Power Grab

From The NYTimes:

President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that seeks greater authority over regulatory agencies that Congress established as independent from direct White House control, part of a broader bid to centralize a president’s power over the government.

The order requires independent agencies to submit their proposed regulations to the White House for review, asserts a power to block such agencies from spending funds on projects or efforts that conflict with presidential priorities, and declares that they must accept the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law as binding.

You can read the White House's fact sheet on the EO here. 

More from The Times:

The directive applies to various executive branch agencies that Congress established and empowered to regulate aspects of the economy, structuring them to be run by officials the president would appoint to fixed terms but whose day-to-day actions he would not directly control.

And:

Ending the independence of such agencies and consolidating power over them in the White House has long been an aim of the conservative legal movement, which sees that goal as a means toward reducing regulations and rules the government has imposed on powerful business interests.

But the movement has lacked the votes to persuade Congress to simply rescind the statutes and abolish or curtail such agencies. Instead, since the Reagan administration, conservative lawyers have developed and pushed an ideology called the unitary executive theory, under which the Constitution should be reinterpreted as not allowing Congress to create any pockets of independence within the government from direct presidential control.

Ah, the Unitary Executive Theory. 

Where are the originalists, those guardians of Constitutional orthodoxy regarding Trump's power grab?

At least he wasn't putting mustard on a cheeseburger.

 

 

This Is Madness

In case you missed it.

Day 30.

From 60 Minutes

Day 29

Where are the conservatives who endlessly declared that, "No one is above the law, not even the President of the United States." now?

Meanwhile, Outside

It's been a while, hasn't it.

 While it's still available, here's some science from NOAA:

The December global surface temperature was 1.26°C (2.27°F) above the 20th-century average of 12.2°C (54.0°F), making it the second-warmest December on record. This was 0.13°C (0.23°F) below last year's record warm month. December 2024 marked the 49th consecutive December (since 1975) with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.

It's still getting warmer out there.

But still, there's this from The Guardian: 

Donald Trump’s administration has started to remove or downgrade mentions of the climate crisis across the US government, with the websites of several major departments pulling down references to anything related to the climate crisis. Climate scientists said they were braced “for the worst”.

A major climate portal on the Department of Defense’s website has been scrapped, as has the main climate change section on the site of the Department of State. A climate change page on the White House’s website no longer exists, nor does climate content provided by the US agriculture department, including information that provides vulnerability assessments for wildfires.

Straight down the Memory Hole.  

To show what the current administration is doing take a look (so to speak) at that DOD portal.

This is what it looked like just before Trump's inauguration:

And this is what it looks like now:

Yep. Down the memory hole.

Day 18 of the Second Trump Administration.

 

 

2 + 2 = 5

I will not give in to the lies.

I will not give in to the fear.

2 + 2 = 5

Day Ten.

From The Guardian:

The Trump White House’s 27-year-old press secretary staunchly defended an abrupt freeze on federal grants and proclaimed a new era of aggressive immigration enforcement on Tuesday, marking a confrontational return to Trump-era media relations in the administration’s first official briefing.

Karoline Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in history, insisted the controversial funding pause set to activate on Tuesday evening would not affect individual benefits like social security and Medicare, but would target what she called “illegal DEI programs” and the “green new scam” initiatives that she claimed waste taxpayer money.

“The American people gave President Trump an overwhelming mandate on November 5, and he’s trying to ensure that the tax money going out the door in this very bankrupt city actually aligns with the will and priorities of the American people,” Leavitt said.

Let's pause right there. 

According to the FEC, Trump received 49.8% of the votes cast - not even a majority. It was only about 2.3 million more votes more than were cast for VP Harris.

This is not an "overwhelming mandate" in any definition of that phrase.

In other words, this is a lie.

Here's another:

She also defended Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, despite legal challenges from 22 state attorneys general. “This administration believes that birthright citizenship is unconstitutional,” Leavitt said, vowing to take the fight to the supreme court.

And here's what's in The Constitution: 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

 2 + 2 = 5

A Judge Responds

Let's start with Trump's assault on the 14th Amendment. 

It contains these paragraphs:

The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.  The Fourteenth Amendment states:  “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”  That provision rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), which misinterpreted the Constitution as permanently excluding people of African descent from eligibility for United States citizenship solely based on their race. 

But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.  The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”  Consistent with this understanding, the Congress has further specified through legislation that “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a national and citizen of the United States at birth, 8 U.S.C. 1401, generally mirroring the Fourteenth Amendment’s text.  

To understand Trump's error here, let's head over to Hah-vahd, to some actual legal experts:

[Harvard Law Today]: The relevant portion of Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The new administration argues that the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” does not apply to children of those who are undocumented or who are on temporary visas. What do you make of that claim?

[Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law]: The argument is either a crazy theory or dishonest interpretation of the Constitution. The Supreme Court explained what those words mean in the Wong Kim Ark case. It reflects the fact that there are these traditional exceptions that really do involve people who are not subject to the nation’s jurisdiction. The leading example in the 1860s debates was foreign diplomats, who have diplomatic immunity, who are for the most part not subject to our laws, and who retain the citizenship of the country that sent them and which they are serving. Their children share the immunity and would not qualify. There is also the example of a foreign warship visiting a port of the United States — the country does not exercise jurisdiction over foreign warships, and therefore children born on the foreign warships are not citizens of the United States.

With respect to undocumented workers, they are people who come to the United States to work, to participate in our economy, to live in our society, to live safely in our territory. They are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Further, the thing that makes the immigration laws so enforceable against them is that they are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

Note that last sentence.

Anyway, Trump's executive order was temporarily blocked quickly after it was pinched out of Trump's Oval Office.

From The NYTimes:

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order to end automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil, dealing the president his first setback as he attempts to upend the nation’s immigration laws and reverse decades of precedent.

In a hearing held three days after Mr. Trump issued his executive order, a Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour, sided with Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, the four states that sued, signing a restraining order that blocks Mr. Trump’s executive order for 14 days, renewable upon expiration. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” he said.

“Frankly,” he continued, challenging Trump administration lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

Mr. Trump responded hours later, telling reporters at the White House, “Obviously we’ll appeal it.”

Of course he will. Not that this part of the judge's order means anything to the MAGA-cult:

There is a strong likelihood that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and Immigration and Nationality Act. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169  U.S.  649, 694-99 (1898); Regan v. King, 49 F. Supp. 222, 223 (N.D. Cal. 1942), aff'd, 134 F.2d 413 (9thCir. 1943), cert denied, 319 U.S. 753 (1943)  see also Gee v. United States, 49 F. 146, 148 (9th Cir. 1892). 

But when has Trump ever let the law get in the way of his plans?