Can A President Turn The U.S. Into A Dictatorship Through Executive Order?

Over the course of 8 months in 1962, President John Kennedy signed a number of Executive Orders which gave certain dictatorial powers to appointed bureaucrats in the event a “National Emergency” should be declared by the President. At whichever seated president’s discretion “in any time of increased international tension or economic or financial crisis”, the Executive Orders could be enacted.

These Executive Orders (10995, 10997, 10998, 11000, 11001, 11002, 11003, 11004, 11005, 11051) signed by Kennedy gave authority to the Federal Government to control all of the country’s resources.

On October 28, 1969 President Nixon signed Executive Oder 11490 combining all the above Executive Orders to be enacted under one Executive Order and granting government control over all US citizens, businesses, and churches in time of “emergency.”

On July 20, 1979 Carter added a few minor amendments to them, including establishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In June, 1994 then president Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12919, which encompassed all previous Executive Orders relating to emergency “preparedness” and management.

Executive Order 12919 directs various Cabinet officials to be constantly ready to take over virtually all aspects of the US economy during a State of National Emergency at the direction of the president.

Executive Order 12656, issued by President Reagan defined National Emergency as: “A national security emergency is any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States. This order includes federal takeover of all local law enforcement agencies, wage and price controls, prohibits you from moving assets in or out of the United States, creates a draft, controls all travel in and out of the United States, and much more.

On March 16, 2012, President Obama greatly expanded Executive Order 12919 with his Executive Order 13603 entitled “National Defense Resources Preparedness.” Prior to his EO, FEMA executed the equivalence of martial law, now it is the Department of Homeland Security. Considering their poor history of protecting civil liberties, if that change doesn’t scare you, nothing will.

This executive order is also frightening because of its sweeping scope—explicitly declaring that the president and his designated Cabinet and agency heads have authority to commandeer and control all water, all human and animal food, all transportation, all energy, all construction materials, all “health resources,” all farm equipment, all fertilizers, and all fuels.

Some of the expanded language in this Executive Order that should be particularly alarming to Americans is that it does not merely claim these powers during wartime or during a “national emergency,” but also “in peacetime and in times of national emergency.”

The culmination of the Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Obama Executive Orders has now given government the power to steal citizens’ homes, lands, cars, computers, phones, food, and everything it deems necessary in the name of “protection.”

Neither President Bush, nor President Trump have reversed their predecessors’ Executive Orders (Clinton’s Executive Order 12919 or Obama’s Executive Order 13603), leaving all American citizens at risk to lose freedoms under a state of “emergency.”

Brief Executive Order History

Presidential emergency powers are hardly new. The Militia Acts of 1792 gave the president the authority to take over state militias to put down an insurrection, which is what President George Washington did two years later during the Whiskey Rebellion. President Abraham Lincoln commandeered ships, raised armies and suspended habeas corpus — all without approval from Congress.

President Franklin Roosevelt declared a state of emergency in 1933 to prevent a run on banks, and President Harry Truman declared one in 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War.

Three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush issued Proclamation 7463. It allowed him to call up the National Guard and appoint and fire military officers under the rank of lieutenant general.

Eight generals and admirals were appointed to their positions post 9/11 despite laws limiting the number of general officers in each service. That’s because the state of emergency allows the president to bypass the law and appoint an unlimited number of one and two-star generals.

Bush’s proclamation has been renewed every year since 2001, including by Trump in September 2017, keeping over 18,000 guard and reserve troops involuntarily called up. Canceling the state of emergency would allow them to go home.

In fact in August of 2017, using the state of national emergency, Trump set aside congressionally mandated pay increases for military and civilian employees, cutting them to 2.1% for uniformed services and an average of 1.9% for civilians.

Invoking national emergencies give’s the presidents comprehensive powers. In 2016 attorney Patrick Thronson published an article in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform identifying 160 laws giving the president emergency powers, such as:

• Reshape the military, putting members of the armed forces under foreign command, conscripting veterans, overturning sentences issued by courts-martial and taking over weather satellites for military use.
• Suspend environmental laws, including a law forbidding the dumping of toxic and infectious medical waste at sea.
• Bypass federal contracting laws, allowing the government to buy and sell property without competitive bidding.
• Allow unlimited secret patents for Army, Navy and Air Force scientists.

“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand—and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at Princeton University.

All these provisions exploit laws passed by Congress, giving the president the power to invoke them with the stroke of a pen. “A lot of laws are passed like that. So if a president is hunting around for additional authority, declaring an emergency is pretty easy,” Scheppele said.

There’s no doubt that 17 years of “War on Terror” has had lack of examination. Under the National Emergencies Act — passed after Nixon’s Watergate as a mechanism for presidential emergency powers oversight — the president is supposedly required to renew the emergency each year or it lapses. Likewise, Congress is supposed to review each emergency every six months, but never has.

Fortunately, some are beginning to see the problem. “The president is given these emergency powers as a temporary measure until Congress has time to act. It stretches credulity to think Congress hasn’t had time to act since 9/11 happened,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We should not be treating 9/11 as an emergency in 2017.”

And it’s not just 9/11. Presidents have declared scores of emergencies over the past 40 years, dealing with everything from the Iran Hostage Crisis to the Swine Flu. More than 30 of those national emergencies remain in effect — and Congress has never reviewed a single one in the history of the National Emergencies Act.

All this should convince Americans that there is a real threat to their freedoms regarding the Executive Orders discussed in this article. Below is the list of individual Executive Orders before they were combined into one by Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and Obama. Each one is linked to the complete Executive Order.

• Executive Order 10995 – The Federal Government may seize any and all communications media, including phones and computers.
• Executive Order 10997 – The Federal Government may seize all electrical power, fuels, and mineral deposits,public and private.
• Executive Order 10998 – The Federal Government may seize all food resources, farms, and equipment.
• Executive Order 10999 – The Federal Government may seize all transportation methods, including personal vehicles, and may restrict access to all roads, highways, and seaports.
• Executive Order 11000 – The Federal Government may seize all civilians for work under Federal supervision, including the splitting of families if the government deems it necessary.
• Executive Order 11001 – The Federal Government may seize all health, education, and welfare services, public and private.
• Executive Order 11002 – The Postmaster General is empowered to register and catalogue every man, woman, and child in the United States.
• Executive Order 11003 – The Federal Aviation Agency is given power to seize all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
• Executive Order 11004 – Allows government seizure of all housing and finance authorities. It also grants the Housing and Finance Authority power to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.
• Executive Order 11005 – The Interstate Commerce Commission is given power to seize all railroads, inland waterways and storage facilities, public and private.
• Executive Order 11051 – Creates the Office of Emergency Planning within the Office of the President and authorizes The Director of the Office of Emergency Planning to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis and may perform any such duties as the President may direct.