The President's Role

The President of the United State has a number of roles they play while serving the country. A few terms that are often heard to refer to the President are "head of state" , "head of the government" , or "commander in chief". All these terms do refer to the President however they don't all have the same meaning. "Head of state" refers to the President's responsibility to participate in sybolic, ceremonial activities. An example of this is a President throwing the first pitch opening day for the Major Legue Baseball season. To be in thise role, it refers to the President having a responsibility of being the face and resprentative for the United States as a whole. The term "head of government" refers to the presidents role as chief executive. A President is granted the role as head of the executive branch of the federal government by the Constitution. An example of a President executing their role as chief executvie would be for them to make decisions on how to handle a national emergency such as riots (for example the BLM protests that were later described as riots). "Commander in cheif" refers to the powers the Constitution grants the President. The Constitution gives the President power to command the nation's armed forces. The President has the power to deploy the nations armed forces and shares power with the congress has the power to declare war and maintain the armed forces. And example of a President using their role as commander and chief is when they set up military governments to establish themselves in conquered land. There are a lot of articles that refer to Donald Trump's misues of his role as head of government. As stated before the head of government refers to the Presiden'ts role as chief executive and one example of this is the president has the power to "handle" national emergincies. A current national crisis has been the Covid-19 pandemic that has swept the globe. This article talks about a former head government's opinion of how Trump has handled his executive role as well as specifically how Trump has handled the pandemic. The reason I chose this article is because it aligns with my belief that it is a trusted job of a President to lead the people in times of crisis. And this responsibility of great magnitutde should not be taken lighly; the expectation of any President is that they make choices as well as speak to the public with their best interest at heart. In this article, the former head of the government's ethics office calls into question Trump's ethics. President's have posted on social media before however the author of this article points out the insanity in Trump's use of twitter. Specifically, the fact that Trump has been known to post tweets to the public that are misinformed. The example's used in the article are tweet's Trump posted about the Corona virus as the country began to shelter in place. One tweet was "Our Testing is the BEST in the World, by FAR! Numbers are coming down in most parts of our Country, which wants to open and get going again. It is happening, safely" which was not reflective of the reality of the state of America. Many citizens at this point were struggling to get tested for the virus as well as Covid-19 numbers in America were far worse than in other countries. I think this example is a misuse of Trump's role as a head of government; the people of the nation should be able to read his statements and be informed not misguided. Especially in a time of crisis where lives could be put at danger due to being misinformed. https://www.politicususa.com/2020/05/12/former-head-of-government-ethics-office-our-president-is-insane.html Whent it comes to Trump's role as the head of state, this article captures the reality of how seriously Trump percieves this responsibility. The head of state is the face and representative of our country. In this washington post article, the author talks about how 'The Crown' believes Trump is a weak head of state; this article caught my eye particularily because though this opinion is from another country's head of state, the United Kingdom has been an exemplary country when it comes to taking the role of the head of state very seriously. Though 'The Crown' is not perfect, there is an obvious sense of responsibility that comes with this symbolic role. When it comes to Trump, his actions do not suggest he see's his role as head of state as symbolic. As documented in the article, Trump's rhetoric rarely unites the people of our nation and his temperment and personality have been called into question. In my opinion, this is because he doesn't put this symbolic role's obligations before his own individualism. This in turn leads to him representing "who Trump is" to the world rather than "this is what the people of the United States want". As the article talked about, it says a lot that Trump picks and chooses which obligations to show up to; the behaviors do not reflect a strong head of state. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/25/crown-explains-why-trump-is-weak-head-state/ The last term, commander and chief, refers to the President's constitutional power to command the armed forces. The view of Trump's ability to be commander of chief has shifted from the Trump as a favorable choice to lead the forces to unfavorable. A lot of military leaders are concerned by Trump's behaviors as commander of chief. His behaviors have been characterized as unstrategized and unwilling to listen to experienced military officials' adivce as well as proffessional analysis. Throughout his term, Trump has criticized generals and other military officials; often blaming these people for military crisis. In addition to placing blame on others rather than taking responsibility as chief and commander, Trump has also involved himself in military areans that traditionally have run more independently. Trump's interventions have not been a overstep of power according to the constitution however they have caused tensions and chaos. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-08-31/half-of-the-military-disapproves-of-trump-as-commander-in-chief-poll

Recent Supreme Court Nomination & The Most Recent 2020 Presidential Debate

There are three tiers for the federal court system. The lowest being the U.S. District Courts, the second tier is the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the third and highest tier is The United States Supreme Court. There is only one Supreme Court that exists in the United states, under Article 111, Section 2 of the constitution, it states that there is only one national Supreme Court. Within The Supreme Court there is one chief justice and eight associate justices, therefore in total there are 9 justices. When The Supreme Court reviews cases they do not usually hear evidence, rather they go over the written record of a case. Attorneys can present oral arguments before the justices being "a conference" where they discuss the case privately. The opinion of the Court is usually written by the chief justice if they are a part of the majority decision; a majority decision is established during the conference and is made up of 5 justices in favor. The Court's decision is written and may conclude concurring opinions or it may include dissenting opinions; the dissenting opinions however do not change the majority decision made during the conference. The Supreme Court Justices are recommended by many people (other judges, state political leaders, senators etc), however the president is the one that considers the recommendations and chooses the person that will be reviewed by The Senate to be approved. Historically presidents choose someone that favors their beliefs in order to leave behind a trace of “why” they were voted into office in the first place. Ruth Ginsberg, a supreme court justice, passed away as of last week. The presidential elections have already begun, however our current president Trump has already selected someone to be considered. Ginsberg was the second woman to be appointed to The Court and served for 27 years. She has done a lot of remarkable service over her time and including launches a Women’s Rights Projects. It is not customary to nominate a justice during an election regardless of this, Trump is nominating Amy Barret. She is a social conservative and stands on a lot of issues the exact opposite of how Ginsberg did. Barret is a danger to all women seeking equality and protection of their individual rights. For example, she wants to Roe v. Wade case, in which the Supreme Court’s ruling protecting a woman’s right to get an abortion. Many can say this is not a surprise that this is Trump’s choice as a justice because he is known for disrespecting women constantly. From his words and actions, it is easy to assume Trump does not want to encourage progressive women or allow the current movement for women’s rights to continue. The reason her being in The Court is bigger than just a conservative view. If she were able to create a national law, it would be used in the future as a precedent. I saw a quote this week how Ginsberg opened doors for other women to walk through, including women like Barret, and Barret is going to close all those doors behind her for future women. I agree with this, and think her presence in The Court will be detrimental towards future generations of women. Another hot topic of the week was the presidential debate. I was able to watch the recording and prior to watching it myself, it was impossible to ignore the recaps and memes that flooded social media shortly after it was over. I wish I could say I was dismayed, but I was not. Trump not only acted as if the rules of a political debate didn’t apply to him, he steam rolled the whole debate. It felt like a joke and it was selfish, the point of the debate from my understanding is for voters to understand both candidates' stances on important topics. I felt like it was hard to hear stances as a voter because of the gaslighting and personal attacks that went on throughout the debate. I can say Trump showed a lot of true colors, attacking Biden’s son, not being able to say white supremacy is an issue or say he is against it (when he told people to stand by it felt like a threat of civil war) and it’s ironic he made fun of Biden for wearing a mask so much and then tested positive for Covid-19 the next day. My biggest concern about Trump is he doesn’t believe he needs to serve according to the rules, that he uses psychological manipulation on the stand and doesn’t have any sense of remorse. It is already known that Trump is on good terms with tyrants like Putin and Kim Jung-un; to me it truly looks like he wants to follow their lead and is a danger to the American quest for freedom. I do not believe Trump has any intention to protect citizen’s rights or any human right because he does not feel his could ever be taken away regardless of how his choices affect others. The theme of the debate to me was unfiltered disregard for America’s people and ego to be invincible. Anyone that views the role of being a leader of people as a self serving title rather than a service position is a danger to society.