End run?

Reader question:

Please explain “end run” in this sentence: John Dean, former White House counsel for the Nixon administration, weighed in on President Trump contemplating a third term, saying the president “likes constitutional end runs.”

My comments:

Donald Trump likes to get his way around the constitution, in other words. Any time he can get away with ignoring the constitution in any way, he will do it.

In John Dean’s own words, Trump ‘likes constitutional end runs”, or he likes to make an end run around the constitution.

“End run” is a football play, an American football play to be exact.

In the play, which happens near the end zone – that’s why it’s called an end run – the ball carrier sometimes runs sideways in order to evade defenders.

Defenders are huddled and clustered in the middle of the field at the beginning of the play. By running wide and sideways, the ball carrier faces fewer or, sometimes, no defenders at all.

In the latter case, the ball carrier is able to run past the baseline for a touchdown – by touching the ball down the floor.

Touchdowns are what to play for, as each touchdown is worth 6 points.

Anyways, by making an end run around the defense, football players find their way around the last defensive obstacle to score a touchdown.

Hence, figuratively, in other walks of life, making an end run becomes synonymous with getting one’s way around a problem instead of tackling the problem head-on.

In our top example, Trump is trying to flout the constitution again by potentially running for the presidency for a third time, which is unconstitutional and therefore hitherto unheard of.

According to the US Constitution, one can run for and be President for a maximum of two terms, i.e. eight years or four years per term.

That’s all. No more than that.

Trump cannot run for the presidency in 2028. But he’s contemplating how to get around any constitutional obstacles in order to stay on as president.

Will he be able to do that, successfully making an end run around the constitution?

He’s most likely to fail, but never say never – as Trump has defied the odds time and time again in his political life.

So, let us all just wait and see.

All right, here are media examples of the American idiom making an end-run around something:

1. Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, has long been a contentious figure in entertainment. His influences in music and fashion have made him a worldwide phenomenon, but it’s his virtual avatars that have overshadowed his artistic success. He has courted controversy for years with his tweeting, having made everything from antisemitic remarks to politically inflammatory statements. A primer on the timing, context, implications, and significance of Kanye West’s tweet wars, based on recent coverage and historical context.

Kanye’s Anti-Semitic Rants and Their Online Aftermath

It’s nothing new, Kanye West’s social media provocations. This impulse, to use spaces like Twitter (now unnamed X) as a direct communication canvas, has defined Mr. Trump’s public persona. “You don’t have to agree with Trump but the mob can’t make me not love him,” he wrote in a 2018 Twitter post that also mused about Donald Trump. The start of his sympathies with the far right which would fester into madder rhetoric later.

But in 2022, Ye began tweeting more incendiary messages. He wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at Paris Fashion Week, a saying frequently used by white supremacist groups. Explaining his decision, he wrote on Twitter: “The reason I put ‘White Lives Matter’ on the shirt is because they do. The tweet provoked anger, with many users accusing him of defending hate speech.

Antisemitic Tweets, and the Fallout

A feud that would prove one of the most damaging of Kanye’s career began in October 2022, when he tweeted a series of antisemitic posts. In one post, which has since been deleted, he said: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” He also wrote: “I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are Jew also.” Those tweets were quickly met with widespread criticism, including from groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which called them “dangerous and antisemitic.”

The fallout was swift. Several companies, including Adidas, Balenciaga, and Gap, severed ties with Ye, saying he did not share their values. Adidas, which lost $246 million by severing its ties with him, and Forbes, which stripped him from its list of billionaires. Ye later tripled down on the comments, appearing on shows such as Infowars to praise Adolf Hitler and to repeat antisemitic tropes.

Elon Musk and X

Another layer of Kanye’s social media controversies dates back to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022. Musk did this even though Ye had previously been suspended for violating hate speech policies and Musk has portrayed himself as a champion of free speech. That decision has provoked a discussion around the balance between free expression and a duty to stamp out toxic rhetoric.

In February 2025, a second volley of antisemitic screeds emerged on Ye’s X account, filled with proclamations such as “I love Hitler” and “I’m a Nazi.” The posts were decried, with the A.D.L.’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, labeling them a “flagrant and unequivocal display of hate.” “Even though Musk tried to talk Ye out of posting things like that, the rapper did an end run around him, saying, ‘I can say whatever the f* I want’.

- Kanye West’s Controversial Tweets & Their Fallout in 2025, TNJ.com, February 8, 2025.

2. Democrats are barreling toward a new clash over cryptocurrency policy that could pit a growing cadre of industry-friendly lawmakers in the party against the left’s loudest voice on financial policy: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Pro-crypto lawmakers are moving quickly to advance long-sought legislation that would give new legitimacy to the digital assets sector – part of a Republican-led push to deliver on President Donald Trump’s pledge to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.” To make it happen, they are scrambling to get enough Democrats on board with industry-backed legislation to clear the Senate.

Some on the left are already signing on, and it’s setting up a potential rift between crypto-friendly Democrats and Warren just months into the Massachusetts lawmaker’s tenure as the party’s new leader on the powerful Senate Banking Committee.

“There’s a number of [Democratic] senators who do want to get involved in this space,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a pro-crypto New York Democrat who has helped write GOP-led digital assets legislation and is quarterbacking the efforts to get other members of her party on board.

The push comes as part of a broad shift in Washington policymaking toward regulatory changes that could benefit the crypto sector. The industry, long dogged by scandals and concerns about financial fraud, is now being embraced by lawmakers and regulators who are eyeing changes that could help legitimize its $3 trillion market. The turn has been driven in part by a massive political spending spree by top crypto firms and executives, who have dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into influence campaigns designed to take down critics and boost industry allies.

The effort to attract more bipartisan support illustrates how Democrats hold the keys to passing the crypto legislation the GOP has pledged, which will require 60 votes to pass the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority of 53 seats. It could become one of the few spaces for bipartisan dealmaking in a bitterly divided Congress.

Washington’s pro-crypto shift is primarily being driven by Republicans, who have broadly embraced the sector, but a growing number of Democrats appear eager to get on board. The embrace comes despite concerns from skeptics like Warren, who has been a leading critic of the digital assets sector.

“I have a very different experience with crypto and understanding of how it fits into our economy,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in an interview last month of his differences with Warren.

Gallego voted as a member of the House last year for an industry-backed crypto bill that Warren opposed. He said last month that he is “going to vote to represent what I think Arizona actually thinks about crypto and how it fits into the economy.”

It’s all coming together to present a major early test for how Warren, who has clashed fiercely with moderate Democrats in the past over financial regulation issues, will handle differences with others in her party in her new role as its leader on the committee overseeing Wall Street and crypto. She has warned that digital assets present risks to consumers and called for the industry to be subjected to tougher anti-money laundering standards.

“I believe that Democrats understand the importance of consumer protections and anti-money laundering curbs in any new financial product,” Warren told reporters last week in response to questions for this story. “All we’re looking for is a level playing field between crypto and all of the other financial systems.”

…

Warren has also raised concerns that stablecoins present a potential threat to financial stability. She said last week that “banks taking more crypto risk onto their balance sheet presents a real safety and soundness issue that bank regulators need to keep a close watch on.”

Pro-crypto senators are gearing up to do an end-run around her. Gillibrand said last week that “at least seven” Democrats “are reading the bill right now.”

“We’re going to try to get to 60 – meaning we need Democrats,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a leading crypto booster who chairs a Senate Banking subcommittee on digital assets. “And I think we can get ’em.”

- A new crypto clash looms for Elizabeth Warren, Politico.com, February 26, 2025.

3. There is an oft-used idiom in my community: “Stop playing in my face.” It can be loosely translated as “Sir, your lies mock my intelligence. Desist from these obvious falsehoods or I shall be roused to combat.”

At 1 o’clock on the morning of Saturday, April 19, the Supreme Court issued a terse, one-paragraph order that amounted to John Roberts telling Donald Trump to stop playing in his face. The court, by a presumed vote of 7-2, ordered Trump to halt a number of planned deportations to El Salvador of immigrants being held in Texas. I believe this is the first time that a majority of Supreme Court justices have gotten pissed at the Trump administration’s lawless refusal to follow basic court orders. If the court is ever going to fight for constitutional principles in the face of fascist overreach, it might be here and now.

The order was issued in a case called A.A.R.P v. Trump (no relation to the old folks nonprofit), which involves Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process. The procedural backstory of how this case got in front of the Supreme Court is complicated, but important.

On April 7, the court issued a ruling in Trump v. J.G.G., a case that also involves Trump’s spurious use of the Alien Enemies Act and that has gotten a lot of attention because the Republican judge presiding over it in the district court, James Boasberg, has tried to slow Trump’s mass deportations. When it was appealed to the Supreme Court, the court ruled that the Trump administration had to provide potential deportees with reasonable and timely notice of their deportation, and be given clear instructions on how they could challenge their abductions.

Following that case, the ACLU was able to get a number of temporary restraining orders (TROs) halting Trump’s mass deportations in three regions: the Southern District of New York, the District of Colorado, and, critically, the Southern District of Texas. The ACLU also asked for a TRO in the Northern District of Texas, but that application (called A.A.R.P. v. Trump to get a sense of where this is going), was denied by Trump-appointed Judge James Hendrix.

Trump seemed to comply with the TROs. But on April 18, reports surfaced that Venezuelan nationals were being “loaded onto buses” headed toward northern Texas – almost certainly as a way to get around the TROs in other districts. As bad, the immigrants received only 24-hours’ notice of their impending removal – and that notice was written in English (despite the fact that the majority speak only Spanish) and did not include instructions on how to appeal.

In response, the ACLU renewed its objection to the denial of a TRO in Northern Texas and filed emergency appeals with the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the extremist, MAGA appellate court that covers Texas) and with the Supreme Court.

Given recent experience, I went to bed on April 18 fairly certain that, by the time I woke up, another group of people would have been illegally deported to El Salvador, never to be heard from again, while the Supreme Court twiddled its thumbs and redirected the ACLU back to the Fifth Circuit. That’s been the hallmark of the Supreme Court’s capitulation to the Trump administration this term: First, it delays; then, it hides behind procedure. Back during the Biden era, when the court didn’t like something, it would move quickly, via its “emergency” or “shadow” docket, to stop the administration from acting. But with Trump, the court takes its time, forcing everybody to appeal to the proper courts, in the proper order, while allowing Trump to continue acting (often lawlessly) until the Supreme Court finally gets around to making a determination.

But that’s not what happened here. Instead, the court acted with alacrity, even urgency, and essentially ordered Trump to turn the buses around at one in the morning. The Supreme Court moved so quickly that it issued its order before the Fifth Circuit could make up a pro-Trump argument, before the Trump administration could reply to the ACLU’s appeal, and even before the court’s two dissenting justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) could write a dissent. Alito’s dissent was issued the next evening, and it made all of the procedural arguments Roberts usually goes for and Alito usually ignores when it suits their political positions to do so.

The court’s decision to issue this ruling when it could have opted to hide behind technicalities and courtesies tells me that the justices who ruled in the majority were fed up with Trump’s games. Trump was attempting to make an end run around the Supreme Court’s authority, and not only did the court tell him “no,” it told him “no” in the middle of the night, without even letting his lawyers or his Manchurian justices (Thomas and Alito) spit out their objections. On Holy Saturday, the court kept its eyes on the good news, instead of getting distracted by all of Trump’s rotten Easter eggs. The majority told Trump to stop playing in their face.

- Did the Supreme Court Just Grow a Spine? By Ellie Mystal, TheNation.com, April 22, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）