alt Hacker News> The operative portion I see is as follows: “The President and the Attorney General [...] shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch" [...] This doesn’t touch the judicial branch in any way.
What? Trump has just asserted that the Judicial Branch's interpretation of federal law--almost its entire job under our US Constitution, and widely understood to include laws authorizing and controlling how government programs work--is entirely void in places where it's mattered for generations.
The correct response to that is: "That's an unprecedented assertion contrary to established principle, and arguably unconstitutional."
Not: "Gee golly willickers, I just can't see why you're all overreacting, it's not like the justices have to obey his interpretation of the law when they do things every day, so it's all fair-n-square!"
> [I]t seems clear to me that the prevailing narrative is both consistent and being constructed in bad faith.
The bad-faith here is your willful blindness, where you construct textual apologetics by dismissing the consequences of what's being said. (Compare: "He only said Big Mickey should wear concrete overshoes and sleep with the fishes, you people are all making bad-faith arguments against someone just trying to give honest lifestyle advice!")
You're misunderstanding the order. It's not saying these interpretations overrule any judicial interpretations. The context you're missing here is that before this order various departments under the executive branch of government interpreted the law in their own, sometimes 'creative' ways. These interpretations are now not only subject to judicial and legislative oversight, but also to executive oversight as well. In reality this was already the case, but this is making it where interpretations will need to be defacto approved beforehand, rather than 'adjusted' after the fact.
If the attorney general says this law says [x] and the judiciary disagrees with an action based on that interpretation, they still have the exact same powers to halt/block said action.