Most of us remember the Constitution somewhat abstractly – We know the big-ticket amendments (Speech! Guns!), we generally assume those rights are our rights, and maybe we hear lines in our head from Schoolhouse Rock about how our government works: ”Heyyyy learn about the USA.”
While we aren’t constitutional scholars, we don’t need to be. What we can see, loud and clear, is the Trump regime attacking, contradicting, and even straight-up disappearing the Constitution. If we zoom out for a second:
How does the regime “see” the Constitution? And how have they treated it?
We’ll start here, and future posts will get into specific Articles, Amendments and Clauses under attack. But this is the foundation.
Disappearing Parts of the Constitution (Part 1)
On Trump's first day in office – literally January 21, 2025 – the White House’s Constitution page returned a 404 error. Think about that: Day One. Their priority was to mess with the Constitution.
Newsweek reported that a spokesperson claimed they were just “tweaking” the website. Sure. Maybe just like how Trump also “tweaks” democracy.
The key point is this: They never restored the original page. To this day, the URL remains dead.
Great SEO practice if your goal is authoritarianism. A competent web team doesn’t leave government foundational documents floating in dead-link limbo. Fixing it is easy ignoring it is intentional.
We’d venture that this wasn’t a glitch – it was a tell. A regime that doesn’t value the Constitution also doesn’t value people seeing it.
The replacement page is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/government/ and it reads like a stripped-down civics pamphlet, just showing the Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments), none of the Articles, and an overview on each branch of government. Plus, this line front-and-center without any context or deeper description:
“The U.S. Constitution mandates that all States uphold a ‘republican form’ of government…”
Notice the quotation marks and lack of context? Without further explanation on the term “republican form” it’s misleading for many people (by design). “Republican” does not refer to the GOP or conservative. What it means is the founders wanted a representative government:
-
No monarchy
-
Power comes from the people
-
Citizens elect representatives
Trump and MAGA use it to pretend it means Republican-run or Republican-leaning, or a Republic vs. a Democracy.
A solid recap in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star shows how conservatives have leaned hard into misusing “republic.” They use this distortion constantly at their conventions, in social media, and even in a rallying cry on January 6th.
GovInfo logged that John Eastman, a law professor who represented Trump in litigation challenging the election result, said this to the crowd before the insurrection: “This is bigger than President Trump. It is a very essence of our republican form of government, and it has to be done. And anybody that is not willing to stand up to do it, does not deserve to be in the office.”
It’s a dog whistle masquerading as civics.
Disappearing Parts of the Constitution (Part 2)
In August 2025, TechCrunch reported that entire sections of Article I vanished from the Library of Congress website.
This included:
-
Half of Section 8 (including the role of Congress and their power over armed forces)
-
All of Section 9 (habeas corpus, emoluments, limits on Congress)
-
All of Section 10 (state restrictions, including tariffs)
A spokesperson at LOC blamed a “coding error.”
Congressman Mark Takano sent a concerned letter to the LOC, pointing out stuff like this “opens the floodgates of misinformation.”
Meanwhile, earlier in May, Trump fired Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden – the first woman and first Black person in the role – and replaced her with Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer (who Democrats obviously contested, and there’s still no official replacement). The reason the White House cited for firing her? She was "putting inappropriate books in the library for children." Don’t know who needs to hear it, but no, that’s not what the Librarian of Congress does.
So let’s take a look just at Section 9 – to break down what the regime “accidentally” disappeared, and then consider some of the statements and actions of the Trump regime this year:
Section 9 — Habeas Corpus
Habeus Corpus grants people in government custody the right to challenge their detention in court, and can be used by immigrants challenging, say, a deportation.
Stephen Miller, who is now both the White House deputy chief of staff, and the homeland security advisor, said in the Washington Post in May:
“The Constitution is clear…that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended in time of invasion. So that’s an option we’re actively looking at.” A threat while implying that the U.S. is being invaded by immigrants.
Then, later that same month, Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, falsely stated that:
“Habeas Corpus is a Constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”
And, we see what ICE has been doing over and over prompting the most amount of Habeas Corpus petitions ever filed in U.S. history.
Section 9 — Emoluments
This bans U.S. officials from accepting gifts, money, or titles from foreign governments.
Meanwhile, in one of the most egregious examples this year, Trump accepted a $400 million jumbo jet from Qatar in May – take Trump’s own words on Truth Social.
A Boeing 747. From a foreign state. While in office. And then bragged about it on Truth Social.
No other administration in our country’s history has ever:
-
“accidentally” deleted sections from the Constitution
-
“accidentally” omitted clauses from the Constitution
-
“accidentally” blocked access to the Constitution
Because it’s incredibly easy not to do.
We don’t think this is incompetence (though, sometimes it’s tough to tell). It’s conditioning, and it indicates what they believe should and should not be law.
Rewriting the Constitution by Ideology: Originalism
Enter the Heritage Foundation.
You likely already know Project 2025 – the authoritarian blueprint Trump’s regime has been running like a checklist, as literally over half of it has been implemented within 8 months.
Now they’ve released a new 800-page companion volume: “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution.”
NYT reviewed it and calls it:
“a kind of judicial counterpart to Project 2025, the group’s blueprint for the executive branch. The new book urges lawyers and judges to view every provision of the Constitution through the lens of originalism…and calls for constitutional cases to be decided based on the document’s original meaning.”
Fifteen of the 18 advisers are Trump-appointed judges; zero were appointed by Democrats; and all contributions to the book are from conservative judges (30 total) who believe in originalism. You know, nice and balanced
Why is this new book important when it comes to the Constitution?
Originalism, TL;DR:
- The Constitution’s meaning is frozen in the 1780s
- Judges should apply what the words meant then
- Modern values, evolving norms, and contemporary circumstances shouldn’t shape interpretation
And what’s more, as for the 14th Amendment – ratified in 1868 – Originalists insist these rights must be interpreted according to “the public meaning in 1868.”
A reminder that 1868 America was:
- pre-women’s suffrage,
- openly racist,
- criminalized homosexuality,
- allowed marital rape,
- denied bodily autonomy,
- denied interracial marriage in many states.
In practice, their interpretation of the Constitution means:
- Limiting rights not explicitly listed (eg: privacy, bodily autonomy, LGBTQ rights)
- Favoring narrow readings of civil rights expansions (eg: no Voting Rights Act or ADA)
- Overturning longstanding precedents that deviate from “original meaning” (eg: the overturning of Roe v. Wade was entirely based on originalism)
It’s all a political weapon dressed up as constitutional purity.
Certainly not “Founders’ intent,” but far-right intent.
Nope, we’re not dragging 2025 back to the 1800s.
So Where Does This Leave Us?
The Trump regime doesn’t respect the Constitution. Not the text, not the meaning, not the intent.
Not when they vanish it, temporary or not.
Not when they limit what the public sees and reads of it.
Not when they use an unelected entity’s beliefs and their hand-picked judges to completely transform our laws.
And that should matter to every single American.
If the people in power don’t believe they need to uphold the document this country is founded on, then we’re not dealing with a functioning United States anymore – just a leader messing with the rulebook to manipulate power to his liking.
