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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
x3: Again, I don't see what the issue is. It's been repeatedly stated that the Presidential powers are too great and without enough limits. Even though the things talked about in that article are unlikely, if it makes people actually consider examining the emergency power statutes and placing limits on the president, isn't that a good thing?
Edited by Ingonyama on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:08:26 AM
Look, just to put it all very bluntly: Trump invoking the powers in question is such a remote possibility that worrying about it is distinctly unhelpful. At best. And that article was pretty much junk.
If we want to start somewhere with curtailing Presidental powers, let’s start with the President’s almost-unlimited ability to expand military action to anywhere on Earth in the name of combating terrorism. This authority allowed Obama to push the US military into dozens of countries across multiple continents, and Trump is abusing it as we speak.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:09:30 AM
They should have sent a poet....and doesn't that fall under the same sorts of laws? So they're something the House Dems should be examining anyway?
And for that matter, I haven't heard any talk of limiting that power you're talking about. Last I heard the Dems (I think it was in the Senate?) tried to revoke the AUMF, but the Republicans squashed it. Has anything been said further about that, and is there anything the House can do about it now?
(Edited to reflect the name of the act in question, thank you Archon for that)
Edited by Ingonyama on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:34:03 AM
Then why are the unlikely scenarios the centerpiece of that article? Why are they things you decided to bring up as if they were serious probable issues?
And why are you not satisfied with the response "don't worry about them. We've got other issues to worry about instead."? Are you looking for people to agree that we should be terrified of these things happening?
Edited by M84 on Jan 5th 2019 at 11:11:57 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
No, not at all. That article is about what a President could do during a state of national emergency. Presidental war powers (not wartime powers, but war powers) derive from a different source, in the case I mentioned specifically the 2001 AUMF passed by Congress after 9/11.
The 2001 AUMF has been challenged pretty much continuously in Congress, from both sides of the aisle. Most recently in 2017 a group of libertarian senators came after it, but their amendment was squashed in committee. Just a few months ago Tim Kaine and Bob Corker put forward a change to the AUMF that would basically expand its scope to an unlimited degree, but they’re facing some serious challenges so we’ll see how it goes.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:25:11 AM
They should have sent a poet.Okay I’m slightly confused, which powers are being worried about here? Because from my reading here the big worrisome powers are ones Trump doesn’t have access to (because the US is not at war).
I can kinda understand worrying about Trump trying something with national emergency powers, but where do wartime powers come into it? Trump can’t declare war, a democratic congress isn’t going to declare war, so why have they been bought up at all?
Worrying about wartime powers is the equivalent of worrying about if Trump gained superpowers, he’s not going to get that power so why is what he’d do with it a concern?
Edited by Silasw on Jan 5th 2019 at 3:22:09 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran@ M84: I brought up the article because it had been stated that the emergency powers couldn't do the things I was worried about. Since I didn't know what all was contained in them, I did a search to try and find more information and posted it, not for the silly scenarios, but for the statutes they derived from. Which Archon admitted were useful information if you ignored the conclusions they came to.
Talk about putting words in my mouth. I wasn't trying to make anyone terrified or saying they should be. I was saying "okay here's what the statutes contain; it's possible they could do some really bad things if they were invoked" (which everyone here seemed to agree was a bad thing, judging by the calls to impeach him if he tried it, among other responses) "so maybe we should let our representatives know to keep an eye on it and be ready to respond, using the methods to combat it which were outlined at the end of the article".
As for not being satisfied, because what I was looking for was for people to agree that since we all thought the powers being invoked would be a bad thing, and everyone thinks the president's powers should be more limited in general anyway, then maybe it's not wrong to think Congress should be ready just in case, in addition to everything else they're doing.
But instead I get accused of wanting the Dems to drop everything to focus on this, and condescended to. I mean, I get accused of panicking and doomsaying, and then when I do a little more research and say "okay if the Cheeto tries anything even remotely like this, here's what can be done to stop it, let's let our reps know we support them in it" and...suddenly that isn't good enough?
The war powers are the ones Archon brought up. The others (which I reiterate, and he agreed, are pretty much unknown how they'd work or what would happen because most of them have never been used) only require him to declare the emergency, but this can be prevented by the courts if they examine the case and declare either there is no emergency or that the powers as used are unconstitutional. Or, as also stated, this can all just be prevented by Congress changing the laws to alter what counts as an emergency, what the powers can and can't be used for, and so forth.
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Thank you for answering my question. Though now I have to ask, isn't expanding the AUMF a bad thing? In which case we should want that to fail? Or am I misunderstanding?
Edited by Ingonyama on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:27:31 AM
Not you specifically, but that Atlantic article is panicking and doomsaying of the silliest variety.
National Emergency powers really aren’t something worth worrying about at this juncture.
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Yes, it probably is a bad thing. Unfortunately there are parts of the Democratic Party too that see forever war as a decent state of affairs.
Personally, I am in favor of robust Presidental war powers. It’s a negotiable point, something I’ve debated on many times. This, however, goes a bit too far.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:36:42 AM
They should have sent a poet.To (slightly) change the topic; Trump really wants to shift blame for the shutdown. Now he wants to call it a strike, implicitly blaming the very workers he's screwing over.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/04/politics/trump-calling-shutdown-strike/index.html
I am not worried about the war powers because they would require that the military obeys Trump - and I don't think that they would. So unless there is some clever general in the background who could take over the whole country (I doubt it), this is nothing to worry about in the sense of it actually playing out the way it could if Trump were actually competent.
The ongoing chaos is something to worry about. Basically, I am more worried about people dying of hunger than getting shot in the streets.
@ archon: Actually I was specifically accused of that (though not by you). And all I'm saying is that we might want to worry if he actually tries anything. If he doesn't, great. Either way though, it wouldn't hurt for Congress to reassess all the expanded powers of the presidency when they can, including these. (For one thing, as the article pointed out, the communication statute does need to be updated to reflect modern social media and the Internet. It covers only the telephone and telegraph, for goodness' sake.)
As for the AUMF, maybe if this fails, a more moderate change could be considered.
Edited by Ingonyama on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:42:40 AM
Well, I think it’s a fair accusation frankly. I can see where you’re coming from, but it’s really such a remote possibility at this time that worrying about it just isn’t productive. It comes across as doomsaying, even if it’s not intended that way, simply because of how remote it is. I’d focus on other things.
The AUMF is a tricky situation. We want to be able to pursue terrorists and put a halt to plots and what have you, but we also don’t want to give the military a blank check. Obama struck a good balance here, since he authorized and personally participated in most major military operations which kept a limit on things. Trump’s hands-off style combined with Obama-era freedoms is a dangerous combination.
In my mind, the best check on military authority would be a competent executive, not a strict legal framework.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:48:03 AM
They should have sent a poet.I'm not really interested in curtailing Presidential powers to use military force, someone like Trump having them is bad but Congress is such an ossified and inefficient institution that them having the sole power to deploy military force would almost certainly hurt our interests so much more in the long run.
We need fast and reactive leadership that is able to deploy military assets whenever and wherever necessary, that more or less disqualifies Congress.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangTrump Claims Again ‘Most of the Workers Not Getting Paid Are Democrats’’ But Says He Doesn’t Care
Trying to make sense of this. Yesterday he claimed (without evidence) that the people on furlough were fine without being paid because they think the wall is more important, and now he claims that those furloughed are mostly Democrats (most of whom would be against the wall).
Edited by speedyboris on Jan 5th 2019 at 10:05:12 AM
He probably isn't wrong, government employees are often Democrats because the Democratic Party actually wants their jobs to exist and the ones who aren't (the military) are being funded anyway.
It's still awful and disgusting that Trump wants to hurt millions of Americans because of their political affiliation but that's not really insane.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 5th 2019 at 11:07:34 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang@ archon: Not really sure how that works, since learning of a possible bad thing, then finding out there's a means to combat it which would prevent awful stuff from happening as long as those in power know to make use of it, is the opposite of doomsaying.
But whatever. What matters to me is that I learned what the solution is (which I didn't know before), and if anything happens to make it necessary, I know what to say to my representative. If it never becomes necessary, or if they already know what to do and do it without any prompting, then great. And either way, I'll still keep following the stuff that is actually happening, and what's being done about it.
Anyway, enough of that. I have to agree that if the shutdown lasts long enough to affect tax filing and refunds, that will likely be the breaking point. I just hope it doesn't come to that.
Edited by Ingonyama on Jan 5th 2019 at 8:22:12 AM
In the context of this thread, doomsaying is worrying about dire far-future events that are unlikely to come to pass. Worrying about Trump putting NE powers to use fits neatly into that definition, hence why people have accused you of it
Others have spoken more at length about exactly why doomsaying is unproductive, but The short version is that it doesn’t really add anything to the discourse. There’s just no point in worrying about something like that right now, it’s silly.
They should have sent a poet.It's still awful and disgusting that Trump wants to hurt millions of Americans because of their political affiliation but that's not really insane.
It's also, as you said, awful and disgusting. He's supposed to be president for all Americans, not just his base.

What's "Jade Helm", if I might ask? I've never seen the phrase before.