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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

whitehouse.gov

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Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#571

Post by svnt »

hiatus wrote: post #523
arunabha wrote: post #503

In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive bra…

I took it to mean that agencies no longer have the final say in interpretations of law when it comes to exercising executive power. So for instance if ATF says a banana is a machine gun and the president says "yes", then barring an act of Congress clarifying, it is. I don't see how you go from there to the end of judicial review?

Naive interpretations like this one, of bad faith actions is how we get there.

This same assumption of good faith was wholly present in peoples' responses to project 2025 prior to the election.

They are not acting in good faith.

Try restating the problem: Why is this EO being issued? What problem, other than judicial review, does it solve for the executive branch?

EDIT: For those who do not think this contributes anything: can you answer the question?

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#572

Post by mmooss »

dkobia wrote: post #128

This new administration lays bare what we've known all along - the legislative gridlock and dysfunction in the house of representatives and senate has made them completely incapable of governing -- the least productive in a generation. This is opened up an opportunity for a well funded strongman, and the checks and balances that were intended to protect our democracy are now mere suggestions.

> the legislative gridlock and dysfunction in the house of representatives and senate has made them completely incapable of governing -- the least productive in a generation.

They governed well enough until January 20.

> This is opened up an opportunity for a well funded strongman, and the checks and balances that were intended to protect our democracy are now mere suggestions.

Creating gridlock and dysfunction is an intentional (and well-known) strategy to create a strongman. Most of the gridlock and dysfunction are on one side. You can call that partisan but even they oppose even the most simple, inescable issues such as paying debt. Back under Obama, the GOP in Congress openly said that their goal was to make government a failure under Obama.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#573

Post by procaryote »

arunabha wrote: post #503

In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive bra…

That sounds pretty obviously unconstitutional. I don't see how a reasonable person could disagree actually. The whole point of the checks and balances is to prevent this.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#575

Post by UncleOxidant »

tartoran wrote: post #570
UncleOxidant wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. Autocracies can be very stable... for a while depending on how much people are able to protest (or not). You could argue that N Korea has been "stable" (from the standpoint of the ruling family) for over 60 years. > There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances. Sure that's…

> Autocracies can be very stable... Sure, if you kill all dissenters , keep population terrified and into the dark, remove all sources of information with propaganda then things could stay like that for a while.

Or if you manage to get most people to not care. There can still be dissent, but it would be too limited to have an effect.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#576

Post by galleywest200 »

svnt wrote: post #571
hiatus wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took it to mean that agencies no longer have the final say in interpretations of law when it comes to exercising executive power. So for instance if ATF says a banana is a machine gun and the president says "yes", then barring an act of Congress clarifying, it is. I don't see how you go from there to the end of judicial review?

Naive interpretations like this one, of bad faith actions is how we get there. This same assumption of good faith was wholly present in peoples' responses to project 2025 prior to the election. They are not acting in good faith. Try restating the problem: Why is this EO being issued? What problem, other than judicial review, does it solve for the executive branch? EDIT: For those who do not think this contributes any…

>Naive interpretations like this one, of bad faith actions is how we get there.

Instead of just dismissing things out of hand like this, maybe you could provide a "less naive" interpretation? Your statement is not helpful either.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#577

Post by svnt »

hiatus wrote: post #531
ceejayoz wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law“ would seem to rule out, say, accepting a SCOTUS ruling against the President, should he insist it was wrongly decided.

Does any law or executive order say "unless invalidated by a court"? Isn't that kind of a given?

If the court cannot have an opinion more valid than the issuer of the EO, then on what authority can they invalidate it? The issuer can always say: that isn't how the law is meant to be read.

First they marginalize, then they alienate, then they never have to take the extreme action that people like you would recognize as a problem.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#579

Post by UncleOxidant »

procaryote wrote: post #573
arunabha wrote: post #503

In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive bra…

That sounds pretty obviously unconstitutional. I don't see how a reasonable person could disagree actually. The whole point of the checks and balances is to prevent this.

Ok, so how would those checks and balances work if the president refuses to obey the courts? Who's going to enforce those court orders? I suppose you could say that the congress could impeach - but what if the majority of the House sides with the president? And if the House does manage to pass impeachment, it still takes 2/3 of Senators to convict - as we've seen that's a very high bar and very unlikely to happen. But let's continue the thought experiment and say that the Senate votes to convict - who's going to enforce the conviction and kick the President out of office?

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#580

Post by dathinab »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #403
axus wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Supreme Court literally said that Trump has absolute immunity for criminal use of presidential power. Combined with the statistical impossibility of a 2/3 senate majority for impeachment, this is a license to grab as much power as that same court will allow.

What's kind of fascinating is the way they've introduced things like the Major Questions Doctrine (MQD), which asserted the importance (really, necessity, in their view) of Congress's explicit delegation powers, as a way to curtail agency actions. But then faced with something like this EO, they seem quite obviously faced with something that runs up against the fact the Congress gave explicit statutes for how and wha…

yes but if the executive just pretends there is no issue does it matter

part of the supreme court hasn't exactly been known to defend the constitution in word and spirit but find excuses to reinterpret it

and worse by giving themself the right to authoritative misinterpreted law they can prevent any such cases ever appearing in front of the supreme court and/or very effectively blackmail people into not making or dismissing cases

and Trump abusing power to blackmail people to get changes in of court related proceeding (to ironically black mail someone else to force them to fall in line or a court case against them gets reopend/not dismissed) did already happen, openly in public just a few days ago

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