James Bovard: What Kind of Dictator Rules by Decree? Joe Biden

President Biden never promised to “make America constitutional again.” Though he took office preaching the need for “unity,” he increasingly rules like an elective dictator, relying on executive orders instead of working with Congress for legislative solutions.

But leftists supporters are furious that Biden has not seized far more power to inflict their values on the rest of America.

Biden yesterday issued an executive order calling for a report within 30 days “identifying potential actions” to safeguard women’s access to abortion. The order asks the Federal Trade Commission to “consider actions” to safeguard women’s privacy when they seek information on abortion. The order has a flurry of other provisions, including summoning activist lawyers to prepare for court brawls, but many observers considered the order “vague.”

Leftists are angry that Biden did not issue a decree making abortion legal based on . . . the majesty of the presidency, I guess.

AOC and Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for setting up abortion clinics in national parks. Advocates are pushing Biden to create travel vouchers for pregnant women, though federally-funded abortion tourism might not play well in swing states.

Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, declared, “You need to be willing to take some risks — even if the anticipation is it might not work.” Sharmin Hossain of the Liberate Abortion Coalition, a group of more than 150 reproductive rights organizations, proclaimed, “We can’t wait 190 days [until the election]. People need care now and that wait could mean life or death for people” (not including fetuses).

Pressures from the left

Similarly, leftists are caterwauling for Biden to issue an executive order canceling almost $2 trillion in federal student loans owed by 46 million people. According to Democrats on Capitol Hill, every ex-student deserves to be treated like an oppressed victim to have all their debts canceled (even the damn lawyers).

Biden has repeatedly decreed moratoriums so that ex-students don’t have to pay a cent on their federal loans. Biden lacks legal authority to waive all the debt, but his critics will never be satisfied as long as any ex-student has to pay a dime.

Are leftists oblivious to how much power Biden has already tried to use — and failed? As law professor Jonathan Turley observed, “President Biden has arguably the worst record of losses in [federal court] the first two years of any recent presidential administration.”

• On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order compelling people to wear face masks any time they were on federal property. The edict had an unwritten Poohbah exemption. Biden went to the Lincoln Memorial a few hours after signing the order, he posed by the statue of Abraham Lincoln; neither Lincoln nor Biden were wearing a mask. Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki scoffed at a reporter’s concern over the apparent crime: “He was celebrating a historic day in our country . . . We have bigger things to worry about.” Biden’s order inflamed legions of junior Stasi who screamed in rage at anyone hiking in national parks without a mask.

• Biden issued an executive order last year proclaiming “the goal of conserving at least 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.” That target would require almost tripling the amount of land under government restrictions — an area twice the size of the state of Texas. Farmers dread future decrees that could hogtie them worse than federal wetlands enforcement already does.

• Last September, Biden decreed that every American working for a company with more than a hundred employees must get a COVID vaccine injection. The Supreme Court obliterated that mandate in January, ruling that there was no basis in federal law for his decree.

• Last November, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s attempt to perpetuate a national moratorium on evictions of renters. Six Justices scoffed that the administration’s legal defense relied “on a decades-old statute that authorizes . . . measures like fumigation and pest extermination.”

• In April, federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Biden administration’s mask mandate for air travel, ruling that agencies were not permitted to “act unlawfully” to justify even desirable ends. Ending the mask mandates almost instantly ended the mid-air conflicts between passengers and flight staff.

Despite being told again and again that he can’t just make law, leftists still insist Biden act unilaterally on abortion, guns and the environment.

Ironically, despite four years nonstop howling about the peril from President Trump, many leftists understand nothing about the danger of absolute power.

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