Donald Trump’s attack on Iran may set off a showdown over the president’s authority to declare war. The case could end up in court, giving conservative justices a long-awaited chance to end Congress’s ability to limit presidents’ warmaking powers.
Saw this on bluesky the other day and it’s been rolling around my brain ever since:
On the one hand, the US Presidency is fundamentally broken.
On the other hand, the US Congress is fundamentally broken.
On the third hand, the US Supreme Court is fundamentally broken.
Our entire system of governance needs to be updated for the 21st century, but with current leadership I can only see that as creating more harm for the citizenry.
These leader do not have the skillset necessary to rewrite the structure of the US government or the desire to do so to the benefit of most Americans. Any attempt would be a power giveaway to the wealthy, the well connected and the corporate.
Jon Stewart did an excellent interview with Maria Ressa of the Philippines, and they outlined how her country modelled itself with the US system of government. Unfortunately, the Philippines was used as a testing ground for American social media platforms, proving that the collapse of one branch of government did not engage any checks to balance the loss.
In her opinion, the collapse of one branch essentially meant the full collapse of government.
Republicans: Trump is not a dictator!
SCOTUS: Not a dictator yet!
It’ll be “fun” to see how they spin it so that the constitution says that the president has a power that it explicitly gives to congress.
The spin will be “yeah but the Framers never expected such a smart, handsome, and big-handed president!”
It is the opinion of this court that the President is exercising his power to “have fun”. Congressional authorization is not required for “having fun”.
“We cite Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 ruling that ‘girls just wanna have fun’”
Possibly some variant of this.
He can try to fight a war by himself, then. If congress doesn’t fund the military industrial complex, they’ll go elsewhere. However I have never seen congress going against military funding, for some reason, even though we’ve continually enabled them to do war crimes for pretty much my entire life.
Trump would make US troops fight without pay before he would end Israel’s war.
Executive Branch’s tariff plan gets around the Congressional spending controls. I’m pretty sure those funds from tariffs are income that doesn’t come from taxpayer budgets that Congress controls/approves.
Trying to fund the entire military complex through tariff revenues would mean cutting 3/4ths of military spending, or 5/6th of Trump’s proposed spending.
