As I understand it, the Epstein grand jury transcripts have been permitted to be made public by a federal judge, and ordered to be made public by the law recently passed by Congress and signed by the President. With this in mind, one wonders how the government yesterday could have released a 100 page grand jury document with redactions that included everything single word of the document. In other words, the government released 100 blank pages in this one document alone.

This partial document release is just one other example of how the Trump administration ignores the law. They are bolstered by two beliefs, both of which are well founded. The first is that the President bears no legal responsibility for what he does, as long as what he does is part of his job as President as he sees it. That was the result of that unfortunate Supreme Court case, Trump v. the United States, decided last year before Trump came into office for his second term.

The second belief is that the Supreme Court will support Trump in whatever he does in the future, not in the sense that Trump v. the United States allows him to avoid personal liability, but in the sense that the Court will agree with the administration on it power to set the various administration policies that are challenged by Democrats or others. Although we don’t yet know how the Court will view Trump’s tariffs, for instance, this belief is legitimately based on the reality that most of the administration’s positions have been upheld, usually by 6-3 votes, even though this typically requires the Court to overturn decisions made by lower courts. In other words, the Supreme Court is consistent ignoring precedent and creating what in effect are new legal realities.

For those of us who oppose everything that Trump does (usually because we disagree with his policies or lack of policies, but sometimes simply because he is just a despicable human being), Trump v. the United States was a horrific opinion. But there is a lingering question, which is rarely asked. With this decision in place, if we had a President whom we could respect, who had positions that we generally agreed with, and who had no problem using the power the Court had given him as freely as Trump does, would we object the way we are objecting today? I am not trying to answer that question; I have no idea what the answer really is. My guess is that we would be split in our opinions.

But we know that there has always been a debate between the authority of the President, as executive, and Congress, as the legislative branch of government. This debate, now that Congress has once again proven itself paralytic, and the current President proven himself boundary-less, has moved to new levels. An example of this centers around questions of independent agencies, from the Federal Reserve to the FCC. If we have a constitution which divides legislative and executive functions, can the legislature create institutions, like these two, which do not answer to the executive? Although these independent agencies have functioned in that way for decades and decades, is time to pull them all under the control of the executive, who should have the right to control both personnel and policies of these heretofore “independent” agencies? None of us may want Trump to get control of these agencies, but if the executive was not Trump but anti-Trump, would we feel the same?

And this goes to the even bigger question, that we tend not to discuss, which is whether or not the American form of government works in the 21st century. Our government is based on checks and balances, and on public discussions of policies and potential policy changes, and all tha takes time, and that just may not be sufficient for a major power in our world with its continual technological changes. I read this morning that China is working hard on nuclear fusion – if you look at the front page New York Times articles, you will see what they are doing. We cannot compete with China with that kind of intensity.

We even see in our space policy that NASA no longer is in complete control; our space future is going to wind up in the hands of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or both. The rich get richer; our government becomes more and more dependent on, and under the control of, billionaires, either because they control our industrial production, or because they control the funding that allows our political parties to flourish.

In other words, the Trump phenomenon may not be solely the result of a demented Donald Trump. Whoever winds up as President will face the same problems – need to control all aspects of the government to allow it to function in a competitive manner, yet held back by an unworkable Congress, and beholden to a group of billionaires who, through their control of both industry and the size of their political contributions, wind up as powerful as, or perhaps more powerful than, our elected leaders.

In 2028, Trump is done. Clearly, that does not mean our troubles are over.