Trump Admin Lawbreaking – The Spreadsheet
The first few weeks of the Trump Administration puts it on the worst-case path warned of by many. Trump was elected as president, the head of the executive branch whose job is to implement laws passed by Congress. In our system, the president has a lot of room to manage the many agencies of the federal government, but only within the law.
Laws are not just about murder or speeding. Congress – with the cooperation of the president – passed laws to create agencies such as USAID or CFPB, specified the missions of the agencies, and determines their funding. A king can decide that he no longer wants a whole agency to exist or if it should do twice as much or half as much as it was mandated to do. A president has to convince Congress to write a new law.
Not only are Trump’s individual actions illegal, but the entire way that he has empowered Elon Musk to step in and run whole agencies is illegal.
In the 1800s, when the federal government did a lot less than it did now, Presidents would fire government workers and replace them with friends and supporters: “to the victor go the spoils”. This spoils system was reformed because it allowed the president to use federal positions to reward friends and punish enemies. In the system we have had for decades, the president chooses the agency leadership – with the “advise and consent” of Congress – but not the people who report to them. Laws specify how civil servants are hired and fired.
The spoils system is the essence of Trump’s way of life. Federal workers swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, but he is making them swear loyalty to him. This is how Putin’s Russia works too, and every government based on the rule of one man. The Great Leader makes all the decisions, no one can reverse them, and since he can decide to reward or punish anyone he wants, everyone is at his mercy.
That’s why, even if you do not like the US spending about 1% of the federal budget on foreign aid or you do not care what the Consumer Finance Protection Board does, you should be alarmed at what Trump is doing. Because if he can swat away things you do not care about, he can also swat away things that you do.
Ultimately, he can also swat away you or your family. That is not always how dictatorships begin, but it is usually how they end.
The law-breaking in the last 3 weeks has come on so fast and thick that you need a program to keep it straight. Here it is: some of the most prominent actions the Trump administration has taken to break the law.
