It's not even established that he has the power. The fact that they do something doesn't mean they have that power.
And given that, it doesn't mean that you get to ignore all other rules.
> You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
When you're firing thousands of people, some due diligence is in order, no?
[–] rayiner 2 days ago
[–] xg15 2 days ago
I love this. Yes, and then several years later, the courts can declare his order was in fact illegal when it's already far, far too late to reverse any of it.
That kind of "oversight" is no oversight at all. If you believe this is just how things should be, then you want a king with unrestricted power, not a president.
[–] rayiner 2 days ago
The President isn’t a “king” he’s a CEO. A CEO doesn’t need permission from a court to spend the company’s own money or to take executive actions about the company’s own operations.
[–] eszed 2 days ago
Now, the US legislature has, in recent decades, delegated so many of its prerogatives, and overlooked so much executive overreach, that your misappropriation is completely understandable. In fact, though, the current situation is exactly what the framers of the US Constitution most feared. (You can read their discussions at the time collected in a volume called "The Federalist Papers".) Their inability to devise a system to meet a threat they fully anticipated argues against their much-heralded "genius".
Total side-note: CEO as sovereign within "their" company is, arguably, also a perverse interpretation of the US corporate governance model. Feel free to argue that point without me, HN - I know that's just how that works nowadays - but it's totally wrong to import that model into government, where it's explicitly not intended.
[–] hackingonempty 2 days ago
It's like byzantine faults, no system can protect you if you don't have some minimum of correctly functioning legislators, judges, and executives.
[–] hollerith 1 day ago
Not only is he an American, but also he routinely makes arguments to American Federal judges very similar to the argument he is making here or at least he is a colleague and coworker of people who do.
[–] xorcist 1 day ago
[–] xtiansimon 2 days ago
Given the Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United, Loper Bright, and Hobby Lobby I find this notion obscene.
[–] hvb2 2 days ago
It's not hr writing the rules here. It's them enforcing what they were given.
Also, they're not saying he cannot do what they want to do. It's that the law prescribes that certain things need to happen first.
Those rules were given to them by elected people in Congress.
Edit:
To add
> But the President doesn’t need a court ruling giving permission before he exercises his powers.
The system was created with the assumption that the president would act cautiously and judiciously. This administration doesn't care about whether something is lawful. When you act fast enough the damage will be done before your called out on it.
South Korea saw a president declare martial law and the other branches held him accountable very quickly. I am not convinced the US in the current state would.
[–] rayiner 2 days ago
Not at all. The founders were focused on having a vigorous executive who could “just do things.” https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp. The system they created is not based on the premise of cautious bureaucracy. It was based on having frequent elections that would empower a vigorous president and political appointees to carry out what they had campaigned on.
The founders were men of action. They would be horrified by how our government today is run by lawyers through APA litigation. The HR-ification of the American government is a mid-20th century invention.
[–] hollerith 1 day ago
An unreliable source writes, "litigants frequently use the Administrative Procedure Act to argue that an agency acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, failed to follow required notice-and-comment procedures, or exceeded its statutory authority."
[–] khriss 2 days ago
100%, just not in the direction you think. They would be apalled at Trump's blatant, in your face corruption all while the MAGA base cheers him on.
[–] tacitusarc 2 days ago
I do not believe this is true historically
Sure, I agree with that. But the President doesn’t need a court ruling giving permission before he exercises his powers. The President is the chief executive in charge of government operations, not the courts. If he’s acting outside his authority, you can sue him and then the courts can figure it out.
> When you're firing thousands of people, some due diligence is in order, no
Not when those people work for the government. This is one of the few things I agree with FDR on: the nature of democracy means that government employees must have less employment protections than private sector workers, not more. Even if you have an expansive view of what the constitution allows in terms of Congress providing for independent executive branch agencies, at most that means the President can’t ignore Congress’s intent in funding certain programs. But that still doesn’t allow the bureaucracy invoking HR rules to protect itself against the actions of the elected branches. That effectively gives a small class of people more say over the operation of the government than the electorate as a whole.