The Constitutional Crisis Is Here | Hacker News Reader

The Constitutional Crisis Is Here

theatlantic.com

59 pointsiNic11 comments

> Congress could pass legislation to reduce or eliminate the problem, and if that were to fall short, it could try again later

Yeah, we've been waiting for them to do that for at least 100 years... that's exactly the problem.

Hold your representatives accountable.

Ideally. That is made more difficult to do in our current 2 party system that is also gerrymandered. The snowball has been rolling for along time and has both mass and momentum in its favor.

I've been saying this for quite a while. My entire life, the executive branch has gone in only one direction-- constantly accumulating power. It's all fun and games until you have an executive that you don't like, and then... well...

There's a reason we have a constitutional separation of powers, and we need to keep it that way.

Ah yes, because if Congress is slow to act, the obvious solution is to hand unilateral power over federal spending to checks notes an unelected billionaire posting memes at 3AM while holed up with a group of junior engineers who've never worked in government.

Your frustration with congressional inefficiency has somehow led you to endorse bypassing the Constitution entirely. That's like saying 'my kitchen remodel is taking too long, so I'll just let this random guy on Twitter demolish my house.

Things have been moving so fast, and there are so many people who are confused, including myself, I am wondering where "bypass the Constitution entirely" comes from?

E.g., USAID. It wasn't shut down, it was moved into the State Dept and the law clearly says the Secretary of State should be setting its direction. The current Secretary of State has said that Congress has been frustrated for decades at how USAID has been spending money without legislative direction. Well, no maybe that'll be fixedm

Trump's E.O. stopping payments only did so for those not required by existing legislation. A judge paused part of that e o., and I've heard nothing about the executive branch ignoring the judges order.

Does legislation specify how payment processing in the Dept of Treasury works, that is, that there be an office of payment processors that do nothing but click "ok" to the tune of over $250B in overpayments in 2023?

Now, maybe if he actually does try to completely disband the department of education then we will have a constitutional crisis if Congress doesn't pass a law authorizing that first.

Everything else so far seems to be just stirring the pot.

I found this helpful to keep me up to date on the legal situation of various executive orders: https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-legal-challenges... . Overall for me, 8 executive orders subject to restraining orders sounds like the executive branch vastly exceeding its authority, which for three weeks of government, sounds like a constitutional crisis.

A “constitutional crisis” is a situation where the constitution does not provide a specific way to resolve a dispute between branches of government. Seems to me that in every case we have seen so far with Trump’s use of EOs, there is still open the possibility that courts or congress can intervene to resolve the ones in dispute.

In fact where we have seen significant disagreement with Trump’s EOs, courts have already intervened and paused EOs or portions of EOs where there is a reasonable question of the executive branch overstepping their authority. Ultimately if the executive branch successfully defends their actions when it reaches SCOTUS (or even in lower courts), there is no longer a dispute. You may not agree with that outcome, but that is different from something being a constitutional crisis.

This is just the inevitable result of congress delegating authority.

>Sometimes a constitutional crisis sneaks up on you, shrouded in darkness, revealing itself gradually.

People who gave a crap have been screeching about this for over a century since Teddy and Wilson. Someone needs to tell these clowns that it actually makes you look worse when you only start caring when it benefits your agenda.

I'd give them a break if it was just an undertone rather than the first sentence of the article but come on.

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