The magic phrase behind the seizure of power Donald Trump

Hello, I am Tim Marsman, Director of Politics, Science and Security at WIRED, and I fill Jake this week.

On August 7, the White House released Executive order Giving the authority of the political appointed to provide federal scholarships. This made non -partisan experts who have long decided how agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Foundation for External Funds have directed to the commissioners.

There has been a phrase that has become an increased phrase over the past seven months, as I read piles of boring documents issued by the administration, in an attempt to find out what you are doing.

“The prizes must be, when necessary,” read, “clearly enhance the priorities of the president’s policy.”

This phrase and variables come a lot. It has emerged everywhere from the White House description of the presidential scheduling office ( Working to “Create an agenda that strategically provides to the president’s priorities,” apparently) to a web site where the Coast Guard shows that its secretary Country To “align the service entirely to implement the president’s priorities.”

“It has become a kind of multi -purpose polytheism from this administration,” says Zakari Price, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Many examples. A The executive order for FebruaryFor example, Al -Mawadi said, the director of the Administration and Budget Office (OMB) will “review the obligations of independent organizational agencies in line with the President’s policies and priorities.” and April Memorandum From the Acting Office of the Information, Information and Organizational Affairs Office (Oira), he provides guidelines for Bureaucrats in the agencies affected by the implementation of the matter that explains what is happening when an important organizational action is provided to Oira for review: “Executive branches of the material to review materials for consistency with the president’s priorities, and express statistical requirements.”

What exactly are the priorities of the president not announced; Nevertheless, the focus on the Paper’s motivation that the president puts them, raises questions about what is happening when they contradict others – including the authors of the constitution.

The importance of shower heads

He talked about the president’s priorities, certainly did not arise with President Donald Trump. Its ancestors, including Biden and Obama departments, used the phrase, and the priority of a part of the federal government, which they oversee a major part of the president’s job.

This does not mean that there is nothing new in the wide use of the phrase and its variables, or that there are no problems in determining the job of officials throughout the executive authority, such as informing the priorities of the man who may focus on a specific day Craft barrel logoand Celebrity Hall case, Roger Clemens HallOr for him Long -term runner with Rosie Odonel.

“Agencies like the Coast Guard have a strategic priority process,” says Judy Freeman, a professor at Harvard’s Law Faculty. “It is usually not a group of seated officials and wondering about the president’s opinion today. It’s really strange instructions.”