Donald M. Fenton
As I reflect upon the second term of what history may well record as the most consequential stress test ever imposed upon the constitutional architecture of the United States of America, a paradox of remarkable clarity has emerged from the fog of daily political chaos. Whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, Donald J. Trump — convicted felon, self-proclaimed dealmaker, and architect of an unprecedented assault upon the institutional norms of democratic governance — will, in the end, make America great again. Just not in the manner he ever intended.
Allow me to explain.
—————
The paradox of the tyrant
How can a president whose tenure has been defined by an almost inexhaustible catalog of alleged crimes, grift, abuse of power, contempt for the rule of law, and a wholesale disregard for the most fundamental standards of human decency serve as the instrument of America’s renewal? The answer, as any student of constitutional law or political history might appreciate, lies not in the man himself — but in the reaction his conduct inevitably and irrevocably provokes.
All tyrants are human. And as humans, they do not reign indefinitely. History teaches us with painful consistency that unchecked executive ambition, left to metastasize without institutional resistance, ultimately collapses beneath the weight of its own excess. The question before us as citizens, and legal professionals, sworn to uphold the principles embedded in our founding documents, is not whether this chapter ends — but what we build when it does.
—————
The coming constitutional reckoning
It is my considered view — informed by both legal education and a studied readings of our political moment — that the most enduring legacy of the Trump era will be a sweeping and long-overdue reformation of Article II of the United States Constitution and the statutory framework governing executive power.
The abuse of executive authority during this administration has rendered unmistakably visible what constitutional scholars have long warned about in law review articles that too few lawmakers bothered to read. The Executive Branch, through the aggressive and largely unchecked exercise of powers never intended to operate in isolation from congressional and judicial oversight, has become a distorted and disproportionate branch of our tripartite government. The framers anticipated ambition. They did not fully anticipate the weaponization of institutional inertia and political tribalism as shields against accountability.
I predict — and I offer this not as partisan wishfulness but as legal and historical analysis — that the post-Trump constitutional reformation will include, at minimum, the following:
First, a meaningful revision to the scope and exercise of the presidential pardon power. The pardon power as currently construed is constitutionally unchecked and has been exploited as an instrument of personal protection and political patronage in a manner wholly inconsistent with its original purpose. Congress and the states will act.
Second, the curtailment of executive orders as instruments of unilateral policymaking, subject to meaningful advice and consent — at minimum, Senate concurrence — for any order of broad domestic or national significance. The executive order was designed as an administrative tool, not a legislative bypass.
Third, and most significantly from a civic standpoint, I foresee the long-overdue resolution of a question our legal system has unconscionably deferred: that no person — including and especially the President of the United States — stands above the law. I envision a structural reform that bifurcates impeachment proceedings from criminal accountability, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a court of original trial jurisdiction for criminal charges brought against a sitting or former President, with all the rights, rules, evidentiary standards, and procedural protections afforded any ordinary citizen in any lower court in this nation. Equal justice under law cannot remain merely an inscription above a courthouse door. The normal Congressional Impeachment Process will start the legal ball rolling that will remove a sitting president from office and if his crimes are severe and heinous, that he/she would be put on Trial at the Supreme Court. This would be the only way to answer for the most severe crimes against “We the People.” An example is what has been seen recently with the misconduct in Minnesota by the private army of Trump disguised as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Fourth, I anticipate the codification — potentially by constitutional amendments — of an impeachable standard that encompasses gross, continuous, and deliberate misconduct with intentional misrepresentation to the American public. The bar must be extraordinarily high, as the First Amendment applies to presidents no less than to citizens. However, just as corporate officers bear a fiduciary duty of loyalty and care to their company and its shareholders, the President of the United States bears an equivalent duty of loyalty and care to the oath solemnly sworn before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and before the American people to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Habitual, weaponized dishonesty while using law enforcement agencies against political and perceived enemies undermines the very foundation of our democratic principles. Abuse and misuse of our federal institutions must not be allowed to continue and must carry a consequence.
—————
The midterms, the pendulum, and the neo-Nuremberg reckoning
As we approach the midterm elections of 2026, I predict a significant and historically consistent pendulum swing back toward Democratic governance in Congress. More notable, however, will be the political reckoning among those Republican officeholders who have served as complicit sycophants — men and women who have subordinated their oaths of office to the political convenience of a single man. History will not be generous to them, and many of them will know it very soon. They will jump like rats from a burning ship in the near future.
The unredacted and eventually fully released/or perhaps leaked “Epstein Files” — and the broader question of documented associations, high crimes, and alleged conduct involving the abuse of women and children — represents a threshold that no political calculation can comfortably cross. Sexual abuse of the vulnerable is not a policy disagreement. It is not a matter of partisan interpretation. It is a moral absolute, and it is the issue upon which the most reluctant Republican consciences will ultimately find their courage to grow a spine. I predict this will serve as the fulcrum of a third impeachment — one that will, at long last, stick and hold and remove this tyrant from office — forever.
As we celebrate 250 years of Independence the fundamental principal of our Democracy has come full circle … King of England Charles III today acknowledges and affirms the realization of even his most egregious ancestor, King George III (1760-1820) that no man is above the law. “The law must take its course,” King Charles said in a statement regarding the arrest of his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
England will give back to America by way of irrefutable evidence and testimony of the undeniable truths about Donald J. Trump:
Those who were complicit will seek repentance, rehabilitation, and distance. The historical analog is uncomfortable but apt: the post-conflict accounting that follows the unraveling of authoritarian governance does not wait for a comfortable moment. It arrives on its own schedule.
—————
The end of American political apathy
Let it be said that whatever else this administration has wrought, it has accomplished one thing of lasting democratic value: it has permanently extinguished American political apathy.
We do not have an apathy problem in this country any longer. We have a nation ignited — across every spectrum, across every demographic, across every ZIP code — with opinion, conviction, and an electorate of engaged citizens who will be extraordinarily difficult to put back to sleep. The ranks of the politically undecided are at a historic low, and they will not return to prior levels in our lifetimes.
This is the vaccine effect. That which does not kill a democracy becomes, in time, its permanent immunity against tyranny.
—————
2028 and the leader we will deserve
I will venture one final prediction, offered with the full acknowledgment that predictions in politics are a humbling enterprise: our 47th president will be succeeded in 2028 by a woman. She will be a unifier, not a divider. She will straddle both sides of the aisle with intelligence, grace, and the moral clarity that comes from having witnessed, firsthand, what the abandonment of those qualities produces. She will restore the honor for Office of the President with the dignity, domestic tranquility, and the principled leadership that the framers envisioned when they constructed the executive power as a servant of the people — not its master. America will be Great Again by virtue of its next Madame President whom ever she will be. As a native Michigander, I hope that will be our governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
—————
A word from James Madison
As we approach the 250th anniversary of this Republic — a milestone we should receive not with celebration alone, but with sober reflection and renewed commitment — the words of James Madison, architect of the very constitutional framework now under siege, ring with the clarity of prophecy: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
The equilibrium Madison sought — a fair and just society grounded in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — has been violently disrupted. But disruption is not destruction. The disruption has awakened us. The institutional memory of what we nearly lost will animate the reforms that follow, and those reforms will endure precisely because they were forged in the crucible of this moment.
The extreme political virus that has plagued this nation for more than a decade now is, in the fullness of time, becoming our vaccine.
America will be great again. It will be greater for having survived this. It will be well-vaccinated against allowing it to happen ever again.
—————
Donald M. Fenton is a retired senior engineer from the Ford Motor Co., where he concluded a distinguished career in 2022 after nearly 50 years in the Detroit automotive industry. He now pursues a second career in law, dedicating much of his time to legal studies and contributing his engineering expertise to local law firms.
Allow me to explain.
—————
The paradox of the tyrant
How can a president whose tenure has been defined by an almost inexhaustible catalog of alleged crimes, grift, abuse of power, contempt for the rule of law, and a wholesale disregard for the most fundamental standards of human decency serve as the instrument of America’s renewal? The answer, as any student of constitutional law or political history might appreciate, lies not in the man himself — but in the reaction his conduct inevitably and irrevocably provokes.
All tyrants are human. And as humans, they do not reign indefinitely. History teaches us with painful consistency that unchecked executive ambition, left to metastasize without institutional resistance, ultimately collapses beneath the weight of its own excess. The question before us as citizens, and legal professionals, sworn to uphold the principles embedded in our founding documents, is not whether this chapter ends — but what we build when it does.
—————
The coming constitutional reckoning
It is my considered view — informed by both legal education and a studied readings of our political moment — that the most enduring legacy of the Trump era will be a sweeping and long-overdue reformation of Article II of the United States Constitution and the statutory framework governing executive power.
The abuse of executive authority during this administration has rendered unmistakably visible what constitutional scholars have long warned about in law review articles that too few lawmakers bothered to read. The Executive Branch, through the aggressive and largely unchecked exercise of powers never intended to operate in isolation from congressional and judicial oversight, has become a distorted and disproportionate branch of our tripartite government. The framers anticipated ambition. They did not fully anticipate the weaponization of institutional inertia and political tribalism as shields against accountability.
I predict — and I offer this not as partisan wishfulness but as legal and historical analysis — that the post-Trump constitutional reformation will include, at minimum, the following:
First, a meaningful revision to the scope and exercise of the presidential pardon power. The pardon power as currently construed is constitutionally unchecked and has been exploited as an instrument of personal protection and political patronage in a manner wholly inconsistent with its original purpose. Congress and the states will act.
Second, the curtailment of executive orders as instruments of unilateral policymaking, subject to meaningful advice and consent — at minimum, Senate concurrence — for any order of broad domestic or national significance. The executive order was designed as an administrative tool, not a legislative bypass.
Third, and most significantly from a civic standpoint, I foresee the long-overdue resolution of a question our legal system has unconscionably deferred: that no person — including and especially the President of the United States — stands above the law. I envision a structural reform that bifurcates impeachment proceedings from criminal accountability, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a court of original trial jurisdiction for criminal charges brought against a sitting or former President, with all the rights, rules, evidentiary standards, and procedural protections afforded any ordinary citizen in any lower court in this nation. Equal justice under law cannot remain merely an inscription above a courthouse door. The normal Congressional Impeachment Process will start the legal ball rolling that will remove a sitting president from office and if his crimes are severe and heinous, that he/she would be put on Trial at the Supreme Court. This would be the only way to answer for the most severe crimes against “We the People.” An example is what has been seen recently with the misconduct in Minnesota by the private army of Trump disguised as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Fourth, I anticipate the codification — potentially by constitutional amendments — of an impeachable standard that encompasses gross, continuous, and deliberate misconduct with intentional misrepresentation to the American public. The bar must be extraordinarily high, as the First Amendment applies to presidents no less than to citizens. However, just as corporate officers bear a fiduciary duty of loyalty and care to their company and its shareholders, the President of the United States bears an equivalent duty of loyalty and care to the oath solemnly sworn before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and before the American people to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Habitual, weaponized dishonesty while using law enforcement agencies against political and perceived enemies undermines the very foundation of our democratic principles. Abuse and misuse of our federal institutions must not be allowed to continue and must carry a consequence.
—————
The midterms, the pendulum, and the neo-Nuremberg reckoning
As we approach the midterm elections of 2026, I predict a significant and historically consistent pendulum swing back toward Democratic governance in Congress. More notable, however, will be the political reckoning among those Republican officeholders who have served as complicit sycophants — men and women who have subordinated their oaths of office to the political convenience of a single man. History will not be generous to them, and many of them will know it very soon. They will jump like rats from a burning ship in the near future.
The unredacted and eventually fully released/or perhaps leaked “Epstein Files” — and the broader question of documented associations, high crimes, and alleged conduct involving the abuse of women and children — represents a threshold that no political calculation can comfortably cross. Sexual abuse of the vulnerable is not a policy disagreement. It is not a matter of partisan interpretation. It is a moral absolute, and it is the issue upon which the most reluctant Republican consciences will ultimately find their courage to grow a spine. I predict this will serve as the fulcrum of a third impeachment — one that will, at long last, stick and hold and remove this tyrant from office — forever.
As we celebrate 250 years of Independence the fundamental principal of our Democracy has come full circle … King of England Charles III today acknowledges and affirms the realization of even his most egregious ancestor, King George III (1760-1820) that no man is above the law. “The law must take its course,” King Charles said in a statement regarding the arrest of his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
England will give back to America by way of irrefutable evidence and testimony of the undeniable truths about Donald J. Trump:
Those who were complicit will seek repentance, rehabilitation, and distance. The historical analog is uncomfortable but apt: the post-conflict accounting that follows the unraveling of authoritarian governance does not wait for a comfortable moment. It arrives on its own schedule.
—————
The end of American political apathy
Let it be said that whatever else this administration has wrought, it has accomplished one thing of lasting democratic value: it has permanently extinguished American political apathy.
We do not have an apathy problem in this country any longer. We have a nation ignited — across every spectrum, across every demographic, across every ZIP code — with opinion, conviction, and an electorate of engaged citizens who will be extraordinarily difficult to put back to sleep. The ranks of the politically undecided are at a historic low, and they will not return to prior levels in our lifetimes.
This is the vaccine effect. That which does not kill a democracy becomes, in time, its permanent immunity against tyranny.
—————
2028 and the leader we will deserve
I will venture one final prediction, offered with the full acknowledgment that predictions in politics are a humbling enterprise: our 47th president will be succeeded in 2028 by a woman. She will be a unifier, not a divider. She will straddle both sides of the aisle with intelligence, grace, and the moral clarity that comes from having witnessed, firsthand, what the abandonment of those qualities produces. She will restore the honor for Office of the President with the dignity, domestic tranquility, and the principled leadership that the framers envisioned when they constructed the executive power as a servant of the people — not its master. America will be Great Again by virtue of its next Madame President whom ever she will be. As a native Michigander, I hope that will be our governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
—————
A word from James Madison
As we approach the 250th anniversary of this Republic — a milestone we should receive not with celebration alone, but with sober reflection and renewed commitment — the words of James Madison, architect of the very constitutional framework now under siege, ring with the clarity of prophecy: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
The equilibrium Madison sought — a fair and just society grounded in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — has been violently disrupted. But disruption is not destruction. The disruption has awakened us. The institutional memory of what we nearly lost will animate the reforms that follow, and those reforms will endure precisely because they were forged in the crucible of this moment.
The extreme political virus that has plagued this nation for more than a decade now is, in the fullness of time, becoming our vaccine.
America will be great again. It will be greater for having survived this. It will be well-vaccinated against allowing it to happen ever again.
—————
Donald M. Fenton is a retired senior engineer from the Ford Motor Co., where he concluded a distinguished career in 2022 after nearly 50 years in the Detroit automotive industry. He now pursues a second career in law, dedicating much of his time to legal studies and contributing his engineering expertise to local law firms.
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