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The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sound
by grandempire 2y ago
The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”.
So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business?
On the other hand, one of the issues brought up in the Obama years was whether a president can choose not to enforce a law like immigration. If congres’s laws can be ignored than what power do they have?
Genuine question. Does anyone have a constitutional framing for the duties of the executive branch in prioritizing enforcement or implementation of law?
- error_logic 2y agoNot unaccountable, just requiring the cooperation of multiple branches to remove. Cooperation which has been deemed too transparent, too vulnerable to actually caring about what is being destroyed.
- grandempire 2y agoWhat other constitutional procedures require cooperation between branches to make a decision?
- sdenton4 2y agoThe president signs laws, for example...... This isn't hard.
- grandempire 2y agoIm not being facetious. That’s a good example. So in that case the president has a final yes/no, but no authority to rewrite. So maybe congress has a kind of veto power here?
- cowfriend 2y agoyes.
- sdenton4 2y agoCongress has lots of power, it's a question of whether they do anything. Currently the Republicans are uniformity falling in line with the authoritarian executive orders, even those that abrogate well established congressional powers.
- bluGill 2y agoRemember we are still in the first 100 days. Congress typically falls in line for the first few months (not always 100 days, but it is a good round number). As the term goes on though congress tends to start looking to the next election and they start to opposed unpopular things because they will lose in 2 years. Trump is risking a democrat super majority in the house in 2 years if he is too unpopular, and 20 republicans are up for election in the senate, if even half of them turn that would be a majority for the democrats and a shot that the other republican senators (who want to win election in 2-4 more years) will pay attention to. But we need to get through the first few months before any of this will play out. And after that there is still a long time before the 2026 elections.
- 9dev 2y agoWhat on earth gave you the idea this administration will be anything like a previous one? I don’t think we can assume the rules will just stay the same.
- bluGill 2y agoSo long as there are elections in 2026 the looming election will have an effect. I doubt Trump can get away with trying to stop elections or even manipulating them (much - there is always manipulation). As such congress will soon start behaving like elections matter and they might not be elected if they are unpopular.
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- snowwrestler 2y agoIf your question is whether the “independent” agencies are Constitutional, the answer is yes. Congress makes the laws and the laws can constrain the behavior of the President. If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot. So who are such agencies accountable to? Congress. Just like the president is accountable to Congress.
- grandempire 2y agoSo your understanding is that these agencies are part of the legislative branch and the senate/house would have the power to do this? If it’s that clear will it be easy to take this to the Supreme Court?
- pas 2y agoThey don't have to be part of any branch. The usual branches are descriptive concepts. (Or they can be part of the executive branch yet still not be part of the "unitary executive" part. The law allows for any kind of exemptions and special-casing.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
- grandempire 2y ago[flagged]
- cowfriend 2y agoFriend, I think I see your concern, and I may have an answer. Most of the bureaucracy is apolitical. However, the heads and higher-ups of each agency are appointed by the currently in-office politicians. So the upper management is composed of political appointments. And like any other organization, the upper management has considerable discretion in setting priorities. re: "politically selective law enforcement" is not a good thing, because laws are one of the things that are supposed to constrain politicians.
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- kasey_junk 2y agoThey aren't 'independent' they are 'a mix between executive and legislative'. The Supreme Court decisions are Meyers v US and Hunters Executor v US. And I'm not a constitutional scholar but my reading of it is that the protections in question come from the legislative delegating some of their power to the executive, think legislative actions (researching laws, etc) but retaining their constitutional prerogative to protect them from executive control. This is something that has existed for a very long time but has been changing lately and will almost certainly show up in the Supreme Court again.
- grandempire 2y ago“ Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), was a United States Supreme Court decision ruling that the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials, and does not need the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body.”
- kasey_junk 2y agoYes. Now look up Humphreys Executor which is mentioned in the next sentence after the sentence you quoted in Wikipedia. It limits that power when it comes to the quasi-legislative agencies. That was the unambiguous law of the land for nearly 100 years until the current court whittled down the exclusion in Seila in 2020.
- tmpz22 2y agoIt’s a false narrative that Obama was soft on immigration and even earned the nickname “deporter in chief”. In some ways he was even harder than Bush during the post 9/11 response. www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not It’s astounding the regularity over the last 100 years that conservatives have used immigration narratives to fire up their base regardless of what statistical data shows.
- marcosdumay 2y agoIt's complex. Obama may have deported lots of people, but Trump famously used the same institutions to detain and torture minors indefinitely... Which of those is "harder" against immigration? It's the same issue that is happening now. Biden deported a lot more people, but he focused on people entering the US or caught doing something. Trump is deporting a low fewer people, but he randomly taking people from their homes, workplaces and schools. Which one do you think appears "harder" on TV?
- Nasrudith 2y agoSo in other words his supporters are a bunch of sadistic idiots who would rather see kindergartners tortured than a cartel member deported into custody because it means a hard tough man is in charge!
- marcosdumay 2y agoHum... Maybe it's more a case of rampant mathematical illiteracy all over the press and people paying more attention to extraordinary events. I really don't know.
- lmm 2y ago> Trump famously used the same institutions to detain and torture minors indefinitely Are you talking about the "cages" that were built under Obama and continued under every president thereafter, including Biden? Or what?
- 2y ago
- cowfriend 2y ago> But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In theory it does, that is the whole idea and genius of the constitution. In fact at the moment it does not, because Trump has so captured the Republican party that the legislature has almost no power to stand up to him. The Supreme Court has a long history of judges aligning with the political party that seated them, and Trump put 3 of them into their seat.
- cjfd 2y agoIn a democracy the three branches are independent. Democracy is not just 'you get to elect the guy on top', it also attempts to preserve the rights of the population. If the population does not have rights, democracy soon becomes very fake. E.g., I don't like this or that party so I throw anyone in jail during election day if I know that they would vote for the wrong party. The general principle is that if a person/organization has too much power they will generally find a way to abuse it. The famous split-up in three branches is employed to a greater or lesser extend in all countries where the rights of the population are respected.
- unethical_ban 2y ago>But our government doesn’t have independent branches. Yes, it does, by the nature of them existing and Congress establishing them. Show me where in the Constitution that they can't do that.
- grandempire 2y agoPowers are enumerated in the constitution. So it’s not a question of what the constitution says they can’t do. It would be strange if congress can designate untouchable officials. Why don’t they just grant themselves office for life?
- unethical_ban 2y ago>To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. So yes, Congress has wide leeway to create agencies to administer particular executions of laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. Furthermore, we don't have untouchable officials. What does that hypothetical have to do with anything? The heads of these agencies that Trump is removing are protected from being fired immediately, fired without Congressional notification, and from being fired without cause. Rank-and-file civil servants are protected from being fired unrelated to performance precisely so we don't revert to the patronage systems of the 1800s.
- grandempire 2y ago> Rank-and-file civil servants are protected from being fired That cannot be true. They do not get a lifetime claim to the treasury which is not revocable by elected officials. The members of the executive branch work for the chief executive.
- unethical_ban 2y agoWell, it is true that civil servants have those protections to some extent. You ignore the benefits. Look up Tammany hall and patronage.
- advisedwang 2y agoCongress makes lots of rules about how the executive can wield power: * FOIA tells the executive branch when/how to share documents. * APA tells executive agencies what they have to do to make a rule. * Congress gives line item budgets, and the executive doesn't get to reassign funds. * Executive agencies must submit to audits from GAO (within congress) It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive agency heads can be hired/fired too. After all, it's agencies that congress enacted and gave power too, and for legitimiate reasons that congress has.
- NickC25 2y agoThere's no more FOIA - Musk had their entire office fired and disbanded.
- advisedwang 2y agoThere is no central FOIA office. Each agency has is responsible for their own FOIA requests. IF you are referring to this news story [1] That was just the FOIA office at OPM. [1] https://www.commondreams.org/news/cnn-foia-office-of-personnel-management https://www.commondreams.org/news/cnn-foia-office-of-personn...
- daveguy 2y agoYeah, don't be so hard on Musk and Trump. They're destroying oversight agency by agency, not all at once. Starting with the agency in charge of HR oversight.
- grandempire 2y ago> It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive agency heads can be hired/fired too. In some limited employment law sense , maybe. The question is who gives these people orders? Who do they work for? And the answer can’t be themselves.
- kelnos 2y ago
- timewizard 2y agoThe Constitution has the "Due Care Clause." The Administration is required to follow the law and to implement it with due care as the legislation intended. The Legislature can impeach the Administration, it can hold it's officers in contempt, and it can pass laws constraining the Administration. It's a simple problem: NO ONE IS DOING THEIR JOB. This is because they can get away with it and you don't actually have the power to vote them out. The media is part of the problem and is no longer serving the interests of the citizens. The monopolized corporations ensure you cannot use the Internet to meaningfully solve this problem. Look at this garbage thread. Look at all these garbage threads on here every time some political problem comes up. It's all compromised claptrap designed to appeal to corporate American but in no way to connect and govern in a modern fashion with each other. Look at turn out on voting day when a presidential election is not slated. It's typically less than 25% of the voting age population that turns out. If you sit and think about this for one minute you will see why we are where we are.
- kelnos 2y ago> The Legislature can impeach the Administration The problem here is that if you impeach Trump, then you get Vance, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. You impeach Vance, and you get Johnson, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. And so on, down the line. Eventually you run out of people in the presidential line of succession, and then you have a real problem. I suppose eventually you get to the point where you have a president who doesn't feel like getting impeached? But by then the damage to the institution has been done. > it can hold it's officers in contempt Who is going to enforce any orders (fines, imprisonment) around those contempt rulings? Congress and federal courts don't really have much law enforcement personnel to speak of. Trump controls federal law enforcement, and he can instruct them to ignore contempt rulings. I guess the House (for example) has the Sergeant at Arms, but their law enforcement staff is limited, and I don't think they're going to want to get into a conflict with, say, the Secret Service, if they go to arrest a cabinet member, but Trump says no. > and it can pass laws constraining the Administration. There are already laws constraining the administration, and Trump and Musk are running roughshod over them. Why would they obey new laws they don't like?
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoThere’s prosecutorial discretion. If Congress doesn’t like it, impeachment is the remedy.
- grandempire 2y agoI think you’re right… impeachment is the main mechanism by which they can complain that he’s not enforcing the law. I’m struggling to think of what else they can do.