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As a self-declared “dictator” in his first “day” of office, newly elected President Trump will want to make a few quick pen-and-ink modifications to the Constitution to undergird his planned activities.
Article 1 responsibilities relative to law-making and war-making by Congress will surely be moved over to the list of Article 2 responsibilities of the executive branch. Congress’ policy-making role will be limited to raising the revenue requisite to implement presidential laws and policies.
Article 1 responsibilities related to coining money would also likely be shifted over to Article 2, as the president will certainly require that coinage and bills carry his personal image.
Much of Article 1 duties related to elections, given the president’s sensitivities in this area, will be transferred over to the executive branch, so that elections can be carried out under his supervision in states and localities. He will want the power that the king had in England to both convene and dismiss sessions of Parliament/Congress and to call for new elections to empanel slates of representatives more congenial to his wishes.
America’s new Roman-style principate government may want to repeal the prohibition on titles of nobility in Article 1, in case he should want to enact provisions to elect senators from the wealthy class and not from the population at large. Senators would hold ownership of their offices in lifetime perpetuity and have the power to bequeath those political titles/offices to first-born sons.
Article 2 provisions related to executive branch responsibilities would additionally be expanded to assure that the president and his appointed administrative officials would be immune from prosecution for any alleged wrongdoing in office; to allow the president to write personal checks on the national treasury with the proviso that they be considered loans that he must pay back on a schedule of his choosing; and to end the requirement that the Senate must ratify treaties made by the president, thus enabling the chief executive to unilaterally rescind membership in such treaty organizations as NATO and make alliances instead with leaders of Eastern European and other nations more expedient for his purposes.
Article 3: The president would be empowered as the court of final appeal after the Supreme Court.
Article 4: States could decide to enact non-democratic forms of government, such as aristocracy, oligarchy or monarchy, and could fashion individualized slates of civil and human rights subject to approval by the president. States would have the right to implement their own immigration policies, also subject to the approval of the president. Immigration quotas would be fashioned on national and state levels to ensure a preponderance of Anglo-Saxon and European bloodlines in the population.
Article 5: Constitutional amendments would be made by the president in consultation with his Cabinet, and no longer by a convention of state-based representatives. This would allow speedy ginning up of future long-term changes our temporary dictator might need.
Article 6: Public officials would be required to take an oath or affirmation to support the president.
First Amendment: This amendment, at minimum, would be modified to allow for an establishment of religion, allowing for the church favored by the president. Candidates for office in MAGA America would be required to swear an oath of fidelity to the church’s theology and social policies. Control of local school boards would default to the established church, which would install chaplains as curriculum overseers and campus morality police. The president would appoint the presiding officer of the American national church like the King of England appoints the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Twenty-second Amendment: This law limiting the president to two terms would be repealed to allow lifetime occupancy of the White House.
Kimball Shinkoskey lives in Woods Cross, Utah.
