Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Checks and balances in spotlight in US

o-DONALD-TRUMP-facebook
o-DONALD-TRUMP-facebook
minus
plus

Michael Mathes -


He may be a new kind of president, employing a go-it-alone business style while upending White House norms, but Donald Trump now confronts a venerable US system of checks and balances.


Trump has moved with lightning speed on multiple fronts since taking office January 20, acting to roll back regulations on industry, freeze federal hiring, and dismantle his predecessor’s health care reforms.


But his most high-profile move — banning the entry of refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries — ran aground in the US courts.


A federal judge temporarily suspended his executive order, and a US court of appeals in San Francisco turned down an administration request that the judge be overruled.


Travellers who had been banned were again trickling back into the country.


The clash is schooling Trump on the limits of presidential reach in a democratic system in which power is divided among the three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial.


Democrats have accused Trump of acting like an autocrat. “We’re a democracy, not a one-man show,” warned liberal Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday.


The writers of US Constitution devised safeguards against dictatorial abuses of power, namely the courts and Congress.


“So far, a case can be made that the checks and balances system is working the way it was intended to,” Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, said.


Trump has pushed the traditional boundaries, criticising the “so-called judge” who suspended the ban, and declaring that the decision would allow “very bad and dangerous people” into the country.


Other presidents have flexed their executive muscles, particularly when the White House has changed hands from one party to another, as it did last month.


Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, also issued a barrage of executive orders in his first weeks in office.


Following the September 11 attacks of 2001, George W Bush sought to expand his powers to confront terror threats, moves criticised by opponents as infringing on constitutional liberties.


Trump has made no secret he intends to act forcefully to confront terror threats.


But even Bush’s deputy attorney general John Yoo — the official who drafted the so-called “torture memos” that gave the CIA latitude in using enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding — warned that Trump has gone too far.


Trump has shown “little sign that he understood the constitutional roles of the three branches” of government, Yoo wrote in Monday’s New York Times.


Trump’s actions since the ban’s suspension “is fundamentally an assault on the separation of powers,” said legal scholar Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School.


Several of Trump’s campaign pledges — his vow to repeal and replace Obamacare, reform the tax code and repair roads and bridges — will require cooperation from Congress.


The Senate and House of Representatives can act as a powerful brake on a president.


Trump’s Republicans are in charge of both chambers. But even though many lawmakers appear willing to yield to the new president, he risks resistance if he tries to ram through a radical agenda. Some Republicans have already made clear they will not leave the new president unchecked.


After Trump was reported to be considering reviving secret prisons overseas and the use of interrogation techniques that have been widely denounced as torture, Senator John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan made clear that Congress would not allow such a resumption.


Many are also firmly in favour of applying fresh sanctions on Russia, despite Trump’s intention to forge closer ties with the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin.


For Ackerman, the soundness of the checks-and-balance system may well be tested in the event of war or a terrorist attack on US soil, which he said could “trigger a reaction that will make George Bush’s (9/11 measures) seem small by comparison.” — AFP


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon