We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we’re going to solve — we’re going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan, and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks. The Supreme Court gave the president of the United States powers that nobody thought the president had, by approving, by doing what they did — their decision on DACA. And DACA’s going to be taken care of also. But we’re getting rid of it because we’re going to replace it with something much better. What we got rid of already, which was most of Obamacare, the individual mandate. And that I’ve already won on. And we won also on the Supreme Court. But the decision by the Supreme Court on DACA allows me to do things on immigration, on health care, on other things that we’ve never done before. And you’re going to find it to be a very exciting two weeks. — Donald Trump in an interview with Chris Wallace

When I listened to this interview today, I was baffled by the claim of “powers that nobody thought the president had.” Wallace apparently didn’t know what to make of it either, since he jumped to a question about Mary Trump’s book.

Today, a report by Axios (“Scoop: Trump’s license to skirt the law”) provides the context, an article by John Yoo (the man who defended waterboarding as a national policy, even if it violated federal statutes) in National Review (“How the Supreme Court’s DACA Decision Harms the Constitution, the Presidency, Congress, and the Country”).

The article offers Yoo’s reasoning in the first three sentences:

Suppose President Donald Trump decided to create a nationwide right to carry guns openly. He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws, and that a new “Trump permit” would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions.

Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency. And, moreover, even if courts declared the permit illegal, his successor would have to keep enforcing the program for another year or two. [Emphasis added.]

Yoo finds justification for this interpretation within the 5-4 opinion written by the Chief Justice (with the 4 liberals concurring). As Yoo puts it (quoting from the text of the opinion):

“Even if it is illegal for DHS to extend work authorization and other benefits to DACA recipients,” Roberts found, DACA “could not be rescinded in full without any consideration whatsoever of a” non-deportation policy other than on the ground of its illegality.

According to Chief Justice Roberts, the Constitution makes it easy for presidents to violate the law, but reversing such violations difficult — especially for their successors.

Yoo criticizes this decision in National Review, because he believes it allows a president to unduly tie the hands of his successors. (I’m not an attorney, so I may be missing something in thinking that Yoo finds torture at the hands of the federal government more acceptable than deferring deportations of immigrants whose parents brought them into the country as children without legal documentation.)

Regardless of Yoo’s objections, the White House sees a green light for expanding presidential power beyond even the creative imagination (prior to Roberts’ DACA decision) of Bill Barr’s justice department.

This is scary stuff for anyone who has had occasion to fear Trump’s authoritarian impulses.

I’ve concluded a couple of posts recently with warnings (regarding a raging COVID-19) that things will get worse. With Trump in a rage about his polling, the economy, and an out of control epidemic he has tried his best to ignore, we can count on this: Things will get worse — much worse — before January 20, 2021.

(Image: King George III via wikipedia.)