[ANarrativeApe]

"The Constitution explicitly forbids Congress from issuing bills of attainder—laws that single out individuals for punishment without trial. While that restriction technically applies to the Legislative branch, the spirit of it clearly applies here. A president cannot simply declare someone an enemy of the state for contradicting a political narrative. That’s not national security—it’s authoritarianism, dressed up in executive language."

So the Constitution does not forbid it. All executive orders, it could be argued, are authoritarian, not just the ones that you happen to dislike. The moral? Be damned careful to whom you give this authority.

[aqme28]

Well the way it should work is that executive orders are not laws and should not be treated as such. They’re supposed to be memos about how executive agencies should interpret the law. Somehow though, as congress has languished they’ve been accruing more and more power

[pclmulqdq]

Congress largely relinquished that power by creating bills that establish rule-making executive agencies rather than writing the rules themselves. That leaves congresspeople free to do things like trade stocks and raise money for their respective parties. They claim they would be too busy to read all the rules they would have to pass, but (1) that's the point and (2) they pass massive bills they don't read anyway. This version of America is fundamentally broken, but it seems to be the nash equilibrium of the system given greedy congrespeople and a greedy executive.

[SkyBelow]

When a law is passed that says "Do what the executive agency says.", then it makes executive orders that control that executive agency on the level of laws. Even with some limits in the original law, the executive order becomes like a law at least within those limits. But it isn't a law, meaning that some protections based on laws aren't offered. So now we run into an issue where we have things that aren't laws that effectively work as a law as far as the common man cares. The only simple fix I see for this is to require that all laws must clearly define what is and isn't illegal without any regard to another system's interpretation of the matter (but as with any simple fix, it is never that simple).

[intended]

All executive orders, it can be shown - expected a functioning set of co-equal branches of government.

Congress is broken - intentionally.

[caseysoftware]

Congress abdicated their role quite a while ago.

They don't even pass a budget anymore.. which they're explicitly required to do. They learned there are political consequences to their action so they handed their job to agencies in the Executive Branch to write their own rules which acted like laws.

When SCOTUS struck down Chevron Doctrine last year, it boiled down to "No, Congress writes the laws."

The fix is Congress doing their job.

[pjc50]

It's not broken, it's complicit. As I understand it Congress has a R majority, which is why all this is happening.

[sidewndr46]

The executive branch has the authority execute citizens that pose a threat, unilaterally. Deeming someone as a public enemy clearly shows a measure of restraint from that power. Thus it must be legal. Otherwise the executive branch would find themselves in a position where they cannot point out when something has been done to harm the US, but could in fact just kill that person without comment.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/obama-administration-cla...

[EasyMark]

We need to pass a law that makes it obvious that ANY executive order that clashes with a law that has been passed disagree, that the law wins. I know that's already the case, but it looks like it needs to be made a law so that it can go in front of SCOTUS. If a president has an issue with a law, he can always use his influence to see that a new law is passed or that it gets challenged in court; he can't simply issue an Executive order to override it.

I've also been imploring my friends to go vote, make sure their ID is in order because the current regime is going to do everything in their power to make sure than anyone under 65 has a tough time voting

[dspillett]

Under the current administration, what the constitution does and doesn't say may be entirely immaterial. They are perfectly happy running ripshod over the due process provisions of the fifth amendment so may choose to ignore, or at least try to ignore, any other part too.

It could be writen on single-ply toilet paper, and the paper hold more value.

Of course a lot of this is up in the air and could be resolved before the end of this term, as there are numerous legal challenges on-going, but perhaps not and with people openly taking about a 3rd term by various tricks (not blatantly declaring that it is happening, but I'd not put it past them!) such as him running as vice to someone else's election campaign then the president elect stepping down, this sort of ignorance of current law could continue for two terms or more.