Evelyn Reynolds

Nikki Haley is releasing the delegates she won during this year’s Republican primary so that they’re free to support Donald Trump at next week’s convention, a move that goes toward solidifying GOP support around the party’s presumptive nominee.Haley on Tuesday opted to release 97 delegates she won across a dozen primaries and caucuses earlier this year, according to her former campaign.In a statement, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador called for party unity at the upcoming Republican national convention in Milwaukee, also calling the Democratic president, Joe Biden, “not competent to serve a second term” and saying that the vice-president, Kamala Harris – whom Haley repeatedly intimated would end up as president in Biden’s stead – “would be a disaster for America”.“We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt and get our economy back on track,” Haley said. “I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee.”Haley won’t be in attendance in Milwaukee next week, according to spokesperson Chaney Denton.“She was not invited, and she’s fine with that,” Denton said. “Trump deserves the convention he wants. She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”Haley was the last major Republican rival standing against Trump when she shuttered her own campaign following Trump’s Super Tuesday romp, having accused him of causing chaos and disregarding the importance of US alliances abroad.Trump, in turn, repeatedly mocked her with the nickname “Birdbrain”, though he curtailed those attacks after securing enough delegates in March to become the presumptive Republican nominee.Trump’s campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Haley’s move, which was first reported by Politico.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign has been working to win over her supporters, whom they view as true swing voters. But Haley said in May that she would be casting her vote for Trump and left it up to the former president to work toward winning over support from her backers. More

Republican former senator James Inhofe, a climate denier who once brought a snowball to the chamber floor in a stunt attempting to disprove global warming, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.Inhofe resigned as senator for Oklahoma in January 2023, suffering long-term effects of Covid-19. Elected in 1994, his time as the state’s longest-serving senator was notable for his ultra-conservative positions on numerous issues, including calling the climate emergency “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.His death was announced on Tuesday in a family statement, which stated the cause was a stroke.The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, a Republican ally during Inhofe’s chairing of the Senate’s armed forces and environment committees, was among the first to pay tribute.“The people he served, a group much larger than the proud residents of the Sooner state, were better for it,” a statement from McConnell’s office said.“Jim’s diligent stewardship of massive infrastructure projects transformed life across the heartland. His relentless advocacy for American energy dominance unlocked new prosperity across the country. And his laser focus on growing and modernizing the US military strengthened the security of the entire free world.”As perhaps the most vocal Senate Republican climate denier, he called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a “Gestapo bureaucracy”, opposed efforts by Democrats to cap greenhouse gas emissions, and pursued lucrative tax incentives for domestic oil and gas producers.His widely ridiculed snowball stunt came in 2015, during a rambling speech during which he claimed climate conditions on Earth were the work of a supreme being, and attempted to discredit a Nasa report that found that 2014 was the hottest year recorded globally to date.“My point is, God’s still up there,” Inhofe said during a 2012 interview during promotion for his book focusing on global warming as “a conspiracy”.“The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is, to me, outrageous.”According to Open Secrets, between 1989 and 2022, Inhofe received campaign donations worth almost $4m from energy producers.As chair of the Senate armed services committee, Inhofe was an advocate for a large US military presence on the world stage, and supported sizable defense spending budgets to pay for it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFollowing the scandal over US service members photographed abusing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, Inhofe said he “was more outraged at the outrage” than the torture of the inmates.Inhofe was born on 17 November 1934 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city he served as mayor from 1978 to 1984.He was elected to the state house in 1966, aged 31, and state senate three years later.His career in Washington DC began in 1986 as a US congressman for Oklahoma’s first district, and he won re-election three times before stepping up to the Senate in 1994 when Republican incumbent David Boren became president of the University of Oklahoma.A keen aviator, Inhofe married his wife, Kay, in 1959, and they had four children. A son, Perry, died in a solo airplane crash in 2013.Reuters contributed reporting More

Donald Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025 after extreme comments from one of its leaders falls flat given the extensive Trump ties and similarities between the project’s policy ideas and the former president’s platform.On Truth Social last week, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. The disavowal from Trump came after Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said: “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.”Project 2025 is a Heritage Foundation effort to align the conservative movement behind policies that an incoming rightwing president should undertake. The far-reaching plan, which would upend the way the federal government operates, includes a lengthy manifesto and recruitment of potential staffers for a second Trump administration.Trump’s comments show that an alignment with the project could hurt him with key voters and that he doesn’t appreciate being seen as someone who could be controlled by an outside group.But, in reality, Trump and Project 2025 share the same vision for where the US should go in a conservative presidency. His platform, dubbed Agenda 47, overlaps with Project 2025 on most major policy issues. Project 2025 often includes more details on how some key conservative goals could be carried out, offering the meat for Trumpian policy ideas often delivered as soundbites.As the Guardian has reported, Project 2025 wants to gut civil service, putting far more roles in federal government in the hands of a president as political appointees, which would erode checks and balances. Trump, for his part, tried to do the same in 2020 shortly before losing the election, an idea known as “Schedule F”.Project 2025 proposes mass deportations of more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and stringent rules on migrants. So does Trump, and so does the Republican National Committee’s platform.Trump wants to get rid of the federal education department, as does Project 2025, echoing a long-held policy wish on the right. The project details how this could happen and other ways to give states more control over education, at the potential expense of students. Both Trump and the project share goals of limiting LGBTQ+ rights and diversity initiatives in schools.Trump often rails against cities run by Democrats, especially Washington DC, and talks about ways to crack down on them, renewing the idea he attempted in his first term to withhold federal funds as a way to enforce immigration policies. Project 2025 has some ideas on how he could do that more forcefully next time.Since the project was announced in 2023, people have questioned whether Trump would actually do any of it. In some areas, like abortion, the project, rooted in Christian conservatism, goes farther than Trump has indicated in recent months. But on the bulk of the issues, the project simply presents rightwing, at times far-right, consensus, albeit with much more detail than normally released to the public.Beyond the policy goals, the people behind the project are certainly in Trump’s orbit. This is not a shadowy group of people – the publicly available manifesto includes named authors, editors and contributors throughout.Roberts, the Heritage leader, has said he met with Trump several times and they were friendly. Trump gave the signature speech at a Heritage conference after Roberts took over the foundation. When Roberts was tapped for the role, Trump said he would be “so incredible” and “outstanding”.Paul Dans and Steven Groves co-edited the project, which includes chapters on federal agencies written by former Trump officials, allies or other conservative experts. Both Dans and Groves served in multiple roles in the Trump administration. Another big contributor to the project is Russ Vought, who Trump appointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAll told, journalist Judd Legum documented how 31 of the 38 people who helped write or edit the project served in some manner in Trump’s administration or transition.In recent weeks, Democrats have latched on to Project 2025, putting out explainers about how the project would impact voters in hopes of showing the dangers of an incoming Trump presidency. The Biden campaign made a webpage detailing what Project 2025 proposes, and campaign social media accounts have repeatedly been drawing attention to its goals. Actress Taraji P Henson gave the project’s impacts a further boost by warning about it at the BET awards.Trump’s campaign has repeatedly tried to move away from the project, telling the media he isn’t privy to it. And Project 2025 and Roberts have also repeatedly said their work isn’t tailored for any specific person. The Trump campaign told Semafor recently that it wouldn’t be taking references for future political appointees from the project.In a statement after Trump’s effort at distancing, a project spokesperson again noted how they have repeatedly said they aren’t speaking for any specific candidate and that “it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.” More

It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025.But anyone following mainstream media coverage could not miss knowing about the latest polls on whether Biden should step aside, how Kamala Harris would fare in a head-to-head competition with Trump, and which members of Congress have called for a new Democratic nominee.And those are just the news stories – not to mention the nonstop punditry on cable news and the near takeover of the opinion sections of major publications.Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.Nor is there much self-scrutiny or effort to course-correct. Only self-satisfaction and an apparent commitment to more of the same.Erik Wemple of the Washington Post queried the Times about any pushback, specifically from the White House. “Have you gotten any complaints about age coverage since the debate?” Wemple asked top Times editor Joe Kahn, who recently praised the paper’s coverage in a note to staff. Kahn said no.He also dismissed as “factually wrong” the criticism from former Times editor Jill Abramson that the Times “failed in the first duty of journalism: to hold power accountable” because reporters didn’t break through what she described as an enormous White House cover-up of Biden’s mental and physical decline. Kahn also brushed off criticism on social media from the left and the right.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Monday, the Times sent out as “breaking news” a story whose headline announced that an expert in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House eight times in a recent eight-month period; much further down in the story we learn that the same doctor also had made 10 visits to the White House in 2012, and that he has supported the White House medical team for more than a dozen years. But many people never get past the headline.“I’m starting to think the Times will see it as a ‘win’ if Biden drops out,” one media observer told me this week.Of course, the problem certainly is not just the New York Times, despite its agenda-setting influence. It’s also TV news, both network and cable. And, to a lesser extent, it’s other major US publications.Where does that leave us?All of these disturbing elements – the Democrats’ dilemma, the media’s failures, and the cult-like, unquestioning support of Trump – could add up to one likelihood in November.A win for Trump, and a terrible loss for democracy.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

There’s one thing Donald Trump knows how to do well: maximizing suspense in an elimination contest and treating contestants with exquisite cruelty. Competing for a spot on his presidential ticket is as close as politics can get to The Apprentice, the show that fooled millions of Americans into thinking that Trump was a successful businessman.A number of Republican candidates for running mate, from the endlessly self-humiliating Tim Scott to the nondescript Doug Burgum, are vying for what surely looks like a political suicide mission: they must know that Trump betrays everyone eventually, yet they seem to think that their fate as a faithful no 2 will be different. Not all aspirants are equally threatening to American democracy, though. The top prize not just for sycophancy, but for clear and present authoritarian danger must go to the man widely considered the “veepstakes” frontrunner, JD Vance.The junior senator from Ohio has a massive advantage that makes him more similar to Trump than any other contender: a presence in popular culture, created by Hillbilly Elegy, the moving memoir to which both conservatives and liberals dumbfounded by Trump’s triumph turned eagerly to understand why the “left behind” were opting for rightwing populism.People think they know Vance, because they know his narrative: growing up in poverty in Appalachia and making it to Yale Law School and Silicon Valley, only to then turn into political champion of blue-collar folks. Josh Hawley et tutti quanti might have more impressive credentials (Yale and Stanford), but only Vance has spawned a Netflix series. Why opt for a cold rightwing technocrat when you can have the rock star of “national conservatism”?Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals. Mobilizing voters is less about programs, let alone a real legislative record (Vance has none; his initiatives like making English the official language of the US are just virtue signaling for conservative culture warriors). Rather, it’s to generate political energy by deepening people’s sense of shared victimhood.The point for the rightist trolls is not that Democrats have all the wrong goals, but that they are hypocrites who say one thing and do another. Vance faults Trump’s opponents for pontificating about the rule of law, but in practice only caring about power – an update of the “limousine liberal” slogan for an age of rightwing autocracy.Few others would try to impress readers of the New York Times with an invocation of the Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, who, in the 1930s, claimed that liberals were either weaklings or prone to betray their own ideals. Schmitt is an obscure reference to most outside the hallowed halls of Yale Law School, but a signal to cognoscenti that Vance is all in on antiliberalism.As with so many self-declared rightwing champions of the working class, economics isn’t ultimately where the action is; much more than factory floors, “elite campuses” feature in an increasingly feverish Maga imagination. Vance has declared universities the enemy and asserted that “the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with leftwing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary”. Supposedly the lesson is not to “eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching”.The reality is that Orbán has simply shut down entire academic subjects which conservatives don’t like – no more gender studies – and handed over Hungarian universities to cronies; he also managed to chase out the country’s best school, Central European University. When pressed, Vance re-describes his Orbánism as giving taxpayers a say in how their dollars are spent in education – a startling admission that politicians should be in control, and of course a blatant contradiction with the free speech pieties Vance’s allies in Congress have become so good at weaponizing. How the hillbillies of Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy will benefit from removing Judith Butler from reading lists at Harvard is anyone’s guess.Like so many faux populists, Vance talks the anti-elite talk, but walks the walk of what observers rightly call plutocratic populism. Slapping ever more tariffs on Chinese imports, promoting the fossil fuel industry in the name of helping the “heartland”, deporting people – whether these policies actually happen is open to question. But not a word is said about the promises Trump is actually most likely to implement (since no court will stop him): further cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations; deregulating such that companies can dump even more toxic waste, including into the pristine parts of what Trumpists like to call “real America”.Of course, the game of “no, you’re the real hypocrite!” isn’t much of a political strategy against aspiring authoritarians. But it is significant that a very intelligent man who also likes to describe himself as highly “self-aware” appears willing to change beliefs at any time for the sake of amassing power. Having called Trump an “idiot”, a “moral disaster” and a potential “American Hitler”, Vance now fawns over Trump as a man of depth and complexity with merely minor issues of style.Maybe he genuinely changed his mind: after all, the point of a free society is also that we can all learn from our mistakes. But praising a man who evidently relishes cruelty as a paragon of “compassion” beggars belief. Of course, despite all the sycophancy, Trump might pick someone else: the very fact that Vance can seem a bit of a “mini-me” of the aspiring autocrat might turn the political showmaster off.
Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

Joe Biden’s position among congressional Democrats eroded further on Monday when an influential House committee member lent his voice to calls for him to end his presidential campaign following last month’s spectacular debate failure.Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the armed services committee in the House of Representatives, issued the plea just hours after the president emphatically rejected calls for him to step aside in a letter to the party’s congressional contingent.Biden had also expressed determination to continue in an unscheduled phone interview with the MSNBC politics show Morning Joe.But in a clear sign such messaging may be falling on deaf ears, Smith suggested that sentiments of voters that he was too old to be an effective candidate and then president for the next four years was clear from opinion polls.“The president’s performance in the debate was alarming to watch and the American people have made it clear they no longer see him as a credible candidate to serve four more years as president,” Smith, a congressman from Washington state, said in a statement.“Since the debate, the president has not seriously addressed these concerns.”He said the president should stand aside “as soon as possible”, though he qualified it by saying he would support him “unreservedly” if he insisted on remaining as the nominee.But his statement’s effect was driven home in a later interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the two moderators in the 27 June debate with Donald Trump in which Biden’s hoarse-voiced and frequently confused performance and demeanour plunged his re-election campaign into existential crisis.“Personally, I think Kamala Harris [the vice-president] would be a much better, stronger candidate,” Smith told Tapper, adding that Biden was “not the best person to carry the Democratic message”.He implicitly criticised Democratic colleagues – and Biden campaign staff – who were calling for the party to put the debate behind them as “one bad night”.“A lot of Democrats are saying: ‘Well let’s move on, let’s stop talking about it’,” said Smith. “We are not the ones who are bringing it up. The country is bringing it up. And the campaign strategy of ‘be quiet and fall in line and let’s ignore it’ simply isn’t working.”Smith joins the ranks of five Democratic members of Congress who publicly demanded Biden’s withdrawal last week. He was among at least four others who spoke in favour of it privately in a virtual meeting on Sunday with Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader in the House.Having the ranking member of the armed services committee join the siren voices urging his withdrawal may be particularly damaging to Biden’s cause in a week when he is to host a summit of Nato leaders in Washington.The alliance’s heads of government and state will gather in the US capital on Tuesday for an event that is likely to increase the international spotlight on Biden, who is due to give a rare press conference on its final day on Thursday, an occasion likely to be scrutinised for further misstatements and evidence of declining cognitive faculties. Unscripted appearances have been rare in Biden’s three-and-a-half-year tenure.In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last Friday, Biden stressed his role in expanding Nato’s membership and leading its military aid programme to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion as a key element of his qualification to continue as his party’s nominee and be re-elected as president.In the surprise interview with Morning Joe on Monday, Biden put the blame for his current predicament on Democratic elites, an undefined designation which he may now expand to include Smith. More

After Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in his first debate against Donald Trump super-charged concerns about his age and fitness for office, the president faces growing calls to stand down as the Democratic nominee this November.Biden has pushed back hard, telling MSNBC “elites in the party” were behind calls for him to quit, claiming strong support from actual voters, and challenging doubters in his own party to “run against me. Go ahead. Announce for president – challenge me at the convention!”Nobody has gone that far yet but a growing number of elected Democratic officials have either publicly called for Biden to quit or reportedly done so in private. Here they are:Lloyd Doggett (Texas)The Texas veteran was first out of the gate, saying last week: “Recognising that, unlike [Donald] Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so.”Raúl Grijalva (Arizona)A senior progressive from a battleground state, Grijalva has sway in his party. Following Doggett, the 76-year-old told the New York Times: “What [Biden] needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat – and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.” Grijalva also said Democrats “have to win this race, and we have to hold the House and hold the Senate”, because if not, the party’s achievements under Biden would “go down the sewer”.Seth Moulton (Massachusetts)The former US marine, who briefly challenged Biden for the nomination in 2020, told a Boston radio station: “President Biden has done enormous service to our country, but now is the time for him to follow in one of our founding father, George Washington’s, footsteps and step aside to let new leaders rise up.” Moulton has since doubled down, citing the “disaster” of the debate.Mike Quigley (Illinois)Speaking to MSNBC on Friday, Quigley said: “Mr. President, your legacy is set. We owe you the greatest debt of gratitude. The only thing that you can do now to cement that for all time and prevent utter catastrophe is to step down and let someone else do this.”Angie Craig (Minnesota)On Saturday, the congresswoman said: “Given what I saw and heard from the president during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from the president himself following that debate, I do not believe that the president can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump. That’s why I respectfully call on President Biden to step aside as the Democratic nominee for a second term as president and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward.”Adam Smith (Washington)On Monday, the congressman said: “That candidate must be able to clearly, articulately, and strongly make his or her case to the American people. It is clear that President Biden is no longer able to meet this burden.” In an interview he also implored Biden. “I’m pleading with him − take a step back,’” he said on CNN. “Look at what’s best for the party, look at what’s best for the county.”Reported: Jerry Nadler (New York), Mark Takano (California), Joe Morelle (New York)According to multiple reports, on Sunday the three senior Democrats along with Smith had used a private call arranged by Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, to call for Biden to stand down. Others on the call reportedly expressed serious concerns but did not go so far as to say Biden should quit. More

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK … It’s, like, incredible.”The ruling of the US supreme court in Trump v United States last week establishes that the president has immunity from prosecution for “official acts” taken while in office. The term “official acts” was not defined in the case, leaving it for lower courts and establishing a precedent that the president broadly cannot be held accountable for breaking the law except under narrow conditions, or by impeachment, which itself only removes him from office without further consequence.“The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a scathing dissent. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon for any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the nation”.The decision seems to grant nearly limitless power to the office. Any act a president takes in the “core” functions of the job, such as appointing judges or issuing pardons, have absolute immunity. Any act taken in the “periphery” of his powers, like directions made to his staff or announcements made through official channels to the public, are presumed to be immune from prosecution, barring the finding of a judge otherwise. Acts taken outside of his official duties are not immune, though again: a judge makes that determination using ill-defined terms.It is roughly equivalent to the “enabling acts” of Nazi Germany. Coupled with the power of pardon – which allows the president to immunize anyone he or she chooses from federal prosecution without review or challenge from the other branches of government – the president can instruct subordinates of his or her choosing to act without regard for legal consequences.The idea that the president might declare a political opponent an enemy of the state and have a military sniper kill that person was raised as a hypothetical during oral arguments, and the resulting decision, incredibly, does not categorically rule that act a prosecutable abuse of power.Instead, we’re left in a fuzzy legal space, with judges left to decide what is “presumptively” immune and what evidence can be allowed to prosecutors after the fact to challenge that presumption.What might have once been an academic or intellectual exercise, the stuff of Tom Clancy novels or Aaron Sorkin scripts, is rapidly resolving into focus as a meaningful real-world problem. As I hear people discussing the ruling – and random people are discussing it everywhere I go – that’s the first thing they reach for. But the implications of the ruling and its effect on executive power are farther reaching than this.In some ways we have always been in a fuzzy legal space with regard to executive power. The assassination of a US citizen ordered by the president is not without precedent. Consider that Barack Obama ordered drone strikes on Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2010. The then president did not face prosecution for this action.The question Trump v United States raises is whether he could have before now.How might a rogue president without political or moral constraint use the office for private gain, the punishment of political enemies, or to subvert the interest of justice and the public good?Start by looking at how executive power is exercised.The president has a set of delineated powers. Some require him to act in concert with others – the president signs treaties, but they must be ratified by the Senate. The president cannot draft a law unilaterally. Judicial appointments, ambassadorial appointments and appointments of cabinet members must be approved by the Senate.But much of executive authority is unilateral. The president can represent the US to foreign countries without constraint. The president commands the military, directs the activities of the CIA and FBI, directs the actions of executive branch employees, classifies or declassifies intelligence, and critically grants pardons without review.Consider each branch of executive authority, by department, and how a malevolent president might subvert the law.Department of StateThe constitution’s emoluments clause requires the president to refrain from accepting any gift, payment, or anything of value from a foreign state or its rulers. The state department maintains a protocol gift unit that makes sure the president or other federal employees don’t pocket anything from a foreign government worth more than a nominal amount, currently set at $480.Trump v United States establishes that the president cannot be prosecuted for this crime, even though it is black letter constitutional law. Receiving a gift from a head of state as president is almost certainly an “official act”, and if the president decides to steal that gift and deposit it in a bank account, or accepts the deed to a golf course in Dubai or a yacht that never makes port in the United States, there’s nothing that can be done about it, except to see if a federal prosecutor can introduce sufficient evidence to overcome the presumption of immunity after the fact.The ruling opens up potential for a foreign government to bribe their way out of state sanctions, an embargo or diplomatic trouble from, say, murdering a journalist working for a US newspaper.Department of the TreasuryThere are many levers here that a corrupt president can pull, but I’d like to focus on impoundment; the act of withholding money allocated by Congress for a specific function. It was an act of impoundment that led to Trump’s first impeachment and an issue that Steve Bannon repeatedly returns to when discussing executive power. Congress made impoundment a crime in 1974 after the abuses of Richard Nixon. The supreme court’s ruling affirms that the only remedy to this “high crime” is impeachment.Consider what would happen if the treasury department impounded funds directed toward any other government agency that wasn’t being cooperative. Medicare and Medicaid. HUD. The EPA. A compliant Treasury official could simply stop sending the Department of Education funding, which would prevent the issuance of new federally-backed student loans for college.There are other broader avenues for misconduct, however. Consider what would happen if the president instructed the secretary of the treasury to unilaterally withhold payment on bonds issued by the US government to specific creditors, all questions about the full faith and credit clause be damned. Consider how the IRS might target political opponents, a touchstone for conservative critics of the federal government and the investigation of church abuse of exempt tax status.Even the implied threat of regulation of financial instruments like cryptocurrencies can create changes in the market. A self-interested president who had not placed his or her personal investments in a blind trust could engage in wide market manipulation to his or herown benefit through regulatory action taken by treasury officials.And then there’s treasury’s role as the overseer of financial sanctions on entities like Russian oligarchs, Israeli settlers, Chinese government agents and international terror groups. A pliant or compromised president could redirect resources away from enforcement.Again, the legal question becomes one of presumptive immunity, as these areas are in the “periphery” of the president’s authority. Note that justices ruled that official acts cannot be used in evidence to support the prosecution of a crime committed in the president’s personal capacity, a complication which renders the practical prosecution of crimes of fraud, the use of public office for private gain or market manipulation difficult.Department of DefenseMilitary officers in the United States have maintained the armed services as an objectively apolitical institution stretching back to America’s founding. Its general officers have resisted attempts to change that. The approach of Project 2025 is to reduce the number of general officers because it is easier to find people who will place their loyalty – and their career prospects – inTrump’s hands.The military has about 1,000 men and women serving in the ranks of generals and admirals. Approximately 40,000 people serve at the rank of 0-5 or higher – that is a lieutenant colonel in the US army, air force, marines or space force, or a commander in the navy. Promotion of an officer to this rank requires approval by the Senate.But the president can fire an officer more or less at will. This is certainly true for removing general officers from command “in a time of war”. The statute does not define what a time of war means; it does not contain language requiring congress to declare war.A president intent on launching military action that is illegal or immoral – calling a Seal Team 6 operator to kill an American overseas, or perhaps someone within the United States – today can be expected to face a refusal to obey an unlawful order and a report to Congress. But a malevolent president can simply fire any officer who refuses the order, working through the ranks until he finds one willing to obey an illegal order, offering a presidential pardon that would immunize whoever obeys the order from the consequences of a court martial.This logic extends to orders for the military to violate posse comitatus – the mobilization of military force domestically, a violation of federal law. It could also extend to the use of nuclear arms, with a president serially firing officers who refuse to arm and launch a nuclear weapon.The president’s management of the military is a “core” function of the president; it is described in article II of the US constitution. Thus, the president likely enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution here.The functions of military intelligence, the CIA and the Department of Justice are separated by a wall of laws meant to protect US citizens from the government’s vast capacity for foreign military surveillance. After discovering abuses within the intelligence community in the Nixon era, Congress established a foreign intelligence surveillance court to review the work of the CIA and ensure that spies were not illegally surveilling US citizens.A president unconcerned with the law could simply walk intelligence gathered from one agency to another, with orders to act on it.Department of JusticeMuch of the constraint on abuses by the attorney general’s office are a matter of custom, not law. A set of internal policy guidelines governs the conduct of US attorneys. Surprisingly, the supreme court decision last month overturning the Chevron doctrine or the principle of legal deference to agency rule-making, may have done as much harm as Trump v United States in this regard. Justice department rules constraining federal investigators from targeting people for their politics – or targeting politicians who aren’t voting the right way – can be challenged on this basis by a politically-motivated appointee. More