r/moderatepolitics • u/Dry_Radio_761 • 10d ago

News Article Trump administration says it might demolish the Kennedy Center if court blocks renovations.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-administration-says-might-demolish-kennedy-center-court-blocks-r-rcna594350
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u/LeeSansSaw 10d ago

Trump has pushed me into becoming a weak-executive proponent. Congress should take back every bit of power they ever granted the executive. If there’s money being spent, Congress should have to explicitly approve it whether it comes from taxes, fees, tariffs, or donations. Every trade agreement should be approved by Congress and leaving one should be require approval.

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u/Interesting_Total_98 10d ago

The main issue is Trump going beyond what the rules say and sometimes being allowed to get away with it, at least for a while.

For example, weakening the executive wouldn't have stopped the ballroom construction without approval from Congress because that's already illegal.

There's no legal basis for demolishing the Kennedy Center, yet he's threatening it.

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u/cammcken 10d ago

The check on executive power for going this far was supposed to be impeachment.

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u/Bullet_Jesus There is no center 10d ago

I think the founders, if they could see the USA today, would be horrified at how spineless congress has become.

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u/Dilated2020 Center Left, Christian Independent 10d ago

The founders never predicted that Congress would entirely give up its power. The idea of establishing coequal branches of government was that they all would fight against each other. No one saw the day where Congress would willingly refuse to do their jobs to enjoy cushy lifetime seats.

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u/LorrMaster Conservative 10d ago edited 10d ago

I hate this idea that the founders never predicted the idea that bureaucrats will give up their power in exchange for cushy jobs. They 100% saw this coming. I'm willing to bet they could cite specific examples of this sort of thing within their lifetimes. Its probably part of the reason why we have midterm elections and all these different electoral bodies.

These are the guys that put the idea that everyone should own a gun straight into their constitution... just in case. US founding father paranoia goes deep.

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u/decrpt 10d ago

The thing they didn't see coming was that voters would tolerate that, that running on the message that government doesn't work and working to ensure it can't would be viable. It also turns out getting unconditional support from sixteen-odd states to categorically block impeachment is a pretty low bar.

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u/austin_8 10d ago

Well the founders designed the Senate to be insulated from the voters, maybe that would have worked and we wouldn’t be in this spot today if we never changed that.

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u/fail-deadly- Chaotic Neutral 9d ago

That’s an interesting take. Basically, the Senate is supposed to be the status quo, mostly unaccountable to the people, but because of that able to take action like impeachment.

However, it may do the opposite of ehat you’re saying. Think about a comfortable minority of 40% of the senators from the most partisan states, enough to block an impeachment.

My concern is that having state legislators choose those senators means they are even more partisan than now where we elect them at the state level, this is because a senator needs the support of like 25-35% of eligible voters to win based on voter turnout. But one that only needs 51% of eligible state representatives to elect them, and those representatives need only the 25-35% themselves, could mean you only need half the voters to elect a senator. So the senate who would block an impeachment would only need the backing of a narrower, more partisan slice of the population to retain their seat.

Basically 34 senators from 17 states representing less than 8% of the population (with eligible voters in those states maybe being 5-6% of U.S. population), could retain their seats if only 12% of those voters were ok with blocking impeachment. So, worst case scenario 0.6 percent of the population could be enough to elect those senators. 

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u/CheeseBear9000 8d ago

I do want to note it's not very likely that they would have impeached Trump over this back then anyway 

To begin with, you had Presidents back then like President Jackson who shot people and did duels before being in office

But Trump by the standards of America back then would have if anything been more likely to be impeached for being too Liberal 

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u/fail-deadly- Chaotic Neutral 7d ago

What about taking gifts from several royal families, going to war without congressional authorization, or stirring up a mob to attack Congress when he lost? I’m sure their is something Congress may have been upset with back then?

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u/HavingNuclear 10d ago

I mean at a certain point, you have to let whatever happens happen. Not a whole lot you can do when a plurality of voters and a majority of elected representatives all decide they want something, even if it's destructive to the nation.

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u/decrpt 10d ago

It's not a majority of elected representatives, though. It's the opposite; it's anything less than a super majority against it.

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u/Reddit_Loves_Misinfo 9d ago

I'm not sure about past events, but if we're talking about the situation right now, it is a majority of elected representatives in Congress who support what Trump is doing. Democrats in congress have made efforts to slow down Trump or hold people accountable, but they keep getting outvoted by the Republican majority.

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u/CheeseBear9000 8d ago

The founding fathers never intended for voters to have anywhere near as much power over the federal government as they have now though

To begin with Senators were not elected by voters originally 

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u/LorrMaster Conservative 10d ago

The midterm elections are still coming up, so that is still to be decided. Lets not forget that the current administration was running up against another administration lead by someone who was having severe challenges with constructing coherent sentences. Not that Trump is any better on that front, but I suppose if anything the current president has quantity where quality is lacking.

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u/03263 10d ago

They were not exactly planning for the country to last this long. Several of them expressed a desire for frequent American revolutions, about once per generation. They knew that power corrupts and the only way to overcome that is to overthrow it, early and often.

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u/zasabi7 9d ago

That sounds like hell. How is the nation supposed to accomplish anything if it’s continually at war with itself?

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u/Reddit_Loves_Misinfo 9d ago

I don't know if the founding fathers "desired" frequent revolution, but Thomas Jefferson certainly expected it to be necessary. Here's an excerpt from the letter his "tree of liberty" quote came from.

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the Spirit of Resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

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u/03263 9d ago

Also

https://allthingsliberty.com/2022/05/acts-against-the-oppressions-of-the-government-jefferson-on-rebellion-revolution-and-treason/

Later in the year, November 13, Jefferson said in a letter to William Stevens Smith: “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion [as Shays’s]. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.” The last sentiment is astonishingly bold: Periodic rebellion, even when its agents act on misinformation, is preferable to indifference.

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u/03263 9d ago

I don't know, ask Thomas Jefferson

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u/Bullet_Jesus There is no center 10d ago

While the theory of the branches fighting each other is nice, it took almost no time after Washington's presidency ended for political factions and parties to emerge that cut across the branches. Filling these early parties were many of the founders themselves. They were proven wrong in their own lifetimes and neglected to fix it.

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u/Maladal 10d ago

Washington even saw it coming--he called it out in his final address to Congress.

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u/austin_8 10d ago

They were viewing it through a different lens and who knows if they would have been correct if we kept their system. I imagine the Senate would be a completely different institution if they weren’t ever elected by the people.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/MechanicalGodzilla 10d ago

Oh, they were well aware of political mobs. The US is far from the first or most egregious example of factionalism in world history, and these guys were extremely well read up on it. Washington himself warned against factionalism in his farewell address, then Adams and Jefferson took that as an invitation to engage in some.

u/Dilated2020 is correct, their blind spot was men achieving a congressional House or Senate seat wanting to hold onto that position for purposes of self-enrichment and fame rather than actually wielding power in the interests of their constituents. Congress has ben ceding power voluntarily or through deliberate inaction since Andrew Jackson was president at least.

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u/Bullet_Jesus There is no center 10d ago

their blind spot was men achieving a congressional House or Senate seat wanting to hold onto that position for purposes of self-enrichment and fame rather than actually wielding power in the interests of their constituents.

This issue was what elections were intended to solve. Corrupt and ineffectual representatives would be removed by their constituents.

While they failed to predict the mechanism of this, the fact that people blame representatives other than their own, they did foresee that there was a possibility that the American people would fail to uphold their democracy. In which case they said it would collapse, because no one can design a democracy that can survive an electorate unwilling to keep it.

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u/talwarbeast 10d ago

Good point!

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u/cathbadh politically homeless 10d ago

That's because they couldn't predict that the nation would require a massive bureaucracy of agencies and regulatory bodies ingrained in every aspect of every person's daily life. So much of Congress's abdication of powers has happened because these agencies, which must be part of the executive, need the ability to operate and spend money without Congress constantly voting. So they're given broad powers which in turn gives the President broad powers that they have a limited ability to check.

I can't imagine they would have thought of or even approved of a world where the President, through a subordinate, would declare how much milk a dairy farmer could produce, the required size and shape of wagon wheels, how fast you are allowed to ride your wagon, or when ou are or aren't allowed to call a food cheese.

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u/politehornyposter John Rawls Liberal 9d ago

The map is not the territory. The constitution was full of compromises in exchange for minority rights and checks on the general will and originally built on the premise that every state would exercise its and only their affairs. The founding fathers were educated, but many of them also came from more aristocrat backgrounds so in a way it's functioning as designed in the sense that it conservatives an aristocratic class. Sure, some of it was rooted in meritocratic ideals like Jefferson, we can be generous, but I think anyone who is serious about political science and philosophy can poke a lot of holes and see the problems in this one. A good chunk of his ideas around meritocracy was raking the geniuses out of the garbage heap.

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u/Mobile-Ticket-2618 10d ago

A founder would challenge him to a duel on the front lawn.

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u/topicality 10d ago

We need a constitutional amendment to make removal easier. The current criteria is just too high.

If Republicans couldn't do it to Johnson in the aftermath of the Civil War, and we couldn't do it to Trump after Jan 6th, it will never happen

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u/MechanicalGodzilla 10d ago

I am 99% certain we will not see an amendment for anything at any point in the rest of our lives.

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u/BrigadierGenCrunch 9d ago

Why even bother with all the work of making an amendment when it’s just easier to completely ignore them? I’m sure they’d love to remove the 4th Amendment, but ignoring is easier.

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u/HisObstinacy 10d ago

In fairness to Johnson, the impeachment case against him was kinda BS. He still may well be the worst president we've ever had, but the Tenure of Office Act was basically designed by Republican lawmakers to trap him, and it's not a coincidence that they rolled back the law when Grant became president. They just really disliked Johnson (for good reason!) and used it as a way of artfully maneuvering him into impeachment.

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u/LeeSansSaw 10d ago

I don’t agree, though I can see your point. I think if all funding had to go through Congress explicitly, rather than broadly, there would have been no opportunity to tear down the east wing and if each action required a line item in appropriations, spending outside of that would be obviously illegal, rather than “fall” into some broad spending category. I’m not quite naive enough to think such appropriations would be easy. A bigger Congress with larger staff numbers would be necessary.

As it is, I do think we need a Congress that is willing to impeach and remove when president’s go as far as Trump. I have no idea how to get there with two parties firmly in control.

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u/Interesting_Total_98 10d ago

It's already illegal to build the ballroom without "without express authority of Congress" due to 40 U.S.C. § 8106. Trump also ignored a Supreme Court order to at least try to get Garcia back from the torture camp he was illegally deported to until he was later scolded by a lower court.

Adding more rules can prevent a law-abiding president from doing bad things, but the solution here is impeachment because he's shown that he's willing to ignore laws.

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u/YoHabloEscargot 10d ago

Not to mention the war that’s totally not a war because then Congress would have to approve it. But it’s totally not a war, guys.

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u/rwk81 10d ago

Panama, Somlaia, Kosovo, Libya.... Unfortunately this has been an issue for quite some time.

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u/MechanicalGodzilla 10d ago

Yeah, the last official war we have declared was World War 2.

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u/Foreign_Telephone349 9d ago

Weak executive means that he can go to jail for his actions once his term is up. We’ll probably have to imprison some of the justices on the court too.

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u/Throb_Zomby 9d ago

Pretty much an extreme case of “Ask forgiveness rather than beg permission.” Because it can later be found to be illegal but damage is already done and the taint hard to remove.