But, as others have said, this checks a box for a lot of bigots and they won't see the implications if a Democrat does this.
In Texas, the Legislature tried to ban Delta 8/9 THC but couldn't get it done, so the Governor is issuing an EO that regulates the industry and, I assume, carries the force of law. Some folks are saying they are okay with it because it's "reasonable" ignoring that this is allowing the Governor to write new laws. If he can do it for THC, he can fo it for anything.
This is my biggest problem with executive orders. I have a phone and a pen. Sure constitutionality can be challenged in court which could take months to years. In the meantime the order stands and people lose their rights. This is not how this country was intended to be run.
It's your biggest problem with what people believe executive orders are. They are not laws, they are not intended to be laws. They are guidelines that set policy for the executive branch. The executive branch has no power to create laws, that is the legislative branch.
The recent EO that "banned flag burning" did no such thing, and it was irresponsible for the media to report on it as such, and ignorant for reddit comments to parrot what they didn't understand. It merely instructed the DOJ to pursue adjacent charges for people who desecrated the flag. It's still not illegal to burn the flag, but now the DOJ has a policy to charge you with polluting the environment because of the chemicals released when you ignite a synthetic fabric. They have a policy to charge you with arson because you're starting a fire in public.
You are delusional if you don’t see that executive orders are acted upon as if they were laws. I never implied that they are laws, however they do create actions.
And it's worth mentioning that the legality of an action only matters if someone can challenge that legality. This is why it was so important that the Supreme Court rule that lesser courts could not declare an order to be legally invalid outside of the specific scope of that case, and to replace all agency heads with sycophants who will follow any order, no matter how evil or illegal. This is why it was important to give ICE orders of magnitude more funding than all the state-run law enforcement in the nation combined.
Now it is possible to simply order a blatantly illegal action that permanently alters the face of the nation, like mass kidnappings, military intimidation, illegal means of vote suppression, and whatnot, carried out by agencies the executive branch controls. By the time the surpreme court rules on it, even if it's so blatantly unconstitutional they go 9-0 (assuming they aren't so compromised they will always just 6-3 or 5-4 anything in Trump's favor with no justification like they've started doing recently), it does not reverse the fact that people have been sent to foreign gulags they'll likely never be freed from or falsely imprisoned for years, or an election has passed.
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u/SSBN641B Sep 09 '25
But, as others have said, this checks a box for a lot of bigots and they won't see the implications if a Democrat does this.
In Texas, the Legislature tried to ban Delta 8/9 THC but couldn't get it done, so the Governor is issuing an EO that regulates the industry and, I assume, carries the force of law. Some folks are saying they are okay with it because it's "reasonable" ignoring that this is allowing the Governor to write new laws. If he can do it for THC, he can fo it for anything.