Under ordinary circumstances, there would be no doubt whatsoever. The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s biggest police union, gave him its approval in 2016 and 2020, lauding him as “a candidate who calls for law and order.”

The Chicago chapter of the FOP also endorsed him both times. A 2016 national poll for Police Magazine found that 84% of officers planned to vote for Trump, with only 8% choosing Hillary Clinton.

But that was before Trump was found guilty of serious crimes by a New York jury. That was before he was indicted in two federal cases charging him with mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election and in a state case for allegedly trying to overturn the election results in Georgia.

It was before a host of Trump associates were convicted of crimes and others were indicted. It was before Trump helped incite a mob of supporters who invaded the U.S. Capitol — resulting in nearly 1,000 arrests and hundreds of criminal charges.

Trump has long portrayed himself as the best friend cops could have. In a 2019 speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago, he declared: “Every day of my presidency, I will be your greatest and most loyal champion. I have been, and I will continue to be.”

He scorns the idea that they should exercise restraint. “Please don’t be too nice,” he told an audience of cops in 2017, lamenting that they are expected to protect suspects from hitting their heads when being placed in squad cars. His first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, denounced the consent decree that was created to address documented abuses in the Chicago Police Department. 

But does Trump deserve their support? The job of police is to enforce the laws, catch and arrest criminals, and uphold public safety. Trump has made it his business to undermine law enforcement, encourage political violence and subvert the Constitution. 

The Capitol insurrection should have put to rest the notion that Trump has the best interests of cops at heart. The rioters attacked some 140 officers with fire extinguishers, flag poles, hockey sticks, bear spray and other weapons. One of the officers, Michael Fanone, was shocked with a Taser and beaten unconscious, suffering a heart attack and traumatic brain injury.

What did Trump do that day? He sat in the White House, spurning pleas that he tell the mob to disperse. Nearly three hours passed before he finally did so — while avowing: “We love you. You’re very special.”

Hundreds of those who invaded the Capitol have been convicted of crimes, and others are awaiting trial. But Trump, who is not known for the quality of mercy, has demanded that the Jan. 6 “hostages” be released. He said he would look “very, very seriously at full pardons.”

Trump made a point of hugging a woman who went to jail for her role in the insurrection. One of his rallies included the playing of a recording of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 defendants who are being held in jail.

His view of the Jan. 6 episode is clear. He has abundant sympathy for the rioters — and none for the cops who put their lives on the line.

As a jury concluded last week, he has committed at least 34 felonies. He faces trials on 54 other charges. But his offenses go beyond proven and alleged violations of the criminal code.  

He has mounted a full-scale attack on law enforcement and the courts. Referring to a routine court-approved FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, he spread the ridiculous fantasy that the Justice Department had plotted his assassination.

He called the prosecutor and judge in the New York case “sick people” who had “rigged” his trial. He made a veiled threat of violent unrest from his supporters if he loses in November — violence that would likely put police in danger.

His denunciations are meant to destroy public faith in the American system of justice, which can only make the job of cops more difficult and dangerous. Trump, who claims to be the law-and-order candidate, is actually an agent of lawless chaos.

I emailed the Fraternal Order of Police twice to ask about its endorsement plans and got no response. John Catanzara, head of the Chicago chapter, told me his lodge will wait until the national organization makes its choice. 

Even after his conviction, a Trump endorsement by police organizations would not be a surprise. But it would be a crime. 

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Since the conservative movement and the Republican Party became wholly owned subsidiaries of the Trump Organization, right-wing advocates have been feverishly devoted to the interests of the 45th president. Lawyers for Donald Trump, who is desperate to evade punishment for trying to overturn his 2020 defeat, argue that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken in the exercise of his office. 

They’ve gone so far as to insist that if the president ordered a SEAL team to give his rival the Osama bin Laden treatment, he could not be prosecuted unless he was first impeached and convicted. Of course, if that were true, he could also order the assassination of any members of Congress who dared to consider removing him from office, which would put the kibosh on that possibility.

Most conservatives show no alarm at these prospects. Eighteen Republican state attorneys general have filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of Trump. No fewer than 27 congressional Republicans signed on to one endorsing his claim to immunity. Republican U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina favor giving the president a license to run amok. Few, if any, Republican officials have dared to disagree.

As usual, the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal offer a showcase for conservatives engaging in tortured rationalizations of whatever their leader wants. David B. Rifkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley argue that “immunity for official actions is a necessary part of the constitutional structure.” In their view, “a president threatened with prosecutions for official acts couldn’t exercise his duties with full vigor.”

The newspaper’s editorial board likewise sides with Trump, accusing the Justice Department of “using lawfare to defeat a political opponent” and contending that “a President needs to be free to make controversial decisions without having to worry that he’ll be prosecuted for them after he leaves office.” The same editorial gingerly conceded that “he shouldn’t be free to commit crimes that are unrelated to the office” — while refusing to admit that Trump did any such thing.

But this is not the first time that the courts have had to consider whether presidents should have any sort of legal immunity. The issue came up in 1996, when Democrat Bill Clinton occupied the White House. 

He was sued by Paula Jones, who accused him of sexually harassing her in a particularly gross manner when he was governor of Arkansas and she was a state employee. His lawyers, citing the demands of the presidency, said he should not be subject to a civil trial while he is in office.

Back then, conservatives universally scorned the notion that Clinton should get a break. Michael Barone, writing in the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, found it “preposterous for the chief executive of a republic to claim the sovereign immunity of a king or queen.”

An editorial in, yes, The Wall Street Journal, took a similar view,  asking, “Are the Clintons simply above the laws that govern all the rest of us?”

Keep in mind that Clinton’s claim was far less audacious than Trump’s. He didn’t request immunity for all time — only until his term was up, at which point he could be hauled into court. 

Nor was he asserting the right to carry out felonies without fear. The Jones case was a civil one, exposing Clinton only to monetary damages. Trump, by contrast, insists that a president should be free to commit crimes — even murder — without ever answering for them. The willingness of conservatives to justify Trump’s claim after condemning Clinton’s can be described only as a titanic case of hypocrisy. 

You might assume that Trump’s critics are equally hypocritical. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief rejecting Clinton’s claim — just as it did with Trump’s. The liberal New York Times editorial board has also been consistent. “No citizen — not even a sitting President — is above the law,” it said in 1997,  a position it has reiterated in regard to Trump.

Oh, and I wrote a column in the Tribune arguing that “one of the glories of American democracy is that the president, unlike princes and potentates of yore, is subject to the same laws as his lowliest constituent.”  The Supreme Court unanimously agreed.

The Republican Party and its allies once upheld the principle that presidents should be accountable under the laws of the land. But now their philosophy about principles resembles Kristi Noem’s  philosophy about dogs: Don’t get too attached, and kill them off when they give you trouble.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

As with explosives, the fear was of being blown up — in this case, at the polls. Republicans were more than happy to use the word to motivate their voters, vowing to outlaw “abortion on demand,” “abortion as birth control” and “partial-birth abortion.” They did their best to coat the term in slime.

But things have changed. Nowadays, Democrats are not reticent about what they are defending. And Republicans are not quite so forthright.

“A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to ban abortion across the country,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Joe Biden’s campaign manager. Vice President Kamala Harris warned that “if Donald Trump has his way, he’ll gut abortion care in every state across the country.” In January, Gov. J.B. Pritzker took part in a discussion sponsored by the Chicago Abortion Fund and declared that “abortion access is health care.”

Many Republicans suddenly prefer to talk about anything else.

Trump, meanwhile, is straining to muddle the issue. That isn’t easy for someone who appointed three of the justices who buried Roe v. Wade and favors a national ban. “We’re going to come up with a time — and maybe we could bring the country together on that issue,” he said recently. “The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. … And it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable.” But a 15-week ban is still a ban.

What brought about this change was the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision enshrining the right to abortion. Since then, public opinion has shifted in favor of reproductive freedom.

A Pew Research Center poll last year found that 53% of Americans think medication abortion should be legal in their state, with only 22% saying it should not be.

Voters in seven states, including red ones such as Kansas and Ohio, have had the chance to vote on ballot initiatives involving abortion rights — and abortion rights have won every time.

Florida, which Trump carried twice, could be next. On Monday, the state Supreme Court issued a decision that will allow a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — while approving a November referendum on a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. A poll last year found that 62% of Florida voters would vote “yes” — enough to meet the 60% required to pass. In any case, the proposal could energize enough pro-abortion rights voters to give Biden a victory in Florida.

The prospect of a Trump presidency should motivate those who support abortion rights to get to the polls this fall. But Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota and Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri have raised a related issue that should help expose how far out of step the GOP is with popular sentiment.

They propose repealing the notorious Comstock Act — an 1873 law making it a crime to mail anything intended for “the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion.” If it remains on the books and Trump wins, Smith noted, he could use this “zombie law to severely ratchet back abortion access in America without congressional action.”

At the moment, abortion medications are legally available nationwide. For nearly a century, the Comstock Act has been a dead letter, with courts and Congress agreeing that it does not apply to products meant for legal use.

But anti-abortion rights groups want to revive the harshest application of the law. The right-wing Heritage Foundation says if Trump regains the presidency, the Justice Department should use the Comstock Act to stop the distribution of abortion pills — which account for more than half of all abortions.

Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer who helped craft Texas’ 2021 ban on abortion and has represented Trump before the Supreme Court, told The New York Times, “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books.”

Even he, however, is not oblivious to political reality. When it comes to the Comstock Act, Mitchell said, “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”

A concerted campaign to repeal the Comstock Act would force Republicans — including Trump — into a painful choice: Defend this retrograde statute, thus antagonizing pro-abortion rights voters, or break with the anti-abortion rights groups that they have long pandered to, at the risk of infuriating the GOP base.

For a long time, many Americans who put the highest value on the bodily autonomy of women could sleep through Republican attacks on abortion rights. Now that the talk has turned into a severe and imminent threat, they are waking up.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter to the editor, of no more than 400 words, by emailing letters@chicagotribune.com. To review our criteria, click here.

Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Trump is immune from prosecution for any crimes he committed as president. But its decision may not come till June, which means his trial for his role in the insurrection may not be held until late summer or fall — or even after the November election. It’s not at all implausible that his systematic attempt to overturn the 2020 election will ultimately go unpunished.

Fortunately, the same cannot be said for hundreds of deluded followers who showed up at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the goal of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. One by one, they have had to face severe consequences for being foolish and malevolent enough to follow Trump’s lead.

Since that shocking day, when members of Congress literally ran for their lives, more than 1,265 individuals have been charged with crimes ranging from assaulting police officers to theft of government property. More than 700 have entered guilty pleas, and 467 have been sentenced to time behind bars. Other prosecutions, convictions and custodial sojourns are in the works. And the FBI is still hunting for several rioters captured on video assaulting police officers.

Some of the villains have qualified for extended lodging at the Graybar Hotel. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the extremist Proud Boys, earned 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for helping to foment the attack. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the hard-right Oath Keepers militia, who expressed a burning desire to lynch then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is serving an 18-year term for seditious conspiracy.

Displays of contrition have been fervent if not necessarily sincere. Tarrio apologized, saying: “Please show me mercy. I ask you that you not take my 40s from me.” Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola feigned remorse before being handed a 10-year sentence but as he left the courtroom shouted, “Trump won!”

Other villains were thoroughly unrepentant. Rhodes avowed, “My only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country.” Marc Bru, who used a barricade to shove police officers, said, “You could give me 100 years, and I would still do it all over again.” The judge graciously gave him just six years.

Moments like these should refresh our memories of what happened 38 months ago, which in many minds has faded to insignificance. A legion of Trump supporters stormed the seat of democracy as Congress prepared to certify the result of the presidential election. They trampled police barricades, smashed windows, invaded the Capitol, ransacked offices and chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” all on behalf of their delusional effort to “stop the steal.”

They were not only contemptuous of the law but also violent toward those sworn to uphold it. No fewer than 140 of the outnumbered law enforcement officers were injured in the riot. Cops were attacked with bats, riot shields, pipes, flag poles, pepper spray, stun guns and other weapons. Some thought they would die. At least four died by suicide following Jan. 6.

Chuck Wexler, who heads the Police Executive Research Forum, captured the horrific nature of the attack. “If you’re a cop and you get into a fight, it may last five minutes, but these guys were in battle for four to five hours,” he told The New York Times. “You would be hard-pressed to find another day in history like this when the police encountered this level of violence in one event.”

Trump, who watched the mayhem on TV, refused for hours to call off his horde of followers, whom he praised that day as “very special.” He has since defended the criminals — calling them “hostages” and “political prisoners” and promising to pardon many of them if he regains the White House.

This is just what you might expect from someone who urged the crowd on the Ellipse in Washington that morning to “fight like hell” and to march to the Capitol — fully aware that some of his listeners were armed. His attempt to upend democracy came unnervingly close to success.

It may be that Trump will never pay the price for his disgraceful conduct. It may be that some of those who heeded him can look forward to presidential clemency. But at least for the moment, at least for many of the guilty, we can savor the gratifying spectacle of justice being done.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

No longer. In 2020, not one state prohibited this sort of medical intervention for minors. But since 2021, 23 states have banned it outright.

Illinois, fortunately, is not one of them: Last year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law designed to protect access to gender-affirming care not only for state residents but also for people who come here from states where it is illegal.

In January, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature enacted a ban by overriding the veto of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. The measure forbids not only surgery but also puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender kids.

Ohio Rep. Gary Click, who sponsored the bill, insists that gender-affirming care is not “best medical practice. I do believe it is child abuse.”

Click, whose medical education apparently came from the Book of Leviticus, should not be treated as a credible judge. A Baptist pastor, he gave a sermon in 2019 arguing that transgenderism is part of a plot by Satan to destroy the family.

To transgender individuals, he declared: “You’re not born that way. God’s not going to curse you in the wrong body.” Would he tell a child born missing a leg that she should not get a prosthesis?

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who disagree with him have undergone treatment to resolve the awful mismatch between their bodies and their minds. Gender dysphoria is not a curious left-wing fad but a well-known syndrome recognized by medical and mental health professionals, from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the Mayo Clinic.

Much of the opposition to gender transition treatment rests on rigid ideology, not reasoned judgment. Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri writes, “To leftists, manhood is fake. Womanhood, too. Both are merely social confections that society made up and can remake at will.” Notions like those rest on a refusal to admit the existence of gender dysphoria, which is like denying the existence of left-handedness.

Supporters of these bans argue that children should not be empowered to act on feelings that may be temporary, that some adolescents who get such treatment later regret it and that some effects of hormone therapy can be irreversible, including infertility. Kids whose minds are not fully formed may make poor decisions that cause long-lasting harm.

All this happens to be true. Gender-affirming care has a real possible downside. It’s essential for physicians and parents to take a careful, deliberate approach, including thorough psychological assessments, before proceeding — which, as it happens, is customary practice.

But the existence of risk is no reason to ban it, even for minors. We allow them to go through pregnancy and childbirth, which carry serious health hazards, including death. We allow obese adolescents to get bariatric surgery, which may include removing part of the stomach and can have serious complications.

We allow puberty blockers and hormones to be administered to minors for conditions unrelated to gender transition. In each case, we agree that the potential value outweighs the possible harm.

For many youngsters, the upside of gender-affirming care is huge. Those with gender dysphoria are known to be especially vulnerable to psychological distress and self-harm. Transition treatments have been shown to reduce the incidence of depression and suicide. The proportion of transgender people who express regret over surgeries — a far more invasive treatment than puberty blockers or hormones and one rarely provided to adolescents — is in the neighborhood of 1%.

Those who want to deny gender-affirming care to minors exaggerate the potential dangers and dismiss the benefits, because many of them would rather not acknowledge human complexity.

But the problem isn’t just that they have the wrong answer. They’re asking the wrong question: whether such treatment is a good thing or a bad thing. The right question is: Who should decide?

We don’t know and can’t know if gender-affirming care will improve the life of young Emma or Ethan. But we do know that the people best informed on the matter are Emma, Ethan and their parents, acting in consultation with medical professionals. And we do know that the people making those decisions are the ones who will experience the consequences, for better or worse.

No medical treatment is infallible or devoid of risks. But to deprive minors of humane options is to condemn them to live with a choice that is not theirs.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Exhibit A is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine in the certainty that he could restore it to Russian rule at modest cost. Instead, his country is mired in a bloody stalemate, with more than 300,000 troops killed or wounded. He provoked Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO and induced the alliance to promise membership to Ukraine — realizing one of his worst fears.

Far from enhancing Russia’s power, Putin has exposed the shortcomings of his military while badly degrading its capacity. After nearly two years, there is no end in sight, and Russia is weaker and more isolated than before.

Ohio State University scholar John Mueller titled his 2021 book on American foreign policy “The Stupidity of War.” The U.S. amply confirmed his thesis in Afghanistan and Iraq, where grand dreams led to disaster.

But these wars were exceptions in the modern world. Until the invasion of Ukraine, Europe had enjoyed nearly 80 years of peace among states — what Mueller says was “likely the longest the once most warlike of continents has gone without such a war at least since the days of the Roman Empire.” He notes that “there have been remarkably few international wars of any sort during the period (since 1945), particularly in recent decades.”

War was once seen as a glorious and essential feature of life. But the ghastly results of two global conflagrations did much to produce a broad disenchantment with the whole enterprise. It has become clear that there are far more rational ways of pursuing national well-being — as illustrated by the happy fortunes of Germany and Japan since World War II.

We’ve learned that war is rarely necessary or useful. Saddam Hussein could have been safely contained without a U.S. invasion. Al-Qaida could have been neutralized after 9/11 without a 20-year American combat mission in Afghanistan.

When a country suffers an attack, a military response is generally obligatory, if only to discourage additional ones. Deterrence is essential to keeping the peace. But if the best war is one you avoid, the second best is one with limited, achievable and affordable purposes.

Some leaders, however, have not learned these lessons. Among them are those in charge of Hamas, which ignited the war in Gaza with a horrific attack on Israel on Oct. 7 — not only hitting military bases but butchering and abducting civilians, including women and children.

What the terrorist group hoped to gain from its atrocities is an open question. But what it has reaped is apparent. For three months, the Israeli military has ruthlessly pulverized Gaza, killing a reported 22,000 people and displacing nearly 2 million.

Half of the people there are at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations. Whatever suffering Gazans endured before Oct. 7 is nothing compared with the carnage and misery that ensued.

Hamas has not fared well, losing thousands of fighters. Its surviving leaders are living on borrowed time — as confirmed Tuesday, when a drone strike in Beirut killed a senior Hamas official and two of his military commanders.

But just because the war has been catastrophic for Hamas doesn’t make it a success for Israel. Given its current maximalist strategy, Israel faces months of vicious urban combat. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has no good answer for the question: How does this end?

When the war is over, Israel will have the challenge of addressing the humanitarian catastrophe — and trying to exercise control over a newly radicalized populace. It also faces credible charges of war crimes. The assault on Gaza is undoubtedly spawning more terrorists than it is killing.

Israel is also jeopardizing the support it enjoys from its indispensable ally. A recent Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Americans ages 18 to 34 and two-thirds of Democrats disapprove of how Israel is waging the war.

Had it been less enamored of violence, Hamas might have found a path to Palestinian independence. Had Israel responded to the Oct. 7 attack in a measured way, it could have averted a quagmire and international condemnation. Had Putin been less paranoid and power-hungry, he could have made Russia more secure without a huge sacrifice of lives and money.

Leaders who embark on war almost always overestimate what they stand to gain and underestimate the price it carries. Only with bitter experience do they recall that while a war may have no winner, it can have more than one loser.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Trump tried to stay in the White House despite losing the 2020 election, going so far as to incite a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol to overturn the result. But when his constitutional term ended on Inauguration Day, he left. It’s a mistake he is not likely to repeat.

The 45th president did everything he could to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, a hallmark of American democracy for more than two centuries. In the end, he failed. But he and his confederates learned valuable lessons from the failure. Should he win this time, they’ll have four years to implement a plan to keep the presidency for as long as he wants.

Liz Cheney, who lost her House seat after turning against Trump, recognizes the danger. Asked if she thought he would try to stay in power permanently, she replied: “Absolutely. He’s already done it once.”

Just ask him. As president, Trump repeatedly spoke, in a somewhat jocular way, of staying around for a third term. But was he joking?

Trump’s authoritarian ambitions were no secret to those closest to him. His vice president, Mike Pence, said of Trump, “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” Gen. Mark Milley, chosen by Trump to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him “a wannabe dictator.” Gen. John Kelly, who served him as White House chief of staff, said Trump “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.”

The former president has always admired ruthless tyrants, including Vladimir Putin (“genius”), China’s Xi Jinping (“a strong guy, tough guy”) and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (“We fell in love”). He likes autocrats not in spite of their despotic nature but because of it.

Lately, he has also gone out of his way to emulate them — referring to his political opponents as “vermin,” declaring that Milley deserved to be executed and vowing to shoot shoplifters. In a pitch-perfect echo of Adolf Hitler, he accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Such remarks may be dismissed as nothing more than colorful language from a candidate unbound by stuffy political norms. But his vitriol is meant to create a sense of apocalyptic danger that requires draconian measures.

Jennifer Mercieca, a communications professor at Texas A&M University, told The New York Times: “Normally, a president would use war rhetoric to prepare a nation for war against another nation. Donald Trump uses war rhetoric domestically.”

Trump has also vowed to use the presidency for vengeance. “I am your retribution,” he told a crowd. In one interview, he elaborated: “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.'”

It would be vain to expect Republicans in Congress to force him out of the White House. Eight Republican senators and 139 House Republicans voted against certifying Biden’s victory. House Speaker Mike Johnson was an enthusiastic accomplice in Trump’s effort to stay in office, pushing the hollow claim that the election was stolen.

Trump administration officials such as Milley and then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper resisted his efforts to use the military to subvert the Constitution. Should he win another term, though, he would install lackeys eager to make the uniformed services his ultimate weapon.

On Jan. 3, 2021, Jeffrey Clark, then an assistant attorney general, was warned that if Trump refused to leave office, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” Clark replied, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act” — which authorizes the president to deploy the military to suppress disorder. Trump could go so far as to impose martial law and cancel the 2028 election.

It’s tempting to believe that no matter what Trump might do to stay in power, the Supreme Court would stand in his way. Maybe so. But we can’t assume that Trump would meekly submit to a ruling against him.

He could very well respond as President Andrew Jackson allegedly did when the court, led by its chief justice, upheld the rights of Native Americans: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Trump may figure he can hunker down in the White House behind the fixed bayonets of the 82nd Airborne.

Most voters, and probably most Trump voters, have not considered how he could make himself president for life. Rest assured, Trump has. The time to stop him is not January 2029. It’s now.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

But there is at least one reason for optimism: Taylor Swift, not to mention the millions — billions? — who adore her. Plenty of artists make good music. Swift has done something else as well: Restore my faith in humanity.

I say that after seeing “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” a film of her performance at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles — which like every other show draws a crowd of ardent followers who know every lyric of every song she’s ever recorded.

Her fan base skews toward younger than age 40 and female. But you don’t need two X chromosomes to appreciate her. Swift is not another pop princess. She’s the biggest musical star of the 21st century.

Her Eras Tour of the U.S. included 53 shows that each drew an average of 72,000 people, including three that sold out Soldier Field. The gross revenue for the tour amounted to $2.2 billion from North American ticket sales alone. “If Taylor Swift were an economy, she’d be bigger than 50 countries,” said Dan Fleetwood, president of QuestionPro Research and Insights.

That’s before she embarks on her world tour across five continents, before returning for more U.S. appearances. The movie had the biggest opening weekend of any concert film on record. Last year, she became the first artist ever to claim all of the top 10 spots on the Billboard charts at once, including her mammoth hit “Anti-Hero.”

Even the NFL has felt the Swift effect, getting a jump in TV ratings when she attended a Kansas City Chiefs game to watch her apparent new romantic interest, tight end Travis Kelce. Paul McCartney must be wondering: What’s it like to be that popular?

Like many daughters, mine is a longtime Swiftie, and she had the immense good fortune to snag a concert ticket at face value. But it was not she who acquainted me with the singer; it was the other way around, when both of them were teenagers. On my list of dad achievements, that ranks pretty high.

Swift is an accomplished singer and songwriter whose compositions, which abound in catchy melodies and unforgettable hooks, are notable for their heart and passion. She’s a marketing genius who has captivated fans through her emotional honesty. She’s a creative machine, turning out 14 albums over 17 years.

In concert, she dances in song after song, driving herself so hard that a Marine drill instructor would say, “Whoa! Pace yourself!” During this tour, she typically performed for 3 1/2 hours, time enough to run a marathon.

She’s no one’s passive victim. When a radio DJ sued her for defamation after she accused him of groping her, Swift countersued, gave withering testimony about his “grabbing my ass” and won a jury verdict. When her entire master catalog was purchased by someone she despised, she elected to rerecord every one of those albums — giving her control over what fans quickly came to regard as the definitive versions and, by design, greatly devaluing the rights she had lost. She’s the rarest of creatures: a beloved billionaire.

That brings up one of Swift’s more impressive feats. She has gone from gawky adolescent country singer to cultural colossus without losing the authenticity that binds her fans so closely to her.

They know enough about her breakups, disappointments and career travails to remember that she is only flesh and blood. Swift doesn’t need more money or awards. (She’s the only woman to win the Grammy for album of the year three times.) The things she clearly values above all are practicing her craft and connecting with her fans.

At the SoFi show, in a moment that didn’t make the movie, Swift captured something vital about that bond: “I go through this process where I feel things, I write a song about that thing, I show it to you, and I go, ‘Do you like it? Did you ever feel this way too?’ And so when you guys are at a show, if you even nod your head or make eye contact with me or sing the words to a song during a show, that to me validates that emotion and makes me feel like I wasn’t alone in feeling it.” It makes her fans feel the same way.

She appears in nearly every frame of this two-hour-and-48-minute movie, but at the center of her concerts is not her. At the center are love, hope and joy. Even in our often ugly world, there is still a place for those. And Swift is making it bigger.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

In 2015, Donald Trump endorsed the idea, and so did several of his rivals. If elected in 2024, he vows to use an executive order to abolish birthright citizenship, which he somehow failed to do during his presidency. Vivek Ramaswamy echoes Trump on most issues, this one included. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis agrees. No one in the GOP presidential field seems inclined to rally opposition.

But opposition is in order. Some ideas are grievously wrong in principle, and some would be a hot mess in practice. This one is both.

The 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It has long been understood to mean that anyone who emerges into life in this country automatically becomes an American — with the notable exception of children of foreign diplomats.

Trump and others claim that the offspring of migrants here illegally don’t actually qualify, because they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of our government. But they are: Unlike foreign diplomats, they enjoy no immunity from U.S. laws.

The congressional debate offers little support for upending the status quo. At the time the 14th Amendment was proposed, when one opponent fretted that it would mandate citizenship for the children of Chinese immigrants, a senator who supported it confirmed his fear. Back then, Chinese immigrants were not allowed to become citizens.

Decades before the era of liberal judicial activism, the Supreme Court interpreted the 14th Amendment as enshrining birthright citizenship. In 1898, it ruled that Wong Kim Ark, who was born here to Chinese parents but barred from reentering the country under the Chinese Exclusion Act, was a U.S. citizen and therefore entitled to admission. It wasn’t the last time the court has affirmed birthright citizenship.

To exclude the children of those here without authorization, you’d need a constitutional amendment, which for now is about as likely as glaciers in the Grand Canyon. The advocates probably realize as much. But a Republican president could issue an executive order and then blame the Supreme Court for striking it down — and proceed to crusade for an amendment without fear of the consequences if it actually came to pass.

But it bears noting how disastrous those consequences would be. You can’t deny birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants without denying it to all children born here. Right now, parents have a simple way to verify that their kids are citizens: a birth certificate. But under this plan, parents would first have to prove their own citizenship, which is not always easy.

Some Americans already have to bear the burden of proof, such as military service members whose kids are born overseas. Margaret Stock, a veteran immigration lawyer in Anchorage, Alaska, who handles such cases, notes that anyone seeking to qualify has to file a 15-page form and pay a fee of $1,170. Repealing birthright citizenship “would be a new birth tax on every child born in America,” she told me.

After paying it, families would pay a tax in patience. Here in Chicago, the typical time for processing these applications is nine months. In Nashville, it’s 17 months; in Phoenix, 21.5.

Those figures are for an agency that handles a few thousand such cases a year — not 3.66 million, which is how many births there are each year in the United States. A new army of federal employees would be needed to shuffle all the paper.

While enduring these delays, parents wouldn’t be able to get Social Security numbers, insurance coverage or passports for their babies or claim them as dependents on tax forms. The lives of many families — maybe yours — would hang in bureaucratic limbo.

And what would be accomplished? Only one thing: the denial of basic rights to infants who have done nothing wrong. Instead of being integrated into American society, the children of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally would become a permanent underclass of stateless souls.

Anti-immigrant zealots may fantasize that these families will all pack up and leave. But men and women who trudged through jungles and crawled under concertina wire to find refuge here are not likely to give up so easily. If the adults stay, as millions do, why wouldn’t their kids?

In the book of Genesis, we read of Esau, who gave up his birthright for “a mess of pottage” — a bowl of lentil stew. Abolishing birthright citizenship would be an even worse bargain.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

If Biden loses, that war may not be long in coming. In the first Republican presidential debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked if he would send U.S. special forces across the border to carry out attacks on drug cartels. He replied, “Yes, and I will do it on day one.”

Pharmaceutical tycoon Vivek Ramaswamy is equally eager, promising “to use our military to annihilate Mexican drug cartels south of our border if necessary.” Former Vice President Mike Pence said his administration would “hunt down and destroy the cartels that are claiming lives in the United States of America.” As president, Donald Trump wanted to launch missiles against Mexican drug labs, according to his defense secretary, Mark Esper. And the GOP front-runner reportedly has asked aides to draft “battle plans” for an attack on Mexico.

In 2009, Boston University international relations scholar Andrew Bacevich said we were trying to achieve impossible goals in Afghanistan. “Anyone suggesting that the United States possesses the wisdom and the wherewithal to solve the problem of Mexican drug trafficking, to endow Mexico with competent security forces, and to reform the Mexican school system (while protecting the rights of Mexican women) would be dismissed as a lunatic,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, those who promote such programs for Afghanistan, ignoring questions of cost and ignoring as well the corruption and ineffectiveness that pervade our own institutions, are treated like sages.”

Bacevich was right about Afghanistan. But today, lunacy is ascendant. Politicians and commentators on the right would have us believe that the biggest problems we have with Mexico can be solved with overwhelming military force.

Those paying attention in Chicago are familiar with the problems. In the past year, the city has had to cope with more than 13,500 asylum-seekers, most of whom came across our southern border and were bused here by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican. Each year, Illinois suffers thousands of overdose deaths involving opioids, including fentanyl smuggled from Mexico.

But the migration crisis and the fentanyl plague grow out of deep dysfunction not just in Mexico but also in countries in Central and South America and beyond. Anyone who thinks the U.S. can transform those societies to suit our needs is divorced from reality. Anyone who thinks an invasion of Mexico would work out well has forgotten our experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti, where failure has been the norm.

There has always been unauthorized immigration across the southern border, and given the insurmountable challenge of securing a 2,000-mile stretch of land, there always will be. Societal breakdown from Venezuela to Guatemala has pushed desperate people to do anything necessary to find a safe haven. If the U.S. were to invade Mexico, it would undoubtedly create even more refugees trying to escape the carnage and hardship that would ensue.

For decades, Mexican drug cartels have been able to transport their products northward to meet the steady demand of American consumers. Fentanyl is easy to make and even easier to smuggle because it is highly potent in tiny doses. How effective is military force against drug trafficking? The U.S. deployed tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan — yet opium production quadrupled during our time there.

The Mexico hawks apparently learned nothing from past U.S. military ventures that were advertised as small, low-risk operations but ended in debacles. In 1983, 241 American military personnel in Lebanon died in a truck-bomb attack on their barracks. In 1993, 18 American soldiers died and 73 were wounded in a vicious firefight in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.

In each case, the president quickly decided to get out and stay out. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton learned the same painful lesson: Starting a war is easy. What comes next rarely is.

DeSantis said that when his administration catches drug smugglers, “we’re going to leave them stone cold dead at the border.” His charming fantasy rests on a grossly inaccurate notion of the fentanyl trade. In the vast majority of drug seizures at ports of entry, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the smugglers are as American as Clint Eastwood. I have news for this Harvard Law School graduate: A president can’t order the summary execution of U.S. citizens or foreigners for alleged crimes.

It’s tempting to think that all the bravado is just political theater by guys from Republicans striving to show how tough they are. But many a supposedly tough guy has let his mouth get him into a fight he couldn’t win.

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.