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Comment by cardamomo | Hacker News Reader

It hardly matters what various theorists think while 6 justices on the Supreme Court are dedicated to giving the President as much power to override Congress as he pleases.

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Which cases do you mean specifically?

I think immibis's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44639370) has a couple great examples of what I'm talking about. To add on, the Court has also allowed the executive branch to essentially shutter federal departments that were created by Congress, such as the Department of Education. They also ruled that lower federal courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions to stop executive action, thereby ending a check on presidential power that has vexed both parties when in office.

> To add on, the Court has also allowed the executive branch to essentially shutter federal departments that were created by Congress, such as the Department of Education.

The Dept of Ed had ~4200 employees and they laid of ~1400. It is not "essentially shuttered" currently regardless of the goal.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...

The important question is: "Can they fulfill their legally mandated obligations with the smaller staff?"

If the answer is "yes" then we saved money and still did the job. If the answer is "no" then we have a problem.

So far I haven't seen anyone identify "here are the legally mandated obligations that won't be fulfilled any longer" which would be useful and could be compelling.

When do you think he will shut the entire DOE down?

Can you elaborate on this? This past term, in the Loper Bright case[1] the Supreme Court took away a massive amount of power from the executive in interpreting statutes beyond what Congress specified.

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

Uh, that was the past term. Have you also paid attention to the current term?

The current supreme court (which was also the supreme court past term) has a very consistent pattern of taking away power from Democrats and granting power to Republicans. Since the president is a Republican, they've been consistently granting power to the president; since the last president was a Democrat, they were consistently taking away his power. You can watch the pattern continue in 2029.

They ruled the president has unlimited power to do anything at all, without punishment, if it can be justified as a presidential duty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States - during the last term, but in relation to Trump.

Very soon after Trump took power, they ruled that courts cannot challenge the constitutionality of Trump's orders: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf?...

Notice all of these sorts of decisions are always 6-3: the 6 conservative justices forming a voting bloc in support of expanding Trump's power (specifically Trump, not just any president), and all 3 non-conservative ones voting against.

This seems like a very ominous-sounding way of saying that Democrats have been losing in the Supreme Court lately and Republicans have been winning.

By Republicans you mean the party hijacked by an authoritarian cult of personality.

You say "Stalin took over as dictator of USSR" and I say "This seems like a very ominous-sounding way of saying that Trotsky lost an election." That response would make sense if you'd said it about Arsenal vs Manchester, but when it's Stalin vs Trotsky it has real consequences, like the Holodomor, and shouldn't be trivialized.

This framing torments me. Political parties "win" and "lose"... It's the quality of life of our parents, children, neighbors, and alike that waxes and wanes by the judgment of these far-removed decision makers.

> "Very soon after Trump took power, they ruled that courts cannot challenge the constitutionality of Trump's orders"

No, specifically they said district judges couldn't write rulings that applied to other districts.

Your local city council would hit the same limitation if they attempted to write laws for other cities.

Which, is a mixed bag. Judge shopping was a huge problem from universal injunctions. But at the same time, what branch of government is the loss of the steadfast check-and-balance known as "universal injunctions" in favor of – and will now require for ANY AND ALL parties to ONLY be recognized for their loss and damages from actions of the Executive ONLY IF they have the means to sue for it and prevail – in a 1:1 cardinality? Could it be the Executive, who OP said this supported Kingsmanship for?

If a executive action is so unjust, so grotesque, and you need to round up parties damaged by it – outside of the absurdly long time most courts take to make things whole – can't that also be a way to round up people being directly targeted by 1 of 3 branches?

Example: EO-1 quietly builds a “voluntary” federal digital ID, so no one is harmed and nobody has standing for their own injunctions. Then, EO-2 later makes that ID mandatory to file taxes, get Social Security, renew a passport, etc. Real injury finally appears, but each citizen must sue alone and any victory helps only that plaintiff while everyone else stays locked out. The first order sinks the foundations; the second flips the switch.

Sometimes, there should be things that should have avenues to be quickly stricken down before more parties fall victim to them

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