A Revolutionary Turn-around

Donald J. Trump, 45th President under the Constitution of these United States, may be re-​establishing some constitutional order.

“The president has the power to veto half-​baked legislation,” explains Josh Blackman at the National Review. “If Trump returned a bill to Congress, stating in his message that it failed to include sufficient guidelines, there would be a paradigm shift in Washington, D.C.” And, in recent speeches at the Federalist Society, Blackman notes, administration lawyers appear to be advancing just such a shift:

1. Congress must no longer delegate legislative power to the executive branch;
2. Informal “guidance documents” must no longer be used to deprive people of the due process of law; and
3. The courts’ rubber-​stamping of executive diktats must end.

Couple this agenda with Trump’s just-​in-​office executive order instructing that two old rules be stricken for every new rule concocted, and we could be witnessing an almost-​revolutionary turn-​around here. 

Why is this happening?

Not, I think, because Trump is an originalist or strict constructionist. “Donald Trump did not campaign for president as the guy who would reverse the mostly unbroken, century-​old trend of the executive power assuming more and more power in the face of an increasingly self-​marginalizing Congress,” Matt Welch reminds us over at Reason.

Maybe it is because Trump has been so roundly scorned and rejected and rebelliously opposed by Democrats in general and the far left in particular — including, especially, most major media figures — that the mogul-turned-politician’s many and obvious left-​leaning proclivities have been made … politically useless. His opposition on the left has sent him right … to good policy.

On this issue, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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