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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Full text cause I don't see it's linked yet: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/

Here are my thoughts on this. US Congress writes the Laws. But Congress is (1) Lazy and (2) are Accustomed to Trust "Experts" and (3) it's Hard to Wrangle 538 Congressperson, so Congress created "Independent Agencies" that has Regulatory Powers. The Crux is (1) "What are Regulatory Powers?" and (2) "Who should/would Enforce these Non-Congress-Originated but Congress-Implicitly-Approved Regulatory Powers?".

Now if Congress wants to Rein in Trump, all they have to do is (1) make clearer Laws on Regulatory Delegation of Powers + Enforcement Mechanism, or (2) if they want to go back to the Old Implicit/Nebulous Ways, Impeach and Remove Trump from Office. This obviously Runs into the Category of "Simple, but Hard" things to do ("cut back on food + exercise more" is an example in this category for me).

I want to Note that it seems the Current Law is not very Clear, even in this substack explaining the situation that was linked on howappealing. Here's a quote:

But the general understanding has long been that [Independent Agencies] are special, in the sense that they are “independent” of the Commander-in-Chief.

Note the word "understanding". Presidents and Congress and Lawmakers and Lawyers and Agencies and Experts etc. has kept Passing the Buck on making things Clear. And there is something to be said about "the Tyranny of Structureless", which can be neatly summarized as:

this apparent lack of structure often disguised an informal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable Leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied.

Is what Trump doing Alarming? Yeah? Probably? But to me, currently, the More Alarming thing Continues to be Congress and their Dereliction of Duty in Producing Laws. All the Criticism of Judges "Legislating from the Bench" or Presidents being "Unilateral" are just Downstream Effects of Congress Not Upholding their End of the Constitutional Order. The People's Will and Need for Legislation are Not Satisfied by Congress's Slowness, so the Outlet is to naturally find Champions that would Do what the People want, whether that's through the Executive or the Judiciary.

ps: tried to get chatgpt to uppercase the first letter of some words like old political texts but didn't really work out :/

ps: tried to get chatgpt to uppercase the first letter of some words like old political texts but didn't really work out :/

Where is the gpt text?

I had to recreate it but chatgpt's output just uppercase almost all the words https://chatgpt.com/share/67b8d1a9-6784-8003-a263-feb006d87a81

ps: tried to get chatgpt to uppercase the first letter of some words like old political texts but didn't really work out :/

I thought it worked out great! I loved reading it. Reminds me of the Terra Ignota series.

hahaha, yeah, had to do it manually. chatgpt just uppercase almost all the words https://chatgpt.com/share/67b8d1a9-6784-8003-a263-feb006d87a81