Not quite. For the time being, President Biden is still serving. Neither Trump nor any other Republican is actually carrying out any vision of unitary executive theory, because none of them actually have the cooperation of the national executive.
In fact, the one major holdover from the Trump administration, Postmaster General DeJoy, has thus far maintained the Post Office’s independence from the President. President Biden pledged to have the Post Office’s fleet go 100% electric, and DeJoy, who answers to a presidentially appointed Board of Governors and not the President directly, has thus far slow-walked the order. This is exactly the executive-branch discord that unitary executive theory remedies. If the tables were turned, Trump et al would whip the Post Office or any other independent minded agency into line.
The thing about unitary executive theory is that it concerns the executive branch exclusively, not any set of votes in Congress. You make a point, and I disagree with it, but as I see it your argument is not relevant to the topic.
Maybe you are thinking, what about the Senate’s role of advise and consent for executive appointments? That’s adjacent to any flavor of unitary executive theory. The main thing is how much power the President has over people that are nominally his subordinates.
Yes, I feel the number one priority in the country should be enacting a voting rights amendment. Sure, there are other issues that seem more immediate to many people. But I believe that if we had a strong voting rights amendment in place, all of those other issues would be easy to address. We need to stop letting a right wing minority rig elections and paralyze the country.
Well, that’s all part of their “tsunami of stupid” plan. So much outrage, every day, and you lose track of it all. So lots of outrage slips past unnoticed.
Extremely scary. And something that I think will be even scarier will be the freedom that informal vigilantes or neighbourhood enforcers will feel to “clean things up”. I don’t think that it will be overtly spectacular but will comprise typical gay-bashing activities that don’t get legally prosecuted or people getting “roughed-up” in a line for the wrong type of concert. Just enough to keep the left on edge and at home.
Trump’s role to the Republicans was essentially to draw away public attention while other Republicans quietly worked on advancing their agenda. It’s important to remember that the real leaders of the modern Republican party were around before Trump and are still around after his defeat.
Yes. And for anyone who ever saw the movie “The Wave” (I saw it in a university psych class), I sort of anticipate those sorts of goon squads informally surfacing.
Years ago, when cycling through a rural area (I was fully kitted in lycra etc) I had a full, unopened beer bottle tossed at me from a passing pickup truck. That sort of thing will probably be seen as less bad than previously.
This, exactly. Trump is the bread and circuses to keep people from seeing what harm is actually being done to our democracy in the quiet shadows.
Another thing to keep in mind: If Trump becomes their best chance to put a Republican in the White House, they will all back him. Any Republican is better than no Republican, to their way of thinking. Look how much they were able to accomplish even with Trump’s incompetence. They’ll finish the job if they get another chance.
Remember too that it always takes far more time to fix the damage than to do the damage. It took John Kerry roughly 7 years to put the Iran nuclear deal together. It took Trump 2 seconds to tear it up.
In my laundry list above, I forgot to include Steve Mnuchin. He was carrying out the plans at Treasury. Never forget this telling photo:
A lot of red states are withdrawing from Electronic Registration Information Center (eric). They cry foul and then knock down the tools we use to help guard against it.
Or when Republicans are caught. In the 2020 election, there were at least 4 people from The Villages FL (retirement community, Rep stronghold) who were caught voting in both Florida and their previous state. I’ve heard of another from a different part of Florida, but also a Republican. ERIC is designed to catch this kind of voting fraud, which I suspect is large part of why Florida recently quit ERIC.