It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes.
The president can't pawn off responsibility to some White House staffer or think tank. An executive order is the president's order.
Is it useful to look at the people who wrote or lobbied for the order? Perhaps if you want to want to understand the context of an order. But none of that context mitigates the president's responsibility for any order. At the end of the day, it is a single person exercising their sole authority to issue executive orders.
Their success in some way is tied to trump right now. Nobody else seems to captivate his base in the same way, and they've made most of this about a man and less about a movement. So it's entirely possible this dies when he does.
The great thing about wannabe dictators is they don't allow the new generation the space to grow and take over, so there's no clear line of succession (Vance doesn't have it yet)
But the democrats seem completely at a loss, and the mid terms are only 18 months away.
I expect it to make the film Death of Stalin look like a depiction of an amiable, staid, and sensible process purely in service of the public good, by comparison.
It's not like Trump is sitting on the toilet writing executive orders or tweets. These are initiatives championed by the elite conservative leadership, they just have a convenient "bad guy" that the rest of the country can focus their hatred on.
Don't think for a second that Vance wouldn't continue digging the same holes if Trump dropped dead.
Exactly this.
Debated at length in the 2016 election cycle and onward since. The Republican establishment didn't (and doesn't) love Trump as a politician, but they love that he puts them in power, and they have been trying to figure out how to reproduce that kind of popularity in a candidate since (and largely failing). He's the best bet of the far-right folks behind the scenes to implement their policy, and he doesn't give a shit about all that stuff as long as he can enrich himself.
The one silver lining is the bit about not being able to reproduce his popularity - which I assume is why they've all been so aggressive in trying to remake the federal government. They've got until the midterms to grab all the power they can. It seems likely they will face a backlash and a lot of seats will swing, so their focus is on removing the teeth from congress, while state level actors try and push through enough new laws that they can prevent loss of seats in the midterms.
I mean, without a constitutional amendment how can that be done?
Then they just have to keep that small number of people in power through whatever means. Even if congress swings enough to have anti-Trump votes, he'll just ignore whatever Congress says, and force it into the courts (which are packed increasingly with Trump friendly judges). That's how it happens.
1. Ignore the laws passed by Congress, and rule by executive decree
2. Experience no consequences, and thereby
3. Establish and institutionalize the idea that Congress is meaningless and decorative.
What documents say the law is doesn't mean anything if it what the people with guns do doesn't reflect what those documents say.
He gets to press the enter key sure, however that doesn't stop his cabinet from passing the executive order over for him to execute.
Needs to be taken up at the root
This time around he was sure to only fill his cabinet with yes men, so no one could keep him reigned in.
Trump has no idea what he is doing, it has been very clear in interviews.
In the first admin, it was the adults in the room, the thing is, it's not yes men this time...it's the villians in the room. Trump is being handed EOs that he doesn't have a clue about.
For all the talk about P2025 and denial of any relation to it, they have done roughly 50% of the actions in the project already with more on the way. ~2/3rds of all his EOs have been in the plan. Virtually everyone related to the project is now in the admin - the head of the FCC literally wrote the 'FCC' section and boy is it an attack on everything the EFF holds dear.
I think what is notable is that it seems to have gotten more bold - the plan called for reducing USAID, not killing it for example.
And Yes, page 246, killing funding for PBS.
Here he is asking the UK prime minister to read out a letter he'd been sent
Probably like every president before him.
No president like CEOs can know everything about the organization they head. They are mostly the face and mouthpiece, and depend on chiefs and VPs to tell them what needs to be done according to the agenda that CEO or president has put forth.
This time, however, he's often doing whatever Heritage/Project 2025 tell him to do. Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, John McEntee, etc.
I think Trump has only very vague opinions on most things. He is ok as long as people flatter his ego.
But what I don't think people remember is that a guy like Hitler didn't just show up and "make a dictatorship". He was an opportunistic guy who showed up when Germany's democratic, constitutional republic was weakened by a poorly-functioning congress, and most of the actual power was concentrated in the executive branch. When the time came, Hitler wasn't the one who passed the Reichstag Fire Decree allowing him to suspend the freedom of the press and jail his political opposition. That law was passed by president Hindenburg.
Hitler didn't create a dictatorship. He was handed one on a silver platter - by an ailing 85 year old man with too much power.
All dictators/authoritarians have a whole layer of very capable people under them that will implement orders from above without thinking about ethics or morality. But they will do a good job. Hitler had people like Himmler and Speer, Stalin had Beriya and many others (don't know names). The interesting thing is that these people will also do well in democracies. A lot of ex-nazis in Germany turned into good democratic people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Filbinger). You also have these people in companies where for example layoffs are done in the most humiliating way.
Every American owes it to themselves to familiarize themselves with the project and its aims, because a number of its authors are the ones wielding power right now.
Some examples on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505433
> It’s “real” in the same way as Steele Dossier was real.
> As far as I can tell it’s just a smear device along the lines of “when did you stop beating your wife”, or fake “dossier”, or “Russian collusion”
And even if you were dumb enough to think "this is just puffery, he wouldn't do things this terrible", why are you voting for the guy arguing he's going to do terrible things?!
This is just people who want republicans to win and either support the project or who do not care about whatever one way or the other protecting the party.
Not a substitute for reading the doc but good for a quick overview.
> Abolish the Federal Reserve and move to a "free banking" system.
Don't let that reveal dint your interest. In the Handmaids Tale such a long list of horrors would have bored the reader, but in the Administrations blueprint for the USA that already has 41% of the items off in just 100 days it's riveting reading.
I can resist pointing out another highlight for me:
> Lessen child labor regulations to allow "teenage workers" to work "inherently dangerous jobs".
In sure Project 2025 is sustained to become a true classic.
If anything, I was kinda confused why he called that into question, the job of the president is to decide whose plan is getting executed at any given time, not actually do the planning himself
Our news media are terrible.
https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
Dude can barely string two sentences together— can't tell when a photo has been annotated and has no idea what Signal is. Thinks "groceries" is an old-fashioned word. It's pretty clear at this point that it's others behind the curtain running this show.
Honestly, the fact that he's now surrounded on all sides by Curtis Yarvin acolytes should have us deeply concerned. I fear someone with that ideology who's maliciously competent coming to power.
It doesn't matter who else is running the show in his name in the same way that it didn't matter who else was running the Biden administration. He's more than just culpable by association. Stop trying to infantilize the man. He's old but he's nowhere a stupid as everyone makes him out to be. He is callous and vindictive and expects loyalty in all things. He hates all forms of liberalism including the Republican ideals of liberal democracy and believes himself to be above the law. It's his administration, even if he doesn't seem to know about or even care about all the details.