By making it extremely hard to gain standing, the Supreme Court has ruled that a president can blatantly act illegally and steal Congress’s power. The Court has deeply damaged a basic tenet of the Constitution by allowing a president to use governmental power in cases where he clearly has no such power. If the president wants to do something outside his core powers, he must have Congress authorize that power and spending. The Constitution is black and white on this, but most “Conservatives” on the Supreme Court don’t care.
The reporting on Natalie Harp and Trump doesn’t say anything about a sexual relationship. But, it does say that she’s even more sycophantic toward him than the rest of his administration, and that’s saying something! He will be given information by relatively knowledgeable officials, and when it goes against Trump’s predilections, Natalie will Google something that fits these predilections, and Trump makes presidential decisions off of this!
Five of nine Supreme Court members, and five of six Republican Supreme Court members, were executive branch attorneys dedicated to finding ways to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress. As justices, they act with a bias against Congress and in favor of presidential power…at least as long as that president is doing Conservative things.
Presidential power breaks down when the president is not faithfully enacting the laws of Congress, which he is required to do by the Constitution!, and when the president acts corruptly, aiming to enrich himself and his friends and family rather than do what is best for the country.
Trump uses his power as president to change US policy specifically to punish businesses owned or run by people who didn’t support him politically and in favor of those who do support him or are related to him.
Obama was interested in military force in Syria after Syria crossed Obama’s redline, but Obama wanted authorization from Congress. Congress didn’t want to be on the record one way or the other, and told Obama to act if he wanted to act.
Then for Libya, some of the Congressmen who said they didn’t want to be on the record and they wanted Obama to act if he wanted to, complained that Obama didn’t get authorization for Libya.
Not only were Congress people derelict of their duty to discuss and vote on military action, but they dishonestly portrayed their true feelings to the public.
In Trump’s second term, his administration sees their job as pleasing Trump, not making sure he has the best true information. Trump doesn’t really care about the truth. People in the administration try to get in Trump’s good graces by publicly lying for him. Sticking their necks out and lying and yelling on his behalf, is a display of loyalty.
“There are two possibilities here. You can believe that the vaguely defined economic emergency that required such huge tariffs on Swiss imports is already over, just a few months after those tariffs were imposed and despite the trade deficit seemingly growing rather than shrinking. If so, then you have to accept that Americans peacefully exchanging their money for chocolates, drugs, and watches were somehow undermining America’s economic security for years—but that those exact same transactions are now totally fine, because of the higher tariffs that no longer exist.
The other possibility is that no such emergency ever actually existed, and that the president’s idea of what constitutes an emergency depends largely on who is paying him homage and what gifts they might leave behind. If so, then you’d have to question the entire rationale behind all of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, many of which make no more sense than the ones imposed on Swiss goods.”
“Over the last decade, roughly one in every 10 dollars of budget authority has worn an emergency tag.
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On paper, the Office of Management and Budget has a five-part test for emergency spending: It should be necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and not permanent. Congress rarely forces itself to demonstrate, item by item, that all five prongs are met. There’s no neutral referee. Once “designated as an emergency” appears in the bill and the president concurs, the amounts are exempt from caps and PAYGO scorecards.
And because this budget label is separate from more specific “national emergency” declarations under statutes like the Stafford Act or the National Emergencies Act, it quietly turns into a vehicle for funding routine projects. It’s such a procedural magic word that fiscal guardrails all but disappear.
Finally, even when a real crisis exists, so too does opportunism. Emergency bills move fast, face weak scrutiny, and become irresistible means for unrelated projects or those that Congress would never approve otherwise. This dynamic marred the 2012-13 Hurricane Sandy package and has recurred in other disaster bills, not because relief is illegitimate but because speed plus political cover invites provisions that would die in regular order.
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The stakes of the abuse of emergency labelling are no longer abstract. Interest costs on debt that results from the extra spending are crowding out core functions of government. Americans are hammered with “emergency” tariff costs. The next true crisis will arrive with less room to maneuver if we keep burning credibility on manufactured ones.
A republic that treats emergencies as a governing philosophy is a republic that lives without its safeguards. We must put the word back in its place: as one describing something rare, reviewable, temporary, and paid for.”
Multiple high level military men have stepped down as the Trump administration appears to murder suspected drug traffickers. The administration showed their intel justifying the strikes only to some Republican Congressmen rather than to members of both parties, so Congress as a whole can’t even analyze the justifications.