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Comment by pred_

2 days ago

And when you have an executive on one hand stating that only the president and the AG can interpret laws for the executive [0] and that you can't break laws if you're "saving the country" [1], that approach also just doesn't seem too promising.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu... Sec. 7

[1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140091792251...

Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You really have to read it twice to understand just how far out that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?

This will end badly and it will not be fun at all in the end, but it is fascinating to watch how this new wave of fascism unfolds.

Honest question: who else, internal to the executive branch, and besides the president, should be able to interpret the laws for the executive branch?

By my reading, this is a clarification that if an agency makes a significant policy change or regulation, they ought to run it by the president first.

It doesn't preclude other branches of government from checking this power.

  • Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it’s frequently useful to have them hash out agreements for the same reason that it’s useful for scientists to get peer review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it’s good to have multiple people validate your reasoning.