdens. “You can just do things” is prescriptive: there have been some limits, and they want as many of those limits removed as possible.
This is a constitutional crisis. If Trump succeeds, there’s a very different country afterwards, run in a very different way by very different people.