It's a bit problematic how Biden has (a) narrow, limited power to have his agency draw up a student loan forgiveness process consistent with the statutes passed by Congress; but (b) complete immunity to tell everyone at Dept of Edu, "mark those loans as $0 or I'll put you in a pine box."
to put a sharper point on this, the President’s power to pass an executive order regulating emissions is severely hampered. his power to use the DOJ or the military to regulate emissions is nearly unlimited
So based on decisions from just this week, the President, as long has he has the gloss of officialdom, can basically do anything without legal restraint, whereas the President, acting via duly appointed agencies authorized by Congress, is more restrained than ever?
What a coherent jurisprudence!
Well, importantly any reversible decision the president makes is subject to judicial review. But if he orders the military to wipe out all the records of student debt, well, there's not much you can do about it and he is also immune from prosecution
While he is at, order Treasury to seize all assets of the Kochs, the Mercers, and all other major R donors pending the outcomes of tax fraud investigations.
Is that an official act? Like even beyond the lack of a clear definition and my skepticism there was any consensus about what today's ruling *means*, that just seems, at its face, not something the President can officially do
They could come back around with another ruling that says, yes, actually, it is, but that seems like a good reason not to spend the interim normalizing it!
I feel like now would be a good time to declassify the Ukraine call transcript. And maybe all the redacted bits of the Mueller report. And maybe whatever it was FBI already had that made them go to Trump in 2016 to tell him to watch out for Russian spies.
This is fucked because the only way we can ever get a "consensus" to make it illegal for presidents to have all their enemies killed or tortured is to actually kill or torture a bunch of people. If GOPers don't believe we'd ever hurt them they'll never support bringing back the rule of law.
