As the world economy crashes because of the grudges and whims of one very dumb and very unstable man, it’s time to ask ourselves if we’ve invested too much power in the presidency.
The answer is yes, we have.
Here are four examples of how that is playing out in awful ways.
The president apparently does have power to increase tariffs willy-nilly. Trump’s actions have prompted introduction of a bipartisan bill in Congress that would trim those powers. “We gave some of that power to the executive branch. I think in hindsight that was a mistake,” said Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. Even the Wall Street Journal recently wrote that, “Someone should sue to stop (Trump’s) abuse of power.” That would imply that he’s already exceeded his authority. We’ll see, but Bacon’s bill should be enacted to make it clear that any president cannot ruin the economy just because he feels like it.
The president’s powers to impose mass deportations are murky. Trump’s deportation of hundreds of people to a notorious Salvadoran prison without any due process or even an attempt to show that they were all in the country illegally has been challenged in court. Last week a judge ordered the administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Garcia was in the country legally and had no criminal record. The administration’s allegations that he was a member of the street gang MS-13 came with no evidence. And when a Justice Department attorney admitted as much, that attorney was suspended for being honest. Then the administration argued that they couldn’t rescue Garcia from the Salvadron prison because he was no longer under their jurisdiction. But let’s say everyone else who was sent to that prison was, in fact, in the U.S. illegally, did the president have the power to round them up without due process and then send them to a foreign prison, even if that prison was humane? Let’s make sure no president has that authority.
The president may have authority to gut Federal agencies so long as he keeps at least one light on. That also is being challenged by multiple lawsuits, but Congress should make it clear that any president can’t do this. Federal agencies and programs are created by Congress. To gut them and leave them unable to do the things Congress has created them to do is clearly a usurpation of Congress’ authority. Unfortunately, in this case Congressional Republicans have decided to hand over their powers to Trump. But if Trump wanted to, for example, eliminate the Department of Education, he should submit a bill or a budget to that effect and let Congress approve it. We need legislation that makes it clear that an executive cannot eliminate an agency in all but name.
The president apparently has some authority to forgive debt. Joe Biden pressed the limits of this in his various student loan forgiveness schemes. His biggest plan was shot down by the Supreme Court, but he managed to use back door methods to give away $190 billion in taxpayer money to borrowers without approval from Congress. Does Congress control the purse strings or not? The issue here is how much a president can spend without getting that Congressional approval.
The Founders created a relatively weak executive and for good reason. Wars and economic crisis’ moved Congress over the years to hand over more and more power to that office. Some of that made sense, but now Donald Trump is demonstrating just how dangerous too much power in the hands of one man can be. It’s time to restore checks and balances. It’s time to rein in the president, no matter who that is.
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Dave,
Can I run your recent column on presidential power on my website?
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Of course. Feel free to do that with any of my columns. I’m grateful for the exposure to your (much larger) audience.
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I’ve been seeing this quote float around the last couple of months and I think it’s very true in this current situation. When you vote a clown into the castle, he doesn’t become a king. The castle becomes a circus. That’s what it feels like right now. The Dems are content on just watching the circus right now.
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“As the world economy crashes because of the grudges and whims of one very dumb and very unstable man”
Anthony Fauci, Q.E.D.
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There’s growing evidence that Fauci and the vast majority of public health experts and officials who supported him were wrong to push for the hard shut down. But Fauci wasn’t malicious. He wasn’t acting on a whim or trying to settle some old grudge. And, in fact, over a million Americans did die from COVID and it would have been worse but for the shut down. The question in Fauci’s case is was it worth it when balanced with all of the negative impacts of that shutdown? So, I just think it’s wrong to equate Fauci with Trump.
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Malicious is probably the wrong term- corrupt is more accurate. In either case too much power in the hands of one man (and the obliging media) that resulted in the world economy crashing.
And let’s face it – stocks did well in the pandemic so people like us didn’t have much to complain about. It did not go so well for poor people. And school children.
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What was corrupt about Fauci?
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https://oversight.house.gov/release/wsj-opinion-evidence-revealed-by-covid-select-subcommittee-shows-corruption-at-highest-levels-of-nih/
I remember old FBI twitter would not even allow you to use the word “coronavirus” (I did and my account was suspended). You were required to use the government approved “COVID”. Obviously an attempt to distance the outbreak from the Wuhan CORONAVIRUS lab. So much unscientific nonsense occurred during the pandemic all the while Fauci screamed Science!
Fauci’s incentive was to cover Fauci’s ass, nothing more.
Now to the topic at hand, I think all 3 branches have greatly abused their powers. We have activist judges (the mean girls of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are but one example), we have Congress driving the country to bankruptcy, and POTUS well… depends on your POV doesn’t it? I’d like to think Trump’s actions are due to an emergency but oh how have emergency powers been abused!
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Dave, why do you let One Eye continue to post without divulging his name? It’s cowardly, is it not?
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I did set a rule for a while that people had to post under their real names. I found that a lot folks just didn’t post. I wish One Eye would, in fact, let us all know who he is. But I find that he makes for a lively conversation and that’s the main point. We also have liberal posters who don’t reveal their names. I very much appreciate the fact that you do, Debbie. And no, I don’t get why people don’t do the same as you and I.
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Covid was an unprecedented global emergency, where educated, capable people were forced to quickly make the best decisions they could under difficult circumstances and incomplete information. It wasn’t just Fauci, officials in EVERY COUNTRY were trying to figure out the best course of action, and many governments came to similar decisions.
This situation has no relevant similarity with that one. An emergency is pretty much the ONLY time where it makes sense to temporarily consolidate decision making power. No matter what Trump lies about, none of what he is taking action on are emergencies (definition: A serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action.)
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I think our debt is an emergency and liken it to hypertension “the silent killer”.
YMMV only time will tell, and of course it’s arguable whether Trump and DOGE will start to fix it.
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You know Fauci was merely an advisor to Trump right One Eye? The Trump administration was the one issuing travel restrictions, not Fauci himself. And Trump himself has stated: “Dr. Fauci would tell me things, and I wouldn’t do them, in many cases. But also, he wasn’t a big player.”
I guess you forget Truman’s old adage about the presidency: “The Buck Stops Here”.
It’s a far cry from Trump’s words about his actions during the pandemic: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
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Another opinion: Tariffs Have Been Needed for Decades
Funniest thing; SanFranNan, FeelTheBern, and Chuckie Schumer were all decidedly FOR TARIFFS before they were agin’ ’em.
SanFranNan,
FeelTheBern
Chuckie
Gosh, I wonder what changed their minds…?
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Deflection. Are you for or against what the administration is doing?
What is different about those you cite and the Trump administration is a rational strategy. I’m in favor of tariffs, if they’re part of a multifaceted, well defined and clearly communicated strategy. I don’t care about the stock market, and I’m willing to lower my standard of living if necessary to support my country. What about you?
The Trump administration is communicating multiple contradictory messages about the rationale, and any one of those being true means the others are false. And Council of Economic Advisors Chair Stephen Miran is trying to spin that as evidence of healthy and thoughtful debate.
The time for thoughtful debate about strategy is on the sidelines, not during game play. You can’t set the play in action and have your players all think they’re doing different things. I think are are being led by fools with no shame. What do you think?
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When the Covid pandemic started, we had nothing to fight it: no vaccine, not enough ventilators, not enough N-95 masks, no treatment protocol, nothing. We had to build supply chains and order manufacturing companies to make hospital equipment and develop the logistics for a distribution network from scratch. One of the vaccines required refrigeration during shipment and also at the destination. People forget that hospitals were overwhelmed, staff were pushed to the brink of collapse, working impossible hours, and many patients died in their hospital bed (or in the hospital hallway) alone, with family prohibited from being present. Then Trump blew the response, which cost him the 2020 election, which he then made a treasonous attempt to overturn. The one thing he did right was implement “Operation Warp Speed,” pushing for an accelerated development of a vaccine. It was a miracle that one was developed in around 6 months. That probably saved us.
Then Trump backed away from the lockdown, which was our ONLY tool in the pandemic toolbox when this all started. We would probably have a modified response now, using the work-from-home software that allowed people to get work done. But back then, the lockdown approach was all we had, and the virus was spreading out of control. He also backed away from using the power of his office to promote the vaccine, due to pressure from the anti-vax ying-yings, and also pushed for quack remedies found on right-wing websites or Facebook, causing his supporters to show up infected with Covid at the hospital (because they refused the vaccine) demanding treatments that no doctor in his/her right mind would ever allow (remember those treatments used by veterinarians?). And I’ll never forget him at that press conference suggesting that we should ingest bleach and shine UV light into our orifices. I believe that was the last time we saw him at a pandemic press conference, when he learned how stupid he had been in front of millions of Americans on live TV.
We are damn lucky that the vaccines (from both Pfizer and Moderna) were developed. If the mortality rate had been as much as 5%, instead of the 1-1.5% that it actually was, the world healthcare system would have collapsed, along with the global economy.
This will happen again, as sure as God made little green apples, and if we are really, really lucky, we won’t have a dangerous idiot in the White House like we do today.
And no, Fauci was not corrupt. He just became the face of the science-based response to the pandemic, and you know what Trump and his fans think about scientists.
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I do remember reading about Lincoln, (during the Civil War) having too much power, and FDR also having too much power. so this is nothing new, only someone different doing it.
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Lincoln and FDR were fighting wars. Even then, there’s no question that FDR went way too far when he sent Asian Americans to internment camps. And you could also add Wilson and WW !, when again we went too far in defining German Americans as disloyal. All of which is to say this stuff is dangerous, even when some of it might be justified by circumstances — which it certainly is not in the current case.
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Dave. can you please provide a source(s) for the following statement?
There’s growing evidence that Fauci and the vast majority of public health experts and officials who supported him were wrong to push for the hard shut down.
Also, OneEye seems to forget that the last three recessions happened under Republican control and Clinton turned over a surplus to Bush, that lead to, well, you know…..I just don’t understand, given the actual track record that shows Republicans are awful with money, why people insist on thinking otherwise. It’s like your only plan is to spend less…less taxes. See what all this cost cutting will get you now….hope you’re not planning on retiring in the near future like some of us whose 401ks just tanked under this absolute terrible tariff war…which, if I didn’t know better, sure seems like a good way to force a recession so your billionaire friends can snag up stocks at bargain basement prices and increase their wealth tenfold, while the rest of us, suffer. But, but, eggs….
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Yes, I can. Here it is https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691267135/in-covids-wake?srsltid=AfmBOop_g9uWRD2X4Hg3kNtvehL-RnlkwMwYUDEJtnVk_UihlUnQ8Gor
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Call me a skeptic, but one book by a couple of authors does not the story make. I could probably find a book authored by two other reasonably educated individuals who came to different conclusions.
Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the author of Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage (Princeton); Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy; and Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism. Frances Lee is professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. She is the author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign; Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate; and (with James M. Curry) The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Age.
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Well, no, but these are quite credible authors published by a revered press (Princeton) and I know of their work because they were interviewed on — of all places — the PBS News Hour, hardly Fox News.
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Debbie you assume too much.
The debt is a bipartisan problem. It’s an inevitable result of politics being a popularity contest and the government being able to borrow money indefinitely.
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Sp maybe while cutting government spending, the trips to the superbowl, the golfing and corporate welfare should also be on the chopping block. Otherwise, it’s just picking on the little guy. The cuts they are making that drastically affect people’s lives are a drop in the bucket and inconsequential in the grand scheme of budgets. AND, they are not well thought out. I just don’t know how anyone can defend what’s going on.
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I have a Post Script:
See this Instagram post by @ohhthatsrich: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIPpCBJtxPl/?igsh=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==
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