American journalists teaching voters about Civics- How the government is supposed to work in our democracy

Americans seem to be in a "learn as we go along" about basic American civics 101. Journalists like David French are educating us about a subject we should have learned in primary school.

These are the times that try a constitutional conservative’s soul.
Echo opinion essay published in The New York Times by David French:

Donald Trump and his allies have proposed two legal maneuvers that could have profound consequences for the function of the federal government. He has proposed confirming presidential appointments through an abuse of his power to make recess appointments, and his allies have proposed reviving a mostly banned practice called impoundment, under which the president can refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

These proposals together would gut core constitutional functions of Congress and could make Trump our nation’s most imperial peacetime president.

You can’t fully comprehend how pernicious these proposals are without knowing Congress’s intended role in our republic. If you read the Constitution carefully, you see that the United States was not intended to have coequal branches of government. Instead, it is clear that the branch of government closest to the people, Congress, was given more power than any other.

While other branches can check Congress’s power — the president can veto bills and the Supreme Court can use the power of judicial review to invalidate statutes passed by Congress, to give the most obvious examples — Congress’s enumerated powers surpass those of both the president and the court.

Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution says, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” This constitutional provision is particularly important, given that in the original Constitution the House was the only part of the federal government chosen directly by the people. The power of the purse is inseparable from democratic rule.

Congress has the sole constitutional power to declare war, even if presidents frequently usurp that authority. It can fire the president, executive officers and judges through impeachment and conviction. It can override presidential vetoes, and the Senate can reject presidential appointees.

But if Trump gets his way, he will have the power to nullify congressional enactments, even if they’re passed with veto-proof majorities. He’ll destroy the Senate’s advice and consent authority. He’ll make the executive the most powerful branch of government by far, creating a version of monarchical government that the founders despised.

In Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton warned that “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious (aka "excessive attention") court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.” A similar pattern is playing out here — claiming a popular mandate, Trump is threatening to further diminish American democracy.

In one version of a Trump recess plan, Trump could pressure the Republican majority in the Senate to agree with the House to adjourn, granting Trump the ability to make immediate recess appointments. This is the clear message of Trump’s post on the subject on Truth Social. He wants the Republican leader to agree to an adjournment, thus forfeiting the Senate’s constitutional role.

But if the Senate holds firm, Trump theoretically has another option. He could conspire with the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to request that Congress enter into a recess. If the Senate refuses a recess, then he’ll rely on Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution — which provides that the president can adjourn Congress “to such time as he shall think proper” if the two chambers disagree about the timing of a recess — and then use his constitutional power to make recess appointments without the Senate‘s advice or consent.

The recess appointments wouldn’t be permanent. They’d lapse at the beginning of the next congressional term, but he could have his handpicked team for up to two years, and there is nothing the Senate could do about it, at least according to Trump’s theory.

The founders never intended for Article II, Section 3 to permit the president to shut down Congress and name his cabinet without Senate approval. Recess appointments were created to permit presidents to fill vacancies when Congress was out of session in a large nation, when travel was often slow and difficult.

When legislators were traveling by horseback to Washington, permitting recess appointments made a degree of sense. It could be weeks before Congress could assemble. But now it takes hours, less when they assemble online.

There is no meaningful question about whether Trump’s scheme violates the spirit of the Constitution. Advice and consent exists precisely because the founders believed that a president should not possess unchecked power to name his team.

In Federalist No. 76, Hamilton wrote that the advice and consent power is “an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from state prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.”

In fact, a key purpose of the power is to prevent the confirmation of exactly the kind of obsequious yes men with whom Trump surrounds himself. Hamilton warned against the selection of nominees who have “no other merit” than “being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”

Trump’s potential scheme violates the letter of the Constitution as well. In a 2014 case called National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected President Barack Obama’s recess appointment of three members of the National Labor Relations Board. A majority of the court held that even when the Senate was in a mere “pro forma” session — when no formal business was conducted — it was not technically “in recess,” and thus the recess appointment power wasn’t available to the president.

Four members of the court, however, went further. In a persuasive concurrence, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the recess appointments clause covered only the space between congressional sessions, not breaks within the session. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas all joined with Scalia.

According to this reasoning, even if Trump engineered a disagreement between the House and the Senate and forced a recess, his recess appointment power wouldn’t attach because the recess occurred after the congressional term started.



Yes, that’s a concurrence — and concurrences aren’t binding law — but the current court’s jurisprudence is far more aligned with Scalia’s than it is with that of Justice Stephen Breyer, the author of the Canning majority. It is highly unlikely that a Roberts-led court would abandon Scalia’s logic and rubber-stamp an obvious end-run around one of the Senate’s core constitutional powers.

Now let’s talk about impoundment. During earlier periods of American history, presidents would sometimes refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. This process, which came to be called impoundment, could give presidents the ability to nullify acts of Congress, even if the act passed with a veto-proof majority.

Imagine that Congress passed a statute mandating the construction of a new bridge across the Potomac, at a cost of $200 million. If impoundment were a real option, the president could simply choose not to spend the money, block construction of the bridge and frustrate the will of Congress.

American presidents periodically used impoundment to block the use of appropriated funds until 1974, when Congress largely banned the practice through the Impoundment Control Act. The act was passed after Richard Nixon frustrated Congress by impounding funds more than his predecessors, blocking spending for multiple programs across several federal agencies.

The constitutional justification is obvious. It prevents the president from exercising an unconstitutional version of a veto. Nonetheless, in a Wall Street Journal essay last week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — the two men Trump named to lead his new Department of Government Efficiency — raised the prospect of reviving impoundment. They suggested it was the Impoundment Control Act itself that was unconstitutional.




Russ Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget (and the man Trump has chosen to choose to lead the O.M.B. again), is an enthusiastic supporter of impoundment. The Center for Renewing America, which Vought founded in 2021, has published a raft of materials attacking the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act.

I very much want to limit the growth of government spending, but not at the expense of our constitutional structure. There is no authority for impoundment in the text of the Constitution. The president’s principal check on Congress is the veto, and the process for vetoes (and for overriding them) is plainly detailed in the text.

One of the reasons American democracy is under duress is that Congress has spent decades abdicating its power to the president. Congressional inaction has created a power vacuum that presidents and courts have been only too eager to fill.

Unilateral executive action elevates the power of the presidency, increases the stakes of each presidential election and sidelines our nation’s most democratic branch of government. According to Trump and his team, however, Congress has not abdicated enough power. They want the president to get the yes men (and women) he wants in government, no matter how corrupt or unqualified. They want the president to block government spending, no matter if Congress has mandated the expenditure.

Trump isn’t in office yet. We don’t know whether he’ll follow through on his threats and try to engineer a recess or impound funds. But his threats are still destructive. He’s trying to cow Congress into becoming an extension of his own will and desires. And if the Republican-led Congress capitulates, the party that long prided itself on constitutional fidelity will become an instrument of its decline.

Support for Ukraine motivates momentum in the war against invading Russians

Echo opinion written by David Brooks for The New York Times and published in the Las Vegas Sun a Nevada newspaper:

In the Ukraine, the war is not only a military event, it’s an intellectual event. 

Slava Ukraini! Official salute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Ukrainians are winning the hearts and minds of their people and the western world, not only because of the superiority of their troops, but because they are fighting for a superior idea — an idea that inspires Ukrainians to fight so doggedly, an idea that inspires people across the West to stand behind Ukraine and back it to the hilt.

That idea is actually two jammed together. The first is liberalism, which promotes democracy, individual dignity, a rule-based international order.

Second is the idea is nationalism. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a nationalist. He is fighting not just for democracy but also for Ukraine — Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian people and tongue. The symbol of this war is the Ukrainian flag, a nationalist symbol.

There are many people who assume that liberalism and nationalism are opposites. Liberalism, in their mind, is modern and progressive. It’s about freedom of choice, diversity and individual autonomy. Nationalism, meanwhile, is primordial, xenophobic, tribal, aggressive and exclusionary.

By this thinking, modern nations should try to tamp down nationalist passions and embrace the universal brotherhood of all humankind. As John Lennon famously sang, “Imagine there’s no countries/ It isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too.”

Those people are not all wrong. Nationalism has a lot of blood on its hands. But it has become clear that there are two kinds of nationalism: the illiberal nationalism of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump,  as opposed to the (IMO - enlightened) liberal nationalism of Zelenskyy. The former nationalism is backward-looking, xenophobic and authoritarian. The latter nationalism is forward-looking, inclusive and builds a society around the rule of law, not the personal power of the maximum leader. It’s become clear that if it is to survive, liberalism needs to rest on a bed of this kind of nationalism.

Nationalism provides people with a fervent sense of belonging. Countries don’t hold together because citizens make a cold assessment that it’s in their self-interest to do so. Countries are held together by shared loves for a particular way of life, a particular culture, a particular land. These loves have to be stirred in the heart before they can be analyzed by the brain.

Nationalism provides people with a sense of meaning. Nationalists tell stories that stretch from a glorious if broken past forward to a golden future. Individuals live and die, but the nation goes on. 

People feel their life has significance because they contribute these eternal stories. “Freedom is hollow outside of a meaning-providing system,” Yael Tamir writes in her book “Why Nationalism.”

Democracies need nationalism if they are to defend themselves against their foes. Democracies also need this kind of nationalism if they are to hold together. In his book “The Great Experiment,” Yascha Mounk celebrates the growing diversity enjoyed by many Western nations. But he argues they also need the centripetal force of “cultural patriotism,” to balance the centrifugal forces that this diversity ignites.

Finally, democracies need this kind of nationalism to regenerate the nation. Liberal nationalists are not stuck with a single archaic national narrative. They are perpetually going back, reinterpreting the past, modernizing the story and reinventing the community.

Over the past decades, this kind of ardent nationalism has often been regarded as passé within the circles of the educated elites. I suspect there are many people in this country who are proud to wear the Ukrainian flag but wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an American flag because they fear it would mark them as reactionary, jingoistic, low class.

The first problem with this posture is that it opened up a cultural divide between the educated class and the millions of Americans for whom patriotism is a central part of their identity. 

Second, by associating liberalism with the cosmopolitan global elite, it made liberalism seem like a system used to preserve the privileges of that elite. The populist class backlash combined with an anti-liberal backlash, imperiling democracies across the globe. Third, it opened the door for people like Trump to seize and hijack American patriotism.

Liberal nationalism believes in what liberals believe, but it also believes that nations are moral communities and the borders that define them need to be secure. It believes that it’s sometimes OK to put Americans first — to adopt policies that give American workers an edge over workers elsewhere. It believes it’s important to celebrate diversity, but a country that doesn’t construct a shared moral culture will probably rip itself to shreds.

American nationalism has characteristically been a liberal nationalism. From Alexander Hamilton to Walt Whitman to Theodore Roosevelt, it has often been a song in praise of a liberal revolution, a liberal constitution and a diverse, liberal society. 

On the other hand, Trumpian nationalism doesn’t flow from that traditional American nationalism, but is a repudiation of it.

Ukraine’s tenacity shows how powerful liberal nationalism can be in the face of an authoritarian threat. It shows how liberal nationalism can mobilize a society and inspire it to fantastic achievements. It shows what a renewed American liberal nationalism could do, if only the center and left could get over their squeamishness about patriotic ardor and would embrace and reinvent our national tradition.

Yael Tamir makes the essential point: “Self-centered individualism must therefore be replaced with a more collectivist spirit that nationalism knows how to kindle.”

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times. 

Quislings - Donald Trump's collaborators

"Trump's slaves...," David Driesen

Quisling is a term originating in Norway, used in Scandinavian languages and in English for a person who collaborates with an enemy occupying force – or more generally as a synonym for traitor.

Vidkun Quisling (left) with Nazi leaders including Heinrich Himmer (2nd from l), 1941

Echo opinion published in the History News Network by David Driesen, Professor at Syracuse University College of Law.

Trump has made it absolutely clear to every federal official that he will fire anybody who follows the law when it conflicts with his personal will. He fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating national security adviser Michael Flynn’s illegal conduct. Trump viciously forced out acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who authorized investigation of presidential obstruction of justice, days before he would become eligible for a pension and then his administration tried (unsuccessfully) to get a grand jury to indict him criminally. He dismissed Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions, who obeyed ethics rules requiring his recusal from investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election. He secured the resignation of Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen, who wanted the administration to obey the laws protecting immigrants with bona fide asylum claims from deportation. 
With horrible imagry, Trump humiliated Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman by having him escorted off the White House grounds like a criminal, because he obeyed a lawful congressional subpoena requiring him to testify about President Trump’s conduct with respect to Ukraine. 

Trump cast out Inspector General Michael Atkinson for obeying the law requiring him to share whistleblower complaints with Congress.

Trump has made obeying the oath that every federal official swears to protect and defend the Constitution a firing offense. The Constitution specifically requires all federal officeholders to swear allegiance to the Constitution, a break from the monarchial practice of swearing featly to the supreme leader. The Oath Clause provides a foundation for the Framers’ project of creating a constitutional rule of law. Trump’s practice dismantles the rule of law at the heart of our constitutional democracy.

Trump seeks a government of quislings, people who view themselves as Trump’s slaves, not noble servants of the Constitution. Trump has triggered an exodus of competent officials who take their obligations to our constitutional democracy seriously.

The Founding Fathers and many of their most respected successors warned that giving the President unfettered control of the executive branch of government would lead to a quisling government and the death of freedom. Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers said that the Constitution was designed to prevent appointees “personally allied to” the President or “possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them obsequious instruments of his pleasure” from gaining office. Senator Daniel Webster maintained that conferring an absolute removal power on the President would turn public officers into “sycophants . . . and man-worshippers.” Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story explained the “old Federalist position” that “unlimited power of removal” may become an “instrument of the worst oppression and most vindictive vengeance.” And Justice Brandeis saw the Founders’ decision to reject “uncontrollable” presidential removal as a part of the separation of powers designed “to save the people from autocracy.”

Trump’s attack on the rule of law emulates that of autocrats he admires in Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere who have destroyed democracies. Once an autocrat establishes quisling government, the autocrat’s minions destroy freedom. In autocracies, the government investigates and prosecutes regime opponents, while giving a free pass to corrupt government supporters. Trump has repeatedly asked the Justice Department to persecute his political opponents and suggested that it not investigate Republicans suspected of corruption. Autocrats use law not to achieve the laws’ objectives, but to subdue opposition and bolster their supporters. If Trump remains in office, America will likely lose its freedom through these forces.

Some of Trump’s dismissals are illegal. They violate civil service laws put in place in the 19th Century when a practice of making offices contingent on political support for the President had debilitated the federal government. But Trump will pay no price for violating these laws, because the Supreme Court declined to allow damage actions against President Nixon when he allegedly forced out a whistleblower in a 5-4 decision. In cases where

Trump has formal authority to dismiss an official, he has abused that authority by violating our constitutional customs safeguarding prosecutorial independence and the freedom to obey the law.

As Trump dismantles constitutional government, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked the Supreme Court to hasten its demise. In that case, DOJ declined to defend a statute protecting the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Board from arbitrary dismissal, instead asking the Court to give Trump the power to fire all important federal officials for political reasons. The DOJ’s decision not to defend a statute that both courts of appeal reviewing this case found justified by existing precedent suggests that Trump has made remarkable progress in substituting autocratic rule for the rule of law. We can only hope that the Justices have the wisdom to reject these pleas, which a more independent DOJ probably would not have made.

Florida echo opinion letter- William Barr is a potus lackey

"AG William Barr is a dirtbag!" Michael Perham

An opinion echo letter published in the Daily Commercial, a Florida newspaper.

https://www.dailycommercial.com/news/20190421/letter-to-editor-ag-william-barr-is-dirtbag

“In for a penny, in for a pound.”*

These were the words of the Attorney General William Barr to President George H. W. Bush when Bush wanted to Pardon Casper Weinberger in December 1992. Barr persuaded Bush to pardon all six of the Iran Contra criminals — not just Weinberger.

Barr was a dirtbag then, just like he is now. 

I just listened to his overview of the Mueller report, and I have never been more sickened. He is no more than a lackey for this disgrace of a president.

Barr, like Nixon and Brett Kavanaugh, comes from the ilk that the president can do no wrong. Remember Nixon’s words, “if the president does it, it is legal.” When did we become a nation that allows a president to be above the law? Nixon went through several Attorney Generals.

I am ashamed! Why aren’t you?

When I listened to Attorney General Barr being questioned by a Congressional committee member a week or so ago, I knew we were in trouble. When he was asked if he would seek the permission of a judge to release everything — just like Ken Starr did with Clinton and Nixon’s special prosecutor did — he did not answer.

When asked again — point blank — will you seek a judge’s order to release everything, he said, "that is not my intention". The fix was in.

Alexander Hamilton 

Alexander Hamilton is rolling over in his grave! In his paper, Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton warned there is no liberty if the power of judging is not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Barr is to represent the people — not some corrupt con man president.

Michael Perham, Clermont

*"I favored the broadest pardon authority," Barr said (about Iran- Contra Weinberger. "There were some people just arguing just for Weinberger. I said, 'No — in for a penny, in for a pound.' "

One Electoral voter resigns takes courage

Although I would've preferred to see this resigned Electoral College voter remain, to cast a dissenting vote, the very rare resignation from what was, in the past, an honorable role, is yet another dent in the irresponsible decision to elect Donald Trump.

Alexander Hamilton:  "the office of the President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications”
Texas Elector to Resign Instead of Voting for Trump
Art Sisneros says he won’t be ‘faithless,’ but he also can’t in good conscience signal his approval of the president-elect.

A Republican elector from Texas says he is resigning his position instead of casting his vote for Donald Trump, calling the Electoral College "corrupted from its original intent" and saying voting for the president-elect would "bring dishonor to God."

Art Sisneros was considering in August the possibility of becoming a so-called faithless elector, meaning he would refuse to vote for Trump if the GOP candidate won the Lone Star State and its 38 electoral votes in November.

In a Saturday blog post on his website, Sisneros said he had decided he was not comfortable defying his pledge to vote for his party's nominee, but neither could he cast his vote for Trump.

"Since I can't in good conscience vote for Donald Trump, and yet have sinfully made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an elector," Sisneros wrote. "This will allow the remaining body of electors to fill my vacancy when they convene on Dec. 19, with someone that can vote for Trump."

His decision followed a previous post in which he posed the question of whether it was "acceptable for a Christian to vote for a man like Trump for president," and concluded that he could not "in good conscience" do so.

"I do not see how Donald Trump is Biblically qualified to serve in the office of the presidency," he said in his Saturday post. 

"Of the hundreds of angry messages that I have received, not one has made a convincing case from Scripture otherwise. If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I cannot and will not vote for Donald Trump for president."

In the lengthy post, Sisneros explained his frustration with both progressives' and conservatives' approaches to the Electoral College and the failure to use the body in the way the founders intended, which Sisneros likened to parents acting "in the best interest of their children" even if in some cases their children desire otherwise.

"The people will get their vote. They will get their Skittles for dinner," he said. "I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic."

Meanwhile, a separate movement is openly lobbying for enough electors to refuse to vote for Trump.

Calling themselves the Hamilton Electors – a nod to Alexander Hamilton’s explanation of the Electoral College’s job as to ensure “the office of the President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications” – the group spurred by Democratic electors hopes to trigger the selection of another candidate through electors either changing their votes or abstaining from voting for Trump.

Electors are set to meet in their respective states across the country on Dec. 19 to formally cast their votes for president.