“…have been relieved of their duties in order to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy." by illegally firing them? The Orange Menace must be stopped and Congress must stop him.
h/t @anniebergin
@davidaugust The problem is that the laws they are citing are themselves legally dubious.
These are executive branch employees, and it was always problematic to have the president's own employees in a position where they were supposed to police the president. That conflict of interest always existed, and laws supporting the conflict of interest don't really make sense.
So in the end, arguably they were not illegally fired.
@volkris @anniebergin not even a little. The U.S. Congress said there needs to be 30 days before termination precisely to give time for any termination to be stopped.
The laws you refer to don’t preserve the conflict of interest, they are designed and for many many years functioned to help avoid it.
So…no.
Separation of powers means that the Legislative Branch doesn't have full control over the co-equal Executive Branch, or else it wouldn't be co-equal.
This is core to the design of the US system, that the different branches have their own spheres and can't willy-nilly order each other around.
Shall we talk about the President saying what the Congress has to do? Of course that wouldn't be allowed. But it is for excellent reason that it doesn't go the other way.
After all, you can't impeach the president for actions of his branch if he's not responsible because Congress is the one ordering his employees to act in their positions.
It is critical to hold the president responsible for the actions of his Branch, and part of that is ensuring that he is responsible and unable to pass the buck to the legislative branch.
@volkris @anniebergin no one with the laws in question is doing any “willy-nilly order[ing] each other around.”
scotus firmly established oversight power is so essential to legislative function as implied from vesting of legislative powers in Congress in Article I of Constitution.
Example: potus cannot create a new agency without Congressional permission.
Internet search for more info if you choose. Good luck.
tl;dr: your characterization of separation of powers is flawed, deeply.
@davidaugust You're really begging the question here.
@volkris @anniebergin no, I’m not. You’re ignoring how separation of powers has in practice been achieved for 2 & a half centuries, failing to address the very clear & present danger that potus is: as I type this he’s working feverishly destroy it. You getting lost in fantasies of having 3 distinct branches of government that never interact is counterproductive.
Muting you for a week to not spend time on nonsense. Hope you’ll stop.
@davidaugust wow, so now you're adding a strawman attack on top of the question begging.
Let me be clear, when I say the Congress can't exert such authority over the coequal branch, you beg the question by saying but they can do this thing that exerts authority over the coequal branch. No, the whole point is they can't do that stuff. Naming other things that fall into a category of the thing that is in question doesn't progress your argument.
And now, three branches that don't interact? Where in the world did I say they don't interact? Of course they do! The whole point is to provide ways for them to interact productively and constructively.
That's the design of the US government, the core feature of it.
So you're just really off base here, not presenting a compelling argument but then arguing against something that's the opposite of my stance.
Hope you'll stop.
But I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
