I find it remarkable that Americans are ok with rule by executive order instead of rule by congressional law.
I also find it fascinating that no federal judge has held any Trump administration officers in contempt or imposed sanctions/bans on officers who are continuously hurting constitutional rights.
I assume that Americans have been sleeping at the wheel, unaware of the threat of slide into fascism. But is the voter-base and judiciary just unaware/unwilling to throttle persistent attacks?
The only reliable action by voters has been demonstrations outside Tesla stores. But look at Turkey, Serbia etc. - people have taken over their capitals and are striking en masse.
Are Americans unwilling to protect what makes America special?
Executive order vs. legislation is a meaningless distinction to most people. What most people care about is what they or someone else can get in trouble for and what consequences they will face, and more generally just how good they perceive their life to be. It's like trying to distinguish between two diseases with long latinate names; what matters is how sick you feel and what treatment will stop it.
Insofar as people do care, I think many people actually prefer executive order-style action because they perceive it as swifter, more direct, and less tied up in debate, dithering, and red tape.
But mostly what people care about is just "are things happening the way I want them to happen". If yes, they won't care about the mechanism that produced that; if no, they will blame whoever they perceive to be responsible, whether or not they actually are.
Side discussion, but the United States having two separate, elected legislative and executive branches is kind of lousy. It makes it difficult, as you say, to understand who is responsible for anything. Yet we have somehow convinced ourselves that it is the best system, because we have also convinced ourselves we are the best country.
Most countries with parliamentary systems don't have this problem, where a person votes for a party and that party works with other parties to elect the the head executive. That head executive answers to the legislative. There aren't situations where the legislative and executive branches aren't politically aligned (a divided government) which has become common in the US and basically where nothing can get done.
If you look at other countries that also have Presidential systems, the US is not in very good company:
Maybe, but I think another part of it is just a dangerously broad construal of the whole concept of executive power. Executive means you execute. Someone else should decide. Executive authority just means you are authorized to do what someone else said should be done. We have gone down a weird road in the US with the creation of "quasi-legislative" agencies that are created by Congress but are then under the control of the president although their function is essentially legislative. Instead Congress should just be able to entirely specify every aspect of those bodies' operations, including what (if any) the president's role is. In other words, the president can "use" executive authority, but the legislature should be in charge of deciding what counts as executive authority in the first place. If congress wants to delegate power to arbitrary bodies with no presidential involvement, they should be able to do so by passing a law as usual.
You can of course say that a reckless executive (like the one we have now) would still run amok, but I think we'd have less of a problem if these matters had been clarified long ago.
Americans allowed Congress to cede a lot of its power to the President after 9/11. That has been a slow-roll towards "rule by EO" since then. In addition, the processes Congress creates are somewhat sclerotic for several reasons; there's a relatively good book out recently by Ezra Klein titled "Abundance" on the details.
Federal judges generally don't prior-constrain the Executive. Hypothetically, the flow of control should be Congress restraining the Executive if it fails to do Congress's will; The judiciary steps in if the Executive tries to do something unconstitutional, but that's restraint of the action; punishment for continued bad behavior should flow from Congress.
Americans are still, overall, quite personally comfortable. I don't anticipate actions at capitals until that comfort is en-masse threatened.
Yes, misinformation won. But when Trump actively cuts benefits, cuts jobs, cuts research, asks for bribes openly, quid pro quo everywhere, town halls unanswered - do voters in America feel willing to change their votes?
Are voters willing to strike until the President resigns? Or are people ok with the country being sold to third world style corruption that is happening right in front of their faces?
American voters are insulated from a lot of that, which is one of the reasons the misinformation works.
Think about the number of moving parts between a federal job cut and most private-sector individuals feeling it. Or between research and the years before the dried-up pipeline slows down the country's progress. And most Americans don't attend, nor are interested in, town halls.
One of Trump's major political strengths has been his consistent stance, in contradiction to the Republican mainstream, that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should not be cut. That's why he does so much better with lower income voters dependent on those programs than McCain or Romney could. I definitely think voters will turn on him if he changes his mind and cuts them anyway.
One of Trump’s major political facets is that he functions as a sort of rorschach test for supporters to read their own favorite issues and stances into even when they aren’t supported by what he has said. Immigration “he won’t deport the ones I like”, on abortion “he will ban it / he will not ban it”, on the economy “he will lower my taxes / lower the deficit”, and on entitlements “he will protect my social security check / he will curb social security spending by cutting fraud”.
>I find it remarkable that Americans are ok with rule by executive order instead of rule by congressional law.
Can you cite a poll for this? Most Americans have never been asked and likely aren't okay with it but we don't really have a choice in the matter.
When it comes down to it the decision on how executive orders work is based on what a few dozen people think and most of them aren't elected. The general public has no say in the matter.
I think one of the problems we face here is effective protesting. Imagine you live in Spain and have to travel to Africa to protest. The US is big and it's hard for us to get into one spot. We can protest at our state capitols, sure, but that's not as effective as traveling to DC which is basically out of the question for the majority of the country.
It might be better to say “Republicans” instead of “Americans” as you do. Americans are a deeply divided group of people: one-third republicans, one-third democrats, and one-third apathetic.
The one-third of Americans who are republicans put Trump in power, and are indirectly responsible for what’s happening — and the vast majority of them of course wholeheartedly fully support these violations of the First Amendment.
The democrats of course oppose all of these things.
Please stop using “Americans” as if this were one solid group of people who share the same views.
Doesn't matter that Democrats oppose it. The fact that there are enough Americans who do support it puts us well beyond trust for any international audience. Democrats could be the best allies and most cooperative people in the world. But Republicans will just tear up any treaties or agreements the next time they get power. It's now impossible to trust the US. The world has seen who we really are and the Democrats have been completely useless at mitigating any of it. The last image the world got from our Democrats is them campaigning with the Cheney's.
Responding in good faith, here. As far as I can tell, what people who voted for Trump have a problem with - and are thus quite happy with as far as action from this Administration is concerned - is that while there are ostensibly only three branches of the Federal Government (the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial), there is in fact a fourth. This fourth branch is the administrative state, and it is (in their telling, not stating this as fact necessarily) an unelected branch that has overwhelmingly leaned left since Richard Nixon, and has an enormous amount of control over the direction of government. One example is USAID, which is a broad way for federal dollars to be spent on various pet projects, prioritized by career bureaucrats with expansive (and expensive) resumes. Trump exerting control over how these dollars are spent is something they like, because they think it's weird (and I see their point) that the executive branch spends a ton of money that the elected officers in that branch may not want spent in that manner. (Yes, I am aware, some or most of this money is congressionally authorized in some manner, debatable, and honestly it's good to have that debate). Anyway, some people like seeing a chief executive asserting control over the executive branch. It's not really more complicated than that, and pearl clutching about "fascism" is pretty boring, because that is a word with specific meaning. Unless you want to expand that meaning, I suppose.
Agencies are created and funded by the legislature. The executive operates them, and has some discretion over their operations and priorities.
Rank and file workers have protections from firing by the executive because if they didn't, we would have the corrupt patronage systems we had 100 years ago.
Independent watchdogs at each agency are protected because political insulation is a requirement for such a role.
Put simply:
Authoritarianism is strongman politics where courts are ignored, and one/few people exert almost total control over the operation of government, ignoring any legal constraints on their power, and any criticism of the ruling party is inherently fake and illegitimate.
Fascism is the right wing brand of authoritarianism.
Reasonable people can debate spending levels or efficiency. But this administration is not interested in that. They are permanently destroying America's place in the world and at least temporarily, and illegally, destroying parts of the federal government. All while participating in eye watering levels of corruption and judicial self-service (firing prosecutors investigating friends, firing generals without cause, calling for impeachment of every judge they don't like).
Our government's design is broken. Our voting system only permits two parties. Our house districts are geographically manipulated. The electoral college further obfuscates the election or president.
I agree on the interpretation on the resentment of MAGA, but I do think the administration is fascist and the president should be removed and sentenced for treason. To MAGA, saving lives abroad by spending a small portion of our budget looks like a scam, like lipstick on imperialism. It's complimentary to describe military as a force for freedom rather than overpaid security guards for oligarchy, but MAGA are in on that joke. MAGA doesn't see any war as "stupid", nor do they sincerely mind private email servers or inflation and obviously don't actually value economic growth. Attributing rationality will leave you confused, the only consistent value among MAGA is accelerationism.
I also find it fascinating that no federal judge has held any Trump administration officers in contempt or imposed sanctions/bans on officers who are continuously hurting constitutional rights.
I assume that Americans have been sleeping at the wheel, unaware of the threat of slide into fascism. But is the voter-base and judiciary just unaware/unwilling to throttle persistent attacks?
The only reliable action by voters has been demonstrations outside Tesla stores. But look at Turkey, Serbia etc. - people have taken over their capitals and are striking en masse.
Are Americans unwilling to protect what makes America special?