Oregon — Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley recently unveiled the “For Our Republic Act,” a sweeping package he claims is necessary to stop what he calls President Trump’s “authoritarian takeover” of the United States. The press release leading the announcement drips with partisan alarm, declaring that “Authoritarianism isn’t down the street or around the corner—it is here right now.”
Merkley went further, asserting the country already possesses “all three ingredients of a strongman state”: “a rubber-stamp Congress doing the President’s bidding; a deferential Supreme Court finding ‘invisible ink’ in the Constitution to enhance the President’s powers; and a power-hungry President behaving like a king, breaking the law and violating the checks and balances of our Constitution.” Co-sponsors and allied groups echoed the language of “tyranny,” “brazen, unprecedented campaign of corruption,” and the urgent need to “save our republic.”
The legislation itself, organized around ten principles drawn largely from existing Democratic bills, would systematically constrain the president’s ability to manage the executive branch. Under Title II, any reduction-in-force decision would face mandatory congressional review, complete with detailed justifications of impacts, alternatives, and effects on veterans. More sweeping still, the bill states that “An agency may only be dissolved, restructured, merged with another agency, or altered, including alterations with respect to the purpose or mission of the agency, with the express consent of Congress.”
These provisions would entrench the civil service bureaucracy by making it far harder for any president to streamline agencies, eliminate duplication, or realign personnel with elected priorities. Combined with tighter limits on who can serve as inspectors general and the creation of new independent structures, including immigration courts removed from the Department of Justice, the package shifts operational control away from the elected executive toward insulated officials and Congress.
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Additional sections would narrow the Insurrection Act, restrict federal law-enforcement tools used by ICE and CBP, mandate disclosure of White House communications with the Justice Department, and prohibit most rescissions of appropriated funds. From a free-market perspective, the net effect is not neutral institutional hygiene but a permanent expansion of bureaucratic insulation that raises the cost of reforming the administrative state. Oregon taxpayers and businesses already contend with federal regulatory accumulation and the fiscal spillover of porous borders; further locking in the status quo does little to restore efficiency or accountability.
The bill’s sponsors insist the reforms would apply to future presidents of either party. Yet the press release and supporting statements remain fixed on Trump’s second term, treating routine exercises of executive authority as existential threats while remaining silent on historical precedents from administrations of both parties. The result is legislation that uses extreme rhetoric to justify structural changes that would inhibit any president’s capacity to manage and direct the executive branch they’re elected to lead.
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How about we entrench him