This post is written solely in my role as a private individual. It is not written for and does not reflect the views of my employer or any agency of the US Government.
Foreword
The president does not love truth.
Indeed, the administration he has built does not believe in objective truth in the way that normal people do. The administration posits repeatedly that truth is subjective, that it is formed by what those in power can enforce, by what can be claimed loudest and repeated often enough in social media, by what can sneak through court using bad-faith arguments strewn across myriad attempts. Truth, to this administration, is unknowable. To hear their claims, there are always alternative facts, differing viewpoints, biased agendas. Unbiased, honest, reliable truth is alien to them. The administration’s dialog does not allow for the possibility of objective truth, nor those who seek it, nor especially those who find it. To their view, truth must be qualified, for there is not only one objective truth. The administration would have us ask “whose truth”, and would (and will if it can) compel us to answer “Trump’s”.
There is, of course, a reason for this. The president loves only those things which serve his interest. He loves power. He loves money. He loves sycophancy and corruption, though perhaps not the sycophants themselves. He loves adoration while disregarding the interests of those who adore and voted for him. He loves control.
The president does not love truth because truth does not serve him. Lies serve him, and he speaks verifiable lies at such a shocking rate that even his true remarks seem like mere accidents in a train of thought divorced from the concept of truth, a rambling and often incoherent series of disjointed ideas that are “true” in his mind because they are desirable to him, with no regard – literally – for their veracity. The president is a liar, and he tells many lies.
I believe in truth, and find myself in the incredible position of needing to say so. Objective truth is real, and it is possible to discover truth. There really are right answers. The existence of truth is not a lie.
This will be the first of a series of blog posts articulating the lies told by the president, and by those with whom he has surrounded himself.
The Unitary Executive Lie
You will probably never hear Trump use the words “Unitary Executive Theory”. He is neither intelligent enough to know the phrase, nor interested enough in law to care about its meaning, nor likely articulate enough to say it without stumbling or trailing off on a tangent. Nevertheless, you will hear him advancing it at almost any event in which he speaks. It is a theory of law which states that the Constitution grants to the president absolute authority over the Executive Branch, with far-reaching consequences.
joebelanger/iStock
Taken on its face, with that definition, and with little understanding of the Constitution or the apparatus of government, this idea sounds reasonable and agreeable. The president is elected to lead the Executive Branch. He should get to do so just like Congress leads the Legislative Branch and the Supreme Court leads the Judicial Branch. What’s the problem?
The problem is twofold. First, that’s not what the Constitution says. The Constitution articulates the president’s powers and duties. The president’s powers are specific and deliberately limited.
Second, almost everything is within the Executive Branch, by necessity. It is the president’s job to make sure those things are done which Congress has decided should be done. To make things happen, the president needs to be able to direct government, and so the Constitution gives the president certain powers to do so. These are powers meant to be used for the president’s duty, which is to carry out what Congress has enshrined in law. It is a mistake to assume that those things given to the president’s direction are also given to his purpose. If they were, then Congress could not ever exert its will. It would pass laws, and the one responsible for making sure they are acted upon, the president, could ignore them. The government would exist solely for the president, not to execute the will of Congress.
When Congress wants a thing to be done, and passes a law to do it, that law must be acted upon. Someone has to make the words in the law turn into reality on the ground. The word for acting upon it is “execution”, and it comes from the same root as “Executive”. The president executes the law. Indeed, this is what the Constitution tells us. Article II of the United States Constitution contains what legal scholars call the “Take Care Clause”, which appears within a list of the president’s duties, and which reads “…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed…” So things are quite plain here, Congress passes laws, and it is the president’s explicit duty to make sure that they are carried out. This is the core domestic function of the president, to make manifest in reality the laws conceived and agreed by Congress.
But the president can’t do it all alone. The president needs civil servants, people who carry out the requirements of the law described by Congress. Congress appropriates funds to pay for these people’s wages, and for the resources they will need. Congress gives these funds to the president, so that the president can use them to carry out the law. Congress similarly awards varying degrees of authority to hire, fire, and direct those in civil service positions, rules and powers which are also enshrined in laws passed by Congress. All of these things are given over to the president, not as gifts, but for the purpose of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and it is important to note that the laws Congress has passed lay out exactly who the president can and can’t fire, and for what reasons.
The truth here is not hidden. It has been written for nearly two and a half centuries. The Constitution is easy to find online and the part that lays out the president’s duties, Article II Sections 2 and 3, is shorter than this blog post has become already, just from its start to this sentence. If you have never done so, or merely if you are a bit rusty, then take the time to read how you are governed.
The president is a leader, but not a king. The president’s role is one of stewardship, a role of power, but with limits, and for the purpose of carrying out duties. No steward, on receiving their power and feeling tempting allure, should foolishly fall into self-aggrandizement, claiming the power as their own, unlimited and for their pleasure and purpose. By giving the president limited, named powers, and a series of duties, the Constitution makes the president the chief steward of all law, shepherding the law’s apparatus to carry out the law’s intent. For this purpose, the president is equipped with funds, and with civil servants organized into agencies, not to use at the president’s every whim and desire, but specifically to use in service of executing the law.
And here is the problem with Unitary Executive Theory, for if the president has absolute authority over everything within the Executive Branch then these agencies become the president’s playthings from the moment that they fall under his control. In this view, the president can use them to further their own policy priorities, not the law, beholden to nobody and nothing. The steward would have power over the master, and so would become the master.
With a president so fully empowered, how then is law to function? How is Congress to exert any attempt to exercise its will or authority? Congress conceives laws, and passes them. It does not enforce laws. This is the duty of the president. If the president, the one with this duty of enforcement, receives the tools for the job, but then claims to own those tools, and have absolute authority to do with the tools whatever the president wishes, then Congress has no power to act. By the Constitution’s text, the president wields the tools with duties to laws passed by Congress. By Trump’s narrative, the president wields the tools, and they are his to do with as he wishes.
Further, the president’s claim when brought to court over the matters is increasingly that the courts have no power to act, for the tools are within the Executive Branch’s purview, not the Judiciary’s. Unitary Executive Theory, with no basis in the plain text of the Constitution, turns our government into an instant monarchy, for the only branch of government empowered to exert will on the world then claims no duty to use those tools for the first branch, nor acknowledge its failures when admonished by the third. Under the Unitary Executive Theory we are unitary indeed, for we see only one branch of government able to change the world around it. The other two branches can shout, but if the president’s tools are for the president’s purpose, then the other branches can only shout, and will be ignored.
I wish that this topic was purely theoretical, academic. It is not. We are seeing this struggle play out in real life and at frenetic pace. Trump, with a childlike view of the presidency, one wherein he is the boss so everyone must listen to him, attempts to do whatever he wants. His army of more educated but equally unscrupulous sycophants put forth media and legal defenses to justify his claims. Be on the lookout for the administration’s arguments.
When you hear that judges should not be able to overrule the lawful orders of the president, remember that it is exactly the role of judges to ascertain what is lawful, and understand that you are hearing a claim that Trump’s actions exist beyond judicial review, that his executive power is not to be questioned.
When you hear that Trump wants to reclassify thousands of civil servants as “Schedule Policy/Career”, hear that he is saying he wants to be able to fire people whenever he wants to, especially if they won’t promote his stated policy interests regardless of their lawful duties, even though the law he is supposed to faithfully execute says he can’t fire them.
When you hear in arguments over authority a deference to Trump as the “democratically elected president”, rather than a deference to the president’s power and roles in the Constitution, understand that you are hearing an abandonment of the law and a claim that his power is limitless, for he will be the “democratically elected president” in every argument he makes. If being the “democratically elected president” justifies action regardless of the limits written in the Constitution then there is nothing he can’t, by those words, claim is justified.
And when you hear that Trump’s administration can admit to accidentally deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a foreign gulag, to a genuine torture prison, but that the administration cannot be compelled by courts to so much as ask for his return, understand that the claim is that the executive is a king who can deprive people of liberty and send them to lifelong torture without trial. For the sake of others, this is an immoral outrage on its face, but be also concerned for yourself, and acknowledge with dread that by his claims we are all subject to those whims.
Trump does not love truth. We do, so we fight for it. You can fight for it today by pushing back against the Unitary Executive Lie. At time of this blog post’s publication there is still time to push back against one one of Trump’s actions. The rule change which would allow him to reclassify thousands of civil servants as “Schedule Policy/Career”, so that they could be fired at will, is still in its public comment phase. You can make your voice heard at https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OPM-2025-0004-0001.
Be bold, and believe in truth.
This is Part 1 in a series titled “Trump’s Lies”. Go to Part 2.
The Unitary Executive Lie
This post is written solely in my role as a private individual. It is not written for and does not reflect the views of my employer or any agency of the US Government.
Foreword
The president does not love truth.
Indeed, the administration he has built does not believe in objective truth in the way that normal people do. The administration posits repeatedly that truth is subjective, that it is formed by what those in power can enforce, by what can be claimed loudest and repeated often enough in social media, by what can sneak through court using bad-faith arguments strewn across myriad attempts. Truth, to this administration, is unknowable. To hear their claims, there are always alternative facts, differing viewpoints, biased agendas. Unbiased, honest, reliable truth is alien to them. The administration’s dialog does not allow for the possibility of objective truth, nor those who seek it, nor especially those who find it. To their view, truth must be qualified, for there is not only one objective truth. The administration would have us ask “whose truth”, and would (and will if it can) compel us to answer “Trump’s”.
There is, of course, a reason for this. The president loves only those things which serve his interest. He loves power. He loves money. He loves sycophancy and corruption, though perhaps not the sycophants themselves. He loves adoration while disregarding the interests of those who adore and voted for him. He loves control.
The president does not love truth because truth does not serve him. Lies serve him, and he speaks verifiable lies at such a shocking rate that even his true remarks seem like mere accidents in a train of thought divorced from the concept of truth, a rambling and often incoherent series of disjointed ideas that are “true” in his mind because they are desirable to him, with no regard – literally – for their veracity. The president is a liar, and he tells many lies.
I believe in truth, and find myself in the incredible position of needing to say so. Objective truth is real, and it is possible to discover truth. There really are right answers. The existence of truth is not a lie.
This will be the first of a series of blog posts articulating the lies told by the president, and by those with whom he has surrounded himself.
The Unitary Executive Lie
You will probably never hear Trump use the words “Unitary Executive Theory”. He is neither intelligent enough to know the phrase, nor interested enough in law to care about its meaning, nor likely articulate enough to say it without stumbling or trailing off on a tangent. Nevertheless, you will hear him advancing it at almost any event in which he speaks. It is a theory of law which states that the Constitution grants to the president absolute authority over the Executive Branch, with far-reaching consequences.
Taken on its face, with that definition, and with little understanding of the Constitution or the apparatus of government, this idea sounds reasonable and agreeable. The president is elected to lead the Executive Branch. He should get to do so just like Congress leads the Legislative Branch and the Supreme Court leads the Judicial Branch. What’s the problem?
The problem is twofold. First, that’s not what the Constitution says. The Constitution articulates the president’s powers and duties. The president’s powers are specific and deliberately limited.
Second, almost everything is within the Executive Branch, by necessity. It is the president’s job to make sure those things are done which Congress has decided should be done. To make things happen, the president needs to be able to direct government, and so the Constitution gives the president certain powers to do so. These are powers meant to be used for the president’s duty, which is to carry out what Congress has enshrined in law. It is a mistake to assume that those things given to the president’s direction are also given to his purpose. If they were, then Congress could not ever exert its will. It would pass laws, and the one responsible for making sure they are acted upon, the president, could ignore them. The government would exist solely for the president, not to execute the will of Congress.
When Congress wants a thing to be done, and passes a law to do it, that law must be acted upon. Someone has to make the words in the law turn into reality on the ground. The word for acting upon it is “execution”, and it comes from the same root as “Executive”. The president executes the law. Indeed, this is what the Constitution tells us. Article II of the United States Constitution contains what legal scholars call the “Take Care Clause”, which appears within a list of the president’s duties, and which reads “…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed…” So things are quite plain here, Congress passes laws, and it is the president’s explicit duty to make sure that they are carried out. This is the core domestic function of the president, to make manifest in reality the laws conceived and agreed by Congress.
But the president can’t do it all alone. The president needs civil servants, people who carry out the requirements of the law described by Congress. Congress appropriates funds to pay for these people’s wages, and for the resources they will need. Congress gives these funds to the president, so that the president can use them to carry out the law. Congress similarly awards varying degrees of authority to hire, fire, and direct those in civil service positions, rules and powers which are also enshrined in laws passed by Congress. All of these things are given over to the president, not as gifts, but for the purpose of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and it is important to note that the laws Congress has passed lay out exactly who the president can and can’t fire, and for what reasons.
The truth here is not hidden. It has been written for nearly two and a half centuries. The Constitution is easy to find online and the part that lays out the president’s duties, Article II Sections 2 and 3, is shorter than this blog post has become already, just from its start to this sentence. If you have never done so, or merely if you are a bit rusty, then take the time to read how you are governed.
The president is a leader, but not a king. The president’s role is one of stewardship, a role of power, but with limits, and for the purpose of carrying out duties. No steward, on receiving their power and feeling tempting allure, should foolishly fall into self-aggrandizement, claiming the power as their own, unlimited and for their pleasure and purpose. By giving the president limited, named powers, and a series of duties, the Constitution makes the president the chief steward of all law, shepherding the law’s apparatus to carry out the law’s intent. For this purpose, the president is equipped with funds, and with civil servants organized into agencies, not to use at the president’s every whim and desire, but specifically to use in service of executing the law.
And here is the problem with Unitary Executive Theory, for if the president has absolute authority over everything within the Executive Branch then these agencies become the president’s playthings from the moment that they fall under his control. In this view, the president can use them to further their own policy priorities, not the law, beholden to nobody and nothing. The steward would have power over the master, and so would become the master.
With a president so fully empowered, how then is law to function? How is Congress to exert any attempt to exercise its will or authority? Congress conceives laws, and passes them. It does not enforce laws. This is the duty of the president. If the president, the one with this duty of enforcement, receives the tools for the job, but then claims to own those tools, and have absolute authority to do with the tools whatever the president wishes, then Congress has no power to act. By the Constitution’s text, the president wields the tools with duties to laws passed by Congress. By Trump’s narrative, the president wields the tools, and they are his to do with as he wishes.
Further, the president’s claim when brought to court over the matters is increasingly that the courts have no power to act, for the tools are within the Executive Branch’s purview, not the Judiciary’s. Unitary Executive Theory, with no basis in the plain text of the Constitution, turns our government into an instant monarchy, for the only branch of government empowered to exert will on the world then claims no duty to use those tools for the first branch, nor acknowledge its failures when admonished by the third. Under the Unitary Executive Theory we are unitary indeed, for we see only one branch of government able to change the world around it. The other two branches can shout, but if the president’s tools are for the president’s purpose, then the other branches can only shout, and will be ignored.
I wish that this topic was purely theoretical, academic. It is not. We are seeing this struggle play out in real life and at frenetic pace. Trump, with a childlike view of the presidency, one wherein he is the boss so everyone must listen to him, attempts to do whatever he wants. His army of more educated but equally unscrupulous sycophants put forth media and legal defenses to justify his claims. Be on the lookout for the administration’s arguments.
Trump does not love truth. We do, so we fight for it. You can fight for it today by pushing back against the Unitary Executive Lie. At time of this blog post’s publication there is still time to push back against one one of Trump’s actions. The rule change which would allow him to reclassify thousands of civil servants as “Schedule Policy/Career”, so that they could be fired at will, is still in its public comment phase. You can make your voice heard at https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OPM-2025-0004-0001.
Be bold, and believe in truth.
This is Part 1 in a series titled “Trump’s Lies”. Go to Part 2.