That can be the subject of an official proclamation during Hour One of a Democratic presidency.
Government agencies should be put on notice during the interregnum* that they’d better get their asses in gear and be ready to revise websites pronto when the new Administration begins.
To avoid confusion: by “interregnum” I mean the period of time between Republican defeat and the inauguration of a Democrat. Looking up the definition of the word with the aid of AI, we see:
Seeing that we don’t have a normal leader currently, the entire period between now and Inauguration Day 2029 could be viewed as an interregnum.
This thread really illustrates the difference between my objections to the Trump approach and that of some others.
While I have serious policy differences with DJT, my number one objection is that he is governing as a dictator. So to me, doing the opposite of what Trump would do requires the next President to stop ruling by decree.
The law says that geographic names are set by the United States Board on Geographic Names, not presidential decree.
Googling the board composition a bit, I am unsure how quickly the composition could legally change to reflect the views of the new administration. But if the lake and gulf are named back in week one, that tells me we almost surely still have, at best, a hybrid regime sometimes ruled by decree.
I don’t have a big problem if the President sends a polite letter to the United States Board on Geographic Names asking them to consider renaming.
Someone can correct me, but I do not think these are all political appointees who can legally be fired and hired on presidential say-so. The Secretary of the Interior has some legitimate influence, but first that person should be confirmed.
Compared to rule by decree, democracy is slower. Getting rid the filibuster would make our democracy a little faster, and I favor that. But legality still takes time.
Did Trump follow the guidance in the link above, such as asking for feedback from Indian tribes, and from the equivalent boards in Canada and Mexico? No. That was wrong! And obvious as it is that they prefer the old names, you cannot assume they will be happy to still be ignored.
Article 3, par. 2 of the US constitution provides:
“2: In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellateJurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”
I infer from this that congress could by statute take away the power of the court to decide on constitutionality of acts of congress. They have chosen not to but this clause would seem to clearly give them the right to. Or they could require a 3/4 majority to declare laws unconstitutional. Or even unanimity.
Executive orders have been a staple of past administrations. Biden signed about 175 of them, Obama 277.
The process can certainly be abused, as Trump has done. We can argue the legitimacy of some executive orders, but they’re a viable tool under the Constitution.
I think he was legally allowed to rejoin with 30 days notice, which is what that executive order did.
You could say that every international agreement requires a 2/3 Senate treaty approval vote. But even George Washington did not read the constitution that way.
I would think the best way to do it would be for the next President to quietly inform the United States Board on Geographic Names to rename them back to Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico. No executive order, no news conference, just a quiet request.
And that’s how they ought to do a lot of this stuff; just set it right, without making a political point. In a few cases, maybe have some political points to make, but in general just set it right.
I’d also try to push any anti-authoritarian type checks and balances through Congress the same way; don’t make a big deal of it. Not that the media won’t get wind of it, but don’t make any of it grandstanding or anything like that.
But DO it. They dropped the ball in Biden’s term and from what I can tell, didn’t even try very much.
Good for him! He’s about as much of an institutionalist Democrat as it gets, so this is a good sign that party leaders believe this is the best way forward.
IMO, if there was a Democrat president, and the Democrats had overwhelming majorities in congress, and the senate, and in an ideal world, a de-Trumpification would have to be comprehensive to the extent that current GOP congressmen and women were held accountable and punished (IANA lawyer or constitutional scholar, or even an American for that matter, so I could be full of shit), and the MAGA program/movement “broken” somehow so that this doesn’t happen again for a long, long time. But how does one do that without being a dictatorship itself, or without causing a civil war?
It would have to be something akin to what the US did to/for post-war Japan and Germany. It would also have to entail fixing the education system (and how is that done without accusations of “woke social engineering”?) so that knowledge, merit, expertise, science, and equality are recognized as the good things that they are.
True enough and absolutely! I believe the whole MAGA thing as an acceptable thing in the US is now so deep-rooted and extensive that I honestly don’t know how de-Trumpification can be effectively done.
And honestly, we need SCOTUS to be able to declare a law unconstitutional.
I concur.
So a Dem Congress and President expand it to say 11- 5 Conservative and 6 liberal. And then a GOP admin makes it 15 with many new conservatives, then the next Dem makes it 21, then…
Two Conservative justices are circling the drain anyway. Give us a Dem Senate, and trump can not add any Right Wing justices, then President Newsom (or whoever) can make the ratio 6 Liberal, 3 Conservative. No need to screw around. It can happen without any big changes- assuming the Dems take the Senate this year and then the White House in 2028. If they do not, all of this is moot anyway.
Just like trump is punishing by punitive indictments to people who are on his enemies list.
Here is the most important thing for a Democratic administration to be- NOT LIKE TRUMP!
I think the fundamental difference is that after WWII, Germany was in ruins, occupied by the Allies, and there was a general acknowledgement that the German people and Nazis had not done right by the country or the world. So de-Nazification was a valid strategy that was helped along by that sort of collective feeling of responsibility or guilt.
The US is far from that; the MAGA/Trump types don’t feel like they/he have done anything wrong, and that what he did, if it was unpleasant to them, had to be done. And I feel like there are a lot of non-red hat wearing people on the center-right and in the center who would object (and IMO rightly so) to a comprehensive de-Trumpification program on the part of the Democratic party. They’d see it as politically motivated and driven from a particular ideological viewpoint, and would not like it for the same reasons they probably didn’t like Trump’s nonsense either.
Beyond all that, the US will always have some mix of provincial rural people, uneducated people, racist people, and classist people. And that’s a recipe for voting conservatively; change is not considered good in those spheres, so they’re going to vote for the status quo or even to regress backward. I would think the trick is to figure out how to mobilize the center, on both sides of the midpoint. I feel like if you can get them to be the group that decides elections, both parties will gravitate to them, instead of further to the fringes, which is IMO what got us here in the first place.
The alternative is this corrupt, fascist-tolerant GOP court forever. They will bend and break any rule to help Republicans, and have only restrained Trump on issues that would explicitly harm Republicans. Everything else they allow, and will continue to allow, unless the Democrats break this corrupt power.
I think you’re missing the point; stacking the court isn’t going to do much in the long term, except initiate a cycle of both sides adding to the court in order to win a temporary advantage there. Where does it end?
Which is not a good idea, as well as counter to the whole idea of the Supreme Court, being a more explicitly political approach to it than even the Republicans are guilty of.
It’s a start. And it’s the only reform that can be done easily and quickly (if the filibuster is ended). Long term reform is for the long term. Stop the bleeding and then take our time to address the serious disease.
Seriously, what’s the alternative? Let this GOP court continue to bend and break the Constitution to help the GOP and hurt Democrats and do nothing about it? Because this GOP court won’t allow Democrats to make PR or DC states, they won’t allow expansion of Congress, they won’t allow campaign finance reform, they won’t allow gerrymandering reform, they won’t allow Civil Rights protections for minority voters, they won’t allow a million things that are right and decent but might hurt Republicans.
