Last weekend’s massive NO KINGS protest across the United States with shadow protests in several other countries is a funny one for us Canadians. We have a King, after all. A real hereditary king who adorns our money and in whose name all of our official documentation exists, from laws to corporate charters to land titles.
As a constitutional monarchy, this works for us. While there is definitely a republican movement in Canada, there are few people asking to replace the ceremonial role with one that can exercise the theoretical powers the King currently holds.
If the King or the Governor General acting in the name of the King chose to exercise that theoretical power they have within Canada’s constitutional framework, we would find that there is quite a bit they could do.
The government currently exercises nearly all of its power in the form of advice to the Governor General. The King or Governor General, in acting without advice, could dissolve Parliament causing an election, refuse to assent to laws, name Senators, or give direct orders to the armed forces as the Commander-in-Chief, as well as perform any acts that are within the executive power of Cabinet. The Constitution Act even expressly allows the Governor General to operate independently of the advice of Cabinet “as the case requires.” They do none of these things today out of respect for the non-partisan ceremonial role they are expected to perform under our understanding of the rule of law.
For our American neighbours, though, somewhere around 7 million people spent their Saturday protesting their president exercising powers he does not hold, or is not intended to hold, under the name “No Kings”. Having such a large show of force from a country where the people don’t have much time off should be sending a message to its leaders that the peoples’ patience is running out.
Instead, the president and his juvenile entourage responded with an AI-generated video showing Trump wearing a crown while flying a fighter jet to bomb the protesters with raw sewage, then posted this on official White House social media channels:
There is no doubt that this plays to Trump’s base, and serves their common purpose of “owning the libtards” who necessarily react to this (literal) crap. It also confirms that Trump is aware of, and affected by, the protest and; if the left is telling him he can’t be a king then by golly he’d better portray himself as a king. His team is also laying the groundwork for the public to accept and expect Vance to eventually take the crown.
At some point, though, we get inured to the endless insanity. It stops having any meaning. We get lost in the optics and the protests and forget some rather important points.
Trump may have attempted a coup on January 6, 2021, but, in spite of the entire country knowing that, 77 million Americans still voted to give him back power in the 2024 elections. And, since he is back, the majority of what he has done has been possible thanks to three major factors:
under US law, a significant portion of his actions, for example the mass pardons of people involved in his coup attempt and most of his targeted firings, are in fact legal;
the other two branches of government have been largely complicit in allowing those actions that are not legal to go unchallenged; and
enough of the public think that what he is doing is morally acceptable that he has no sufficiently powerful incentive to stop.
He may well be seizing and acting with the power of an absolute monarch, but he is doing it through the framework of the constitution and legal system he seeks to overturn, running roughshod over what few checks and balances remain — with their willing participation.
The American people, through their Congress, have the power to stop him through the impeachment process. But that same Congress can’t even get its act together enough to keep the government itself up and running, itself another more-or-less legal coup by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Meanwhile, the president is portraying himself as literally crapping on his population while commuting the sentence of a former Republican congressman jailed for fraud — the 11th Republican lawmaker he has pardoned or released from prison. His armed forces are killing people with impunity in the Caribbean Sea and repatriating the survivors rather than charging them while performing live-fire exercises over populated areas of California. All are sufficiently within his legal powers for his orders to be carried out.
According to Trump, the United States has a crime crisis requiring the intervention of the military in its cities, which he is fighting with the courts over his right to do. Whether he is able to complete that action, too, is in the hands of the two branches of government designed to keep the executive in line. So far, that is not looking good, either, with Monday’s ruling that the National Guard may be deployed in Portland, Oregon.
So, when the Americans protest their president acting as a King, they will have to confront an uncomfortable truth. It is not only the billionaire enablers destroying the information marketplace that are enabling the autocratic actions of Trump and those surrounding him, it is, in large part, the constitution itself, and the failure of those responsible for exercising the checks and balances provided from performing their functions.
The United States is effectively operating as a constitutional monarchy. Unlike in Canada, their Monarch is currently testing the limits of all of the available levers of power. When Trump is eventually gone, there is nothing to stop the next president from doing exactly the same, built on the precedents set by Trump and his enablers, all while apparently operating within the constitutional framework.
If the No Kings protest are to succeed in the long term, they will need to rewrite the American constitution from scratch to get rid of the kingly powers it offers, and effectively limit the role and power of private money in the American political and journalistic systems.
Until then, even succeeding in deposing Trump will not resolve the problems, no matter how satisfying it will be to remove the first American King.
One of the things I I find frustrating with much of the other coverage is the focus on an individual, and not the systems. The US and Canadian Democratic institutions aren't as strong as people believe, and yet they wait until some "other" (not their chosen party, not their chosen PM/President, etc) leverages flaws in the existing institutions before they will complain.
I blame the Democrats as much as the Republicans for what is happening under US institutions, and for what I expect will continue to happen even when Trump is gone (I don't think there will be a third term, as I don't believe that individual will live that long).
I blame the NDP and Liberals as much as Conservatives for all the things that people seem to fear about the next Conservative majority federal government (which I expect to form soon).
I am thankful for the articles you write that focus on some of the critical systemic problems that need to be addressed.
Trump is not a King. The actual British Kings such as Charles 1st were beheaded for doing for instance what Trump has done in pardoning his supporters who killed people. The Canadian Monarch Reigns but does not rule. Unlike a US President the Canadian monarchy can not overthrow a jury decision, In Canada only a new jury of citizens can free a convicted felon unless the law (Gay rights for instance) nullifies the offence as no longer a crime. Ordinary Canadian citizerns have far more power than American citizens and our Monarch has far less power than a US President. Canadians live under a far superior constitutional system than in the USA. We have our problems such as in Quebec with its gerrymandered electoral system directed against the Anglos and our gerrymandere Federal electoral sistem in favour of Quebec and the provinces eastwards. We are not perfect but live much longer than Americans do in a superior but not perfect governmental system. We do not kill each other in the way the Americans do, a good indicator of our superior way of life.