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Notes -
On the sqs thread, @Capital_Room had an interesting query, about whether Trump is actually being authoritarian:
Is there anything to this: "The Coup We've Feared Has Already Happened"?
Is this what it seems like to me — just more lefty pearl-clutching and crying wolf — or is there something to the arguments James Bruno and Tonoccus McClain are making?
Some of the commenters like @MadMonzer offer an interesting response:
That substack is a bad take on it - the best version of the theory I have seen is spread across multiple posts on lawfaremedia.org. But the underlying story is absolutely serious, and as far as I can see it is true. The three-bullet version of the story is
The slightly longer version is:
The claim that Trump and Johnson are trying to change the US budget process to one where (at least as regards discretionary spending - the only changes to entitlement spending have been done in regular order through the OBBBA) Congress does not meaningfully exercise the power of the purse seems to me to be straightforwardly true.
Overall I tend to agree that Trump's admin is acting in authoritarian ways, and even moreso than past administrations. However, it seems to me that the Congressional structure is so broken that, it kind of makes sense?
The way I see it, and the way Trump et al probably sees it, is that the Three Branches as they exist are extremely dysfunctional, and cannot do the actual job of governing the country pretty much at all. This has allowed NGOs and other non-state actors to come in and basically take over by deploying social and cultural capital in key areas, craftily created a sort of secret network of influence, etc.
The only way for us to get out of this morass, the theory goes, is to have a strong executive who basically burns this gridlock down. Though I don't know if Trump's team would want to restore a functioning American government after or just keep an extremely strong executive.
Anyway, I can't say I fully agree with Trump's seeming plan to just destroy jurisprudence for the executive and do whatever he wants, but I admire the sheer boldness. OTOH, I'm also not convinced that the U.S. has more than a 2% chance of meaningfully falling into an authoritarian dictatorship under Trump, or even in the next 10-20 years. Hopefully I don't eat my words!
The problem with claims of “authoritarianism” about Trump or anyone else is that the entire thing is so unempirical that it’s basically “boo outgroup” name calling.
Trump is going around Congress? What about Obama threatening to simply mint money to pay for things? Trump is using the National Guard, but in the 1960s the National Guard enforced desegregation including removing the Arkansas governor from the school house door. It’s not what laws are bent or broken, it’s scored differently depending on whether or not you agree with the goal and like the guy doing it.
Indeed, this would have been an equivalent if he'd actually done it.
It wouldn't have been directly equivalent, because the spending he minted the platinum coin to pay for would have been approved by Congress.
When Congress passes a deficit budget without raising the debt ceiling to pay for it, the President is subject to mutually contradictory laws - at which point the concept of obeying the law goes out of the window. I suppose you could argue that if a loophole like the platinum coin exists, the President is legally required to use it as the alternative breaks a law (either the budget or the debt ceiling). When Congress doesn't pass a budget, the legally correct thing is clear - the executive branch should stop spending money that hasn't been appropriated.
The fundamental asymmetry here is that the debt ceiling is constitutionally pointless - it doesn't give the Congress any useful additional powers because if Congress wants the debt not to increase they can just pass a balanced budget. The requirement for annual appropriations is a core structural feature of the US Constitution.
The factual and political logic is the same in both cases - when Congress behaves in a sufficiently retarded manner, the President is going to look for a loophole. It is hard to say that Trump is doing the wrong thing by paying the troops illegally, but he is making a novel move to increase the power of the Presidency at the expense of Congress, and it is part of a pattern of behaviour of circumventing the power of the purse, not all of which was a necessary response to Congressional retardation.
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