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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

The trouble is, Pandora's box has been opened. It turns out that the president of the US can act like a crazy post-Soviet-style dictator, and that the mechanisms which are supposed to prevent that are simply not fit for purpose. Even if in 2028 the US elects the most sensible, rule-of-law-oriented president imaginable, allies will still have to look to 2032. Fixing the problem would require constitutional change, which in the US is virtually impossible.

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The powers granted to the U.S. President are meant to be used in times of war or situations that threatens the security of the United States. Trump is using it nilly-willy for just about everything. It will, however, be difficult to come up with a law that would put a stop to this without harming the Executive Branch's effectiveness in a time of need.

But so far I'm pretty satisfied how Congress and the judiciary are putting reins on his powers. He recently threatened to halt all trade with Europe over Canada's associate EU membership. There's no way he can do that. Congress would step in.

> But so far I'm pretty satisfied how Congress and the judiciary are putting reins on his powers. He recently threatened to halt all trade with Europe over Canada's associate EU membership. There's no way he can do that. Congress would step in.

Would it? It didn't step in on the tariffs; that had to wait on extremely slow Supreme Court action, and he went right back to attempting them by other means.

As far as I can see almost nothing he's done in his second term has been subject to timely oversight (it was a bit different in his first, where the judiciary _did_ shut some of the most batshit stuff down quickly).

I don't know why you think Congress would step in. Perhaps if they had Democratic majorities in both houses, but so far they have been pretty steadfast in refusing to curtail any of his moves so far.

Because Congress (including the GOP) threatened to impeach him if he invaded Greenland (a NATO ally).

They're giving him a lot of slack, but there's a limit to how far he can go.

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