17 Comments

It's not really a theory. It's an excuse for a power grab that Republicans can't win through democratic processes. I realize lawyers have to treat the "unitary executive" as if it had substance, but the rest of us need to get real. What kind of political system we'll have will be determined by what we'll put up with. So it has always been.

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Our "Originalist" SCOTUS needs to refer to the Executive Branch as it was constituted with respect to Presidential authority. Congress has created much of what is now considered part of the Executive Branch and those agencies that Congress created include restrictions on the President's authority to alter them. Allowing the Executive to overrule the Legislature without vetoing the legislation as it is enacted is a travesty.

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They never actually cared about the constitution to begin with. "Originalism" was just the paper thin disguise they used, which our useless fucking media orgs blindly accepted.

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"Here’s hoping this rampage, this wild shift in the balance of power in American democracy, irks the right-wingers on the court enough that they’ll choose to rein him in."

Yeah, that's not going to happen. The fascist shitheads on the court only care about shifts of power when those shifts move towards civil rights and away from white supremacist Christians.

Besides, even if they did try to rein him in, he'd just babble something nonsensical and go ahead and do whatever he wants anyway.

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But how do we stop this?

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We support the organizations taking the Trump administration to court: Democracy Docket, Democracy Forward, Norm Eisen's group (which you can support by subscribing to The Contrarian). We also continue to demonstrate nationwide.

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We hope he dies soon, and that the power vacuum left afterwards is enough for actual elections to happen.

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Thank you I’ll add Democracy Forward to my list

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We must do the counteroffensive with speed. Take to the streets. Begin an economic boycott. Stop buying. Stop buying everything.

https://bit.ly/4bhzA68

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The clown who would be king, the nutty NAZI, their sycophants in Congress and the nutty "opinion" of the nuts on SCOTUS that declared the Golden Calf was above the law (immune from prosecution for criminal abuses of power) just might bring about the death of the unitary executive.

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One weird thing is that the immunity decision rested on the idea of that lack of immunity makes it difficult to do his job. Wouldn't making HIM responsible for everything every agency does INCREASE his workload and make it difficult for him to do his job?

The decision also talked about the difference between "core" powers and non-core powers. Doesn't it follow that if Congress has put limits on a president what he does with disregard to Congresses' strictures is NOT a core power? So by holding that EVERYTHING is a "core power" then they are obliterating the distinction they laboriously made to try to make the immunity decision even mildly palatable.

Congress clearly has the power to create Executive Branch departments and presumably to un-create them. I'm at the point of wondering what would happen if Congress just eliminated, say, the State Dept and the Defense Dept or maybe ALL Departments and just let trump try to run the country without any help at all. If there IS no Dept of Justice, how is he going to persecute his victims? If there is no Homeland Security or Border Patrol, who will keep out the ravening hordes? Certainly for the enumerated powers, like laying taxes, they could just set up their own committee to run the collections, or regulate commerce with foreign nations itself.

Yeah, I know. But one wonders.

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Unless it's a 9/0 rebuke Trump, Vance, Musk et al won't care - they may not even care then - and I just don't see that happening with at bare minimum 3 justices fully onboard with this insanity. In my perfect fantasy world, these justices would have an epiphany and realize that they're playing with fire - but in reality as long as Thomas keeps getting richer, Alito gets his vengeance and Gorsuch gets whatever gets him off about all of this we're f-d. At least two of them are hopelessly lost to the cult, maybe many more.

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Perhaps there's a silver lining here if I understand the unitary executive theory. Does this mean that the president, Democrat or Republican, can fire one (or more) of the Supreme Court justices?

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The only silver lining I see is that trump has effectively banned anyone who shows signs of knowledge, intelligence, expertise, cunning, leadership and ability to actually get things done from his administration. Future generations will live in shame if we are unable to stop these incompetent, inept, unqualified, bush-league boobs from destroying our democracy and establishing an authoritarian regime. It should be impossible - on paper at least.

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I would argue that the unitary executive theory was built originally for Richard Nixon, that shining example of integrity.

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Yes, King Donald the First, muses Mr. Musk as he twitches the strings to make the puppet do its YMCA dance.

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Thank you for laying out the case so clearly. We have work to do.

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