Before getting to my commentary, I want to share something I saw in the Nice News newsletter about bees and flowers. “It can be annoying when bees buzz in our ears — but if you’re a pollinating plant, that sound may actually be music to your ears. New research funded by the Human Frontier Science Program suggests that plants can not only pick up on the sounds visiting pollinators make, which include wing flapping and noises related to landing and taking off, but they can also “respond.”
To figure this out, the researchers played recordings of buzzing noises from snail-shell bees, an efficient snapdragon pollinator, next to a group of the flowers. Their findings? The buzzing caused the snapdragons to generate more sugar and nectar, a change that could be seen at the genetic level.”
That is so cool. Right?
God bless the bees and the flowers.
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It’s understandable that the people close to tRump are only going to say positive things about him and feed into his need for attention and affirmation, but it’s dangerous to go too far in comments, leading the public astray.
Such was the case of the comment by J.D. Vance during an interview on The Daily Podcast. When questioned about immigration, among other important issues, Vance said that what tRump is doing is just following the will of the American people who voted to give him that power.
Several things are wrong with that statement.
First, barely half of the American people voted for him. The other half voted for the more qualified candidate – Vice President Kamala Harris. The popular vote was Donald Trump won the popular vote with 77,303,568 votes (49.81%), while Kamala Harris received 75,019,230 votes (48.34%). And 85.9 million eligible voters skipped the 2024 general election., so obviously they didn’t like either candidate.
Keep those numbers in mind Mr. Vance when you speak of the 2024 election and your boss during interviews.
Also remember that when a president is voted into office it isn’t a mandate to exert executive power that stomps all over the Constitution. He, or she, takes an oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.
tRump seems to have forgotten the “uphold” part of that oath.
Just one example of his “stomping” is the recent case decided in the Supreme Court regarding the firing of Gwynne Wilcox with the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris with the Merit Systems Protection Board. The Federal News Network posted an article that outlines the issue and the response by the SC justices. SCOTUS failed to uphold an appellate court decision that reinstated the women to their leadership roles until a final ruling could come regarding the legality of what tRump did.
While not a final ruling, the court said in an unsigned order that the Constitution appears to give the president the authority to fire the board members “without cause.”
The court’s three liberal justices dissented. “Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a President, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The court refused to reinstate Harris and Wilcox while their cases play out in the courts over warnings from their lawyers that their action would signal that Trump is free to fire members of every independent agency, including the Federal Reserve Board. “That way lies chaos,” lawyer Neal Katyal wrote in a high court filing on behalf of Harris.
The U.S. Constitution, primarily in Article II, clearly and succinctly outlines the president’s powers. These include being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the ability to veto legislation, the power to pardon, and the authority to negotiate treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate. The president also has the power to appoint ambassadors, judges, and other federal officers, as well as the responsibility to ensure laws are faithfully executed.
The president is free to appoint a new agency head of ten agencies. For example, it is not unusual for the CIA‘s director or NASA‘s administrator to be changed by the president. Other agencies that deal with federal regulation such as the Federal Reserve Board or the Securities and Exchange Commission have set terms that will often outlast presidential terms. For example, governors of the Federal Reserve serve for fourteen years to ensure agency independence.
Regarding all the other independent agencies, such as the EPA and FCC, the president has no direct power to fire people. Those federal agencies are government bodies that operate largely outside the direct control of the President, but are still subject to the Constitution and laws. They are established by Congress and are not part of the 15 executive departments that the president does have direct power over.
Those 15 federal executive departments, basically the president’s cabinet, are: agriculture, commerce, education, energy, health and human services, homeland security, housing and urban development, interior, justice, labor, state, transportation, treasury, and veterans affairs. These departments are led by secretaries, who advise the President and can be fired by the president with no congressional review or vote.
Once, when asked in an interview if he had to uphold the Constitution tRump’s response was “I don’t know.”
You may not know, Mr. President, but we the people do.
All the people who didn’t choose you and aren’t afraid to speak out against all the ways you are ignoring the true mandates in that document.
All the people who are suffering in one way or another because of some of your executive orders: higher prices for everything at the various retail and grocery stores, loss of jobs, increased debt, and extreme anxiety over what is coming next.
All the people who are tired of the lies, the grandiosity, the belief you seem to have that you are “the king,” and your obsession with that absurd Golden Dome. If you’d stop pissing off all the other countries in the world, we wouldn’t need to have that kind of protection.
We’ve all read the Constitution and I encourage you to do the same. Then decide to uphold it. That is the most important responsibility of the office you hold.