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Have you lived recent American history?
The administrative state is not, formally, a branch outside the Executive.
Indeed I have, and I'm older than you.
No, but we have laws (which the other two formal branches have a say in) which the Executive can't just override. Just as every military officer, in theory, serves at the pleasure of the President, his ability to unilaterally dismiss officers has been constrained by law (since around 1950, IIRC). The civil service works for the President, but he can't just order them to ignore laws imposed on them by Congress and Supreme Court rulings, or fire people because they aren't personally loyal to him.
I am not against the president "reigning in" a bureaucratic state out of control and probably agree with you about some of the ways federal agencies have inappropriately balked his intentions in the past (so I understand, if not agree, with why he's acting the way he is now). But either we actually have laws and a Constitution, or else stop talking about laws and civil society and admit you just want to be the boot.
This seems like a violation of separation of powers. Should the President have a say in who Congress hires too? Maybe he can choose Sotomayor's clerks?
We have laws and a Constitution, but the way they are enforced is entirely non-evenhanded (both directly politically, as in the Democrats get better treatment, and indirectly, as in deference to the administrative state over its opponents) and we are not going to get to a better situation by the Republicans playing along with that lack of evenhandedness.
For an obvious example, note the lack of any consideration of standing in the SDNY challenge to DOGE access to treasury records.
Congress passes laws, the President executes them. No, the President shouldn't be able to make up new laws to impose on Congress. Yes, Congress can pass laws that are imposed on the President. That's how things are meant to work. Sometimes Congress overreaches, the President defies them, and there is a fight. (See: Andrew Johnson being impeached for ignoring the Tenure of Office Act, which Congress passed explicitly to screw him over.) Don't like it? Change the Constitution. Congress and the President and the Supreme Court are supposed to be divided and jostling for position. Anything else gives unilateral power to one branch - which apparently you want when your side controls that branch, and don't want when your side does not control that branch.
You think it's a violation of the separation of powers that the President can't order civil servants to violate laws passed by Congress? Or are you only talking about hiring and firing? If you want to give the President the power to hire and fire any government employee at will (what about military personnel?) then you're advocating a return to the spoils system of the early 19th century. Andrew Jackson's handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, pretty much created the Democratic machine politics you hate so much, and he did it with the patronage system you are saying we should return to.
Okay, do you have any limiting principal, or is it just, as I said, you want to be the boot? You've been posting that laws are fake and nothing matters because Democrats do whatever they want for years. Rather tedious, really. Could practically be generated by an Eliza script. Now that clearly the shoe is on the other foot, you eagerly embrace Republicans rendering laws and the Constitution irrelevant. Of course when Democrats start doing it again, you will once again be outraged and doom-posting.
See the Steel Seizure cases. Where there is a use of the explicit core power of the president, then his power is at its zenith. His ability to take care the laws are faiths executed is a core power. Preventing him from firing people (or even putting them on admin leave) meaningful interferes with his core constitutional duty. If the president can’t fire the bureaucrats for failing to faithfully execute the law then the president cannot discharge his duties. Thus any law in opposition to that is facially unconstitutional
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Or do what Johnson did: Defy Congress and win.
I think it is a violation of separation of powers that the President cannot fire employees of the executive branch. And certainly a violation of separation of powers that the President cannot order the Treasury Department to open its books to other executive branch employees. Certainly he should not be able to e.g. order them to spend money not appropriated, but that's a different matter.
My embracing of the Republicans doing it is a consequence of both the fact that the Republicans are doing things more aligned with what I want (with exceptions; I oppose the no-birthright-citizenship order), AND the fact that the Democrats have been doing what they want. As I said, a check that only checks one side is no balance at all. Either the Democrats move the government one way while they are in office and the Republicans move it the other.... or the Democrats move the government one way and the Republicans are stymied so nothing happens while they are in office. I prefer the former.
Well, sure, but that's a high risk strategy. Johnson survived impeachment by one vote. It's also basically saying "It's only illegal if you lose."
Well then change the laws, or else the Supreme Court will have to agree that the civil service reforms of the last 150 years are unconstitutional. But believing the President should be able to fire any civil servant at will does not make it legal.
It actually isn't. If a civil servant in theory can't be ordered to commit an illegal act, but if he refuses to commit an illegal act ordered to by the president, the president can fire him, what do you think happens? Especially if the president is telling an entire agency "Do what I want or I will fire you all?" We might hope some brave souls will refuse on principal, and some probably would, but you are clearly setting up a system where in practice the president has the power to direct the entire government to do whatever he wants regardless of what Congress or the Supreme Court says. More indirectly, this is why they changed the system so that federal positions can't all be patronage appointments.
I would like to check both sides. Accelerationism checks neither. And your view that it's only ever Republicans who make concessions and it's only ever Democrats who go too far is ahistorical claptrap.
Insisting that the laws be changed is denying the separation of powers issue. If the separation of powers argument is correct, the laws are without authority.
I'm not calling for accelerationism; that would be if I wanted the Democrats to go further and eventually collapse the system due to the inherent contradictions or some such nonsense. I'm calling for the Republicans to not just slow things down temporarily, but to actually go in the opposite direction. And when the Democrats complain that the Republicans are bypassing all the institutional checks and balances that the Democrats blithely bypassed in building this monstrosity, the Republicans should not let that deter them.
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