authorization

As legal scholar Matt Waxman has reminded us, FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, went to war in Korea without congressional authorization.

One week after the attacks of 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which undermined its own power in Article I of the Constitution to declare war and weakened its powers of restraint on presidential actions carefully articulated in the 1973 War Powers Resolution, passed to guard against the very kind of secretive engagement in war that Nixon had unilaterally authorized in the Vietnam era.

And with the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the immunity of Donald Trump for acts taken while in the Oval Office, the shackles that once tied presidential acts in wartime to congressional authorization are arguably now fully off the table, should a president be determined to act on his or her own say-so.

“Anyone may return your ballot for you, as long as they do not get paid on a per ballot basis. In order for your ballot to be counted, you must fill out the authorization section found on the outside of your ballot envelope,” the state says.

But many of the roughly 10.5 million immigrants in the U.S. without authorization have been here for decades — holding jobs, having children and otherwise building lives.