#trump

A little over three months into the second Trump presidency, I think we can safely identify patterns in the way the regime is seeking to construct a patchwork dictatorship by asserting unprecedented powers under the executive branch through a variety of means. Part of this is a truly unhinged reading of Article II of the US Constitution that requires you to assume the drafters just decided to quill out the rest of the document for shits and giggles after granting absolute authority to the President. Part of this strategy is exercising rarely-used powers under the authority of very old laws in ways that they were never intended to be used and based on pretending fascist conspiracy theories are real. And finally part of it is that Trump has declared an unprecedented number of (fake) national emergencies to grant himself extraordinary powers; which of course the Kelpto Kaiser is still using in ways they were never intended so he can straight up install a fascist dictatorship.

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-has-issued-8-national-emergencies-since-reentering-the-white-house/

Trump Has Issued 8 “National Emergencies” Since Reentering the White House

"According to reporting from Axios, which relied on data collected by the Brennan Center for Justice, Trump has declared eight national emergencies since assuming office in mid-January. For comparison, President Joe Biden issued two national emergency declarations during his first 100 days in office, and President Barack Obama issued none within that time frame in either of his terms in office.

Trump has declared 21 national emergencies across his two terms so far — more than any other president this century, as the eight he announced this year, combined with the 13 he declared during his first four-year term, amount to 35 percent of all national emergencies declared by the four presidents since 2001. The next highest number of emergencies declared came from former President George W. Bush, who issued 16 such orders over the course of eight full years in office.

National emergencies allow presidents to temporarily enhance their executive powers without congressional approval. While Trump is not the first president to declare national emergencies to expand his authority, legal scholars say that he is exploiting such declarations to enact his far right agenda."

One of the major ways I think mainstream political discourse in the second Trump era has failed Americans, is in mainstream thinkers' inability to separate whether or not Downmarket Mussolini "can" do something, from whether or not he "should" do something. This isn't a videogame; emergency presidential powers presupposes an actual emergency that justifies them or Trump is just stealing power for the executive branch. Yes, the President has the authority to declare a bunch of national emergencies, but that doesn't mean we have to believe him when he makes up a bunch of fake crises and then insists that those fake crises give him the power to literally do fascism. What do I mean by fake crises? Well let's take a look at some of the emergencies Trump has declared:

"Trump has issued national emergencies related to fossil fuel energy production, mineral drilling, additional militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the country’s economy, using the latter of those declarations to justify imposing tariffs on nearly every country on the globe. Despite some abuses of the law by multiple presidents, Trump’s actions have been much more numerous and noticeable, according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program."

Please keep in mind that this is in addition to the fake war he says we're fighting against narco-terrorist gangs only his administration believes are working for Venezuela; as I've discussed elsewhere, this fake "invasion" is more or less the basis for the Trumprenreich regime's entire plan to traffic migrants to a torture prison in El Salvador, just to name one example.

Finally of course, our American political tragedy wouldn't be complete if the reason Trump is getting away with all this wasn't a function of GOP complicity, short-sightedness, and a terrible SCOTUS ruling:

"The National Emergencies Act of 1976 established more than 120 powers that presidents can use when declaring emergencies. Meant to empower the executive branch to respond to events that required faster response times than allowed for by the ordinary legislative process, the law also originally included a “legislative veto” on emergency decrees, to ensure presidents couldn’t abuse the law.

That veto, which only required a simple majority vote under the law, was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1983. To overturn a presidential national emergency order today would require the passage of a law, with a veto-proof two-thirds support in both houses of Congress."

Somehow I don't think the fascist GOP is gonna stop the fascist president; but maybe I'm just cynical.

#Fascism #Trump #GOP #USPol #EmergencyPowers #NationalEmergency #SCOTUS