4 ways Trump and McGuire are flouting the law

An incomplete list.

Photo from the McGuire campaign’s X feed.

For all his talk of respecting the law and loving the Constitution, Donald Trump has a way of doing things in direct contravention of both—and apparently with the approval of the 5th district’s congressman.

Over the weekend, I emailed Rep. McGuire’s press secretary, Elizabeth-Burton Jones, asking for comments on these four examples. She hasn’t responded.

1. Skirting term limits.

Under the 22nd Amendment, Trump can’t run again—“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”—but that hasn’t kept him from dropping hints that “there are ways you can do it.”

There’s been plenty of speculation about how he might try to pull it off; no need to rehearse it here. What I’m interested in is what John McGuire thinks of the idea.

Here are the questions I emailed Jones, his press secretary.

• Does Rep. McGuire support the idea of Donald Trump serving a third term?

• If so, how does he foresee Trump becoming president, considering that the 22nd Amendment says he can be elected only twice?

• Would he support Trump’s being president beyond three terms?

Jones hasn’t replied.

2. Giving stock tips.

On April 9, at 9:37 a.m. ET, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” Less than four hours later, he announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs, which led to a $4 trillion surge in the stock market. Later, he introduced Charles Schwab as a man who’d made $2 billion in the stock market on the chaos that his own tariff policies created.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought stocks worth as much as $15,000 in each of 17 companies in the hours before Trump’s announcements. Did she know what was coming? (She says she didn’t.)

What about John McGuire?

Like all members of Congress, he’s legally required to disclose any trades worth more than $1,000 within 45 days, so if he has any to report, they should show up by late May.

In the meantime, I emailed his press secretary the following questions. She hasn’t replied.

• When did the congressman learn that President Trump was pausing most of his tariffs for 90 days?

• Did Rep. McGuire buy or sell any stocks in the 48 hours before the announcement?

• If so, did he do so with foreknowledge of the president’s announcement?

• Does he believe there’s an appearance of impropriety given that the president announced on social media “this is a great time to buy” four hours before lifting the tariffs, and that NASDAQ call volume spiked minutes before the announcement?

• Does he support steps that would prevent members of Congress and the administration from trading assets based on inside knowledge of decisions or announcements that will affect markets?

Bonus joke I didn’t send his office:

What do you call buying stocks when prices are low and selling when they’re high? Buying the dip.

What do you call campaigning for John McGuire? Selling the dip.

3. Dodging qualifications for America’s top military leader.

President Trump appointed Dan “Razin” Caine to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Senate approved him last week with support from Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, and 11 other Democrats.

By law, the chairman of the JCS is supposed to have served as the vice chairman of the JCS, chief of one of the branches, or commander of “a unified or specified combatant command.”

Caine hasn’t had any of these jobs. The president can make an exception if it’s “necessary in the national interest,” as the law puts it,, but Trump hasn’t explained why we need a chairman who isn’t otherwise qualified for the job.

Of course, John McGuire is on record as being a fan of meritocracy who opposes hiring anyone other than the most qualified candidate. As he posted on Facebook last month:

Even those pushing it know D.E.I. = Didn’t Earn It. DEI is illegal discrimination and it is a tool used by the radical left to bully institutions and individuals into submission.

So he must be against passing over qualified candidates and hiring someone for America’s top military role who Didn’t Earn It. And he definitely wouldn’t want anyone in the job who will bully institutions and individuals into submission, even at the order of the president.

Here are the questions I emailed McGuire’s press secretary. I also asked Warner’s and Kaine’s offices why they voted to confirm Caine. None have responded. Correction: Sen. Kaine’s press secretary responded before my deadline, but somehow I missed her email. I’ll paste her response below the questions.

• Which of the qualifications does Rep. McGuire believe Caine has met?

• If none, what does he believe justifies appointing someone who doesn’t meet the requirements?

• Has Rep. McGuire asked, or will he ask, the president to explain whether suspending the qualifications is in the national interest and, if it is, why he thinks that’s the case?

Response from Sen. Kaine’s office:

General Caine has served our country honorably, and I believe he will continue to do so as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I also know some of his former colleagues who speak very highly of him. After meeting with him one-on-one and asking him additional questions at his Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, I believe he will provide sound military advice to the President and Secretary of Defense, work with our allies and partners, and avoid politicizing the Department of Defense.

4. Seizing control of elections.

With the executive order on election integrity that he signed last month, President Trump tried to claim a role in governing the mechanics of a federal election. Among other things, his order gives DOGE and Homeland Security authority to review voter registrations. It also instructs the Justice Department to prevent states from counting mail-in ballots received after election day, and it would require to you prove you’re a citizen, using a specific and limited list of documents, when you register.

It’s not clear, by the way, that non-citizens registering to vote is a real issue; when Glenn Youngkin scrubbed the rolls of 6,300 people, local election officials “attributed much of the presence of possible noncitizens on the voter rolls to errors made when people fill out paper or online forms or when they respond to a question about citizenship on a touchpad device” at the DMV.

At any rate, there’s one fundamental problem with Trump’s executive order on elections: The Constitution doesn’t allow the president to do any of these things. As former Homeland Security official Paul Rosenzweig explains in this excellent piece, the Constitution expressly gives that responsibility to the states and to Congress. Here’s the exact and unmistakably clear wording:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Congress is now trying to do through the SAVE Act what Trump tried to do by executive action. As lots of writers are pointing out, the act requires expensive documentation to prove you’re a citizen—$130 or more for a passport, for instance— which amounts to a poll tax.

Plus, there’s a reason the Constitution distributes control over elections so widely. We don’t want one person with a vested interest in the outcome of an election to have so much control over who gets to vote and how and whether their votes get counted. Especially when that person has spent nearly five years denying the reality that he lost an election.

What’s most concerning, though, is that before Congress even voted on this question, Trump tried to settle it literally by fiat with his executive order—by simply claiming power he does not have.

I emailed Burton-Jones the following questions. She hasn’t replied.

• Does Rep. McGuire believe the president has a role in governing the mechanics of a federal election? If so, why? Where does this power come from, in his view?

• Would he have any concerns about vesting control over federal elections in a single person who has a clear interest in their outcome?

• Does he think the framers made a mistake in giving that control to only the states and Congress?

4 more areas I’ll be asking about

It may be a lost cause, given their failure to respond so far, but I’m going to email McGuire’s office about these other examples and will share my questions and any answers they send in a future post:

5. ignoring court orders to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador

6. threatening to throw U.S. citizens in the same Salvadoran prison as Abrego Garcia

7. using his authority to extort law firms that have represented his opponents

8. ordering the FCC to investigate CBS News for running stories he disapproves of

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McGuire won’t speak out, but isn’t there even one Republican who will?

Yes! One lone senator has been brave enough to call out Trump. Check out this CNN interview with a Florida whippersnapper named Marco Rubio when asked why he called Trump a wannabe Third World strongman:

Here’s what happens in many countries all over the world. You have a leader that emerges that basically says don’t put your faith in yourselves, don’t put your faith in society. Put your faith in me. I’m a strong leader. I’m going to make things better all by myself.

This is very typical. You see it in the Third World. You’ve seen it in Latin America for decades.

We’ve never been that kind of country. We have a president. The president is an American citizen who serves for a period of time, constrained by the Constitution and the powers vested in that office.

If you listen to the way he describes himself and what he’s going to do, he’s going to singlehandedly do this and do that without regard to whether it’s legal or not.

I can tell you this. No matter what happens in this election, for years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media, and voters at large that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump. This not going to end well, one way or the other.

This Rubio fellow is sharp! I wonder what happened to him. Wherever he is now, I bet he’d like a word with our Secretary of State.