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[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm not too worried about it, as an executive order. Legislation is harder to overturn,

You know, I hope, that what kicked off the US Civil War was an EO issued by Abraham Lincoln. During the Great Depression, many of FDR's famous "New Deal" programs were put in place not through legislation, but via an EO through which he established the Works Progress Administration, which entirely reshaped the physical landscape of the US by building much of the nation's infrastructure - roads, bridges, schools, parks, housing, dams, sewage management plants, electrification networks - and by funding a large number of projects in the in the visual, dramatic and musical arts, and also literacy programs and lots of social history and archeology projects such those that obtained oral histories of former slaves and slave descendants and preserved artifacts of Native American cultures.

In WW2, hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, losing their homes and jobs in the process, coz of an EO from the White House. During WW2 another EO from the White House established the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and gave it an unlimited budget and enormous powers to pursue development of weapons that would enable the US to defeat the Axis powers, leading directly to the development of the atom bomb.

Seems to me EOs can have very significant, far-reaching effects that change the course of US and world history.

Also, as what happened under Obama then Trump shows, POTUS EOs change the rules, regulations and policies of all executive branch agencies (HUD, HHS, Defense, Education, Justice and so on) and affect how the executive branch interprets and implements the vast number of laws already on the books that it is tasked with enforcing.

What's more, EOs trickle down to the states, shaping the laws state legislatures pass as well as all the rules, regs and policies put in place by state and local bodies, including school boards, along with non-governmental authorities like the NCAA. Obama's original EO on Title IX is what led directly to Connecticut statewide scholastic sports authorities and individual school districts in the state - as well as universities in other states (New Hampshire, Montana) and national bodies like the NCAA - to enact policies allowing males to compete - and win big - in female scholastic sports. And it's what's led elementary and HS schools, colleges and universities throughout the US to allow members of one sex to have access to the school toilets, locker rooms, showers and dorms meant for the opposite sex.

Legislation is harder to overturn

Overturning EOs as well as all other executive branch interpretation, implementation and enforcement policies - along with all the actions of states and local bodies that follow from such, right down to your local school board's locker room policies - requires filing lawsuits and mounting challenges in court. In the US, court cases themselves take a long time, then there are many layers of appeals and so on. It takes years and years before courts finally determine once and for all whether legislation, and the way it's been interpreted and enforced by the federal executive as well as by the states and local bodies, becomes a matter of settled law or is to be overturned. And the whole long, drawn-out process costs LOTS of money.

Overturning what's written in the US Constitution is hard to do. As Lincoln knew, which is why after he issued the EO known as the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in the US he immediately pushed Congress to pass the 13th Amendment. He knew that when the the Emancipation Proclamation finally got before SCOTUS, the high court would probably throw it out as an unconstitutional overreach. But he also knew that if an amendment to the Constitution was added for the purpose of abolishing (most) slavery* in the US, it would be essentially ironclad. (*I am aware that the phrasing of the 13th Amendment left open a loophole allowing incarcerated convicts to be used as slave labor, so it didn't really "abolish" slavery the way it's often alleged to have done.)

What happened with the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol in the US was a anomaly. In that case, the US Congress passed an additional Amendment - the 21st - repealing the 18th.

But in most cases, laws in the US are not overturned by legislative bodies voting to repeal them or taking steps to do so. Instead, the task of overturning legislation and EOs alike ends up largely in the hands of individuals and organizations that have the legal chops, clout and the financial backing to challenge laws, EOs and government rules and regulations in court. Additionally, laws are changed by legislatures passing new legislation that fine-tunes, expands or overrides previous ones - as the misnomered Equality Act is meant to do.

However, I think by making it seem that overturning legislation is much harder to do than overturning EOs, you are drawing a distinction that for all practical purposes doesn't exist. Remember, every administration will fight to the death to defend its own EOs - and to do so, they have the entire executive branch of the US government, including the US Department of Justice and all the lawyers within all the other federal agencies, at their disposal plus the public purse.

You seem to be suggesting that legislation in the US gets overturned via another alternate route, one that's simpler and more streamlined and a whole lot easier and cheaper than going through the courts. I don't think this is actually the case.

[–]our_team_is_winning 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I believe DACA was an EO and the court ruled that President Trump couldn't touch it. Judicial activism seems to be another layer here.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Yes, you're right. But DACA was preceded by the Dream Act, Congressional legislation that had been debated and voted on in both the House and Senate over the course of a number of years. Moreover, both the Dream Act and DACA were preceded by decades of public discussion, press reports, polling of the populace and political jockeying over the issue of illegal immigration and how to treat people brought to the US as children, when they had no say in the matter. Immigration to the US has been a topic much discussed and argued about in public and private settings in the US as far back as I can remember, which goes back to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

Whereas the matter of turning back Title IX; opening up female sports to males; ending of all sex segregation in toilets, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, etc; denying girls and women our previous right to safety privacy, dignity and a measure of peace of mind in facilities where we deal with bodily functions, and so on is entirely different. With the rare exceptions of the "bathroom bills" several years ago, none of these enormous policy changes and their implications have been discussed and debated in the press, by politicians or by the public. No polling has been done. It's all just been rammed through through by the back door and from on high without the body politic having any chance to ask, what's going on and why?

[–]our_team_is_winning 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's all just been rammed through through both the back door and from on high without the body politic having any chance to ask, what's going on and why?

The Trans Lobby have big money and politicians like big money donations. Only answer I can come up with.