ArcaMax

America's 249th birthday Friday will be no party. Call it bittersweet at best.

The guns of Gettysburg were stilled on July 4, 1863, after the Union Army whipped Robert E. Lee and Confederates brigades in a raging three-day theater of civil war.

Now somehow, without ever reading it, President Donald Trump tore up the Constitution's clear design of power into three equal parts: executive, legislative and judicial.

(Thanks, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Nothing lasts forever.)

In a trifecta, Trump seized Congress, the Supreme Court and his mindless Cabinet.

Senate Republicans raced day and night with a knife at Medicaid's throat. They need those dollars to extend huge tax cuts to billionaires like Trump, Jeff Bezos and their greedy ilk.

Up to 16 million may lose health care.

That's what it's all about in the Capitol corridors, where Republicans control both chambers.

Trillions of dollars in Treasury deficit are also at stake, to cover the rest of personal and corporate tax breaks, not meant for you and me.

Here's the deal: Republicans can hardly say the massive "reconciliation" bill benefits the common good.

It could be called "nothing for nobody" rather than "big and beautiful." Three Senate Republicans dissented, but the bill barely passed, 51-50.

Democrats know time is on their side if they can slow-walk the vote and get the word out.

Yet as messengers in the public square, they are overpowered by Trump every single day.

And House Republicans stand ready to rush delivery to Trump's desk by the Fourth of July. Orders are orders.

If government were just a game, Trump won the whole Monopoly board. To gloat over his victory, he paved over the White House Rose Garden.

Yes, he's a reckless, ruthless ruler -- for universities, science and medicine, the arts, libraries and humanitarian aid.

Yes, Trump sends federal agents out to take people by force just like the days of slavecatchers hunting fugitive slaves.

Yes, Trump treats the military as if he owns it. He violates cardinal rules the military lives by: Stay out of civilian streets. Seek congressional approval before an act of war.

At least give timely intelligence briefings to Congress after a major sudden strike.

No to all that.

The Iran bombing showed Trump couldn't care less about military law and ethics.

On First Street, the 6-3 Republican Supreme Court stamps power and permission slips for Trump.

Legal scholars who say there's a complex rhyme and reason to the high court are confronted with this: Anything goes.

The only justices defending the Constitution are three women -- Jewish, Latina and Black -- appointed by Democrats.

The John Roberts court sides with more and more presidential power.

The high court just aided and abetted Trump's brutal immigration policy (shipping souls to far-off lands) in our country of immigrants.

Again, Trump traces a tragic arc, of African people landing ashore on slave ships.

Oddly, the high court also denied the right of federal judges to issue national injunctions that halt the president's juggernaut.

In so doing, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to limits on the executive branch.

America's founders -- Quakers William Penn and Thomas Paine along with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson -- were eloquent masters of language.

Vice President Aaron Burr once warned of the danger of a demagogue causing the constitution to "perish."

Burr's famous farewell made men weep.

Like an abusive father of this country, Trump dishes out ferocious insults to Democrats and the press.

"Radical left" is his most mild turn of phrase. He even snarled that a young CNN Pentagon reporter should be "thrown out like a dog."

(Reminding us of the scorn with which Trump treats women.)

No president has ever pitched so many ugly insults in public, treating people like so much dirt. It's infectious among his online and MAGA base.

Trump lets our id out, adept at stoking the dark side of the war within the American people.

This very week may be the final act -- or the unspooling of the American Revolution, democracy as we have known it.

Unlike at Gettysburg, the war's decisive battle, the winning forces this Fourth of July are on the wrong side of history.

========

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

----

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate, Inc.