“At around noon on 14 April, 2025, America ceased to have a law-abiding government.”
— Edward Luce, Financial Times (London), April 16, 2025
Mom was working on a jigsaw puzzle of the U.S. Capitol and turned to me: “Tom, do you know what makes our country great?”
I was about 10 years old and under the education of nuns, so I had no clue.
“We’re a nation of laws, not of men,” she said. “In the United States, no man is above the law, not even the president.”
Mom was a math teacher and a thinker and exponentially smarter than any of the nuns she sent me to school to learn from, so I believed her and I remember that teaching moment like it was yesterday.
I’m glad mom is not alive to see a U.S. president ignore laws and court rulings every day. The remainder of the lesson mom didn’t teach me was this: If our laws mean nothing and can’t be enforced by our courts, our lives descend quickly into medieval savagery.
Donald Trump, who famously said in 2016 he could shoot a person and get away with it, may soon prove himself right.
That’s why you need to be writing Nick Begich, Dan Sullivan, Lisa Murkowski and Trump every day on this issue. And going to rallies. And hoisting up signs. And shaking your fists. And stomping your feet.
The rule of law must hold. Silence in the face of this is your agreement to torch the constitution and set loose the vicious dogs of unrestrained power. I’m sorry there’s no easy way out here.
There nothing that’s more important than the authority of laws and courts, with the possible exception of a plugged toilet in your house.
But just as working toilets are the bottom line for maintaining homes, laws are the bottom line for maintaining civilization. You might have missed this because you had a lousy basketball coach for a social studies teacher. Does the Code of Hammurabi ring a bell? No? How about the Ten Commandments?
Laws are what separate our species from the animal kingdom. Laws are rules that allow us to live outside of a state of war, reasonably sure that we can have a home, belongings and some food to eat and the same thing tomorrow.
For laws to work, they must be obeyed by everyone, even the President of the United States. People who don’t have to obey laws are called kings. They rule only with the power of force and savagery and respond only to savagery themselves.
Kings ruled nations for most of the world’s history and people lived in savagery. Our nation became famous for lifting the world out of savagery by establishing rules that everyone – even the nation’s president – was required to follow.
King George III, the British tyrant from whom America escaped, once said that George Washington would be the greatest man in history if he did not make himself king.
Washington became the greatest man in history and America became a beacon to the world, a place where people could live without savagery, reasonably assured that they were protected from the whims of powerful leaders – even protected from the president – by laws, including the U.S. Constitution.
Act now if you support the rule of law. Or prepare for the worst.
Write today to:
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski
522 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan
706 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
U.S. Representative Nick Begich
153 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
U.S. President Donald Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500