Last week we broke the news that while speaking before a closed-door UBS business conference in Hong Kong, Mike Pence said there is “no more compelling gesture” of goodwill China could take than if it “were to take steps to free Jimmy Lai.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger warns of the accelerating imperial-ness of the U.S. presidency. Two slices:
With Mr. Trump, however, we may be heading to the outer limits of what America’s traditional system of checks and balances can absorb. Among Mr. Trump’s first acts was to instruct his Justice Department not to enforce a ban on TikTok imposed by an act of Congress and affirmed unanimously by the Supreme Court. In his inaugural speech, Mr. Trump never mentioned Congress, exhibiting a disdain for the legislative branch also shared by his White House predecessors.
A remarkable deference to Mr. Trump’s use of his powers is happening, or being allowed to happen, because so many Americans think the political system is broken, a point he hit hard in his inaugural speech: “For many years, the radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens. While the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair, we now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home.”
In a blink, Mr. Trump went from zero to 60 on exercising presidential authority, declaring two national emergencies—on the border and energy policy. If energy is a crisis under the National Emergencies Act, anything is.
Mr. Trump is reveling in his return to the U.S. presidency and the unparalleled powers of its modern incarnation. Those who agree with most of his goals think: So what? The ends, under the nation’s current dire circumstances, justify exceptional means. Of course, the next Democratic president will pocket Mr. Trump’s expansive definition of his powers and raise the ante.
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The breadth of the Trump presidential orders is impressive but also a sign of a system that isn’t working as originally designed. Congress is supposed to represent the country’s varied interests, down to 435 separate congressional districts. And they are different. Mr. Trump is displacing that federalism of interests with the simpler idea of a uniform national interest, defined and executed by the president.
While an argument can be made that more consolidation of national power has become important in a world of aggressive, centralizing powers like China and Russia, America’s system of dispersed authority, whether among the three federal branches or the states, is a sustaining strength.
Its hallmark is accountability, achieved through a system of checks and balances. The Biden and Trump pardons this week were a lurch into unaccountability. The message they sent is that you can get away with anything. Where’s the Republican outrage?
Also warning of the fast-accelerating powers of the U.S. presidency is Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille. Two slices:
Well before President Donald Trump returned to office, his supporters boasted that he would start the second term with a flurry of executive actions. The new president exceeded expectations with an avalanche of pardons, orders, and edicts on matters great and small. Some should be welcomed by anybody hoping for more respect for liberty by government employees. Others extend state power in ways that are worrisome or even illegitimate. All continue the troubling trend over the course of decades and administrations from both parties for the president to assume the role of an elected monarch.
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These issues will be hashed out in court—the ACLU has already filed suit over the birthright citizenship order. But flaws in these ideas could have been exposed during congressional testimony and debate. It’s especially difficult to justify many of these orders given that Republicans hold the majority in both houses of Congress. But even if the legislature was divided or controlled by Democrats, the federal government consists of three branches intended to slow action and encourage deliberation.
Not that Donald Trump invented the vice of unilateral presidential dictates.
Julian Adorney is correct: “TikTok can be bad for us, but banning it would be worse.”
Alex Tabarrok isn’t impressed by the economic understanding of Curtis Yarvin.
