Post by demos on Jul 22, 2020 17:11:21 GMT
Trump consults Bush torture lawyer on how to skirt law and rule by decree
The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding on how the president might try to rule by decree.
John Yoo told the Guardian he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws.
“If the court really believes what it just did, then it just handed President Trump a great deal of power, too,” Yoo, a professor at Berkeley Law, said...
In a June article in the National Review, he wrote that a supreme court decision that blocked Trump’s attempt to repeal Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, known as Daca and established by executive order, meant Trump could do the same thing to achieve his policy goals.
Daca suspended deportations of undocumented migrants who arrived in the US as children. As an example of what Trump might achieve in the same way, Yoo suggested the president could declare a national right to carry firearms openly, in conflict with many state laws.
“He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws,” Yoo wrote, “and that a new ‘Trump permit’ would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions.
“Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency,” he said. In a telephone interview, he added: “According to the supreme court, the president can now choose to under-enforce the law in certain areas and it can’t be undone by his successor unless that successor goes through this onerous thing called the Administrative Procedure Act, which usually takes one to two years...”
The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding on how the president might try to rule by decree.
John Yoo told the Guardian he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws.
“If the court really believes what it just did, then it just handed President Trump a great deal of power, too,” Yoo, a professor at Berkeley Law, said...
In a June article in the National Review, he wrote that a supreme court decision that blocked Trump’s attempt to repeal Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, known as Daca and established by executive order, meant Trump could do the same thing to achieve his policy goals.
Daca suspended deportations of undocumented migrants who arrived in the US as children. As an example of what Trump might achieve in the same way, Yoo suggested the president could declare a national right to carry firearms openly, in conflict with many state laws.
“He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws,” Yoo wrote, “and that a new ‘Trump permit’ would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions.
“Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency,” he said. In a telephone interview, he added: “According to the supreme court, the president can now choose to under-enforce the law in certain areas and it can’t be undone by his successor unless that successor goes through this onerous thing called the Administrative Procedure Act, which usually takes one to two years...”
First, Bolton, now John Yoo. Yeesh.
Edit to add: If you read the National Review article, Yoo seems critical of the SCOTUS decision, because it would allow Presidents to violate the law. But John Yoo is really not someone that needs to be involved in goverment imo.
And here is a response to Yoo's NR article.
