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In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. Howev

In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law' This can potentially enable an end run around congress and the courts in that the President can easily choose to interpret laws in a manner inconsistent with the intent of congress and courts. Now, we can argue the point and say that presidents have already done so in the past and that congress/courts should have been more specific. However it quickly gets into the issue of the impossibility of congress or the courts anticipating and specifying every detail to avoid a 'hostile' interpretation. This part of the EO says the president's opinion is the law as far as the executive branch is concerned. Given that the executive branch implements the law, this would imply that the president's interpretation is all that matters. The other two branches have no real role left to play. Given the supreme court's ruling on presidential immunity, this is a dangerous level of power concentration. Even if you support the current president's goals and objectives, setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. Nothing prevents the next president from having a radically different opinion. There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances.

chinathrow 2y ago
A self-coup. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
DannyBee 2y ago
Lawyer here. So i think this is all insane, and a power grab, to start out. But not because of these parts of this EO I think people are trying to assume this says "the president gets to ignore the courts and congress", but it, uh, doesn't actually say that anywhere. I would very conservatively guesstimate at least 50% of people assume trump will go that route, and so they assume this is the method by which he will do it. But unless i missed something, he's actually said the opposite consistently - he wants absolute power over the executive agencies, but will follow court orders. If he was going to start not following court orders, i don't think he would have any trouble saying it. I don't think he would issue an EO, either, since those can be challenged. I think he would just continue to fire anyone who doesn't do what he says, or he otherwise disagrees with, and let each individual decision spawn a new court case, rather than give a really large EO that can be challenged and give him a much broader setback. As for this order itself, I really hate taking a side I hate here, but there is almost nothing interesting in the parts you quote: To start - AG opinions (and OLC opinions) were already binding on the executive branch. So they already provided authoritative interpretations of law. Heck, the entire FBI is guided only by AG opinions and guidelines on how to conduct investigations, and has been since it's creation. There are no separate rules - it's just the AG guidelines and opinions. (There is also a secret set of AG guidelines for classified investigations, and they release a heavily redacted version of it) I don't point this out to say it's awesome, i point it out to show that this state has existed roughly forever. It's just not commonly known i guess. The part about the president was also already true in exactly the way it is described here. This is what caused things like the saturday night massacre - in the end, the president does get to say what they want to happen, and what they think is legal and people can either resign, or do it. That was always the choice. This is all secondary to whether courts can say the president/AG's authoritative interpretation is wrong - they can and do already. Nothing in this EO says otherwise. >No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance >an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that >contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law' This is also well within their power to request and enforce. It was also already true in practice in the vast majority of cases, and most importantly, before the highest courts of the land. At the highest court level (SCOTUS), the US is represented by the solicitor general's office, which is part of the DOJ and controlled by the AG. They also look at appeals court decisions and get involved where needed to direct positions. In lower level civil matters, the US is generally represented by the civil division of the DOJ, and therefore controlled by the AG. The only thing this order theoretically changes is to say that the agency counsel who would represent the US at lower levels for various agencies can't take positions that contravene the AG or president. That is, the counsel for the EPA can't decide they think the president is an idiot and that they are going to take a position that is the opposite of what the president wants. There is actually little to nothing controversial about that - they shouldn't be doing so in the first place, regardless of who is president or AG[1]. The president always had the power (though rarely exercised) to tell the EPA in the case above to change their position, and fire every single person who refused. It has even happened that they have forced agencies to change positions at the district court level, fired people who refused to follow their interpretations, etc. All upheld since the days of the founding fathers. There is and never was a 4th branch consisting of independent agencies. The issuance of regulations and their interpretation to flesh out the law is something congress is delegating to the executive branch when they set up executive agencies. The executive only has the power delegated to it here, and congress isn't even allowed to delegate significant power here. To see why it's not controversial at all, if they moved all the agency counsel to the DOJ, you would have the same effect as this order. This would not be illegal for most agencies, though some have interesting appropriation and other restrictions that require consulting with congress prior to reorging them and whatever. Put simply: Congress has the power to restrict or direct agencies through legislation (and the EO even mentions this), and the Judiciary has the power to say everyone else's legal interpretations are wrong. In between, the executive has always had the remaining power to direct the agencies and how they operate, and have done so, just not as clearly as you see here. What this order explicitly forbids actually has also been a practical problem before, and the AG's and solicitors end up having to explain to a judge why they changed their position from the lower level one, and get made to look stupid. Not that i believe they are doing it to fix that, but it has abeen a real problem. So like I said, while I think there is a huge power grab going on, this part of the EO isn't it. [1] The office of the inspector general is basically the one agency that exists in part to audit and investigate the other parts of the executive branch, and so would normally take contrary positions. But those positions are not taken in court, they just issue reports and inform congress. The agencydoesn't, and has never had, any rulemaking power (except to the degree necessary to carry out it's own function), any disciplining power, and any authority. That is why it is legal for it to be independent and why it was illegal for the president to fire the head of the agency.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Did you see Walter Olson's Cato bit? I had the same take you have (I have associates that worked at FTC until recently, were familiar with the process, and pointed out basically the same thing --- that the independent agencies have so many DOJ touchpoints that the administration already has effective control). But Olson says the prospect of all the independent agencies needing to run their rulemaking processes through OIRA would be a big deal. https://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-independent-agencies-must-submit-regulations-legal-opinions-our-review https://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-independent-agencies-m...
  - nullc 2y ago
    I agree that part is the more substantive change, but OTOH it seems reasonable to me: Why would the president have less oversight over the regulatory acts the bodies he nominally (and constitutionally) supervises than he has over the laws passed by congress, by virtue of them passing his desk on the way to becoming law? It might not be a wise change for him or his party, given that all changes to the practice and structure of government ought to be viewed through the lens of your worst opponent wielding them...
  - DannyBee 2y ago
    I also (like nullc ) agree with his take that the OIRA part is more important. But I’m sort of not sure I agree with his argument about their independence. Walter is brilliant so I may just be missing something that is in his brain and left unsaid. ;) He agrees that most were never really independent but points out some and goes into a chat about the UET. The UET seems mostly irrelevant here. There is no 4th branch. They are either executive agencies or not. They are further either exercising power delegated from Congress, or exercising power delegated from the executive. If the former, Trump can’t control them, even under most interpretations of UET, but then you have non delegation problems to deal with. This is the OIG case. If they are exercising power granted to the executive, it’s literally his right to control them. The constitution doesn’t give a third option where congress can establish agencies that have power from the executive but the executive can’t control them. They can only establish agencies with no real power that the executive can’t control I can believe after ~250 years we have some weird edge cases, but it seems fine to clean that up
codewench 2y ago
> Nothing prevents the next president from having a radically different opinion. Of course, this is only relevant if they are interested in having a 'next' president, something which it seems a segment of society is less than open to.
- arunabha 2y ago
  I would like to believe(perhaps naively) that the segment of population which genuinely believes in doing away with democracy is pretty small. However, in case such an event comes to pass, what is far more important is the segment which actively opposes such a power grab. Authoritarians reply on the passiveness of the majority coupled with a small but very vocal and rabid fan base. It's quite possible that a slow and gradual slide in that direction is underway, but the minute even a small faction of people actively oppose that, strongmen tend to find the limits of their power pretty quickly and mostly in ways that are pretty detrimental to their health. The civil rights movement is a pretty good example of the power of a small set of people being enough to have critical mass.
  - jjkaczor 2y ago
    It's about 70 million as of the last count in November.
    - Judgmentality 2y ago
      There are some odd patterns in the voting data. I'm not saying this is proof, but it's definitely weird. https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv https://www.thenumbersarewrong2024.com/across-the-us/swing-states https://www.thenumbersarewrong2024.com/across-the-us/swing-s... Then combine that with all the election interference we know Elon was doing, and previous years of being concerned about the security of voting machines. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlnjzzk919o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlnjzzk919o https://apnews.com/article/election-security-voting-machines-software-2024-80a23479d8a767ba9333b2324c4e424b https://apnews.com/article/election-security-voting-machines... There are reasons to think the votes may have been tampered with. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42994293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42994293 This was previously discussed on HN before getting flagged like most political topics.
hiatus 2y ago
I took it to mean that agencies no longer have the final say in interpretations of law when it comes to exercising executive power. So for instance if ATF says a banana is a machine gun and the president says "yes", then barring an act of Congress clarifying, it is. I don't see how you go from there to the end of judicial review?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  “No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law“ would seem to rule out, say, accepting a SCOTUS ruling against the President, should he insist it was wrongly decided.
  - hiatus 2y ago
    Does any law or executive order say "unless invalidated by a court"? Isn't that kind of a given?
    - dclowd9901 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - andrenth 2y ago
        Flagged
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” They are openly contesting the authority of the courts in various statements. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx3j5k63xo.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx3j5k63xo.amp > Vice-President JD Vance has suggested judges do not have authority over the Trump administration's executive power, as the White House responds to a flurry of lawsuits that aim to stall its agenda. "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," he wrote on X.
kkukshtel 2y ago
who could have seen this coming
dizzant 2y ago
In the second quote, the phrases "in their official capacity" and "as the position of the United States" are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The EO is going out of its way to broadcast that its purpose is to establish a unitary policy position of the executive branch that stems from the President, rather than having "independent" agencies providing contrary position from within "in their official capacity" "as the position of the United States." The logical leap from there to "the President's (unrestricted) opinion is the law (without reference to Congress or the Courts)" is vast. The EO does not bear on the balance of powers between branches of government, but on the ability for the executive branch to function as a single entity within that balance, rather than a multiplicity of quasi-"independent" agencies. The disincentives that have always prevented the executive from blatantly violating the law are still in force and unchanged. They have been functional through 250 years of Presidents testing the limits of their authority.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > The disincentives that have always prevented the executive from blatantly violating the law are still in force and unchanged. We’re just gonna pretend Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024) doesn’t exist, are we?
  - dizzant 2y ago
    That opinion specifically defers to lower courts to define the precise limits of the President's immunity. I refuse to believe that the collective effort of the judicial branch would construct those limits in a manner that enables dictatorship.
    - procaryote 2y ago
      The lower courts can be appealed to the higher courts, so the opinion of the supreme court was effectively that the president is immune if they say so, on a case by case basis. It was a clever but blatant way to give their side immunity without giving it to Biden
      - 2y ago
jv22222 2y ago
If they were able to follow through on this absolute power would California succession be on the cards?
- Tostino 2y ago
  Realistically, not unless the military fractured and there was a coherent alternative government that some of them aligned with. There is absolutely no standing up to our military if it is actually deployed against you as a regular citizen without equal military backing.
bagels 2y ago
They're trying to leverage the immunity the Supreme Court gave him to extend to people following his orders.
UncleOxidant 2y ago
> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. Autocracies can be very stable... for a while depending on how much people are able to protest (or not). You could argue that N Korea has been "stable" (from the standpoint of the ruling family) for over 60 years. > There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances. Sure that's what we were all taught in school. But it turns out that the whole system is heavily dependent on the executive branch "doing the right thing". But what good is it for the Judicial or Legislative branches to rule against the executive when the executive is in charge of enforcement? Even Nixon was eventually able to be shamed into doing the right thing, but if we have a president who can't be shamed into doing the right thing... well, I suspect we're about to find out, but my guess is that the checks and balances aren't going to be effective.
- tartoran 2y ago
  > Autocracies can be very stable... Sure, if you kill all dissenters , keep population terrified and into the dark, remove all sources of information with propaganda then things could stay like that for a while.
  - UncleOxidant 2y ago
    Or if you manage to get most people to not care. There can still be dissent, but it would be too limited to have an effect.
  - boroboro4 2y ago
    I come from autocracy and it's way more similar to the US than one might think. It all starts with distrust of institutions, (silent) support of majority and power consolidation under executive branch. It's very hard to get out of it, and propaganda and terror just one part of it, and I'm not even sure the first. Just to be clear I lived in Russia.
  - enjo 2y ago
    That isn't really what happened in Singapore.
procaryote 2y ago
That sounds pretty obviously unconstitutional. I don't see how a reasonable person could disagree actually. The whole point of the checks and balances is to prevent this.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  Ok, so how would those checks and balances work if the president refuses to obey the courts? Who's going to enforce those court orders? I suppose you could say that the congress could impeach - but what if the majority of the House sides with the president? And if the House does manage to pass impeachment, it still takes 2/3 of Senators to convict - as we've seen that's a very high bar and very unlikely to happen. But let's continue the thought experiment and say that the Senate votes to convict - who's going to enforce the conviction and kick the President out of office?
  - procaryote 2y ago
    I never said the checks and balances are working well... but the constitutional checks and balances not working well is a lesser problem than the executive branch just deciding that the president is also able to do the judiciary's job It should be the trigger for country wide protests until the president is overthrown. It won't be of course. But it should.
    - UncleOxidant 2y ago
      Lots of things should have happened long before we got to this point. After Jan 6th he should never have been a contender for the nomination, but then he was and won it. And then the electorate at large should have chosen his opponent, but they didn't. And here we are. I'm not sure what would trigger nation wide protests that are large enough to have an effect - I suspect that in our spread-out country you'd need something like at least 20% of the population which would be about 65 million people. Most people are too apathetic to be bothered and by the time some final straw makes them care it'll likely be too late.
      - 2y ago
spacechild1 2y ago
> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system Only if there is a transition of power. If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  > If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way. I don't think it actually can be that stable. I think I see what people are getting at when they say this, but it seems to me that authoritarian governments are generally quite unstable, because power never stays in the same hands. Power always changes hands, because we are mortal. Non-authoritarian systems are built to handle this, and ensure that it happens frequently enough that the wheels stay greased. Authoritarian systems are built around ensuring that the concentrated power stays only in the hands of certain people, and this is not possible. To put it another way, non-authoritarian governments have less variance because they are taking some (very) rough average of all the people. Authoritarian governments are much more subject to the significant variance of individuals. Of course we don't actually have that much historical data on non-authoritarian governments.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    We also don’t have much data on how the calculus changes when AI transcript analysis makes the Stasi’s wet dreams a reality.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    Look at Venezuela. Chavez was kind of a thug, but he was also immensely popular with the commons. The people supported him, in a lot of his goals, and he was able to have a light touch, on a lot of the authoritarian stuff. When he stepped aside, and Maduro took over, Chavez had established what was basically a dictatorship, and Maduro took the reins. However, Maduro does not have the base support that Chavez had, and has had to use the stick a lot more. That sort of sets up a negative feedback loop, where more stick, means unhappier people, pushing back, which needs more stick. Even if the current GOP really does have the best interests of the people in mind, if they dismantle the checks and balances, it's highly likely that a successor will use the power badly.
giantg2 2y ago
'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' That's basically what EOs are already.
- peterashford 2y ago
  No. EOs can be overturned by congress. This EO says that they can't - ie: there's no checks or balances on the President
  - giantg2 2y ago
    "This EO says that they can't" Where does it say that? What existing EOs explicitly say congress needs to overturn it?
    - threeseed 2y ago
      “authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch” That means that if Congress passes a law with an implicit/explicit interpretation the Executive Branch can simply ignore that. And there are no existing EOs that say Congress needs to overturn it. It has been the rule since forever that Congress makes the laws. Executive Branch implements it accordingly.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Implicit Yes, Explicit no. This is basically a tightening of the "major questions doctrine". The idea is that Congressional law must be explicit or leave it up to the executive. If law isn't clear, this states the executive decides, and it isn't a matter of supposing what congress intended, or would have wanted but didn't define.
- threeseed 2y ago
  But you need to combine it with the fact that a whole bunch of agencies e.g. FCC, SEC are now no longer considered independent from the Executive Branch. It’s the combination of actions that makes this so concerning.
photochemsyn 2y ago
Ironically, this is reminiscent of Bush-Cheney justifications for a host of programs such as NSA warrantless domestic surveillance, CIA black site rendition flights, Iraqi and Afghan Reconstruction, etc. Method-wise, GW Bush used signing statements on more than 100 laws in collaboration with his AG to express executive control over interpretation of laws. The language of some of these is interesting, eg Dec 17 2004 on an intelligence reform bill: > "The executive branch shall construe the Act in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch, which encompass the authority to conduct intelligence operations." (Which was a long-winded way of saything were doing warrantless surveillance of US citizens, also circumventing the courts) The other method was Office of Legal Counsel memos, eg Yoo's torture-is-OK letter for the CIA, etc. Curiously, Cheney, the main advocate of unilateral executive power, was campaigning for Harris - but Trump can now use the Bush era as precedent, which is equally odd as Trump ran directly against some of those Bush-Cheney policies in 2016... As to why this is a bad idea, look at King Lear and Macbeth, both being examples of unitary executive power gone wrong.
timoth3y 2y ago
Even with a highly sympathetic Supreme Court it is hard to imagine this EO standing. It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. US civil servants and military alike swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution not the president or their commander. Illegal orders are not only expected, but required to be disobeyed. This EO eliminates the concept of an illegal order since the law would be whatever the executive interprets it to be.
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  If the Supreme Court and Congress has no enforcement power, though, what recourse is there?
  - dwaltrip 2y ago
    Protest and revolt. Government for the people and by the people
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      A majority of Americans voted for Trump. There was a pollster who was on CNN a day or two ago who looked into people who voted for Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020, but then for Trump in 2024. These people were (of course generally speaking) happy with Trump's performace so far this term. There frustration with the Democrats was what they perceived as a lack of action, and they see Trump as "moving fast". It's clear the American people (again, majority speaking - I mean, I certainly care) don't care about what is going on with the federal government right now. The only thing that will make them care is if the economy tanks or if inflation spirals out of control.
      - dreamcompiler 2y ago
        > A majority of Americans voted for Trump Not true. A majority of the Americans who chose to vote voted for Trump.
imgabe 2y ago
Before this EO, what happened if a lower level official in the executive branch had an interpretation of the law that was different from the President and Attorney General? Was junior staff attorney in the Tulsa field office previously able to override the President?
pessimizer 2y ago
> Given that the executive branch implements the law, this would imply that the president's interpretation is all that matters. The other two branches have no real role left to play. What role did the other two branches of government ever have in the executive branch? You're describing the normal state of affairs as if it were a shocking escalation. Actually, it's any deviation from this that is a constitutional problem. The elected president is the head of the executive branch. If he is not the head, then the executive branch has no connection to any democratic process at all. Who is a bureaucrat serving if not the president? An inner sense of fairness or fashion?
ta8645 2y ago
Ostensibly, this EO is meant to remove power from bureaucratically controlled agencies in the government. The right have been complaining that real power has been usurped from the institutions mentioned in the constitution, and centered in a professional managerial class, that works below the surface, and has no culpability or exposure to voters. That's all massively up for debate obviously, but this EO seems to be aimed square at that "problem".
- jeremyjh 2y ago
  Yes, and as a harmless side effect also ensures Trump's word is law.
- losvedir 2y ago
  Right, on its face this is simply more of the "drain the swamp" rhetoric from his first term. The way the EO is written sounds "fine" to my high school civics ears: there's three branches of government, one is the executive branch, and ostensibly the president is the head of that branch. The motivation of the EO was clearly articulated all throughout the campaign that, as you say, even within the executive branch there's a large swath of career bureaucrats who kind of do their own thing. And so if the people vote for something else, there's kind of a limit to what any new administration can actually accomplish. Arguably, this is by design and provides valuable stability, but I think you have to at least acknowledge that it's there, and people aren't crazy for noticing it and trying to change that if the career bureaucrats aren't actually on their side. I thought Trump was laughably ineffective his first time around. I chalked it up to all the Russia Manchurian Candidate stuff and Trump's constant flailing and hiring and firing of staff. But I'm wondering now how much of it really was this large bureaucracy in the executive branch not really moving in step with the new administration, which is interesting to me. I think there was a JD Vance interview (maybe with Ross Douthat in NYTimes?) where he says people throw around "constitutional crisis" a lot, but that he felt we were already in one because Trump was asking the generals stuff about troops in Afghanistan and they weren't answering. I know people here are primed to read the worst into everything, and there's some seriously apocalyptic predictions in this discussion. But my first impression is that the EO reads fairly mundanely and is meant to sound like it's addressing the "hostile bureaucracy" situation that folks on the right have been talking about for years. I guess we'll see in a couple years, how it all plays out. I wish people predicted stuff more and then looked back to calibrate themselves based on the results.
georgemcbay 2y ago
> In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. IMO if you could look at this executive order in a blind test somehow not knowing who signed it and can ask yourself "would this be incredibly concerning even if it were passed by the political side I agree with?" and the answer is no then you're not looking through a lens, you are drinking kool-aid.
abtinf 2y ago
The president is the executive branch.
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
>However this part of the EO is pretty concerning >> 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later >> 'No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law' In the corporate world, when you’re unsure about something legal, you go to your in-house counsel and ask how to interpret the law, you don’t decide for you or the whole company. Same thing is happening here: if in doubt, speak to the AG.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  Difficulty: This isn't the corporate world and the worst-case scenario here isn't being sued or taking a trip to bankruptcy court, it's the potential downfall of a nuclear-armed superpower. Which is why business leaders, at least ones like Trump, need to be kept far, far away from government. The goal isn't to maximize value, it's to administer a society in a sustainable way.
  - ExoticPearTree 2y ago
    It doesn’t really matter, unfortunately the whole federal workforce has a single boss: POTUS. And now they have a really moody one. The US needs to come with some new checks and balances for presidential power. With every new election the president asserts more and more power, and the Congress sits idly by.
brightball 2y ago
Ultimately, I expect this to be taken to the Supreme Court and reigned in.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  Don't be surprised if the administration says something to the effect of "the court has made its ruling; let us see them enforce it." That, or they're hoping that someone will sue so that SCOTUS makes this sort of EO precedent.
apple4ever 2y ago
>setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. But that is what the Constitution specifies (Article II Section 1): > The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. I find it funny people either don't know this or are intentionally ignoring it. The entire power is vested in one person, who can delegate the enforcement of it to lower officers. > Nothing prevents the next president from having a radically different opinion. There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances. Right, thats why they included a legislative branch and a judicial branch. The problem is the legislative branch delegated much of what it does to the executive, and the judicial said it was okay.
- Nevermark 2y ago
  All three branches of the government are beholden to the Constitution as a whole, and to each other based on the Constitutional roles and their expressions of their roles. All government actors individually are also responsible to the Constitution and its expression by all three branches first, before any loyalty to anyone else. In the same branch or not. Even before the current top office holders of the executive branch, congressional majorities, or Supreme Court justices. Saying that a President’s personal interpretation of Congress’ laws or the courts precedence, completely overrides any individual executive employees good faith understanding and responsibility to the Constitution, laws, and judicial rulings is madness. There will be disagreements within a branch that will need to be worked out. The president certainly has more power and deserves special respect. But his helpers must stand firm with the constitution first. Settling Constitutional level disagreements within a branch is a desirable process. The president, and all government actors, need pushback when they start running into the weeds, and vetting when their take seems Constitutionally risky or outright invalid. Taking into full account all valid standing orders, laws and rulings. The Presidents most important advisors are subject to Senate approval precisely because they are supposed to be loyal to the Constitution and laws first. If the president says he believes arresting disagreeable members of the Supreme Court is Constitutionally supported because yadda, yadda, yadda, you don’t do it. If the President directs the Vice President not to certify an election, because he interprets that role as active and worthy of pauses and delays to settle issues the President deems Constitutionslly important during an election… But you the Vice President, after careful thought and consultation believe your role is ceremonial, you fulfill the ceremony.
class4behavior 2y ago
It's really sad no one just looks up the legal principles conservatives are pushing forward together with Trump. Here, it's the unified executive theory, which is based on how the US system had worked for its first century. Same with the birthright citizenship. The conservative argument is actually to a degree fairly reasonable. If I say this, then the current SC will surely rule in favor. Just read the Wiki for an intro on the details.
invig 2y ago
Given that in all cases interpretation is required, are you trying to make the claim that the President (who is elected and can be voted out) should not make the interpretation, and that some employee who is not elected and works for them should?
georgeplusplus 2y ago
I still don’t see how this changes anything. I think trumps legal strategy is basically, putting the quiet part into writing. It’s as you already said, what has been the norm If trump doesn’t like how the departments are executing his policy he has the power to steer it. It makes sense he is the ultimate authority for the executive branch. Blame congress for ceding their oversight duties to departments. Which IMO is the root of the issue.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago
  No concept of constitutional supremacy and an end to legal precedent is what you consider to be the norm in USA? What's your job?
starspangled 2y ago
> This can potentially enable an end run around congress and the courts in that the President can easily choose to interpret laws in a manner inconsistent with the intent of congress and courts. How does it potentially enable that? The executive branch has always served under the delegated authority of the president. The executive branch has always been able to operate outside the laws as written and ruled on by the other branches, because they have practically no hard power. Presumably the citizen militia are supposed to be the check and balance for that. The people have always been the ultimate deciders of the government's power.
BariumBlue 2y ago
My lens is that the military is a federal agency, and our soldiers are federal employees. This EO combined with the "he who saves his country breaks no law" quote points towards an eventual attempt at a coupe or similar use of force to retain power. Thankfully there are currently no partisan militias in the DOD, but I could see an attempt at a Saddam-style seizing of Congress
potato3732842 2y ago
>This can potentially enable an end run around congress and the courts in that the President can easily choose to interpret laws in a manner inconsistent with the intent of congress and courts Good. I hope they do so. Because if trump and friends do it it'll get struck down and precedent will be established. It will likely be too late to stop them, but it will stop the next guy. And the next guy may very well be some establishment swamp creature that would never have encountered any resistance from the other branches doing the same and worse.
- ModernMech 2y ago
  Why would the next guy abide if the current guy won’t?
TrnsltLife 2y ago
I don't read it like that. I see it as notice to the members of the executive branch that insubordination will not be tolerated. The Chief Executive and the Attorneys General set the final executive branch decision on all matters, and all other members of the executive branch are expected to toe that line.

chinathrow 2y ago

A self-coup. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

DannyBee 2y ago

Lawyer here. So i think this is all insane, and a power grab, to start out. But not because of these parts of this EO I think people are trying to assume this says "the president gets to ignore the courts and congress", but it, uh, doesn't actually say that anywhere. I would very conservatively guesstimate at least 50% of people assume trump will go that route, and so they assume this is the method by which he will do it. But unless i missed something, he's actually said the opposite consistently - he wants absolute power over the executive agencies, but will follow court orders. If he was going to start not following court orders, i don't think he would have any trouble saying it. I don't think he would issue an EO, either, since those can be challenged. I think he would just continue to fire anyone who doesn't do what he says, or he otherwise disagrees with, and let each individual decision spawn a new court case, rather than give a really large EO that can be challenged and give him a much broader setback. As for this order itself, I really hate taking a side I hate here, but there is almost nothing interesting in the parts you quote: To start - AG opinions (and OLC opinions) were already binding on the executive branch. So they already provided authoritative interpretations of law. Heck, the entire FBI is guided only by AG opinions and guidelines on how to conduct investigations, and has been since it's creation. There are no separate rules - it's just the AG guidelines and opinions. (There is also a secret set of AG guidelines for classified investigations, and they release a heavily redacted version of it) I don't point this out to say it's awesome, i point it out to show that this state has existed roughly forever. It's just not commonly known i guess. The part about the president was also already true in exactly the way it is described here. This is what caused things like the saturday night massacre - in the end, the president does get to say what they want to happen, and what they think is legal and people can either resign, or do it. That was always the choice. This is all secondary to whether courts can say the president/AG's authoritative interpretation is wrong - they can and do already. Nothing in this EO says otherwise. >No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance >an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that >contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law' This is also well within their power to request and enforce. It was also already true in practice in the vast majority of cases, and most importantly, before the highest courts of the land. At the highest court level (SCOTUS), the US is represented by the solicitor general's office, which is part of the DOJ and controlled by the AG. They also look at appeals court decisions and get involved where needed to direct positions. In lower level civil matters, the US is generally represented by the civil division of the DOJ, and therefore controlled by the AG. The only thing this order theoretically changes is to say that the agency counsel who would represent the US at lower levels for various agencies can't take positions that contravene the AG or president. That is, the counsel for the EPA can't decide they think the president is an idiot and that they are going to take a position that is the opposite of what the president wants. There is actually little to nothing controversial about that - they shouldn't be doing so in the first place, regardless of who is president or AG[1]. The president always had the power (though rarely exercised) to tell the EPA in the case above to change their position, and fire every single person who refused. It has even happened that they have forced agencies to change positions at the district court level, fired people who refused to follow their interpretations, etc. All upheld since the days of the founding fathers. There is and never was a 4th branch consisting of independent agencies. The issuance of regulations and their interpretation to flesh out the law is something congress is delegating to the executive branch when they set up executive agencies. The executive only has the power delegated to it here, and congress isn't even allowed to delegate significant power here. To see why it's not controversial at all, if they moved all the agency counsel to the DOJ, you would have the same effect as this order. This would not be illegal for most agencies, though some have interesting appropriation and other restrictions that require consulting with congress prior to reorging them and whatever. Put simply: Congress has the power to restrict or direct agencies through legislation (and the EO even mentions this), and the Judiciary has the power to say everyone else's legal interpretations are wrong. In between, the executive has always had the remaining power to direct the agencies and how they operate, and have done so, just not as clearly as you see here. What this order explicitly forbids actually has also been a practical problem before, and the AG's and solicitors end up having to explain to a judge why they changed their position from the lower level one, and get made to look stupid. Not that i believe they are doing it to fix that, but it has abeen a real problem. So like I said, while I think there is a huge power grab going on, this part of the EO isn't it. [1] The office of the inspector general is basically the one agency that exists in part to audit and investigate the other parts of the executive branch, and so would normally take contrary positions. But those positions are not taken in court, they just issue reports and inform congress. The agencydoesn't, and has never had, any rulemaking power (except to the degree necessary to carry out it's own function), any disciplining power, and any authority. That is why it is legal for it to be independent and why it was illegal for the president to fire the head of the agency.

tptacek 2y ago
Did you see Walter Olson's Cato bit? I had the same take you have (I have associates that worked at FTC until recently, were familiar with the process, and pointed out basically the same thing --- that the independent agencies have so many DOJ touchpoints that the administration already has effective control). But Olson says the prospect of all the independent agencies needing to run their rulemaking processes through OIRA would be a big deal. https://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-independent-agencies-must-submit-regulations-legal-opinions-our-review https://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-independent-agencies-m...
- nullc 2y ago
  I agree that part is the more substantive change, but OTOH it seems reasonable to me: Why would the president have less oversight over the regulatory acts the bodies he nominally (and constitutionally) supervises than he has over the laws passed by congress, by virtue of them passing his desk on the way to becoming law? It might not be a wise change for him or his party, given that all changes to the practice and structure of government ought to be viewed through the lens of your worst opponent wielding them...
- DannyBee 2y ago
  I also (like nullc ) agree with his take that the OIRA part is more important. But I’m sort of not sure I agree with his argument about their independence. Walter is brilliant so I may just be missing something that is in his brain and left unsaid. ;) He agrees that most were never really independent but points out some and goes into a chat about the UET. The UET seems mostly irrelevant here. There is no 4th branch. They are either executive agencies or not. They are further either exercising power delegated from Congress, or exercising power delegated from the executive. If the former, Trump can’t control them, even under most interpretations of UET, but then you have non delegation problems to deal with. This is the OIG case. If they are exercising power granted to the executive, it’s literally his right to control them. The constitution doesn’t give a third option where congress can establish agencies that have power from the executive but the executive can’t control them. They can only establish agencies with no real power that the executive can’t control I can believe after ~250 years we have some weird edge cases, but it seems fine to clean that up

codewench 2y ago

> Nothing prevents the next president from having a radically different opinion. Of course, this is only relevant if they are interested in having a 'next' president, something which it seems a segment of society is less than open to.

arunabha 2y ago
I would like to believe(perhaps naively) that the segment of population which genuinely believes in doing away with democracy is pretty small. However, in case such an event comes to pass, what is far more important is the segment which actively opposes such a power grab. Authoritarians reply on the passiveness of the majority coupled with a small but very vocal and rabid fan base. It's quite possible that a slow and gradual slide in that direction is underway, but the minute even a small faction of people actively oppose that, strongmen tend to find the limits of their power pretty quickly and mostly in ways that are pretty detrimental to their health. The civil rights movement is a pretty good example of the power of a small set of people being enough to have critical mass.
- jjkaczor 2y ago
  It's about 70 million as of the last count in November.
  - Judgmentality 2y ago
    There are some odd patterns in the voting data. I'm not saying this is proof, but it's definitely weird. https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv https://www.thenumbersarewrong2024.com/across-the-us/swing-states https://www.thenumbersarewrong2024.com/across-the-us/swing-s... Then combine that with all the election interference we know Elon was doing, and previous years of being concerned about the security of voting machines. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlnjzzk919o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlnjzzk919o https://apnews.com/article/election-security-voting-machines-software-2024-80a23479d8a767ba9333b2324c4e424b https://apnews.com/article/election-security-voting-machines... There are reasons to think the votes may have been tampered with. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42994293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42994293 This was previously discussed on HN before getting flagged like most political topics.

hiatus 2y ago

I took it to mean that agencies no longer have the final say in interpretations of law when it comes to exercising executive power. So for instance if ATF says a banana is a machine gun and the president says "yes", then barring an act of Congress clarifying, it is. I don't see how you go from there to the end of judicial review?

ceejayoz 2y ago
“No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law“ would seem to rule out, say, accepting a SCOTUS ruling against the President, should he insist it was wrongly decided.
- hiatus 2y ago
  Does any law or executive order say "unless invalidated by a court"? Isn't that kind of a given?
  - dclowd9901 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - andrenth 2y ago
      Flagged
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” They are openly contesting the authority of the courts in various statements. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx3j5k63xo.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gx3j5k63xo.amp > Vice-President JD Vance has suggested judges do not have authority over the Trump administration's executive power, as the White House responds to a flurry of lawsuits that aim to stall its agenda. "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," he wrote on X.

kkukshtel 2y ago

who could have seen this coming

dizzant 2y ago

In the second quote, the phrases "in their official capacity" and "as the position of the United States" are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The EO is going out of its way to broadcast that its purpose is to establish a unitary policy position of the executive branch that stems from the President, rather than having "independent" agencies providing contrary position from within "in their official capacity" "as the position of the United States." The logical leap from there to "the President's (unrestricted) opinion is the law (without reference to Congress or the Courts)" is vast. The EO does not bear on the balance of powers between branches of government, but on the ability for the executive branch to function as a single entity within that balance, rather than a multiplicity of quasi-"independent" agencies. The disincentives that have always prevented the executive from blatantly violating the law are still in force and unchanged. They have been functional through 250 years of Presidents testing the limits of their authority.

ceejayoz 2y ago
> The disincentives that have always prevented the executive from blatantly violating the law are still in force and unchanged. We’re just gonna pretend Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024) doesn’t exist, are we?
- dizzant 2y ago
  That opinion specifically defers to lower courts to define the precise limits of the President's immunity. I refuse to believe that the collective effort of the judicial branch would construct those limits in a manner that enables dictatorship.
  - procaryote 2y ago
    The lower courts can be appealed to the higher courts, so the opinion of the supreme court was effectively that the president is immune if they say so, on a case by case basis. It was a clever but blatant way to give their side immunity without giving it to Biden
    - 2y ago

jv22222 2y ago

If they were able to follow through on this absolute power would California succession be on the cards?

Tostino 2y ago
Realistically, not unless the military fractured and there was a coherent alternative government that some of them aligned with. There is absolutely no standing up to our military if it is actually deployed against you as a regular citizen without equal military backing.

bagels 2y ago

They're trying to leverage the immunity the Supreme Court gave him to extend to people following his orders.

UncleOxidant 2y ago

> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. Autocracies can be very stable... for a while depending on how much people are able to protest (or not). You could argue that N Korea has been "stable" (from the standpoint of the ruling family) for over 60 years. > There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances. Sure that's what we were all taught in school. But it turns out that the whole system is heavily dependent on the executive branch "doing the right thing". But what good is it for the Judicial or Legislative branches to rule against the executive when the executive is in charge of enforcement? Even Nixon was eventually able to be shamed into doing the right thing, but if we have a president who can't be shamed into doing the right thing... well, I suspect we're about to find out, but my guess is that the checks and balances aren't going to be effective.

tartoran 2y ago
> Autocracies can be very stable... Sure, if you kill all dissenters , keep population terrified and into the dark, remove all sources of information with propaganda then things could stay like that for a while.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  Or if you manage to get most people to not care. There can still be dissent, but it would be too limited to have an effect.
- boroboro4 2y ago
  I come from autocracy and it's way more similar to the US than one might think. It all starts with distrust of institutions, (silent) support of majority and power consolidation under executive branch. It's very hard to get out of it, and propaganda and terror just one part of it, and I'm not even sure the first. Just to be clear I lived in Russia.
- enjo 2y ago
  That isn't really what happened in Singapore.

procaryote 2y ago

That sounds pretty obviously unconstitutional. I don't see how a reasonable person could disagree actually. The whole point of the checks and balances is to prevent this.

UncleOxidant 2y ago
Ok, so how would those checks and balances work if the president refuses to obey the courts? Who's going to enforce those court orders? I suppose you could say that the congress could impeach - but what if the majority of the House sides with the president? And if the House does manage to pass impeachment, it still takes 2/3 of Senators to convict - as we've seen that's a very high bar and very unlikely to happen. But let's continue the thought experiment and say that the Senate votes to convict - who's going to enforce the conviction and kick the President out of office?
- procaryote 2y ago
  I never said the checks and balances are working well... but the constitutional checks and balances not working well is a lesser problem than the executive branch just deciding that the president is also able to do the judiciary's job It should be the trigger for country wide protests until the president is overthrown. It won't be of course. But it should.
  - UncleOxidant 2y ago
    Lots of things should have happened long before we got to this point. After Jan 6th he should never have been a contender for the nomination, but then he was and won it. And then the electorate at large should have chosen his opponent, but they didn't. And here we are. I'm not sure what would trigger nation wide protests that are large enough to have an effect - I suspect that in our spread-out country you'd need something like at least 20% of the population which would be about 65 million people. Most people are too apathetic to be bothered and by the time some final straw makes them care it'll likely be too late.
    - 2y ago

spacechild1 2y ago

> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system Only if there is a transition of power. If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way.

Vegenoid 2y ago
> If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way. I don't think it actually can be that stable. I think I see what people are getting at when they say this, but it seems to me that authoritarian governments are generally quite unstable, because power never stays in the same hands. Power always changes hands, because we are mortal. Non-authoritarian systems are built to handle this, and ensure that it happens frequently enough that the wheels stay greased. Authoritarian systems are built around ensuring that the concentrated power stays only in the hands of certain people, and this is not possible. To put it another way, non-authoritarian governments have less variance because they are taking some (very) rough average of all the people. Authoritarian governments are much more subject to the significant variance of individuals. Of course we don't actually have that much historical data on non-authoritarian governments.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  We also don’t have much data on how the calculus changes when AI transcript analysis makes the Stasi’s wet dreams a reality.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Look at Venezuela. Chavez was kind of a thug, but he was also immensely popular with the commons. The people supported him, in a lot of his goals, and he was able to have a light touch, on a lot of the authoritarian stuff. When he stepped aside, and Maduro took over, Chavez had established what was basically a dictatorship, and Maduro took the reins. However, Maduro does not have the base support that Chavez had, and has had to use the stick a lot more. That sort of sets up a negative feedback loop, where more stick, means unhappier people, pushing back, which needs more stick. Even if the current GOP really does have the best interests of the people in mind, if they dismantle the checks and balances, it's highly likely that a successor will use the power badly.

giantg2 2y ago

'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' That's basically what EOs are already.

peterashford 2y ago
No. EOs can be overturned by congress. This EO says that they can't - ie: there's no checks or balances on the President
- giantg2 2y ago
  "This EO says that they can't" Where does it say that? What existing EOs explicitly say congress needs to overturn it?
  - threeseed 2y ago
    “authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch” That means that if Congress passes a law with an implicit/explicit interpretation the Executive Branch can simply ignore that. And there are no existing EOs that say Congress needs to overturn it. It has been the rule since forever that Congress makes the laws. Executive Branch implements it accordingly.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Implicit Yes, Explicit no. This is basically a tightening of the "major questions doctrine". The idea is that Congressional law must be explicit or leave it up to the executive. If law isn't clear, this states the executive decides, and it isn't a matter of supposing what congress intended, or would have wanted but didn't define.
threeseed 2y ago
But you need to combine it with the fact that a whole bunch of agencies e.g. FCC, SEC are now no longer considered independent from the Executive Branch. It’s the combination of actions that makes this so concerning.

photochemsyn 2y ago

Ironically, this is reminiscent of Bush-Cheney justifications for a host of programs such as NSA warrantless domestic surveillance, CIA black site rendition flights, Iraqi and Afghan Reconstruction, etc. Method-wise, GW Bush used signing statements on more than 100 laws in collaboration with his AG to express executive control over interpretation of laws. The language of some of these is interesting, eg Dec 17 2004 on an intelligence reform bill: > "The executive branch shall construe the Act in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch, which encompass the authority to conduct intelligence operations." (Which was a long-winded way of saything were doing warrantless surveillance of US citizens, also circumventing the courts) The other method was Office of Legal Counsel memos, eg Yoo's torture-is-OK letter for the CIA, etc. Curiously, Cheney, the main advocate of unilateral executive power, was campaigning for Harris - but Trump can now use the Bush era as precedent, which is equally odd as Trump ran directly against some of those Bush-Cheney policies in 2016... As to why this is a bad idea, look at King Lear and Macbeth, both being examples of unitary executive power gone wrong.

timoth3y 2y ago

Even with a highly sympathetic Supreme Court it is hard to imagine this EO standing. It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. US civil servants and military alike swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution not the president or their commander. Illegal orders are not only expected, but required to be disobeyed. This EO eliminates the concept of an illegal order since the law would be whatever the executive interprets it to be.

dclowd9901 2y ago
If the Supreme Court and Congress has no enforcement power, though, what recourse is there?
- dwaltrip 2y ago
  Protest and revolt. Government for the people and by the people
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    A majority of Americans voted for Trump. There was a pollster who was on CNN a day or two ago who looked into people who voted for Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020, but then for Trump in 2024. These people were (of course generally speaking) happy with Trump's performace so far this term. There frustration with the Democrats was what they perceived as a lack of action, and they see Trump as "moving fast". It's clear the American people (again, majority speaking - I mean, I certainly care) don't care about what is going on with the federal government right now. The only thing that will make them care is if the economy tanks or if inflation spirals out of control.
    - dreamcompiler 2y ago
      > A majority of Americans voted for Trump Not true. A majority of the Americans who chose to vote voted for Trump.

imgabe 2y ago

Before this EO, what happened if a lower level official in the executive branch had an interpretation of the law that was different from the President and Attorney General? Was junior staff attorney in the Tulsa field office previously able to override the President?

pessimizer 2y ago

> Given that the executive branch implements the law, this would imply that the president's interpretation is all that matters. The other two branches have no real role left to play. What role did the other two branches of government ever have in the executive branch? You're describing the normal state of affairs as if it were a shocking escalation. Actually, it's any deviation from this that is a constitutional problem. The elected president is the head of the executive branch. If he is not the head, then the executive branch has no connection to any democratic process at all. Who is a bureaucrat serving if not the president? An inner sense of fairness or fashion?

ta8645 2y ago

Ostensibly, this EO is meant to remove power from bureaucratically controlled agencies in the government. The right have been complaining that real power has been usurped from the institutions mentioned in the constitution, and centered in a professional managerial class, that works below the surface, and has no culpability or exposure to voters. That's all massively up for debate obviously, but this EO seems to be aimed square at that "problem".

jeremyjh 2y ago
Yes, and as a harmless side effect also ensures Trump's word is law.
losvedir 2y ago
Right, on its face this is simply more of the "drain the swamp" rhetoric from his first term. The way the EO is written sounds "fine" to my high school civics ears: there's three branches of government, one is the executive branch, and ostensibly the president is the head of that branch. The motivation of the EO was clearly articulated all throughout the campaign that, as you say, even within the executive branch there's a large swath of career bureaucrats who kind of do their own thing. And so if the people vote for something else, there's kind of a limit to what any new administration can actually accomplish. Arguably, this is by design and provides valuable stability, but I think you have to at least acknowledge that it's there, and people aren't crazy for noticing it and trying to change that if the career bureaucrats aren't actually on their side. I thought Trump was laughably ineffective his first time around. I chalked it up to all the Russia Manchurian Candidate stuff and Trump's constant flailing and hiring and firing of staff. But I'm wondering now how much of it really was this large bureaucracy in the executive branch not really moving in step with the new administration, which is interesting to me. I think there was a JD Vance interview (maybe with Ross Douthat in NYTimes?) where he says people throw around "constitutional crisis" a lot, but that he felt we were already in one because Trump was asking the generals stuff about troops in Afghanistan and they weren't answering. I know people here are primed to read the worst into everything, and there's some seriously apocalyptic predictions in this discussion. But my first impression is that the EO reads fairly mundanely and is meant to sound like it's addressing the "hostile bureaucracy" situation that folks on the right have been talking about for years. I guess we'll see in a couple years, how it all plays out. I wish people predicted stuff more and then looked back to calibrate themselves based on the results.

georgemcbay 2y ago

> In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. IMO if you could look at this executive order in a blind test somehow not knowing who signed it and can ask yourself "would this be incredibly concerning even if it were passed by the political side I agree with?" and the answer is no then you're not looking through a lens, you are drinking kool-aid.

abtinf 2y ago

The president is the executive branch.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

>However this part of the EO is pretty concerning >> 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later >> 'No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law' In the corporate world, when you’re unsure about something legal, you go to your in-house counsel and ask how to interpret the law, you don’t decide for you or the whole company. Same thing is happening here: if in doubt, speak to the AG.

lenerdenator 2y ago
Difficulty: This isn't the corporate world and the worst-case scenario here isn't being sued or taking a trip to bankruptcy court, it's the potential downfall of a nuclear-armed superpower. Which is why business leaders, at least ones like Trump, need to be kept far, far away from government. The goal isn't to maximize value, it's to administer a society in a sustainable way.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  It doesn’t really matter, unfortunately the whole federal workforce has a single boss: POTUS. And now they have a really moody one. The US needs to come with some new checks and balances for presidential power. With every new election the president asserts more and more power, and the Congress sits idly by.

brightball 2y ago

Ultimately, I expect this to be taken to the Supreme Court and reigned in.

lenerdenator 2y ago
Don't be surprised if the administration says something to the effect of "the court has made its ruling; let us see them enforce it." That, or they're hoping that someone will sue so that SCOTUS makes this sort of EO precedent.

apple4ever 2y ago

>setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. But that is what the Constitution specifies (Article II Section 1): > The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. I find it funny people either don't know this or are intentionally ignoring it. The entire power is vested in one person, who can delegate the enforcement of it to lower officers. > Nothing prevents the next president from having a radically different opinion. There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances. Right, thats why they included a legislative branch and a judicial branch. The problem is the legislative branch delegated much of what it does to the executive, and the judicial said it was okay.

Nevermark 2y ago
All three branches of the government are beholden to the Constitution as a whole, and to each other based on the Constitutional roles and their expressions of their roles. All government actors individually are also responsible to the Constitution and its expression by all three branches first, before any loyalty to anyone else. In the same branch or not. Even before the current top office holders of the executive branch, congressional majorities, or Supreme Court justices. Saying that a President’s personal interpretation of Congress’ laws or the courts precedence, completely overrides any individual executive employees good faith understanding and responsibility to the Constitution, laws, and judicial rulings is madness. There will be disagreements within a branch that will need to be worked out. The president certainly has more power and deserves special respect. But his helpers must stand firm with the constitution first. Settling Constitutional level disagreements within a branch is a desirable process. The president, and all government actors, need pushback when they start running into the weeds, and vetting when their take seems Constitutionally risky or outright invalid. Taking into full account all valid standing orders, laws and rulings. The Presidents most important advisors are subject to Senate approval precisely because they are supposed to be loyal to the Constitution and laws first. If the president says he believes arresting disagreeable members of the Supreme Court is Constitutionally supported because yadda, yadda, yadda, you don’t do it. If the President directs the Vice President not to certify an election, because he interprets that role as active and worthy of pauses and delays to settle issues the President deems Constitutionslly important during an election… But you the Vice President, after careful thought and consultation believe your role is ceremonial, you fulfill the ceremony.

class4behavior 2y ago

It's really sad no one just looks up the legal principles conservatives are pushing forward together with Trump. Here, it's the unified executive theory, which is based on how the US system had worked for its first century. Same with the birthright citizenship. The conservative argument is actually to a degree fairly reasonable. If I say this, then the current SC will surely rule in favor. Just read the Wiki for an intro on the details.

invig 2y ago

Given that in all cases interpretation is required, are you trying to make the claim that the President (who is elected and can be voted out) should not make the interpretation, and that some employee who is not elected and works for them should?

georgeplusplus 2y ago

I still don’t see how this changes anything. I think trumps legal strategy is basically, putting the quiet part into writing. It’s as you already said, what has been the norm If trump doesn’t like how the departments are executing his policy he has the power to steer it. It makes sense he is the ultimate authority for the executive branch. Blame congress for ceding their oversight duties to departments. Which IMO is the root of the issue.

pbhjpbhj 2y ago
No concept of constitutional supremacy and an end to legal precedent is what you consider to be the norm in USA? What's your job?

starspangled 2y ago

> This can potentially enable an end run around congress and the courts in that the President can easily choose to interpret laws in a manner inconsistent with the intent of congress and courts. How does it potentially enable that? The executive branch has always served under the delegated authority of the president. The executive branch has always been able to operate outside the laws as written and ruled on by the other branches, because they have practically no hard power. Presumably the citizen militia are supposed to be the check and balance for that. The people have always been the ultimate deciders of the government's power.

BariumBlue 2y ago

My lens is that the military is a federal agency, and our soldiers are federal employees. This EO combined with the "he who saves his country breaks no law" quote points towards an eventual attempt at a coupe or similar use of force to retain power. Thankfully there are currently no partisan militias in the DOD, but I could see an attempt at a Saddam-style seizing of Congress

potato3732842 2y ago

>This can potentially enable an end run around congress and the courts in that the President can easily choose to interpret laws in a manner inconsistent with the intent of congress and courts Good. I hope they do so. Because if trump and friends do it it'll get struck down and precedent will be established. It will likely be too late to stop them, but it will stop the next guy. And the next guy may very well be some establishment swamp creature that would never have encountered any resistance from the other branches doing the same and worse.

ModernMech 2y ago
Why would the next guy abide if the current guy won’t?

TrnsltLife 2y ago

I don't read it like that. I see it as notice to the members of the executive branch that insubordination will not be tolerated. The Chief Executive and the Attorneys General set the final executive branch decision on all matters, and all other members of the executive branch are expected to toe that line.