#executive-power

#executive-power

When a president says his authority is limited only by his own morality, the Constitution has already been violated. The oath of office binds the president to law, not conscience, not instinct, not personal judgment. Claiming otherwise is a declaration that constitutional limits are optional. This is not rhetoric. It is an imminent danger. A president who believes only he restrains himself is asserting personal sovereignty. That is the definition of autocracy.

"The executive branch is getting very creative using the pockets of money at their disposal with no congressional oversight," Ed Al-Hussainy, portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle, tells Axios.

In just the past 11 months, his administration has canceled billions of dollars in foreign aid, frozen billions of dollars in research grants, imposed new conditions on other grants and contracts, slashed agency staffs, and even sought to claw back certain prior grant payments. At the same time, it has employed military resources to assist immigration enforcement, offered civil-service buyouts without statutory authority, and reportedly used a private donation to help pay military salaries during this fall's government shutdown.

Peering wide-eyed and black-turtlenecked from a shelf load of magazine covers. Honored as a "Woman of the Year" by Glamour. Touted as one of Time's "100 Most Influential People." At age 30, Holmes was regarded as a preternatural business talent - and, more impressively, described as the youngest self-made female billionaire in history - owing to her founding and stewardship of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize health care by diagnosing a host of maladies with just a pinprick's worth of blood.

President Donald Trump may be stretching executive power to its outermost bounds, but in one very significant area he is simply not getting his way: criminal prosecutions. In many cases-such as those of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, charges against whom were thrown out by a federal judge in Virginia today-the basic, ground-level machinery of the criminal-justice system has thwarted the administration.

As he hosted Republican senators at the White House, Trump offered some initial thoughts on the Democratic victories across the country on election night. Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. But I don't think it was good for Republicans, he said. I'm not sure it was good for anybody. He added: We had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot, and we're going to talk about that.

When asked whether United States President Donald Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act, Vice President JD Vance said this week that Trump is looking at all his options. The decision would allow Trump to deploy the US military domestically for law enforcement purposes without congressional authorisation and over the objections of state governors. list of 4 itemsend of list Vance's October 12 comment on NBC's Meet the Press was just one of many in recent months

has banned the president's deployment of National Guard units to Portland on the grounds that the president's claim that Portland is a "burning hellhole" besieged by violent anarchists is "untethered to facts."

And no surprise, judges in those countries have repeatedly done what Orban and Erdogan want. Donald Trump has not had the opportunity to pack the US supreme court to nearly the same degree. Nor has he, despite his brash, bullying ways, done much to pressure or browbeat the court's nine justices. Nevertheless, the court's conservative supermajority has ruled time after time in favor of Trump since he returned to office.

Calling the president's action a "breathtaking abuse of power," Newsom said in a statement that 300 California National Guard personnel were being deployed to Portland, Ore., a city the president has called "war-ravaged." "They are on their way there now," Newsom said of the National Guard. "This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power." Trump's move came a day after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the federalization of Oregon's National Guard.

Trump has 40 more months - four-fifths of his term - left to stretch it further. White House officials tell us they're just getting going. They see chaos as their brand and "consequence culture" taking root.