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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

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

#631

Post by reubenswartz »

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 "strong" man and his allies are the ones that crippled the legislative branch, except for tax cuts for the rich and appointing unqualified SC justices.

There was bipartisan (Republican-ish) immigration legislation with enough votes pass until Trump told people to vote against it, because he knew that he could blame the problem on his opponents and many people would believe him.

Note that none of this would be possible with Citizens United and dramatic media consolidation in the hands of a few oligarchs. ;-(

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

#632

Post by dragonwriter »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #628
Vegenoid wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Even if the current GOP really does have the best interests of the people in mind

Note that the Chavez/Maduro distinction you drew was not about “best interests of the people in mind” but the former being immensely popular and the latter not. The current Administration, whatever intent may exist in their minds, is very much not “immensely popular”.

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

#633

Post by vessenes »

thephyber wrote: post #351
buttercraft wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legislative gridlock and dysfunction Isn't this a direct result of "no compromise" policies on one side of the aisle?

The causes are more complicated. The founding fathers envisioned the legislature be slow and deliberate, so it was never intended to move quickly. One major party doesn’t think government solves any problems, so it’s not incentivized to use it to solve any problems. In fact, a generation of Republicans have tried to stifle fixing any of the large problems. The other party is frequently torn between a wide spectrum of…

Agreed on this - the country is founded on a deep skepticism of government oversight. Some of what we see today is cultural blowback for those who think that core value has been lost by dems.

I'd also put out that the lessons of the Tea Party (Gingrich style) have not been lost on modern people with political goals -- a fairly small group has used the heavy party whipping that the Republicans use to become an important swing vote / caucus -- and the republican party was more amenable/vulnerable to this sort of tactic, precisely for cultural reasons embedded in the Republican party's history, governance and setup.

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

#634

Post by threeseed »

giantg2 wrote: post #624
peterashford wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

“authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch”

That means that if Congress passes a law with an implicit/explicit interpretation the Executive Branch can simply ignore that.

And there are no existing EOs that say Congress needs to overturn it. It has been the rule since forever that Congress makes the laws. Executive Branch implements it accordingly.

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

#635

Post by photochemsyn »

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…

Ironically, this is reminiscent of Bush-Cheney justifications for a host of programs such as NSA warrantless domestic surveillance, CIA black site rendition flights, Iraqi and Afghan Reconstruction, etc.

Method-wise, GW Bush used signing statements on more than 100 laws in collaboration with his AG to express executive control over interpretation of laws. The language of some of these is interesting, eg Dec 17 2004 on an intelligence reform bill:

> "The executive branch shall construe the Act in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch, which encompass the authority to conduct intelligence operations."

(Which was a long-winded way of saything were doing warrantless surveillance of US citizens, also circumventing the courts)

The other method was Office of Legal Counsel memos, eg Yoo's torture-is-OK letter for the CIA, etc.

Curiously, Cheney, the main advocate of unilateral executive power, was campaigning for Harris - but Trump can now use the Bush era as precedent, which is equally odd as Trump ran directly against some of those Bush-Cheney policies in 2016...

As to why this is a bad idea, look at King Lear and Macbeth, both being examples of unitary executive power gone wrong.

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

#636

Post by khazhoux »

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…

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

It is saying that for all matters where a law is not explicit and prescriptive, the WH shall provide the interpretation for the agency to follow.

The WH is correct that (aside from judicial review, which is not at issue here) they have final authority over how to implement open-ended laws, and not the agencies that function under the WH.

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

#637

Post by 4ndrewl »

adrianmonk wrote: post #495
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.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how legal immunity equates to legal authority. If you are a government employee and Trump orders you to do something that exceeds his authority, can't you still say no? It seems like the Supreme Court only said that Trump can't get in trouble for asking. I don't think the court said that you have to answer yes. I'm not trying to say that we're in a great position here or that immunit…

At this point your working assumption should be that the target operating model is similar to Russia.

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

#638

Post by threeseed »

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.

You keep arguing the same point in this thread. So let’s make it simple.

If Congress or the SCOTUS says do A and the President says do B then the Executive Branch are required to do B.

That’s an unprecedented situation.

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

#639

Post by Trasmatta »

ergonaught wrote: post #318
jaybrendansmith wrote: post #11

As Americans that believe in the Republic, what exactly are we supposed to do about this? Should we continue to implore congress to take action against this lawless behavior?

[flagged]

That "guidance" is not so easy when the tyrant has control of the most powerful military the planet has ever seen

I have no idea how you even propose that to happen

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

#640

Post by vessenes »

wilg wrote: post #608
neilv wrote: post #582

Who is actually behind all these executive orders? Do they all originate by the President saying "I want X" in reaction to something, and lawyers figuring out how to do X? Do some of them originate with a wishlist of some extremist think tank or powerful people, and they finally found a President who'll rubberstamp them? Other?

They put out a whole playbook called Project 2025, developed by a bunch of insane people at the Heritage Foundation. Trump lied and said he didn't know anything about it. Now they're doing it.

Actually, he said during the Kamala debate that it had "some good ideas and some bad ideas" to my recollection.
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