What are the opponents of trump against

Four years ago, trump said to his voters, "what do you have to lose?" Today, Americans with a new understanding of the importance and responsibility of the White House wear masks and gloves, mail ballots or line up in communities.

This winding voting team is described by the new york times as "the small intestine of democracy". The US media said that the opposition to trump has aroused people's enthusiasm for voting, but this can not bridge the tear brought by trump for four years.

In a national poll by the New York Times and Siena college, voters from different political factions expressed concern that the next generation of Americans would be worse off and that the United States might lose democracy.

This sentiment has different implications for voters on both sides of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Republicans are more alert to socialism within the Democratic Party and the profound changes in American values in protests against police and historical figures. Democrats are worried about the threat of democracy from within the White House, because they believe trump has undermined the institutions and the rule of law in the United States.

Out of order crisis

As the 100 day countdown to the 2020 U.S. general election is approaching, U.S. President trump announced the launch of "operation ligende", sending a large number of federal law enforcement personnel into Chicago and other major U.S. cities to combat violent crime, and asked the US Department of justice to provide more than $61 million for recruiting hundreds of new police officers to carry out the operation.

Named after the 4-year-old boy, lejinde talifero, who was killed at his home in Kansas City, Missouri, in June, the operation was designed to highlight the "law and order" theme in Trump's campaign strategy. After that, the theme used by Nixon when he ran for president in 1968 continued to heat up in the sprint stage.

In the nationwide demonstrations triggered by Freud's death in June, trump repeatedly used the slogan "law and order" on social media. Although White House chief of staff meadows repeatedly clarified that "the president is on the side of the rule of law", in the debate with Democratic presidential candidate Biden, trump still did not listen to the advice of his staff, chose to give up the most commonly used word "rule of law" in Washington, and chanted "law and order" again and again.

"The" rule of law "in American legal culture emphasizes that" law is more important than leaders ", and the core roles are lawyers and judges. Law and order emphasizes the importance of law in maintaining social and political stability, and the importance of federal agencies such as the police and the Department of homeland security. " David mednikov, a law professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a researcher at Harvard's Kennedy School of government, introduced China Newsweek.

Mednikov pointed out that "law and order" may be the "rule of law" in Trump's understanding. Although "the two concepts themselves are not entirely different", when trump exhausted his power in order to achieve "legal order", norms and conventions that protect the "rule of law" have been broken one after another, pushing American politics and society into a crisis of disorder.

Mednikov said that the American pioneers who formulated the constitution more than 200 years ago "were more worried that the legislative branch (Congress) under the new system would have too much power, while the executive branch (the president) would not have enough power. Therefore, the trend of expanding executive power was established when the constitution was enacted."

In the last four years, some remote "historical loopholes" have become an important basis for trump to expand his power. Garrett EPPs, a famous American constitutional scientist and professor at the University of Baltimore, observed that Republican conservative lawyers constructed a logic: "claiming that the pioneers wanted the executive to have all the power until the intervention of Congress was completely eliminated."

When Trump came to power, the expansion of president's power had left enough flexibility for him. Peter Strauss, Professor Emeritus of law at Columbia University, pointed out in a study that since the Nixon administration, American citizens have been subject to legal obligations from "quasi legislative" rules such as federal "Regulations" and presidential executive orders, and the number has far exceeded that from Congress. Before the advent of the "trump era", the balance between the White House and Congress had been broken.

"In general, Democratic presidents - Carter, Clinton, and Obama - are more principled in the use of executive power than George W. Bush or trump." "But every president will find himself blocked by the opposition at some point," EPPs told China News Weekly. In this context, it is tempting to innovate in the expansion of administrative power. "

According to trump's opponents, he is the most reluctant US president to "resist temptation". In June 2020, the death of African American man Freud triggered a continuous wave of demonstrations. Most state governments in the United States refused to send troops to deal with it. However, trump successfully mobilized the National Guard to deal with the March crowd in Washington. From the Democrat controlled house of Representatives, to the Senate, the army's leading body that opposes the decision, to the District of Columbia government, there is nothing anyone can do about it: the top commander of the Washington National Guard is not the head of the D.C. or the military, but the president.

Compared with his predecessors, trump did not choose to make institutional breakthrough in the expansion of presidential power, and even abandoned the path of expanding executive power by establishing new federal departments since World War II, but by strengthening his personnel control over administrative and judicial organs. Federal government departments, represented by the Department of justice and the State Department, have been controlled by technocrats and are considered to be semi independent of the president. However, after taking office, trump did not promote professional bureaucrats from relevant departments. Instead, he recruited "outsiders" such as oil tycoon Tillerson and intelligence director pompeio as secretary of state. Whether or not they are "loyal" to trump has become a key indicator for these bureaucrats to go or stay.

Justice Minister Barr's public speech before taking office also showed his "loyalty" to trump. He claims that the law is not a set of neutral rules. "His speech revealed a feeling that society has become immoral and must be 'redeemed' by force." EPPs said to China News Weekly. After taking office, Barr, in his capacity as the Attorney General of the United States, announced that trump was innocent in the cases of tax and rape that were being tried by the court at that time.

Trump used the federal vacancy reform act of 1988 when there was no suitable person loyal to him. The Act provides that the president has the right to directly appoint interim heads of federal departments without the need to go through the Congressional process of nominating full ministers.

During Trump's administration, the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was vacant for 188 days, the "acting defense chief" of the Department of defense was in charge for 203 days, and the Department of Homeland Security had no formal Minister for more than 500 days, respectively, setting the longest record for the absence of a minister in the history of the United States.

On June 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a crowd protesting the death of an African American man, George Floyd, clashed with police in Minneapolis, USA. Picture / people's vision

"Post standard era" under social tear

"Like all smart people, I avoid taxes. Only fools do." In a televised presidential debate on September 30, local time, trump hit back at the New York Times report that he had long evaded taxes. In response to doubts about his tax evasion, trump has claimed several times that he will publish his tax records, but he has not kept his promise until the election day on November 3.

The president's declaration is not a political regulation in the United States. Compared with the United Kingdom without a written constitution, the framework of American political system has been relatively codified. However, unlike the constitution of continental law system, the constitution of the United States does not answer the basic problems of the establishment of the military and the jurisdiction of the court, while the Congress, the president and the federal court act according to the conventional norms.

Taking tax returns as an example, in order to protect national security, the president is not subject to the information disclosure rules of general public officials except for the government ethics act of 1978 and the knowledge (stock) stop trading act of Congress of 2012. However, politicians often take the initiative to disclose their tax records.

Garrett EPPs, a professor at the school of law at the University of Baltimore, defined Trump's term as a "post normative era.". But he pointed out that the disorder of norms did not begin in the trump era, but intensified in the late Obama administration, which was intensified by the party struggle, and the deeper source was the tearing of American society.

Jared Diamond, a famous American scholar who wrote "guns, germs and steel", pointed out that the social polarization of the United States originated around 2005. The social media with information fragmentation superimposed the social conflicts caused by the financial crisis in 2008, which caused the anti nationalism sentiment of the mainstream white groups in the United States. With the aggravation of social tearing, people are used to label all topics from ethnic, skin color, sexual orientation to political factions.

The rules of nomination and voting of federal judges were the earliest victims. At the end of the 1990s, kingsberg, the Supreme Court judge nominated by Democratic President Clinton, could also win more than 90 percent of the votes in the Senate, with the support of almost all Republicans. But by the time of Obama's administration, the typical liberal judge views such as abortion, minority and same-sex equality, and public health care have become the "original sin" in the eyes of Republicans and their supporters.

In 2016, the Republican Senate led by McConnell delayed voting for eight months for Obama's nomination of Supreme Court judges for creative reasons that "it is not suitable to vote for nominations before election". The "federal judge nomination that the Senate must vote for the president" was broken. On the other hand, instead of losing supporters because of breaking the rules, the Republican Party and its presidential candidate trump consolidated his vote warehouse as a major achievement worth promoting in the campaign.

Near the election day of the 2020 election, trump has been able to do so again, refusing to condemn white supremacy in the TV debate and once again getting the voters through a judge's nomination. After the death of liberal justice Ginsberg, trump nominated Barrett, who was Catholic, opposed to abortion and equal rights, to the Supreme Court and was passed "night before" on election day on the Senate fire line.

"Trump and Republicans are good at using the question of judges for political interests and have won repeatedly." "I don't think most people outside the United States realize that the Supreme Court is already part of naked political procedures," Levinson, a member of the American Academy of Humanities and Sciences and a law professor at the University of Texas, concluded to China news week

The famous jurist Posner points out that Trump's support reflects the essence of the white mainstream society in the United States: to put his imaginary "America" first and ask their leaders to pursue policies that are conducive to "Americans", regardless of whether it is against the rules of the game.

Trump's repeated breaking of norms after taking office is a reflection of this idea. Mednikov, taking the 2017 travel ban as an example, explains Trump's different logic of action from his predecessors: a normal Republican president thinks he must control immigration, so it is important for the legislature to attach importance to the issue, to join the agenda in the Senate and the house of Representatives' games, to challenge the existing laws and to advance all this. Trump's other "rough" choice is that since I have the right to issue the presidential executive order, I'll issue an executive order.

"Trump does not consider the relationship between the executive and the legislature, and he is not concerned about the way the president acts under the Constitution and norms, but rather wants to solve the real and important practical problems in his eyes; in his view, the democratic mechanism of power balance has become a bigger problem that hinders him to solve the problem." Mednikov told China news.

Trump, who focuses on solving "specific problems", doesn't care about the damage he brings to breaking norms: what he breaks is actually the balance of separation of powers. Before he issued the travel ban, American law had set up a balance mechanism for the presidential executive order: Congress was responsible for voting on the executive funds of the administrative order, which was designed to balance the president and Congress in legislation.

After the mid-term elections in 2018, Democrats in Congress who won the house once hoped to get trump back on track by not allocating money. But trump soon found a breakthrough in the default "no president of any party should be assumed to exercise the power granted by dictatorship": the president of the United States has the power to declare an emergency, and the president can mobilize funds in an emergency.

When the state decides to provide the government with funding for the construction of the border wall between the United States and Mexico, he has filled the cost of building the wall by declaring an emergency and regarded it as his important achievement in the 2020 campaign. In 2020, he also identified the U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan as a crime by declaring an emergency to prevent us informed persons from exposing the crimes of the United States.