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Where was all this complaining about the forms of the Republic when Obama was using his phone and pen, or everyone from Johnson to Biden was implementing DEI by executive order?
No, the Democrats have knocked every check and balance in the nation flat in their attempt to purge Republicans from power, and now the Republicans have turned tail on them. It's too late to call upon institutional integrity now.
There was plenty of complaining about it. As someone who dislikes both the left and the right, I am not impressed by "the Democrats did bad thing X, so now the Republicans should also get to do bad thing X" arguments. I'd rather that nobody did bad thing X, if X is actually bad.
It's fair that you complain. But, let's be honest, 99% of the complaining is not coming from principled libertarians. It's coming from totalitarian statists who are mad that their toys are being taken away.
Suddenly, when their 300k per year no-show job is under threat, they rediscover the Federalist Papers.
I'm not a libertarian either, and I also didn't like seeing the expansion of executive powers under Obama, or much of anything that Biden did.
Mostly what I see here is arguments over who smashed the Defect button first. If we can't get back to a stable equilibrium where everyone isn't choosing Defect, then whatever America becomes, it will just be wearing labels like "Democracy" and "Republic" as skinsuits. (I'm aware some people believe this is already the case. But if you're an accelerationist who thinks we should just abandon the pretense and make Trump God-Emperor, then I'm not interested in your opinions about executive authority.) There is very little Trump can do that a succeeding Democratic administration can't undo (except perhaps fix it so there can never be another Democratic administration - is that what you are actually hoping for?), and of course, they will continue following precedent and the next Democratic president will act even more like a monarch. Everyone cheering for Trump and Musk now will be outraged - outraged! - at this abuse of power and violation of norms.
Yes, a lot of the people outraged today are hypocrites who thought it was just fine when Obama and Biden were abusing their authority. So what? Do you think it's actually bad for presidents to do this, or do you think it's only bad when it's not the president you voted for? If the former, then what do you expect to be the outcome of each president being encouraged by his supporters to expand his powers? That your party will be in power forever so it's okay?
I guess I should say here that I am very much in a "Wait and see" mood right now. As I said before the election, I don't think Trump is going to be a good president, but I'm willing to be proven wrong, and I am enjoying the leftist convulsions. However, the President can't just abrogate the powers of Congress and decide (or delegate to Elon Musk to decide) which pieces of the federal government he'd like to keep and which pieces he'd like to do away with. (And if you are saying "Yes he can!" and triumphantly quoting Andrew Jackson, well, see above. Better lube up for when the Democrats return to power. And Andrew Jackson also ran a notoriously corrupt spoils system, in which federal employment was explicitly conditioned on party loyalty and when your party lost an election, you lost your job. This obviously created undesirable incentives, and led to the civil service reforms some are so eager to dismantle.)
On a slightly more pedantic point, I see a lot of people talking about "$300K laptop jobs." No government worker makes $300K - even the top of the SES pay scale is capped at around $250K, and the GS workers (with or without laptops) are making far less. If you mean NGO workers, maybe some of their executives make that much, but the peons who are mostly the ones losing their jobs don't. Lobbyists, lawyers, and contractors, though? Sure, and oddly enough, I don't see many of them losing their jobs yet.
No there is a difference in kind. DACA is an example of the imperial presidency. There is clear law on the matter. Obama created a new system diametrically opposed to the law.
In contrast, Trump is trying to rein in the unaccountable bureaucracy in a way that can square with congressional delegates (see my above comment to anon_).
That is, just because Trump and Obama both aggressively used the power of the president doesn’t mean they are the same thing. There are important differences that make them different in kind. So your analysis rests on a faulty assumption that the actions are similar.
I agree with you about DACA. I do not agree that what Trump is doing is different in kind, or "a return to norms." I think you just like what Trump is doing and disliked what Democrats did.
What do you think is his limiting principle? If granted success in unilaterally abrogating the power of Congress and the Supreme Court, do you think he will refrain at any point from doing other things he wants on Constitutional grounds?
I don’t fuck with pointless hypos—yes if Trump had all of the power he would probably use it. Few men wouldn’t.
But explain how you think curtailing the power of the admin state is akin to DACA.
Exactly, which is why we should enforce the constraints that are supposed to prevent him from doing that.
There are a lot of things that fall under the category of "curtailing the power of the admin state." Some of them are legal, and are even things I would agree with. Some of them aren't. The President can't just dissolve agencies that were created by law, or redirect or deny funding that was appropriated by Congress. Ending birthright citizenship is another example - even if you think birthright citizenship should be abolished, that requires a Constitutional amendment, not just the President saying so. DACA was the President making new law with his pen, which he's not supposed to do. It's directly equivalent to a lot of the things Trump is doing now.
You seem to be giving into unfounded fears. The bureaucratic state isn’t what stops Trump from having all of this power.
Also the president absolutely can stop funding for an agency without congressional action and is probably required to do so. Again let’s say Congress said “50b to USAOD to accomplish Y.” But USAID spent it to accomplish Z. The president would actually be failing his required duty by not stopping USAID from spending on Z. Full stop. And if you determine the people in that agency are lawless then you need to fire them.
If the president then later on fails to take steps to put people into the agency to accomplish Y then he also failed his duty. But that’s a future issue. Right now he is acting within those safe guards.
Re birthright citizenship I think you are probably right but the president’s position is colorable (even Richard Posner seems to think the better view is the constitution doesn’t require birthright citizenship). There is a difference between taking a position that may not be correct and doing something that is obviously incorrect.
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