This could turn out to be the most significant moment in a presidency full of disastrously significant moments. Of course the courts will tell trump he can’t do this, but if he doesn’t listen and nobody stops him, the US is officially a dictatorship.
On the one hand, I wouldn’t call a unitary presidency a dictatorship, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t say the US has ever been a democracy, and studies back this up.
I think this goes a bit beyond a unitary presidency. He’s not just assuming control of the executive, but supposedly independent regulators as well.
ENSURING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL AGENCIES
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Policy and Purpose. The Constitution vests all executive power in the President and charges him with faithfully executing the laws. Since it would be impossible for the President to single-handedly perform all the executive business of the Federal Government, the Constitution also provides for subordinate officers to assist the President in his executive duties. In the exercise of their often-considerable authority, these executive branch officials remain subject to the President’s ongoing supervision and control. The President in turn is regularly elected by and accountable to the American people. This is one of the structural safeguards, along with the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, regular elections for the Congress, and an independent judiciary whose judges are appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, by which the Framers created a Government accountable to the American people.
However, previous administrations have allowed so-called “independent regulatory agencies” to operate with minimal Presidential supervision. These regulatory agencies currently exercise substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President, and through him, to the American people. Moreover, these regulatory agencies have been permitted to promulgate significant regulations without review by the President.
These practices undermine such regulatory agencies’ accountability to the American people and prevent a unified and coherent execution of Federal law. For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected President.
Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch. Moreover, all executive departments and agencies, including so-called independent agencies, shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.
So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Generally in places like, I dunno, the military which is under the DOD which is under the executive branch. There is instruction to disobey an illegal order from higher ups. But according to the definition of employee here & the requirement of item 7.
I think that if the president ordered an illegal act (which he cannot be charged for from the supreme court) for the military to enact. Then as federal employees, these forms of recourse would no longer be applicable as everyone in the chain of command would be forced to use the presidents definition of legality until a court case could remove/block that authority.
I hope that I’m missing something here but I think this gives him much more power than the rest of the order claims to be covering.
