The main theme of the Trump administration’s abuse of executive power is its attempt to take away power from Congress. That includes the power to exercise “oversight” by monitoring the activity of the executive branch. Crucially, this means denying the right of Congress to obtain information from executive officials by requiring them to testify in hearings.
The Washington Post reports:
When Sen. Bill Cassidy announced in February that he would vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary despite concerns about his skepticism of vaccines, the Louisiana Republican said he had secured a commitment from Kennedy to testify before the committee Cassidy chairs once a quarter if asked.
But Kennedy has not come before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee since May—and he’s hardly the only administration official who has frustrated senators by failing to show up.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has rebuffed requests to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers behind closed doors earlier this month on the administration’s controversial strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea. But they have not testified in public about the strikes, as some Democrats have demanded. …
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has asked Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), the committee’s chairman, to summon half a dozen Trump administration officials to testify. They include Russell Vought, in his capacity as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; and several banking regulators who testified in December before the House Financial Services Committee but have not come before the Senate.
“Many of these folks are required to come before Congress on a regular basis as a matter of law—and they’re not even doing the legally required parts, much less the additional oversight that’s sometimes needed when there are big issues pending,” Warren said.
As this report notes, the appearance of some of these officials before Congress is required by law. For others, it was a promise made as a condition of Senate confirmation. But in any case, this is a violation of the spirit of the Constitution as a system in which the executive is check by the legislature and answers for its actions to the people’s representatives.
An executive branch that does not answer to Congress—in the literal sense of answering questions—is a branch with unchecked and unlimited power.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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