A President (and the priorities of his administration) can make bad programs much worse.

Take marijuana enforcement as an inverse example. The federal law around marijuana hasn't changed, and it's as illegal in 2020 to use, grow, and sell as it was in 2004. But the Obama administration made clear to the DEA and FBI that pursuit and enforcement of that law in states that had passed their own laws to legalize it would be a career-limiting move, which gave the states breathing room to experiment (and allowed hard evidence to gather that allowing medicinal and recreational use wouldn't cause societal collapse or, really, almost any negative outcomes).

This aspect of the intersection of law and executive enforcement is why the Trump administration is correctly condemned for worsening the situation regarding immigration in the US. Most of the laws the administration uses have been on the books since before 2016. This administration chooses the harshest and cruelest ways to interpret and execute on those laws.

While Obama might have been nice to some states in some contexts that passed some laws he was as if not more aggressive on weed than the previous administration.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/obamas-w...

https://swampland.time.com/2012/05/03/what-is-president-obam...

This was a big deal back during his term which I feel like people are already forgetting.

That didn't really change enforcement elsewhere and choosing Biden for his VP, who is basically the legal architect of the entire War on Drugs, sent a huge signal.

The Obama administration did exactly nothing for prison reform, which coincidentally is probably going to be a big part of Trump's legacy (he's done more on this than any other President), and nothing for situations where marijuana possession suddenly makes other things criminal (like owning a firearm _and_ marijuana).

For as poor as Trump's record with women is, it's pretty shameful for everyone else that he's the president that made sure tampons are widely available in women's prisons.

Yep. These are examples of the effects that a President can have on policy I was referring to.

> A President (and the priorities of his administration) can make bad programs much worse.

Ok? So that should counteract the behavior.

> This aspect of the intersection of law and executive enforcement is why the Trump administration is correctly condemned for worsening the situation regarding immigration in the US.

There is an element of "outrage" culture that means to ascribe new fault, in the established pursuit of a "federally safe" cryptography, to the administration as a proxy for other wrongs. This is not relevant to the issue of original fault.