Its an Attack on Democracy

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/06/the_white_house_s_latest_attack_on_democracy_is_unprecedented.html

“It’s an Attack on Democracy”

The White House decision to reject any and all Democratic oversight requests in an unprecedented act of nullification.
By Jamelle Bouie


Last week, President Trump’s White House took a significant but little noticed action. “At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with {any oversight} requests from Democrats,” reported Politico. This is the formalization of an ongoing practice of sidelining such requests—which were often responded to in previous administrations—amid Republican fear that any evidence could be used against the president. As Politico reports “oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January.”

What’s more, the White House Office of Legal Counsel holds that no minority lawmaker—including ranking members of a given committee—can be granted information without the approval of the chairperson. As long as Republicans hold both chambers of Congress, in other words, they can lock Democrats out of any meaningful oversight authority. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, calls this “the latest in a series of abuses by the Trump administration to operate in a shroud of secrecy,” a move that overturns long-standing norms and practices raising the standard for congressional inquiry to an almost unreachable high. Yes, previous administrations, Democrat and Republican, have ignored or slow-walked oversight requests from opposition lawmakers. But this blanket rejection is a major escalation of partisan combat in governance, an outright statement that Democrats have no prerogatives a Republican administration is bound to even acknowledge.

“It’s an attack on democracy. Members of Congress represent the people, and refusal to provide them with the information they want or need as a matter of policy is saying that we’re going to shut down half of Congress,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York told Slate. “To systematically say ‘we’re not going to give people the time of day’ to half the members of Congress just because they’re the wrong political party, that’s smacking the American people in the nose. It’s saying ‘how dare you elect Democrats; we don’t approve of what you did.’ ”

More broadly, White House rejection of opposition oversight is in keeping with actions from congressional Republicans, as well as Republicans at the state level. America’s two-party democracy only works if both sides see each other as legitimate actors with the right to wield power should they win it. The Democratic Party, as evidenced by the rapid and normal transfer of power from President Obama to President Trump, still holds that principle. But increasingly, it seems the GOP does not.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/06/the_white_house_s_latest_attack_on_democracy_is_unprecedented.html

[Zoonart]

1. YEP!

It's a coup.