Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0003
C. Ball
This chapter explains how liberal states, with the enthusiastic support of progressives across the country, repeatedly exercised their authority as sovereigns to oppose and challenge some of the Trump administration’s most misguided, harmful, and discriminatory policies. State-based resistance to the Trump administration was particularly robust in matters related to immigration and environmental regulations. State-based policies were also crucial in filling the void left by the Trump administration’s failure to provide effective national leadership on issues that desperately demanded it, including the stemming of gun violence and controlling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The chapter argues that if progressives going forward embrace federalism only situationally—defending it when there is a conservative in the White House, but dismissing its relevance or appropriateness when there is a liberal in that position—then it is less likely that the principle will remain a viable and effective tool in resisting the policies of a future right-wing administration in the Trumpian mold. In contrast, if progressives after the Trump era defend federalism as a matter of principle, then it is more likely that the concept will retain its constitutional and political legitimacy, making it available to progressives in future years when confronting another right-wing and potentially autocratic federal administration.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0005
C. Ball
This chapter explores the many ways in which Trump abused the powers of his office to create what it calls a Madisonian nightmare. Trump’s abuses of power included his efforts (1) to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference with the 2016 election; (2) to gain personal, political advantages from Ukraine and other countries while carrying out his official duties as president; (3) to obstruct the exercise of Congress’s impeachment and other investigatory powers; (4) to push the Department of Justice to investigate his political enemies and to protect his political allies from the enforcement of federal law; (5) to punish sanctuary jurisdictions for refusing to help implement the administration’s harsh immigration policies; and (6) to defy Congress by reallocating funds to pay for a border wall despite congressional disapproval of such action. These abuses of power show why it is crucial for progressives going forward to prioritize the reining in of presidential power in domestic affairs as a political issue, adding it to traditional liberal concerns such as economic justice and civil rights protections. The chapter ends with specific suggestions on how Congress and the courts can constitutionally limit the powers of the presidency in domestic affairs in ways that can help deter the types of repeated and dangerous presidential abuses of power that the nation experienced during the Trump era.
{"title":"The Presidency During the Trump Era and Beyond","authors":"C. Ball","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the many ways in which Trump abused the powers of his office to create what it calls a Madisonian nightmare. Trump’s abuses of power included his efforts (1) to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference with the 2016 election; (2) to gain personal, political advantages from Ukraine and other countries while carrying out his official duties as president; (3) to obstruct the exercise of Congress’s impeachment and other investigatory powers; (4) to push the Department of Justice to investigate his political enemies and to protect his political allies from the enforcement of federal law; (5) to punish sanctuary jurisdictions for refusing to help implement the administration’s harsh immigration policies; and (6) to defy Congress by reallocating funds to pay for a border wall despite congressional disapproval of such action. These abuses of power show why it is crucial for progressives going forward to prioritize the reining in of presidential power in domestic affairs as a political issue, adding it to traditional liberal concerns such as economic justice and civil rights protections. The chapter ends with specific suggestions on how Congress and the courts can constitutionally limit the powers of the presidency in domestic affairs in ways that can help deter the types of repeated and dangerous presidential abuses of power that the nation experienced during the Trump era.","PeriodicalId":226775,"journal":{"name":"Principles Matter","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126108649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0002
C. Ball
This chapter begins by explaining the roots of federalism in the American constitutional system: where it comes from historically and why it exists today. It also explores how northern states relied on federalism mechanisms and principles to oppose the expansion of slavery in antebellum America and how progressives more recently have used federalism to encourage state experimentation with progressive policies, such as marriage equality and marijuana decriminalization, as a way of promoting their eventual national implementation. At the same time, the chapter acknowledges that federalism in American history has been frequently deployed to promote racist and reactionary policies. This mixed record supports the chapter’s thesis that federalism is a substantively neutral principle that has sometimes been used for good and sometimes for ill. Federalism, in other words, is about which level of government (federal or state or both) should make which types of policy decisions rather than about the policies’ substantive content. As such, federalism is a neutral principle of governance that can and should be separated from the pursuit of particular policy objectives.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0004
C. Ball
This chapter explores how Congress, the courts, and we the people have permitted presidents for the last ninety years to accumulate an immense amount of power with few meaningful and effective restraints. In doing so, the chapter shows how Trump’s abuses of presidential authority were not only the actions of a reckless and autocratic leader, but were also the outgrowth of the steady accumulation of presidential powers that has taken place since the 1930s under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Although progressives since the Vietnam War have worked to limit presidential authority in matters related to armed conflicts and national security, they generally have not pushed for restraining that authority in domestic matters. It is time for progressives to take into account the extent to which proposed laws, regulations, and executive orders expand presidential domestic powers when determining whether such measures merit their political support. This means that there may be times when progressives should refuse to support measures that unduly expand presidential authority even in instances in which the exercise of that authority advances progressive goals. To illustrate this point, the chapter argues that progressives should have been more cognizant of the extent to which President Barack Obama’s humanitarian but unilateral decision to cease deporting Dreamers—the large number of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children—expanded presidential powers.
{"title":"The Presidency Before Trump","authors":"C. Ball","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores how Congress, the courts, and we the people have permitted presidents for the last ninety years to accumulate an immense amount of power with few meaningful and effective restraints. In doing so, the chapter shows how Trump’s abuses of presidential authority were not only the actions of a reckless and autocratic leader, but were also the outgrowth of the steady accumulation of presidential powers that has taken place since the 1930s under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Although progressives since the Vietnam War have worked to limit presidential authority in matters related to armed conflicts and national security, they generally have not pushed for restraining that authority in domestic matters. It is time for progressives to take into account the extent to which proposed laws, regulations, and executive orders expand presidential domestic powers when determining whether such measures merit their political support. This means that there may be times when progressives should refuse to support measures that unduly expand presidential authority even in instances in which the exercise of that authority advances progressive goals. To illustrate this point, the chapter argues that progressives should have been more cognizant of the extent to which President Barack Obama’s humanitarian but unilateral decision to cease deporting Dreamers—the large number of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children—expanded presidential powers.","PeriodicalId":226775,"journal":{"name":"Principles Matter","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116610538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0006
C. Ball
This chapter explores the ways in which some progressives, in the years leading up to Trump’s election, had grown skeptical of expansive First Amendment protections, viewing them as impediments to the pursuit of equality objectives. Although some of that skepticism is understandable, the chapter details the multiple ways in which free speech and free press protections helped curtail some of Trump’s autocratic policies and practices. In doing so, the chapter argues that progressives, going forward, should not allow what it calls “First Amendment skepticism” to grow to the point that it undermines the amendment’s ability to shield democratic processes, dissenters, and vulnerable groups from future autocratic government officials in the Trump mold. The chapter ends with an exploration of future hate speech regulations. While it would be understandable for progressives, after Trump’s repeated use of hate speech, to call for greater regulations of such speech, the chapter urges progressives to be cautious in this area because of the real possibility that the regulations will be used by future government officials in the Trump mold to target and discriminate against both progressive viewpoints and racial and religious minorities.
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Pub Date : 2021-08-19DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197584484.003.0007
C. Ball
The epilogue explores the reasons why progressives, following Trump’s re-election defeat, must not give up on their commitments to the federalism, separation-of-powers, and free speech principles that they defended during the difficult Trump years. It may be tempting, following Biden’s defeat of Trump, for progressives to try to put the traumatic and harrowing Trump years behind them by worrying and fretting less about the implications of his policies and of how he governed. But progressives must be prepared for the possibility of a future president in the Trump mold by continuing to defend the constitutional principles that they endorsed and championed during the Trump era. Those principles consist of not only the ones that progressives have valued for decades, including those related to equality, privacy, and the fundamental right to vote, but also the structural constitutional principles behind federalism and separation of powers that progressives had generally ignored before the Trump presidency, but which became crucial to resisting it.
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