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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump undermines Watergate laws in massive shift of ethics system
Congress built a system 50 years ago to prevent another Nixon. Trump seems determined to dismantle those rules.
By Naftali Bendavid
Then-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman was 32 when, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she voted in 1974 for three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. She spent the next few years as part of a Congress that passed wave after wave of laws to rein in future presidents.
A half-century later, Holtzman, a New York Democrat, is watching as President Donald Trump takes aim at post-Watergate reforms on transparency, spending, conflicts of interest and more. By challenging and disregarding, in letter or in spirit, this slew of 1970s laws, Trump is essentially closing the 50-year post-Watergate chapter of American history and ushering in a new era of shaky guardrails and blurred separation of powers.
We didnt envision this, Holtzman said. We saw Nixon doing it, but he hadnt done it on this vast a scale. Trump is saying, Congress cannot tell me what to do about anything.
https://wapo.st/4eavWMJ
The GOP congress refuses to do anything about this. SCOTUS for the most part is on the take, so they enable Trump also.

Klarkashton
(3,670 posts)He's a known criminal. Insurance companies won't let businesses hire felons or rent them apartments that they underwrite. They do this for good reason.
Yet our boob public elects a shitbird criminal to run the whole cha cha. JFC.
Hekate
(98,530 posts)
the imperial presidency with Nixon, and I remember it well. Settled.
But the right-wingers on the current SCOTUS saw fit to open the door to a truly imperial president, and to all who follow him.