Jonathan Turley: 'Panic Politics', Why the U.S. is Not in a Constitutional Crisis

Editor's note: Mr. Turley's views are presented in his own words, without editorial commentary or independent fact-checking, in a condensed version, edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available in the online version at www.cadetnewspaper.com Jonathan Turley is a prominent American legal scholar, public interest lawyer, and legal commentator known for his work as a J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and as a legal analyst for Fox News and columnist for USA Today and The Hill. A Constitutional law expert, he has testified before Congress, represented whistleblowers, and served as an expert witness in impeachment hearings for Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. He is the founder of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS) and has published numerous academic articles and a popular blog, Res ipsa loquitur. In the upcoming debate Mr. Turley will argue against the debate resolution "Be it resolved, the U.S. is experiencing a constitutional crisis." Mr. Turley recently sat down to answer a series of questions The Cadet posed to him and his opponent, Daniel Farbman, on this important topic and its impacts on VMI. The Cadet: You have said that claims of a constitutional crisis often amount to "panic politics" and that many assertions of constitutional crisis "fall flat."Could you define what would count as a constitutional crisis by your standard? What objective criteria, in your view, are missing in the U.S. today (or since 2016) to meet that standard? When would you say it would or could become one? Jonathan Turley: Well, it's a difficult question because you know, the use of the term "constitutional crisis" is often meant as a type of exclamation point for those who are unhappy with the policies of a President or even the rulings of the Court. The reason I have long objected to that term is that this country has faced many conflicts between Presidents, the courts and Congress. It has survived all of those periods. The fact is that the U.S constitutional system is the oldest and most stable in the history of the world. It has survived conflicts that reduced other countries to a fine pumice. The reason is that it is designed for bad times, not good times. It was created in times like these. So this suggestion that we're in a crisis reflects more how we view our times than how the constitutional system is handling it. When people raise these objections, they often overlook the fact that the constitutional system is functioning. It's a curious omission because in the most divisive periods, our system has proven itself time and time again to be up to the challenge. On January 6th, we had a disgraceful riot in Congress. It was an unprecedented intrusion into the constitutional process or the passage of power in the presidency. Yet, Congress reassembled, and President Biden was certified. The court system continued to work throughout that period in addressing allegations of electoral fraud and also dealing with the aftermath of that riot. There was certainly a political crisis during that, but the ECG [Enduring Constitutional Government] didn't arise at all in the constitutional system. It's designed to deal with these types of problems. If your question is whether I can imagine a situation where a true crisis would unfold, the answer is 'yes', but we've not seen that. That would require the loss of our tripartite system. It would amount to shutting down the court system or Congress, effectively eliminating checks and balances. That's really not the case. People use this term because they don't like how the political system is deciding policy questions or how the courts may be ruling on conflicts. The Cadet: How would you assess institutional behaviors under President Trump (e.g., challenges to norms, executive actions, defiance of courts) vs. under Biden—is there any point in recent years where you think the U.S. came close to a crisis? Jonathan Turley: No, I don't believe that the events in recent years have come close to a constitutional crisis. The constitutional system functioned as designed, and has once again proven that it is more than up to this task. There have been several issues in both the Trump and Biden administrations involving the failure to follow established law. President Biden admitted he was told by his own White House counsel and literally every expert that he consulted that he did not have the authority to impose a national moratorium on eviction. Only one professor, Larry Tribe, said that he had that authority. But he went ahead and acted accordingly, driven by his political desires. Is that a constitutional crisis? No, because he is not the first President to proceed despite countervailing precedent. President Trump has had similar controversies. I was very critical of some of the positions that he took. For the most part, however, he has complied with federal orders. The exception that comes to mind is when Abrego Garcia was deported in violation of a court order. I wrote at the time that [deportation] was clearly in violation and that he would have to come back. I also said that at the end of the day, he would most certainly be brought back. He was brought back. In the interim, I think that the administration was not complying with those orders. That is another case in point. The Supreme Court, including Trump appointees, made it clear that they expected the lower court's orders to be complied with, even though they had some qualms or disagreements with aspects of that. The Cadet: Critics say that while there are incidents of suppression, threats, or violence, none yet amount to a systemic breakdown of free speech protections. Some point to the recent Charlie Kirk assassination. What differentiates isolated events from a crisis? What examples of alleged suppression or threats do you believe are serious, and why do you believe they do not rise to a crisis level? Jonathan Turley: The question is a difficult one. It starts with talking about whether we are having a free speech crisis. I think we are. That is different from saying we are in a Constitutional crisis, where we're living in a political period where free speech is under assault. In Europe, free speech is in free fall. I just returned from Prague, and speaking about free speech. It is a disheartening state of affairs with the European Union (EU). The EU is now staunchly anti-free speech and is pursuing censorship at unprecedented levels. The assassination of Charlie Kirk occurred just shortly before my speech in Prague. I knew Charlie, and I respected what he was trying to do in higher education. He was holding a mirror up to the face of higher education to show the hate and hypocrisy on our campuses. He was exposing the intolerance that most universities and colleges have for opposing views, particularly on the right. He succeeded in doing that; indeed, he might have been killed for doing so. This individual was obviously a disturbed person, and we cannot hate critics for his actions. Now, none of that makes it a Constitutional crisis. Even with what I've described as an indispensable right under attack, which is free speech, the more relevant question is not whether the Constitution is up to this challenge, but whether we are. As Benjamin Franklin made clear, this is only a republic if we can keep it. We have a system that will survive this age of rage. My book is entitled The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, and it's not "the" age of rage, because this is not our first. We have gone through periods of rage. This country was born in rage. That is what the Boston Tea Party was: an act of rage. We've always had rage rhetoric. At times, that has led to violence. We have survived those periods, mainly because figures like James Madison created the constitutional system. But it would be a dangerous conceit to believe that we can survive this period with free speech intact. Every generation has to defend these underlying rights. That fight is first and foremost found in higher education. We have seen the purging of most faculties of conservatives and libertarians. Surveys show that many departments do not have a single Republican or conservative. That is not by accident. There has been a massive change in higher education since I first joined as a professor over 30 years ago. I would never have imagined that we could become the echo chamber we are, where the dialogue on most campuses runs exclusively from the left to the far left. Charlie Kirk was trying to change that and succeeded in exposing that, even if you disagreed with his own political views. That's a rather long answer. We are in a crisis, but it's a political crisis, not a Constitutional crisis. The Cadet: How do you view statements like the one from the Virginia Senate Majority Leader that "On Martin Luther King Day, [alluding to when President Trump was inaugurated] something happened up in Washington, D.C. that changed the tone … norms are out the window, laws are out the window, and the Constitution is out the window."? Are these rhetorical exaggerations or signs of distress? To your knowledge, do state institutions in Virginia or elsewhere show evidence of a constitutional crisis (e.g., state courts being ignored, state executive overreach)? If not, why not, and what would you look for to conclude there is one? Jonathan Turley: We have dealt with rage rhetoric and inflammatory rhetoric since the start of our Republic. In every age of rage, some people attempt to ride that wave to power, and this is not exclusive to any particular party. The suggestion by some that we are seeing the death of democracy or the rise of tyranny is historically and legally absurd. There is no evidence that democracy is dying in the United States. Indeed, many people seem most aggrieved by how elections turned out. The fact is that Trump won the popular vote and won rather handily in terms of electoral votes. That is neither here nor there. I can understand why people opposed and supported Donald Trump, but soon after the election, many returned to this narrative that democracy was at an end to justify their own extreme actions and language. My book talks about rage and how it is a curious element of politics. Rage gives people a license to say things and do things that they would ordinarily not say or do. What most people will not admit is that they like it. Rage is addictive, and it is contagious. It's perhaps the most powerful political impulse. That is why you see many politicians trying to marshal it, even to the point of embracing violent extremist groups like Antifa. We have seen all that before. These are the same voices. They are the same people that we see throughout history. You know, the book details our prior pages of rage. Only the names change. The language and the panic politics are virtually identical. The hopeful aspect of all this is that the last election involved one party insisting that the election of their opponent would be the death of democracy. The President of the United States, Joe Biden, made that argument repeatedly, as did his chosen successor. It was never a compelling argument to me, and the American people clearly rejected it. Yet, after that stinging defeat, the same voices are being heard again to justify their own extreme reactions and measures. It is a hopeful sign that the public does not appear to be buying this. The problem is that rage rhetoric has always appeared to extreme portions of a given party. It is never, or rarely, a majoritarian call. That is enough to trigger extremists, particularly those people who are mentally unstable. We've seen two attempts on the life of President Trump. We saw the assassination of Democratic politicians in Minnesota. We now see the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We cannot ignore that this is a critical escalation in this age of rage. That political and social crisis cannot be denied. The Cadet: From your historical perspective, when society and institutions faced serious constitutional danger, what prevented collapse? What remedies or guardrails were effective, which failed? What would you propose now to prevent a slide towards constitutional crisis? Why should the VMI community be alarmed (or reassured)? Jonathan Turley: I love this question, although it's not easy to answer in the usual way. I have a new book coming out titled Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution. It is going to be released by Simon & Schuster, as part of their 250th anniversary book, on the Declaration of Independence, which will be released in 2026. That book looks exactly at this question. Half of the book looks backward to the formation of the American democracy, and what was unique about what happened in this country. It also, in that first half, it compares what happened in Philadelphia to what happened in Paris, two revolutions occurring in proximity. It specifically looks at five years, where Philadelphia was heading towards a resurgence of violence. This is after defeating the British. Then something happened. It stopped. Not immediately, but it stopped in a relatively short period of time. The only element that changed was the ratification of the United States Constitution. The Constitution worked as Madison had hoped. It created critical venting elements for different groups. It recognized that we are a nation of factions and that those factions had to be allowed to work out a majoritarian compromise. The Constitution was not overwhelmingly popular, particularly in places like Philadelphia. But people seemed to accept that it gave them an alternative to violence. What emerged was the most stable and successful democratic system in history. In Paris, the opposite was true. They pursued more direct democratic governance, which proved as unstable and dangerous as Madison had predicted. It became a bloodletting. Thousands were guillotined and killed during the terror. The second half of the book looks at whether the American democratic experiment can survive in the 21st century. The greatest threat I view in the book is not the rage rhetoric and divisions we are seeing today; we have seen those before, and I think we will survive them as we have before. The greatest danger is that we will be facing systemic changes in society on a global scale that the world has never seen before. I specifically look at the impact on economies of robotics and AI [Artificial Intelligence] technology. That is going to be the greatest test of the American democracy in its history. When I was speaking in Europe a few days ago, they asked me about the book and how democracy has survived in the 21st century. I was candid and said that I actually would not bet heavily on Europe's democratic institutions surviving because I believe that the EU has undermined those institutions. It has actually weakened the ability of many countries to weather the storm that is coming. I think the United States could avoid a true crisis, not a Constitutional crisis, but an economic, social, and political crisis because we have the Constitution that was crafted 200 some years ago. The challenge will be dealing with a policy level with a large percentage of the population that is likely to be unemployed and unproductive. We have never faced that. How that changes the meaning of being a citizen is something we need to grapple with. But that's the true crisis we're looking at, not a Constitutional one, but how our Constitution can survive under the greatest stress test that we have ever faced. And that test is coming. The Cadet: What empirical or institutional markers should we be looking for that suggest a constitutional crisis is coming as we go into, umm, the future years? Jonathan Turley: The institutional aspect of that question is interesting, and it plays into the earlier question. In some respects, VMI itself is an example of our resilience and the importance of those institutional strengths. The American military was not created to be apolitical; the modern American military was founded on a principle of being apolitical. That was by no means a common approach. In many ways, it was a touchstone of the American experiment. Originally, the First Army was non-apolitical. The Federalists used the military for political purposes. Jefferson responded by creating West Point, for example, as a way of getting people who did not come from wealthier families into officer positions to fill the positions with Jeffersonians, essentially. Ultimately, the U.S. military adopted this core identity of being apolitical, allowing political figures to determine the policies and direction of the United States, and to focus on carrying out the protection and defense of that nation. That is why citizens have so respected the U.S. military. It's not that [this country] is unique, but there are very few countries on Earth where the military is not feared. The military in the United States is generally not feared by the public. There have been controversies about President Trump calling out the National Guard. That type of controversy has come before. We have had those arguments before. But this country has never faced the type of history that other people have in their military, conducting coups and overwhelming democratic institutions. To answer the question more directly, the markers that we're looking for are really the functioning of our constitutional system and the respect given to those institutions. I've been critical of people on both the left and the right, including President Trump, in attacking judges personally. I have been very critical of the left in attacking many of the conservative justices unfairly as hacks and other types of labels. The real assurance of stability in our country is fidelity to the Constitution and acceptance of these institutions. We have seen people calling for the packing of the Supreme Court, even the trashing of the U.S. Constitution. That's coming from academics. That's coming from establishment figures who are actually saying that the U.S. Constitution is now a danger, and specifically, the First Amendment has to be rewritten. That's a crisis of faith that is coming not from the extremes, but from figures in the establishment itself. We have to deal with that because the U.S. Constitution itself is something of a leap of faith, not in our government, but in each other. I think that if you're looking for markers on the stability of this country, it will be protecting the fealty towards the constitutional system. To understand that while one might not like all aspects of what comes from that system, we have been blessed with a system that has given us centuries of stability and productivity. We have achieved what the Declaration of Independence called for. We are pursuing individual happiness to an extent that no nation on Earth has been able to achieve. We can take great pride in that. But the danger of this crisis of faith is that we forget who we are and what we have achieved through a very difficult time. The Cadet: This last one is really more relevant to VMI itself. We are not sure how familiar you are with the situation, but over the past four years, The Cadet newspaper has been one of the oldest independent college newspapers in Virginia. It started in 1871 as a magazine. The administration's actions since 2021 have generated a Warning Letter and letters of Concern from many national free speech groups. If you can, what would you say regarding the free speech that you emphasized to administrations, not only VMI, but at all the schools that selectively apply restrictions on student journalists who are critical in exploring the various difficult issues that are facing not only them, but the country at the time? Jonathan Turley: I'm very proud of the [VMI] cadets who have fought this fight. Free speech has been described as the "indispensable right," which is why I entitled my book, The Indispensable Right. Those are words from Louis Brandeisin a famous case called Whitney. The reason I use those words as the title is that there was a strange anomaly that they came from an opinion that spoke brilliantly and profoundly about free speech as the indispensable right. Brandeis, in that very same conference, signed off on the imprisonment of Charlotte Anita Whitney, who was arrested for speaking against lynching. It shows the conflict that can occur for those people who believe in free speech but allow endless trade-offs and restrictions to be placed on the right, including one of the greatest civil libertarians in history, Louis Brandeis. The fight at VMI is no different from the fights described in my book throughout our history. The true heroes of our history are those who refuse to be silent and refuse to be marginalized. I'm hoping that VMI will recognize that a diversity of opinion strengthens a community. It promotes tolerance and free speech, fostering greater understanding between students and faculty. If you look at higher education today, it has become an academic echo chamber. Nobody seems to be happy. There is a huge percentage of students, including many liberal students, who admit that they self-censor because they don't want to face retaliation or displeasure from their faculty. We are destroying higher education with these attacks on free speech. I'm hoping that VMI will recognize that and allow equal footing for cadets to be able to engage in this dialogue. Cadets, faculty, staff, and the public can attend as Mr. Turney and his opponent square off on these issues in an in-depth debate at the VMI Center for Leadership and Ethics on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, at 7:00 PM. Further information and registration for this free event are at: https://steamboatinstitute.org/event/virginia-military-institute/. Can't attend? Watch the livestream at this link. Please help keep The Cadet independent by DONATING AT: www.thecadetfoundation.org