- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
New York Times reports Michele Beckwith’s firing came after she reminded Border Patrol to comply with courts
Donald Trump fired a top federal prosecutor in Sacramento just hours after she warned immigration agents they could not indiscriminately detain people in her district, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times.
Michele Beckwith, who became the acting US attorney in Sacramento in January, received an email at 4.31pm on 15 July notifying her that the president had ordered her termination.
The day before, Beckwith had received a phone call from Gregory Bovino, who leads the Border Patrol’s unit in El Centro, a border city 600 miles south of Sacramento. Bovino was planning an immigration raid in Sacramento and asked Beckwith who in her office to contact if his officers were assaulted, the Times reported, citing Beckwith.
This is the fringe legal theory called unitary executive becoming not so fringe at all. In fact it seems to be headed towards firmly mainstream, precedential status.
Article II, section 1:
Everyone used to think this sentence was pretty harmless. It was put in to say there’s one President at the top, instead of an executive committee (which was proposed and debates at the convention).
But to the unitary executive theorists, that one sentence actually means that all of the executive Power must flow through the President, and there can be no executive Power that does not.
The previous thinking is that this power was only talking about the powers specifically listed in Article II, which is not a lot. (Veto, cabinet nominations, pardons, and a few other things). And that if Congress chose to delegate part of its Article I power to the executive branch by passing a law, it could put whatever limitations, checks, and balances it wanted to.
So what you’re saying is unitary executive theory is a fancy name for a dictatorship?
It certainly seems to be going that way. If Trump can just choose not to spend money that Congress appropriated… Well, that’s a lot more power than even George III had when Thomas Jefferson wrote out that listicle of 28 reasons why he sucked.