Summary
Senator Bernie Sanders condemned Trump’s order to freeze all federal loans and grants, calling it a “dangerous move towards authoritarianism” and “blatantly unconstitutional.”
The directive, exempting Social Security and Medicare, is expected to impact universities, nonprofits, food assistance programs, health centers, and disabled veterans.
Sanders emphasized that Congress holds the “power of the purse” and urged Americans to oppose the order.
Attorneys general are preparing legal challenges to overturn the freeze.
Unless someone actually does something, he effectively is a king.
According to the Supreme Court, he is a king. I do not know why everyone hasn’t been absolutely freaking out about that ruling since it came down. According to that court, he is allowed to do literally anything as long as it’s an official act. This is not a rules-based society anymore.
The ruling is that he can’t be prosecuted for official acts. Not that he can do them.
He can order the moon to reverse its orbit without getting in trouble, but the moon doesn’t have to obey.
The biggest power he has is over the administrative state. Lots of executive agencies create regulations because of power granted to those agencies by Congress. Things like the FAA, EPA, FTC, SEC, ATFE, etc. A President can fuck up all those regulations.
But what Trump is already running into is the fact that his power doesn’t extend to overturning items passed by the legislature. His birthright citizenship order didn’t last a day. A judge has already thrown out the freeze because Congress pases budgets, not the executive.
He couldn’t overturn the ACA last time around because it was a law passed by the legislature. Even though he controls the ATF and can control some of their interpretations, he can’t declare machine guns and silencers legal because the NFA is a law passed by Congress.
And even his power over the administrative state is in some danger because over the overturn of Chevron deference last year that allows judges to ignore the opinions of administrative agency holdings.
That ruling removes any kind of criminal check on the president.
Theoretically there is still a congressional check, via impeachment, but we have learned that is not terribly viable given how difficult it is to convict.
There is the check provided by the 25th amendment, but again, the hurdle is so large that it may not be viable.
Of course there is also a political check, via elections and the 22nd amendment, but that takes years to kick in under the best circumstances, and has limited immediate influence on a second term president.
There is also violence. The president could be checked by an assassin, for example. But that is extremely unlikely.
Under the rules, the president has a limited scope of action as you’ve described. The problem arises when the president decides to overstep those rules, violate laws, or do things that the constitution assigns to other branches. We are in a situation where the checks on such overreach are vanishingly weak as described above. trump is already attempting such violations, such as with the freeze yesterday. Yes, a court has intervened for now, but there is every reason to believe that will be reversed or overturned. But, even if it isn’t, consider what happens if the president chooses to violate the courts ruling.
I understand that the president can’t literate do anything. But no king in history has ever actually has unlimited power and we are in the early days of this new imperial presidency. This is a group project between all three branches. Both congress and the court are working diligently to enshrine the president as a king and the populace has shown little willingness to resist any of this. I would argue that we are effectively there already, but I suppose there are a few remaining hypothetical threads holding him back.
Yes, it’s bad.
But we’ve already had some small judicial pushback, and from Republican judges.
We need to throw wrenches into every gear we can for 2 years, and it’s going to suck, but we can get there.
Though what’s neat politically (and horrible socially), is the stuff he can do is the sort of thing that will result in severe economic consequences. That’s the number 1 indicator of how the next election will turn out. Trump and the GOP are lighting fire to their own rope right now.
There’s enough GOP senatorial seats up for re-election in 2026 that if he fucks up bad enough he and Vance could be removed from office in January 2027, giving the Dems the White House and the ability to pack the Court before his term is even half-finished.
I don’t think the GOP will give him enough rope to do that to their party.
There is nothing that dumpy is doing that cannot be undone or re-done by a future president.
Relying on a president that changes every 4-8 years to make overwhelming changes is going to cause a lot of issues. If we thought government was dysfunctional before, just wait until it’s maliciously dysfunctional.
Republicans, everyone who voted for him and everyone who decided to not vote or to vote for third parties all decided that he should be king.
Absolutely. There are also Dems in Congress/Senate that have been voting yea to his bills. It’s disgusting.
“Yeah, every single Republican hates us and are openly corrupt, but like 2 Dems (usually caucusing Independents) are also bad.”
Im confused, are we supposed to pretend that there aren’t also democrats that are voting for Trump initiatives? Because trying to remove accountability for that seems idiotic.
Im not understanding what you’re trying to say. There are five or so Democrats voting for Trumps antics. And yes, all the Republicans vote down the line, that’s what they do.
Many people that voted for Bernie in 2016 voted for Trump in 2024. Many people eople who voted for Trump in 2024 also voted for AOC down ballot.
The Democratic party has basically made every single mistake they could possibly make in the last 8 years. To lost to fuckin Trump not once but twice is fuckin embarrassing.
Let’s see if they learn anything by 2028. I doubt they will but here’s to hoping.
Yeah the Neolibs would rather burn the country down than lose power.
We need a new leftist party that isn’t the Democrats.
I’m pretty sure that people who didn’t vote or voted for other candidates didn’t decide he should be king, kind of by definition.
Nah they saw the choices and didn’t care to participate in any meaningful way so they can’t just wash their hands of the choice they made.
“If you don’t want to eat your vegetables, then you can go to bed without dinner. Which do you want, vegetables or bed?”
“I WANT ICE CREAM!”
“That’s it! GO TO YOUR ROOM!”
“I DIDN’T VOTE FOR THIS!”
I mean, Harris got more votes than Biden did in the majority of the swing states. It’s okay to lay the blame squarely on the people who, you know, actually chose Trump.
I feel bad for Bernie. I never agreed with his politics 100% across the board but I have the utmost respect for the man. He has stuck to his guns basically since he started. It’s a real shame the Democrats shot him down to shove Hillary down our throats in 2016.
That was basically the moment when it became apparent that the Dems chose oligarchy. Had they let Bernie run and win, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Had they chosen to prosecute crime instead of protect wealth, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Yeah but to prosecute crime would have involved going after many of their own voters and donors.
