Washington, DC, is a place where those in power carry out illegal and unconstitutional acts so blithely and regularly, it’s barely even remarked upon. So it’s always instructive when observers of goings-on in the capital suddenly perk up, notice, and sound the alarm.

In this case, Joe Biden’s reluctant extension of the recently expired moratorium has prompted a series of rebukes from right-wing and centrist press outlets who fear it may mean the demise of the rule of law as we know it. The Bulwark — essentially the now-defunct Weekly Standard, but rebranded as an “anti-Trump” conservative outlet aimed at liberals — warned the measure was a “Trumpian instance of norm-busting” that undermines Congress and “atrophies our self-governing muscles,” with its cofounder declaring that “Biden just undermined the rule of law.” Likewise, the right-wing National Review urged Republicans to “shut down the Senate” to “defend the Constitution” from “Biden’s brazen abuse of his constitutional oath”; elsewhere, it called on all Americans, including landlords, collection agencies, and the police, to simply ignore the “illegal mirage.” After all, “this is a country built atop an aversion to illegitimate power.”

You’re hearing similar objections a little closer to the center. Over at The Week, Bonnie Kristian called the order “a novel way to degrade the rule of law,” and, fretting about the alarming precedent it might set, was unable to find “a comparable brazen example [of lawlessness] from US history” even after consulting three legal experts. Most significantly, the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post warned Biden was giving renters a lifeline “at the expense of the rule of law,” insisting he isn’t entitled to “a pass” on this bedrock principle just “because his heart is in the right place.”