Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.
The authority of classification rests solely with the executive branch and the policies are established by EO.
A President can absolutely classify and declassify whatever he wants. This has been done a million times.
"It is true that the President has broad authority to classify and declassify, derived from the President’s dual role “as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. The “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant" ...
"Finally, as the district court recognized, the suggestion that courts can declassify information raises separation of powers concerns.... such determinations encroach upon the President’s undisputedly broad authority in the realm of national security."
- The New York Times v. Central Intelligence Agency, No. 18-2112 (2d Cir. 2020)
The only reason the material was not considered declassified in that case was because the possible declassification was "inadvertent" etc etc.
Even that ruling does not go far enough, and I'd be willing to give 10:1 odds SCOTUS would give Pres. full and complete powers over classification
What you are overlooking is the underhanded plays executed by a certain political party to allow one president during one 4-year term to appoint 3 supreme court lackeys in order to ensure no matter what bs went before them, they'd rule in his favor.
The idea of the "unitary executive", a concept that has long been a wet dream of the Federalist Society and other conservative think tanks, is the most decidedly un-American thing I can imagine.
Our country was founded on the idea of 3 co-equal branches of government, who each have the duty and authority to exercise checks and balances against the other 2 branches (trust but verify).
Further, the citizens are supposed to have representatives in the house & senate who act as their voice on issues and execute their will and represent their interests.
Nowhere in this entire framework was there a President with the authority to rule by executive fiat, who has absolute immunity from every law of the land, and who is given free reign to do as he pleases like a bull in a china shop. The President of the United States is not a Monarch and he is not a King. There is no divine bloodline in the US of A. The President should always be answerable and accountable to the citizens of the United States and the other 2 branches of government, and they should be held to account for his/her actions.
The current legal framework is a travesty and a result of a gradual erosion of many foundational principles of our republic that have been ground down since FDR dared to empower the working man 80 years ago. In short, it's an abomination.
And don't give me this "but Biden had that same authority" bs. Anybody who knows anything about politics know Dems are spineless. If a Dem tried to pull one tenth of the shit the Republicans do, Rs would be all over AM radio, Fox News, Breitbart, X, Rogan, screaming at the top of their lungs about socialism or some kind of "takeover" or telling people their country is being stolen from them, or some other boneheaded idiotic conspiracy theory. They know there's always someone to fall for their shit. Remember the guys showing up at the DC pizza place looking for the child sex dungeon in the non-existent basement? Yeah, these geniuses.
It's always the same old shit- rich & powerful people don't like being told "no" by the government. Oh, and they also hate paying the government (we all do, but to them it's an actual insult). This is a tantrum of epic proportions, and all this crap is political theater for people who don't know any better.
As an aside, not a one of them has any problem holding out their hand to get old Uncle Sam's money, nor do they have a problem suckling at the government teet their entire career. Ironic, no?
If half these people knew they were carrying water because some spoiled brat of a man didn't want to pay his taxes or got pissed because they can no longer light a river on fire, they'd tell these gold-brickers to pound sand.
But that can't happen anymore. Everybody is plugged-in. The algorithms that drive engagement drive the feedback loop. People can't even argue anymore, because no one knows what the hell is really going on.
This is what our ancestors fought and died for: Twitter and Donald "I can't even make money running a casino" Trump.
The worst part? These people truly don't care. "Gee whiz, why are all these billionaires building bunkers thousands of miles away from the continental US?" Because they're planning to light the USA on fire and bounce. They don't care if you are a republican or a democrat. They don't care about anything. They got theirs. They raped the system, rigged the system, and that's it. Why? Because, paraphrasing George Carlin, "You ain't in their club, you ain't ever going to be in their club. They don't give a shit about you."
And one half the country is helping burn it all down, while blaming the other half of the country for "making them do it ha ha, see what you get you stupid <insert insult here>", meanwhile, the greatest grifters of all time will be sneaking out the back door with the loot to live out their days sipping mai tais, sailing around on aircraft carrier sized yachts, talking on satellite provided cellphones, and jacking off all day, while we continue to argue with each other about whose fault it is that all the money's gone.
That's a lot of politics I won't be answering about but I think you misunderstand the unitary executive idea.
It's not that the president is the sole power in government! it's that he's the sole power in the executive branch
This means the checks and balances are Congress vs Court vs President. Just like the clerks for SCOTUS don't have any power and neither do the staffers or clerks of Congress, so too do all the members of the executive branch have no power, except for whenever the Pres decides to delegate his power to them.
Even those who argue with this idea (few do) the only other ppl who have power in executive branch are the officials who get confirmed by the senate bec. they are mentioned in the constitution. No one thinks that unelected bureaucrat have any standing whatsoever outside of what's been delegated to them by the President
This does not in any way pertain to ruling by EO! Many things should in fact be done by Congress, but those that can/should be done by the executive branch are under the Presidents full control.
When the executive is also vested with the power of enforcement, then, by construction, it usurps the power of the other 2 branches to check its authority.
Which I think is obvious- a power hungry executive who disputes an attempted check of its authority by one of the other branches can simply decline to enforce.
Ipso facto, unchecked executive power.
Edit: you seem informed, so you should know that issues like these are not new; Andrew Jackson famously ignored the Supreme Court and told them to get bent way back in 1832 after their decision in Worcester v Georgia.
To use a programming analogy, our government's type system has a soundness problem. That means we, as a civilized society, have to follow a few unwritten rules to make sure the system remains functional and doesn't crash. One of those is for the executive to exercise restraint on the technical power they have in the interest of not encountering UB.
No, the greyed-out parent comment is correct. It's an unintuitive and weird legal truth, but it *is* the truth.
- "While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance, in most cases, the White House’s personnel security office makes a determination about whether to grant one after the F.B.I. has conducted a background check. If there is a dispute in the personnel security office about how to move forward — a rare occurrence — the White House counsel makes the decision. In highly unusual cases, the president weighs in and grants one himself."
Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.