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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

#621

Post by spacechild1 »

procaryote wrote: post #574

In many other countries people would take to the streets and protest until they get a new government if something like this happened. Perhaps you should try it?

Yes! Where are the mass protests? Take some inspiration from Serbia: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/01/student-led-pr....

I have been asking myself: what needs to happen until US citizens wake up and finally take it to the streets? In countries like Iran or Syria people have been protesting despite the danger of being tortured and/or killed. People in the US do not need to fear any of that, so what's holding them back?

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

#622

Post by adamsb6 »

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.

The employees of the executive branch are not intended to be a check on the executive branch's powers. They are the agents of the executive.

The legislative and judicial branches are the checks to executive power.

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

#623

Post by Tostino »

jv22222 wrote: post #561
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…

If they were able to follow through on this absolute power would California succession be on the cards?

Realistically, not unless the military fractured and there was a coherent alternative government that some of them aligned with.

There is absolutely no standing up to our military if it is actually deployed against you as a regular citizen without equal military backing.

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

#624

Post by giantg2 »

peterashford wrote: post #620
giantg2 wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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

"This EO says that they can't"

Where does it say that? What existing EOs explicitly say congress needs to overturn it?

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

#625

Post by daveguy »

bagels wrote: post #548
codewench wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing prevents the next president from having a radically different opinion. Of course, this is only relevant if they are interested in having a 'next' president, something which it seems a segment of society is less than open to.

There is no next legitimately elected president. They are going to disenfranchise us.

Not if we speak the fuck up.

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

#626

Post by handoflixue »

galleywest200 wrote: post #576
svnt wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fundamentally, an EO says "we urgently need to course correct and do X", which only makes sense if you agree that X is not already being done.

So this EO is not just declaring "the Executive Branch will obey me", but also saying "the Executive Branch has been so disobedient that I need to take immediate action to quash that"

If you are saying that latter sentence, you should be able to justify it by pointing at the disobedience that caused this issue AND explain why the usual mechanism of "Congress passes a law to address the problem" is insufficient (AND congress is currently aligned with the President politically, so that's a fairly uphill battle to argue)

---

As an example, no one should ever need to write an EO declaring "the sky is blue." If you're familiar with history, you might remember that smog used to turn the sky yellow. If someone wrote such an EO back then, you could reasonably conclude the actual purpose of the EO is to declare "it is now illegal to notice that the smog is so bad that it's changing the color of the sky."

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

#627

Post by mindslight »

exe34 wrote: post #249
lazide wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why the current administration is going to make sure the other side doesn’t get in power again.

I'm debating on whether they will manage to stir up enough chaos to suspend the constitution, or whether there will be enough independent thought left in the military to oust them when the time comes for new elections - although I can't rule out Russian-style elections, one-man one-vote, and his vote is what counts.

My gut says there will be elections and they might even be "fair" but that there won't be much left to actually govern, having been sold off to corpo looters or just outright destroyed. Trump is his own aggressive buffoon, but ultimately still just a tool of the corpo authoritarians that have had a death grip on this country for decades (at least) - doubly so with the deals he undoubtedly had to make to get a second term to assuage his pitiful ego. Hence the captains of the surveillance industry throwing their support behind him with Musk gaining the de facto executive power.

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

#628

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

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…

Look at Venezuela.

Chavez was kind of a thug, but he was also immensely popular with the commons. The people supported him, in a lot of his goals, and he was able to have a light touch, on a lot of the authoritarian stuff.

When he stepped aside, and Maduro took over, Chavez had established what was basically a dictatorship, and Maduro took the reins.

However, Maduro does not have the base support that Chavez had, and has had to use the stick a lot more. That sort of sets up a negative feedback loop, where more stick, means unhappier people, pushing back, which needs more stick.

Even if the current GOP really does have the best interests of the people in mind, if they dismantle the checks and balances, it's highly likely that a successor will use the power badly.

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

#629

Post by riffraff »

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…

> it seems to me that authoritarian governments are generally quite unstable, because power never stays in the same hands.

Well, it depends, the Kims and the Chinese Communist Party have been in power for almost 80 years. We do have a lot of history of pre-democratic regimes tho, and many of those lasted longer than modern the democratic states.

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

#630

Post by threeseed »

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.

But you need to combine it with the fact that a whole bunch of agencies e.g. FCC, SEC are now no longer considered independent from the Executive Branch.

It’s the combination of actions that makes this so concerning.

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