alt Hacker NewsIs it" hysterical" to point out this section of the EO?
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.
Because, to put it in plain words, this is ordering all members of the executive to obey exclusively the President and the Attorney General when it comes to how all law should be enforced. That includes the U.S. Marshals Service that provides enforcement duties for federal courts and the Supreme Court.
How is that related to a dictatorship though? The executive comes under the control of its democratically elected head, which is pretty normal and not considered a dictatorship.
Forget the police, I thought the US president actually has much more direct and undisputed power over the military than some other executive agencies, which could be much more dangerous in the wrong hands, yet that is still is not considered a dictatorship (e.g., not even when Obama ordered the extrajudicial execution of a US citizen and was protected by presidential immunity, nor when past presidents have launched undeclared wars of aggression or interventions and bombing campaigns against sovereign nations), at least not in mainstream political thinking.
This EO seems like just shuffling responsibility around within the executive, moving interpretation of laws directly under the president rather than delegating it out to various unelected bureaucrats in different agencies making their own interpretations. I'm sure there are argument for and against it but it doesn't seem outlandish, or an kind of crazy power grab beyond what the executive branch already has.