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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

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

#911

Post by shitspotter »

Aeolun wrote: post #898
timoth3y wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with a highly sympathetic Supreme Court it is hard to imagine this EO standing. It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. US civil servants and military alike swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution not the president or their commander. Illegal orders are not o…

It’s pretty amazing. A few days ago someone posted a comparison of the oath of allegiance for officers before and after Hitler, and it has basically exactly the same change.

How does this executive order compare to an oath of allegiance?

Seems like a major reach to compare the two unless you are rationalizing backwards.

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

#912

Post by BariumBlue »

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…

My lens is that the military is a federal agency, and our soldiers are federal employees.

This EO combined with the "he who saves his country breaks no law" quote points towards an eventual attempt at a coupe or similar use of force to retain power. Thankfully there are currently no partisan militias in the DOD, but I could see an attempt at a Saddam-style seizing of Congress

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

#913

Post by kelnos »

timewizard wrote: post #401
grandempire wrote: post #30

The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”. So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business? On the other hand, one of the issues brought…

The Constitution has the "Due Care Clause." The Administration is required to follow the law and to implement it with due care as the legislation intended. The Legislature can impeach the Administration, it can hold it's officers in contempt, and it can pass laws constraining the Administration. It's a simple problem: NO ONE IS DOING THEIR JOB. This is because they can get away with it and you don't actually have the…

> The Legislature can impeach the Administration

The problem here is that if you impeach Trump, then you get Vance, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. You impeach Vance, and you get Johnson, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. And so on, down the line. Eventually you run out of people in the presidential line of succession, and then you have a real problem. I suppose eventually you get to the point where you have a president who doesn't feel like getting impeached? But by then the damage to the institution has been done.

> it can hold it's officers in contempt

Who is going to enforce any orders (fines, imprisonment) around those contempt rulings? Congress and federal courts don't really have much law enforcement personnel to speak of. Trump controls federal law enforcement, and he can instruct them to ignore contempt rulings.

I guess the House (for example) has the Sergeant at Arms, but their law enforcement staff is limited, and I don't think they're going to want to get into a conflict with, say, the Secret Service, if they go to arrest a cabinet member, but Trump says no.

> and it can pass laws constraining the Administration.

There are already laws constraining the administration, and Trump and Musk are running roughshod over them. Why would they obey new laws they don't like?

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

#914

Post by sympil »

refurb wrote: post #910
sympil wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do people think the agency derives 100% of it's power from? The President! You clearly do not understand how the American system of governance is supposed to work. Every department has enabling legislation. Below is a link to a law passed by Congress and signed by the President establishing the DOJ. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/...

Executive power is derived from the President. Congress can design an agency, set it's processes and procedures, and give it money to run. But the President is in charge of it within those bounds. The President can't decided DOJ doesn't need an Attorney General (Congress already decided that), but the President gets to pick the AG and the AG reports to the President.

the President gets to pick the AG and the AG reports to the President.

With the Senate’s approval. You dont understand how the interplay between the branches work.

Executive power is derived from the President.

No!

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

#915

Post by Nevermark »

refurb wrote: post #803
Nevermark wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three branches of the government are beholden to the Constitution as a whole, and to each other based on the Constitutional roles and their expressions of their roles. All government actors individually are also responsible to the Constitution and its expression by all three branches first , before any loyalty to anyone else. In the same branch or not. Even before the current top office holders of the executive b…

> Saying that a President’s personal interpretation of Congress’ laws or the courts precedence, completely overrides any individual executive employees good faith understanding and responsibility to the Constitution, laws, and judicial rulings is madness. But it's not madness based on the intended structure of government? The EO isn't saying "ignore Constitutional violations". It wouldn't be valid if it did. If Congr…

> But it's not madness based on the intended structure of government? The EO isn't saying "ignore Constitutional violations". It wouldn't be valid if it did.

If all executive actors must bend for the president’s orders, regardless of previous orders, laws and precedent, then nobody’s views in the executive branch matter, any time the President chooses.

They are now effectively sworn to a particular human, not the Constitution.

The President is now the “Constitution” for the executive branch.

(You might counter with the argument that they are sworn to the President’s Office first, but who actually gets to decide what that means? The human in that role.)

It is madness because a president whose will is unassailable within their own branch is also unassailable across all three branches.

The President has all the levers of practical coercive power.

Neither Congress can put any law into effect, or the Judiciary put any ruling into effect, without the cooperation of the executive branch. Without that, their existence is decorative.

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

#916

Post by kelnos »

grandempire wrote: post #870
advisedwang wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress makes lots of rules about how the executive can wield power: * FOIA tells the executive branch when/how to share documents. * APA tells executive agencies what they have to do to make a rule. * Congress gives line item budgets, and the executive doesn't get to reassign funds. * Executive agencies must submit to audits from GAO (within congress) It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive ag…

> It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive agency heads can be hired/fired too. In some limited employment law sense , maybe. The question is who gives these people orders? Who do they work for? And the answer can’t be themselves.

Why is that the question? I think it's clear that some of them work for the president, and the president (perhaps filtered through cabinet members and others) tells them what to do. But that doesn't mean that Congress can't put limits on when and how the president can fire them.

That isn't necessarily the case for all officials. For example, I believe Congress can't prevent the president from firing a member of the cabinet. But that doesn't mean the president can do whatever he wants to anyone.

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

#917

Post by autoexec »

refurb wrote: post #803
Nevermark wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three branches of the government are beholden to the Constitution as a whole, and to each other based on the Constitutional roles and their expressions of their roles. All government actors individually are also responsible to the Constitution and its expression by all three branches first , before any loyalty to anyone else. In the same branch or not. Even before the current top office holders of the executive b…

> Saying that a President’s personal interpretation of Congress’ laws or the courts precedence, completely overrides any individual executive employees good faith understanding and responsibility to the Constitution, laws, and judicial rulings is madness. But it's not madness based on the intended structure of government? The EO isn't saying "ignore Constitutional violations". It wouldn't be valid if it did. If Congr…

> If Congress passes a law that say "tobacco is banned", and the US President says "I will direct my agencies to follow this new law" and you have agencies saying "I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like this law is unconstitutional so my agency is not going to follow it!"?

Now if Congress passes a law that say "tobacco is banned", the president can say "This law means that tobacco isn't banned and has to be sold in schools, and I will direct my agencies to follow this new law". Before, the president had the option to refuse to enforce the laws as written (and risk getting thrown out on his ass) and now the president has the option to rewrite laws according to his whim and enforce that instead. He also has immunity too so he can't even get into trouble for just doing whatever he wants.

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

#918

Post by thrance »

hector126 wrote: post #807
thrance wrote: post #774

Is anyone still doubting that what's happening is the actual death of American Democracy? Anyone still willing to argue that this is about freedom and cutting waste?

I would argue that this is not the end of your country's democracy and that in 2028 a new president will be elected. You'd disagree, I trust?

A new president, sure. But an opponent? We'll see I guess.

Remember when Trump said "we wouldn't have to vote ever again"? That was 3 months ago, so maybe your memory doesn't go that far.

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

#919

Post by dwallin »

apple4ever wrote: post #773
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…

>setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. But that is what the Constitution specifies (Article II Section 1): > The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. I find it funny people either don't know this or are intentionally ignoring it. The entire power is vested in one person, who can delegate the enforcement of it to lower officers. >…

The constitution also explicitly sets up formal departments with specific purviews, with heads that need to be approved by congress. It also outlines that the president has the right to get the opinion of said principal offices about their duties (while seemingly failing to state any right to direct said opinions) This implies that the president’s executive authority over the departments is far from absolute, since if it was, why would you need to explicitly bestow a right to merely seek opinions?

If anything, the constitution implies that department heads SHOULD have independent opinions related to the purview of their departments.

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

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

#920

Post by autoexec »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #749
avianlyric wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the checks and balances are kind of predicated on the idea that each arm of government who actually bother to protect their own powers, and use those powers to rein in misbehaviour of the other branches. But both congress and the supreme courts seem to have decided that personal ideological principles are more important than the maintenance of the U.S. democratic foundations. The Supreme Court has basically ru…

> All of the checks and balances are kind of predicated on the idea that each arm of government who actually bother to protect their own powers, and use those powers to rein in misbehaviour of the other branches. I mean, sure, that's the Schoolhouse Rock version. But I'm talking about something else: The executive branch is the branch that controls military, FBI, CIA, BATF, US Marshals - the law enforcement agencies…

> The executive branch is the branch that controls military, FBI, CIA, BATF, US Marshals - the law enforcement agencies with guns, tanks and planes. Congress and the Courts don't have any similar enforcers.

military and law enforcement also swear an oath to uphold the constitution of the united states and to defend the nation against threats, including domestic ones. I think it's reasonable that they would defy a president who went totally off the rails to the point where he became a threat and violated the constitution.

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