(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party, or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
National electoral selection of a president determines not only what policies the winner will advance and reject, but increasingly, which laws — even co-equal constitutional separation of powers mandates — they will choose to enforce or ignore as well.
Recent years have witnessed the ascendancy of an all-powerful imperial presidency that increasingly rules through executive orders and regulatory statute diktats of a growing number of politically beholden non-elected agencies who are largely unaccountable either to public concerns, congressional legislative oversight, or traditional judicial standards of practice.
This evolutionary expansion of executive branch powers originally occurred somewhat gradually over the past half-century, it has incrementally led to impose sweeping influences over our lives and fortunes that the Framers of our Constitution would never have countenanced.
Included are unprecedented rulemaking regulatory excesses, of these U.S. Departments: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Energy Department (DOE), and the Education Department (ED).
And yes, this trend demonstrably correlates with the emergence of far-left control-obsessed Democratic Party influence.
Following then-President Barack Obama’s EPA declaring plant-nourishing CO2 as a "pollutant," the agency, along with DOT, now applies tailpipe exhaust emission restrictions to force electric vehicles on reluctant consumer markets on the pretext of attempting to legislate an end to millions of years of climate change.
More fortunately, Obama’s unilateral "pen and phone" initiatives included his "Clean Power Plan," an attempted end run of Congress to eliminate coal-fired plants, was later blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The past nearly four years of Biden-Harris administration has extended executive branch overreach to unabashedly challenge congressional and judicial authority with impunity.
President Biden brazenly extended the COVID-19 eviction moratorium for delinquent rental tenants despite full knowledge that doing so was unconstitutional, but that procedural court actions delay legal removals.
When high court justices ruled last year that the Biden administration had overstepped his authority to wipe out $400 billion in student debt — one of the most expensive proposed executive actions in U.S. history — he promised to move forward with a de facto campaign loan-forgiveness bribe anyway.
Biden then arrogantly boasted on social media, "The Supreme Court tried to block me from relieving student debt. But they didn’t stop me. I’ve relieved student debt for over 5 million Americans. I’m going to keep going."
He then sought to grant student debt cancellation through the Higher Education Act which grants some loan discretion through the education secretary, although it’s a huge stretch to interpret this to mean the executive branch can take such a sweeping action.
More than $175 billion in cancellations reportedly are in the works.
President Biden and his appointed "border czar," vice-president and party presidential candidate Kamala Harris have entirely forsaken constitutional and moral responsibilities to protect American sovereignty and safety from an illegal immigrant invasion.
Consider that according to a 19-page report released in August by the GOP-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee, an assessment of the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies, more than 250 illegal border crossers during fiscal years 2021, 2022 and 2023 were on a terrorist "watch list," with at least 99 of them later allowed to enter and settle.
As aptly noted by Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, "Obama and Biden immigration policies have both relied heavily on mass nonenforcement of selected statutory provisions — which puts courts in a bind, because policing and prosecutorial discretion are core executive functions on which courts are rightly loath to intrude and poorly suited to exercise."
The upcoming U.S. presidential election will determine whether edicts and agencies of the federal executive office will continue to strangle our vital energy industry with anti-fossil regulations, phase out internal combustion vehicles and gas stoves, invite millions of unvetted immigrants into our country, indoctrinate our children with anti-patriotic and racially divisive propaganda in public schools, and even require girls' sports teams to include biological boys.
Vote as if it is the most consequential election in modern American history.
It's the understatement of the age to say otherwise.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.