The Extent of Presidential Power: Trump's Inaugural Promises

 
One of the major points I've tried to make so far in class is the the key to minimizing the chance that an autocratic system (rule of the one - dictatorship / tyranny) develops is to ensure that power is limited in a substantive way. This means with powerful, independent institutions. 

Minimizing executive power is especially important since they have coercive power.

Yesterday's inagural address contained a variety of declarations about what Trump intends to do. 

But does the U.S. Constitution grant him the power to do these things? Does he have to work with other institutions? 

Let's explore.

- - Click here for the transcript.

- I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. 

- We will reinstate my remain in Mexico policy. 

- we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

- invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks

- defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.

- We will drill, baby, drill.

- fill our strategic reserves up again,

- export American energy all over the world.

- end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate,

- We will build automobiles in America

- we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.

- establishing the External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues.

- establish the brand new Department of Government Efficiency.

- sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.

- bring law and order back to our cities.

- end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.

- it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.

- I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from the military for objecting to the Covid vaccine mandate with full back pay.

- I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty.

- changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

- restore the name of the great President William McKinley to Mount McKinley

- gave it to Panama, and we're taking it back.

- pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.

What is a Presidential Pardon?

We've seen quite a few in the past few days. 

In short, it is one of the internal checks on power intended to limit the ability of one interest to control all aspects of governmental power.

It can be found in the plain language of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1: 

1. The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

For more: 

- U.S. Constitution Annotated: Overview of Pardon Power.

- List of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United States.

- U.S. Department of Justice - Office of the Pardon Attorney.

- Pardons Granted by President Joseph Biden (2021-Present).

- Pardons Granted by President Trump (still looking for the best link)

For a more expansive look at the powers of the U.S. President: 

- Powers of the president of the United States.

From the Houston Chronicle: Houston lawmakers call for state hearing to address alleged violations of state law in HISD

More checks and balances.

In this case, the Texas legislature is gearing up to check - or at least challenge - the decision by the Texas Education Agency to take over the Houston Independent School District. 

- Click here for the article.  

Several Houston-area Democratic legislators are calling for a formal hearing to address “potential violations of state law” in Houston ISD in the aftermath of the Texas Education Agency stripping elected leaders from the school district.

The lawmakers asked in a letter sent Friday that the House Committee on Public Education host a hearing to address reports of “unqualified, non-degree holding teachers” working in classrooms and a lack of accommodations for students with disabilities. They also requested independent research proving the benefits of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Education System.

The request comes after the state takeover of HISD in March 2023 and the Texas Education Agency’s appointment of the Superintendent and nine members of the Board of Managers. Due to the takeover, the nine lawmakers who signed the letter said it is “imperative that the state assume full responsibility for HISD students and hold the board of managers accountable”

“As their duly elected State Representatives, we must hold a hearing to learn more about these concerning reports and efforts to subvert state laws and requirements,” the letter states.

From Reason: Supreme Court Will Hear This Texas Woman's Challenge to a Politically Motivated Arrest

The problem with unrestrained police.

- Click here for the article. 

Four years ago, Sylvia Gonzalez, a newly elected member of the Castle Hills, Texas, city council, was charged with concealing a government record, a misdemeanor that would have resulted in her removal from office if she had been convicted. Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales declined to pursue the case, and it is not hard to see why. The charge, which was orchestrated by Gonzalez's political opponents, was based on what she describes as an honest mistake: After a city council meeting, she says, she accidentally picked up a bundle of petitions against City Manager Ryan Rapelye—petitions that she herself had organized—and placed it in her binder along with other papers.

As a result, Gonzales was arrested two months later and spent a day in jail, after which her mug shot appeared in local news reports. According to a Supreme Court petition that the Institute for Justice filed on Gonzalez's behalf in April, "Gonzalez was so hurt by the experience and so embarrassed by the media coverage of her arrest" that "she gave up her council seat and swore off organizing petitions or criticizing her government." On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear her case, Gonzalez v. Trevino, which poses the question of what counts as "objective evidence" that someone was arrested in retaliation for constitutionally protected activity.

- ScotusBlog: Gonzalez v. Trevino.

- Oyez: Gonzalez v. Trevino.

ScotusBlog: Court hears Texas city council member’s retaliatory arrest claim.

U.S. Supreme Court: Audio Recording.

From ScotusBlog: Supreme Court skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies

This covers both checks and balances and the free speech and/or press.

- Click here for the article.

After nearly two hours of oral argument on Monday, a majority of the justices appeared sympathetic to the Biden administration’s argument that a federal court in New Orleans went too far in an order that would limit the government’s ability to communicate with social media companies about their content moderation policies.

The lawsuit before the court on Monday stems from efforts by the Biden administration in 2021 to encourage companies to restrict misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. But the challengers – two states with Republican attorneys general, Missouri and Louisiana, and several individuals whose social media posts were removed or downgraded – say that the government’s efforts violate social media users’ rights to free speech.

A federal judge in Louisiana agreed with the challengers that federal officials had violated the First Amendment by “coercing” or significantly encouraging” the content moderation decisions of social media platforms. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued an order that limited communications between the White House and several other government agencies with social media platforms.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit largely upheld Doughty’s order, although it narrowed its application to a smaller group of officials, including the CDC, FBI, and the White House.

The Biden administration came to the Supreme Court, which agreed last fall to put Doughty’s order on hold and to weigh in on the merits of the case.

. . . Most of Monday’s argument, however, centered on the merits of the dispute – that is, whether the Biden administration’s contacts with social media platforms violated the challengers’ First Amendment rights. A majority of the justices appeared concerned that the challengers’ rule would sweep in too many government efforts to influence social media platforms, potentially prohibiting the government from acting to protect the public.

Fletcher described the government’s efforts to influence social media platforms in this case as a classic example of the “bully pulpit,” in which officials would “speak their mind and call on the public to act.” The court of appeals, he stressed, “mistook persuasion for coercion.” Efforts to persuade social media platforms cross the line only when they convey a threat of adverse government action, he insisted.

But Louisiana Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguinaga countered that “the government’s levers of pressure are anathema to the First Amendment. Behind closed doors,” he told the justices, the government “badgers the platforms 24/7, it abuses them with profanity, it warns that the highest levels of the White House are concerned.”

. . . Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson outlined a hypothetical TikTok challenge involving teenagers jumping out of progressively higher windows, leading to serious injuries and even death. Could the government, she asked Aguinaga, “call the platforms and say: This information that you are putting up on your platform is creating a serious public health emergency, we are encouraging you to take it down?”

Aguinaga agreed that the government could call the platforms to flag the TikTok challenge as a problem, but he added that “the moment that the government tries to use its ability as the government and its stature as the government to pressure them to take it down, that is when you are interfering with the third party’s speech rights.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett also appeared concerned about the broad implications of the challengers’ position. She asked Aguinaga about a scenario in which he and other Louisiana state government officials were doxed, followed by social media posts “about how people should rally and do something about this.” Could the FBI, she queried, “really encourage” social media platforms to take down the posts?

Aguinaga appeared to suggest that it could not. “If what the FBI is trying to do is trying to persuade a speech intermediary to take down a private third party’s speech,” he reiterated, that would be “an abridgement of speech.”

- ScotusBlog: Murthy v. Missouri.

- Wikipedia: Murthy v. Missouri.

From the Washington Post: Trump’s anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues

Many of the plans detailed here would tie together the executive and judicial powers, and give the president more direct control over the justice department. 

- Click here for the article.

Trump has complained publicly and privately that his first-term Justice Department leaders were too weak, that his Supreme Court picks have tried to come across as too “independent” and that the court system has broadly been biased against him, as he faces 91 felony charges. Trump told donors in meetings in late 2023 that one of his only mistakes as president was that he did not pick the right people to lead the Justice Department, according to people who attended, and he regularly discusses plans for the department in a second term.


Terminology: 

- conservative legal establishment
- Federalist Society
- stock the federal bench
- Leonard Leo
- Donald McGahn
- Mitch McConnell
- top attorney general candidates
- Article III project
- judicial advocacy group
- Jeffrey Clark
- Deregulation
- Faith and Freedom Coalition
- Insurrection Act
- White House Counsel’s Office
- populate the agencies.
- Project 2025

How to consolidate power and become a dictator: What Would Mussolini Do?

This is what a well constructed system of checks and balances tries to limit.



For more: 

- Political Ambition.

- How did the Nazi consolidate their power?

- The Night of the Long Knives.

- Rise to power of Benito Mussolini.

- Political career of Vladimir Putin.

- How Did Putin Come To Power? You Can Thank the 1990s for That.

Can a president be indicted? Part 1

This is uncharted territory, the Constitution is silent on the matter. Arguments exist on each side.

For 2305:

- Can we indict a sitting president?
- The Only Way to Find Out If the President Can Be Indicted.

I'll more soon.

From GovTrack: A liberal circuit court struck down Trump’s travel ban. This bill would divide that court into two.

Extreme checking and balancing - perfectly constitutional though.

- Click here for the article.

Mere days after President Trump signed a controversial executive order temporarily banning U.S. entry for immigrants or refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, it was struck down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This put national focus on that court, which encompasses both some of the most progressive and conservative states, yet generally issues liberal decisions — making it despised many Republicans.

A new bill in Congress could make it less likely for that court to issue decisions like striking down the Trump executive order.

(Rather than appeal to the Supreme Court as he originally promised, Trump plans to issue a revised executive order that his administration believes is more likely to withstand judicial scrutiny.)

Why many Republicans hate the 9th Circuit Court

Below the Supreme Court on the judicial hierarchy, there are 13 “circuit courts,” which decide cases of federal law in different geographical areas of the country. The Supreme Court takes up cases where two or more lower courts disagree, as well as other cases that raise consequential or novel constitutional issues.

The 9th Circuit Court covers the west coast and covers more than 20 percent of the U.S. population. It encompasses left-leaning states like California, Hawaii, and Oregon, and Washington, but also right-leaning states like Arizona, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana. But its judges clearly lean left: of the 44 judges serving on the court, 28 were appointed by Democratic presidents, and only 16 by Republicans.

From the US House of Representatives: Presidential Vetoes

A summary of the history of vetoes.

- Click here for it.

Article I, section 7 of the Constitution grants the President the authority to veto legislation passed by Congress. This authority is one of the most significant tools the President can employ to prevent the passage of legislation. Even the threat of a veto can bring about changes in the content of legislation long before the bill is ever presented to the President. The Constitution provides the President 10 days (excluding Sundays) to act on legislation or the legislation automatically becomes law. There are two types of vetoes: the “regular veto” and the “pocket veto.”

The regular veto is a qualified negative veto. The President returns the unsigned legislation to the originating house of Congress within a 10 day period usually with a memorandum of disapproval or a “veto message.” Congress can override the President’s decision if it musters the necessary two–thirds vote of each house. President George Washington issued the first regular veto on April 5, 1792. The first successful congressional override occurred on March 3, 1845, when Congress overrode President John Tyler’s veto of S. 66.

From the National Law Journal: Order to Reveal Detainee Names May Grow List of Plaintiffs Challenging Travel Ban

More checking and balancing of the Trump Administration from the courts.

- Click here for the article.

A Brooklyn judge's ruling for the Trump administration to produce a list of travelers who were detained under a controversial travel ban it issued in January may help plaintiffs' attorneys in the New York case challenging the ban to grow their clients' ranks.

Eastern District Judge Carol Bagley Amon ruled on Tuesday that the government has until 5 p.m. on Thursday to submit the names of all those held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents under the Trump administration's executive order from 9:37 p.m. on Jan. 28, when Eastern District Judge Ann Donnelly issued a ruling to stay deportations, to 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 29.

In a news release, Healy Ko, a law student intern for Yale Law School's Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, said Amon's order was an "important step in the fight to repair the damage done" by the executive order.

"We are aware of reports that CBP officers deliberately ignored the court's order in the hours after the decision came down, and are confident that the court's decision will help to identify individuals that were unlawfully removed and provide them a chance to return to the United States," Ko said.

In addition to counsel from Yale Law, the plaintiffs are also represented by the National Immigration Law Center, the International Refugee Assistance Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

The Justice Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Amon's order partially granted a motion to compel filed by the plaintiffs, who include doctors, refugees and students affected by the order. The plaintiffs have also moved for class certification, but there has been no ruling on the motion.

The plaintiffs' motion to compel also contained a proposed order for the government to return any individuals who were removed from the United States as part of the order.

- Click here for the Judge Amon's Wikipedia page.

Limiting Trump

Here are four out of a number of articles detailing how aspects of the governing system - both internal and external - are limiting efforts of the Trump Administration to quickly implement its goals.

I've mentioned in class that inertia is built into the constitutional system, here's proof.

1 - Lawfare: Bannon in Washington: A Report on the Incompetence of Evil.

Steve Bannon has proved himself to be so monumentally incompetent that I am fairly certain the Republic is safer than I could have believed three weeks ago, at least from Bannon’s flailing efforts to maximize whatever supposed contradictions he believes he has identified.

Bannon isn’t an arch-villain. And he’s not the guy who’s going to destroy American democracy. Instead, as I’ll explain, he’s just an internet troll.

Bannon’s ineptitude has become clear in the context of his role at the center of the refugee order’s botched writing and rollout—strangely, the same context out of which emerged the portrait of him as the sinister, all-knowing eminence grise. To paraphrase Benjamin Wittes, the executive order was both deeply malevolent and profoundly incompetent.

. . . it’s very hard to dismantle major democratic institutions without a certain degree of capability. The establishment of authoritarianism takes both effort and cunning. And I’m much less worried than I was that these folks have the kind of cunning and focus it would take to take down the American experiment.

And for that I say, thanks, Steve Bannon.

2 - Lawfare: The Real Constitutional Danger.

The real story in the last week, and indeed of the Trump presidency, is (as predicted) how well our constitutional checks and balances are working in reaction to an unorthodox, norm-breaking, law-indifferent President. It is increasingly clear that the main danger in a Trump presidency is not that it will be too strong, but that it will be too weak.

In November I argued that “the permanent bureaucracy, including inspectors general and government lawyers; the press; civil society; Congress; and courts … will operate in much more robust fashion to check President Trump than they did to check President Obama,” and that “Trump’s seeming indifference to the rule of law and his pledges to act unlawfully will cause the checking institutions to judge all of his actions with much greater scrutiny and skepticism.” That is precisely what has happened.

3 - Washington Post: In the early weeks of the new administration, the humbling of a president.

For Trump, nothing has proved as easy as it might have looked on the campaign trail, despite the flurry of executive orders and actions that flowed from his desk in the first days after the inauguration. He has signaled a radically different direction for the country, but only that. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller’s claim that Trump has accomplished more in a few weeks than most presidents do in their entire administrations should be seen as the fanciful boast that it is. The record is only beginning to be written.

The powers of the president are vast, but they are not unlimited. Trump has come face to face with the checks and balances built into the Constitution and with the difficulty of commanding a huge bureaucracy of federal workers who value their role as public servants. He has seen anew the power of a free press to dig and report and hold those in power accountable. He has felt the power and sting of leaks from inside the government. There’s nothing new about any of this. It has been true for past presidents. Trump is learning the lesson painfully.

4 - The New Republic: Donald Trump Is on the Ropes.

Trump’s obsession with the leakers, and those who are eager to publish these leaks, is consistent with his longtime political strategy of demonizing the press and professional bureaucrats. The leaking issue allows him to pair these two alleged foes as a united enemy—a characterization his base will no doubt devour—and also allows him to have his cake and eat it, too: He can bemoan the “illegally given” information on the one hand, and then claim it’s all “fake news” anyway. Further, this obsession is also consistent with his propensity for conspiracy theories. The very anonymity of leakers makes it easy to portray them as shadowy conspirators plotting against him.

This isn’t just a matter of rhetoric, though. It’s also a reflection of Trump’s approach to governing. He’s being undermined by leakers because he doesn’t know how government works, is isolated and alienated from the professional bureaucracy, and has been slow in appointing his own people to key spots. The result is an utterly chaotic, confused administration—and where there’s chaos and confusion in government, there are usually leaks, too.

A look at checks and balances on the state level - the case of North Carolina

Slate - which tends to be a bit to the left - details what the Republican dominated legislature in North Carolina to limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor, as well as the response of the courts.

It's a great look at checks and balances.

First: North Carolina Republicans’ Legislative Coup Is an Attack on Democracy.

Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly staged a shocking legislative coup on Wednesday night, calling a second special session and proposing a raft of measures designed to strip power from the newly progressive state Supreme Court and governorship. This last-minute power grab marks an alarming departure from basic democratic norms—a blatant attempt to overturn the results of an election by curtailing judicial independence and restructuring the government to seize authority lawfully delegated to the incoming Democratic governor.

- The article goes on to list the specific measures introduced to limit both the governor and the courts.

Second: The North Carolina Supreme Court Just Blocked Republicans’ Unlawful Election Board Power Grab.

Note that the North Carolina Supreme Court has argued that the changes - at least those related to the Board of Elections - violate the separation of powers.

There is, however, a serious constitutional flaw in the bill. North Carolina’s constitution creates strict separation of powers, requiring that “the legislative, executive, and supreme judicial powers … shall be forever separate and distinct from each other.” It vests “the executive power” in the governor and states that he or she must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Fortunately for Cooper, the State Board of Elections is an executive agency, and county election boards are arms of that agency. That means Cooper has a constitutional requirement to “take care” that the boards fully implement election laws.

Yet as Cooper pointed out in his lawsuit to halt the attempted restructuring, Republicans have deprived him of that ability. “By creating an evenly divided board structure and then imposing a super-majority voting requirement for all actions,” the suit states, “the legislative appointees can effectively hamstring the myriad actions required for the proper administration and execution of elections and elections laws.” Similarly, the evenly divided county boards would be “consistently deadlocked and unable to act,” and thus “unable to carry out their [statutory] duties.”

“In short,” the suit concludes, the Republican restructuring “ensures that the New State Board and county boards will be unable to execute the State’s election law, and it strips from the Governor any ability to change that circumstance. Accordingly, it prevents him from fulfilling his constitutional duty to see that the laws are ‘faithfully executed.’ ”

The North Carolina Supreme Court appeared to agree with this theory in halting GOP changes from taking effect. And although Monday’s decision was only preliminary, it seems quite likely that the court—which vigorously safeguards separation of powers—will ultimately agree with Cooper on the merits. Here, as in its effort to block Cooper’s cabinet appointments, the legislature simply overstepped its constitutional bounds. And for the time being, North Carolina’s courts remain independent enough to halt the GOP’s unlawful power grab.

In the news: Ninth Circuit’s Decision on Trump’s Travel Ban

- Click here for the decision.

We'll review it in 2305.

From the Washington Post: Former top diplomats, tech giants blast immigration order as court showdown looms

More pushback against the president's immigration order.

- Click here for the article.

Fresh challenges to President Trump’s court-frozen immigration order took shape Monday with two former secretaries of state claiming the White House was undermining national security and nearly 100 Silicon Valley tech companies arguing it will keep the best minds from coming to America.

The powerful new voices were added with another legal showdown coming as early as Monday. The suspension of the order, meanwhile, has allowed those previously banned more time to try to reach the United States.

. . . A decision Sunday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit preserved a lower judge’s order to temporarily halt the ban — and based on a schedule the court outlined, the stop will remain in place at least until sometime on Monday. The Justice Department said it would not elevate the dispute to the Supreme Court before that.

. . . Hours earlier, a host of technology giants — including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber — were part of a “friend of the court” legal brief by 97 companies opposing the Trump administration’s immigration order.

The brief claimed the order was a “significant departure” from U.S. immigration policies and “makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees.

. . . Vice President Pence said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that White House officials felt that Trump was “operating within his authority as president, both under the Constitution and under clear statutory law.” Legal analysts have said the president has broad authority to set immigration policy, although civil liberties advocates have countered that the order essentially amounts to a discriminatory ban on Muslims that has no real national security purpose.

“We’re very confident that we’re going to prevail,” Pence said. “We’ll accomplish the stay and will win the case on the merits. But again, the focus here is on the safety and security of the American people.”

From the Washington Post: Judge halts deportations as refugee ban causes worldwide furor

More resistance to recent immigration moves by the Trump Administration - a current example of checks and balances.

- Click here for the article.

A federal judge in New York blocked deportations nationwide late Saturday of those detained on entry to the United States after an executive order from President Trump targeted citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn granted a request from the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the deportations after determining that the risk of injury to those detained by being returned to their home countries necessitated the decision.

Minutes after the judge’s ruling in New York, another came in Alexandria when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a temporary restraining order to block for seven days the removal of any green-card holders being detained at Dulles International Airport. Brinkema’s action also ordered that lawyers have access to those held there because of the ban.

Several hours after the judicial rulings, the Department of Homeland Security said it would continue to implement Trump’s executive order. In a statement released early Sunday, the agency said “less than one percent” of international air travelers arriving Saturday in the U.S. were “inconvenienced” by the executive order.

“President Trump’s Executive Orders remain in place — prohibited travel will remain prohibited, and the U.S. government retains its right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety,” the statement said. “No foreign national in a foreign land, without ties to the United States, has any unfettered right to demand entry into the United States or to demand immigration benefits in the United States.”

From Reuters: Executive actions ready to go as Trump prepares to take office

Now President Trump is prepared to hit the ground running.

- Click here for the article.

Donald Trump is preparing to sign executive actions on his first day in the White House on Friday to take the opening steps to crack down on immigration, build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and roll back outgoing President Barack Obama's policies.

Trump, a Republican elected on Nov. 8 to succeed Democrat Obama, arrived in Washington on a military plane with his family a day before he will be sworn in during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

Aides said Trump would not wait to wield one of the most powerful tools of his office, the presidential pen, to sign several executive actions that can be implemented without the input of Congress.

"He is committed to not just Day 1, but Day 2, Day 3 of enacting an agenda of real change, and I think that you're going to see that in the days and weeks to come," Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Thursday, telling reporters to expect activity on Friday, during the weekend and early next week.

. . . Trump's advisers vetted more than 200 potential executive orders for him to consider signing on healthcare, climate policy, immigration, energy and numerous other issues, but it was not clear how many orders he would initially approve, according to a member of the Trump transition team who was not authorized to talk to the press.

Signing off on orders puts Trump, who has presided over a sprawling business empire but has never before held public office, in a familiar place similar to the CEO role that made him famous, and will give him some early victories before he has to turn to the lumbering process of getting Congress to pass bills.

The strategy has been used by other presidents, including Obama, in their first few weeks in office.

"He wants to show he will take action and not be stifled by Washington gridlock," said Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer.

Trump is expected to impose a federal hiring freeze and take steps to delay a Labor Department rule due to take effect in April that would require brokers who give retirement advice to put their clients' best interests first.

He also will give official notice he plans to withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, Spicer said. "I think you will see those happen very shortly," Spicer said.

From the Washington Post: Obama largely commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning, U.S. soldier convicted for leaking classified information

Checking and balancing:

- Click here for the article.

President Obama largely commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, an Army private convicted in 2013 of taking secret diplomatic and military documents and disclosing them to WikiLeaks.

Obama also granted a full and complete pardon to Ret. Marine General James E. Cartwright for lying to the FBI in a probe of a leak of classified information about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program. A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was known as Obama’s favorite general, Cartwright pleaded guilty in October and was sentenced last week to two years in prison.

In addition, Obama granted clemency to about 200 low-level drug offenders who were sentenced under harsh drug laws and would have received lighter sentences if convicted today. In all, the president commuted 209 individuals and pardoned another 64. He is expected to grant more drug commutations on Wednesday.

More from Vox: Chelsea Manning’s commutation is part of a historic year in reducing prison sentences.

A few days before leaving office, President Obama broke one of his own records. Pardoning 64 people and shortening the prison sentences of another 209, he made Tuesday the biggest use of clemency by a president in a single day in US history — breaking a record he himself set last month.

It’s the culmination of a year-long effort to use the president’s clemency power to get hundreds of people — almost all of them nonviolent drug offenders — out of prison sooner.

Depending on how you look at it, Obama’s effort in the twilight of his presidency is either a historic act of criminal justice reform — or too little too late. Obama’s rejected thousands of petitions for reduced sentences, and there are still thousands more waiting for review — and the Trump administration, under attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions, is extremely unlikely to give them a second look.

Obama still has more time to get even more people out of federal prison — after all, presidents historically get most aggressive with clemency in the very last days of their term. But while it’s now clear that Obama’s done something very significant indeed, it’s also near-certain that it will, in some ways, fall short.

From the Hill: Republicans vote to weaken federal regulatory powers

Reigning in the federal bureaucracy seems at the top of the Republican to do list.

- Click here for the article.

Empowered by President-elect Donald Trump, Republicans lawmakers are moving to gut the vast regulatory powers federal agencies enjoyed during the Obama administration.

On Wednesday, the GOP-controlled House passed the Regulatory Accountability Act which puts a ceiling on the regulatory costs coming out of Washington by instructing federal agencies to craft the "least expensive" rules they possibly can. It passed 238-183 on a largely party line vote with five Democrats crossing the aisle.

This would give Congress more control over federal agencies.

“Some of the most significant decisions in Washington --- those that most affect the lives of the public --- are made by those who don’t stand for election,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said.

“What happens when the EPA imposes rules that deprive people of their property rights? Or when the Department of Health and Human Services tries to force nuns to violate their religion? Or when the VA perpetuates a system that lets veterans die while they wait for care?” McCarthy asked.

“The people can’t vote out the bureaucrats who write rules at the EPA or at the Department of Health and Human Services. They can’t vote out bad leaders at the VA,” he added. “And these bureaucrats know it.”

Regulatory reform is a key part of Trump’s economic agenda, and Republican lawmakers are working quickly to reshape the way in which regulations are developed before the president-elect takes office next Friday.

McCarthy indicated the House would begin repealing specific regulations after the inauguration.

More on the Congressional Review Act ....

... which I really know little about.

It looks to be an instrument to reign in the bureaucracy that has been more or less dormant for twenty years, but might be ready to be unleashed.

For more:

- CRS: The Congressional Review Act: FrequentlyAsked Questions.
- Heritage Foundation: Stars Align for the Congressional Review Act.
- CPR: The Congressional Review Act: A Primer.
- The Hill: The Congressional Review Act, rarely used and (almost always) unsuccessful.
- The Fiscal Times: The Latest Republican Trick to Roll Back Obama’s Rules.