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Grasswire2

(13,564 posts)
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 03:27 AM Nov 2020

Harper's Magazine Nov. 2020 article on frightening presidential powers in Lame Duck session.


We need to be prepared.

THE ENEMIES BRIEFCASE

[link:https://harpers.org/archive/2020/11/the-enemies-briefcase-secret-powers-of-the-presidency/|

A few hours before the inauguration ceremony, the prospective president receives an elaborate and highly classified briefing on the means and procedures for blowing up the world with a nuclear attack, a rite of passage that a former official described as “a sobering moment.” Secret though it may be, we are at least aware that this introduction to apocalypse takes place. At some point in the first term, however, experts surmise that an even more secret briefing occurs, one that has never been publicly acknowledged. In it, the new president learns how to blow up the Constitution.

The session introduces “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs, orders that authorize a broad range of mortal assaults on our civil liberties. In the words of a rare declassified official description, the documents outline how to “implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations”—by imposing martial law, suspending habeas corpus, seizing control of the internet, imposing censorship, and incarcerating so-called subversives, among other repressive measures. “We know about the nuclear briefcase that carries the launch codes,” Joel McCleary, a White House official in the Carter Administration, told me. “But over at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department there’s a list of all the so-called enemies of the state who would be rounded up in an emergency. I’ve heard it called the ‘enemies briefcase.’ ”

These chilling directives have been silently proliferating since the dawn of the Cold War as an integral part of the hugely elaborate and expensive Continuity of Government (COG) program, a mechanism to preserve state authority (complete with well-provisioned underground bunkers for leaders) in the event of a nuclear holocaust. Compiled without any authorization from Congress, the emergency provisions long escaped public discussion—that is, until Donald Trump started to brag about them. “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” he boasted in March, ominously echoing his interpretation of Article II of the Constitution, which, he has claimed, gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” He has also declared his “absolute right” to build a border wall, whatever Congress thinks, and even floated the possibility of delaying the election “until people can properly, securely, and safely vote.”

“This really is one of the best-kept secrets in Washington,” Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, told me. “But though the PEADs are secret from the American public, they’re not secret from the White House and from the executive branch. And the fact that none of them has ever been leaked is really quite extraordinary.” Goitein and her colleagues have been working diligently for years to elicit the truth about the president’s hidden legal armory, tracing stray references in declassified documents and obscure appropriations requests from previous administrations. “At least in the past,” said Goitein, “there were documents that purported to authorize actions that are unconstitutional, that are not justified by any existing law, and that’s why we need to be worried about them.”

Part of what makes the existence of PEADs so alarming is the fact that the president already has a different arsenal of emergency powers at his disposal. Unlike PEADs, which are not themselves laws, these powers have been obligingly granted (and often subsequently forgotten) by Congress. They come into force once a president declares a state of emergency related to whatever crisis is at hand, though the link is often tenuous indeed. For example, to fight the war in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson used emergency powers originally granted to Harry Truman for the Korean War. As Goitein has written, the moment a president declares a “national emergency”—which he can do whenever he likes—more than one hundred special provisions become available, including freezing Americans’ bank accounts or deploying troops domestically. One provision even permits a president to suspend the ban on testing chemical and biological weapons on human subjects.


much more at link. Let me know if there is a paywall. I subscribe, but I have a hard copy I could scan, perhaps.
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Pachamama

(16,873 posts)
1. This is what I have been fearing...
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 03:44 AM
Nov 2020

I have no doubt that Trump would use these extraordinary powers against the American people in the coming days and weeks...

Not one doubt

Grasswire2

(13,564 posts)
2. He told us about these powers himself.
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 03:46 AM
Nov 2020

Said he had powers of office that people don't know about.

Scary.

NYC Liberal

(20,132 posts)
4. Just because some lawyers drafted these "powers" doesn't mean they would be enforceable
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 04:43 AM
Nov 2020

if Rump actually tried to use them. They would be challenged immediately and would be suspended in the meantime. If Rump did this during his lame-duck period, he would be out of office by the time it all made its way through the courts, at which point it'd be moot.

Rump is dangerous to be sure, but I don't see any court, even this SCOTUS, upholding executive orders -- not even laws passed by Congress -- giving the president unilateral power to suspend habeas corpus, seize control of the internet, impose censorship, and incarcerate "subversives."

Freethinker65

(9,928 posts)
5. Concerned about what Trump privatizes and destroys during his last two months and who he pardons.
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 06:19 AM
Nov 2020

I think Trump can be kept from starting much of the scenario described above when Trump loses the election.

uponit7771

(90,225 posts)
7. How with Moscow Mitch in the senate? Moscow Mitch knew kids were being snatched from their parents
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 06:24 AM
Nov 2020

... he could care less what Red Don loots and bombs while being a lame duck.

uponit7771

(90,225 posts)
6. K&R, the election will be the easy part for America the 3 months after will be a nightmare unless...
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 06:23 AM
Nov 2020

... Red Don and the Kremlin KKKlan is threatened with jail time.

doubleplusgood

(944 posts)
8. I worry about MORE new justices on the supreme court
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 07:18 AM
Nov 2020

What if, in the wake of a Trump defeat, McConnel gets Samuel Alito & Clarence Thomas both to resign and then he rams thru two more younger, rabid R/W justices to the SCOTUS?

Grasswire2

(13,564 posts)
10. the response to that is for President Biden to add more justices.
Tue Nov 3, 2020, 12:41 PM
Nov 2020

But for that eleven weeks, we should assume that McConnell will do all the damage he can possibly do, yes.

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