This will end badly and it will not be fun at all in the end, but it is fascinating to watch how this new wave of fascism unfolds.

A good read: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-purge-of-the-deep-sta...

Yeah, if we (even in other countries) weren't all personally affected by it, I couldn't stop laughing. The way things are, I'd rather go with Max Liebermann, who reportedly commented on the previous wave of fascism with the words "I couldn't eat as much as I would like to throw up" ("Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte" - https://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/93763).

Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You really have to read it twice to understand just how far out that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?

Or Trump fucking referring to himself as king yesterday .. signs are clear.

Honest question: who else, internal to the executive branch, and besides the president, should be able to interpret the laws for the executive branch?

By my reading, this is a clarification that if an agency makes a significant policy change or regulation, they ought to run it by the president first.

It doesn't preclude other branches of government from checking this power.

Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it’s frequently useful to have them hash out agreements for the same reason that it’s useful for scientists to get peer review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it’s good to have multiple people validate your reasoning.