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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!
I think even Republicans, if they were thinking more clearly, should have great cause for concern. As the supposed originalists, they should be extra aware of the original Constitution's ideas for how the branches' relations should be. And there are objectively several gigantic fractures in the original Constitutional checks-and-balances design (who you blame for this is a separate discussion). We have:
Again, these are not really partisan spin-type allegations, they are very strongly rooted in fact. I can't emphasize enough that all of those problems are fundamental and direct threats to the checks and balances system. There's also some federal-vs-state stuff too but I tend to view that as less important.
Also, you have varying degrees of extra-Constitutional but still foundational stuff like:
I'm still a believer in the system, but... shit's bad. That's not an exaggeration. While political polarization is overblown (historically), the checks and balances are I believe in a worse state than they have ever been in the entire history of the state. I do fear for an American Empire era. Not in the next 10 years probably, but in the next 30, absolutely. Weirdly, I actually kind of think that making Senators directly elected (done via amendment) might have been a mistake, that the original idea of making them appointed by legislatures was more conducive to the role they were expected to play.
Again, let's step back for a moment: that's SEVEN major failures of critical pillars of the three-branch system to sustain itself properly (as originally envisioned). That's very concerning. Only so many checks and balances can be nullified before the system functionally collapses. (In fact, an argument could actually be made that Congress allowing too much federal rule-making many decades ago has created a vicious downward spiral as the responsibilities became increasingly easy to evade). This is, again, just simple facts and logic so to speak.
Now, to your original point, does dysfunction in one place justify dysfunction in another? I say no, two wrongs don't make a right. IF, and that's a big IF, major and fundamental stuff is going undone due to failings of Congress, I think the President is probably allowed some latitude. But that in my view is not broadly the case here, not now and not historically either. Executive rule-making infringing on legislative turf, the whole rescission stuff, presidential military encroachment, at least all of those have a long history of occurring independently even when Congress isn't dropping the ball. Like, the President is probably within his rights to move money around to pay the troops in a government shutdown like this, even if I don't like it. But the President is NOT allowed to deliberately, for example, decline to nominate someone to a Cabinet-level position on purpose because he prefers the current non-confirmed dude, as he recently did. I'm not quite sure what the ideal remedy for that failure is, if any, but it IS still a failure.
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