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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   30599 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Trump did an interview with "Time," to mark the end of the first 100 days of his second term. The first topic they discussed was Presidential power:

Q: You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?

A: Well, I don't feel I'm expanding it. I think I'm using it as it was meant to be used. I feel that we've had a very successful presidency in 100 days. We've had people writing it was the best first month and best second month, and really the best third month. But that you won't know about for a little while, because it takes a little time in transition. You know, we're resetting a table. We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade, and you can't do that. I mean, at some point somebody has to come along and stop it, because it's not sustainable. We were carrying other countries on our back with, you know, with trade numbers, with horrible numbers, and we've changed it. You see the market fluctuates quite a bit. Today, it's up 1,000 or 1,200 points. It goes up and down, but that will steady out, and we're taking in tremendous amounts of money. We have, as you know, already, 25% on cars, 25% on steel and aluminum—

Q: Mr. President, I think what we’re driving at is that you've taken congressional authority on trade and appropriations. You fired the heads of independent agencies. You're challenging the courts right now, as you know. You're using the levers of government to weaken private institutions like law firms and universities. Isn't this seizing power away from institutions and concentrating them inside the presidency?

A: No, I think that what I'm doing is exactly what I've campaigned on. If you look at what I campaigned on, for instance, you can talk about removing people from the country. We have to do it because Biden allowed people to come in through his open border crazy, insanity. He allowed people to come into our country that we can't have in our country. Many criminals—they emptied their prisons, many countries, almost every country, but not a complete emptying, but some countries a complete emptying of their prison system. But you look all over the world, and I'm not just talking about South America, we're talking about all over the world. People have been led into our country that are very dangerous. If you were walking down the street, and if you happen to be near one of these people, they could, they would kill you, and they wouldn't even think about it. And we can't have that in our country.

Q: So you're not concentrating more power in the presidency?

A: I don't think so. I think I'm using it properly, and I'm also using it as per my election. You know, everything that I'm doing—this is what I talked about doing. I said that I'm going to move the criminals out. I saw what was happening early on when I heard that he had open borders, when I, because it was a hard thing to believe. I built hundreds of miles of wall, and then he didn't want to, and we had another, an extra hundred miles that I could have put up because I ordered it as extra. I completed the wall, what I was doing, but we have, I wanted to build additional because it was working so well. An extension. And he didn't want to do that. And when he said he wasn't going to do that, I said, “Well, he must want open borders.” There were sections that were being built. And he stopped to work on it, and I said, this guy actually wants to have open borders. That's going to be a tragedy for our country. That's going to mean that other countries will release into our country some very rough people.

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

He also claimed to have made more trade deals than there are countries... The way he answers questions is peculiar and worth reading. Near the end of the interview:

Q: You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization of the Justice System under Biden. You recently signed memos—

A:Well, sure, but you wouldn’t be—if this were Biden, well, first of all, he wouldn't do an interview because he was grossly incompetent.

Q: We spoke to him last year, Mr. President.

A: Huh?

Q: We spoke to him a year ago.

A: How did he do?

Q: You can read the interview yourself.

A: Not too good. I did read the interview. He didn't do well. He didn't do well at all. He didn't do well at anything. And he cut that interview off to being a matter of minutes, and you weren't asking him questions like you're asking me.

Q: Well, we appreciate that you are able and willing to answer these questions. It says something about you, Mr. President.

A: I am indeed. I've been answering them for years and I’ve been getting elected by bigger and bigger numbers all the time, but you didn't ask questions like this to Biden, because if you did, he would have crawled under this beautiful desk.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

  • -17

There's a trick in the question.

Is using the Alien Enemies Act, for example, to immediately deport a members of a particular 'foreign' gang an "Expansion" of Presidential powers?

The AEA has been used by Presidents before, and its existed for almost as long as the Presidency has existed.

But Trump may be using it in a 'novel' way to perform an act that was not originally anticipated by Congress or explicitly approved by the courts...

So question becomes:

Has the President ALWAYS had the authority to do this under the AEA, and Trump was just the first one to receive an electoral mandate to use this authority...

or

Is Trump CREATING the power to do this via utterly novel interpretation and application of the law, and possibly thumbing his nose a 'traditional' boundaries on Presidential power... and he thinks he can get away with it?

I really think its the former. Trump saw a particular law that granted a particular power, sitting there dusty and unused in the warehouse of executive authority, and reached over and pulled the lever to activate it. But it has always been sitting there, he didn't invent it or wrest it from Congress or the Courts.

So ask that question about most of his actions. Is he 'expanding' power to take the particular actions he's taken, or do most, or even ALL of the powers he's wielding have established precedent in previous administrations, he's just one of the first to wield ALL of them this aggressively, so it looks like a scary expansion of power.

My personal view, as a guy that voted for Ron Paul in 2012, is that Trump is literally just flexing the full set of powers and authority that Congress has ceded to the President and that the Courts have permitted to continue for decades and decades.

I'm STILL mad about the PATRIOT Act, and that's 24 years old now. Congress has delegated even more power to the president since then. They could try to take it back at any time, but they don't. So they're tacitly approving of the executive's current exercise of authority.

I dunno, The Imperial Presidency was published in 1973 and lamented the expansion of the President's war powers. Congress has delegated much of their rulemaking authority to the executive since then in thousands and thousands of pages of laws creating various agencies. Its the logical outcome of about a century of SCOTUS precedent.

If you're scared of what the Presidency has become only because Trump is the guy wielding all that authority, well, I'm going to feel impotently smug once again. Or maybe smugly impotent. The problem has always been that the power is too broad and lacks any effective checks, if you were counting on the goodness of the man occupying the seat of power to keep the office limited, you're basically praying that God doesn't put madman on the throne.

Has the President ALWAYS had the authority to do this under the AEA, and Trump was just the first one to receive an electoral mandate to use this authority...

I find the AEA argument to be quite weak in this case. For the TDA members and their supporters. The AEA was passed when John Adams was President and Thomas Jefferson, his main political rival, was Vice-President. If we transported both to 2025 and had someone neutrally describe TDA, with no conclusion language or question begging (i.e. don't use "invading army", "criminal gang" etc to describe them), describing their place of origin, appearance, and actions both would agree on the outcome. It would go something along the lines of, "Sure I guess we can expel them with the AEA, but why not just hang them like we do with the rest of the Indian warbands that do those things?"

So the dilemma is not real a dilemma about the AEA, its a dilemma about whether expulsion or public execution within 48 hours is the more appropriate punishment. Due process is not something appropriate for foreign savages, both would tell you. In criminal courts it is for co-citizens like the British soldiers Adams defended in court, or for uniformed British soldiers eventual President Andrew Jackson would take prisoner during the war of 1812, who would be held pending the outcome of the war, or immediately expelled under the AEA, depending on what was militarily appropriate. Jefferson, in his later years might note that very few Barbary pirates were ever afforded the opportunity to surrender in that war, mostly ships were left to sink or set ablaze with losses frequently being total.

TDA, with no conclusion language or question begging (i.e. don't use "invading army", "criminal gang" etc to describe them)

But Tren de Aragua are a criminal gang. That's their purpose for existing. The BBC, no fan of Trump or his deportation agenda, say it started as a corrupt local railway union which extorted carriers and contractors on their section of line, then turned into a prison gang, and now is a "transnational criminal organization" which controls diverse economic activities including gold mining and sex trafficking, and engages in political assassination as well as more commonplace "murder and torture."

The question is whether their activities in the US are in coordination with the Venezuelan dictatorship, as asserted by the administration.

But Trend de Aragua are a criminal gang

That is the word we use to describe them now. But the question at hand is what are the words John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have used to describe them in the early 1800s. To those people in that time "gang" would have strong implications that a matter is local of origin and scope. Thus, I think in our hypothetical using the word "gang" to describe TDA can only serve to mislead.

A "transnational criminal organization" which controls diverse economic activities including gold mining and sex trafficking, and engages in political assassination as well as more commonplace "murder and torture."

This just sounds like a rogue government. Or some rogue offshoot of a chartered international corporation like the Dutch East India corporation. Adams and Jefferson would PRESUME any org engaging in all that sort of commerce must be sponsored by some government, otherwise the other governments would crush them. Or they would ask you something like, "this Venezuela is a lawless land of pirates then?" We hang pirates, or sink them, of course. "

The question is whether their activities in the US are in coordination with the Venezuelan dictatorship, as asserted by the administration. Coordination or permission is how I understand the idea to be being presented.

Adams and Jefferson would PRESUME any org engaging in all that sort of commerce must be sponsored by some government, otherwise the other governments would crush them.

Adams defended John Hancock in court after the latter's smuggling business was caught out. The big deal in smuggling back then was just getting wine and tea without paying taxes on them, but that was enough that it helped fund and train colonists for and prompt the American Revolution.

Jefferson fought the first of the Barbary Wars, against foes who were nominally Ottoman protectorates but really independent warlords funded by human trafficking, extortion, and piracy.

Explain to them that we now have drugs so destructive that we ban their shipment at any price and yet so addictive that their market is over $10B/year, and I think they'd understand right away that those drugs' smugglers would avoid becoming a legible (and thus easily targetable) government but would still become powerful enough to stand up to weak governments anyway.

"this Venezuela is a lawless land of pirates then?" We hang pirates, or sink them, of course. "

This was Jefferson's thinking going into the First Barbary War, despite that being evenly matched enough that we have to call it the "First" and we didn't get a complete victory until a decade later. Pitting the modern US vs Venzuela would seem to be a much more obvious and less bold decision.

I'm not sure that works as a metaphor here, though. That "avoid becoming a legible government" trick in the modern case is a sneaky one. If we can't stop Tren de Aragua from operating here in the US under our noses, why be surprised or angry with Venezuela about the fact that they also can't stop it there? But if we can, then from our point of view the problem is solved here, no need to go nation-building to try to solve it elsewhere.

Adams defended John Hancock in court after the latter's smuggling business was caught out. The big deal in smuggling back then was just getting wine and tea without paying taxes on them, but that was enough that it helped fund and train colonists for and prompt the American Revolution.

So an arm of the revolutionary government and its precursors. State.

Jefferson fought the first of the Barbary Wars, against foes who were nominally Ottoman protectorates but really independent warlords funded by human trafficking, extortion, and piracy.

Yes. And we took basically zero POWs. We just sank pirates until their state sponsor agreed to some terms.

I'm not sure that works as a metaphor here, though. That "avoid becoming a legible government" trick in the modern case is a sneaky one. If we can't stop Tren de Aragua from operating here in the US under our noses, why be surprised or angry with Venezuela about the fact that they also can't stop it there? But if we can, then from our point of view the problem is solved here, no need to go nation-building to try to solve it elsewhere.

Yes its a problem of will here, not means. While its more of a question of means/will (aka intentional by Venezuela). I think there is a lot of intentional burying the head in the sand on this question. 3rd party groups is how modern war by inferior powers is conducted. People acting like Venezuela should be treated like a real nation state that is going to conduct proper military operations are delusional.

So an arm of the revolutionary government and its precursors. State.

Proto-state, sure, with the benefit of hindsight. The actual State at the time was the government they fought against for 8 years, who wasn't their sponsor.

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