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This is just such an insane understanding of the current state. You are complaining about a lack of checks and balances. Fine. Understand that for the last fifty years the administrative state has run amok with functionally no checks. No balances. They fund their own activists and media to make sure they get what they want.
So now we have an executive cutting down that bureaucratic state — an energetic executive trying to eliminate the unelected unaccountable and unconstitutional fourth branch. Yet you are upset about it from a checks and balances? No you need to kill the admin state in order for congress and the presidency to actually have power and therefor effort there to be actual checks.
I have already said words to the effect that I am fine with dismantling the administrative state, if that is what voters want Trump and Congress to do. I am less convinced than you are that Trump couldn't have done this the "right way" with actual laws. Sure, a few Republican lawmakers defecting would scupper his plans, but if they did, that too would be an important check in our system working as intended.
Trump has the bully pulpit. Trump claims he has a mandate. Let him actually do the work of getting the laws he wants passed.
This is a better path for one big reason: If Trump accomplishes his dismantling of the administrative state via EOs, that will mean that if Democrats ever get the presidency again they can just bring the administrative state back even if it will take some doing. This is all assuming we actually have a republic where Democrats could actually get back into power again, of course.
Respectfully, are you an administrative lawyer? How familiar are you with the Administrative Procedures Act and the dozens of legislative and executive actions which together, in concert, have intertwined to create the tangled mess that is the current administrative state? How familiar are you with the history of the legislative veto and INS v. Chadha?
It's not reducible to schoolhouse rock-tier "you need congress to pass a law," and you shouldn't minimize the legal and bureaucratic infighting that's taking place.
Isn't it? Trump, 50 R senators, and a R majority of the House could pretty much immediately nuke the filibuster and repeal/revoke all of that. They're not going to, and that's, depending on your perspective, the checks and balances working, or the checks and balances failing, but they could.
They don't have to, and shouldn't have to just because people don't actually understand the state of the law and the left is willing to strategically misrepresent and/or lie about it when it suits their purposes (for the record the right isn't much, if at all, better). Significant powers have already been delegated to the President, or arguably unlawfully usurped from its constitutional power as commander in chief (e.g. protection from at-will removal).
This is silly. If you pass a law that is misrepresented or misapplied by the courts then you absolutely should have Congress pass a law that unambiguously makes that misrepresentation impossible.
Their power to misinterpret is greater than your power to wordsmith; you cannot write something that cannot be misrepresented by a sufficiently hostile actor.
It’s an iterative game! You win because you always have the right of immediate response whereas the opponent has to go back to the district court and start over.
Meanwhile each misrepresentation because more and more fantastical along the way.
This is literally Congress’ primary job!
No, it takes longer to pass a law than to get an injunction.
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