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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

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

#611

Post by giantg2 »

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…

'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch'

That's basically what EOs are already.

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

#612

Post by Maxatar »

twoodfin wrote: post #330
snowwrestler wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your question is whether the “independent” agencies are Constitutional, the answer is yes. Congress makes the laws and the laws can constrain the behavior of the President. If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot. So who are such agencies accountable to? Congress. Just like the president is accountable to Congress.

This is just flatly incorrect. Humphrey's Executor (which may not be long for this world as precedent, anyway) lays out specific cases where "for cause" requirements on termination are Constitutional, but otherwise the President's power to dismiss subordinate officers of the executive branch is absolute.

Your comment is way too vague to be declaring anything as flat out wrong. At any rate, federal employees have numerous protections from being fired arbitrarily as laid out by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, a law passed precisely to limit arbitrary firing of federal employees, especially for politically motivated reasons.

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

#613

Post by throw0101d »

kbrkbr wrote: post #293
pjmlp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most dictorships started by the people in power streamlining decadent processes and burocracy, by putting into place the new regulations that would improve everything. Until a couple years later on average, a state protection organism gets put in place to check those organisations are working as expected. Eventually, the state protection organism gets a bit carried away on what they are supposed to be checking on.

I don't think so. "Nearly half of dictatorships start as a military coup, though others have been started by foreign intervention, elected officials ending competitive elections, insurgent takeovers, popular uprisings by citizens, or legal maneuvering by autocratic elites to take power within their government. Between 1946 and 2010, 42% of dictatorships began by overthrowing a different dictatorship, and 26% began af…

> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship (see "Formation")

Maybe worth considering:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

Also "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days":

* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...

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

#614

Post by giantg2 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #529
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?

“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.

If that were the case, then SCOTUS would just invalidate the EO.

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

#615

Post by ceejayoz »

Vegenoid wrote: post #607
spacechild1 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system Only if there is a transition of power. If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way.

> If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way. I don't think it actually can be that stable. I think I see what people are getting at when they say this, but it seems to me that authoritarian governments are generally quite unstable, because power never stays in the same hands. Power always changes hands, because we are mortal. Non-authoritarian systems are built to handle…

We also don’t have much data on how the calculus changes when AI transcript analysis makes the Stasi’s wet dreams a reality.

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

#616

Post by ceejayoz »

giantg2 wrote: post #614
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.

If that were the case, then SCOTUS would just invalidate the EO.

And the President’s order compels them to ignore that contradictory opinion.

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

#617

Post by sjs382 »

doctor_radium wrote: post #599
UncleOxidant wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Bu…

If it comes to it, the military.

Which? The State national guards? The "well-regulated militia?"

The President is Commander in Chief of the US armed forces.

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

#618

Post by avalys »

intermerda wrote: post #497
avalys wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This EO says nothing about the Judicial branch and presents a perfectly reasonable policy statement about how legal decisions and interpretation should be made within the executive branch. What specific language in this EO do you have a problem with? I’m no fan of Trump, but this pattern of people hallucinating that Trump said something he didn’t and then freaking out about their nonexistent hallucination, is getting…

Imagine finding absolutely no issue with an EO that uses phrases like “so-called independent regulatory agencies”. This is what Germans must have felt like in 1933.

What branch of government do these independent agencies exist in, and where is that defined in the Constitution?

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

#619

Post by afpx »

ptah wrote: post #173

this is impacting scientific research to the point that people are scrubbing the word "gender" from their papers to avoid their research programs getting flagged by the doge gestapo

Given that it took about two centuries for the public to accept the heliocentric model, some patience may be needed. A great number of people only learn about gender through undergraduate education. And, iirc, only 25% of the population have undergraduate degrees.

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

#620

Post by peterashford »

giantg2 wrote: post #611
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…

'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' That's basically what EOs are already.

No. EOs can be overturned by congress. This EO says that they can't - ie: there's no checks or balances on the President
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