Presidential Executive Orders for Constitutional Enforcement

What if a president took his oath of office seriously, exercised independent judgment about constitutional meaning, and started issuing executive orders (including interpretive reasoning) declaring existing statutes unconstitutional that order his administration not to enforce those unconstitutional laws?

If there is anything that the new DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) that includes Elon Musk, Vivek, and maybe Ron Paul could do to downsize the federal government, it would be to persuade the president to simply stop enforcing unconstitutional federal statutes.

The oath the Constitution requires any president to take is:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Early in our Republic, the U.S. Supreme Court started with the self-serving assertion that they were final arbiters of Constitutional meaning. But the Constitution does not say that. That is an interpretation the Constitution. Using circular logic, SCOTUS has interpreted the Constitution to say that they are the final interpreter.

It is true that because SCOTUS swears the oath that every governmental official takes to the Constitution, each justice should use his or her best judgment to understand and apply the Constitution, but so should every other actor, including the president.

Madison and Jackson certainly thought so. They said so in messages to bills they vetoed. We degraded over time, however to presidents who refused to use constitutional reasoning in their decisions. George W Bush, for example, infamously said that he would sign McCain-Feingold and let SCOTUS determine its constitutionality.

The most earthshaking question a modern president can answer is whether his oath allows him to enforce statues, regulations, or judicial opinions that he understands to be unconstitutional.

To answer that precedent trumps a president’s oath is the way we have ratcheted ever farther away from the limits the framers placed on the central government. Once one set of bad actors in time have strayed from the limits of the Constitution, deference to precedent instead of the Constitution allows the Constitution to be perpetually violated and power to be inexorably centralized.

What are the most important constitutional principles have been violated over time that, if enforced, could create transformative change?

• Stop the feds from exercising unenumerated, undelegated power. (E.g., regulating the environment and engaging in education are not powers delegated to the central government, but rather are reserved to the states.)
• Reverse the complete gutting/replacement of the interstate commerce clause – the Constitution allows the feds to “regulate Commerce” “among the several States.” One of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever, Wickard v Filburn amended by judicial opinion those limiting words to allow the feds power to regulate anything “affecting” commerce.

Now may be the time that a president can set us on a new course that puts the power of the central government back in the Constitutional box. Executive orders by the president to enforce the Constitution can save the Republic and truly Make America Great Again.