Trump, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears

The United States is in a constitutional crisis with scant historical precedent. President Donald Trump has launched a power grab, through executive orders and proclamations. He has installed the world’s richest man, his principal campaign donor Elon Musk, to run the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. Musk (who some now call the “X president” after the social media platform he owns) is the largest government contractor, with his SpaceX serving as the sole launch provider for NASA and Pentagon space operations. Musk is eviscerating almost every federal agency that has either investigated, fined or sought to regulate his business empire, all while avoiding investigation into conflicts of interest.

Trump’s more than 60 executive orders have provoked numerous lawsuits seeking to block an array of his fiats: his attempt to overturn the constitutional right to birthright citizenship; his freezing trillions of dollars of federal funds already approved by Congress and signed into law, including foreign aid, science funding and DEI initiatives; his mass firings of civil servants; his attacks on immigrants and trans people; and DOGE’s unfettered access to the private records of millions of federal workers and regular Americans.

Many federal judges have issued injunctions, at least temporarily halting Trump’s rampage. When a federal court issues an order, according to U.S. constitutional law, a president must obey. At an Oval Office news conference on Wednesday, when he and Musk took questions, Trump was asked if he would abide by court orders. “I always abide by the courts … and will appeal.”

Yet, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the administration to restore federal funding after 22 states sued, and followed up a week later, accusing the White House of ignoring his order. He then denied Trump’s request to allow the freeze to stay in place during the appeal. As of Feb. 13, reports are that the funds are still not flowing, violating the court’s order.

Vice President JD Vance, who was educated at Yale Law School, has encouraged Trump’s defiance. In response to the slew of restraining orders halting Trump’s executive orders, Vance tweeted,

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Vance’s view of extreme executive power is not new. In a 2021 interview, Vance offered this advice to Trump, who he predicted would win in 2024:

“Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the court — ‘cause you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Andrew Jackson became the seventh president of the United States in 1829 after running as an anti-establishment candidate who would fight corruption and the entrenched aristocracy. He was a hero of the War of 1812, had little formal education, a fierce temper, and two bullets lodged in his body, one from a duel and another from a brawl with Thomas Hart Benton, who would later become a senator and a key Jackson ally.

Jackson also owned a plantation and enslaved people of African descent. He sold some, breaking up families and brought a number of them to work in the White House.

The Jackson quote that Vance tweeted refers to an 1832 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Worcester v. Georgia, written by Chief Justice John Marshall. The court ruled that the state of Georgia could not impose its laws on Cherokee native land, which Georgia wanted to control. This allegedly prompted Jackson, who sided with Georgia, to utter that threatening line, “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

Jackson, it turns out, didn’t have to defy the court’s order. In succeeding years, as president, he was able to pack the court, consolidating a majority which overrode the Marshall court’s precedents. That allowed Jackson to orchestrate one of the greatest ethnic cleansings in U.S. history, the Trail of Tears.

From roughly 1830 to 1850, an estimated 60,000 people of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole indigenous nations were forcibly relocated to reservations in what is now Oklahoma. Close to 20,000 of them died en route or shortly thereafter. This was a central episode in the U.S. government’s genocide against indigenous people.

Vance’s threats to defy court orders, echoing a dark era under Jackson, are an ominous warning, as the Trump constitutional crisis continues to be fought in the courts, and in the streets.