I think this is chilling stuff. We should be very alarmed. I live in the UK, which, I fear, would follow the lead of the U.S. were this to happen. The 'International Dictator Club' is always open to new members! We are sleepwalking into this and the Climate Emergency. What will our descendents say about us?
I am afraid, I have been afraid most of my adult life,
However, you teach, and taught me, that change is not only possible but inevitable. Your final lecture, told me not to be cynical. I will follow your advice and work to make the USA and the rest of the world better,
If Jack Smith won't indict trump for insurrection, does that invalidate or at lesst weaken the 14th Amendment option to disqualify trump?
I believe trump wants more than anything to get re-elected so he can absolve himself of all the crimes he's committed against our country. He wants to be above the law and also punish his enemies. And to keep breaking rules and laws. And to keep raking in money.
Very scary notion of trump as a “unitary executive” autocrat. Does his appeal come from bashing everything good Biden and the Dems do? What policies does he actually seek to advance that improves American workers and families?
I find it unbelievable that we can seriously discuss this. I escaped from Hungary as a young woman after Soviet tanks crushed the 1956 revolt. I just could not see living there any longer. It was not an easy decision, leaving Parents. Brother and Friends behind. The USA , being mostly unknown to me, with all her faults and shortcomings still was like a Promised Land. Now comes trump, the Ignoramus if ever was one, try to crush all that is good , hopeful etc. The present Hungarian nitwit (Orban) causes suffering and discontent - I know that because I am getting emails from relatives and friends from Hungary.
We need to get this message out -- not just to us, your readers, the choir. The media should pepper the ether with alarmist headlines: Do you want a King again? How important is your freedom? Do you want unchecked authoritarianism? Etc. it has to be hammered home exactly what we could lose.
EU here. I hate this, but the truth is whatever happens with the US situation will impact all of us everywhere. Glad to be watching from here and not there, but it is frightening to view from anywhere.
Scalia wouldn't have supported the unitary executive theory if a Democrat were President, nor would the current Supreme Court, despite that ruling--hell, they won't even let Biden execute existing laws they don't like. But if a ReThuglican got in, they'd be all for it. All the more reason to VOTE BLUE--from school board to President.
There are only a very few ways this could happen. The election could be given to Trump if he has enough Secretaries of State to hand him the election, and the lawfully elected President caves in and allows this to happen, and the citizens of those States whose Secretary of State gave Trump the election against the will of the voters. This is very iffy. Second, if the US Military turned uniformly traitorous and literally fought the US Citizens. Third, if somehow Trump's dishonorable legal team managed to get his appeals on the electoral results to the current Supreme Court he could win 6-3 or 5-4. Frankly I don't feel like terrorizing myself with any of these scenarios. First, if enough of us email our Governors, Secretary of State and State Legislators asking them to invoke the Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 3, his name won't even appear on the ballot. Second, we can appeal to our young friends and relatives to vote. - It won't be enough for just us voting, we need a better turnout than we got in 2022. and that was pretty good.
I'd like to think the public would rise up against him and some will but it will not be enough people to make a difference. I'd like to think we would demand our democracy like the South Koreans did but I think we are too complacent. Sad.
This situation terrifies me. I am working to GOTV for elections this fall and next year, but in case they go south I’m also gathering facts and doing some visiting to determine whether a move to Ireland is feasible for a retired person.
Don't worry, Trump won't be elected President, because the Climate Emergency will trump him! If we take the most recent past Presidential elections as a guide, where the Democrats have been gaining an average of one million votes per year (they won the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020), the 2024 results will be 11 million for Biden-Harris. And by the way, I'm also betting that Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee in 2028 and win by 16 million votes! Any takers out there?
I was reading about this very subject in The Bulwark yesterday.If we aren't frightened, we're up the creek without a paddle.This is heavy duty serious stuff,folks.
I am reminded of Rage Against The Machine's "Wake Up"that is played at the end of the original Matrix.We Need to WAKE UP before it's too damned late to matter!!
And make absolutely no mistakes,if we allow Trump to get back in office,we are royally #*%#*$@.When we say he means to eliminate his"enemies",he means DEAD AS A DOORNAIL.Don't think for a single minute he wouldn't have people lined up and shot.He likely has a list already,and is adding to it every single day.He wants to be KING TRUMP,and will stop at nothing to achieve this goal.
And,BTW,I know that people are hearing about the backlog of passports that's been going on.Just to clarify,this is because people are trying to get ready to get the hell out of Dodge if Trump is allowed back in office.I believe he will close our borders so WE can't escape him.Do you really think he wants his enemies to escape him?
These prosecutors need to get the ducks in a row right NOW,and stop wasting time,and get him out of the way,before it's too late to matter.He would be very happy to put these people first on the list to be eliminated.He would make examples of all of them.
If you think this is hyperbole, remember what he's already tried to do before,and we managed to stop him.What if he can't be stopped the next time...???Do we really want to think about that?
Trump was elected to kill "the deep state," and as president "pitted himself repeatedly against the institutions and personnel of the executive branch. In the process, two once-obscure concepts came center stage in an eerie faceoff. On one side was the specter of a “Deep State” conspiracy-administrators threatening to thwart the will of the people and undercut the constitutional authority of the president they elected to lead them. On the other side was a raw personalization of presidential power, one that a theory of “the unitary executive” gussied up and allowed to run roughshod over reason and the rule of law. The Deep State and the unitary executive framed every major contest of the Trump presidency. Like phantom twins, they drew each other out and wrestled to light basic issues of governance long suppressed." https://global.oup.com/academic/product/phantoms-of-a-beleaguered-republic-9780197543085?cc=us&lang=en&#
Article II, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution vests the executive power in “a president of the United States.” Those words do not seem ambiguous. Under the Constitution, the President, and no one else, has executive power. The executive is therefore “unitary.”
However, the United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce (i.e., non-elected and non-military public sector employees) of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871 (5 U.S.C. § 2101) Before that a president could appoint or fire any employee at will. Some employees [like me] could be fired only for "cause."
The Constitution lists several "departments" of the executive branch: the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the other departments in the President's Cabinet are examples of administrative agencies. Other examples include the Social Security Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Labor Relations Board. The first "independent" agency, a hybrid of the executive and legislative branch, with power to enact its own rules was the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1881.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Pub. L. 79–404, 60 Stat. 237, enacted June 11, 1946, is the United States federal statute that governs the way in which administrative agencies of the federal government of the United States may propose and establish regulations and it grants U.S. federal courts oversight over all agency actions.[2] According to Hickman & Pierce, it is one of the most important pieces of United States administrative law, and serves as a sort of "constitution" for U.S. administrative law.[3]
The APA applies to both the federal executive departments and the independent agencies.[ U.S. Senator Pat McCarran called the APA "a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated" by federal government agencies.
The U.S. civil service is managed by the Office of Personnel Management, which as of December 2011 reported approximately 2.79 million civil servants employed by the federal government, including employees in the departments and agencies run by any of the three branches of government (the executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch) and the over 600,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service.
FDR enlarged the number and authority of agencies, but he was faced with the depression and WWII. Reagan craved more power and Justice Roberts was a lawyer in the White House who tried to develop it as in 1987, Reagan issued a signing statement that declared: "If this provision were interpreted otherwise, so as to require the President to follow the orders of a subordinate, it would plainly constitute an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority as head of a unitary executive branch."
The George W. Bush administration made the Unitary Executive Theory a common feature of signing statements.[22] For example, Bush once wrote in a signing statement that he would, "construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power."[23] Critics acknowledge that part of the President's duty is to "interpret what is, and is not constitutional, at least when overseeing the actions of executive agencies," but critics accused Bush of overstepping that duty by his perceived willingness to overrule US courts.
Unfortunately, even the Obama administration fell to power. Not only did he retain most of the security-related actions of the Bush presidency (the state secrets doctrine, targeted killings of terror suspects, warrantless wiretapping), but he went even farther than his predecessor in some areas (e.g., drone strikes). Moreover, he employed unilateral powers across an array of domestic policy areas (e.g., immigration policy, implementation of the Affordable Care Act), to the consternation of his opponents and the confusion of many of his supporters. Unilateralism became Obama’s preferred method for getting things done in Washington.
INHO Trump was forever looking for "emergencies" to declare himself unitary executive, i.e. king. In the first few months of Trump's administration, he signed three executive orders that gutted unions representing federal workers. He appointed three “anti-union” members to the Federal Labor Relations Board and a General Counsel who consistently issued anti-union rulings when advising the FLRB. Trump undermined OSHA protections and methodically implemented ten “requests” from the pro-business US Chamber of Commerce designed to weaken unions. In 2018, he went after people like me, appointed under Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, to be appointed under a spoils system.
We are facing worse than authoritarianism. The apex of the MAGA leadership features genocidal intentions. Believe it. They are genocidal. How are 5,000 children taken from their parents as "punishment" otherwise? How can so many unarmed blacks be shot to death by police over traffic stops and misdemeanors? Just recently a black man was stabbed just because ... he was black. And Kari Lake . . . She told an interviewer that the big problem with DeSantis's big mistake in his mistreatment of Venezuelan refugees was that "we're spreading them too far inland." The word "vermin" immediately popped into my head when I heard her say it. Even Melania ... her jacket bore the message, "I don't really care. Do you?" when she was on her way to visit an island ravaged by a terrible hurricane full of Latinos, and her husband the president didn't even know they were citizens of the U.S. And besides Neo-nazis, there's Moms for Liberty who quote Hitler and then own it. And of course, there's Margie. She claims that Satan took over the Catholic Church for two reasons which she equates: (a) pedophilia, and (b) they comforted and aided refugees crossing the southern border. My God! We cannot be indifferent when we see it coming. This is the greatest struggle of our lifetime! If you don't do anything else, volunteer with democrats. We don't have time for third parties, and fancy footwork. If Godzilla turns out to be the great opponent of the GOP, vote for Godzilla. We don't have any other chance on this burning planet.
I think this is chilling stuff. We should be very alarmed. I live in the UK, which, I fear, would follow the lead of the U.S. were this to happen. The 'International Dictator Club' is always open to new members! We are sleepwalking into this and the Climate Emergency. What will our descendents say about us?
Wake up reasonable people! The alarm bells are ringing!
Professor
I am afraid, I have been afraid most of my adult life,
However, you teach, and taught me, that change is not only possible but inevitable. Your final lecture, told me not to be cynical. I will follow your advice and work to make the USA and the rest of the world better,
Thanks again.
If Jack Smith won't indict trump for insurrection, does that invalidate or at lesst weaken the 14th Amendment option to disqualify trump?
I believe trump wants more than anything to get re-elected so he can absolve himself of all the crimes he's committed against our country. He wants to be above the law and also punish his enemies. And to keep breaking rules and laws. And to keep raking in money.
Very scary notion of trump as a “unitary executive” autocrat. Does his appeal come from bashing everything good Biden and the Dems do? What policies does he actually seek to advance that improves American workers and families?
I find it unbelievable that we can seriously discuss this. I escaped from Hungary as a young woman after Soviet tanks crushed the 1956 revolt. I just could not see living there any longer. It was not an easy decision, leaving Parents. Brother and Friends behind. The USA , being mostly unknown to me, with all her faults and shortcomings still was like a Promised Land. Now comes trump, the Ignoramus if ever was one, try to crush all that is good , hopeful etc. The present Hungarian nitwit (Orban) causes suffering and discontent - I know that because I am getting emails from relatives and friends from Hungary.
Are MAGA Repubs naive, ignorant or what?
Eva Foreman
We need to get this message out -- not just to us, your readers, the choir. The media should pepper the ether with alarmist headlines: Do you want a King again? How important is your freedom? Do you want unchecked authoritarianism? Etc. it has to be hammered home exactly what we could lose.
We can not allow Trump to become a Dictator. Too many people died defending our Democracy.
EU here. I hate this, but the truth is whatever happens with the US situation will impact all of us everywhere. Glad to be watching from here and not there, but it is frightening to view from anywhere.
Scalia wouldn't have supported the unitary executive theory if a Democrat were President, nor would the current Supreme Court, despite that ruling--hell, they won't even let Biden execute existing laws they don't like. But if a ReThuglican got in, they'd be all for it. All the more reason to VOTE BLUE--from school board to President.
There are only a very few ways this could happen. The election could be given to Trump if he has enough Secretaries of State to hand him the election, and the lawfully elected President caves in and allows this to happen, and the citizens of those States whose Secretary of State gave Trump the election against the will of the voters. This is very iffy. Second, if the US Military turned uniformly traitorous and literally fought the US Citizens. Third, if somehow Trump's dishonorable legal team managed to get his appeals on the electoral results to the current Supreme Court he could win 6-3 or 5-4. Frankly I don't feel like terrorizing myself with any of these scenarios. First, if enough of us email our Governors, Secretary of State and State Legislators asking them to invoke the Constitution, Amendment 14, Section 3, his name won't even appear on the ballot. Second, we can appeal to our young friends and relatives to vote. - It won't be enough for just us voting, we need a better turnout than we got in 2022. and that was pretty good.
I'd like to think the public would rise up against him and some will but it will not be enough people to make a difference. I'd like to think we would demand our democracy like the South Koreans did but I think we are too complacent. Sad.
This situation terrifies me. I am working to GOTV for elections this fall and next year, but in case they go south I’m also gathering facts and doing some visiting to determine whether a move to Ireland is feasible for a retired person.
Don't worry, Trump won't be elected President, because the Climate Emergency will trump him! If we take the most recent past Presidential elections as a guide, where the Democrats have been gaining an average of one million votes per year (they won the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020), the 2024 results will be 11 million for Biden-Harris. And by the way, I'm also betting that Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee in 2028 and win by 16 million votes! Any takers out there?
I was reading about this very subject in The Bulwark yesterday.If we aren't frightened, we're up the creek without a paddle.This is heavy duty serious stuff,folks.
I am reminded of Rage Against The Machine's "Wake Up"that is played at the end of the original Matrix.We Need to WAKE UP before it's too damned late to matter!!
And make absolutely no mistakes,if we allow Trump to get back in office,we are royally #*%#*$@.When we say he means to eliminate his"enemies",he means DEAD AS A DOORNAIL.Don't think for a single minute he wouldn't have people lined up and shot.He likely has a list already,and is adding to it every single day.He wants to be KING TRUMP,and will stop at nothing to achieve this goal.
And,BTW,I know that people are hearing about the backlog of passports that's been going on.Just to clarify,this is because people are trying to get ready to get the hell out of Dodge if Trump is allowed back in office.I believe he will close our borders so WE can't escape him.Do you really think he wants his enemies to escape him?
These prosecutors need to get the ducks in a row right NOW,and stop wasting time,and get him out of the way,before it's too late to matter.He would be very happy to put these people first on the list to be eliminated.He would make examples of all of them.
If you think this is hyperbole, remember what he's already tried to do before,and we managed to stop him.What if he can't be stopped the next time...???Do we really want to think about that?
Trump was elected to kill "the deep state," and as president "pitted himself repeatedly against the institutions and personnel of the executive branch. In the process, two once-obscure concepts came center stage in an eerie faceoff. On one side was the specter of a “Deep State” conspiracy-administrators threatening to thwart the will of the people and undercut the constitutional authority of the president they elected to lead them. On the other side was a raw personalization of presidential power, one that a theory of “the unitary executive” gussied up and allowed to run roughshod over reason and the rule of law. The Deep State and the unitary executive framed every major contest of the Trump presidency. Like phantom twins, they drew each other out and wrestled to light basic issues of governance long suppressed." https://global.oup.com/academic/product/phantoms-of-a-beleaguered-republic-9780197543085?cc=us&lang=en&#
Article II, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution vests the executive power in “a president of the United States.” Those words do not seem ambiguous. Under the Constitution, the President, and no one else, has executive power. The executive is therefore “unitary.”
However, the United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce (i.e., non-elected and non-military public sector employees) of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871 (5 U.S.C. § 2101) Before that a president could appoint or fire any employee at will. Some employees [like me] could be fired only for "cause."
The Constitution lists several "departments" of the executive branch: the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the other departments in the President's Cabinet are examples of administrative agencies. Other examples include the Social Security Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Labor Relations Board. The first "independent" agency, a hybrid of the executive and legislative branch, with power to enact its own rules was the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1881.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), Pub. L. 79–404, 60 Stat. 237, enacted June 11, 1946, is the United States federal statute that governs the way in which administrative agencies of the federal government of the United States may propose and establish regulations and it grants U.S. federal courts oversight over all agency actions.[2] According to Hickman & Pierce, it is one of the most important pieces of United States administrative law, and serves as a sort of "constitution" for U.S. administrative law.[3]
The APA applies to both the federal executive departments and the independent agencies.[ U.S. Senator Pat McCarran called the APA "a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated" by federal government agencies.
The U.S. civil service is managed by the Office of Personnel Management, which as of December 2011 reported approximately 2.79 million civil servants employed by the federal government, including employees in the departments and agencies run by any of the three branches of government (the executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch) and the over 600,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service.
FDR enlarged the number and authority of agencies, but he was faced with the depression and WWII. Reagan craved more power and Justice Roberts was a lawyer in the White House who tried to develop it as in 1987, Reagan issued a signing statement that declared: "If this provision were interpreted otherwise, so as to require the President to follow the orders of a subordinate, it would plainly constitute an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority as head of a unitary executive branch."
The George W. Bush administration made the Unitary Executive Theory a common feature of signing statements.[22] For example, Bush once wrote in a signing statement that he would, "construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power."[23] Critics acknowledge that part of the President's duty is to "interpret what is, and is not constitutional, at least when overseeing the actions of executive agencies," but critics accused Bush of overstepping that duty by his perceived willingness to overrule US courts.
Unfortunately, even the Obama administration fell to power. Not only did he retain most of the security-related actions of the Bush presidency (the state secrets doctrine, targeted killings of terror suspects, warrantless wiretapping), but he went even farther than his predecessor in some areas (e.g., drone strikes). Moreover, he employed unilateral powers across an array of domestic policy areas (e.g., immigration policy, implementation of the Affordable Care Act), to the consternation of his opponents and the confusion of many of his supporters. Unilateralism became Obama’s preferred method for getting things done in Washington.
INHO Trump was forever looking for "emergencies" to declare himself unitary executive, i.e. king. In the first few months of Trump's administration, he signed three executive orders that gutted unions representing federal workers. He appointed three “anti-union” members to the Federal Labor Relations Board and a General Counsel who consistently issued anti-union rulings when advising the FLRB. Trump undermined OSHA protections and methodically implemented ten “requests” from the pro-business US Chamber of Commerce designed to weaken unions. In 2018, he went after people like me, appointed under Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, to be appointed under a spoils system.
We are facing worse than authoritarianism. The apex of the MAGA leadership features genocidal intentions. Believe it. They are genocidal. How are 5,000 children taken from their parents as "punishment" otherwise? How can so many unarmed blacks be shot to death by police over traffic stops and misdemeanors? Just recently a black man was stabbed just because ... he was black. And Kari Lake . . . She told an interviewer that the big problem with DeSantis's big mistake in his mistreatment of Venezuelan refugees was that "we're spreading them too far inland." The word "vermin" immediately popped into my head when I heard her say it. Even Melania ... her jacket bore the message, "I don't really care. Do you?" when she was on her way to visit an island ravaged by a terrible hurricane full of Latinos, and her husband the president didn't even know they were citizens of the U.S. And besides Neo-nazis, there's Moms for Liberty who quote Hitler and then own it. And of course, there's Margie. She claims that Satan took over the Catholic Church for two reasons which she equates: (a) pedophilia, and (b) they comforted and aided refugees crossing the southern border. My God! We cannot be indifferent when we see it coming. This is the greatest struggle of our lifetime! If you don't do anything else, volunteer with democrats. We don't have time for third parties, and fancy footwork. If Godzilla turns out to be the great opponent of the GOP, vote for Godzilla. We don't have any other chance on this burning planet.