"... the idea that the president is the sole and exclusive wielder of a broad and expansive executive power. This includes the power to dismiss federal employees at will as well as the power to resist congressional statutes or judicial decisions that encroach on executive authority.... Trump may be working from an expansive theory of executive power, but in delegating so much of his authority to Musk... he is both undermining that power and demonstrating [Alexander] Hamilton’s real insights about the importance of a singular executive. Hamilton wrote that 'plurality in the executive' tends to 'conceal faults and destroy responsibility.'... Hamilton says that 'the multiplication of the executive adds to the difficulty of detection…. It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author.' It is hard to imagine a better description of our current situation, in which the presence of what are essentially two presidents has blurred lines of accountability for 'pernicious measures.'... If and when disaster strikes, Musk can walk away. After all, he isn’t really the president. The buck will stop with Trump and the Republican Party, because if Musk cannot be held politically liable, they will be."
Writes Jamelle Bouie, in
"The Bewildering Irony Behind the Trump-Musk Partnership" (NYT)(free-access link).
But Trump himself says "The buck stops here":
And isn't it rich — isn't it ironic — to hear Trump antagonists rail about concealment and lack of clear lines of responsibility when they did not seem to care much about the radical opacity of the "Biden" administration? We're supposed to worry now about the "multiplication of the executive" when you didn't worry about the absence of any true executive and nothing but a multiplicity of executive substitutes?
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76 comments:
They’ve apparently decided the strategy for month two is hurling giant bowls of word salad at our heads…
…and point of fact Musk has not run a cabinet meeting in Trump’s absence the way Jill did for President whatshisname…
Some serious category error there. Hamilton was opposed to a committee or board of executives. Musk has no authority which is not Trump's authority. The concept that executive agencies have authority independent of the executive is directly at odds with Hamilton's position.
Having multiple elected executive officers works well in the states. The problem here is that Musk is acting as a principal executive officer who has not been confirmed by the Senate.
Tired, inept pushback. They’re lost in the wilderness.
Article II
Section 1
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
The bureaucracy is not an independent branch of government. It is part of the executive branch. President Trump is the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief of the military. It’s really as simple as that.
The problem here is that Musk is acting as a principal executive officer who has not been confirmed by the Senate
If Musk was acting as an ‘executive officer’ or whatever title you choose the people being fired could/would simply ignore whatever Musk is doing show up for work and still get paid. As it stands now not even a Hawaiian judge wants to get involved. This to me strongly suggests someone with executive power is making the decisions, not Musk…
”... the idea that the president is the sole and exclusive wielder of a broad and expansive executive power.”
As described in the first sentence of Article II, Clause 1 of the US Constitution, yes.
As Victor Davis Hanson succinctly puts it, the Left is “out of ideas and out of power.” The two are not uncorrelated.
Some states - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and perhaps others - have some form of executive council. These can be an bit opaque, but are useful for some purposes, such as requiring a committee vote to grant pardons rather than leaving pardons to the governor.
They desperately want Musk to be the one in power, not the tool. It's weird.
How is Hairy balls homophobic?
"And isn't it rich — isn't it ironic — to hear Trump antagonists rail about concealment and lack of clear lines of responsibility when they did not seem to care much about the radical opacity of the "Biden" administration?" It is rich and ironic. But then, are there any non-rich non-ironic criticisms that Dems/progs level at GOPers, the kind that don't apply more to their own side? I guess heinous granny-off-the-cliff squealing about Medicaid "cuts" (i.e., slightly slower massive increases) qualifies. But all structure/process/Constitutional objections are always BS.
isn't it rich
Aren't they a pair?
Seconding the category error comment. In what way is Musk, with delegated and limited authority, doing what Trump, the President, asks and authorizes him to do, the same as the Politburo situation Hamilton foresaw and warned against? Out in the open, reporting daily and in real time to anyone who cares to check the DOGE website or X feed?
They are conflating two issues. The "expansive theory of executive power" is about what can and can't be controlled by the executive branch of government. The amount of that power that can be delegated is its own issue, albeit one that shouldn't be an issue. There is clear misunderstanding of how executive leadership works in any environment. The amount and specifics of delegation are a matter of executive preference. The Sec Def doesn't involve himself in how a particular military base is run on a daily basis, nor can he/she. Unless the executive branch has 6 or less employees, there is going to be some level of delegation.
Whether he knew it or not, Biden delegated everything to other people, whether it was his staff, cabinet, or wife. He just signed what he was handed.
Ultimately the success will be how well DOGE uncovers things AND the ability to hand investigation/execution over to the heads of those agencies.
It's not ironic, just delusional.
Whatever the pic is, Firefox won't display it as part of malicious content suppression.
The idea of Senate confirmation was that the powers of the executive would be exercised through principal officers confirmed by the Senate who would have duties and responsibilities defined by law rather than Presidential decree.
The NYT has been sleeping since 2008. Obama elected Trump.
"the idea that the president is the sole and exclusive wielder of a broad and expansive executive power."
Echoing Big Mike...what are these people smoking?
Remember how the left raised holy hell when Obama created DOGE by executive order?
"The idea of Senate confirmation" was merely and solely to advise and consent, NOT to transfer absolute executive power to anyone other than the President. That power is plainly and unequivocally assigned by the constitution in Article II Section 1 to one and only one person - the President. And while he may delegate the execution of those powers, he alone has that authority as well as the accountability.
In my opinion the senate conformation of officers was a check on character and intelligence in operating independently without going off the rails. It was not until the 1950’s that high speed transportation and communication allowed the president to actually operate directly to respond to foreign events reliably without having officers in the field that had high decision making authority.
This is unimportant now, the president can act himself in almost every case and not depend on having an agent with real power.
The bad part is that government agencies can keep secrets from the president like the bureaucrats of the FBI and CIA love to do. This is actual stolen power.
In fact at the present time, the main purpose of Senate confirmation is to allow the opposition party the opportunity to hobble the president. They can make him less effective by denying someone who can make the president’s agenda be successful.
Uh... I think he's talking about the pre-Trump era. Who to blame now? Trump, right? If Trump is gone, so is Musk. Not true of the everlasting beureaucrats and, frankly, all the Democrats that want to have each and every agency that reports to the Executive resist the Executive.
Left Bank bringing the Stuck on Stupid On Steroids this morning!
Hey Left Bank, are there any other completely irrelevant governing structures you'd like to derail this conversation with?
Perhaps an "insightful" interpretation of your local.Girl Scouts leadership arrangement?
If the excutive branch weren't so massive and unwieldy, this might not be as big a problem. But it is, and it is. Someone needed a chainsaw...
"Hamilton wrote that 'plurality in the executive' tends to 'conceal faults and destroy responsibility.' . . .The buck will stop with Trump and the Republican Party, because if Musk cannot be held politically liable, they will be."
Those two sentences are a bit incongruos, no? He's not even making an argument. He's just rambling about through his thesaurus.
I guess we are finding out the million ways the DNC Media can misunderstand the Trump-Doge dynamic. It seems pretty simple if you take both men at their word: Musk is there to identify problems and opportunities for improvement. The decisions rest with Trump, who then delegates the tasks to his respective cabinet departments.
So far they've tried (1) saying Trump would "never" share the limelight with Musk, (2) placing Musk (with AI) behind the desk "as if he's president" in hopes they'd torment Trump, (3) claim Musk is "firing people" and "sending emails" (both false), and (4) we now have Jammy Bouie claiming WITHOUT EVIDENCE that the dynamic duo must be hiding something by appearing to share the executive power.
Jamelle, let me introduce you to a key concept in one word: delegation. Look it up.
What is a Congressional Statute? Is that a law passed by Congress? If so, what law is Trump resisting? Is this another one of those games where we are supposed to accept that Trump was just bad, yet nobody actually provides an actual example. Sort of like when a CNN panel expressed outrage that Trump was trying to run the military until one of their own reminded them that the President is the Commander in Chief of the military. Not sure that's the same here, because that's in Article II of the Constitution, and Congress has Article I powers.
Josephbleau said...
“In fact at the present time, the main purpose of Senate confirmation is to allow the opposition party the opportunity to hobble the president. They can make him less effective by denying someone who can make the president’s agenda be successful.”
It’s a shame the Democrats in the Senate realized this several elections ago, but the GOPe never did.
I remember Biden resisting the notion that funds to pay off student loans needed to be appropriated by Congress. That wasn't a Congressional Statute. That was the Constitution Biden was resisting.
Tell me you don't know how business works without saying you don't know how business works. You get good people and set them to do their work. You're responsible for what they do but you don't have time (if you're successful) to micromanage.
Is there anything that Bouie has ever written that is worth reading? Please inform me. He vis the prime example of a DEI hire.
Somebody's ox has been gored with surgical precision, it would appear. We're presented with the argument that appointed executive councils are an excellent idea and ought to be implemented, with the proper approvals, tout de suite, without a hint of any self-aware irony that might give away the fact that it's been a preferred, unapproved modus operandi for the past 4 years.
The best answer for these arguments is 'Oh, f*ck off'. They're still going with the canard that Elon is somehow making decisions. OK: Which ones did he make, then? So far, I've just seen the kind of recommendations that arise from audits. Who is implementing the recommendations?
Yes, the person who's responsible for Elon Musk and DOGE is the POTUS, Donald Trump. The President is in charge of the executive branch and hire and fire at will. He and the VP are the only elected official directly responsible to the American people. We've put him in charge.
Truman said "The buck stops here" meaning his desk. As for BIden, as Althouse notes, the same writers who didn't care about mysterious somebodies making all the decisions for Biden are now really upset that Musk and others are making decisions without being appointed to an office and confirmed by congress
I could be wrong, but the constitution says:
"He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,.. shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."
IOW, the President can appoint anyone not covered by law without the consent of Congress. Musk fits that category.
Was it George Carlin who said "Life is full of ironies for stupid people."
" the Democrats in the Senate realized this several elections ago, but the GOPe never did."
No, they just shard the agenda with the Democrats. Coke and Pepsi both sell the same sugar water with different branding.
Was Samantha Power confirmed by Congress? She exercised tremendous power and directed unaccountable spending in the billions through USAID.
These are just rhetorical questions, they don't care, these articles are written to keep the simple people on their side based on the colors of the jerseys, so to speak.
This is why they invented the fake charge of "whataboutism."
"The idea of Senate confirmation was that the powers of the executive would be exercised through principal officers confirmed by the Senate who would have duties and responsibilities defined by law rather than Presidential decree."
Left Bank, what happens if the Senate refuses to confirm anyone within the executive branch? Does this mean the elected President can't, for examples, run foreign policy or run the Department of Defense? Are you really claiming the President has no power over these departments?
Sounds to me like Hamilton was decrying the proliferation of agencies and subagencies like USAID that would form an unaccountable Deep State, not the number of people working for the president under his direct authority.
Hamilton wrote that 'plurality in the executive' tends to 'conceal faults and destroy responsibility.'... Hamilton says that 'the multiplication of the executive adds to the difficulty of detection…
Woodrow Wilson, in his first book, Congressional Government believed a "Cabinet Ministry" conferred sufficient, identifiable responsibility:
The most striking contrast in modern politics is not between presidential and monarchical governments, but between Congressional and Parliamentary governments. Congressional government is Committee government; Parliamentary government is government by a responsible Cabinet Ministry.
Althouse said...
We're supposed to worry now about the "multiplication of the executive" when you didn't worry about the absence of any true executive and nothing but a multiplicity of executive substitutes?
Both Wilson and Biden finished office while being fed 'Yankee Beans' by their wives.
Or it could be said this way:
Biden may be working from an expansive theory of executive power, but in delegating so much of his authority to Samantha Powers... he is both undermining that power and demonstrating ...
My wife and I are currently watching "Ted Lasso" and one of his mantras is that when you make a mistake, you need to have the memory of a goldfish and forget it as to not let it ruin your confidence. It seems to me that many members of the media have really taken this to heart. Especially when they would like to claim something is "unprecedented."
'Irony' must have been in the talking points memo sometime before today.
Trump antagonists rail about concealment and lack of clear lines of responsibility when they did not seem to care much about the radical opacity of the "Biden" administration?
Who the f*ck are you talking about? I never gave Biden - who was Trump before Trump was, utterly obnoxious and disgusting - a pass on anything. Or any Democrat.
And this argument of "well Biden and the Dems are corrupt so it's OK for Trump to be" is a pretty piss-poor argument. Like practically everything Trumpist.
Musk is to Trump as Alexander Hamilton was to George Washington? The first president delegated a lot to his "numbers guy" Hamilton. There was never any doubt, though, about who was in charge.
Bouie writes better than Lauren Jackson in the other article, but his conclusions aren't right. If Trump knows what he's doing, Musk is expendable. If what Musk is doing doesn't work out, Trump can dismiss him. I'd say that the odds are better that Trump rather than Musk will be the one who can just "walk away" if something goes wrong. That does depend, though, on just what it is that goes wrong or doesn't work.
When we became an empire, unelected and unconfirmed individuals came to play a bigger role in political life. Col. House under Wilson. Harry Hopkins under FDR. Their role was insitutionalized in the National Security Advisor's post (Bundy, Rostow, Kissinger, Skowcroft, Brzezinski, McFarlane, Poindexter, Powell, Berger, Rice, Rice, McMaster, Bolton, Sullivan, Waltz and others). It's a very powerful office but does not require Senatorial confirmation (though by a quirk in the laws a 3- or 4-star general appointed to the post will have to be reconfirmed as a general -- please don't ask me why). Senatorial confirmation wasn't constitutionally required for every presidential appointment and today positions that don't require confirmation can be very powerful indeed.
You do realize that the word "executive" is derived from "execute"? As in the president's primary role is to see that the laws passed by CONGRESS are faithfully executed. Just because Biden and Obama held that dictatorial pen doesn't mean that anyone should be embracing a despotic Trump.
So Jamelle Bouie babbles a bunch of BS, and Althouse blows away the entire article with 8 words:
But Trump himself says "The buck stops here"
Article II
Section 1
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
All the rest of Section 1 is about how the President is selected.
Section 2 is about HIS powers. Including the power of appointment.
While it includes limits on his power of appointing, it makes NO limitations on his power of removal. It includes this "but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."
What it never says, anywhere, is that Congress may limit or block his power to remove.
So what Trump is doing is following his oath of office and enforcing the written US Constitution
They're flailing. You can see it. Their arguments don't cohere.
Mark said...
You do realize that the word "executive" is derived from "execute"? As in the president's primary role is to see that the laws passed by CONGRESS are faithfully executed.
And the laws that Congress passed say "the Executive Branch shall give grants." They also say "the Executive Branch can terminate this grants whenever they want to, for any reason they want to."
So Trump IS faithfully executing those laws.
Mark said...
Just because Biden and Obama held that dictatorial pen doesn't mean that anyone should be embracing a despotic Trump.
Never change, Mark. "Just because we completely ignored this principle when a Democrat was President doesn't mean we can't try to force it on a Republican!!11!"
Yes, Mark, that is EXACTLY what it means when you don't hold your own side bound to a rule:
You let your side get away with it, now the other side gets to do the same, and no one is going to listen to you complain, because you have not the slightest shred of legitimacy.
Are you really so completely, fundamentally, stupid that you can't grasp that?
One of the first things that DOGE did was brought USAID spending under the control of a member of the cabinet. The Secretary of State, specifically. Prior to that, the job was held by an unconfirmed partisan political hatchet man, who had power over the spending of billions. So Left Bank of the Charles arguments are strangely out of touch with the reality.
And isn't it convenient for people who backed Joe Biden at every turn here on this blog to now throw him under the bus, as if they didn't have any work to do reflecting on their blind support for the man, or reflecting on why the Democratic Party rigged the primaries to put that man at the top of the ticket.
Obama mia.
It's perfectly clear Trump is the executive and Musk is an advisor. I haven't seen any decisions or actions taken directly by Musk. He doesn't have the authority.
Yancey Ward said...
"Are you really claiming the President has no power over these departments?”
Apparently the only power the president is supposed to have is what flavor of ice cream he gets today.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Never change, Mark. "Just because we completely ignored this principle when a Democrat was President doesn't mean we can't try to force it on a Republican!!”
I think we can conclusively rule out that Mark is Glenn Greenwald in real life.
Who the f*ck are you talking about? I never gave Biden - who was Trump before Trump was, utterly obnoxious and disgusting - a pass on anything. Or any Democrat.
Ann likes setting up strawmen.
"as the power to resist congressional statutes or judicial decisions that encroach on executive authority"
The Constitution says "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." Why *shouldn't* Trump resist congressional statutes or judicial decisions that encroach on that authority?
I mean- aside from the fact the writer doesn't want Trump exercising authority expressly granted by the Constitution and the voters?
Freder continues to be unclear on the concept.
Virginia Mark is the the exception that proves the rule Althouse stated, Fredo. It wasn't a strawman because you won't find a single Biden supporter in the media or anywhere else that contradicts it.
Left Bank said: The problem here is that Musk is acting as a principal executive officer who has not been confirmed by the Senate.
OK. Now explain to us the constitutionality of Obama's "Czars" as well as the people who ran the Biden regime.
The Founding Fathers were scholars of history, with intimate knowledge of Plutarch's Lives and the Histories of Polybius. They wanted to avoid the the civil wars of the late Roman Republic that were exacerbated by the dual consulate, which diffused accountability, muddied the chain of military command, and led to competition and backstabbing between the two consuls, as well as endless scheming and conspiracies on the part of their respective Senatorial allies, clients, and supporters.
Hamilton surely also had in mind the subsequent fall of the Republic that followed the two Triumvirates, the decline and fall of the late Roman Empire after the multiple Tetrarchies of Diocletian and his successors, and the chaos that direct democracy wrought in Athens with its annual election of the Ten Generals, culminating in the victory of Sparta over Athens in the Peloponnesian War.
A unitary executive provides the electorate with a single seat of authority and accountability that they are able to replace at will, as just happened in November. Everything bad that is happening to the Democrats and the monster bureaucracy they built is their own fault. The corrections being imposed by the Trump Administration, according to the will of the voting public, are entirely in keeping with the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and the form of government they ordained for us in the Constitution.
This is guy who either has obvious failing cognitive abilities (talk about Brandon) or does his obsessive lying which is just as bad an illness. i DONT THINK i SAID THAT! Trumpers go oh he never said that,or he was just joking or its not what he meant. Im voting just classic lying. Did I say that?’: Trump questions whether he called Zelensky a ‘dictator’
‘Did I say that?’: Trump questions whether he called Zelensky a ‘dictator’
‘Did I say that?’: Trump questions whether he called Zelensky a ‘dictator’
President Donald Trump on Thursday questioned whether he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator" despite using the descriptor multiple times.
“Did I say that? I can't believe I said that,” Trump told reporters Thursday in the White House's Oval Office when pressed on his and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's difference of opinion regarding whether Zelensky is a "dictator."
I know not quite a DINKY diatribe like BRUCE'S who periodically posts up in here but its always over the readers heads, Ah the quest for learning is deep but futile.....
Well said, Althouse! Are you abandoning cruel neutrality?
If we believe Elon, he's just tech support feeding real numbers to department heads who will perform the acts to eliminate WFA. I'm sure he's doing much more than that however it does seem to provide plausible deniability work around the lack of Senate confirmation.
We all remember the torrents of criticism of Joe Biden that came from our lefty commenters, we were considering building an ark because we were worried about being washed away in it! Oh, that's not actually true. I don't remember any criticism of Biden's policies here from Freder, for example, up until the disastrous debate when the truth was no longer possible to hide. And still they didn't criticize his policies. Nobody here from the left had the slightest concern about unelected and unconfirmed by Congress Samantha Power directing billions of unaccountable until now money overseas to overthrow democratically elected governments by paying street mobs, for example. No, I remember that when commenters here brought this stuff up, how the US was doing it, we didn't understand exactly how it was being funded, just that it was plainly being done, we were called nut jobs and "conspiracy theorists."
Trump questions whether he called Zelensky a ‘dictator’
‘Did I say that?
This is consistent with the explanation that Trump's statements about Ukraine and Putin, interspersed with shouted questions from "journalists," were misinterpreted as criticizing Zelensky when he was actually referring to Putin. It was a complicated exchange to track and I can see why people heard it one way or the other. I'm glad he finally gave a direct answer that Dinky highlights as a "lie" but I'm not a mind reader. So I'll just accept that what he said was meant to apply to Putin and not Zelensky, since Trump doesn't believe he said it about him.
Of course the media ran with the other interpretation, because it stirs things up. But it doesn't make sense. I'd like to see the chaotic transcript of that whole scrum and see how hard it is to disentangle Trump's meaning from what he appeared to say.
"it does seem to provide plausible deniability work around the lack of Senate confirmation."
Does he direct the outflow of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to groups operating to the benefit of the Democratic Party the way unconfirmed Samantha Powers did? Hundreds of millions to "ministries" whose main purpose in the world was to fly migrants from all over the world into the US bypassing our legal immigration system, for example?
I don't remember you criticizing that when it was going on.
Zelensky is holding on to office not by winning elections, but by continuing a war that he has plainly lost except for the needless killing, because as soon as the war ends, he's looking at being strung up from a lamp post. Yeah, he's a dictator. Putin stood for re-election. He is extremely popular in Russia, US polling firms found his popularity in Russia to match roughly his vote totals. Americans wouldn't vote for him, but we. don't get a vote, because we don't like him, that doesn't make him a dictator. Zelensky simply rules by decree a lot of the time, but his rubber stamp legislature did push back when he tried to get a law passed saying that no further presidential elections could be held in Ukraine without his personal sign off, so maybe he is not quite a dictator completely.
That is too well-written for Jamelle Bouie. The syntax is too correct, and the ideas are unoriginal but well-expressed. I think Jamelle has been hitting the AI a little too hard.
Jamelle is an idiot. But I repeat myself.
Trump will fire Musk. You know I'm right.
Two things are being deliberately confused here by the Dems. First, and foremost, Musk isn’t acting like an Officer of the USG. He is an advisor to the President and Cabinet heads. He didn’t cut off the USAID tap. They did. He just gave them the information that they needed to do the job. That’s what advisor’s do. And have done throughout the history of our Republic.
Secondly, they are calling much of what Trump has been doing lawless. And they are getting Dem nominated District Court judges to sometimes agree with them. Yes, the forum and judge shop, and sometimes throw their cases up against different judges until they get a wall that it sticks on. The judges biting on their arguments are almost all Biden and Obama nominated judges. Some even have familial stakes in the litigation (one of the judges has a close family member whose NGO has its USAID spigot cut off).
The primary legal questions are whether we do indeed have a Unitary Executive type government. And with a 6-3 Republican advantage in the Supreme Court, the Dems are very likely going to lose most of the skirmishes. We saw this with Trump’s Immunity decision last year. What these Dem activist judges seem to be trying to do is legislate from the bench, then trying to isolate themselves from immediate judicial review by various stratagems, such as utilizing non-FRCP authorized stays. So, the question of whether Trump is violating the law is really whether or not he and his Administration are fully complying with the ultimately probably illegal orders by these highly partisan Dem District Court judges. As of 2010, there were 678 authorized district court judgeships. Roughly half of the non-vacant judgeships were probably nominated by Dem Presidents, and better than half of those were probably nominated by Obama/Biden. And, thus, the argument of illegality by Trump is that he and his Administration aren’t fully complying with the illegal orders from a handful of these 678+ Dem appointed District Court Judges.
"There is a deep irony here ....".
Oh, yeah, I have to admit, that probably is authentic Jamelle Bouie. Jamelle was the first member of his family to graduate from junior high, and he even went on to college. The one lesson he learned, during four years of easy courses and AA grading, was that there is a thing called "irony", and it can be deep, but it can never be shallow. There are no shallow ironies, in Jamelle's sunny world.
But i think the rest of it is AI.
“What is a Congressional Statute? Is that a law passed by Congress? If so, what law is Trump resisting? Is this another one of those games where we are supposed to accept that Trump was just bad, yet nobody actually provides an actual example.”
They really can’t point at any specific law that Trump has broken, in these Musk/funding cases. It’s mostly just fringe arguments in favor of the bureaucracy having these powers, and not the President. Which will mostly be rejected long run, with the current 6-3 majority that Republicans have in SCOTUS.
Then there was the argument overruled a couple days ago by CJ Roberts, that the status quo ante, that he was maintaining, was that commitments for USAID money meant that the money had to go out to the targets of the commitments. That’s not going to work either - the status quo ante is that the money hadn’t been disbursed.
The one place where Trump has violated statutes is in firings. He fired James Comey in his first Administration, despite the statute giving the FBI Director a 10 year term. Trump won there. Similarly, Litzy Fauxhauntis Warren tried to isolate the commissioners of her Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from being fired by a Republican President. That too failed. This is a Separation of Powers issue, with Congress trying to, but failing to, interfere with the President’s core Article II, § 1, ¶ 1 power as the country’s Executive. Firing is a core Executive power, and Congress can’t interfere with it.
Jamelle may be bewildered by the Trump/Musk relationship. I am not losing any sleep about the matter..
Nicholas II is always roundly criticized for naming himself Commander-in-Chief in 1915. Every military failure was tied to him, and he was detached from what happened in St. Petersburg.
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