With less than a year until the 2024 presidential election and some polls putting Donald Trump in the lead for the race to the White House, I am alarmed Congress has not acted to define limits for presidential powers that he is likely to abuse.
Trump can reliably be expected to go his own way without regard for rules or norm. He will end-run asking for required consent where he can. He has expressed a preference for “acting” cabinet secretaries, for the obvious reason that he would not have to ask the Senate to confirm them and so if he wanted a secretary whose main or sole qualification was loyalty to him, he could have that.
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Trump hates oversight. In a six-week period in 2020, he fired officials from posts in inspectors general offices in five different government agencies.
Trump does not want people telling him what he wants to do is illegal. Late in his term, he replaced the secretary of defense with a loyalist and was only stopped from doing the same at the Department of Justice by the threat of a mass resignation.
His answer to this was “Schedule F,” which would shift about 50,000 jobs from civil service to “serves at the pleasure of the president” and allow these departments to be layers deep in presidential loyalists. This, also, would lead to massive and disruptive turnover after an election that changes the party in power, not that Trump intends to allow any more such changes.
Congress should, at least, act to limit the ability to employ acting officials, narrowly and specifically define the circumstances under which an inspector general can be dismissed, and defend the civil service employment system that has minimized the effects of politics on hiring for about 140 years. I would think the Congress would have enough interest in maintaining its own prerogatives to do two of the three.
To allow any president, and, especially, Donald Trump a free hand in these areas would be a giant step toward tyranny.
Curt Fredrikson, Mokena
GOP shows true colors in stopping Ukraine aid
Nobody should be surprised by the Republicans’ refusal to fund further aid to Ukraine. It is fully consistent with their current political philosophy: Seeing no reason to support democracy domestically, why spend money to support it abroad?
Bruce Barnbaum, Granite Falls, Washington
A warning from the past
As he prepared to leave office, President George Washington warned the forces of geographical sectionalism, political factionalism and interference by foreign powers in the nation’s domestic affairs threatened the stability of the republic.
This message was published in 1796. It was relevant then and is equally as relevant today. I hope we are listening.
Warren Rodgers Jr., Orland Park
