What is the goal of our American Tribunal?
That goal is to re-establish a nation that is honest and just, to recoup larcenous gains, to compensate and restore those who have been harmed, to repair broken institutions, to punish those who have acted in violation of our laws and the laws of nations, and to deter future bad conduct.
These are general expressions; they are not adequately specific.
So let us begin to break that down into more specific elements.
Justice in America is more than simply laws that apply equally to all. Justice in America also requires that just laws be made, that injust laws be removed, and that there be fair and equal access to legal procedures by everyone regardless of wealth or status.
The United States has become unjust. And what justice remains is to be acquired only at high costs, often costs that can be afforded only the the very wealthy.
Law on the books go unenforced, and the concept of legal standing has been elevated to a fine art in order to prevent judicial review of obvious crimes and usurpation of public assets by private actors. For instance, no one, it seems, has standing to bring legal action to prevent President Trump's clear violation of the Constitution's emoluments clauses.
People who are harmed or discriminated against by Federal or State government actors often find themselves barred from redress by "qualified immunity" of police, almost royal immunity of the President, claims of "national security", and by laundering impermissible government actions through friendly private actors (such as when Elon Musk's DOGE, a body of unclear provenance, raved Federal agencies in ways that Atilla the Hun could only admire.)
Our laws have been twisted through bizarre interpretations, such as our Supreme Court's declarations that racism is absent from situations in which racism is clearly alive and well. Or when SCOTUS failed to perceive how money, gifts, and privileged access are used to influence and purchase government acts unless there is a rare tit-for-tat, quid-pro-quo agreement.
We have seen Federal and State officers - from attorneys general (such as Paxton in Texas, and Bondi and Blanche at the Federal level) become zealots pursuing political opponents while turning a blind on on the acts of political supporters.
President Trump is well described as a "coin-operated President".
Massive corporate mergers have been permitted when the result benefits the Trump family or Trump Organization.
Voting is being suppressed; SCOTUS uses its "shadow docket", particularly when presented with contrived and tailored cases, to become a new legislature, superseding Congress and the Presidential signature.
We should not limit our goals to redress only matters that occurred within the borders of the US or afflicted US citizens or residents. The TME harms are worldwide.
The Trump/MAGA administration has been a Ministry of Untruth. "Press Secretaries" and "Spokesmen" at all levels make outrageous lies without a blush.
We will never achieve a fully honest government - government duplicity has been around ever since the Greeks placed a gift horse before the walls of the city of Troy.
The answer requires multiple prongs:
The government often uses rules of "standing" to prevent people and the media from going to court to demand access to our government's data.
The Tump/MAGA Era (TME) has destroyed the wealth, lives, and families of so many people and small enterprises.
Some of that destruction was sheer wanton rapine and destruction. The Trump/Miller deportation industry has separated parents from children (possibly forever), broken homes, and deported innocents.
Some of that destruction was quasi-religious and anti-science reaction against modernity. Trump and RFK have replaced medical science with primitive tribal voodoo. One can plausibly assert that Trump, through his non-reaction to Covid, and now (with the help of people like RFK Jr.), has killed more Americans than did WW-II.
We can not fully restore those losses. Partial restoration is possible, even though it may significant cost to do so. We ought to consider those costs to be our national penance for permitting TME to ruin so much.
-256x342.jpg "Attilla the Hun")
The first half of the second Trump/MAGA administration has been a wanton wrecking of Federal agencies. Atilla the Hun could not have accomplished so much destruction in so short a time.
Much of this was mindless, such as done by Elon Musk's DOGE post-adolescent "know it all" boyz who simply chopped, cut, and took. Much of that damage, particularly the transfer of unknown, but massive amounts, of personally identifiable private information of citizens into unknown private hands, is damage that can never be repaired.
Other destruction was planned far in advance, and was even published in works such as Project 2025. For example, the eradication of the Department of Education had been planned for years.
The list of Federal agencies that have been ravished is long; a few examples will suffice:
Some agencies have been repurposed. Best known is the transformation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) into an unaccountable secret police force reminiscent of the Soviet Unions NKVD or East Germany's STASI.
What is the goal of our American Tribunal?
The Trump/MAGA administration (with help from Elon Musk and DOGE) has, and has continued to, decimate the Federal bureaucracy by eliminating or reclassifying jobs.
The Federal government is quickly losing its institutional knowledge of "how things work."
And if the positions are filled the Trump/MAGA administration is trying to alter our Civil Service protections to ensure that only loyalists are hired.
At the same time that the Trump/MAGA administration has attacked the Civil Service, it has filled appointive/political positions with dedicated loyalists.
One might wonder whether Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago is surrounded by more unswerving, supine courtiers than was Louis XIV at Versailles. Two examples of Trump's courtiers would be Pam Bondi and Russell Vought.
Thus, at the end of the Trump/MAGA era, we will need a mass purge of the Federal bureaucracy. This writer uses the word "purge" quite intentionally and with full awareness of its negative connotations.
We should not underestimate the size of that purge. Institutions have inertia. In order to change the direction of an institution's culture, one may need to replace a very high percentage of its staff. This will even further reduce our Federal government's "institutional knowledge."
Almost certainly such a purge will catch people who really ought to be retained. This writer has few ideas how to balance fair "civil service" process notions against the need to do a serious cleansing of the "poison pill" staff that was inserted by the Trump/MAGA administration.
Americans have a long history of mistrust of the government in general and the Federal government in particular. Often that mistrust has been merely unfounded suspicions. However, the Trump/MAGA administration has given people concrete evidence of predatory acts, bribery, insider trading, and disregard for laws by Federal officers and agencies.
Trust is easily lost and is difficult to re-create.
There are both Constitutional and statutory restrictions on what an officer of the United States government may receive.
The Trump/MAGA regime is ignoring them all.
Foreign Emoluments Clause - Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section9
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.
Domestic Emoluments Clause - Article II, Section 1, Clause 7 https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section1
The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.
The Supreme Court has largely reduced the scope of federal anti-bribery statutes by requiring an overt this-for-that, quid-pro-quo exchange, and distinguishing between "bribes" and "gratuities". As we see with the Trump/MAGA administration, there is rarely a direct, overt, clear this-for-that transaction. Rather, we see purchases of influence through gifts (such as a gilded Boeing 747 airliner from Qatar), a "Peace Price" from the soccer organization, FIFA, or large donations to Trump campaigns or building projects.
The Trump/MAGA administration is corrupt. The Trump/MAGA administration is more than willing to sell favors and assets in exchange for unquestioned loyalty or money. The US Supreme Court seems unable to recognize obvious bribery and violations of the Constitution's two "emoluments" clauses. The amounts of these "bribes" and favors range into the Billions of dollars.
(The Trump/MAGA administration, and particularly Trump himself, have been described as "coin operated": insert a coin, such as a big wad of cash, and wait, often not for very long, for your reward.)
Those who have benefited from this extortion and sale of government favors are quite fearful of having to return those ill-gotten gains.
For example, Congress or the Tribunal should assure that not a single piece of government-owned property - including Presidential papers and Boeing 747s - ends up in a National Archives facility or public museum, not a MAGA Monument to Trump in Miami.
Clawing back those gains is an important goal of the proposed American Tribunal.
We tend to think only of the government actors who received bribes.
But there are also those who made the bribes. Those people and corporations (and other entities) often receive a great bargain; for every dollar they invested in making the bribe, they receive many multiples of that in return benefits.
We should strive to claw back those benefits from everyone, whether individuals, corporations, churches, or other countries that bribed our government.
We live in a country that has dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder:
As a nation, we can't seem to decide whether to live by the violent and punitive Old Testament or by the (sometimes) forgiving New Testament.
On one hand, we regularly apply the death penalty, even to those who are innocent or mentally unable to comprehend their acts or the punishment.
On the other hand, we imbue police with the near-perfect armor of "qualified immunity". Our Supreme Court has placed a royal crown of protection on the President and has made the rules of "standing" so narrow that, as a practical matter, nothing short of the inevitable creeping hand of death can call the President to account.
So, should we forgive or punish those of the Trump/MAGA regime who have so terribly harmed our country?
This writer comes down strongly on the side of the vengeful god of the Old Testament, if not for the punitive satisfaction, then to deter future copycats.
Members of the Trump/MAGA klan are like ants. But rather than being attracted to sugar or fats, Trump/MAGA klan members tend to be driven by the desire for money, power, or proximity to those they think are rich or powerful. That suggests that an effective means of detering future conduct would be to remove those attractants.
There are some obvious means, such as Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which can be used to deny jobs or offices to many who participated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capital.
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The people of MAGA will not suddenly be transformed into Norman Rockwell model citizens. Instead, they will remain as an angry subculture who will adopt a false mythology about why they are no longer in power.
This creates a situation similar to that in Germany around 1920 when the NAZIs and other facist groups began to coalesce around symbols of WW-I and myths that Germany would have won WW-I if it had not been "stabbed in the back".
Care must be taken that we do not feed the MAGA monster. It feeds particularly well on images, tales, and physical relics.
Images and tales can be countered by education, not necessarily in-school education, but broad messaging from everyone opposed to MAGA. Fads, such as the self-mutilation of Mar-a-Lago Face will hopefully simply vanish under the weight of their stupidy.
The Trump/MAGA era has created many physical relics. These will become prized articles of veneration.
There are many examples of these physical relics:
Holy sites of Mar-a-Lago, Trump golf courses and hotels; and places (like the newly renamed Palm Beach airport) onto which Trump or his acolytes have attached his name
Labels, such as those building-sized pictures of overloard Trump that have been attached to Federal buildings, or simply the letters that formed Trump's name on the Kennedy Center
The ghastly gilded and spray painted decoratios that have been installed throughout the White House
Trump labeled merchandise
January 6 flags
For large physical sites full destruction might feel good but perhaps they can be repurposed to anti-MAGA uses, such as converting Trump Tower in New York City into low income and homeless housing.
Smaller items should be either destroyed - such as grinding those awful Oval Office decorations into dust that is then dumped into the ocean - or made, through social efforts, into targets of disdain, ridicule, and humor - much as Mel Brooks did in his play-within-a-play of "Spring Time For Hitler".
The Trump/MAGA era has resurrected racism and manipulated voting. Gerrymandering is now common. Elections laws and procedures are being created to dictate outcomes that permanently entrench the Trump/MAGA universe.
We must find means to unwind these biased systems - including possible removal and replacement of elected or appointed officials.