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executive power
From Executive Overreach to Undeclared Wars, We Are Living in the World Cheney Made
Dick Cheney midwifed the emergence of a new warfare marked by extrajudicial killing, torture, secrecy, and endless war that transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever.
Nov 04, 2025
Dick Cheney has died, according to reports Tuesday morning, at the age of 84.
A formidable White House and defense department aide (under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford) who left to head an equally formidable Texas-based oil company (with vast federal contracts) and then back in Washington as vice president to George W. Bush, Cheney is probably the most symbolic figure of the failure of the post-9/11 wars. In particular, the Iraq War. It was his amassed power and special cadre of operators known as neoconservatives inside the Old Executive Office building and E Ring at the Pentagon, who with strategic treachery dominated the politics and intelligence necessary to march Washington into the invasion of 2003 and to proliferate a Global War on Terror that lasted well beyond his tenure in office.
By all accounts it was his midwifed lies over WMDs that got us there, followed by the blunders (not anticipating the Iraqi insurgency); the loss of life (millions); the cost to our treasury; and the emergence of a new warfare marked by extrajudicial killing, torture, secrecy, and endless war that transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever.
For it was the exploitation of American grief, fear, and patriotism after 9/11 to pursue neoconservative wars in the Middle East that zapped the people's faith in government institutions. It pretty much destroyed the Republican Party and gave rise to populist movements on both sides of the aisle. It created a generation of veterans harboring more mistrust in elites and Washington than even the Vietnam War era. On the other end of the spectrum, it unleashed mercenary warfare, killer drones, civil wars, and police powers in the United States that have only served make the people less free and more fearful of their government. Thanks in part to Dick Cheney, the Executive, i.e. the president, has more power than ever—to bomb, detain, and "decapitate" any government leader he does not like.
There will be many obituaries written for Dick Cheney, all will be scarred with his role in the Iraq War. For a time he was a very, very powerful man and then he went away to retire and help raise his grandchildren. How many hundreds of thousands of American families were unable to do the same, plagued by death, disease, mental injuries, sterility, divorce, addiction, suicide—because of a war that he so relentlessly pushed but should never have been.
Cheney's Quest for More Executive Power and 'Machtpolitik'
Cheney first came to national prominence when he served as White House chief of staff (1975-77) to President Gerald Ford. In that position, he worked closely with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to counter and eventually derail Henry Kissinger's strategy of "detente" with the Soviet Union.
In that initiative, Cheney and Rumsfeld also worked closely with the Washington-based leaders of the emergent neoconservative movement, a number of them, including Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams, working in the office of Washington State Democratic Senator and Senate Armed Services Chairman Henry "Scoop" Jackson, to promote, among other things, Jewish emigration to Israel and in persuading Ford to convene an ultra-hawkish "Team B" outside the intelligence community to hype the alleged military threat posed by Moscow.
Their mutual interest in pursuing a massive US arms buildup and an aggressive foreign policy more generally would form the basis of an alliance between the aggressive nationalism and Machtpolitik of Cheney and Rumsfeld on the one hand, and the Israel-centered neoconservatives on the other that created the infamous Project for the New American Century in 1998 and ultimately became dominant in the post-9/11 "global war on terror" (GWOT) and the Iraq invasion for which he always remained unrepentant.
In the 1980s, Cheney, who chafed at the post-Watergate restrictions on presidential power, particularly regarding foreign policy, served as Wyoming’s single congressman in the House of Representatives where he became a staunch and powerful defender both of Ronald Reagan’s anti-Soviet policies and of the “Reagan Doctrine” of rolling back leftist regimes and movements in the Global South, notably in Central America and southern Africa. A staunch defender of the protagonists of what became the Iran-Contra scandal, a secret operation to sell weapons to Iran and use the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan contras (for whom Congress had prohibited any US assistance), he later prevailed on President George H.W. Bush, for whom he served as defense secretary, to issue pardons to those, like Abrams, convicted as a result of the affair.
In the wake of the first Gulf War, Cheney commissioned his undersecretary of defense for policy, Paul Wolfowitz, to draft a long-term US strategy, called the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), whose global ambitions, when leaked to the Washington Post, provoked a flurry of controversy about the future US role in the world.
Among other things, the draft called for Washington to maintain permanent military dominance of virtually all of Eurasia to be achieved by “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role” and by preempting, using whatever means necessary, states believed to be developing weapons of mass destruction. It foretold a world in which US military intervention would become a “constant fixture” of the geopolitical landscape, and Washington would act as the ultimate guarantor of international peace and security.
One of the document’s principal drafters was I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who would later become Vice President Cheney’s highly effective chief of staff and national security adviser during George W. Bush’s first term until he was indicted for perjury.
The draft DPG would essentially become the template for what became in 1997 the Project for New American Century, a letterhead organization launched by neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan that in some ways formalized the coalition of Machtpolitikers like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and John Bolton; pro-Israel neoconservatives like Perle, Abrams, Libby, Eliot Cohen, and Frank Gaffney; and Christian Zionists, such as Gary Bauer and William Bennett.
PNAC subsequently published a series of hawkish statements and open letters demanding substantial increases in the US defense budget and stronger US action against perceived adversaries, notably Iraq, Iran, and China. Led by Cheney as vice president and Rumsfeld as defense secretary, many PNAC associates, particularly neoconservatives, took key posts in the George W. Bush administration in 2001, while PNAC became the leading group outside the administration banging the drum for invading Iraq and prosecuting the “global war on terror.” A legacy that leads directly to the current moment where Cheney's hard won Executive powers rule over a landscape of unauthorized US military interventions and undeclared wars all over the globe.
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Spineless Mike Johnson Grovels to Trump and Shutters the House Early
Imagine Johnson, a lawyer, took an oath to uphold the Constitution yet has no interest in safeguarding the independence of the congressional branch of our government.
Jul 26, 2025
The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson—probably the worst speaker in American history—shut down the House early this week before its five-week vacation. He wants to avoid holding votes on releasing the Epstein files that reportedly include, among other notables, President Donald J. Trump.
This is the latest valet service provided by a spineless Johnson, a Trump toady, whose groveling has no known boundaries. Imagine Johnson, a lawyer, took an oath to uphold the Constitution yet has no interest in safeguarding the independence of the congressional branch of our government.
Like Trump, he falsely characterizes what is in the Trump corporate giveaway tax-budget bill that shattered the country’s social safety net for American families. No one has ever even dared to promote such a draconian tax bill. Our country’s safety net has had the support of both parties until the wrecking crew of Trump, Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) showed up.
Johnson declined to protect his own party members who were raising serious questions about Trump’s big, destructive bill. He allowed the Trumpsters to physically threaten these dissenters to get them back in line.
No matter who is in control, the GOP or the Democrats, the crass obeisance to the executive branch remains the surrendering norm.
Most seriously, he has further crumpled the Founders’ system of checks and balances by turning the House of Representatives into an automatic rubber stamp for Trump. Johnson even refuses to allow his committee chairs to hold hearings on legislation Trump wants to ram through Congress. Johnson and his cronies do no oversight of the executive branch despite Trump’s vast violations and vicious cruelties, such as firing tens of thousands of key federal civil servants and further debilitating the resources of the Internal Revenue Service to collect taxes from the evasive super-rich and big companies. And the list goes on.
As The New York Times elaborated further with this description:
Mr. Johnson’s decision to shut down the House early was the latest example of how the speaker has in many ways ceded the chamber’s independence in order to please or avoid angering Mr. Trump. He has deferred to the president on matters large and small, including when it comes to Congress’ spending power. He quietly maneuvered this year to yield the House’s ability to weigh in on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, in order to spare Republicans from having to cast politically tricky votes on whether to end them.
The larger decline of Congress providing countervailing checks and balances reflecting the interests of the people, whose sovereign power under the Constitution has been delegated to it as a public trust, and has been eroded for decades. (See, “Congressional Surrender and Presidential Overreach” by Bruce Fein).
No matter who is in control, the GOP or the Democrats, the crass obeisance to the executive branch remains the surrendering norm.
The consensus by the two parties extends to the minimal days that Congress is actually in session. The members take numerous vacations (they call them “recesses”). They see the weeks they work as starting on Tuesday and ending on Thursday. In between even those days, they are busy in fundraising offices dialing for campaign dollars.
With such limited workdays for a full-time, well-paying job, members of Congress have less time for hearings to investigate wrongdoing, waste, and neglect of actions in the executive branch or the dubious ethical practices in the federal judiciary and federal prosecutors’ offices.
Increasingly, it is nearly impossible for informed citizens to secure congressional hearings and be invited as witnesses, as was the case in the 60s and 70s. Congress is, however, “open for business” if you represent big corporations. Congress has built a cocoon around itself with a sign reading: Business Lobbyists Only. People are bitterly complaining about their inability to get through to their senators or representatives if they are not big campaign contributors or from big business. (See, The Incommunicados by Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein).
The solution is obvious. The people back home must organize Congress Watch Groups—call it a crucial civic hobby (See: The Day the Rats Vetoed Congress)—and establish a tradition of formally summoning their wayward lawmakers to the people’s Town Meetings with the people’s agendas on the table (See, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think, City Lights Books).
There are many overdue changes and reforms backed by large majorities of liberal and conservative voters to make Watchdog Groups a formidable force. One percent of the voters can change Congress, especially because the necessities of the People are widely and strongly supported by millions of voters.
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How the Right-Wing Supreme Court Uses the Shadow Docket to Boost Trump’s Agenda
Although the Supreme Court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals, emergency requests in high-profile cases proliferated during Trump’s first term and continue in his second.
Jun 04, 2025
In an unsigned two-page decision (Trump v. Wilcox) released on May 22, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s move to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board without cause and in the middle of their designated terms. The decision reversed two separate judgments issued by two different D.C. District Court judges that had blocked the firings as unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was issued on an expedited basis as part of a rapidly expanding and highly controversial set of truncated decisions known as the “shadow docket,” a term coined by University of Chicago professor William Baude in a 2015 law review article to describe emergency appeals that come before the court outside of its standard “merits” docket and that are typically resolved without complete briefing, oral arguments, or detailed opinions. Although shadow-docket rulings are frequently used to lift, or “stay,” lower-court injunctions while further litigation continues, they often have the same practical effect as final decisions.
The two officials involved in the Wilcox case, Gwynne Wilcox of the NLRB and Cathy Harris of the MSPB, were nominated to their positions by President Joe Biden and were confirmed by the Senate. Before their dismissals, they were set to serve fixed terms, with Wilcox’s tenure expiring in 2028 and Harris’ in 2029.
Kagan is not alone in her critique that the shadow docket undermines precedent and lacks transparency.
The NLRB’s five-member governing board is charged with enforcing U.S. labor law and collective bargaining, and adjudicating alleged unfair labor practices. The MSPB has a three-member board and adjudicates federal employee challenges to adverse employment actions. Both agencies were established by Congress to operate as independent, nonpartisan overseers free from presidential interference.
President Donald Trump has long railed against agency independence. In a 2019 speech at Turning Point USA’s Teen Action Summit, he declared, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” referring to the second article of the Constitution and the “unitary executive” theory, which contends that all executive power is concentrated in the president. Trump is also a proponent of the goal of “deconstructing the administrative state,” a phrase popularized by Steve Bannon and more recently promoted by Project 2025.
Sensing an opportunity to strike, Trump fired Wilcox, a career labor attorney, on January 27, a week after his second inauguration. Harris was sent packing a month later. The lower-court orders mandating their reinstatements were issued in March. But on April 9, Trump’s solicitor general and former criminal defense attorney D. John Sauer requested the Supreme Court to intervene and put the district-court judgments on hold, allowing the dismissals to take effect while returning the cases to the district courts and the Court of Appeals for additional hearings, a process that could easily take more than a year.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Sauer implored the justices to disregard the court’s 1935 precedent decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which held that Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws limiting the president’s authority to fire executive officers of independent agencies that exercise quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions. Sauer asked the justices to put the lower-court reinstatement orders on hold or, alternatively, issue a final decision on the merits, endorsing the administration’s actions.
Although the firings of Wilcox and Harris clearly ran afoul of Humphrey’s, the Supreme Court granted a stay, and both women were sacked. Just as shocking, the court did so without hearing oral arguments, and without citing Humphrey’s a single time in its decision.
The three Democratic-appointees on the court dissented. Writing for herself and justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan blasted her Republican colleagues for their bad faith and bias in favor of the president. “For 90 years,” she charged, “Humphrey’s Executor v. United States… has stood as a precedent of this Court. And not just any precedent. Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control.”
Quoting Alexander Hamilton, she continued, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents.” Without mentioning the shadow docket by name, she castigated the majority for rushing to judgment, “unrestrained by the rules of briefing and argument—and the passage of time—needed to discipline our decision-making.”
Although the Supreme Court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals—such as last-minute requests for stays of execution in death penalty cases—emergency requests in high-profile cases proliferated during Trump’s first term, earning the shadow-docket sobriquet. According to Georgetown University law professor and shadow-docket scholar Steve Vladeck, the first Trump administration sought emergency relief 41 times, with the Supreme Court granting relief in 28 of those cases. By comparison, the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations filed a combined total of eight emergency relief requests over a 16-year period.
In December 2017, the Supreme Court issued a shadow-docket ruling allowing the third and final version of Trump’s racist Muslim travel ban to move forward pending further appeals. The court ultimately approved the ban in a 2018 merits decision. Later in Trump’s first go-round, the court used the shadow docket to uphold Trump’s executive actions calling for the diversion of federal funds to construct the southern border wall, prohibiting transgender people from openly serving in the military, and restricting the ability of Central American refugees to seek political asylum.
During Biden’s presidency, the shadow docket shifted to emergency requests filed by red state governments and private parties, but the court maintained its rightward bias. Among other shadow-docket decisions, the court ended Biden’s Covid-19 eviction moratorium; permitted the new six-week Texas abortion ban to take effect (it would later approve the ban in a final decision that overturned Roe v. Wade); and reinstated a first-Trump-term policy that made it easier for companies to pursue projects that pollute U.S. waters.
Kagan is not alone in her critique that the shadow docket undermines precedent and lacks transparency. At times the criticism has become heated. In September 2021, Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer triggered an open feud with Justice Samuel Alito, penning a column that accused the court’s right-wing majority of publishing its ruling on Texas’ abortion law in the middle of the night to minimize public outcry. In response, Alito excoriated the media during an hour-long live-streamed speech delivered at Notre Dame University for portraying the court’s majority as “a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” and for feeding “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”
Fortunately, not every shadow-docket order has leaned in the direction of Trump and the MAGA movement. One notable exception was the court’s May 16 ruling that extended an earlier ban on the deportation of undocumented Venezuelan men in immigration custody in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But even that decision ended with a note of encouragement for Trump, advising that “The Government may remove the [men]… under other lawful authorities.” There was also an impassioned 14-page dissent written by Alito and joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
On May 30, the court issued another pro-Trump shadow-docket order, allowing the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of more than 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela that had been granted by the Biden administration. And in the coming weeks and months, the court can be expected to return to the shadow docket again in cases involving the deportation of undocumented migrants to South Sudan, the operations of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and possibly the legality of Trump’s tariffs.
Given the court’s overall jurisprudence, there is scant reason to be optimistic that it will openly repudiate or substantially limit the president’s authority in these or other cases critical to the nation’s future. As Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, told Reuters in a 2021 interview, “What we are seeing are the consequences of a deeply conservative court, with the added travesties of the shadow docket.”
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