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Trump Vests All Executive Power In Himself

Trump Declares The “Policy Of the US” Via Executive Order – Arrogates And Over-Rides Congress’ Legislative Powers 

Executive Order On The “Unitary Executive” Cites Supreme Court Support

I am now reading the incredible barrage of Trump Executive Orders – which are broader in scope and far more detailed than the Project 2025 Agenda.

But before getting into the policy and program issues they raise, we need to keep it simple and emphasize structural concerns.

Trump just did completely unconstitutional things via Executive Order and Executive Emergency Powers:

• He assumed the policymaking power for the United States:

Example:

Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to:

[(a)]

(b)  efficiently and effectively maximize the development and production of the natural resources located on both Federal and State lands within Alaska;

That Executive Order not only illegally creates policy, but the policy stated (i.e. “maximize development and production“) conflicts with current law.

• He consolidated all Executive power in himself:

Example: (emphasis mine)

As the Constitution makes clear, and as the Supreme Court of the United States has reaffirmed, “the ‘executive Power’ — all of it — is ‘vested in a President,’ who must  ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”  Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 197, 203 (2020).  

As a result, the US is no longer a Constitutional democracy and Trump is a Dictator.

This can not stand.

More to follow.

[End Note: and under Trump’s “emergency” declarations, compliance with almost all laws is waived, as determined by Trump!

This is Trump’s version of Hitler’s Enabling Act – with the even worse abuse in that he did it via Executive power!

Trump has also threatened to impound and/or reallocate funds appropriated by Congress (e.g. Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, et al), thereby over-riding Congress’ exclusive power of the purse. I haven’t read all of the Executive Orders to determine whether he did so on day one. ~~~ end

A Radical Bourgeois Plan – – Or 10 Easy Steps To Trump’s Fascist Program

Bill Wolfe, 47, who made his way from Ringoes, N.J., to protest the inauguration, took one hour to go 50 feet in line, and when he got through expressed his anger with the entry procedures. […]

“It’s overkill to the extreme,” he said. “I think it was designed specifically to suppress dissent and keep out protesters. They want to control the visual image, it’s part of a coordinated effort to mislead the American people about the level of opposition to this administration. They’re trying to make it a coronation and it’s not.” (NY Times, page 1, January 21, 2005: Heightened Security Turns Washington Into Quiet Scene

Protesters lamented the restrictions.

“They got us compartmentalized like rats in a cage,” said Bill Wolfe, 47, who came from Ringoes, N.J., carrying a “War Mongers” sign. Mr. Wolfe looked at the shoulder-to-shoulder wall of police officers, blocking his way as he inched along. “You don’t need a ticket for democracy, folks,” he hollered, to no one in particular. ~~~ Love Him or Hate Him, All Vie for a Good Perch – NY Times, page 1, January 21, 2005

I had planned to go to DC on Inaugural Day and even rented a car, but got burned and had to pay a $53 penalty for cancelling the reservation. That seemed like insult upon injury. They get you coming and going.

As an alternative, yesterday morning, I walked 2 miles to City Hall in Philadelphia to join “The People’s March” against Trump.  I was disappointed but not surprised by the tiny crowd, maybe 200 people. The speakers were talking about electing local Democrats and spouting Kamala Harris campaign slogans.

I didn’t stay very long, got into somewhat of a  ranting conversation with an elderly couple on bicycles, and walked home in disgust bordering on despair.

The contrast with the repression and resistant mood of the first Trump Inaugural protest 8 years ago could not have been more stark, see:

• A Fleeting Moment Of Beauty

I’ve also been disgusted by some political essays by “The Resistance” I’ve read that sure seem to be a strategic retreat, parading under a banner of “going local” and “building local power”.

When an outright self revealed Fascist like Trump assumes Presidential power, consolidates fascist power in Congress and the federal Courts (with little push back by Democrats and the media), nominates a clown show Cabinet of incompetent, corporate right wing ideologues and loyalists who get fast tracked rubber stamped Senate confirmation hearings, and espouses an explicitly fascist program (which includes:

1) concentration camps for migrants who are “poisoning the blood of America”, homeless people, mentally ill, and the “socialist scum” and leftist “internal enemies”;

2) mass deportations (including illegally revoking legal refugee status and Constitutionally guaranteed 14th Amendment birthright citizenship and due process);

3) use of the military to crush domestic protest (and insane Imperial adventures to seize the Panama Canal, annex Greenland, make Canada the 51st State, invade Mexico to crush drug cartels, and maybe even seize Venezuelan and Iranian oil like Bush (Iraq) and Obama (Syria and Libya) oilfield projects);

4) closing down critical media, banning books, and defunding Universities;

5) wreaking “retribution and vengeance” on and even jailing political opponents;

6) forming open alliances with violent and heavily armed militias and right wing groups, including County Sheriffs and police who could easily be organized to comprise Trump’s Brownshirts;

7) rescinding all climate policies and seeking fossil “energy dominance”;

8) making public lands mere “assets” on the nation’s “balance sheet” that should be deregulated, extracted, privatized, and sold;

9) BEFORE the election, issuing a 1,000 page plan to ‘dismantle the administrative state” that he can now claim a “mandate” to impose;

10) and promising to implement this fascist program via a flood of executive Orders issued on his first day in office, including likely declaration of a National Emergency and invocation of Insurrection Act, the National Emergencies Act, and the Alien Enemies Act) –

when all this is happening, it is NOT THE TIME TO GO LOCAL!!!!!!!

There should be national strikes (starting with ports, railroads, airports, trucking, food processing, and all other “strategic” industrial sectors) and mass mobilizations with millions of people in the streets to shut the economy down (similar to how the “Resistance” flocked to airports when Trump announced the Muslim ban, but much larger in magnitude, geography, and scope.).

It will be very difficult to keep from becoming obsessed with this fascist attack on everything I value and have worked and lived my life for.

I really hate all the individualism and self help bullshit that undermines collective political action and resistance, but there will need to be strategies to keep from going insane and burning out.

Yesterday I read an interesting radical response to that challenge, see:

• A Depressed Anarchist’s Guide Surviving Winter

Let’s just say that I’m not that radical or insane (yet), so in a bourgeois vein, I just read a NY Times lifestyle piece on “35 Simple Health Tips Experts Swear By”.

As is usual at the gray lady, most of their “experts” were largely full of crap and most of the “tips” were silly and likely ineffective.

So I submitted the following reader comment with some of my own “tips”:

Get outside, walk, enjoy nature and creative little things people design and make. Find quiet places to sit. Look at water and small birds. Get rid of the phone. Love your dog. Go to bed early and get up and outside before sunrise. Express your emotions, including anger and even rage. If you’re not angry or enraged, you are not paying attention. Always take the stairs. Work on your muscles. Drink good beer. Stay out of your kids’ adult lives, let your younger ones explore and experience on their own. Read books. Listen to gentle music, not the crap that’s popular today. Try photography. Ride your bicycle every day. I am not an expert, but these are all wise moves!

And then you can be more empowered to educate, agitate, organize and mobilize against the fascist Trump regime!

[End Note: And listen to Leadbelly’s “Bourgeois Blues” (1937)

Home of the brave, land of the free
I don’t wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues, I’m
Gonna spread the news all around

I listened in horror today to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s confirmation hearing of Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of the Interior.

The man is a slick talking corporate fossil energy press release.

The Senators are corrupt and ignorant economic cheerleaders.

The NY Times nailed the money quote:

Doug Burgum, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the Interior Department, said Thursday he viewed America’s public lands and waters as part of the country’s financial “balance sheet,” with potentially trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals waiting to be extracted beneath the surface.

We are truly fucked.

DEP Wildfire Map Exposes DEP Regulatory Failure

Insurance Industry Wildfire Map Shows How Much Market Forces Have Displaced DEP Regulation

NJ Is Making Exactly The Same Tragic Mistakes As California

(Source: NJ DEP)

The California wildfire catastrophe has forced NJ wildfire issues back in the media.

Those major issues include: 1) the climate emergency, 2) forest management, 3) poorly planned and unregulated development in high wildfire hazard areas, 4) the lack of emergency planning and preparation; and 5) lack of funding, staffing and legal authority.

I recently wrote a brief note to remind people that DEP was mismanaging NJ’s forests with respect to both climate and wildfire; had explicitly refused to regulate new and existing development in DEP mapped “High Hazard” areas; and had abdicated implementation of prevention and management programs to reduce risks identified in NJ Hazard Mitigation Plan (which include wildfire) to local government, see:

• Murphy DEP Denies Climate Wildfire Risk Petition

DEP explicitly stated that they lacked legislative authority to regulate based on wildfire risks. Instead, to address wildfire risks, the DEP relies on other indirect regulatory protections of natural resources, not the explicit risks of wildfire. The DEP wrote:

While the Department has considerable authority to regulate certain activities in particular environmentally sensitive areas, the Department does not possess the sort of master land use planning or regulatory authority alluded to by Petitioner. In the particular areas over which the Department has regulatory authority, the development of many land areas that may be susceptible to wildfire is already minimized under the Department’s regulation of impacts to natural resources such as wetlands, threatened and endangered species habitat, coastal areas, riparian areas, and certain forested areas.

I made key NJ Legislators – including the Senate Environment Committee Chair Bob Smith and members of his Committee –  aware of this huge gap in DEP’s authority. No legislator even replied.

In contrast, California regulators issued a Report warning of wildfire risks:

Back in 2019, a California state climate task force issued a stark warning: endless development in the state’s high-risk wildfire zones was magnifying wildfires and putting more people in their path.

Based on that Report, Legislators introduced a bill, back in 2021, that would regulate development in high wildfire hazard lands, see:

• SB-55 Very high fire hazard severity zone: state responsibility area: development prohibition

In 2021, Stern’s bill would have barred development in “very high risk” zones, with exceptions for cases in which local fire agencies adopted a comprehensive plan for wildfire risk management. Without such limitations, development in these areas was likely to continue to boom; one 2014 study estimated that by 2050, a million additional houses would be built in very-high-risk wildlife zones in California. Already, there are two million homes in high and very-high-risk wildfire zones in the state.

The real estate and development industries opposed and killed that bill.

Tragically, as a result, thousands of new homes were built in high wildfire hazard lands, including some burnt by current LA wildfires.

I again brought the lack of DEP authority and the California bill to the attention of NJ Legislators and DEP Commissioner LaTourette and urged them not to make the same mistakes as California legislators did. And Again, none replied.

Equally bad, not one aspect of this science and irresponsible planning, regulation, reckless development, and DEP mismanagement has been reported by the NJ press corps or exposed by NJ environmental groups.

It’s as if DEP were invisible and had no role whatsoever in wildfire and land use issues.

Instead of the DEP mapping of risk and regulatory issues regarding development and wildfire risks, we get the insurance industry’ perspective in today’s NJ Spotlight:

Even the so called “environmental leaders” are focussed on property values, money, and insurance and also totally ignore the science and DEP planning and regulatory issues.

And that is why DEP and NJ legislators ignore and dodge the tough issues, virtually guaranteeing a repeat of the LA disaster here.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone. ~~~ (The Hollow Men (1925)