With the exception of the most loyal MAGA supporters, President Donald Trump’s legal overreaches have managed to alienate observers across the political spectrum. Whether it be the liberal use of national emergency declarations to justify draconian deportation policy and an illiberal tariff regime, attacks on elite universities and law firms, or support for the acceleration of the genocide in Gaza and settlement of the West Bank, everyone in the anti-Trump coalition can find something to hate.

However, many of these critics justify their position with an appeal to procedural norms, concerning themselves chiefly with the damage done to the country’s legal foundations. On behalf of our Constitution, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks argued for a “comprehensive national civic uprising,” while prominent Democrats like Joe Biden’s antisemitism czar, Deborah Lipstadt, objected to the deportations of pro-Palestinian students exclusively on the basis of the proceedings’ legality, arguing only that these attempts to chill free speech should have been handled a little more “deftly.”

That these lectures are delivered by people who have defended illegal wars and the concomitant expansions of executive power is as ironic as it is sickening, but their fears are not without merit. Those who object to the kidnapping of immigrants, the silencing of speech, or US support for deliberate genocide and ethnic cleansing — those of us on the Left — should take seriously the threat posed by Trump. But we should not lose sight of the fact that these attacks on legal precedent and the norms governing the balance of power between the branches of government represent an opportunity for advancing the socialist cause. And should a left-wing president come to power, efforts to build a workers’ democracy would likely run through the sort of aggressive use of executive power that Trump has practiced.