Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data. ICE now gobbles it all up and can use it without rules by a department that operates with little regard and lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution.
The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it). Whatever rules we thought there were seem to be out the window because someone magically moved data or ICE got to do it or so on ...
You put that between parentheses as if it was just a detail, but it is the fundamental question that nobody is talking about: what happens after their guy is gone?
Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
1. Most of the federal judges and SCOTUS will overturn bits and pieces of executive power once a Democrat tries to use them. See Biden and school loan forgiveness. They firmly believe that Thomas and Alito will retire during this administration, and they hope Sotomayor or Kagan retires or dies. I’ve also heard noise about impeaching Barrett.
2. Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
3. Regardless of the other two points, it’s very unlikely for the Republicans to lose control of House and Senate again, and the Senate can revert to being effective when the executive is a Democrat. A Republican House can constantly submit articles of impeachment and a Democrat president will get bogged down dodging the accusations, even if they’re spurious.
This.
A lot of the focus these days is on SCOTUS, but most of what Trump is doing was already permitted by law for the executive branch well before he came into office. The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?