I’ve never been a fan of the “Donald Trump plays 3D chess while the Dems play checkers” mantra. The President is clearly a smart guy, but the Dems must have some smart people too. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so close to that socialist utopia they’re trying to create. However I must admit, President Trump’s blitz attack on the swamp has me questioning my assumption about the intelligence of the left.
Most of the problems we have with the Washington bureaucracy were created by Congress being lazy, malicious, or both. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to create executive functions – a power which it has exercised enthusiastically over the years. But some decades ago, Congress began delegating law-making authority to executive regulatory agencies.
Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, with a mission to ensure clean air and water – period. It gave the EPA a pile of taxpayer money, and the authority to create regulations as needed to accomplish its mission – which turned out to be a big mistake.
The EPA started out okay, and our air and water quality improved significantly. But unrestrained bureaucracies always attempt to expand their scope, and the EPA was no different. Now the agency has classified carbon dioxide as an environmental hazard. That means the air we exhale – and is required for plants to live – is now considered a pollutant. I doubt Congress had that in mind when it founded the EPA.
Another such agency is the United States Aid for International Development (USAID), which is part of the State Department. Congress founded it, directed it to assist in international development, gives it about $50 billion per year of taxpayer money, and said, “you figure out how to do your mission.” The USAID answered the call by funding “sex changes in Guatemala,” the “fight against disinformation in Kazakhstan,” and a plethora of other nonsensical projects.
The same issue is happening with every other government department. Bureaucrats are attempting to dictate all aspects of life in America without debate, oversight, or accountability. The Democrats like it that way because they’re advocates of total government control – the communism that candidate Walz is such a fan of.
The whole Washington mess has gotten so absurd that the country elected Donald Trump to fix it. He and his merry band of disrupters are delivering on his promises by
- Firing people who won’t come to work,
- Cancelling wasteful financial outlays (like those of the USAID),
- Shuttering departments (e.g. DEI departments), and
- Issuing new government guidelines (e.g. no boys in girls sports).
The left has predictably responded as they always do, crying for activist judges to hobble the new administration. Democrats like Obama and Biden didn’t appoint judges. They appointed activists to the bench. Hence, there are plenty of radicals in robes who are more than willing to violate the Constitution in serving the wishes of the checkers-playing left.
Several such judges have provided restraining orders and injunctions preventing the Trump administration from firing insubordinate government workers, prohibiting the Treasury Secretary from accessing records in his own department, and ordering the President to spend the USAID funds that Congress provided, according to the preferences of department employees rather than presidential policy.
Just like that, we now have the Constitutional crisis that the Dems warned of if Donald Trump were elected. The federal bureaucracy now has judicial permission to operate free of any elected oversight. The Supreme Court won’t to be able to avoid taking on that issue without killing the Constitution and the republic for good.
I’m starting to wonder: Was it really a high priority for President Trump to stop funding for “Sri Lanka journalist training to avoid binary gendered language”? Or was the Donald baiting the radicals into a legal fight he wanted to have? Is Trump playing chess with the swamp, sacrificing the occasional pawn for strategic advantage? Is he willing to lose on “LGBT advocacy in Jamaica,” in exchange for a Supreme Court decision that the Constitution actually means what it says – that the Chief Executive is really the chief of the executive branch?
Is President Trump presenting the Supreme Court with a binary decision: Either the President is empowered to make decisions about the agencies he is elected to run, or are those agencies are free to act independently to fund “art for inclusion of people with disabilities in Belarus.” I suspect the absurdity of the USAID’s choices will make it a relatively easy 6 to 3 decision – the judges and “flip flopper” in the majority, and the activists in the minority.
If the court reaffirms the President’s authority over the executive branch, it will have huge implications. The President will be able to
- Fire insubordinate employees,
- Spend the piles of money Congress programed for his agencies on his priorities rather than theirs, and
- Use the authorities delegated by Congress to completely overhaul the nation’s regulatory environment.
Just imagine where this could end. Congress – especially when led by Democrats – won’t dare give such unfettered authority and funding to the regulatory agencies in the future. The House and Senate will actually need to … debate the issues, make regulatory decisions, and provide specific directions for executive branch agencies. Why, it could cause … transparency. That will be “checkmate.”
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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