X post by Cynical Publius
I want to talk about the greatest power Trump will have as the USA’s 47th President.
One of the things I have been harping on for a very long time is that the greatest threat to freedom in America is the out-of-control, unelected, unaccountable, unconstitutional, bureaucratic, overgrown administrative state Leviathan housed in the Executive Branch.
Over time, thanks to “Progressive” ideas, the Administrative Procedure Act and SCOTUS cases like Chevron v. NRDC (which was essentially overturned last term), Congress has abdicated large amounts of its Constitutional lawmaking power and shifted that power to these Executive departments and agencies, resulting in greatly undemocratic laws, tyrannical policies and unjust decisions. We now have a vast array of unchecked Presidential power that the Founders never intended.
To the extent tyranny exists in the USA Today, it can largely be traced to this phenomenon.
But this is also why you should not care too, too much who takes the House or whether the Senate has a filibuster-proof majority. The power the President now has is a two-edged sword. With that sword he can create bureaucratic tyranny, but he also can destroy bureaucratic tyranny.
The fact is, so long as there is a Senate majority (which we now have, and which is sufficient for approving Executive Branch appointments thanks to Harry Reid’s “nuclear option”), Trump can appoint the Cabinet and agency heads he wants, and that’s really all he needs to transform America.
At a very minimum level of effectiveness, Trump will have the ability—all on his own—to neuter the destructive power and scope of these departments and agencies by basically grinding them to a halt, shutting down programs, and wholly shifting their policies and missions in a MAGA direction. Despite public sector union rules, “resistance” by federal employees and the budgetary authority of Congress, with the right leadership at the top of these agencies/departments Trump can basically pay a bunch of uncooperative bureaucrats to sit and do literally nothing, with email access denied, government phones cut-off, travel and allowances denied, and with these egomaniacal bureaucrats working out of a dark basement corner like Milton in “Office Space.”
Trump did not succeed in this last time because he trusted the The Swamp to pick his heads of those departments and agencies, but not this time. Now he knows EXACTLY what he wants to do, and he is going to start doing it from Day #1.
Is this optimal? No. It would be much better if he could also have a unified Congress slashing budgets, eliminating departments and agencies and overturning public sector union rules, and he still might be able to do that with his national mandate, but at a minimum, ALL ON HIS OWN, he can stop the Leviathan in its tracks and bring it to its knees. A Leviathan that does NOTHING is far better for freedom than a Leviathan that is able to pursue its own totalitarian impulses.
That’s the real power and practical meaning of this election… and it gives me great hope.
Remember, when great power is granted to an office, the holder of that office can choose to destroy that power as much as he can choose to wield it.
And that’s exactly what President Trump is going to do.
PT will also need the assistance of the House and Senate since they control the money. Whether or not he gets that is another story. The Republican leadership in both Houses is spineless and it’s looking like the spineless ones will be back in control meaning they will roll over and play dead for the dems. Unlike the Communist dems who use their power to advance their radical agenda, the Republican leadership is comprised of a bunch of sissies who want to play nice. If that happens, kiss both Houses goodbye in the midterms because our base won’t show up again. Nancy Johnson and Charlie Thune have a LOOOOONG way to go to restore the base’s confidence in the Republican leadership.
As long as we are destroying precedents, let’s destroy the precedent that the party in power loses in the midterms. If Trump can assemble a dedicated team that can slice through the obstruction that is going to be thrown at him and achieve as good or better successes than in the first term, he could possibly strengthen his position in 2028.
The best thing? The Democrats suffered a near total collapse because of their election fraud in 2020. That theft set off a chain of events that culminated in kicking Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden out of the campaign, replacing him with incompetent Kamala and losing both the electoral and popular vote.
The problem is that there are too many RINOs in both houses for Trump to be sure of their support. I won’t be surprised if enough switch parties to give Democrats control of both houses. It would take less that ten traitors… And there are more than that in Congress.