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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 y

• 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.
        • plagiarist 2y ago
          Who chose to vote and who were not prevented from voting.
        • timoth3y 2y ago
          > Not true. A majority of the Americans who chose to vote voted for Trump. Not true. A plurality of the Americans who chose to vote voted for Trump. Trump: 49.8% Harris: 48.3%
      • ks2048 2y ago
        > A majority of Americans voted for Trump 22.73% of Americans voted for Trump. 22.06% of Americans voted for Harris.
      • etc-hosts 2y ago
        I wish Trump wasn't able to act like he has a huge massive sea change mandate, when he only won by 1%
  • nowandlater 2y ago
    sic semper tyrannis
    • montagg 2y ago
      Hopefully we never get there. But America should suffer no kings.
      • mrtesthah 2y ago
        This executive order just brought us there.
      • hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        Like this guy, tweeted out by the official Whitehouse X account? https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1892295984928993698 https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1892295984928993698
    • shrubble 2y ago
      This could be construed as a threat, given they were the words of Lincoln's assassin.
  • timoth3y 2y ago
    I know this sounds corny, but people are the recourse. We are part of the checks and balances. Whether it is as overt as a soldier refusing to follow an illegal order knowing they are risking court marshal, or as clandestine as mid-level bureaucrat slow-walking damaging policies, or people actually voting in local-to-national elections. Democracy is not a passive form of government.
    • pessimizer 2y ago
      > I know this sounds corny, but people are the recourse. We are part of the checks and balances. By "we" here, it seems you mean bureaucrats. But what if your opinions, as an individual, unelected bureaucrat are bad? I don't care what a mid-level bureaucrat's opinions on what policies are damaging is. He could be a neo-nazi for all I know. Constitutionally, we should go with the opinions of the people who won an election, instead of some random dude. I was taught that was what "democracy" was, not some random person taking advantage of their position to advance their personal goals. When the guy paid to guard the door starts making his own decisions about who should get to come in, it's not good. It's corruption.
      • repeekad 2y ago
        You’re right. But if the guy paid to guard the door is told to start letting gangsters in by management, whistleblowing and civil disobedience become championed by the public rather than condemned, that’s “the people’s” check and balance to power. I don’t think we should legally protect the guard’s right to disobey orders, but we MUST protect the guard’s right to protest publicly.
        • thaumasiotes 2y ago
          > I don’t think we should legally protect the guard’s right to disobey orders, but we MUST protect the guard’s right to protest publicly. That's already protected and the executive order doesn't claim otherwise. >> No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance [...]
      • 2y ago
  • johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Congress has all the enforcement power, they can impeach the president whenever they want. Will they? I don't know, he's already gone so far in constitutional overreach that he's making Nixon blush. Judiciary has more power than you'd think too. It's just that they try to act in good faith and generally do not want to throw people into civil contempt that often. The SCOTUS can even re-re-interpret the presidential immunity that Trump has abused to a pulp if they are angry enough. That was their call after all. Will they do this? Highly unlikely, at least for Trump. I wouldn't be surprised if Musk flies too close to the sun, however.
    • chii 2y ago
      > Will they do this? so the question is why? The point about what they're legally allowed to do, and could do, is moot, if there's no will.
      • johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Judiciary is easy. They don't want to take drastic actions unless absolutely pushed. The entire idea is to be meticulous and try to avoid the political climate when making judgement. They are taking action but they havent taken their gloves off yet. Congressional's reasons: your guess is as good as mine. Their majorities aren't that wide. moving 3 senators can affect policy, moving half the senators can get an impeachment trial. We'll see how things proceed there.
    • hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      > Congress has all the enforcement power, they can impeach the president whenever they want. <Sad clown laughing noises> Regarding the power of the judiciary in this, Trump's team is arguing right now before the Supreme Court that the judiciary has no power to constrain the President's power when he's acting solely within the Executive branch (which is basically all the time...) Oh, and as part of that filing he reminded the Supreme Court that they just granted him full immunity from prosecution. For the cherry on the cake, the official Whitehouse X account tweeted out "GOD SAVE THE KING" with a picture of Trump with a crown on his head (I thought this was fake when I first saw it). Sorry, the Republic is toast.
  • throw0101c 2y ago
    > If the Supreme Court and Congress has no enforcement power, though, what recourse is there? While maybe not practical for the president, but at least for various cabinet Secretaries or Directors: if they do not follow court-issued orders could be found in contempt and jailed until the corrective orders are implemented?
    • drawkward 2y ago
      Jailed by whom? Trump controls the executive branch.
    • tsimionescu 2y ago
      Trump's new doctrine is that all employees of the executive branch, such as federal police, must take his interpretation of the law as correct. So if a court ordered that the Secretary of State be jailed, Trump can issue a memo saying "the Executive Branch interprets this legal decision as meaning that the Secretary of State should not be jailed", then any federal police officer or agency head has to comply with the official interpretation of the president or be fired.
  • boredatoms 2y ago
    I think this is what the second amendment was about
    • mp05 2y ago
      Mind clarifying precisely what you mean by this?
      • j2kun 2y ago
        They mean taking up arms against the government.
• pessimizer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    We should not have have top down dictates on what cases get prosecuted, that is insane. The President can give areas of focus, but average government employees are not military personnel, they should not be given 'marching orders'. Special envoys, etc, sure, but telling individual prosecutors 'drop charges against XYZ' isn't how our system should work. 'I would appreciate it if...' yes, but not 'Bob's our guy, drop the charges against him'.
• sejje 2y ago
  > This EO eliminates the concept of an illegal order since the law would be whatever the executive interprets it to be. Isn't this exactly how it works? They interpret it and that stands unless challenged in court.
  • fach 2y ago
    The nuance here, based on the EO, is rank file and employees of these agencies must now rely on the sole interpretation of the law by either the president or the AG instead of themselves. These _were_ independent agencies who handled their own interpretation of the law. If you combine this EO with the Supreme Court immunity decision, there may very well be a situation where a rank and file employee acts illegally based on the president's interpretation of the law. This would create a situation where there is a legal challenge about whether a member of the executive branch should be granted the same immunity privileges as the president since they are an extension of the president. You can imagine where things will head if we end up on the wrong side of this decision.
    • gottorf 2y ago
      > rank file and employees of these agencies must now rely on the sole interpretation of the law by either the president or the AG instead of themselves. These _were_ independent agencies who handled their own interpretation of the law At first glance, it seems like it's a positive thing for all members of the executive branch adhere to the same interpretation of the law. It's the definition of "arbitrary and capricious" if one executive agency interprets the same law differently than another. As others have commented, the president or AG's interpretation is still open to judicial review.
      • tsimionescu 2y ago
        Judicial review won't automatically change the president's mind. And according to this order, executive branch employees must only look at the president's decisions, not at what other branches of government say. Even if a judge issues an injunction against some decision by the president, federal employees acting on that judicial order will be fired for not performing their duty to the president.
• dwaltrip 2y ago
  One can hope…
• refurb 2y ago
  This EO eliminates the concept of an illegal order since the law would be whatever the executive interprets it to be. How do you come to that to conclusion, especially in the context of the EO? This EO doesn't change the Constitution's requirement that the President "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". I'm not a lawyer but I would interpret this EO to say "it is the job of the President to execute the laws passed by Congress" and "the President may employ subordinates in that execution", however "these subordinates must still execute based on the President's interpretation, not their own". The EO has a long section on "independent agencies which operate without Presidential supervision". This is what the EO clarifies. > This EO eliminates the concept of an illegal order since the law would be whatever the executive interprets it to be. This isn't true at all. This EO doesn't change the fact that President is held accountable by the judicial branch for following the law.
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    > "these subordinates must still execute based on the President's interpretation, not their own". Yes, this is a problem, because it would mean that if the President (for simplicity, the order also specified the AG, but it doesn't really change the issue) had an opinion on the law, and the courts issued an order to an executive officer such as a department head in a lawsuit contrary to that interpretation, the department head would remain bound by the Presidential interpretation until the President relented, since the meaning and effect of a court order is no less a matter of interpreting the law than the meaning and effect of a regulation, statute, or Constitutional provision. Sec. 7 is so ridiculous on its face that, while I am sure the Administration seriously does want to impose as much of this control as it can get away with, I think it was largely included as a lightning rod to distract from the rest of the order moving control of all independent agencies internal spending allocations into OMB and the Executive Office of the President and otherwise purporting to transfer effective control of the functions assigned by law to the independent agencies to be exercised by their boards into the White House.
    • refurb 2y ago
      > the department head would remain bound by the Presidential interpretation until the President relented I don't know what you mean by "bound"? The President, EOs and the exective branch are not immune from court decisions. If a court rules again an EO, the President would need to abide by that court decision. As per this EO, the department head would do what the President wanted (align to the court order), and would thus be in compliance with the court order. In the case the President decides to ignore the court order, the department head has an option - do what the President says or do what the court says. If they decided to do what the President says they would also be in violation of the court order. If they did what the court said, they would likely be fired. It's not like this EO really changes the situation? Before this EO a department head would have the same choices and face the same risk of being fired. > Sec. 7 is so ridiculous on its face that, while I am sure the Administration seriously does want to impose as much of this control as it can get away with I'm not sure what you mean? Why is it ridiculous that an agency which derives it's authority from the executive be able to ignore the head of the executive's interpretation of the law? Who would they be accountable to if not the US President? Nobody? There are no "independent agencies" under the US Constitution. All agencies exist under the purview of the President. What Section 7 says is "no executive agency employee may make an independent interpretation of a law outside that determined by the head of the executive". This is entirely aligned with prior US Supreme Court decisions that the US President has sole authority over the Executive Branch. I'm not sure we'd want to have an unelected executive agencies that is unaccountable to head of the executive branch. That just wouldn't even make sense.
• worik 2y ago
  > 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. Yes. It does. But there is an older Big Man tradition where loyalty to the nation is indistinguishable from loyalty to the person, the Big Man). I naively thought that that was a stage that democracies passed through (we see it a lot in the South Pacific - the Big Man. So sad. So terribly sad. We all like to tease Americans for being this and that, but now it feels like punching down. Good luck to you all - Dog bless.
  • meristohm 2y ago
    fellow Blindboy listener, and/or is "dog bless" common elsewhere, too? And yeah, it's about time we (I'm from the USA) got off our high horse and accepted we're a collection of humans with cultures, traditions, languages, habits, and messy traumatic history like everywhere else.
• heresie-dabord 2y ago
  > it is hard to imagine this EO standing There are many things that I thought would not survive the scrutiny of good people within the system of checks and balances. But here were are. It seems that "good people within the system of checks and balances" were the only obstacle to absolute power.
  • FuckButtons 2y ago
    There used to be competing centers of power. But then they stacked the judiciary and used manipulative propaganda to turn the congress and senate into a rubber stamp. The only check on power was having the interest of those institutions not aligned with each other, for them to have power that they were able to exercise independently.
• wahern 2y ago
  > 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. The United States had a spoils system of government administration until at least the late 1800s. The spoils system was still prevalent in many state and city governments until the mid 1900s. This didn't mean officials were permitted to violate the law, but self-dealing and bald partisanship in administration was rampant, and of course violations of the law often went unpunished as administration officials had (and have) discretion to prosecute.
  • potato3732842 2y ago
    > The spoils system was still prevalent in many state and city governments until the mid 1900s. Chicago, NYC, the entire state government of New Jersey.... That stuff still goes on today.
• Aeolun 2y ago
  It’s pretty amazing. A few days ago someone posted a comparison of the oath of allegiance for officers before and after Hitler, and it has basically exactly the same change.
  • shitspotter 2y ago
    How does this executive order compare to an oath of allegiance? Seems like a major reach to compare the two unless you are rationalizing backwards.