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The evil genius of this move is that it gets everybody arguing about DEI, and we’re letting the continued expansion of absolute executive power centered in the president go unchecked. It’s not even about party; this started with FDR or even earlier, massively expanded under LBJ and again under W and Obama, and now here we are. The president feels no obligation at all to execute what the Congress authorized him to. Instead the limits of power are whatever the president can get away with. We have a constitutional problem where the Congress is unwilling or unable to legislate effectively and the executive gets to make policy unilaterally. This is not the balance of powers from the U.S. constitution. This is something else.

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> We have a constitutional problem where the Congress is unwilling or unable to legislate effectively and the executive gets to make policy unilaterally. This is not the balance of powers from the U.S. constitution

The Republican party controls both houses and the presidency, having already stacked the supreme court, so they get to do whatever they want and there is no balance of powers.

Inevitable consequence of a two-party system with first past the post voting.

There is still a very clear balance of power.

All Republicans and all Democrats don’t act and think as one. Take any collection of humans, of any size, and their opinions will be spread across a spectrum.

There are, and always will be, some members in either house and of any party that find it’s in their political interest to debate and pull new laws left or right.

This is especially true under FPTP because each member has to answer to an area, and different areas of a country have baked-in differences in their ideal political outcomes and points of view.

Balance of powers has nothing to do with party; it’s about the ability of one branch of government to operate without constraint by the other branches of government. It was instituted in the US by people who were trying to take lessons from history; both recent (the Intolerable Acts) and ancient (Appius Claudius, Octavian, Alexander, the Thirty), and it’s been forgotten by generations who’ve come to take its protections for granted.

If that were true then we wouldn't be watching a collection of circus performers get confirmed by congress.

Looking at the past voting records, Democrats often vote as a block in both houses of Congress. The same can't be said about Republicans.

I feel like that's pretty disingenuous to say that. They have both been increasing party line voting for decades. https://rollcall.com/2021/03/03/no-quarter-for-centrists-in-...

Trump has definitely purged the Republican party of its most moderate members, leaving him surrounded by only the most radical of sycophants. Why do you put so much trust into your institutions? Trump has promised that "we won't ever have to vote ever again", he has been made untouchable by the supreme court, and is now passing budgetary laws without congress.

The opposition is powerless, his own party has become an echo chamber for fascist talking points.

I think fascism is about totalitarian dominance of the population by the government, no?

Seems like cutting taxes and bureacracy does the opposite.

Unless “fascist” and “nazi” means “people I don’t like”.

Your definition of fascism is deeply flawed, it would include kingdoms which are not automatically fascists, for example.

I go by this [1] definition of fascism, which the current republican party fits almost perfectly.

Trump rules almost unopposed, and is further consolidating his power with each passing day. Neither court nor congress can harm him anymore. That you may still believe he is fighting for freedom, peace and democracy is baffling, with everthing that's been happening in the past 2 weeks.

Indeed, I don't like fascists and nazis, sue me.

[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

This is a naive, context-free misunderstanding of the present moment based on supposedly intuitive truisms. The Republican party is Trump's party and has been for years now. Pretending there is that much variation that matters is ridiculous and can be remedied by reading any piece of news from the last few years.

The US is now a formal democracy, but it doesn't work as one. There is one guy making decisions, the remaining are either too feeble to do anything about or just fine with the status quo. Yes, there are formal avenues for responses, like the judiciary system, but they've been made toothless. The very fact that Trump is back in the WH is proof of this.

FPTP is a superior option to proportional representation. Belgium still lacks a federal government despite voting 5 months before the Americans and being just some 10 million people and we aren't going to get one either before they get their whole cabinet (minister equivalents) confirmed and installed. This is because there are 5 parties trying form a coalition raging from nationalist-separatist to socialist-rebranded-to-progressive across 2 languages. Brussels lacks its regional government too and is even further away from resolving the impasse.

America would be well advised to avoid this. They'd immediately get a language divide between English and Spanish. The alleged "grand coalitions" of the Democrat and Republican parties would crumble. There might be some consensus in the center which might be large enough but then policies would never change regardless of who you vote for, just like in the times before Trump.

> The Republican party controls both houses and the presidency, having already stacked the supreme court, so they get to do whatever they want and there is no balance of powers.

- No, the supreme court is the same size it's always been.

- No, members of congress don't always vote the party line (although this has consistently gotten worse over time)

- No, that's not what "balance of powers" means.

>The Supreme Court is the same size is always been

“The number of Justices on the Supreme Court changed six times before settling at the present total of nine in 1869”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/institution.aspx

Point of order, the supreme court has changed size 6 times

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/institution.aspx#:~:text=...

A point of order means someone has violated congressional procedure.

Or just Robert's Rules.

Right, but disagreeing with something is just a point, not a point of order.

> - No, the supreme court is the same size it's always been.

Stacked in the sense that more members were appointed by one party vs the other (including one by dubious means), and those people apparently are quite partisan.

Stacking here is about the make up of the benchm not size. I don't understand this link, its seems like an obvious point.

Partisanship works in the current political environment. Cutting off your own projects in case the other party follows your lead, has paid off more than bipartisanship. Voting across aisles is strictly controlled.

Trump was voted in precisely because The R base was tired of people talking about identity issues, getting to power, and then doing nothing about it.

Trump is giving people exactly what they were told would solve their problems, for decades.

The balance of powers has been broken, for good reason. It ensures political goals - see Bi-partisanship doesn't pay.

1.) non sequitur

2.) missing the point

3.) pedantic

The point is that the current party in power has had multiple opportunities to reign in the current lawlessness and the current minority party has attempted to do so, to no result.

I think it’s a little early to call the end of the U.S. Constitution. There is a time component to the rule of law that can be frustrating in the moment but has always been true.

The President is free to assert his desires. Other parts of the country are free to push back if they choose. This takes filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress, pursuing prosecutions, etc. all of which take time, money, and effort. Which in turn allows short-term disruption to happen as the legal process plays out. Which again, is frustrating.

Political mood is also more fickle than people usually believe at the beginning of a new administration. FDR, LBJ, W, Obama, and many other presidents passed through a time in which conventional wisdom held that they had changed the game and amassed too much power. In every case we can look back and see that while they each have left a legacy that endures, it’s smaller than expected at the time. The pendulum swung the other way later on.

My own opinion on this is that “don’t tell me what to do” is among the most popular political positions among Americans. So for example, to the extent DEI felt like being told what to do, it became unpopular. But now that anti-DEI is in power, I expect the bloom will come off pretty quickly. In part because of overreach by a new administration overestimating their mandate. (As most new administrations do.)

Agreed, I wouldn’t call it the end either. But it’s a problem for our system of government and I think it’s worth calling attention to.

> I think it’s a little early to call the end

I don't. This has been a long, gradual erosion of constitutional rights, and now the system has crumbled. It may appear to stand, but it's merely resting on the rubble.

SCOTUS is going to rule with GOP doctrine, regardless of what the constitution says. The GOP may pursue legal avenues for their actions in an attempt to not make it so apparent that the country is now under single party, totalitarian rule. But they don't have to (see: news).

It started with minor constitutional violations, like emoluments, and has ended with blatant ones, such as attacking birthright citizenship.

Interesting and high-quality comment.

>I think it’s a little early to call the end of the U.S. Constitution.

I totally disagree with this though. It is several generations late to start crying about the end of the US Constitution.

I basically agree with the rest of your comment though, especially the "don't tell me what to do" and the Presidential "honeymoon period".

I used to think the problem of governance by EO was getting worse too but the stats tell a different story:

https://www.statista.com/chart/7658/number-of-executive-orde...

Somehow "number of EOs" doesn't sound like the right metric to use when determining whether executive power is growing. Surely it's the content that matters.

FDR forced people to give up all their gold assets at a fixed rate, under threat of imprisonment for a decade. He then proceeded to nearly double the declared exhange rate up once the government had confiscated everybody's gold.

All done by executive order. Makes basically all modern EOs look pretty innocuous by comparison.

That said I actually agree and would love to see a sharp reduction in executive power, especially as it comes to using the military. If we're going to go bombing places, that should require a declaration of war from Congress. And 'emergency' powers should not be enabled for decades on end.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

FDR truly was the worst president we ever had. The more I learn about him, the more I wish we could roll back history to before his presidency.

Especially when there are EOs for naming post offices and other boring mechanical work of the executive.

It would take some serious effort (and there’d be disagreement) but maybe you could classify “important” government changes and if they were enacted by congress, EO, courts, etc.

Also, that link stops with Obama and that leaves out two whole administrations that would be pretty pertinent data in this discussion. Nearly a decade of data. It looks like Trump's first term had 220 and Biden had 162. It would be interesting to see the data classified the way you described and then broken down by party over time. The actual policymaking via EO by each party over the last 50 years would be more elucidating than the straight numbers for sure.

I’m open to that, but what context do you think is appropriate and how would you measure it for an unbiased metric?

The number of EOs is a poor measure of the extent of executive power. There are many other ways to concentrate executive power; for example OMB (part of the Executive Office of the President) issues “M-memos” (“M” for “management”) to the heads of all departments, instructing them on how to implement EOs, laws, and White House priorities.

There is a consensus among researchers of the workings of the US government and the legal context thereof that, since FDR and especially since Reagan, that the “imperial presidency” has been gaining ground.

Related to that, the first 100 days are typically when there is the highest number of orders per day. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-exec...

Tump did 20% of his total, from the first term, in the first 100 days. Biden did just under 1/3 of his total in the first 100 days.

I wouldn't call him genius, but maybe you're right.

Whoever got the idea of flooding the space with outrageous EOs is a genius. Certainly evil as well.

Pretty sure it’s the work of Stephen Miller - who is now his senior policy advisor.

8 years ago the Trump admin had no idea what to do. Now they’re prepared and much more dangerous.

Some things will be reversed in 4 years time and we can ride out the storm. but others - like renewed emphasis on fossil fuels to reward the big donors and have energy for AI - will have lasting effects on my children and their children — those make me truly furious.

> Some things will be reversed in 4 years

Or never. We should be prepared for Term 3 (which is already being floated) or a landslide GOP win in 2026, 2028, and beyond. Expect future Presidential elections to look like '86.

You all are openly admitting that these people are evil geniuses. Keep that in mind when thinking to the future. They are going to continue their evil genius behavior and it's going to keep working.

Thankfully most are not evil geniuses (though there may be a few), and Trump is so drunk on his own ego that he can't govern well. So I don't share the same degree of pessimism.

The word evil is a bit overused, but in the case of Stephen Miller it fits like a glove.

I’ve said since the beginning that that saving grace (if there is one) of Trump’s first term was that he was disorganized, and he surrounded himself with people who kept him in check to some degree. People who were willing to tell him that he couldn’t do certain things (prime example: White House legal counsel kept Trump from doing the crazy things that people like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell suggested after he lost the 2020 election).

He’s not going to make that mistake this time, and he’s putting people in power who will do what he wants without question. That’s the scary part of the next four years.

Agreed. Miller is evil. He was the architect of the policy of separating migrant families at the border to scare them into not crossing.

Why do people think there is some riding out this storm? I am curious, what do people mean by this?

I mean you just hunker down, stop reading the news, go about your life, and hope that the “storm” doesn’t do too much damage, and then work like hell in 4 years time to avoid a repeat (won’t be Trump but to prevent another fascist president, also you can bet that Trump will try for a 3 rd term on the basis that he didn’t serve 2 consecutive terms).

I think there are some active things you can do to help. Give money to legal groups challenging unconstitutional actions. Write to your various federal reps to let them know how you feel. Be kind and supportive to those being targeted by hate and bigotry.

We won't be riding out this storm if we all hunker down.

> Give money to legal groups challenging unconstitutional actions

Maybe work with possible candidates to flippable seats in state and federal levels.

Also, work on the politician acquisition pipeline - guiding promising ones to school boards, city council, and upwards.

The campaign for the next presidential election started the day after the last. The far-right got this and are actively working to discredit any possible competing candidate.

Right now is a great time for Dems to start working hard on taking back both houses. Start mapping districts that can be flipped, districts with low voter registration, and which messages they will bombard these people with.

I agree with you that FDR was a turning point. Before that Lincoln was a major Executive expansion.

We have been beyond US Constitutional limitations for many lifetimes.

People ought to stop thinking everyone one else is playing 3D chess and just accept what is happening in front of their eyes.

Conservatives realized that they could effectively lock down Congress, take over the Supreme Court and then vest all power in the executive. The whole arguments against DEI, smaller governments etc are all a smoke screen because they have zero issues with nepotism and favoritism as long as it benefits them. And no issue with government overreach as long as they control it.

Unfortunately I think the only direction is balkanization of the states. And I don't think that is going to end well.

It may be easy to get mad as the Republicans for this, but there’s a clear bipartisan precedent here. Remember DACA? Might have been a good policy if Congress had enacted it. Bad precedent as an executive action though, because it establishes that the president’s ability to make immigration policy is effectively unlimited. Today’s ICE raids are made possible by DACA.

I wouldn't count the Executive Orders related to ICE in the "nepotism and favoritism" group fzeroracer referred to. Those might be more of the "smokescreen." The orders for mass layoffs or encouraging quitting of civil service seen more like the ulterior motive. Allowing the president to remove "disloyal" civil servants would take us back to the spoils system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

Then, either they use existing executive power to ensure Republicans have an insurmountable advantage in national elections, or they haven't thought things through and we'll see even larger shifts in federal regulations after each administration change.

I'm not particularly going to disagree that the Dems are useless or not part of the problem, because they absolutely are. A lot of the issues we have is because of continued attempts at bipartisanship watering down bills into oblivion, means-testing and obsession with locking out people further left.

But ultimately a lot of our core foundational agencies have been functioning well regardless. And it's only the right that's intent on tearing them down no matter the consequences. So while the Dems enable this, the Republicans enact it.

What the Democratic party did to Sanders was a disgrace. The people wanted him, the powers-that-be (donors?) didn't. He'd probably have won against Trump, according to surveys.

The Republicans did go with the (sadly) popular guy. I guess he was palatable (by the definition that matters) because there was no talk of increasing taxes on high incomes.

> What the Democratic party did to Sanders was a disgrace. The people wanted him, the powers-that-be (donors?) didn't.

More people who voted wanted Clinton and Biden. Sanders himself admitted not enough young people voted and his platform was less popular in more conservative states.

AFAIU, there were party shenanigans to decrease his chances in the primary?

Very very minor party shenanigans. Serious enough that they should be called out and punished, but not serious enough to effect the voting.

"She was given the questions tonthe debate," is the most serious accusation. But anyone with a dozen brain cells knows whats going to be asked during the debates.

There was some more stuff that I found upon researching it, but not nearly as serious as I (mis?)remembered, yeah.

DACA certainly pushed the limits of executive authority, but...

Immigration raids are pretty clearly an executive function, and they happened prior to DACA and prior to ICE. Executive prioritization of federal law enforcement is normal and expected.

No, ICE was established in 2003, post-9/11, way before DACA in 2012, and it was always intended to be used for this purpose.

I think the OP has a different point. I don’t think they were claiming ICE was created by DACA, but rather their actions were enabled by it.

I'm all for balkanization. It is better than the status quo.

We have pretty fixed red/blue blocks of states and Trump/MAGA has made the gap much wider.

In earlier years I would have been okay living in a red state - not my pref but no big deal. Now I’m no more willing to raise my kids in a deep red state than I am in Russia or China.

Yea, looks like the US is going full on Russian mode here. I'm not all that disappointed in Trump himself, this was no surprise. I'm disappointed at the lack of meaningful opposition. Most of the republican part have fallen in line and the Dems aren't doing much.

Question here for this group. In this day of technology, information is power seems much more relevant. I don't have clear data, but it seems from observation and analysis by others social media played a pretty key role: "fake news", info bubbles, biasing your feeds etc. What are some ideas on reliable ways to provide access to accurate information?

I agree with your broader point, but I really wish people wouldn't refer to MAGA Republicans as "conservative." Right-wing, or reactionary, certainly. But there's nothing "conservative" about undermining the rule of law and ignoring the Constitution.

By the same logic, I don't like calling far-left cancel culture "liberal." I'm afraid our partisanship has blinded us to genuine liberal and conservative virtues.

I also wouldn't label cancel culture as "far-left" because just as it isn't in any way "liberal", it isn't limited to those on the proverbial left of the spectrum. The mainstream language used to discuss politics simply lacks the ability to reflect the nuance needed in the 21st century. And that's not even getting into the discussion on what we call "cancel culture" because there is a big gulf between "that person said a thing that was a bit off" and "that person is a literal criminal/fascist" in my opinion.

And thanks to Biden's final decisions, presidents and their entourage are effectively immune to prosecution. They just need to "pardon" their friends at the end of the administration. So there is really no limit to what Trump can do.

That's way older than Biden.

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby_clemency_controv... for example.

Hell, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon

Yes, I know it existed. But democrats acted previously as this was a problem. Now they normalized it and both parties cannot complain anymore. The judiciary system was made completely toothless against a president and anyone he dims a friend.

Biden exercised the power that the Courts identifed for the President.

Still, it doesn't matter. Telling you, this is the one truth of our reality - the dems are always wrong.

Ehh… the Supreme Court actually did this for Trump. All “official” actions of the president are immune from prosecution.

Biden just acted on it.

> Biden just acted on it.

He could have done a lot better with that legal blanket.

Nothing evil about not wasting taxpayer money.

He banned politically incorrect research.

I'm old enough to remember when it was the right wing complaining about "political correctness gone mad".

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