Jamie Raskin, Joe Walsh Team Up For ‘No Dictators Declaration’

WASHINGTON — Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) joined former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh on Monday to promote a “no dictators declaration” in response to the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency.

The symbolic pledge is an election season ploy to highlight Trump’s authoritarian tendencies without explicitly mentioning the former president.

“This declaration is about protecting the freedoms of the people by closing statutory loopholes that could allow a president to exploit the executive power to trample constitutional freedom and liberty,” Raskin said Monday outside the White House.

Walsh’s presence at Monday’s press conference, organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, State Democracy Defenders and Principles First, highlighted the bipartisan opposition to Trump. Several prominent Republicans, including Trump’s own former vice president, have spoken out against his bid for a second term.

“We’re at a point where the American people need to be protected against a president who would be a king, who would be a dictator,” said Walsh, a former tea party Republican from Illinois known for his past inflammatory rhetoric.

As for his fellow Republicans, who mostly back Trump, Walsh said, “It’s easier to get them to come out and speak against the notion of a dictatorship.”

The five-point “no dictators declaration” says Congress should curtail presidential power to declare emergencies, to deploy the military on U.S. soil, to require loyalty pledges from civil servants and to wield law enforcement against political opponents. It also says that former presidents should be able to be prosecuted.

“To reduce the threat of dictatorship, Congress should ensure that presidents who abuse their powers to commit crimes can be prosecuted like all other people,” the pledge says.

The Supreme Court said in July that the government can’t prosecute a former president for any “official acts” undertaken while in office. The ruling mostly embraced Trump’s legal argument that he’s immune from prosecution for his various efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election, which included pressuring state officials to undo the results, trying to install a lackey in the Justice Department and inciting a riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Prosecutors have pressed forward with a narrower version of their case against Trump, but the ruling was a major setback that also delayed the proceedings, and the case stands little chance of a resolution before November’s election. If Trump wins, he is widely expected to instruct the Justice Department to drop the matter.

In response to the case, President Joe Biden called for a constitutional amendment stating that former presidents aren’t immune from prosecution. Such an amendment would need approval not only from Congress but also three-fourths of state legislatures.

Raskin said a constitutional amendment wouldn’t address all the authoritarian problems presented by Trump, pointing to his possible use of emergency powers to bypass Congress. During his first term, Trump used an emergency declaration to divert military funds to pay for wall construction along the southern U.S. border, an action later declared unlawful.

“We’ve got to respond to each of the different problems that we’re dealing with right now, and that’s why it’s a declaration of principles that we don’t want to have dictators and Congress must rein in a runaway presidency,” Raskin said.