Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.
Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US?
With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago.
I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt itself. Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government. Accountability requires a true adversary/"outsider". Should that be DOGE, or its current implementation? Probably not. Should the adversarial concept of DOGE exist? I would enjoy seeing arguments against the concept. It seems like it's severely needed.
US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off our debt) has basically remained static since COVID. I agree that the US requires a serious debate about our fiscal priorities and the appropriate levels of spending and taxation, particularly with automatic social security cuts looming. But it is nowhere near an emergency and fiscal decisions are the responsibility of Congress, not the executive.
My point is that our debt only grows unsustainably in response to severe crises (the great financial crisis, COVID). Our deficit is otherwise sustainable during "normal" times as our economy grows alongside it. We of course should want our debt to GDP ratio to be declining during periods of peace and prosperity (and it is evidence of political malfeasance that we haven't seen that happen since the late 90s). But our current spending is not a crisis in it's own right.
Why should you care if the national debt goes up or down? Why is it bad if it goes up? Do you actually understand the underlying mechanics, or have you just built a lot of eloquent abstractions around the idea of “number go up is bad”?
Go high enough, interest payments consume the entire federal budget. There is no way out except revenue growth (infeasible without breakthrough productivity improvements), taxation, and printing money (equivalent to taxation). Before that point, other bad things happen such as creditors losing faith in the government, making debt more expensive and destabilizing the dollar's position as global reserve currency.
Over the last few decades, debt has continued to rise as a percentage of the federal budget, and appears that trend will continue without drastic action.
Barring massive political instability, nobody is ever going to lose confidence in the dollar, regardless of debt ratios. Japan has a debt ratio of over 300%, economists have been predicting a crash and capital flight for decades, but none of it has come to pass.
At the end of the day, the Japanese market is huge and people want access to it. Same thing goes for the US.
If the private market doesn’t want bonds, the central bank can purchase them. That’s not inflationary. What is inflationary is how the government then spends that money, but that’s true for any government spending, regardless of how it was financed. Either way, the debt ratios is literally meaningless.
> If the private market doesn't want bonds, the central bank can purchase them. That's not inflationary.
Central bank buying bonds and increasing money supply absolutely is inflationary. That is precisely how FOMOs work, with the end goal being increasing or decreasing money supply depending on inflation and labour market. So if you already have stubborn inflation and you have a fiscal crisis then unmooring inflation expectations by lowering rates is exactly what you don't want to do (risk becoming a banana republic that inflates away it's debt). I don't think this will happen in the near future but it is absolutely a risk and you'd be foolish as a central banker not to consider it.
What do you mean "there's no failing for a country with a sovereign currency"? There are many, many examples of countries failing. Some of them had sovereign currencies. Sure they can't "run out of money" if they can print more. Along with many more examples of being able to adjust internal values and metrics. This is a very different thing from not being able to fail.
I’ll be clearer. The failure mode that you’re talking about, where debt ratios are so high that a country isn’t able to service its debt, is economically speaking impossible. This isn’t “too big to fail”, it’s the system working as intended.
I'm not sure why you think that's what I'm talking about, because I never brought that up. In fact I agree with that point. The apparatus will never report a failure because it has an incentive not to. The whole system is built and described in a way to make failure seem impossible because confidence is necessary for it to work. But when numbers and reality don't match, reality wins.
The interest still needs to be paid. That requires revenue growth, taxes, or printing money. Taxes and printing money makes everyone poorer - the IOUs of yesterday coming due. Japan has had many challenges over the past few decades.
I'm not an expert but I think I have a reasonable understanding of the situation. If the US debt to GDP ratio gets too high, purchasers of US Treasuries (bills, notes, and bonds) will lose confidence in the US government's ability to service that debt and demand a higher yield on US Treasuries at auction, which increases the cost of servicing the debt. At that point, the government has two choices; pay the higher yield which eventually results in fewer services/higher taxes and a contraction in the real economy, or to default on the debt which would result in very bad things happening (this is where I cop to ignorance on the scale and exact details of the badness). We should get ahead of that by reducing our services/raising taxes now so that we don't risk a loss of confidence that would restrict our ability to borrow in a time of crisis.
1. Nobody is losing confidence in the US over debt ratios. Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with financing their spending or capital flight. This is a myth that has been proven false.
2. If the private market doesn’t want to purchase bonds, the central bank can do it. Either way, there is never a need to default on debt owed in your sovereign currency. This will never happen. The risk here is inflation, but that risk is always present, regardless of how spending is financed.
1. Japan is a net creditor nation, meaning it owns more foreign assets than it owes in debt. The U.S., on the other hand, is a net debtor nation, meaning it relies heavily on foreign investors to finance its deficits.
Japan also has a high domestic savings rate, and a large portion of its debt is held by its own citizens and institutions. This reduces capital flight risks compared to the U.S., which depends more on foreign investors (e.g., China, Japan, and others buying U.S. Treasuries).
The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, which gives the U.S. unique advantages, but also means its debt is held globally. A loss of confidence in U.S. debt could have larger consequences compared to Japan.
2. U.S. benefits from strong global demand for the dollar, but this is not guaranteed forever. If the Federal Reserve were to absorb all bond issuance ( basically monetizing the debt), inflation expectations would rise sharply, leading to a currency crisis or higher interest rates. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are extreme examples of this.
U.S. essentially "exports" its debt due to its persistent trade deficits.
U.S. runs large trade deficits, meaning it imports more goods than it exports. Other countries (like China and Japan) accept U.S. dollars in exchange for their goods, and then reinvest those dollars into U.S. assets, primarily Treasury bonds. This has helped finance U.S. debt at low interest rates for decades.
If global confidence in U.S. debt declines, foreign demand for Treasuries could drop, leading to a weaker dollar, higher interest rates, and inflationary pressures.
All of your comments in this thread are misleading.
This creditor/debtor dichotomy is meaningless. It doesn’t change the fact that the debt is owed in dollars and can always be serviced. If foreign investors lose confidence in the US and sell off their treasuries, the central bank can just purchase them and nothing would change. In fact, that’s what Japan does, and that’s why they’re a net creditor. And no, this would not lead to inflation. Again, look at Japan for an empiric example.
I already wrote about how Japan is different from the US and why that changes everything.
> debt is owed in dollars and can always be serviced. If foreign investors lose confidence in the US and sell off their treasuries, the central bank can just purchase them and nothing would change
It changes everything for US citizens. Zimbabwe's debt is also serviced, but I'm not sure US citizens would like to pay one trillion dollars for bread and get cut off from the majority of products and resources that the US imports, because the dollar would be worth as much as the paper it was printed on. It would also mean that the whole stock market would collapse because no one would recycle the dollar anymore. It would be a devastating blow to the US economy. It's so obvious to anyone that knows anything about economy that at this point you are just spreading lies.
No, you didn’t explain how Japan is different. Because in fact it’s not. The key point is that a government that issues debt in its own currency can always service that debt, and this is NOT inflationary.
Zimbabwe’s inflation happened because the country had debt denominated in USD and CNY, along with massive political instability, a shrinking economy, and a war happening all at the same time. Couple that with a useless central bank and you have hyperinflation.
How is that in any way comparable to the US? It’s not. This is obvious to anyone arguing in good faith.
> The key point is that a government that issues debt in its own currency can always service that debt, and this is NOT inflationary.
Hmm. Let's follow your argument to its conclusion. Why stop at 300% of GDP? Why stop at 300 times GDP? It seems that even a small nation with a sovereign currency can eliminate all taxation, borrow an infinite amount of money, buy an infinite amount of stuff, make all of its citizens infinitely wealthy, service its debt with printed money forever, and prices and interest rates will both be unaffected. It's amazing, then, that no nation has yet taken advantage of this exploit!
I feel confident that is not right. I think it may be right that (marginally?) there is not a big difference whether a fixed amount of government spending is financed by taxation or debt, because printed dollars and t bills are so easily interchangeable. But it seems that you are trying to use this argument to prove that if these things are equivalent that they are (in any quantity!) harmless, and that's a non sequitur.
Of course that’s not what I’m arguing, please don’t straw man me.
The constraint on public spending is the amount of real resources that can be utilized. Productive utilization of resources is not inflationary. For example, if you have 10% unemployment, a government can hire those people to build infrastructure regardless of the debt ratio. On the other hand, if you issue public debt to purchase commodities that’s obviously inflationary.
But in either case, the constraint is real resources and inflation, not the debt ratio.
You asked why countries haven’t done this already? They have, it’s called quantitative easing and they do it in financial crises to absorb the productive capacity that the private market isn’t utilizing anymore.
>> Zimbabwe’s inflation happened because the country had debt denominated in USD and CNY, along with massive political instability, a shrinking economy, and a war happening all at the same time. Couple that with a useless central bank and you have hyperinflation.
No mention of velocity or the role of human behavior in an inflationary environment.
> Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with...
I don't know what the fallacy of "something is the same along one dimension, therefore the situation along some other dimension(s) must be the same too" is called, but this is a clear example.
This doesn't make any sense. Crises planning should be a fundamental function of the government. Just exceptin that every crises puts us close to being ruined and eventually one will, but it's fine because with no crises were doing ok, is unacceptable
"Since COVID" is a bad baseline, I would draw a parallel with someone who's condition "stayed stable since they entered the hospital a few days ago". It is too recent and the situation pre-COVID was quite bad. The US is the most indebted entity [0] in history. But it is not obviously the most productive; since that title may sit with China now. It is a precarious position.
Complaining about the “national debt” is the clearest sign that someone does not understand economics.
What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.
Do you think inflation is gonna happen? Again, literally not how it works. In fact, too low public spending means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation.
Infinite free money hacks is literally how fiat currencies work.
The government wants the economy to operate at close to full capacity, so it creates money and spends it into the private sector.
Eventually that money makes it to individuals, who want to save some of that money. There’s also foreign agents that might want to hold on to your currency, and trade happening that means some of your money leaves your country.
If the government maintains steady spending, this money supply slowly dwindles, which leads to a shrinking economy.
So governments issue debt to offset that dwindling money supply. The catch is that spending that doesn’t create real resources is inflationary, so you have to spend money on things that eventually earn you more money.
At the end of the day, that’s the idea of macro economics. Spend enough to get your economy growing, while making sure inflation doesn’t go up too much. Which is why people that complain about debt have no idea what they’re talking about.
The reason Trump won was because “the economy is doing great since Joe Biden”, meant the billionaires tripled their wealth as mega corporations went from less than a trillion market cap to more than 3 trillion, while me and millions others fixed salaries went up 5% if you were fortunate.
Biden governed far too much as a center-right President, I agree. Meanwhile Trump had those same billionaires with front row seats at his coronation. So the situation will continue to get much worse.
Those billionaires didn’t choose to inflate the money supply. I have no issue with them having assets that go up in value. That just doesn’t mean the economy is doing great. The point is there is way too much spending, and this includes Trump, yet it seems like they really are trying to make a dent in our federal spending, and Musk going in and looking at USAID, is quite awesome.
Trumps net worth actually went down from being in office, and so far so has Elon’s, so I ain’t worried.
I don’t see how that’s relevant to the macro economics discussion, and I don’t see how Trumps tax cuts for billionaires are going to help you in any way.
If you don't see how that's relevant to the macro economics discussion, i don't see how the macro economics discussion is relevant.
We're sending in the young guns to save on government spending because trump won partly on "Biden ruined the economy". The government spending leads to the increase of government debt. Or is the debt coming from a separate source?
I think you're arguing against a position that not many people here hold - people aren't worried about bankruptcy so much as inflation.
My understanding is that the reason the USD is unusually resistant to inflation is that there's artificially high demand due to international demand for the currency as the global reserve currency.
But yeah, if that effect weakens (and the BRICS are trying to challenge the USD as reserve currency), then I think you'll see the USD weaken/inflation spike in response to large deficits.
> What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.
You're the one that has no idea what hes talking about.
Debt uncontrollably going up without something to balance it means exactly that. If the debt exceeds the GDP, which is where the US is clearly going, we are looking at a collapse of the US dollar and its global influence. Theres no telling what will happen after that because its unfathomable
This is also why the techbros are staging a coup on the US, so the US doesnt come for the billions when it goes bankrupts
Well, yes. Japan as a nation is a net creditor. Net creditor don't generally struggle when paying back their debts. The question of where the money will come from has an obvious answer. If the US was a net creditor then the story would be completely different.
The value of a currency has nothing to do with how that country’s economy is doing. It’s mostly a factor of international trade. That has nothing to do with debt ratios.
1. I don't think you have a theory for how it works.
> means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation
2. People regularly come up with this theory that prices dropping is a terrible thing. An extraordinary claim for which I've never seen an argument I accepted and the evidence is as thin as a rake. Typically the countries that experience the horrors of deflation go on to be unusually wealthy and prosperous - I'd like to see more of it. But it is easy to see why the governments would believe deflation is bad that since they are typically enormous debtors and inflation favours debtors.
Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.
People who bring up this theory, bring the great depression as evidence, forgetting that the problem there was caused by the law forbidding to reduce salaries, which made prices going down equivalent to minimal wage going up, which of course leads to unemployment.
Given the confusion around, eg, the 2008 financial crisis I just flat out reject that there was 1 lesson in the 1930s that was so unambiguous that the debate is settled. It is a ridiculous claim. There was so much going on and so many people always pop up in a crisis trying to muddy the waters to get their preferred policy through. Look at the minimum wage debate - still unsettled despite what I would consider overwhelming evidence in theory and practice. And whatever anyone's personal beliefs, if that can't be settled there is no way at all that the inflation/deflation question has a firm answer from one event in the 1930s.
Especially given that "prices always up"="good" is counter-intuitive and I can't find anyone with a clear argument in favour of inflation. There is lots of gobbledegook and occasionally people who make arguments equivalent to holidays being bad because they reduce economic output. Which is an argument but not very persuasive, I'd prefer to optimise towards an end state where I get to live out a permanent comfortable holiday; even if the economic metrics go down. I like comfort.
Well if I want to talk about inflation we have things like the Nazis, Zimbabwe, a long list of collapses that countries never really recover from. But if we look up deflation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples
EU - Still to see the long term consequences, but it isn't obvious the deflation was the bad thing in the story.
Hong Kong - Jewel of Asia.
Ireland - Very high HDI and GDP ppp per capita.
Japan - Economic success story.
UK - Can't argue that they're a success! But their problems after WWI wasn't the deflation.
US - Some good some bad, lots to debate, but the latest episode (Great depression in the 1930s) set them up to conquer the world and establish the Not-An-Empire they have now. If that is a bad outcome I fear the good ones.
I'm not seeing the Zimbabwe equivalent. In fact it looks a lot like deflation is associated with - if not a precursor to - long term economic success and prosperity.
Is there an example where you can explain how the deflation actually led to economic success? The above feel like very distant correlations more than a result.
'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.
I'm not arguing that deflation leads to economic success. I'm arguing the evidence that it is bad is nonexistent. Although it has some interesting interactions with the tax system and government policies.
If you go through the arguments, inflation/deflation are both mostly neutral because people just adjust their expectations by whatever they think the rate will be. In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth. And by reversing that, deflation is usually positive but only because it suggests that the political leadership at the time was interested in honest market signals rather than seizing an opportunity to conduct handouts.
> 'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.
Inflation or deflation, by definition, doesn't impact how much someone can buy in real terms. Because wages and goods are theoretically changing at the same rate.
Deflation is bad because it’s literally your economy shrinking. It’s not prices dropping, it’s less spending across the board. Depending on your demographics you end up with huge unemployment numbers or a standard of living for the older generation that can’t be sustained by the new generation.
If you’re arguing a fringe point of view please make that clear up front. If I knew you think deflation is good I wouldn’t have ever replied.
And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.
> Deflation is bad because it’s literally your economy shrinking.
Well, this comment is off to a bad start. What about a very small economy of 1 widget that can be produced and sold for $2 per unit time, then a technological change that causes the equilibrium to move to 2x widgets for $1 apiece in over the same time? The real production of the economy has doubled, and experienced 50% price deflation. The same basic scenario can be developed at any economic size and complexity. No unemployment. No standard of living drop. Just people affording more stuff.
Deflation, in fact, is literally not the economy shrinking. It is a systemic reduction in prices.
> And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.
This is pretty typical of anti-deflation comments in my experience - what are you trying to say here? Countries manage to overwhelm themselves with high debts with inflationary monetary policy too; the problem - if there is one - is the borrowing of money. It is hard to end up in debt without borrowing money and investing it unproductively. That decision is independent of monetary policy.
And I didn't say Japan was an economic success because of deflation. There wasn't a "because".
> Inflation or deflation, by definition, doesn't impact how much someone can buy in real terms. Because wages and goods are theoretically changing at the same rate.
From your earlier post:
> Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.
As you mention above, this isn't likely to actually be that different.
But:
>In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth
Inflation rewards moving money into goods, and deflation rewards moving money out of goods. Generally, an economy where money moves around is better than one where it sits idle. Yes, it does penalize saving cash (), which offends many puritan mindsets (including mine), but it rewards risk-taking and committing your currency towards capital, both of which tend to make the economy more productive.
() - So, if your 'wealth' is in currency, then inflation does devalue your wealth. But if your wealth is in capital, that capital should fluctuate with the currency, and inflation doesn't devalue that.
Heh, you noticed. I was being a bit sneaky in my word choice [0] there - the commonly used measure is the CPI [0] which doesn't include wages - so in practice it would often measure "deflation" which is really just prices going down due to technology improvements and people becoming better off. Think what has been happening in the tech world for however long. If not for pro-inflationary policy the overall economy would tend to stable prices except for massive drops in the cost of tech goods, leading to measured "deflation" (not really deflation but error in the measure) and people getting wealthier.
That was why I said "prices go down" instead of "deflation" - because the measure in practices is a price basket which doesn't directly include wages.
> But if your wealth is in capital, that capital should fluctuate with the currency, and inflation doesn't devalue that.
In the abstract, yes. In practice, after you factor in the interactions with capital gains tax it actually means there is a wealth tax (transaction tax? Extra tax on the principle, anyway) which is relatively punishing to anyone trying to save for their old age.
EDIT [0] With benefit of 24 hours hindsight, it would have been more proper to say "consumer prices" to distinguish the CPI from inflation.
>US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off our debt)
US debt as a percentage of GDP doesn't demonstrate the continued ability to pay off the debt, since the ability to pay off the debt is dependent on that debt's interest. The issue with the debt in the current environment is that it is going to start rolling over into higher interest rates. If the debt is structured to pay higher interest then that lessens the ability to pay off the debt even if the debt as a percentage of GDP stays the same.
Some people have a lot of unexpressed sadness and anger and fear from the pandemic (and housing crisis before that) and are projecting it on to indirectly or totally unrelated things.
there are distributional impacts from crowding out and potential long term effects on AS, never to mention that the inflation risks are very real… debt is likely already politically constraining the fed right now
You're upgrading from a crisis that impoverishes a bunch of people to ... a crisis that impoverishes everyone. Unclear what the improvement was. And potentially literally how you get Hitlers running the government, inflation is one of those effects that breeds political instability.
You said we - possibly there is a flaw in my grammer. How should I be referring to this "we"? Isn't the "I" to "We" transform applied to "you" still "you"? I thought "you" could be plural for groups.
I don't think going from "we" to "they" would be appropriate although in hindsight it might have been a better choice.
You’re describing the independent Inspectors General. That were summarily fired. Could they have had more power and independence? Sure. But there were real independent offices doing what you describe.
The problem is EM and DOGE are equating “fraud and waste” to “I think it’s wasteful”, which is a judgement the adversarial auditor should not be allowed to make.
because they can take loans against their paper wealth and spend that as income. and as a bonus they get to write any interest payments off of their taxes.
Never mind that “wealth” can evaporate as quickly as it’s created, the numbers don’t make sense at for “borrow until you die”.
If you think it does I challenge you to do it. Instead of selling taxable equities during retirement, just borrow against them then let your heirs get them tax free when you die.
You can insanely cheap margin loans against your holdings if you keep the ratios high. Like 1-2%. Sure it won’t add up to much but you can do it.
Then kept rolling it over for 20+ years and tell me how 1-2% interest is less than a 25% capital gains tax.
Maybe if you’re going to die within a few years (and can time your death).
Then explain why if it works so well why Musk paid $10B in taxes when he sold Tesla stock if it works so well.
> Then explain why if it works so well why Musk paid $10B in taxes when he sold Tesla stock if it works so well.
Loans to Musk were a risky asset before the election. He was at risk of investigation in the event Trump lost. No one would have given him a loan big enough to supply the cash needs which this sale supplied.
That said, ordinary billionaires can of course make use of this strategy.
I know you're making a good faith argument, but you're twisting the definition of regressive. For example, if a country has one citizen with an income of 1 trillion, and one hundred thousand citizens with an income of $10,000 each, the trillionaire would still pay over 99% of taxes even if taxes were proportional.
The point is that with severe income inequality, it is fair that the super rich pay a very, very high proportion of taxes. The 40.4% seems high for the "top 1%" of the population, but if you replace "top 1%" with their actual average income, the comparison is less misleading.
The Tax Foundation has a well-known conservative leaning mindset when they publicize data. They project the benefits for business and lower tax policy.
It is not a legit source for progressive tax policy.
The Congressional Budget Office has been the most reputable source for tax policy data. The current director was appointed by Trump 2019 and was retained through Biden's presidency.
The CBO is very wonky and so far as withstood partisan meddling by presidents.
This only takes into account income tax and not other taxes which are often more regressive such as sales tax, payroll tax etc. When analyzing taxes paid we should take into account all taxes
No healthcare, no public research to today's extent, no military etc. etc. Yes when your government is doing nothing normally it doesn't cost that much.
In 1960 the top tax rate was 91%. In 1980 it was 70%. Reagan dropped it to 35% and it's stayed below 40% since. Then add in that corporations and the wealthy have moved away from having normal income that isn't taxed (loans backed by assets) and you've lost half the tax revenue that paid for cheap housing, nearly free healthcare and public college and you have a healthy society and middle class.
But then to screw the pooch even more, Bush printed 5 trillion for his wars and two tax cuts. Trump printed money for his tax cuts too. (these expenses were never in the annual budget - they just printed the money)
Tesla, one of the richest corporations in our country just reported 0% tax in three years.
Our national debt has nothing to do with the annual budget and expenses, including USAID and helping Ukraine.
While tax cuts do contribute to the national debt, it is not accurate to say the national debt is "100% of tax policy". Tax revenue as a % of GDP has been pretty stable for a long time.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
So what actually is driving the national debt higher? The never popular answer is entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) + interest, which is exasperated by an aging population. In fact, almost all future debt growth is driven by these programs. The rest of the budget is expected to balance out. Tax revenue is expected to increase, and discretionary spending is expected to fall as a % of GDP.
How is social security adding to debt when its funded by payroll tax? And the government has borrowed 3 trillion from it.
Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper. The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t. And negotiate down costs and all materials and drugs on top of that.
>How is social security adding to debt when its funded by payroll tax?
Simple - the payroll tax doesn't raise enough funds to cover the full cost of the program. Even if it did raise 100% of the needed funds, that's still money Congress cannot tax a second time. At the end of the day, the government has two buckets: income and expenses. It doesn't matter whether some of that income is called "payroll tax", and some of it is called "income tax". Every cent raised through a payroll tax, is a cent that cannot be raised through an income tax, and visa-versa.
>Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper.
Yet...none of the advocates of a socialized healthcare system have ever put forward a real bill that can be rated by the Congressional Budget Office. Instead, they put forward shell bills which importantly lack any funding mechanisms.
> The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t.
The current system is divided between public and private spending. Even if you could reduce the overall cost to 32T, that's still a net cost increase on the public side. How will the government raise that money? The advocates for social healthcare never say.
I mean it ran at a surplus for 30 years until 2009 when boomers started retiring, still has over 3T in assets. How can you claim it's adding to the deficit?
If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets? Or did you want to keep the tax but stop paying out? I don't see how the outcome is different then.
Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.
>I mean it ran at a surplus for 30 years until 2009 when boomers started retiring, still has over 3T in assets. How can you claim it's adding to the deficit?
It takes money from the general fund in the form of interest payments. And the CBO assumes that when the 3T in assets run out in about ten years, there will be some kind of continuous bailout whereby money from the general fund is used to plug the shortfall.
>If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets?
You don't have to remove it entirely. You could implement means testing so that only those who truly need it receive money.
>Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.
It wouldn't generate enough revenue. Social Security and Medicare, and their associated interest payments are expected to run a ~100T deficit over the next 30 years. If you want to go the "just raise taxes" route to bridge that, you'll have to raise taxes on everybody. If you doubled middle class taxes and implemented a 20% VAT, it might raise enough to stabilize social security and medicare. But that would be the largest tax increase in American history, and Americans would receive no new benefits in return.
The government "borrowed" from the SS fund. That's why it's endangered. The money was there and it should still be there.
The government also screwed the postal service by taking their profits (one of the few things in government that actually makes one) and then yells at them for not making enough income.
We need a flat corporate and billionaire tax that has no loopholes.
The government borrows money from Social Security, and the government pays that money back with interest. So what you are complaining about is actually a transfer of money from the general fund into Social Security. And when we talk about the impending insolvency of Social Security, we're talking about the point at which this subsidy stops (because they won't have any surplus funds to lend), and the program is forced to cut benefits to match what payroll taxes bring in.
Also very predictable exenditures over time, which increase with an aging population with decreased firtility rates. Which have little to do with actual firtility but are just a measure of kids vs parent ratio, it might play a role though. Everyone always forgets that it is entirely predictable but nobody does something about it because it hurts.
Also doesn't help if you borrow against the money put in. The US is not alone in taking money from the baby's/old peoples fund unfortunately, same happened here but worse the money was just taken. Although it was mostly spend on education and construction so there is that at least.
Strange how the national debt increases much faster when the president is a Republican. Republicans love to run the debt up when they are in power and then use it as a weapon when they are not.
We have it: three branches of government. But the political branch loyalty has been superseded by political party loyalty and it breaks the system.
What I think should happen is that the vast majority of legislators (Senators/Representatives) should be furious that the Executive branch is disregarding laws that they wrote themselves. And the justices should be furious that the Executive branch is disbeying their interpretation of the law.
Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?
Aren't other countries adversarial enough?
I think these are made up concerns. By and large the US is dominant in the real world, and always will be given its size, location and cultural foundations. And that translates to being able to print and spent a large amount of money, which could be used to solve real world problems, such as:
- climate change and the need to transition energy, transportation over time with some urgency
- chronic housing shortage
- education costs
Instead they're focusing on fake problems and solutions that will make the real problems worse.
> Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?
Not really. There is a political strategy Republicans have engaged during this time known as "Two Santas" which can explain it:
First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans
control the White House they must spend money like a
drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far
and as fast as possible.
This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus
making people think that the GOP can produce a good
economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes
people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa
Clauses.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans
must scream about the national debt as loudly and
frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our
children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut
spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government,
crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around
the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending
money.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own
social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus
shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus
right in the face.[0]
Except that is inaccurate. With the exception of the Biden admin, Republicans have been increasing the national debt at a _much_ higher rate.
Both private and public dept have been rising rapidly since the 70/80's and the introduction of neoliberal policies. Real wages have stagnated, so Americans go into debt. Tax cuts for the rich, so the US has to borrow.
Yes, but it would be dishonest to claim that only Republican admins drastically increased the deficit. Biden is an exception. I’m not comparing him to Trump either.
Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare, and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely uninterested in doing any of those things, and are in fact going to make them worse.
Indiscriminately firing federal workers whose salaries will collectively make up maybe one tenth of one percent of the budget is not at all about reducing debt, that's just the thin justification they are using the destroy any independence and competence within the government that might get in the way of their looting and corruption.
Anyone who thinks that Trump and Musk are serious about reducing the federal debt at this point aren't likely to be swayed by anything I say. But for anyone who genuinely believes that I hope you will look at what the national debt and deficit are right now, and then to check on them in a few years when both are dramatically worse. You will find that two of the most prominent bullshitters in the world are in fact bullshitting on this topic as well.
To add to this: specifically regarding random firings and loopholes. Every marginal dollar spend on the IRS brings in $5 to $9 in return to the government [*]. Yet they are firing IRS agents. More generally, we know, and the government knows, how to reduce the deficit because the CBO offers options regularly [%]. All of the big ticket items require some kind of healthcare cuts, which are all not fun. Note that they do not have any suggestions for cutting any part of USAID. The biggest saver would be "Eliminate or Limit Itemized Deductions".
> Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare, and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely uninterested in doing any of those things
Easiest thing to do IMO is fund anyone that is over 18 that has paid into Social Security. Anyone younger - simple, reduce taxes to not include it. Phase that fucker out. Get rid of all but 10% of federal income tax.
Also, make all black budget projects that involve underground alien bases public and move it all private, so Elon and other people can just directly invest in those instead of coming out of our taxes through the DOD.
I am happy to cut government spending and increase government efficiency (obviously). I have so far not seen any evidence that DOGE is working is this direction. As I like to point out the marginal dollar spent on the IRS brings in ~$10 of revenue. If DOGE or Trump really cared about the deficit they would expand the IRS. They would take ease the burden of NEPA, but in the meantime increase the number of bureaucrats to make the process faster. They would reform the Paperwork Reduction Act. They would make it easier for government officials to handpick hires.
On the policy side they would push for port automation. They would get rid of the Jones act. They could standardize and simplify the tax code (& get rid of loopholes like stepped up basis)
Instead they are breaking random government websites, blocking & politicizing USAID (< 1% of budget), mass firing with seemingly no plan for running various orgs, trying to increase mass incarceration (?) and reinforcing captured markets (like TurboTax).
He campaigned (first time) to reduce the national debt and instead exploded it by giving massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy.
> Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government
US Government Accountability Office already existed to do this, without it being career suicide for those involved (at least until Trump began attempting to end it despite being nonpartisan)
You are way underreacting to what’s going on here. This is not about saving money, or trying to cut waste or fraud. Elon Musk has been posting wild conspiracies on X to justify what he’s doing. But the actual changes are reactionary and political. Accountability is long gone if someone like Elon is in direct charge of what bills get paid. Fraud and waste will skyrocket in these conditions.
Tesla and SpaceX ran on government money. X is doing poorly enough that he’s suing former advertisers demanding that the courts force them buy ads.
He now has significant influence over all of those things. Official government communications are only being released on X, incentivizing people to use it. The next NASA contract is going to be awarded by people who know their boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss owes his political career to the owner of one of the bidders. Last quarter, a quarter of Tesla’s net income was unrealized Bitcoin profits – and he’s pushing the government to subsidize Bitcoin so it can get the kind of adoption it hasn’t been able to achieve on merit!
This is why government ethics rules exist, and why high-level officials have public confirmation hearings. Even if he was incredibly scrupulous about not making decisions based on his own interests, it reeks of corruption and provides many avenues for potential abuse (e.g. what if China threatened to seize his factories unless he helped them get a better deal?). The federal employees he’s attacked have annual training reminding them that they can’t accept gifts over $20/year – and really shouldn’t even then – with consequences up to going to jail for a long time.
Hold on there, Tesla has repeatedly shown an amazing ability to cut costs of their products while improving functionality/quality.
Yes Tesla benefits from credits caused by other companies not meeting co2 targets set by the government but that wouldn't have been enough to save them from three near bankruptcies. And yes, they are still quite a ways away from being a leader in overall quality and consistency but yhey are executing extremly well in their R&D compared to other US car companies only to be outdone by the Chinese, certainly not any US company.
As someone solidly on the left, this has really frustrated me to no end with the typical lefist sources I watch. In 2025 Facts really matter but all I see are facts being omitted to push a narrative (ie. Elon wasn't the founder of Tesla, Tesla/SpaceX is just alive because of the government subsidizes, Elon does not know anything about how to make a car/rocket).
They cite his bad behavior or screwups in reforming Twitter but unless you have followed everything that Elon has accomplished/failed at you are lying by omission. This is especially dangerous now because by dismissing him as dumber than he really is, you are setting him up for surprise successes because people let their guard down.
This is what I see on /r/fednews at how shocked they are over how fast he is moving at his slash and burn.
You would have known this had you followed the whole Twitter saga very closely, the early days of Tesla where they ousted the original CEO for deliberately lying to the board, and the three near bankruptcies of the company where Elon pulled out hail mary after hail mary to save the company.
See this is my point. You can easily google that answer and I suspect you know it already. The entire context is missing because you are pushing your narrative. Tesla was founded by Eberhardt and Tarpenning and thats where the left always stops. Without any doubt we know that Eberhart would have tanked the company. Tesla would have been nothing without Elons involvement especially now that we know of the lies that occurred early on during Roadster. There would be no Tesla left had he continued. Leaving this out causes people to miss lessons that help them understand how Elon thinks.
Lessons such as how he brought in his fixers to go 'line by line' in the books to figure out where all the money is going: sound familiar?
>Tesla is getting cooked by Chinese carmakers and only tariffs or outright bans can help. In EU their sales are falling quickly due to his salute.
Did you not read my message completely or were you so fixated on your conclusion that you missed how I admitted that Chinese are outdoing Tesla?
Don't listen to me, heres Elon Musk talking about how good his Chinese competitors are:
"If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
In regards to EU, yes they are sinking there, so are all the other EU companies. The Chinese will own that market. That entire continent is a sinking ship and in hindsight maybe it was a mistake to even open a factory there as im sure Musk is realizing now.
I am so disappointed that the left has apparently learned nothing from the Twitter saga and are instead relearning all the mistakes made there because they didn't pay attention the last several times this happened. Instead of downvoting figure out how you can exploit Musks's weaknesses to stop him.
So the company was founded, Elon Musk joined later and funded it. Are investors founders now or what? This isn't a leftist things, it's just reality. I'm not disputing that he was instrumental in Tesla's success, saving the company several times with new financing.
He overpaid about 20B for twitter and tanked it's value so it's almost worthless now. For example by telling advertisers to fuck off, and when they did he started suing them for doing what he told then to do. All this to turn twitter into a far right extreme and racist echo chamber to push propaganda. All regular users and companies are fleeing it to other platforms. Now he's using his position in government go force agencies to use it for communication, padding his own pockets.
I don't think there is anything I can say to knock some sense into you but i'll bite anyway.
>So the company was founded, Elon Musk joined later and funded it. Are investors founders now or what? This isn't a leftist things, it's just reality.
The left position implies or outright says that he just used his money to take over the company pushing the poor founder out. This nonsense is as far from the truth as you can imagine. Two guys that came along with no financing and just a general business plan. As the founders they were given the chance to run the company and ran it into the ground losing almost all of the investor's money. The original plan was for Elon to start his own company: A company called Faraday Motors(ironic). He was convinced by his business partner to instead join forces with these other two guys. A mistake he probably still regrets.
Is the left correct in that Elon was not the founder? Yes...are they being disingenuous? Absolutely. We can't be playing this stupid game anymore after their abysmal loss this past election.
>I'm not disputing that he was instrumental in Tesla's success, saving the company several times with new financing.
You make it sound like he just wrote a check, walked away, and it magically fixed itself. Now you are being dishonest. A lot had to happen correctly between then and now for Tesla to be where it is today and not just some distant memory.
OP made the claim "Tesla and SpaceX ran on government money." This is another disingenuous statement. Tesla utilizes a program open to any car company to encourage them to transition to ZEV. Its not Tesla's fault that other car companies still cannot take advantage of the program due to the cars that they sell. They had 10+ years to turn the ship around and many still haven't done so. It is certainly not some sweetheart deal only allocated to Tesla or even created for Tesla.
The same can be said for SpaceX: they provide a service, the government pre-paid for that service...SpaceX still has to provide the service. The left makes it sound like they are just being thrown free money.
Frankly why do you even nitpick this so much? What are you even trying to prove? My overall point was that people need to know this history so they can see his tricks coming a mile away instead of being caught off guard like many are doing right now. How is that a bad thing?
>He overpaid about 20B for twitter and tanked it's value so it's almost worthless now. For example by telling advertisers to fuck off, and when they did he started suing them for doing what he told then to do. All this to turn twitter into a far right extreme and racist echo chamber to push propaganda. All regular users and companies are fleeing it to other platforms. Now he's using his position in government go force agencies to use it for communication, padding his own pockets.
Thats just like your opinion man. Here is an alternative take: That Twitter deal in hightsight is looking to be one of the best acquisitions in the history of tech. For 44 billion (of which a lot is other people's money) he literally bought the USA. In the grand scheme of things it is chump change.
>And you still think he's a good guy.
Well I really don't know what kind of a person he is. What I do know is that he will continue to surprise you if you keep your mind closed like that.
You don't see the conflict of interest in one person both controlling how public funds are spent, and running private companies that may have those funds directed to benefit them?
When Elon runs his companies, he is beholden to shareholders to use the company's resources effectively to generate and maintain value.
Who is Elon beholden to when managing public funding and programs as an unelected non-official? Who will vote him out when he wasn't voted in? Who will revoke his confirmation when he was never confirmed?
> What is happening in DC (currently) has broad public support.
Things have been moving quite quickly, so this seems like a premature judgement. Can you cite a survey that shows that levels of support for disbanding USAID, for example; or taking over the treasury system; or "deleting" DirectFile?
I am responding to a specific comment about public support. Besides surveys, what method would you suggest for accurately determining public support for particular policies? And leave your self-satisfied partisan snark out of it.
I couldn’t care less about measuring the popularity of the President a couple weeks into the term. You could ask a fortune-telling chicken for all I care.
I’m ecstatic about everything that’s being done to make the country better right now. We’re again moving in the right direction. That’s what matters to me.
> I couldn’t care less about measuring the popularity of the President a couple weeks into the term. You could ask a fortune-telling chicken for all I care.
Then why are you responding to my objection to a post asserting the alleged popularity of current actions? Are you just interesting in spreading snark and bitterness without any thought or substance?
> I’m ecstatic about everything that’s being done to make the country better right now. We’re again moving in the right direction. That’s what matters to me.
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that you're dumb. What's happening right now is vandalism of the government.
> So why would "fraud and waste" skyrocket under him?
TSLA doubled in value in the month after the election, despite the financials of the company going down. The only reason for the increase in share price is because the market expects Musk to benefit from Trump's corruption, in the form of less oversight and more government subsidies.
They mean that he will divert or protect payments and credits going to his own businesses or partners. His interest in capital efficiency exists to generate profit for himself, not as a blessing for other orgs he provides as a gift. He did it with Twitter/X after he became owner of its profits.
If treasury money is diverted to his private interests, that is waste and perhaps fraud. But to him it achieves the same end (personal profit) as capital efficiency of orgs under his own ownership, not just his control
Elon has gone off the reservation. Just based on his insane social media postings, he's either completely mad or is cynically pretending to be. Either way he is completely untrustworthy.
At this point, it's probably the safer bet to assume Musk isn't the primary reason those companies are capital efficient.
Maybe he runs companies like he plays video games. Someone else drives while he pretends to.
That's a very valid argument. Both SpaceX and Tesla are quite capital efficient. Maybe another angle to consider is what's being optimized for? What outcomes would be considered successful for these federal agencies? That's probably going to tell us more about whether the austerity measures that seem likely result in more efficient use of resources to create successful outcomes.
One thing that seems worth think through more is whether the stated outcomes of those agencies is what's actually be optimized for, or whether those are suborned for personal gain by a few parties.
This is not correct. SpaceX is covered by ITAR and therefore cannot hire foreigners.
Of the approximately 70,000 Tesla employees in the US, fewer than 2,000 are H-1B workers. The rest are US citizens or permanent residents. Tesla's manufacturing is much more vertically integrated than other auto manufacturers, so they rely almost entirely on their US factories to produce the cars they sell in the US. Other auto makers tend to do more manufacturing overseas to save on labor/safety/environmental costs, then do final assembly in the US to avoid tariffs.
JFC, he named a quasi-governmental agency "DOGE"! He may as well have called it "The Department of Pump"
And his buddy the president is happily sending the currency and stock markets up and down with his every idiotic tariff announcement. I wonder if the top man at DOGE is on the list of people who Trump tips off?
Musk, Trump and half this administration are off-the-charts corrupt.
You would have to cut entitlements if you're relying on cuts alone, and those require Congressional action to change. It's absolutely wild people actually believed Musk without spending a few minutes understanding the issue.
Certainly, building systems to search for and prevent fraud is a worthy goal. Solving for that is orthogonal to what is taking place (which is Musk and his loyal, inexperienced band of lackeys doing whatever they want without governance and oversight). Is all of USAID fraud? Does the executive branch have the authority to unilaterally shut the program? No, these are the actions of authoritarians.
Everything Musk and Trump have done have been virtue signaling, removing oversight and political independence, gutting consumer protections, and pissing off our allies.
A Russian puppet candidate could not do more damage to this country than what the Trump administration is doing right now.
Nothing being done fights the large causes of fraud/waste/abuse. Nothing being done helps the cost of housing or the cost of healthcare or college or fuel.
The so called successes of the tariff wars so far have been done at the expense of our long term credibility as a nation.
Indeed. There's undoubtably fat to cut all across the board but anybody who decries government spending and waste and doesn't include the DOD as part of that is a hypocrite at best.
I didn't downvote you, but tell how you would like to downsize the military's mission 95%. No overseas bases? No Coast Guard? No R&D? Just looking at a big number and saying "cut it" is easy, saying what to cut is hard.
95% is overly aggressive, but that doesn't mean there's opportunities to trim fat.
Addressing the DOD's accounting failures is a first step -- famously admitted to by Don Rumsfeld:
Rumsfeld says, “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building. Because it's stored on dozens of different technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”
There's zero incentive to cut waste -- in fact the opposite. At the end of the fiscal year it's SOP to spend every last penny in the budget on anything they can, just to ensure their budget isn't cut.
Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US ~$6T and we got nothing to show for it.
There's got to be a reasonable center between "God bless the US Military" and "Shut it all down".
You said it! How long before a lot of small countries start leaving treaties like the Berne Convention? Why would they bother protecting other big countries copyrights when they're no longer getting support through programs like USAID and there's no longer any guarantee that the US will protect them in any way.
The first country to pull out has the chance to make like $100 billion by creating the next TikTok competitor that never takes down content for violating anyone's copyright. It'll be like Edison moving to Hollywood all over again! Let the gold rush begin!
You see the carrot vanishing... OK. But what about the stick?
The whole point of Trump's policy is 'we forgot the stick, let's use it again'. I see this true for international policy but you could probably extend that to that infamous DOGE: Fed agencies must be 'productive' (whatever that means), or else.
Never appropriate. The actions are entirely unconstitutional. If the US decided to disband USAID it would have to be an act of congress, unelected friends of the president don’t come close to being able to make that call.
In a sensu stricto it's illegal, but practically and regrettably they are able to make that call, because though there are rules against it, unless the sergeant at arms of the senate goes out and handcuffs them, nobody is going to stop them. When the executive branch and the judiciary both decide to ignore the legislative branch, what is the legislative branch going to do?
Our legislative branch is unable to even minimally fulfill its Constitutional duties.
We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them.
The Congressional budget process is fundamentally broken and increasingly nondemocratic - the leadership of both parties get "continuing resolutions" passed while they draft a mountainous "omnibus" bill that includes all their pork and graft, then they whip the members of the majority party to pass it without reading it.
The Congressional oversight committees are usually captured by the industries and/or agencies they oversee.
Congressional hearings are not used to inform Congress or the people; they're nakedly partisan acting gigs for committee members.
Congress has unconstitutionally delegated much of its authority to a bureaucracy run by the executive branch, intending to have it operate independently of the president. Now we have a president who is choosing to exercise his authority over the executive branch.
Of course, it is illegal and unconstitutional for the president to eliminate programs that are established by law. But remember the executive branch bureaucracy ONLY exists to allow the president to implement the laws passed by Congress. If the laws aren't explicit or delegate to an executive branch agency HOW they law/program will be implemented, then the president has enormous authority over how to implement it, and there is nothing Constitutionally wrong with that. So if the president says "we don't need 10000 people to implement CFR 1.2.3 section 4, we only need 10", and he can implement the law/program as passed by Congress with 10 people, then he's allowed to do that.
The big problem is that Congress MUST depend on the executive branch to, er, execute. Whatever is required to implement the law, that isn't specified in the law, is up to the executive branch, and the President is the head of that branch.
And all this BS about "classification" again only exists to enable the president to do his job. If the president says someone can have access to something, that is non-negotiable, as two USAID folks found out over the weekend. The bureaucracy has for decades used classification to make a currency out of secrets and to try to avoid oversight. Looks like that ride has ended.
So, America has been dovetailing towards being a monarchy because Congress won’t do their jobs, and it was inevitable that a President would eventually arrive who would wield that power? If nobody is willing to enforce the law, and the majority willingly hand the keys to the democracy to a single individual with dubious intentions, is it best to just accept this as the “natural order of things”? The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens. I preemptively left the country last year and won’t be back anytime soon, so as sad as I am to see this day, I’m also strategically working to insulate myself from as much of the fallout as I can.
Yep. When push comes to shove, I suspect more of them will side with the authoritarian since that's kind of the personality type that tends to get involved in these kinds of occupations.
The electoral college was created to prevent a majority from doing such things, but having the electoral college override the will of the people creates all sorts of problems (and possible tit-for-tat in future elections).
Well, it would have been pretty damn nice to see it “activate” when a candidate with 34 felonies and two impeachments won the election, but that didn’t happen, so any supposed utility is immaterial now. I disagree with the entire concept in principle and do believe that the democratic vote should choose the candidate (even now). I just don’t think most folks actually know what they bargained for.
What does it mean for it to be illegal? If they cast faithless votes, would those votes stand, but then they open themselves up for prosecution? or would the votes not stand at all.
Yeah, the one useful feature I ever thought it might have would be as a check against a crazy-unqualified demagogue, and since then I have seen it fail spectacularly, twice.
That was the original intent. It’s like a half way to a parliamentary system where the legislature elects a PM except here it is a separate one time use assembly.
The electoral college was created in the time before the Internet, computers, television, radio, telephone, telegraph, electricity, the automobile, the airplane, and the train. It was logistically impossible to have a national popular vote at the time. Even the gap between the election and inauguration was based on the time it would take a man on horseback to reach DC from the farthest point out in the country.
Go where you have friends, family, or some clear reason to be. The fact that you are open to suggestions implies this is an aimless/distracting way to waste years of your life. Perhaps you have the type of trouble you can't run away from ? I am speaking from experience and hoping you don't give up on the US assuming your roots are here. Take a long vacation abroad as an alternative.
>The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens
What generation was raised to respect those institutions? Because the boomers were against them and their policies, and Gen X was cynical about them...
Millennials, I'd argue. During the 90s, culture at large painted a picture of stability and progress, all made possible by democracy. See Francis Fukuyama's The End of History for the kind of tone that permeated the time.
As we Millenials have gotten older, we too have seen through the veil and realized the system isn't perfect. More importantly, perhaps, we've seen the wide range of ways people react to this imperfect system. Some have chosen to undermine its very foundations to get their way, leaving many to wonder what we're left with if -- to loosely quote Whose Line Is It Anyway -- the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
The late 70s through the 90s were kind of our last stable period (the 60s & early 70s were tumultuous with Viet Nam and Watergate, and the 30s & 40s were dominated by Depression and World War). That all starts to unravel with 9/11 and the response to it (starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost us $Trillions and didn't really help stabilize the region and ironically began the destabilization of the US).
Much as we like to kvetch about Clinton (and I've certainly done my share of it, and certainly much of the criticism has merit), if there was a "golden age" of America in recent memory, the Clinton era was it.
America is not moving toward a monarchy. The idea that no one is willing to enforce the law is not true. There have been many criminals that have just been removed from the country and many more are in the process of being removed. I'm not sure what "handing the keys to democracy" means, if this is about the United States then that country is a constitutional republic. I'm not sure what leaving the country served, if it makes you happy great, but there is so much hyperbole on the left. The funny thing is that people at the highest levels of the left that pushed insane hyperbole, clearly don't even believe their own nonsense about Trump and the administration, with their sheepish smiles.
As far as the article, Musk is a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it is a good idea to have an entity concern itself with improving the efficiency and reducing the bloat of the bureaucracy of the federal government and Musk is not a dummy, he is the richest person in the world and runs some quite high-profile companies. On the other hand, it is hard to deny Musk is a little bit of a buffoon: fighting with Asmongold on X over his clear lies about video games is sort of unbelievable, telling Americans to "F [themselves] in the FACE" if they don't want all high-skilled jobs in this country to go to H-1Bs, and various other sort of juvenile things. Having these kids that Musk has hired to run-around the federal government is probably not the best thing but I think this doomsday stuff is completely silly.
He also just pardoned a bunch of criminals who physically assaulted police, desecrated Congress, because… they were on his side? That’s simply unprecedented. I don’t need a “party leader” to tell me that’s wrong.
It's silly but some of it is true. Curtis Yarvin is a monarchist and believes countries should be run as a company with a tech CEO as king, ska dark enlightenment. Peter Thiel believe in his ideas, he funded JD Vances career. Musk seems to be onboard, if not just to enrich himself and achieve his Mars goals. Other tech billionaires are as well.
Their goal seems to be to dismantle the federal government and buy up assets and land. Then form micro countries like above with themselves as king/CEO.
This concept (Congress failing) gets repeatedly stated in many contexts without sufficient pushback. It should be considered whether perhaps for organization so large its functioning quite reasonably. Much of the current outrage has been manufactured via a long game of propaganda since at least the Reagan era but probably longer.
> We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them
Which Congress authorized and funded.
Congress, historically, has made formal declarations of war only at the request of the President. No President has asked for one in decades nor are they required to make war.
They aren't the same thing at all. We've had Presidents ask for authorization without asking for a declaration since the 18th century - the Quasi War was the first I believe.
The precedent is well understood. The President may ask for authorization for any extended war and for a formal declaration, if desired. Then, and only then, will Congress act. Congress will not issue a declaration absent being asked by Commander of the military, for obvious reasons.
This idea that Congress is somehow not doing its job because it's not issuing a formal declaration that were not requested nor required, is simply nonsense.
Frankly, if requesting authorization was the same thing as requesting a declaration, then one could just as easily argue Congressional approval of funding for a war is a declaration.
A declaration of war or an authorization of force are both Congressional approvals for use of military force against an enemy of the state. I get that's inconvenient for your argument, but they're the same.
And the president doesn't have the authority to declare war on his or her own accord, full stop, because the constitution explicitly gives that right to Congress (and no other branch).
Any convoluted timelines around requests are immaterial to those facts.
If the president uses the military to attack an enemy of the state, without Congressional approval, that's outside of his or her authority.
Didn't the Supreme Court judge that the president can't be prosecuted for crimes relating to his official duties? The only recourse is impeachment, and that requires the cooperation of his own party. The president can also pardon all the rest of his associates as required.
And yet all of the inefficiency of Congress and the Courts is better than the alternative, which is dictatorship with no guardrails. We've seen what this looks like in many countries, and nothing you say, do, or own will be safe.
Right, the crusty 236 year old government is showing it’s age and has problems but has also resulted in an exceptionally successful country, so the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it, but instead, the voting populace just decided to burn it to ash; although, many are too politically ignorant to even understand the consequences of their decision.
> the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it
You can't, though. It's ossified too much. The constitution was always meant to be a living document, but now it's a sacred text for which new amendments are practically inconceivable.
It will take a long time to go through the courts, the courts may not care, and even if they do, you can usually appeal and drag your feet long enough that it doesn't matter. Oh, and bonus here, if you become president again you get another reset. It's illegal, but there's no recourse for action.
It's a DDoS on the legal system and he's got all three branches by the balls. The courts can intervene in some of the cases some of the time, but it won't intervene in all of the cases all of the time.
The only way forward here is if everybody in the federal government either does the same thing, or that they become so ineffective and unreliable at _their_ jobs that everything is slowed down enough for the courts to intervene.
... right up until they pretend they're not and never were when the political winds shift again. Though, maybe the winds no longer shift in these parts ...
He got just under 50% of the vote. He won by 1.5%, a tiny margin, fourth smallest since 1900. That does not sound like a mandate to me. I also suspect many people who voted for him did not specifically consider what he would actually do.
> I also suspect many people who voted for him did not specifically consider what he would actually do.
So far he has more or less adhered to the plans he and the rest of the crew that coalesced around his campaign over the summer and undoubtedly led to his election said they would do. I would argue that the campaign’s plans were the most accessible of any campaign so far - dozens of hours of discussion on podcasts and the like by him and potential cabinet members, and video addresses for specific policy plans on the agenda 47 website.
For example, Musk made it very clear that the intention with DOGE was to move fast and break things, saying (perhaps ignorantly) that if it turns out something was necessary, you just put it back.
You're saying they're doing the plan they said they would do, but Trump explicitly said he never heard of the plan they're now doing: "I have nothing to do with Project 2025.... That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it."
Judging by some of the surprised Pikachu responses from his voters I'm seeing, I think people took him at his word when he said he had nothing to do with it and never read it. Because he lied about his intentions to voters, you can't not say he has a mandate.
Why do you think it's illegal? USAID was established by an executive order by JFK, not by Congress; Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it specifically be USAID. Closing it and not replacing it with anything would be illegal, but closing it doesn't seem obviously illegal.
Edit: not only that, but they didn't close USAID entirely: they just closed the USAID headquarters, and installed Marco Rubio as the new head of USAID. While this may or may not be desirable, I don't see how this is actually illegal. The specific organization of USAID was established by executive order; this is one of the many consequences of the Republicans winning control of the executive branch of government.
> Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it specifically be USAID
That was true in 1961, but not in the 63 years since then. The Foreign Assistance Act has been amended many times with specific requirements since written for the by then already existing United States Agency for International Development[1]
Nothing in that bill says that USAID needs a specific headquarters to be open, or that it can't be run by Marco Rubio. How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run USAID illegal?
> How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run USAID illegal?
This framing seems disingenuous given the already far reaching effects of the frozen funding, the layoffs, the shut down of communications, the shuttered offices, and, apparently, giving non government employees unfettered access to its computer systems.
But yes, shutting down the USAID or trying to muddy the waters by saying it'll totally still exist, they'll just somehow run it out of the state department and not fund anything should indeed not be possible without an act of congress.
According to USC 6601 — which is the current law — the President literally has the power to abolish USAID entirely, and only has to submit a report about it to do it. [1] Saying that closing the HQ and assigning a Republican as the head of USAID is "illegal" or "should not be possible without an act of Congress" doesn't make sense. Congress already passed an act allowing the President to terminate USAID. Congress does not mandate that USAID exists forever, and does not prevent the President from terminating it or streamlining it.
I’m pretty sure it’s now 2025, which is more than 60 days after Oct 21, 1998. Therefore, the president does not have power to abolish USAID. Please try again.
Ah, my read of that was that as of October 21, 1998, the President would have to submit a report to close USAID (whereas previously the President did not have to submit a report). However, your reading makes more sense.
Uh, that obviously cannot be executing a power that expired 60 days after October 21, 1998.
(It was actually delegating power to revise the USAID reorganization plan—which was not a abolition—and to set the effective date of then part of the reorg that was not transfer of mandatory functions to the Secretary of State.)
That's not correct. Acts of congress specifically created the agency after JFK's XO.
Regardless, the agency is a party to contracts which it is currently breaking. The actions of DOGE are causing the US to break contracts, which is illegal.
Interesting take. I think it applies to every agency? Shutter NASA, and any congressional act merely specifies an agency for aeronautics and space, not necessarily this exact one? As long as it’s eventually reconstituted, no foul.
I’m suspicious, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised we’ve hit the “one simple trick” era of governing.
No, NASA was specifically created by the "National Aeronautics and Space Act" [1], not by an executive order. USAID was created by executive order by JFK. [2]
The bill you link to specifically allows the President to abolish USAID: as it states,
Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. [1]
And here's the text of section 6601, which explains how to abolish USAID:
(a) Submission of plan and report
Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998, the President shall transmit to the appropriate congressional committees a reorganization plan and report regarding-
(1) the abolition of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the United States Information Agency, and the United States International Development Cooperation Agency in accordance with this chapter;
(2) with respect to the Agency for International Development, the consolidation and streamlining of the Agency and the transfer of certain functions of the Agency to the Department in accordance with section 6581 of this title;
(3) the termination of functions of each covered agency as may be necessary to effectuate the reorganization under this chapter, and the termination of the affairs of each agency abolished under this chapter;
(4) the transfer to the Department of the functions and personnel of each covered agency consistent with the provisions of this chapter; and
(5) the consolidation, reorganization, and streamlining of the Department in connection with the transfer of such functions and personnel in order to carry out such functions.
The President can abolish USAID, or can streamline it, or terminate functions within it, according to your own provided links, and only has to submit a report about it.
Fair enough; my initial read was that this meant that as of October 21, 1998 reports would be required (whereas previously they weren't), but honestly I think that was the wrong read and you're right.
This seems like a stretch. If I close Wal-Mart headquarters does Walmart still exist? For a little while, maybe. Warehouses will probably run on autopilot, people will still get paid for a bit, etc, but the company is walking dead. What they've done is effectively decapitate an agency without the consent of the legislature.
That's even more clearly illegal. The Executive doesn't determine where money goes.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:
> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
I mean you could impeach him again. But that's doesn't really do anything other than wave a finger at him and says "Naughty naughty".
Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected office again after being impeached a few times during his previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his impeachment to force him out of office and that requires a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress defending his actions that he would still be president. I mean he's already a convicted criminal.
That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he already proved that nothing can stop him.
Our elected officials don't have any direct power over government agencies (ministerstyre), they create laws that the agencies need to follow. Then we have independent bodies that can investigate and remove bureaucrats that don't follow the law.
Now are there any cracks in this system? Probably. But we dont have a president with unlimited power than can only be checked by congress at this point.
Eh, they've already seen that with the balkans and eastern bloc countries in the 80-90s. You're gonna get a bunch of Orbàn-like small time dictators on every state that once on a while have to bow to the requests of a central-government more interested in its own political intrigues than governing anything.
US Doomers are expecting something similar to the Civil War movie in the next few years, the reality will be more similar to "The Lives Of Others".
And I say that as a fellow US citizen that has born witness to the abuses of the current bureaucracy.
Good luck with that.
By flagrantly violating the laws and constitution they are doing more than dismantle the bureaucracy. They are removing the very protections that exist to protect you from the petty bureaucrats that you disdain. A government as large as ours cannot function without a bureaucracy, and there is no guarantee the current one's replacement will be as free from corruption, sycophancy, and pettiness as our current one (despite its flaws).
In fact there is ample evidence the new bureaucracy they are creating has just one goal - to do whatever their dear leader asks of them. Try to criticize Nazi rhetoric on X and see how long you last. Now imagine the apparatus of government with the same bent. Only when governments "ban" you they have ways of making you disappear.
You think yourself safe. But everyone is guilty of something. And under a government unrestrained by the rule of law there is nothing to protect you should someone in power take offense. And someone will take offense eventually. Maybe you cut some official's ex-wife's former roommate's cousin in traffic. Or maybe you just say something one day that contradicts what the dear leader says the next.
What does a mixed-truth Snopes article about a dumb law proposed in Tennessee have to do with anything? The law sounds dumb and I would be wary of anyone proposing or voting for such a law, but I’m not a citizen of Tennessee so ???
I likely disagree with a lot of your political opinions, but I want nothing bad to happen to you. If you were my coworker or we encountered each other in public, I would treat you with respect unless you disrespected me.
I see lots of changes to the extent that we will no longer “celebrate” or subsidize LGTBQ+ or DEI issues with public funds. That seems fair to me, I don’t expect public funds to be used to celebrate my lifestyle and sexual preferences. I think that flying an LGTBQ flag over an US Embassy in another country where the citizens overwhelmingly oppose such ideas, does not further any American interest. It just makes working with such countries more difficult.
I also don’t believe in equity in the sense of discriminating against people now for wrongs of the past. I believe strongly in equality and in merit based opportunity that is not in any way tied to immutable characteristics.
I do not see any action that the government has taken as endangering anyone. I would vocally oppose any policy that I thought would harm someone (except I don’t think ending a benefit is a harm in this context).
> I do not see any action that the government has taken as endangering anyone
I’m curious how you view the executive order that moves transgender women into men’s prisons. To me those prisoners are now in a danger they were not previously.
But female prisoners are now at less risk, because they're no longer being forcibly incarcerated with male prisoners, thanks to this executive order. In federal prisons at least.
The process of hosting a transgender woman with a violent prisoner is called v-coding, and it's done in order both to punish the transgender woman and reward the violent prisoner. This has been an unofficial policy on many levels of corrections for decades, and is not new. Firing a few wardens won't fix it, and often complaints are ignored and/or swept under the rug.
If this is something you didn't know, Google it. Don't take my word for it.
I don't doubt this is true. We see many law enforcement abuses of this sort[1] and I want any such abuses investigated and the perpetrators severely punished.
But you are implying that because that might happen, the transgender woman should be left in the women's prison. But that carries its own risks[2] which ALWAYS get left out of these discussions. I do not automatically believe in the sincerity of men, especially those with a history of violence against women, when they arrive at prison and only afterwards declare that they are trans.
The solution to the problem is separate. The executive order could have included language about protecting prisoners from violence but it does not. Can you agree that the executive order increases the danger that person is in?
The executive order could have included all sorts of "remember to do your job" directives to prisons.
I don't agree with the framing of the question. Men's prisons are typically more violent than women's prisons. So from that perspective, statistically the person is in more danger. However if we only look at that, we would transfer everyone to women's prisons.
You are implying but not stating that there is some extraordinary targeting of trans women by prisoners in men's prisons. I don't know if that is true or not but it seems plausible. My argument is that since prisoners are intentionally kept in a defenseless state, that it is the job and moral duty of prison staff to keep prisoners safe from each other, regardless of who the prisoner is. If a specific prisoner is at unusual risk of violence (like a convicted police officer, for example), then I expect that prisons have processes in place for that.
You’re still talking around the issue. You said that you’d object to anything that puts people in danger. You admit this order puts people in danger but immediately pivot to talk about where the responsibility ought to lie for mitigating that danger rather than follow through with your original pledge to OP.
It just makes your original statement look dishonest. You do not object to the order that places people in danger. You and I both know that prisons are terrible for protecting vulnerable populations. “They should, though” is both correct and meaningless to the person being transferred.
I am not talking around the issue; I am just not accepting your framing that moving these people into men's prisons puts them in any danger over and above the danger of being in a prison.
I agree that there are dangers in prisons. But I don't think that prevents us from routine transfers of people between prisons.
I do think that prison officials are responsible for the safety of their prisoners and want them held accountable when they fail to do that, or worse, when they intentionally endanger prisoners.
I can't be more clear than that. I reject your framing.
> I don’t expect public funds to be used to celebrate my lifestyle and sexual preferences
End the child tax credit and extra tax exemptions for being (straight) married then or shut the fuck up because the amount of money going to subsidizing that is much, much, MUCH more than what is spent on LGBTQ+/"woke"/DEI stuff. If you care about the deficit, go for those first.
It's a terrible opinion and free speech means people can call out harmful beliefs and behavior. Society is all about establishing social norms, so it's almost an obligation. You are free to be wrong and ostracized.
Most immediately, all the people and services directly impacted. Then second order effects like the continued collapse of rule of law and related operational aspects like the systematic stripping of cybersecurity layers. Magnified by all this happening in one of the largest countries in the world + with most other countries and their process/people. Ex: Halt of congressionally-approved funding of hospitals, schools, and cyber defense teams, and mass layoffs around the same.
It might be amusing when you are personally comfortable and do not consider the people and processes involved, but basic digging reveals this stuff. I happen to work with people like doctors, first-responders, cyber teams, military, scientists, etc whose communities are in a tailspin. It's quite vivid, and I am confused how this is even a question. The ability of people to get life-saving care is literally being removed as perishable supplies are running out and staff are working pro-bono.
A top misinformation tactic is asymmetric trolling: Ask a simple question to force the responder to spend all their time. It's hard to tell if your question is from naivete, privilege, apathy, a broken media diet, trolling, or what.
Thank you for taking time to write a response in good faith.
I was not trolling; I sincerely believe what I wrote.
I do not believe that anything the federal government does that is time sensitive (social security payments, etc) is being affected.
I believe that termination of programs will require Congressional action.
However I believe that there is a lot that the President is Constitutionally authorized to do, that will limit what agencies do and control how they do it, and that the courts will not be shy to step in if the administration even has the appearance of acting unconstitutionally.
I do not think that we are in any way at risk of dictatorship; I think we are quickly moving away from that since Biden left office.
I respect your opinion, but I disagree in good faith, and my disagreement is neither trolling nor uninformed parroting of social media; it’s informed by my understanding of the Constitution and the structure of government it created.
I hope I am right in my predictions and you are wrong, because I don’t want the outcome that you fear may happen.
You are already wrong - hospital care is impacted, schools are/were shutdown, etc. I think you should ask yourself why you are so wrong and unaware on such basic things, and why you do not value them as much as the people reliant on them.
Please name a school that was shut down as a direct result of any Trump administration executive order. I see lots of hyperbolic news articles speculating about such shutdowns, but I do not see any actual closure.
Also, you’re going to have to be more specific about what hospital care was affected and how it was affected.
If a hospital happens to have a research wing and processing a grant proposal for researchers associated with the hospital takes a little longer than usual, I hardly consider that a crisis.
If you've ever been involved in operating small businesses or NGOs, or even harder, making one, you understand how fragile things are for someone to abruptly rugpull on even a small number of pay periods:
The Head Start schools are pretty hard to miss as having been on blast in the media around notifying layoff notices, closures, etc being only paused last minute due to court orders
A lot of basic domestic + intl'l social programs & safety nets run on state + federal grants, and ironically, that is especially true of the Republican/MAGA preferences of non-gov religious, community chartered, etc independent charities & non-profits. A lot are on shoestring budgets - stressing these further is a terrible idea.
RE:Telework, core operational areas like cybersecurity, especially with the COVID flip 4 years ago, is now telework, and those contracts are canceled. Likewise, more qualified positions are often by special renewing appointments, so those are now failing to renew too. Most American families cannot handle multiple missing payperiods, and thus cannot afford to play chicken with the rich or apathetic on this: they're told they're fired, so even if they haven't resigned, they have to interview. With the purse strings coming into the control of those who the courts are disagreeing with, rent wins: that's part of the point. It's already hard to staff these positions given they're underpaid to beginwith, especially when regional, so this is another self-inflicted wound.
This stuff is not hard to search. Systems are more fragile then they may seem from a comfortable techie background in affluent and otherwise self-sufficient regions. I think it's a fair position to want the US to have little power in the international stage, not use its wealth to save lives, etc, and that's something to vote etc on. But rugpulling essential services in illegal ways and unilaterally breaking society is a different thing, and again, not seeing that is pretty terrible and worth calling out.
My 'deja vu' here is when COVID broke out, and while my extended network was working long hours in labs trying to sequence the virus... others were encouraging people to go to restaurants. I'm actually disinterested in the politics. I just want society to avoid breaking from stupid unforced errors. Pulling the cord on people and processes en masse sounds fun if you do not understand operations and sociopathic if you do.
Do you consider all taxes to be theft? Then yes, your money is being stolen from you. Maybe you should move to a country with no taxes.
On the other hand, most people accept that taxes are necessary in order for the government to provide services. The disagreement is fundamentally over which services are necessary. In considering this, know that keeping other Americans able to work, live, get health care, life in safety, etc, is beneficial for everyone, even you.
I should only move to another country in the same capacity as you for being upset about the size of the government being reduced right now. We all have our political opinions and “you should just move” is a lazy and stupid non-argument to make.
> . We all have our political opinions and “you should just move” is a lazy and stupid non-argument to make.
No, these are not the same, because your position is untenable. I disagree with decisions being made right now; my preferred policy solutions can be accomplished with moderate taxes and legislative solutions.
On the other hand, your preferred solution involves no taxes at all, because you believe that tax is theft, so you want to eliminate all taxes, and that's not how countries work. My response to your unrealistic preferences is an unrealistic proposal; that seems entirely fair to me.
It is, instead, your naive ideas about how to run the government that are lazy and stupid; it's like you haven't studied history or government at all and are clinging to some 13 year old Ayn Rand fan's ideas of libertarian utopia.
Oh, sorry. When I asked "do you think all taxes are theft" and theb you said "yes", I foolishly assumed that you consider taxes to be theft. How irrational of me!
But sure, enjoy your performative intellectual superiority. I'm sure lots of people are impressed.
Ok so now it is getting explicit. So some things you dislike are getting cut, and because that is without due process and at illegal levels, causing excess harm that is serious & irreparable, eg, even deadly in some cases. You approve.
Next: People don't know what they are destroying and what other damage that will cause. Operations are fragile even without mass rug pulling. So that is another level of sociopathy to accept.
These come back to either being unaware or apathetic, which get back to social norms and ostracism.
Just remember how they "ostracized" you for being "wrong" now, keep silent when in enemy territory, and smile when you vote against them next election.
But I will not ostracize you for having a different opinion than me, nor will I downvote you, nor will I attempt to dox you, nor will I demand your posts be censored as “misinformation”, no matter how much I disagree.
I might screenshot something you say and make a meme out of it though :-) And you are free to do the same.
It's worse to be a US citizen? Then why are so many people coming in the US and why are so many people upset about removing the ones that come here illegally? It seems like people should be happy the federal government is giving them free rides away from here if it is so bad ...
Giving up the power to do the one thing you are constitutionally permitted to do, just because it doesn’t work for one particularly teflon-coated individual, is incredibly short-sighted.
Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up on impeachment would cede even more power to the executive branch.
He'll wear an impeachment as a badge of honor. The rule of law is a mostly self-supporting system. When nearly the entire edifice of government stops being concerned with it, the system breaks irreparably. We're looking at nothing less than the fall of the Roman empire in speed run, in my opinion.
I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.
As the economy crashes, proletariat sentiments will change. If trump is unable to get a war going, or it doesn't develop how he expects, the economy will be the obvious narrative. And if they get trump out before midterms, his endorsement isn't the same thing.
> I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.
You're assuming that the founders were actually correct about a power rivalry between the branches producing a system of checks and balances between them.
As it turns out, when the whole team is rowing in the same direction, congress doesn't actually care that they've abdicated power or all responsibility to check the executive. Their personal comfort is not threatened by it, and this particular congress doesn't care about governing well.
Sure, the republic will be destroyed, but in the meantime, they'll extract a lot of value for their paymasters.
Congressmen that had a spine, and refused to do that all got primaried out.
Which is why the less Trumpy republicans should have supported the anti gerrymandering acts at the start of Bidens term. The primary problem only exists because of gerrymandering.
The Senate didn't find guilt last time. If they do find guilt, the office is stripped. I don't think it's happening anytime soon, but the failed impeachment doesn't really speak to the consequences of a successful one.
That's not true, most just relied on him being a former president at the time of impeachment.
McConnell:
> “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty…There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day… There is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict and disqualify former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen. ...The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.”
They'll 25th him before they consider impeachment. Right now Trump is just a useful idiot being puppeteered by the Silicon Valley elite. They got "Just Dance" Vance as VP, so they have a good backup.
All they would really need to do is take the existing Trump "speeches" and present them as the.word salad they are too prove him incapable of serving. That story would viewership so the media would be all over it 24-7. That's one reason Trump is rubber-stamping everything Elon says or does - he knows they have him by the balls.
Good luck with that. He is in for the next four years and will finish his term.
Impeachment and removing him from office means the dems will need to control congress. Which can’t happen until 2027. Then, those dems will need convince at least a double digit count of GOP senators to vote to remove him and not care about facing the wrath of the MAGA base…just to get him out a couple of years before term limits do?
I kinda imagine the next 4 years will work hard towards the singular goal of eliminating those. Or he might just ignore them with a whole lot more preparation than the badly organized insurrection of last time.
He wanted the national guard there. What you’re saying isn’t any better than someone parroting some Newsmax theory about depopulation. There’s no real substance behind your claim, just mischaracterizations and innuendo repeated ad nauseam so people view it as fact.
He did. But I think Republicans in general (and Trump in particular) are being incredibly disingenuous about the National Guard thing and trying to blame {not even calling it a riot anymore} Jan 6 on Pelosi.
Why wouldn't Pelosi want the National Guard there?
Putting a bunch of moderately trained military in a chaotic situation with angry civilians is a recipe for disaster.
And if they'd opened fire on the crowd? Do you really think Trump and the Republicans would have backed that use for force?
After how they treated the United States Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt for climbing through a broken window into the Speaker's lobby, after ignoring multiple orders to stop?
He's already floating the idea of a third term, and the house is considering a constitutional amendment that would allow it.
Of course, that'll be a moot point if he continues to just ignore the constitution as he has been so far this entire term, and the other two branches continue to just let him.
Do you understand how long and what it takes to ratify an amendment? There a reason why we haven’t done one in 33 years and that one took 202 years. The process is designed to be difficult, it’s much more than a simple majority and bang of a gavel.
We are still working on approving the equal rights amendment. That’s one that started 102 years ago, and we have been trying to get the 3/4 state’s agreement for it for only 53 years.
So no, I seriously doubt with a 50/50 divided electorate in this country that we will repeal the 22nd amendment in the less than 4 years that the US would have to do it before Trump could run again.
The democrats will have to convince enough voters that what they really want is to turn the entire country into California. I'm not sure that will be a winning strategy. Judging by the most recent DNC shenanigans, I don't think they learned very much from the last election.
Okay, another nitpick, but it's not because the majority is _conservative_, is it? If they truly voted from conservative principles, _some_ possible actions of the administration could offend them enough to impeach. It's probably more correct to say that it definitely isn't happening with a loyalist (MAGA) majority?
In the US, "conservative" is synonymous with "Republican" and "Republican" is (so far, at least) synonymous with "MAGA loyalist", so it's really splitting hairs to call out the alleged difference.
I thought one of those synonyms was going to be "spineless". It's amazing how many lines on the sand the fascist has crossed, but despite some Republican noise, in they end they vote to protect their job and its perks (like info about stock movements before they become public, amongst the many other forms of corruption) rather than to defend their principles. But then again, the Vichy Democrats are quiet too, they're too chickenshit to escalate and call out this enemy of the constitution.
I grew up in a "democracy" with rigged elections and decades of one president. From TV we thought "Oh, America is such a better place, the politicians are clean, the cops are honest and can't be bought...". Hah, fucking Hollywood fairytales.
Yep, you're right. When I was a kid during the Obama years, I was even proud of our country. Now I realize that it and the conservatives in it are basically no different to Putin and his followers in Russia, and the liberal opposition party is spineless and feckless at best, complicit at worst. We may well have an autocoup soon, if we haven't already. I hope to be able to leave this country before that point, but until then I can only attend protests, even though they seem ineffective at effecting change. I hate everything.
"Capture" is the basic theme of current US government. MAGA capture of the Republican party, for instance. Regulatory capture by by various industrial sectors.
Republicans in the US have made being culturally regressive and staying on top as a demographic (white straight christian men) a cornerstone of their politics since the civil rights era. That’s what it has meant to be a Republican for generations.
I don’t think so. The Republican Party had some pretty consistent positions for the better part of the last century, until those got in the way during the Obama era. It’s not like it was perfect before but when it came to questions like “is the President above the law?” or “is Canada an ally?” you could predict how most of the party would side. Stuff like granting unappointed people control over multiple agencies, running roughshod over the national security process, trying to impound huge chunks of the budget, etc. wouldn’t have flown even in Trump’s first term before they finished purging non-loyalists from the party.
Dems should bring up articles of impeachment yet again. It will fail in the house and if it doesn't the senate won't convict. But that's really not the point right now. The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal" and make the republicans defend the behavior.
How exactly are Democrats going to do that considering they don't control the House or the Senate? All that's required to block impeachment is a simple majority to kill the resolution. The Republicans control a House majority and can schedule those kill votes whenever they want. They don't need to defend anything, they can just vote to kill the measure.
Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the midterms.
Democrats can’t force an impeachment, but they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day, every day.
Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just how authoritarian the US has become.
America is a democracy, and the Trump won the election, and the Republicans won the majority of elections in the House and the Senate, and by virtue of those elections they also control the Judiciary Committee by a wide margin which can block attempts at impeachment. Trump is not going to be impeached less than a month into his term for doing exactly the kind of things he said he was going to do during his campaign. The best bet for Democrats is to focus on winning the midterms. Impeachment is not a serious option.
A lot of politics is purely performative. I’d wager over 50% of presidential candidates in any given election know full well they have no chance of securing the nomination but run anyway to build up their profile for a cabinet position or a future run.
Making a noise today about impeachment would be similar. It would play into a strategy for winning the midterms. It’d generate more headlines about the blatant illegality occurring under our noses, it’d be a stick to beat rivals with come election season. No, there would be no hope of it actually resulting in an impeachment, but that would be beside the point.
Not the point. The point is to signal (to stand against, to protest) that what the current wankers in charge are doing, shredding up what little decency was left in Washington, is not normal, is wrong, and moving the needle one more small notch towards fascism.
From afar, it's grotesque seeing what's happening over there. Perhaps you're too close to see it.
He's following the Project 2025 playbook and during his campaign he specifically claimed he would not be implementing Project 2025.
Democrats were warning that he was lying about his intentions, and that he would in fact implement Project 2025, but that is not equivalent to him campaigning on Project 2025. I think this is an important distinction.
Yeah. Frankly driving a wedge between Trump and Elon would be the more effective political strategy, since it wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of them to spectacularly fall out, and Trump couldn't care less if DOGE exists or not as long as he's getting praise from the right quarters
It's inevitable that the two will break up, but it'll be after trump has used him to do all the deeply unpopular hacking apart of social safety nets that he wants to do. He's a useful idiot. A very rich useful idiot.
What a convenient scapegoat to have when we eventually feel the ruinous effects of these decisions. "I trusted ELLEN and he couldn't get the job done, THATS why I FIRED him"
>The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal"
They have been doing that. The issue is that people just look at it all and think "its all political theater"
The only way anything will change is if the ~200m americans who didn't vote actually start to realize that voting matters. Texas could turn blue if all the people in the liberal areas actually voted, which would basically win the election for Democrats.
Waste of time and really achieves nothing other than theatrics. I don't doubt they'll do it though. Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.
> Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.
They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't get legislation to the floor; they can't call investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers. All they can do is make a case against the ruling party. And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them not to be theatrical.
All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for the destruction they are bringing to the country and the world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other levers they can pull.
You really are deluded if you think these moves are for draining the swamp and to make the nation great again... that's the thinly veiled bullshit they're feeding you, and geez, people like you think they're clever and have got it figured out?!?
It's to consolidate power for the foreseeable future for a bunch of elites, so they can even more freely exploit people like you and make tons more money.
But hey, seems like people like to bend over and get MAGAed harder...
Remember you said this if/when it's your life on the line.
I have a feeling that, when that time comes, a lot of people will be changing their tune. "I always knew he'd fuck people over, I just didn't think I'd be one of them!"
I'm not convinced that the democrats (most of them anyway) are actually apposed to what is happening. Both parties seem to have largely the same goals just preferring to use different tactics in order to achieve them.
I love how "both sides are the same" continues to persist, even though Biden did absolutely none of what Trump has done these last two weeks, either in terms of method or outcome. They truly could not be more different and yet people like you are like theyrethesamepicture.jpg.
Lot's of speculation over the decades about what Gödel's Loophole was, but one wonders if it lies in this direction.
"Gödel told Morgenstern about the flaw in the constitution, which, he said, would allow the United States to legally become a fascist state." [1] Unfortunately Morgenstern never completely specified what this flaw was. As pointed out in the wikipedia article speculation is that "The loophole is that Article V's procedures can be applied to Article V itself. It can therefore be altered in a "downward" direction, making it easier to alter the article again in the future." But given how difficult it is to amend the constitution it doesn't seem like the problem lies there.
"unless the sergeant at arms of the senate goes out and handcuffs them"
Capturing the courts is the first step in a fascist takeover. The Republican controlled legislature isn't going to send the sergeant at arms and arrest him.
There is nothing in the way now. "It could happen here."
Not really. Right/Left labeling is silly in general so it's hard to explain in those terms, but Turkish military is and has been anything but Left. You could maybe call them reformist, secular authoritarians, in opposition of religious, populist authoritarians.
Interestingly after 50 years and 2.5 coups, the kind of people they pushed out are the ones running the country for the past 20 years and they're stronger than ever. I take it as a signal that the problem wasn't specific individuals and parties, but they were merely symptoms of deeper problems with the Turkish people.
There was a momentous coup in 1980 that clamped down on the left and nurtured the religious right, to counter communist influence. It was a Carter administration project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Theory
The left will throw them down even faster. I'm honestly baffled as to why any police bothered stopping January 6th - it predictably got them hated by the right, but they never got any thanks or appreciation from the left either, so it looks like a complete losing move to me.
They got the Congressional Gold Medal award, and every time I heard Nancy Pelosi speaking of them, she sounded personally grateful.
Also, it was their job to keep Congress safe, and there are a lot of people that take their job and their honor seriously. Maybe they don't make the podcasts, but they are out there keeping our society safe.
When someone's in a highly politicised position where it's not obvious what the right call is, I'm baffled that they wouldn't take the route that aligns so heavily with their interests, yes. Much as I'm a fan of personal integrity, there's only so much shitting on my whole profession that I could take.
You're not usually meant to use force to prevent trespass outside of some very narrow circumstances. And whether someone is trespassing or is somewhere they have every right to be is very often unclear.
America as 70s/80s Turkey, just have the military coup the civilian government every time it gets out of line. Not a super stable way to run a country!
This sounds very ignorant. The members of the military very much understand and remember their oath to the constitution and they are acting accordingly currently.
The rule of law is always contingent on the good will of the powerful. RIP USA. They are dismantling the country, not an abstract concept. Godspeed my American friends, I hope you live in a strong state, can get to one, or have a second nationality.
It doesn't take much for a successful coup. Really just the right amount of people to sit on their hands and think that maybe someone else will do something to stop it.
Think something should be illegal? It's probably in there somewhere. Want to do it anyway? It's probably allowed somewhere else. Want to know if you can or can't do something? Well, good luck figuring that out. With enough time spent in lines talking to civil service workers you can get an answer that may be correct. Or maybe not. Probably best to hire a lawyer at hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you whether you can or not. (The lawyer will say "no", because if he says "yes" and is wrong, now he's in trouble, and nobody wants that.)
The system has grown and changed and mutated, and now it's a behemoth that nobody really understands. It's such a mess that people are genuinely hopeful that an AI will ride in and help us all untangle all that we humans did.
And the people that we've put in charge of doing all of this are collectively the most unaccountable folks ever. They routinely skirt, side-step, or ignore the rule of law as they see fit, and they still enjoy a 90%+ re-election rate and an incredibly high barrier to entry for reformers.
Impeach. Subpoena. Then arrest if subpoena ignored. Pass laws (supermajority to bypass veto). Cut funding to executive office. Then go nuclear with things like amendment putting the armed forces under legislative control. Lots options. All require a united front.
Or, massive recalls across the country change the math. My point is that there are totally legal and constitutional options. Nobody need result to silliness.
I disagree. This is the outcome of someone who doesn't believe in the law acting accordingly. If there are no consequences, the law is immaterial. If the law is to remain intact, show up with force and enforce it. Checks and balances within the branches of federal government.
Look at the comments. It's only been two weeks, and people are already tired of members of Congress running to the media after Musk does something illegal. They want these members to force the police to arrest them on behalf of Musk.
I'm in agreement. These people are softer than tissue paper. Where's the energy South Korean representatives had when their President declared martial law?
You cannot practically imprison the richest man in the world. He'd end up running the place like a king, like El Chapo did. The only way forward is to exile him to Mars.
> Musk is a convenient fool for the trump administration.
Exactly this. And he doesn't even see it. There will be no "Elon dismisses Trump". Elon is not a natural born US citizen, Trump is. Trump wins, because if one has been paying attention, the people who put Trump in office don't like immigrants all that much.
The thing about Trump and Musk is that they both believed the other to be a convenient fool. It will definitely be interesting to see who lasts longer.
I'd bet on Musk as he has better connections among the Silicon Valley elite that are propping up this administration. Plus, the way that Trump is rubber-stamping everything Musk does as soon as he hears about it seems to suggest which one is actually in charge.
Time doesn't matter here. Elon can never hold the highest office nor the second highest. The best he can ever do is be their appointed henchman.
The MAGA mobs may only care about a few cherry picked bits from the Constitution, but the requirement of being a natural born citizen (usually meant as born on US soil with 2 US parents, but generally, either one is accepted) is definitely one of them. And he won't be getting meaningful support from anywhere along the other end of the scale anytime soon, so I left them out
You think the Trump administration is going to prosecute the wealthiest person on earth? Attention and wealth are the currencies of Trumpian politics, and I would be shocked to see Trump try to fight someone with such a massive ability to direct attention (via control over twitter and through having hundreds of billions of dollars).
If Trump can make money on it, he will put anyone in jail. Musk is such an easy target, Trump could take him down in a heartbeat , freeze his assets and put ownership of his companies in his control. And let me state this as clear as I can: this would all be perfectly legal “official acts”
The Capitol Police Board oversees and supports the United States Capitol Police in its mission and helps to advance coordination between the Department and the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives and the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the Senate, in their law enforcement capacities, and the Congress. Consistent with this purpose, the Capitol Police Board establishes general goals and objectives covering its major functions and operations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations.
The Capitol Police Board consists of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol. The Chief of the United States Capitol Police serves in an ex-officio non-voting capacity. The Chairmanship alternates annually between the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms.
> The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States with nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the United States Congress within the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its territories. It answers to the Capitol Police Board and is the only full-service federal law enforcement agency appointed by the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States.
The legislative branch can recall both the president and the judges, but it won't do that because it is happy with what they are doing.
Even a Democrat landslide in two years wouldn't change it, because almost all Democratic politicians are unwilling to cause a fuss (or they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing).
But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
> they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing
Knowing people in democratic politics, this isn’t true. The root of the problem is that they don’t understand or prioritize power.
They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose. Minority on the Supreme Court, house, senate, presidency.
Think about Obama’s first presidency. Sixty senators. What happens if they:
1. Make DC a state. That’s two senators. I don’t think they could get Puerto Rico.
2. Make Election Day a federal holiday. That spikes turnout, which benefits democrats (see: advantage in every major issue.)
That’s the type of thinking that gives and maintains power. But they don’t think that way until it’s panic time and already over.
> They have overwhelming support for every major issue
The problem is for a lot of these this only becomes apparent when pollsters remove all context and political baggage. For instance, ask people if they like Obamacare/ACA and results are mixed. But go down the line and ask about the constituent pieces of it all and you'll see positive support.
The Democrats have completely and utterly failed at packaging these things up with a message that resonates with the people. Instead they've allowed their opponents to demonize their stances. And that's how we wind up with people holding signs that say things like "Keep government out of Medicare"
1) They create an issue at Fox.
2) Sell it breathlessly
3) congress person brings it up in the legislature, points to news reports as proof
4) pass a new bill, or stall another
5) Refer to these actions on Fox, showing it as proof.
6) go to the polls after creating the arena you want to fight in.
Add in the internet and the media advertising incentives, and you have escalating sensationalism and extremism.
Post watergate, the Republican strategists decided to win at all costs. There is no messaging that is “nice”, and if dems are aggressive they get penalized for it. Because many people didn’t believe this was true. It was too outlandish.
I understand why things are the way they are. And the dems are pretty fucked now. Whining about it doesn't help though, and it won't get them out of this mess. But neither will just saying "we have better ideas".
They need to come up with a solution that'll actually work. Instead they seem to keep punching themselves in the face.
> Whining about it doesn't help though, and it won't get them out of this mess.
Are we sure? Them keeping quiet while fascists run rampage gives me the feeling of "not saying anything means you're consenting". A gruesome analogy that doesn't fit, because it's the nation getting raped (or since it's Trump, do we want to call it sexual assault), and it seems the Dems were supposed to be another guardian of the nation...
I didn't say they shouldn't do anything. I said that them whining about the situation won't help. To be honest I have no clue what they *should* do, as I said before it seems they're pretty well fucked for now. They could steal the GOP playbook and start a multi-decade effort to take over all media sources and influence people's internal metaphors. But that's going to take some time.
But I hope someone smarter than I figures out a better path.
There’s no solving a problem if theres no ability to look at it in the first place.
This is the other magic trick that happens in America that I can’t figure out fully.
I’ve had the chance to talk to people across stripes in America, including people with significant seniority. I’ve made this point in more refiner points for YEARS now, well before Trump.
It’s not a point that people like to acknowledge. Like here ! It’s a massive issue, one that deserves its own conversation, and it’s reduced to a “whining about it”.
Step up for gods sake.
Here! this is a simple way to move forward, this is how I started to resolve it - why does free speech matter? In layman’s terms, it matters because it’s in support of a market place of ideas. In that case is it ok if you have a market place which has a monopoly? What happens if it’s ok for say… junk food and cigarettes to be sold by the same people who certify it as healthy?
How do you address the issue of advertising incentives that drive part of the escalation in rhetoric.
What do you do to throw a spanner in the free money glitch? Here, and everywhere in the world that is learning to replicate this?
We’re originally meant to be on Hacker news. It’s become VC unicorn hopeful land. Asking these questions, and finding an interest in providing if it’s wrong, or right is part of the most basic flame wars we indulge in.
To be fair, the Democrats message extensively about things like the Affordable Care Act, but most people don't see those messages because the liberal media only wants to talk about migrant caravans, egg prices (sometimes), and immigrants committing crimes.
> They have overwhelming support for every major issue
Obviously not, or they wouldn’t have lost.
From a purely power-based standpoint, Obama probably should have pushed more in 2008. But that’s the only time he could have done it - even passing ACA got the Democrats severely punished in the 2010 Congressional elections.
That doesn't follow. It would be true if everyone voted on a correct and comprehensive understanding of the issues and where candidates actually stood on issues, but a massive proportion of the population just votes on vibes and is completely ignorant of actual policies or issues. Trump is objectively more responsible for the overturning of Roe v Wade than any other person, but ask a swing voter and it's pretty likely they won't know how Trump has anything to do with Roe v Wade and think he's pretty tolerant of abortion.
People don't vote on actual policy. They vote on vibes and other heuristics.
There isn't necessarily a contradiction there; Roe v. Wade was objectively a bad ruling. It was a wild reach to suggest that the US constitution implied anything about abortion; the question is basically whether or not it counts as murder and in the US that is supposed to be resolved by state legislators.
I'm in that camp, I'm extremely tolerant of abortion but the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was good jurisprudence. Probably not well advised, if they're going to burn political capital there are more important issues.
> Roe v. Wade was objectively a bad ruling. It was a wild reach to suggest that the US constitution implied anything about abortion;
Wrong. The Constitution grants a right to privacy.
* The 3rd amendment secures our privacy in our homes against demand for quarter by soldiers.
* The 4th amendment grants us privacy in our persons, homes, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure. ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...")
* The 5th amendment secures our privacy from compulsion to bear witness against ones self and secures our life, liberty, and property against deprivation without due process. ("nor shall any person ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;")
* The 14th amendment explicitly extends that protection to guard against action by States ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ")
* And the 9th amendment makes it clear that not all rights are explicitly enumerated in the bill of rights.
It is incoherent to hold that the Constitution doesn't grant us a right of privacy and control over our bodies, and it follows that we have a right to remove things from our bodies. The aforementioned amendments limit the extent of rights when there's a compelling government interest, but our freedom to exercise the right must be balanced against that government interest and the right doesn't exist if the government can't just make it impossible for anyone to exercise the right.
Roe v Wade was an objectively good decision.
> the question is basically whether or not it counts as murder and in the US that is supposed to be resolved by state legislators.
No. Murder is the unlawful and malicious killing of a human being [0]. Not only are abortions not typically done with malice, but US code defines "person" and "human being" [1] (relevant text included below) and fetuses are explicitly not human beings. Further, the 14th amendment explicitly prohibits states from making or enforcing laws that abridge Constitutional privileges.
|§ 8. ‘‘Person’’, ‘‘human being’’, ‘‘child’’, and ‘‘individual’’ as including born-alive infant
| (a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words ‘‘person’’, ‘‘human being’’, ‘‘child’’, and ‘‘individual’’, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.
| (b) As used in this section, the term ‘‘born alive’’, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or
definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.
you may be undervaluing the effect of conservative billionaires owning every conceivable propaganda outlet and mashing on the fear, racism, and division buttons like they were going out of style.
The major issues [0] included things like the economy, foreign policy, violent crime and immigration. Which generally favour Trump & the right wing. I don't understand the lack of strategic empathy among some on the left for being realistic about what people are focusing on. The election was close to a coin flip, obviously the democrats didn't have a big advantage.
Climate change might not even be a major issue any more, people are cooling to it.
>I do not believe US policy makers and thought leaders think FGM is a good thing in the US
This may not occur to you, you assume other people are like yourself. That they work in an office and perform a similar job as your own. Given that scenario, if the turnout of Democrats is lower than you expect, the only reasonable conclusion is that some bosses are less reasonable than your own, and ducking out for 40 minutes to go vote at 2pm just isn't allowed! And therefor if it was a federal holiday, their office jobs would just call it off for that whole day, they'd vote, and the Republicans would never win an election ever again.
However, the people who would vote for Democrats don't have such jobs. The jobs they have are menial, they are working all hours of the day and night, someone has to cover that shift on election day, and if somehow one or another of them does have an office job, there's no guarantee that it will be a paid holiday at that employer. My own employer ignores several federal holidays and instead gives us off days for Easter (Good Friday) and some other Christian holidays.
Your political opponents would hoof it through a warzone to cast their ballot. Having to vote early (or late, or apply for a mail-in) isn't why your numbers are down.
> They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose.
The dems spent this last election cycle distancing, downplaying, and reversing each of these issues. Is it any wonder why they are losing? Rather than play to their strengths and party positions they endlessly and relentlessly try and shift right.
Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
The Kamala/Biden campaign took painstaking measures to try and quash every single one of these issues rather than centering it in the discussion. Instead, they wasted an entire campaign talking about how much Liz Cheney loves them.
Even now, Schumer is saying "let's just sit back and let people watch what's happening" rather than pressing his advantage and Jeffries is saying "It's not great, but God is in control".
Dems desperately hate their base. That's why they lose. They simply transparent in the fact that the only thing that matters is corporate campaign contributions.
> Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
On the contrary, abortion was one of the main issues the Democrats campaigned on. I live in California, and while I didn’t get presidential campaign ads for obvious reasons, down ballot Democrats campaigned hard on a pro-choice message, despite the fact that California is about the last place where pro-choice is under threat. (Gun control a little less, but I still saw it sometimes.)
The issue is that Democrats successfully passed a lot of pro-choice ballot measures in 2022 after Dobbs. In 2024 they couldn’t use this issue much, since the states with heavy abortion restrictions after 2022 are much less sympathetic to the pro-choice cause, particularly because Democrat party messaging has moved a long way from “safe, legal, and rare”. Also, Trump distanced himself from the pro-life cause during the 2024 election, even removing the strongest pro-life language from the Republican party platform.
Without the pro-choice vote that delivered the midterms, and combined with the general incompetence of the Kamala campaign, Democrats really had little to offer, especially since they’re associated with unpopular policies like DEI, open borders, trans advocacy, inflation, etc.
> How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
On the contrary, they very much want to “control” guns out of existence. But they know during election season they have to tone down the rhetoric in the hopes that people forget everything they’ve said about guns during the last three years.
Having power for the purpose of having power isn't too meaningful. In democracies parties (already questionable concept) should ideally not worry about power, but worry about reaching useful goals.
It's hard to reach a useful goal without power to do so.
Also, think game-theoretically (or practically). If you don't dedicate at least some effort to gain and retain power, you will be displaced by those who do. The first priority of a pilot is to stay in the air, the second is flying in the right direction.
Right, and it's all rather obvious. The problem is better seen when, if you focus on staying in power, you have to spend all your resources on this goal, and you can't reach any other goal. Republican party in USA currently does rather little - they do dismantle government, but the more they do that, the harder it is to them to stay in power, so their resources are self-limiting.
During these elections, Dems lost even the support of the precariate, the least wealthy who traditionally voted for left wing. No wonder actually, because they largely stopped to represent the the interests of these groups. When I see a black worker in a small grocery store wearing a MAGA hat, I understand that Dems have failed miserably. All the DEI boards did not represent interests of that guy.
1. Most US media (especially radio) being conservative allowed Republicans to define Democrats in their terms. Consequently, the "Democrats are all trans rights and DEI" was a Republican choice.
2. The Democrats certainly didn't make it hard for (1) to happen.
Yes, the Democratic party is terrible at avoiding dumb issue traps that are unpopular.
But the public dissemination of these positions is very conservative media driven.
Counterfactual: if progressive media had been as dominant as conservative media is, everyone would have spent the last 4 years hearing about government infrastructure spending and Project 2025.
In reality, you instead heard a relentless drumbeat of easily attackable Democratic positions, with nary a peep about Republican extremes.
So, yes, Democrat fault for having those positions in the first place. But the de facto situation is mostly created by conservative-dominated media being able to repeatedly broadcast those to an uninformed public.
When you ask yourself why the Democratic Party doesn't in fact do things that you think would be obvious ways to further it's goals and purpose, over and over again, for generations, you might want to start pondering this concept:
Dems have not held power in the US since at least Reagan, Full Stop.
"51" senators (when at least two aren't even democrats and one routinely votes against the party for his literal coal lobbyist cronies) isn't Power.
The one time Democrats held some power for about FIFTY DAYS, we got the ACA. We could have gotten medicare for all but a "Democratic" senator refused. Medicare for all has been on and off the Democrat platform since before RFK got got.
That so many "liberals" and "leftists" insist the democratic party hasn't done anything despite fifty years of being explicitly voted away from the reigns of power is part of the problem.
Go look at the coalition FDR had if you want to know what it takes to push Progressive policy in the US system.
> But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.
Whether anyone with the relevant power chooses to punish these violations, is a different matter. The choice since January 2020 has been to repeatedly do nothing in the face of illegal action, but winning elections doesn't make criminal action magically non-criminal.
> No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.
Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?
The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
That's only the case in a pure direct democracy, which isn't what the US is.
There's a process for amending the constitution. If they want to amend the constitution, follow the process. Even if they only follow it once to change the constitutional requirements and reduce the threshold going forward.
We are (theoretically) a nation that is governed by laws, with equal protection for all under those laws. This creates stability and predictability, which encourages commerce and development.
When you go all Calvinball with government, you destroy that stability and predictability, and investment drops.
One team follows the rules, the other team doesn't care about rules and doesn't follow them. Guess which one struggles to achieve their goals.
This is the predictable outcome of the last 50 years of US politics, of the subversion of the rule of law and decency. The southern strategy, the 1994 Newt Gingrich legislative session, the failure of the supreme court to allow recounts in Bush V Gore, the teaparty, september 11th. All of it has only served to entrench and reward conservative opposition to the rule of law.
Also the Clinton administration where we were told repeatedly that the private actions of the president, and accusations of sexual misconduct have no bearing on their ability to be president. I’d also say the reaction to the Bush v. Gore election which solidified in the public consciousness the idea both of unreliable elections and that an election could be (and depending on what corner of the political world you were in, was) stolen. Decades of telling voters that if you don’t vote for one of the “lesser of two evils” you’re throwing away your vote. Decades of congress abdicating their responsibility to the executive branch to avoid the electoral consequences. Decades of cheering on executive fiat changing the rule of the land (see Net Neutrality) like it was a good thing (or at least like it is when one’s chosen team is enacting one’s preferred policies). Or happily going along with the president blatantly and openly refusing to enforce the laws as passed by congress (see federal enforcement of drug laws), again at least when one’s own team is the one doing the ignoring.
I used to think that people really just weren’t paying attention to the sort of precedents they’re setting when they do certain things. But the older I get, the more I’m convinced that it’s intentional. Take the dreaded “filibuster” that supposedly prevents congress from anything (except apparently banning Tik Tok). The filibuster in general, and its current form specifically are entirely products of congresses own rules. At any time, congress can decide by simple majority to change the rules of their proceedings and they could do anything from requiring that you actually get on the floor and speak instead of just declaring “filibuster” like some Magic: the Gathering spell. Or they could reduce the vote requirements to override a filibuster. Or they could abolish the thing completely and declare all their laws pass with a simple majority vote. So there must be some reason why they don’t do this, why it’s not the number one agenda item the moment the Democrats get any major it in congress. And the only logical conclusion is the current state of affairs benefits the congressional reps and that’s more important to them than the overall functioning of the system.
Even assuming every state would decide this direct question the same way as they did the Presidency this past election, a Constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states.
> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
Ultimately it has to be, but not always in the moment. The bar to Constitutional amendment is high for a reason.
Honest question: would the margin have been sufficient if the outcome was reversed? Would you be understanding of their position if Republicans had the same feelings and ideas of resistance if roles were reversed?
32 is less than 38, regardless of the political valence.
On the grounds that I'm, y'know, human I will grant that I'd probably find myself filling in the details of where exactly the constitutional lines are drawn somewhat differently in line with my policy preferences, but the question wasn't whether this is within bounds of the Constitution, but whether we ought to (morally) consider the Constitution amended anyway because of the electoral victory. My answer to that will always be no - both because of the numbers and also because the election conflates a bunch of questions where ratification asks just the one question directly.
The requirements to amend the Constitution are clear: a 2/3 supermajority in each chamber of Congress, followed by 3/4 states ratifying it. Neither chamber comes close to clearing that bar, let alone the state margins.
So this discussion is pretty confusing to me, because the Trump administration objectively does not have the level of support you seem to think they do. Are you saying the incoming administration should get a little amendment as a treat? Are you just not aware of the procedure? Where’s the disconnect here?
The position of the devil's advocate is that the procedure is a little undemocratic - it prevents people to express their will, right? - and ought to be bent when it's really needed. Insert whatever justification here the interested side could plausibly produce.
And like many devil’s advocate positions, it doesn’t make sense. Like, how exactly does the procedure prevent people from expressing their will? If there were truly popular support for DOGE, they would be able to conjure up the required votes in Congress and amongst the states.
But they can’t, because that support doesn’t exist. You’re starting from the presupposition that this is “the people’s will”, but voter turnout was less than 2/3 and Trump only won a plurality of that. That’s not to say that he didn’t win, but you’re talking about whether we should amend the Constitution to satisfy less than a third of eligible voters.
Illegal and unconstitutional executive overreach is what it is, regardless of party.
I don't really envision a Democratic administration making a similar illegal and unconstitutional flurry of bullshit, but if they did, I would absolutely call them out on it.
1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has plenty of shills to advocate for him.
2. 49.8% of the popular vote is enough to elect an executive, but not enough to overturn the constitution, which places clear limits on the power of that executive. The more radical the change, the larger the consensus that it requires. In order for the executive to legally receive this power, you need a supermajority of states.
But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
> 1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has plenty of shills to advocate for him.
Yes, but - if you want to review your arguments, it might be still useful.
> But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
Maybe not legal - but effective it could be. As a recent example, Syria changed the people at power disregarding laws - cops and courts weren't enough to prevent it.
Amendments require approval of 3/4 of states and there are still enough states to vote against. Also what amendment, specifically? That Trump can be president more times? Exert more power? Eliminate opposing political parties? Legislate pi to be 3?
Why go through all the trouble of amending the Constitution when you can just do whatever you want because nobody's going to stop you? Suppose Trump declared himself king tomorrow. Who with any power is going to push back? It doesn't matter if it's against the law if nobody cares about the law.
You're saying that elected officials may operate as kings ordained by the will of the people. But they were willed into office, not willed into supreme power.
There are still laws. But you make a case for "might is right"
The constitution and laws are for the people. If the people don't care for them then they're just meaningless bits of paper.
Frankly we haven't had any real rule of law for a long time, and that's finally filtered through to the general populace. The law has been selectively enforced for decades (the famous "three felonies a day"). Of course the people don't respect the law any more, why would they?
I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic.
This is true on all sides of course, folks who voted for Obama didn’t vote for drone strikes against US citizens either. Winning a presidential election does not mean four years of dictatorship and silencing of criticism.
FWIW, people thought that when Obama ran around saying “these extrajudicial drone strikes are illegal” they assumed that he would end them rather than do what he actually did - make them legal.
Power Wars by Charlie Savage covers this rhetorical zig zag.
We (supposedly) elected a king. He’s exempt from all rule of law save spineless congressmen.
Whether most of the people doing so were smart enough to understand it is a good question, but the fact is we put a Perón-like figure into office, and only age will likely make him leave.
I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic
Gee, I'm shocked, shocked, that a guy who stole large numbers of classified documents on his way out the door and stuffed them in unused bathrooms in his house(s) would fail to safeguard confidential taxpayer information.
You're right, it wasn't an election topic. Nobody who had any power cared to make it one, nobody who cared had the power... and nobody else was paying attention.
Obama didn't run on drone strikes, but everything Trump is doing has been a part of the Trumpist or Republican fringe platform for years. The Republicans have wanted to defund and destroy government ever since Grover Norquist said he wanted government to be small enough to drown in a bathtub. Purging academia of DEI and "woke," aggressive anti-immigration policies, tariffs, rule through executive order, none of it is new, all of it is established, boilerplate Trump-era Republican doctrine.
Trump ran on "draining the swamp." This is what "draining the swamp" means.
The only real exception to the norm seems to be Trump's sudden hard-on for invading Greenland and Canada.But even then you can look back at his infamous comments on not wanting immigration from "shithole countries" like Haiti versus places like Norway, or his comments on Mexico sending rapists over the border, and see how he might want to forcibly annex a few million white people to balance out the scales of white replacement or whatever racist paranoid shit goes on in his head.
I don't know. But let's please stop pretending no one who voted for Trump knew who he was or what he was about, or that what's happening now is not in effect what many Trump supporters wanted.
> But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
Did people vote for this? I thought people were voting on the price of eggs. Trump dishonestly disavowed the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ghostbuster containment system of horrible policies when people started becoming aware of the horrors that were in there. Sure, Trump is releasing those demons on us now, but a lot of voters claimed to believe Trump's dishonest disavowals.
Trump wouldn't have won if he had been honest about what he would do. Voters didn't choose *this*.
For all the fetishization of the constitution popular media has led me to believe Americans engage in, when push comes to shove it doesn’t seem to be worth the paper it’s written on.
It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
It’s unconstitutional because the U.S. has separation of powers: the Congress passes laws and the President executes those laws. USAID was explicitly chartered by the Congress as an independent agency outside of the executive offices:
That means that the President can’t wipe it out as an independent agency unilaterally. He could go to the members of his party in the legislature and ask them to create a bill rechartering the agency but then it would get public debate and they’d have to own what they’re doing, so he took the path of daring anyone to enforce the law. It’s like hot-wiring your buddy’s car because you don’t want to ask if you can borrow it, except that it’s disrupting millions of lives.
I didn't see where the chartering is in that, all the refs I saw assumed the group's existence, and only a few referred to it as an "agency"--but maybe I missed it?
Most of what I saw was that USA was supposed to follow the guidance of the Secretary of State, or work with other departments. That was Rubio's claim, that not only did it not work with the State Department, but it subverted that department's work and that there was no cooperation with Congressional oversight committees.
disrupting millions of people who REALLY need CIA slush fund money to do "good things" with it, they promise. USAID needs to go into the dustbin and fast.
That’s a valid opinion, but it’s still illegal not to have Congress change the law just as it’s illegal for hurricane survivors to help themselves to Walmart’s stock even if they really need food or clothing.
That is totally hyperbolic. I think it is true that birth-right citizenship is part of the 14th amendment and the Trump administration will fail in this challenge. However, there is some debate about it among legal scholars, though, again, I think the weight of the evidence is in favor of birth-right citizenship,
However, disagreeing about the interpretation of the constitution when it is not actually that "plainly" clear, it has been supported by precedent is not the same as ignoring the constitution. In fact, it sets up a challenge for the Court to decide and it will almost certainly find in favor of this kind of citizenship.
Many presidents, including Obama, have put forth orders and supported legislation that was ultimately found to be unconstitutional; it does not mean they were running a monarchy or whatever the left is implying.
That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd. The 14th amendment was added to solve a specific problem, the disenfranchisement of slaves who had truly been born here without their say or that of their parents, for generations, and with the leave of the United States government when that was occurring. Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.
Besides all of that, there is the danger that if Democrats try to play the 14th card against him, Trump will declare the immigrants enemy combatants. At which point they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the United States at all, and he can do more than simply deport them. The left has been out-maneuvered at every step here, it's unlikely that this is the point at which they start winning.
Most of Europe and the world don’t have as wide ranging protections for free speech or bearing arms as we do, either. So using that as an argument is not relevant, regardless of any spiffy smart sounding Latin phrases.
The text of the 14th amendment follows:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
> For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could easily be read to exclude those who are born to people present unlawfully and/or in violation of their visa. I think it's pretty plausible that the Supreme Court might overturn Wong Kim Ark.
> Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
Welcome to how it's always been for anyone who didn't have citizenship. The "enemy combatant" concept is some tinpot dictator bullshit, but at this point it's been well established in the US and supported by both sides of the aisle, the Dems wouldn't have a leg to stand on in campaigning against it. Talking about applying it to "lawful citizens" is purely circular logic - Trump will take the position that they aren't and were never lawful citizens.
The debates on the amendment make it clear that Congress believed the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals.
Indeed, one of the Senators (Cowan) against the amendment feared millions of invaders who settle as trespassers leading to a loss of control over immigration due to the amendment.
It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
> the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals
A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
> It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
What Congress believed at the time is not binding on today's courts if they don't want it to be, as the history of interpretation of many other parts of the constitution shows.
> A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
Deported using......jurisdiction?
You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
No, just deported. When the Navy shoots at Somali pirates they don't worry about jurisdiction. The left has been at pains to point out that illegal entry is not a crime and border patrol is not law enforcement, but that cuts both ways.
> You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
If they do a medium-sized crime the US ignores it and just deports them, that much happens all the time already, no-one wants more people in prison.
If they do a big enough crime then I'm sure the US would find some way to charge them, but that's no different from what they do for full-on foreigners who never come anywhere near the US. E.g. if they kill a US citizen on US soil then the US would claim jurisdiction on that basis, even if the perpetrator stayed on the other side of the border the whole time.
>You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
If you were being reasonable, you might realize that short of those crimes deserving the death penalty, our country is better off just deporting. I don't want to spend $50,000/year (and up) on sequestering someone from our population, when deportation accomplishes that same result. Just make sure the deportation is successful. Send them with a crate of evidence for local prosecutors (who, in theory, should want to prosecute them... unless they really were sending them here to destablize our country with sabotage and rape).
This would remain true for me, even if it had no impact on citizenship of their children.
I'm not saying there's a pressing need to prosecute and imprison, I'm saying the option exists because the US has jurisdiction. The US is not forced to do nothing about the crime.
And I could imagine situations where it makes sense to prosecute and then deport with a suspended sentence, which keeps costs relatively low but also gives them a much bigger incentive to never come back.
I didn't say anything about the parents being imprisoned, tried or even caught.
Indeed, Senator Cowan feared "Gypsies" who "settle as trespassers wherever they go" and whose "cunning is of such a transcendent character that no skill can serve to correct it or punish it." He argued the amendment to make those born here citizens would prevent their removal, as a class.
He went beyond that of course. His diatribe includes floods of "Mongol race", Chinese, Australians and even cannibals.
Really, the arguments against jus soli today almost sound like they're channeling the man.
The debate over the 14th amendment covered children of foreign countries.
> Mr. Cowan: I am really desirous to have a legal definition of “citizenship of the United States.” What does it mean? ... Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen? ... If the mere fact of being born in the country confers that right, then they will have it; and I think it will be mischievous. ...
> Mr. Conness: If my friend from Pennsylvania, who professes to know all about Gypsies and little about Chinese, knew as much of the Chinese and their habits as he professes to do of the Gypsies ... he would not be alarmed in our behalf because of the operation of the [proposed amendment] ... so far as it involves the Chinese and us. The proposition before us ... relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens.
It is very hard to look at the debates and argue it was just done for ex-slaves and has no other effect given they very clearly debate the effect.
> That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd.
But that's not true. Only their offspring gains US citizenship, not them.
> Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.
It is extremely common in the Americas though. I think only Colombia and a few island countries don't have birthright citizenship here. I think it is a good concept for us, the US has historically been a nation of immigrants and our country has a culture that is shaped (and IMO strengthened) by people from all over the world.
The reason why it's common in the Americas has little to do with perceived virtues of immigration, but because they were colonized. Granting citizenship through jus sanguinis is not really possible in this case; granting it via principle of jus soli on the other hand legitimizes the conquest.
The jus soil argument is an interesting solution to a problem that even the Founders recognized, which is the tendency for a democracy/republic to create a second, lower class of "not-quite citizens" (famously, Rome).
It means that even if your citizenship never gets worked out, your descendants will be handled.
Having it so extreme as to be "anyone born on the soil (except diplomat kids)" is a novelty. Not necessarily a bad one, but also not obviously what the 14th was attempting.
> It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If there are no existing laws to prevent this, then it probably is legal. Given the voluminous laws in existence, I would not be surprised if there was one out there which is relevant.
> If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
While this might be a "strict letter of the law" kind of thing (again IANAL), violating the spirit of a law is still illegal. Disbursement schedules are a real thing, with real-world impact when they are not adhered to, and can cause very real problems.
That doesn't mean it's subject to the whims of the president. When Congress creates independent agencies, they lay out exactly how the president has oversight (usually by hiring and firing the director and/or board).
I remember you pushing this idea (that the independence of independent executive agencies are unconstitutional, or unaccountable, or similar) heavily in a thread a couple days ago. Where is it coming from? AFAIK virtually everyone on both sides has agreed that the independence of these agencies was a Really Good Thing for the last hundred years.
I argued that independent agencies are extra-constitutional, not clearly "un"constitutional, but very clearly not enumerated in the Constitution.
Given that, they've operated on a consensus model for so long, it's hard to say that the current admin is doing something illegal by changing (as long as the money is spent by end of fiscal year, due to impoundment laws). This may be a "constitutional crisis" in the parliamentary sense, but hardly in the American sense.
>virtually everyone on both sides has agreed
This is something I've talked about elsewhere, but the electorate that put Trump in office did it specifically in rejection of the Dem & GOP cooperation of the last several decades which led to the same things happening regardless of who was in charge.
From that perspective (and without saying anything about legality or wisdom, etc) Trump is doing exactly what the people who put him in office asked him to do.
I understand you're arguing this, I'm asking where this meme came from. Independent agencies have been around for more than a century and AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new. Whence came this idea? Is it something you personally invented that the rest of the right doesn't subscribe to, or are others advocating it, and if so could you refer me to what arguments they're using to justify it?
I haven't seen arguments that they're constitutionally unsavory, but I've seen arguments, that the President, as chief executive, does have almost CEO-like control over them. FDR did exert such control, in his case using it to expand the federal government, but he ran a fast-moving government.
So it's not like there isn't precedent for this, it's just that the consensus was as you said, the independent (some would say unelected) bureaucracy running things. But that was only ever a convention.
In most cases the law that created the agency spells out exactly what control the president has, and AFAIK presidents still have to follow the law like everyone else. Is there any real justification for this, beyond the general notion that FDR once got away with something similar so maybe Trump should too?
> AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new.
I don't think anyone's claiming that they're "unsavory" - just that they are creatures of the executive that were created by the executive and may be abolished by the executive as well.
And I don't think it's a new position either? The Ron Paul types have been complaining about them for literally decades.
In some constitutional democracies there is a court that sits above the apex court, and they rule on constitutional matters only. I feel this is is an effective check/balance, as it makes the interpretation of the constitution completely unambiguous.
The US Supreme Court is the original constitutional court. It invented the idea that courts can rule on the constitutionality of laws and governmental actions (in Marbury v. Madison, 1803).
Some more recent constitutions have established a separate court that only rules on constitutional issues, but the US doesn't have that.
IANAL, but my understanding is that that effectively is what SCOTUS does most of the time, i.e. very few issues make it to SCOTUS that aren't constitutional questions. In any case, there is not any higher court like you're describing.
you're talking about the US Supreme Court but it has been politicized over the years and leans to one party or the other instead of strictly interpreting the constitution. For example, many people believe it leans heavily to the right side these days.
Totally appropriate. Everytime congress would ask USAID for information on their spending or audit what they were doing, they would just ignore the requests and say they were apolitical. They're not apolitical. The state department is by definition political, and responsible for the US interests. Totally reasonable to roll it under the state department where they will have to answer questions and not refuse audits. It's not going away it's just going to be accountable to the public that pays its budget (the US taxpayer).
What is your source for this? USAID has an inspector general like every other government agency. Inspector generals are independent of the agency and part of their function is to perform audits. Congress has the same powers with regard to USAID as it has with any other agency. It can investigate, subpoena, etc. The senate must confirm nominees to lead the agency. USAID is subject to the same laws like FOIA as any other agency.
What does it even mean to say that the state department is by definition political? There are political appointees, but the overwhelming majority of the state department is career foreign service or career civil service, which are apolitical. The same is true for USAID.
None of what you're saying makes any sense or has any relation to reality.
Do you disagree with what he says in the above video? They denied to be audited.
The US in USAID stands for United States. Can we not ask what they spend the money on?
USAID was not created by congress. It was created by executive order 10973 by JFK. It can be undone by executive order. It's function can be rolled into the state department.
That is factually incorrect. Congress did not codify USAID as an independent agency in 1998. It reaffirmed and clarified its role. The foreign affairs reform and restructuring act of 1998 left USAID a separately managed and operationally independent agency UNDER THE AUTHORITY of the secretary of state. Congress did not explicitly codify it as fully independent.
This stuff isn't hard to look up, but feel free to send an explicit link explaining why they can spend money and never have to answer any questions about what they are spending it on. Some of the alleged things that they spent the money on are ridiculous (not going to repeat them here).
Something is "constitutional" if nine unelected political operatives in black robes with lifetime appointments say it is.
This same court invented prisidential immunity out of thin air. They invented "history and tradition" doctrine out of thin air (and then selectively applied it). They invented "major questsions" doctrine to allow them to act as all three branches whenever they want to.
There is absolutely no opposition to any of this. There are only the perpetrators and the controlled opposition who are 100% complicit with what's going on.
Nobody is coming to save you and certainly not the courts.
we keep having side debates about 'appropriate', 'ethical', 'traditional', 'conventional', 'legal', 'moral', whatever, but the fact remains that you can do whatever you want, until someone else stops you.
No one is stopping the people at the top of the US Government from doing what they want. In fact, there is a whole apparatus in place, at this point, to protect their ability to continue to operate unchecked.
Irrespective of whether our system of checks and balances is working (it isn’t) it’s still worth pointing out exactly what rules and norms are being broken.
USAID as the specific agency was established by executive order, in response to legislation (the Foreign Assistance Act) passed by Congress requiring such an agency to exist, and other legislation that continues to fund its operation.
If the goal is reorganization then it could be argued that the president has the power to do so provided it still meets the requirements of the legislation passed by Congress.
If the goal is to simply delete the agency with no replacement and let the funding stop indefinitely, that is not so clearly within the president's power and has precedent against it.
That’s an absolutely absurd response. Even if your argument were correct (it isn’t) there is no executive order shutting down USAID. It isn’t “specious” to want actions like the shutting down of entire government agencies to be done legally.
The opposite happened. Congress said that an agency should manage aid, and then USAID was created by executive order. Trump could just create another agency.
Congress passed a law in 1998 itself to establish US AID, 37 years after the EO. The EO was made with authority that had been granted by another law.
That 1998 law does not permit the President to abolish it or name a different organization:
> Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5.
Congress explicitly forbade downsizing of US AID without prior consultation.
> Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated ... may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by ... the United States Agency for International Development ... without prior consultation ... with the appropriate congressional committees.
> (b) ... a reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to
> (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas ...
> (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024.
> I'd be really surprised if Congress can stop the President from firing employees. He is the head of the Executive branch.
The President is bound by law in that role, and most of thr federal civilian workforce is covered by civil service laws that govern hiring and firing, they are not at-will employees serving at the pleasure of the President? And those laws create a legal property interest which means that no one in government can fire them without due process, and that to do so is a violation of not only the statute itself but the 5th Amendment as well. This has been litigated fairly extensively, as one might expect given the size of the federal workforce and the inevitability of disputes over thr legitimacy of adverse workplace actions.
Based on some googling sounds like you're partially right, it was established as EO by JFK in 1961. But it was established as an agency via Congress in 1998. So the assertion that President can't dissolve USAID without Congress is in fact true. At least as of 1998.
> edit: why is the level of discussion about anything Trump-related always so low? If you want to defend USAID, defend USAID. If you can't defend USAID, make an entirely specious process argument.
Who is making specious arguments? Your comment was about process, while omitting congress’s role in that process, and people are responding accordingly.
Strict constitutionalists would call many of these programs unconstitutional.
This is a problem for the left and for neo-cons; they flouted the constitution for so long, that now that someone else (Trump) is doing it to them, the left/neocons don't really have a base that responds well to cries of "Unconstitutional!".
Constitution says nothing about barrel loading, smooth bore muskets. It says "arms". It's a fairly timeless umbrella term for "weapons or objects usable as such". The only people who have trouble understanding this are generally those who approve of the Machine gun registry being closed by having the federal expenditure to maintain it set to $0, and don't that as being an example of "infringement" of a Constitutionally granted right.
It also says “the right of the people” a phrase understood in every other part of the constitution and its amendments to refer to the individual citizenry. Notably, you don’t need to be a member of the press to exercise a right to free speech.
It has different wording but I feel like it’s only difficult because of the politics and emotions attached to it. If it said instead:
“A thriving community of professional musicians, being essential to the existence of great art, the right of the people to keep and play musical instruments shall not be infringed.”
I really don’t think anyone would be arguing that it restricts the right to keep and play musical instruments only to people who are already professional musicians.
A rule saying you already need to be a professional is unreasonable in this scenario. But I think a rule that you have to engage with the community of musicians if you want to have a musical instrument could probably coexist with that wording.
If we go down that route, the "militia" in the US is divided into the "organized" militia, which is effectively the National Guard forces, and the "unorganized" militia, which is everyone not in the "organized" militia and are:
> able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States
So I'm not sure "a rule the you have to engage with the militia" is going to get any better of a reading on the 2nd amendment from an "individual" vs "some group of people defined by the government that aren't 'the People' of every other part of the constitution" perspective.
As far as I know that’s been the definition at least since the 50s though I’m pretty sure at least the “able-bodied males 18-45” part has been around even longer
> Where did I get the definition of the militia? The US Code
You can't look to the US Code for definitions of terms in the Constitution; the US Code definition applies to the portion of the US Code that that definition is applicable to, but (except where the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to define something) cannot define terms in the Constitution, otherwise, Congress could simply rewrite the Constitution by redefining the language used in it, and would never need to use the more difficult process of Constitutional Amendments.
As a general rule I agree, but in that case we’re limited to what the constitution says explicitly and what is says explicitly is that keeping and bearing arms is a right of “the People” which is a distinct group from “the States” and “the United States”. Further we know that the Militia is not the Army, nor the Navy, and that it too is also considered a separate group from “the people”.
It seems reasonable to conclude then that the right must be conferred to all the people because if they meant for it to be limited to the Militia they would have said “the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
Joni Ernst is a Senator who I heard speak on this issue. She was trying to get information out of USAID and it became a long battle just to check their work and could only do so under extremely limited conditions later. They try to hide everything, basically.
I don't think these fences are being torn down by inexperienced engineers by their own initiative. They have a mandate (or so they think), a direction, and maybe specific orders from much more experienced folks, AFAICT.
Most of the world's currency is backed by the currency they print? The USA has to spend a few cents to gain a hundred dollar bill, but any other country has to exchange a hundred dollars of actual goods and services (to the USA!). Losing this privilege would be devastating.
The economic power of the US is also largely due to its reputation for rule of law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5zaImTF92g) when contrasted with other regimes like the CCP. Once that image goes out the window, it becomes no more attractive to foreign investment than any other banana republic run by thugs.
Young, inexperienced people have a hard time saying “no”. It’s even harder when working 120 hour weeks where you have less than 7 hours a day outside work (not even enough to get a full nights rest): https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doge-work-silicon-...
Sleep deprivation, stress and overwork, controlling the lives of participants, targeting at risk populations, etc. are cult programming techniques.
From what I've read, the deficit looked like a huge problem and turned out to not be a problem from WWII to 2008. That's the situation most economists, finance leaders and regulators grew up in.
But, the demographic crisis means that moving forward our growth in entitlement spending for the growing population of seniors is far outpacing our growth in GDP from our slowing population of workers.
We can't tax or cut out way out of this. Elon's cuts are going to be performative at best. Real cuts would put tens of millions of seniors, vets and disabled people into destitution. Taxing the billionaires more would be nice. But, taxing them to zero would only paper over a few years of the problem.
The only way out I see is through massive investment to increase per-capita GDP long term. As a super duper liberal, I'm gung ho on "Bring manufacturing back!" in the form of
1. Re-prioritize trade schools and trade skills so we can actually perform high-skill work in factories if/when we build them.
2. Do everything we can to catch up with China making locally-built green energy tech dirt-cheap and highly effective.
3. Figure out how to incentivize the market to local build the interconnected web of advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to produce high tech goods fast and cheap.
I see the work of https://www.hadrian.co/ as an example of what I'm talking about. I'm starting to see some senators act like they need to stop talking about it and actually do something about it. But, the "best" I've heard from Trump is "Drill, baby. Drill!" and "Tariffs are magic."
If Trump laid out a plan for how to target tariffs surgically and use those proceeds to build up manufacturing, I'd be on board. But, he hasn't. Instead, he has made it clear his only plan is to create chaos, achieve performative concessions, and declare personal triumph while netting great harm for everyone in the end.
I agree with your numbers. If we're seeing this much resistance to cutting down mostly foreign-focused programs, would you really be making this comment if Elon/Trump were trying to cut social security, medicare/aid, etc?
I would be 10X as concerned and so would everyone else because mishandling those programs could absolutely wreck the lives of tens of millions of people.
My point is that a lot of people seem to be in an "ends justify the means" mindset here where it's OK to rubber-stamp over laws, security, any sort of requirements for competence, or even basic understanding of what's being destroyed because in the end, this is chaos is going to have such a tremendous impact.
But, it's not. It mathematically can't. Even if it all turns out amazing it will be a small dent in the problem it's claiming to solve.
So, in the end, all of this is actually just chaos for sake of chaos. In the process, a whole lot of real people will be hurt in real ways. It's not bad at the same scale that "Turn off Medicare until we understand how it works" would be. But, it's nonsensically destructive in exactly the same way.
Exactly my point. This is (one of the reasons) why Trump is cutting these small programs. People would really flip out if he cut social programs for Americans
I applaud the goal of rooting out the pork. But, "We have to do something. This is something." doesn't excuse how it's being done.
Turning off the entire flow of money is unnecessary, even counter-productive, to understanding how the money is flowing. Even if half of the money is waste, turning off the other half is causing tremendous real harm for no reason.
It is completely unnecessary and horrific to rubber stamp around national security protocol for something as incomprehensibly impactful as the federal payments system.
And, in the end, what are we going to get out of all of it? What I'm seeing out of Elon is propaganda about programs like "studying shrimp on treadmills" which was an microscopic piece of a very sensible study on marine safety and security. That's exactly the kind of work the government is supposed to be doing. But, if you frame it badly enough, you can destroy it for everyone and claim it as a victory.
Or we could repeal the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, that are largely responsible for the deficit exploding in the first place?
Yes and it is fine. That’s a scary number with zero context, but given the borrowing rate and the investments we’re making in future GDP, this is good borrowing!
it isn’t good when a group of people tries to destroy the entity that’s making those investments. These shitheads are basically corporate raiders coming in to tear things apart for personal gain.
Ironically, it is the “fiscally responsible”, “WhY nOt RuN gOvErNmEnT lIkE a BuSiNeSs” gang who want to destroy any fiscally responsible investment.
If they want to reduce spending meaningfully, they need to cut defense, social security, and Medicare. They won’t, because it’s political suicide.
Most government spending is just keeping old people alive and happy, and paying the interest on debt. Say what you want about, but its not an investment in the future.
This is like building a computer, getting it mostly done, and declaring it useless because it doesn’t turn on yet. Or complaining the Manhattan Project had produced zero nukes by early 1945.
It’s a decade long project, with phases and 50 different state governments doing the actual contracting. The Fed side is mostly funding and establishing the Tesla charger as the national standard - which required quite a bit of diplomacy to get all the car manufacturers onboard.
Ah, so if they had the extra year they would have had charging stations everywhere. What a pity. All that money wasted because we didn't wait till August.
They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.
> They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.
It's a plan to build tens of thousands of charging stations, by 2030.
In all 50 states, with the states and local administrations being responsible for contracting, permiting, buying land, utility work, etc. Most of the work is not on the Feds here.
It should not be at all surprising that 10k+ little building projects take some time to get going. Even from the folks who credulously believed the President could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
But we have a plan, ceejayoz. We've got a plan. And ten years from now we'll have a plan and maybe one shed where we can build a teleporter, but always remember the bomb: in early 1945 there was no bomb.
The Interstate Highway System took like 36 years to build, wouldn't that be a better analogy, since it's an entity that exists in many different places at once? Whereas the bomb was built on eminent domain-seized property so you didn't have to deal with local jurisdictions or landowners.
That is a better analogy, yeah, and much more convincing. If this is delivering at an equivalent pace (same year had a state complete their I-70) then I am convinced.
I think your other comment about it being harder because it's an overly complicated plan doesn't convince me. The complexity and feasibility of a plan are also characteristics of its quality.
I didn't mean it was overly complicated so much as it's probably got more bickering stakeholders, as it involves private industry who presumably don't want Tesla to be able to dictate the standard.
Coming up with one would have been a reasonable outcome. Using Tesla's would also have been reasonable. They managed to sort out who to give EUV tech. But in any case the space of disagreement here isn't large enough to be worth arguing.
There’s also the matter that the Manhattan Project was under one authority. As an ancestral comment mentioned, there’s multiple automakers involved. It would be trying to build a bomb and dealing with not only the gun type design vs. the implosion design but a bevy of others, whose proponents all have equal influence over Oppenheimer to stymie the effort.
> There are currently 214 operational chargers in 12 states that have been funded through the law, with 24,800 projects underway across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
I'll give you a general tip for reading opinion pieces / fact checks (from generally reputable sources):
Any "fact" it claims which is bad for it's case, you can believe with > 90% probability
Any "fact" it uses to support it's case should be taken with a tablespoon of sodium.
For example in this case: 24,800 projects underway. I assume if many were mostly built then they would say "10,000 chargers expected to be operational by March".
If they were under construction at all, they would probably say "under construction" This is a statement from the Federal Highway Administration! it's PR! (as it should be, nothing wrong with tooting your own horn) and the most they claim is "underway".
Of course we won't get an investigative story about this, but I'd wager the vast majority is in the earliest possible stage (before even permits to build)
So, the criticism of Buttigieg is well founded, and the "misinformation" is more directionally correct then the "fact check"
I think it's the price per charger that's the important value here, and the original claim "billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations" is indeed provably false (even if you amend it to 243 or 214 EV charging stations). The money hasn't been spent yet.
The only potential problem here is that "we owe ourselves" simplifies things given that some individuals are owed much more than others, i.e. there's inequality. Other than that? The whole debt charade is just political groups weaponizing (and perpetuating) the lack of fairly basic macro-economic understanding in the population.
Turns out that having a 100% guaranteed return is attractive to a lot of large-scale investors, even if the yields don't make the money machine go brrr.
This is one thing that worries me about the current administration. A lot of trust is built on the fact that the US gov't has never defaulted on a debt in its history. I feel like some people don't place enough weight into what that really means for both ourselves and the world.
It's institutions who are investing on behalf of their elderly clients (for example pension funds and such).
That 100% return is guaranteed by the whip that the government so willingly cracks over the backs of productive young people. Why would it be in the interest of the non-entitled to have a government which keeps swinging that whip? To guarantee the investments of the elderly who only have bottomless hate towards the young?
There is a reason why third world countries choose IMF funding even with the strings attached even though default is always an option. It turns out having credit is very valuable to stability and progress and therefore defaulting is a very bad thing.
The reason being that the ruling class benefits from selling out their subjects to financial vultures?
Being rich in a first world countries is very neat, even great. Being rich in a third world country is like thirteen levels above that. For you and for your family.
If a balanced budget led to a flat or negative GDP, reduced the USA’s power and influence globally, and/or lowered standards of living, then would it still be desirable? What exactly is the argument against a deficit besides that it might be giving some groups leverage over the USA, which is dubious?
The argument is that it inevitably gets you to a state like Argentina was in, where the government repeatedly defaults until eventually you're forced to crash the economy for years to escape the loop. I'd rather have a flat GDP than 95% annual inflation.
I hate threads like this because of all the misinformed debt hysteria.
People like to bring up places like Argentina and Venezuela, but their debts weren't denominated in their own currencies, so they had to collect dollars in order to repay debts in dollars. As a currency issuer, since we create dollars, we can never run out of them. Nor do we have to round up dollars and take them back from currency holders before we can repay a debt. Doing so just takes those dollars away from the non-government so that the issuer can zero out a ledger somewhere. The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason. The only way we could default on our debt is if we decide to. The only way to "pay off" the "debt" is to take all the dollars away from the non-government, which is _us_.
Respectfully, it's you who's been misinformed by viral but false monetary theories. It's true that the US government can't run out of dollars in the same way that you or I might run out of dollars. It's not true that the government has no fiscal constraints, or that taxes and spending are unrelated parameters.
> The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason.
Perhaps this is the best point to talk about, because the precise way in which it's untrue is very concrete. The US government doesn't choose how much interest it feels like paying; it sells securities which promise a specific payout schedule according to an auction-set interest rate. If investors want to buy at a high interest rate, there's no mechanism for the government to demand they accept a lower one.
I never said that we have no fiscal constraints, just that the common misconception is backwards. I also never said that the government chooses the rate. It chooses to pay interest when it chooses to sell securities.
I think the popular misunderstanding is more harmful than some of the misunderstandings you point out (which some people may indeed have) because it leads to people pushing austerity because of their monetarist dogma.
Nobody ever asks who's going to pay for stuff when it's so-called "defense" spending. But if we want health care or education then it's all apoplectic "debt, hyperinflation, enslavement of future generations, where's the money going to come from!?"
I’m not advocating for war but one thing this deficit pays for is being a military superpower, which is the main way our debt is “guaranteed”. As in, call in the debt at your own peril.
US government debt doesn't exist as a line-of-credit agreement that someone could choose whether or not to "call in". It's primarily represented by Treasury bonds, securities which represent a promise by the US government to pay a specific amount of money at a specific point in time. It's true that the US can decide one day to default on these promises, but this doesn't have anything to do with military strength, nor can military strength mitigate the negative consequences for the (mostly domestic) investors.
He's not advocating it. But it's simply the reality of the US as a superpower.
Just look at Panama this very week. They were threatened to be invaded if they didn't give up economic deals with China and go back to being a servant colony of the US.
The odds of citizens cashing in and demanding all their money at once is pretty slim. The odds of countries that hold US debt doing it are better. But there's a strong deterrent for countries doing that. And it's the reality that the US has no issue with invading, and they've done it countless times this past century to the applause of the voters.
To put it another way, the private sector gets an income of $1 trillion every 100 days. Now suppose you stop that income. What happens to the private sector?
Sometimes following rules leads to an unrecoverable state, and then you have no choice but to reboot. Compound interest leads to either stagnation and decline, or else to jubilee. It's an inherently unstable system that has felled many civilizations before ours. Debt grows exponentially while real economies saturate in an S-curve. Eventually something has to give.
Stop unaudited government spending? Ukraine says it’s received only about half of what the Biden admin said it gave it.
It's looking like this was at least larping as a 40+ billion dollar slush fund. There may have been some legitimate (useful) spending, and they will find out after auditing the system, but it also looks like there was lots of waste and once-removed (one degree of separation) self-dealing.
How exactly is this approach an improvement over the status quo? Elon is not auditing spending. He’s pursuing political grudges and generating chaos for its own sake. The outcome will not be less government waste and fraud.
USD as reserve currency is a hen that lays golden eggs.
The US maintains monopoly on this free money cheat through goodwill driven manufactured consent, diplomacy, financial bullying and military might. Each subsequent tool being more heavy handed & less preferred than the last. Heavy handed tools while effective, break more than they fix. This prudence sustains Pax Americana.
In 2025 America, good will is at an all-time-low. Mechanisms for classical diplomacy are being actively dismantled by Elon-Trump. Financial bullying is now the cudgel of choice. Pax Americana is under threat.
Post-WW2 peace is among mankind's most remarkable civilizational achievements. It isn't self-evident and it definitely isn't the historic norm. How long until nations start questioning the deal ? How many decades of work is being dismantled within days ?
May be hyperbole, but the locks on Chesterton-Pandora's box are being opened. It might work out, but Elon's aggressiveness seems so unnecessary at a time when the American economy is doing exceedingly well.
Improbable is probably how a lot of citizens of countries have felt in the past before their savings lost their worth. I'd rather us not be risking it at all.
That was when the US was tightly aligned politically, economically, strategically at every level from national security to economic liberalism, with the rest of the West.
For years it was a given that the UK and Europe needed to buddy up to the US. That's not the sentiment any more, because the next four years feel like that's the wrong direction, and Ukraine is about to fall and that's the priority.
If it's at some economic dominance peak is at the point at the top of an upward curve, when the acceleration has ended and the object reaches 0 velocity before coming back. It's a downward trajectory: public debt, failing infrastructure, failing manufacturing capabilities, failing leadership, failing rule of law, increased irrelevance on the world stage, and let's not get started with the culture.
If the dollar falls further from being the global reserve currency (something which both administrations did their best to ensure it will happen) that will be an even worse blow.
That there are people in bubbles believing it's all fine, or they never been better, is also a contributing factor to all this.
>> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.
In which parallel reality do you live? Some metrics:
- U.S. share of global GDP (nominal). 40% in 1960 to around 24% nowadays.
- Share of global exports from the peak of 17% in 1963, to around 8.5% today (China is 14%).
- Global R&D expending from the 1960 peak of 69% to 30% today with China closing the gap currently at 23%.
- Reserve currency status of the Dollar dropped from 71% to 59%.
- Share of outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 47% in 1960 vs 22% in 2022.
Even the strongest selling point of the american economy of being the largest consumer economy is strongly dependent on high levels of consumer debt as well as the ability to sustain gigantic trade deficits based on the global appetite for the dollar and US bonds.
And then we have some other points of concern: In 1950, manufacturing represented 28% of GDP, while FIRE was 10%. Today, manufacturing is 10%, and FIRE is 20%. FIRE’s dominance reflects financialization — prioritizing short-term profit through financial engineering over productive, long-term investment. It encourages Rent-Seeking vs Productive Activity, for example, in Finance, much of the sector’s growth comes from fees, interest, and speculative trading (e.g., derivatives, high-frequency trading) rather than financing innovation or infrastructure. In Real Estate Rising prices often reflect speculation rather than new construction or improved living standards. This leads to inequality amplification, FIRE disproportionately benefits high-income earners (e.g., Wall Street, landlords). The top 1% owns 53% of stocks and 40% of real estate wealth (Fed data), which exacerbates wealth gaps without broadly improving household economic security.
Real Estate alone now accounts for ~60% of corporate profits, something that create obvious systemic risks.
The US is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, but it is far from being as economically dominant as it was in the past, exactly the contrary of what you said.
I understand that after the gains we all had in the stock market in recent times, we might be tempted to consider this as a measure of the health of American Economy and considering market capitalizations, its global dominance. But that is a mistake. Stock Prices reflect investor sentiment, not fundamentals, they are driven by factors like speculation, liquidity and future expectations, not direct economic performance. Also, a handful of mega-cap companies dominate indexes, which introduces a lag that could mask broader economic issues. For example, the "Magnificent Seven" drove around 75% of the S&P 2023 gains, while small-cap stocks lagged. Also, tech and finance dominate markets, but they are not labor intensive, and thus they can't contribute as much to employment. Also, as the top 10% of the households own almost 90% of stocks, rising markets enrich the wealthy but don't reflect wage growth or living standards.
Also, a lot of the stock market exhuberance has been driven by things like stock buybacks, inflating share prices at the expense of investment and wages.
True that the US's share of global GDP is lower than it has been. But there are many other ways to measure its power (and dominance), so it is easy to argue about this between reasonable people.
Rather than make any specific point, I'd recommend acoup's detailed post about the US's overwhelming dominance across a huge swath of areas:
The US is still the most powerful economy in the world. No question about it.
What I was questioning was the argument from OP that it never have been as dominant since WWII. And no, the US has been way more powerful in the past, even if it is still the most powerful economy.
Agreed - it’s arguably as much a risk-on behavior as the excessive spending they’re warning about.
They are using a similar cut-first mentality to what has been done in the private sector, but in the govt there are more considerations than the direct economic impacts of the actions. In an ideal world the better route is likely to spend more time on analysis before making cuts and to try and reduce variance, but it’s fair to say that might impede the initiative entirely plus they are trying to act quickly before the opposition wakes up.
> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.
That may be true if you look at the US in isolation, they're much richer now compared to 1950, but they've never had a strong a contender as China is right now. The Soviets were matching them militarily back in the Cold War years but they were never close to surpass them economically, like China is now in the process of doing.
It does not matter. If republican party voters cared about appropriateness, they would not picked up Trump and Musk. They picked them because they wanted to see maximal harm and they see lack of ethics/morals as strength.
If you are bleeding from the wound on your head it does not mean you need to cut off your legs. This is just weakening of state while covering it under this charade.
Inflation was because of pandemic and wars. Rest is absolute nonsense.
The Biden administration just had to make things easier for businesses after covid. They had a very easy job and couldn't even get that right.
Instead, The biggest oil pipeline in the US was shutdown on day one and increased regulations led to our current situation with inflation.
The democrats are also war mongers and want to have perpetual wars to line their pockets.
It's telling when there isn't one negative story about Biden/the democrats (especially when we found out they were colluding with big tech to suppress the speech of average citizens) in 4 years, and we immedialy get slop hit piece articles about Trump and Musk.
Why yes, let's let a totalitarian state become a superpower and start dictating the international order. I'm sure Xi Jinping will prove to be just as cuddly as Winnie the Pooh; nothing to worry about here.
I bet you're from the USA, so this may be hard for you to understand given your context, but as someone from LATAM, let me tell you: China can try really hard to be evil - they will have a LOT of work to be worse than the US.
That's mainly because the USA's flaws have been covered in far more detail, and has also played a bigger role in Latin America. Once those countries start to deal with China more you may find your observations were biased.
You're right, but that's not the point.
Being afraid that another state will become the leading superpower and "dictate the international order" when your oligarchical country has been doing the same thing for the past 70~ years, and not in a "cuddly as Mickey Mouse" way, is HILARIOUS. The doublethink is off the charts! hahahaha.
America has been truly 'oligarchal' for approximately the past one month, whereas China has been a totalitarian state for the better part of a century.
Why not compare the Allies with the Axis next? The US was segregated, right, so... hey, same difference! /s
A surprising number of people don't seem to know the first thing about China. Hey, it might not help that China doesn't allow a fifth of the world to learn the history of China.
But let's talk again in four years. The way things are going in America, I may agree with you guys by then :(
You're arguing with folks who just want to be angry, not listen to facts or sage observations.
(it's not like the US is innocent; we have made a huge number of terrible mistakes attempting to maintain the Pax Americana. I fully acknowledge while being fairly sure that China could and would do far, far worse than the US)
This speculation that China could do far worse is totally unfounded given that they've had plenty of time to push buttons militarily that the US and the Soviet Union had already pushed with much less military power.
What democratic government did they overthrew? Because the ROC was no more democratic than the CCP... and Taiwan didn't have real election till the 1990.
If this kind of take is what I missed by never installing TikTok, I don't regret it.
Also, China did try it only a few decades ago. Murder, starvation, horrific torture, reeducation camps, brainwashed children denouncing their parents... impressively evil. Not that Tiananmen Square or Uyghur ethnic cleansing or kidnappings of expat dissidents are so much better.
It's extremely telling that you're bringing up the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward and being downvoted as if the US had ever done anything to that scale.
For sure this country has its own flawed history with slavery and treatment of Native Americans, but China is absolutely on its own level with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Should we become a totalitarian state in order to compete with another? That feels like McCarthyism/Cold War/ “authoritarianism is fine as long as it isn’t communism” vibes.
I can see why one would think that; China is very successful in the world market (or, getting there) despite it not having a free market as such (although it has freed up a lot); despite, or is it because, it being a totalitarian state it is quickly catching up to the US, being the 2nd economy of the world; they still have like $10 trillion to go, but charts like https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070632/gross-domestic-p... predict China will overtake the US by 2030 at the current rate.
And there's nothing the US can do. Cutting government spending and starting trade wars with neighbours is not going to stop it. Building up a totalitarian state with deep government influence into businesses is not going to work and will be actively resisted, since Big Government is so against the principles of the current regime's voters - and China has been working on this for decades now. Free market won't work either, as it's already very free in the US itself - but the aggression of US companies in their sales practices, tax dodging, and privacy violations have caused their foreign customers like Europe to raise the defenses.
TL;DR, while I can see how totalitarianism can in theory create a strong economy, it isn't going to fly / work in the US.
Some people can't handle the idea that China has more people and are roughly as resource rich as the US, so if they work hard like we do they will naturally have the bigger economy.
The guy who deciphered an ancient scroll destroyed by a volcano is too incurious to possibly understand things unlike the amazing geniuses who fund DEi operas in Peru
In a just world, these kids will end up in jail for a long time, and Musk for the rest of his life. In a less just world, well, I don't want to get banned
I don't get how this could be a coup, Trump was duly elected, and he's delegated this power to Musk. It could certainly be bizarre and highly illegal, but to me, the essential piece of a coup is unseating the rightful leadership, and there's no element of that at present.
Judging from his last term, at some point Trump is likely to get tired of Musk, kick him out of the administration, declare he always thought Musk was a bad guy, and pretend like he never listened to him. If Musk tries to stay in after that, it could be a coup.
> A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from Spanish autogolpe) or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters.[1] The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.[2][3]
But which of those actually fits the present situation? Four years haven't passed. Congress is not dissolved. It's literally just a bunch of executive orders and firings within the executive branch, which, last time I checked Article II, is under the authority of the president.
I think “unlawfully assume extraordinary powers” may apply.
It’s certainly debatable, but shutting down agencies created and authorized by Congress and refusing to distribute funding legislated by Congress seems to be an overstep of executive power, and therefore an undermining of Congress’s power.
My main point was that ousting an incumbent or defying an election is not a requirement for something to be a coup, as the previous comment was suggesting. A legitimately elected official seizing more power than they are legally entitled to is a form of coup.
anyone can call anything anything, sure(is it a "coup" when I paint a good painting, or win a game of chess? https://www.thefreedictionary.com/coup), but the great-grandparent comment referred to a "bizarre and highly illegal" coup.
Separation of powers, checks and balances. The executive branch taking powers from the legislative branch with the judicial branch approving can be seen as a coup.
Trump cannot legally delegate his power to just anyone. Delegations of power are done through appointed positions that must be confirmed by the Senate.
It looks to me like this is the natural outcome of the executive branch deciding what mandates from congress it will uphold. I.E. deciding which laws to focus on enforcing and which one's to have lax/non-existent focus.
Until Congress grows a spine and starts legislating again, the executive will continue to run rampant.
Republican's STATED OBJECTIVE for decades has been obstructionism, entirely so they can go on the news and say "Look how ineffective the government is". Go look at how debates happened on the floor of congress 40 years ago. Go look at the AMOUNT of work done by a functioning congress. Compare it to how little republicans have done in congress since.
Then go ask republican voters and they will tell you that they explicitly prefer a congress that does nothing.
I’m not sure how having Congress “start legislating again” would be effective if the executive branch can simply ignore that legislation under your interpretation.
There's so many laws they're breaking it's hard to name them all and that's part of the point, flood the zone with misbehavior and it becomes difficult to track and react to it all. The President is not a little tyrant able to do whatever he wants with the Executive Branch just because he was elected, the idea that he is and should be is a bizarre new reading ideologically motivated to allow someone like Trump to tear anything they don't like to shreds and only keep the parts they want.
I would use the term 'purge' for what's happened so far, along with 'seizure'. the coup would come after the purge, once musk has full control of the monetary system and the republican congressional leadership and the courts have made it clear they won't do anything to stop Trump.
Whether Trump was duly (?) elected is still up for debate, after all he's a convicted felon, an insurrectionist, there's investigations into voter fraud, and foreign interference / propaganda that helped get him elected again.
He can't just delegate power to an unelected civilian like this.
To invoke Godwin's law, Hitler was democratically elected, Austria democratically voted to join the Reich, the people of the UK voted in favor of leaving Europe. Just because it doesn't technically meet your definition of a coup, doesn't mean it's a hostile takeover of the country's government and systems. But if you'd rather argue semantics that's fine too. If this keeps up, the US government will shut down by March and people will die - or, more will, as there's a link between the plane crashes and the Trump admin's cutting down on already understaffed air control staff.
Hitler wasn't elected, he was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg. He then used the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest the opposition to his Enabling Act, guaranteeing it's passage and solidifying his hold on power.
What do you think is going on exactly that there’s any remote chance that someone who isn’t a political appointee or employee of the government can be given the power to stop all payments to federal contractors or abolish Congressionally established agencies? The President doesn’t have those powers, much less Elon Musk.
While it's true that a perspective and opinion can be made by me, it's in no way tied to the reality of how the courts will view it, which is all that matters, which is why I want an informed perspective and opinion, from the domain of law. A good example for the value of people's opinions vs how something is interpreted is Roe vs Wade.
If you have an informed reference that helped you achieve such clarity, I'm very interested. Unfortunately, my armchair has a broken leg, so I'm unable to use it at the moment. And, search engines are completely failing me.
that's a little self-flagellatory. I don't think it takes a whole lot of legal education to recognize that what is happening is not legal.
most lawyers aren't constitutional scholars either. do you really think an expertise in personal injury law in Rhode Island makes one more qualified to recognize that an unelected billionaire shutting down organizations without any Congressional approval or appointment is illegal?
I'll add to the other good reply - in our constitutional system, branches are not allowed to delegate significant amounts of their power to other entities.
So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity.
The courts, for example, cannot give their judicial power to others.
Similarly, the president can't delegate significant executive authority to others.
Where are the limits of this?
It's usually about delegating significant amounts of power or functions that the constitution explicit calls out as being owned.
But the limits are not tested often, so not tons of cases.
In the case of agencies, the executive branch also has no power in the first place to either set up, or disband, agencies.
This is a power that congress owns.
They can't, per above, delegate it, even if they wanted to.
I asked ChatGPT and it said many other agencies were established by EOs (e.g. FEMA, NSA, NASA, EPA). Quote from ChatGPT: "Many agencies later received congressional authorization, but their initial formation or restructuring was often directed by executive orders."
So it seems like the last paragraph is incorrect.
It's not wrong, it just depends on what you consider an "agency".
If you mean "any organized entity that contains federal employees", by that definition, sure lots of "agencies" exist that are created by the different branches.
If you mean "something that can create binding regulations that interpret or implement law" - no, those have to be authorized by congress in some fashion. Even if they are run by the executive later, which is also somewhat muddy.
etc
Traditionally, they agencies are the things that have officers who are nominated by the president and approved by the senate, and have useful power as a result :)
I'll also point out - even the ones that are entirely created by other branches (executive, judicial) have to be funded by congress one way or the other.
This includes all the ones you listed.
They cannot legally spend money otherwise - ""no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law".
Sometimes they are created with a small, more general emergency appropriation or something, but again, if they want to spend money, that also requires them to be authorized and appropriated by congress.
Some of the more interesting questions that we have thankfully never had to answer for real (outside of blustering) is around various branches using their power to deliberately interfere with the basic functioning of other branches (except as authorized by the constitution, which, for example, says congress can set the jurisdiction of courts except for the supreme court. Where we've come close to it has mostly been around appropriations designed to force another branch to do or not do a certain thing. We may come a lot closer the next few years depending on what happens.
The constitutional limit is easy (none of them is more powerful than the other, and may not interfere with the basic sovereignty of each other), but the lines are not.
Sure, thanks for the explanation! I didn't mean to imply that this was intentionally misleading, just wanted to point out that a lot (most?) of people, including mainstream media, are using the term "government agency" with a meaning closer to your first definition. And with that in mind it's valid to say that the exec branch actually does have the power to create / disband agencies.
And even if we stick to the latter definition of the "agency" - it feels like there's a certain asymmetry here. Perhaps EOs can't be used to create a new agency, because that requires new funding to be approved by another branch. But what about disbanding an existing agency? That doesn't require approving new funding, right? So what stopping an EO to disband an agency?
So the thing about appropriations is - they actually have to spend them unless it says something else.
It's not like a budget. It's an order to spend money a certain way. That's why generally congress is said to have the power of the purse - they give the directions on how money is spent.
So appropriations come with directions, time frames, etc.
The executive branch must spend them as directed, and they must be applied to the specific purpose as directed.
This is also why you will sometimes find federal agencies or the military spending infinite money towards the end of the fiscal year, because they are just making sure they spent all the money they were supposed to. Again, sometimes the appropriation says "spend up to", etc. But whatever it says, they have to do it.
So if they say "you have to spend 1 billion on USAID", they must in fact, spend 1 billion on USAID.
Let's take the agencies that are specifically authorized or created by congress out of the picture - they literally can't disband these (and i don't believe they've tried yet). These are usually the things created or later authorized by bills that say something like "their shall be an office of the xyz" or something similar.
(I just picked a random one, the establishment language is fairly standard, the rest i have no opinion on :P)
Given it is created and provided for by law, it must be disbanded in the same manner - legislation that removes it.
So if we are sticking to the other ones - it basically comes down to whether an appropriations bill allows it in some fashion.
Does it say "1 billion must be spent on USAID" or does it say "1 billion must be spent on giving aid to ukraine" or does it say ....
That is what in practice, enables or prevents an EO from disbanding an agency that is not specifically provided for by congress.
At least, as far as money/etc goes. There may be other reasons they can or can't disband an agency.
For example, Congress has a congressional research service that provides it with information. It is basic to the functioning of congress (or just slightly above basic). Whether established by law or not, it's unlikely to be constitutional for the executive to disband an agency that another branch depends on, since they are supposed to be coequal branches.
This has rarely, if ever, been tested in practice though.
Even when different branches have hated each other with a passion in the past, the degree to which they would test the limits of constitutional power while pissing on each other was fairly restrained.
There are a few exceptions, but they are definitely the exception and not the rule.
Also keep in mind - while the president has some special powers, the general purpose of the executive branch is simple - to faithfully execute the laws. The only discretion in even doing that comes from the laws themselves and the constitution's description of the executive's discretion.
EO's (no matter who makes them) were not intended to be a path for the executive to do whatever it wants, and use power not granted to the executive
I say this not offering a view on the legality or not or wisdom or not, just trying to make sure i answer your question completely.
USAID was "created" by EO originally, but was recreated in 1998 by congressional act (The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.):
"(a) In general
Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. "
(there is being the key words here. Not there can be)
The last relevant appropriations bill (section 7063 of the FY24 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act) says:
" Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds
appropriated by this Act, prior Acts making appropriations for the
Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, or any
other Act may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or
other plan described in subsection (b) by the Department of State, the
United States Agency for International Development, or any other Federal
department, agency, or organization
[[Page 138 STAT. 844]]
funded by this Act without prior consultation by the head of such
department, agency, or organization with the appropriate congressional
committees: Provided, <<NOTE: Requirement.>> That such funds shall be
subject to the regular notification procedures of the Committees on
Appropriations: Provided further, That any such notification submitted
to such Committees shall include a detailed justification for any
proposed action: Provided further, That congressional notifications
submitted in prior fiscal years pursuant to similar provisions of law in
prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign
operations, and related programs may be deemed to meet the notification
requirements of this section.
(b) Description of Activities.--Pursuant to subsection (a), a
reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to--
(1) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize covered
departments, agencies, or organizations, including bureaus and
offices within or between such departments, agencies, or
organizations, including the transfer to other agencies of the
authorities and responsibilities of such bureaus and offices;
(2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United
States official presence overseas, including at bilateral,
regional, and multilateral diplomatic facilities and other
platforms; or
(3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil
Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally
employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID
from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees
on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024.
"
So the executive branch cannot eliminate, reorg, or downsize USAID without, at a minimum, consulting with congress.
> So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity
But this is standard practice, no? The US system is rather unusual compared to Parliamentary systems in that Congress delegates precisely this power to the executive all the time.
It's muddy but the Executive isn't making laws it makes regulations constrained by and implementing the laws passed by Congress. It's all nominally rooted in some law the Congress passed and instead of just making those interpretations known when they sue you because you're using a financial instrument to defraud people there's a whole process of making it known how the Executive believe the old laws relate to new situations. Congress has neither the bandwidth nor the knowledge to keep abreast of every novel maneuver around the law so they say this type of thing is illegal and this agency is in charge of saying what type new things are.
A great example of that are with various toxins and pollutants, there's no system in which we can go through the whole process of making a new law every time we discover that some miracle chemical is giving people giga-cancer. Instead Congress tasks an agency full of experts to decide what safe levels of the giga-cancer causing chemical is and makes sure we only ingest slightly below the LD50 of that so we can statistically live.
Yeah, but it's a distinction without a difference because some of the "fill in the blanks" stuff Congress does is so vague that executive agencies in practice write plenty of new laws from scratch. It's not just adding specific items to lists.
And then there's also plenty of cases where the constitution is just ignored without consequence. The CDC unilaterally announced payments to landlords were suspended during COVID, something it had no power to do. It didn't cause much of a fuss.
Regulations are nowhere near that freeform, and they have extensive public review and commentary. The EPA was in court for years debating whether CO2 could be included under the Clean Air Act because they had to stay in the narrow lanes Congress created.
The CDC case seems to make the opposite point: they took a broad interpretation of the public health act, and it was rejected in the courts as exceeding what Congress had intended:
Right, of course, it was clearly illegal but during the key period the CDC got what it wanted anyway. There were apparently no repercussions for this behavior, is making a decision this latest struck down by the courts are valid justification under federal employment law of the terminating employees?
Clearly illegal? The CDC temporary eviction moratorium went to our conservative Supreme Court and they ruled 5-4 in the CDC's favor. Maybe based on the fact we were dealing with a worldwide pandemic.
No, they ruled against it. There were two moratoriums. The first was authorized by Congress. When that expired the CDC tried to unilaterally extend it and that was struck down:
Realtor associations and rental property managers in Alabama and Georgia again sued to enjoin the CDC’s new (“second”) moratorium. The District Court entered judgment for the landlords, and the Supreme Court affirmed.
The Supreme Court found that Congress could speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise the powers of vast economic and political significance that the CDC exercised in its order, but Congress had not done so. In addition, the CDC order “intruded” in an area that is the particular domain of state law: the landlord-tenant relationship. Absent clear Congressional authority, which was lacking, the CDC order was too broad and was properly struck down.
Sure, they ruled against the second moratorium, not the first. But it was a close ruling, because it's not as clear as you're making it sound. The CDC has very broad powers during a public health emergency.
Not saying I agree with what Trump's CDC tried to do, but it's not clear to me that the law bars them from taking extreme measures during a pandemic. It just has to be continually justified by facts on the ground.
Yeah and ultimately in a very real politik way whatever the Supreme Court says is Constitutional is Constitutional because they are vested with the final say on what the Constitution means at any particular moment.
The CDC has pretty vast powers in a public health emergency and IMO the ability to forcibly quarantine people is a power far beyond the ability to pause evictions and is maybe even a necessary part of the former. (Can't really quarantine someone if their landlord can just throw them out right?)
There is no such thing as DOGE. Any new “construct” and its directives need to be created and funded by Congress. Musk isn’t even legally an employee of the federal government.
The President can hire him and Congress could direct him to do what he’s doing, but that step has been skipped.
They renamed the US Digital Services agency to be DOGE. I don't know if they can rename a branch of government but that's how they are doing it. Musk has then gotten Trump to appoint members of his initial DOGE as representatives in each of the departments (Treasury, Commerce, etc) so they can have acting authority.
Trump's delegated Musk as a Special Government Operative and signed executive orders granting him and all his recommended employees security clearances w/o the requisite background checks that normally would be required.
So they are acting within the government, they are employees, and they've been granted special waivers by Trump to do all this craziness.
I think its going to come down more to the courts looking at whether these 'newly appointed employees' are breaking all kinds of laws passed by congress.
The power President Trump is lawfully exercising in the executive order to control the Executive Office of the President of the United States stems from the Reorganization Act of 1939 (via https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8248) which FDR had to get Congress to pass after his previous efforts to reorganize the executive branch during the Great Depression were deemed unconsititutional.
Critics at the time warned this Act would give the president too much power.
Gotta say I'm surprised. I thought for sure I'd get ratio'd by Muskovites, but it seems people have woken up and realize our democracy is literally at stake.
The only way we prevent the worst case scenario is to stand up to authoritarian power.
Keep shining the light on these bad actors. Let's send them home.
Trump is not king. Musk has no authority. DOGE is a hacker crew without a legal mandate.
They're accessing extremely sensitive government systems that do things like disburse trillions of dollars in federal funding and trying to shut down agencies like USAID. I highly doubt they have the right clearances for that. Additionally, congress controls the purse, not the executive branch. Even if DOGE was an above board agency approved by congress, withholding money that congress approved is incredibly illegal and may lead to a real constitutional crisis.
Giving their names is hardly doxxing them, especially since they are breaking the law. And if they are government employees, it would still be illegal to hack into sensitive databases, copy data to insecure devices, suspend payments to federal contractors, bar federal employees from their offices, and disband entire agencies.
If a presidential aide ordered USAID staffers to not go to work and physically locked them out, it would violate multiple federal laws and protections. Here’s why:
1. USAID Employees Have Legal Employment Protections
USAID employees—both civil servants and Foreign Service officers—are protected by federal employment laws. A presidential aide cannot simply tell them to stop working without a legal order, such as an official reorganization approved by Congress or a government shutdown following a funding lapse.
Under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, federal employees cannot be arbitrarily removed or prevented from performing their duties.
The Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341) prohibits government officials from unilaterally stopping agency operations without congressional authorization.
2. Locking USAID Buildings Would Violate Security & Property Laws
Physically locking the doors to prevent USAID employees from entering their offices would likely violate:
18 U.S.C. § 371 (Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government) if it were done to obstruct lawful government operations.
18 U.S.C. § 1361 (Willful injury of government property) if it involved unlawful restriction of access to a federal facility.
Federal Continuity Directives require that government agencies maintain essential functions even in emergencies.
3. Presidential Authority Has Limits
The President does not have unilateral authority to suspend an entire federal agency’s operations without following proper legal processes.
Only Congress can permanently dissolve an agency like USAID by repealing its statutory mandate.
Even if a president wanted to reorganize or defund USAID, they would need to work through legal channels—such as submitting a restructuring plan to Congress.
What Could Happen If Someone Tried This?
If an aide illegally ordered staffers to stop working and locked the doors, several things could happen:
Congressional & Legal Challenges – USAID officials or Congress could sue, arguing the action was unlawful.
Federal Court Intervention – A court could issue an injunction blocking the order.
Potential Criminal Charges – Any official involved in obstructing a federal agency’s work could face legal consequences.
Historical Precedents
Trump’s 2018-2019 Government Shutdown: While federal agencies, including USAID, were partially shut down due to funding lapses, career employees were still required to follow proper procedures.
Nixon’s Attempt to Defund Agencies: President Nixon tried to defund programs by impounding funds, but Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, limiting executive control over funding.
Bottom Line
Simply ordering USAID employees to stop working and locking the doors would be blatantly illegal and would likely lead to immediate legal challenges, congressional intervention, and possible criminal liability for those involved.
To pile on, the very data they have in their hands probably has very strict legal requirements for storing/moving and distributing. Failure to account for proper processes can be held against them.
It's only matter of time until one of these clowns starts "accidentally" touching data like the 2020 census individual response data.
To me, that's the red line: If they can touch that and suffer no consequence, then there is no law or process can exist to ensure accountability of the government.
I don’t have the legal background to assess the accuracy of this response. Assuming it came from ChatGPT, how did you go about validating its correctness (and its relevance to the unprecedented new state of affairs) before posting?
It is not really good faith to assume that somebody has posted a chatGPT response and doesn’t know what the thing spat out. Assuming they wrote it themselves, they assessed the accuracy of the response by looking up the numerous citations that they used.
This is actually curtis yarvin's RAGE (retire all government employees) concept.
Curtis Yarvin, an extreme right-wing tech person out of Silicon Valley and the person who JD Vance is a disciple of.
Their belief is that the U.S. government itself “must be deleted” and that what the country needs is not a president but a dictator, which is what a CEO of any successful corporation actually is. Yarvin said that the American people “must get over their ‘dictator phobia’” while Vance says we have to do things that make even conservatives “uncomfortable.”
Closing USAID is idiotic from a foreign policy perspective. Gives China a huge opportunity to fill the void in countries and grow its global influence. It’s already done so in Africa due to US being so preoccupied with the “war on terror”.
Not to mention that aiding developing countries - reduces chances of instability/conflicts/etc which otherwise end up costing much more. Plus it’s about access to raw materials (why do you think China cares about Africa?).
Idiotic no matter how you look at it.
You realize USAID has been a conduit for CIA activities pretty much since its establishment? I mean the hint is the fact its head sits on the National Security Council. Why does a friendly aid organization need a seat at that table?
USAID played a huge role in the Vietnam War by supporting things like “civil defense forces” arming villages against Viet Cong, land reform and “open arms” program to get defectors from the North.
It had little to do with no strings attached foreign aid. It’s mostly been an arm of US covert activities in other countries (providing cover) and a massive, massive slush fund for the CIA (hence the billions going to “undisclosed recipients”).
HUD and FEMA alone are 2.5x larger than USAID's budget, so while I can't argue with the unsourced bit that it would be shocking, it's clear there is and was even more money being spent on Americans too.
Oh please enough with the hand wavy bs. Give some examples of how much we are “saving” and what is being cut, and what it will be spent on to “rebuild” America (whatever tf that means). Then we can be the judges of how shocking or not it is.
The young and incurious have been targeted, recruited, and brainwashed into this by tech moguls for just this reason. A steady diet of calcified resentments against vague, post-modernist buzzword nonsense like “woke” and “DEI” has created a whole political movement around getting unreasonably angry over feeling slighted about symbolic representation in pop culture to the point where they’re going to bring the whole country down it’s insane.
But of course, that’s exactly what would be oligarchs want.
> fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
So you're saying they hired a bunch of undistinguished Berkeley drop-outs just because they're libertarians? A sort of affirmative action for libertarians?
I'm not sure why people are focusing on the engineers here. The fish rots from the head.
Elon is the definition of Dunning-Kruger. He seems smart (maybe) when he's talking about something you know nothing about but as soon as he talks about something you do know about, the illusion quickly shatters. Many here learned this after the Twitter takeover when he started talking about software and technical infrastructure.
The only thing going on here is some performative cuts to mollify the base and make some headlines. The real goal here is looting the public purse for the (further) benefit of the ultra-wealthy.
It’s the definition of failing up: you sin bullshit for long enough, and make big enough changes, that you get your next job before you’re accountable for the consequences.
That’s an interesting thought because I saw Trump, and many other elections, as a conservative reaction. A main complaint I see is people thinking the country is going backwards, rather than into uncharted territory.
No, it is not correct. That tweet is clearly being deceptive by listing their ages when the revolution started in 1776, which is largely irrelevant for these four and when they were impactful to the country. At minimum it should list their age when the US Constitution was ratified, which was 13 years later, in 1789.
Also, you consider Aaron Burr one of America's greatest leaders? He literally committed treason.
> Some of America's greatest leaders were younger than these guys.
All of them were at some point in their lives, but generally not when they were “America’s greatest leaders”.
(And none of the guys in your first linked X post were in charge of the revolution, even remotely, in 1776—Hamilton, for instance, was doing some of the heroics as a young captain that got him noticed and on the fast track that ended up in top leadership positions, but that's a far cry from being a top leader.)
What are you talking about? The whole reason this is happening is because US economic dominance is being eclipsed and dedollarization is occurring at a rapid pace. This is a freak out and reorganization of foreign policy and the economy to cope with that situation.
Here is data from the IMF, for example, showing US and EU area GDP as a percentage of global output over time, gradually declining since 1980. The decline from 1960 to 1980 in the US was even more dramatic: in 1960 the United States GDP was about 40% of global GDP.
US GDP growth is slow, China's is high and BRICS is coalescing.
In not too long, China's GDP will eclipse ours and their cooperative foreign policy as opposed to our full spectrum dominance policy will yield major benefits. Dedollarization is proceeding apace, and it accelerates with each sanction and aggressive and arbitrary move by the US. Other countries used to have no choice, but now choices are opening up. The end of dollar dominance ends the most powerful tool of U.S. hegemony and turns us into a mere great power, not the lord of the world.
Trump's policy is about corruption yes, but also likely about wringing more efficiency out of American industry by reducing worker protections and reducing middle management positions. They are trying different methods to juice growth. I don't think it will work for very long.
It's impossible to get these people to stop deluding themselves. My dad is a contractor and literally watched Trump's tariffs make his job harder and his materials more expensive from 2016-2020, and still has all the spreadsheets that show how much it has affected his clients and how the price never came down
You can bet your ass he still voted for Trump. "I don't even like the guy" he insists.
The farmers that voted for Trump in droves in 2016 got FUCKED by his tariffs and retaliation from China. Trump had to sign off billions of dollars to offset their losses. They still voted for him in droves. Vibes don't care about the very clear data on the spreadsheet.
A huge portion of my state's lobster industry goes to China, because there literally is not a big enough market here in the states. Selling to China took the industry from barely staying afloat and selling lobster for cheaper than beef half the time, to being a healthy industry that didn't have to worry about oversupply. They will be fucked if China notices. They still voted for Trump.
All these people have FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE with how much Trump hurts our economy. They don't care. "immigrants" or some bullshit. Funny, the guys up north growing potatoes sure love the immigrants come harvest time, especially when they were paid under the table. Of course, these dumbasses in NORTHERN MAINE insist on flying confederate flags to honor their "heritage". They are from NORTHERN MAINE, their heritage is: Being harassed and assaulted by the KKK for daring to be catholic, freezing to death in ice storms, being mistaken for Canadians, and murdering the hell out of confederate slavers for the glory of the Union
They're outright racists is what I'm saying. My brother has bitched and moaned about "affirmative action" for decades. The horror that a black person might be somewhere they don't "deserve" is their only concern. It's funny to blame anything on affirmative action when you come from a town with single digit black people, and without affirmative action in the past, you would be just like the rest of the white trash.
I understand you. I have the similar experience from different country. "Everyone steals but at least he is not THEM". The worst part of this all is that I feel how I slowly sliding into pure cynism. I just can't sympathize for some people if their problems are their own decisions over and over. For
example one of the ministers in our government sold fake cancer treatments to sick people. It's just forgotten.
These politicians who do not provide results and are just confidently talking nonsense still get voted. By the people.
People are indeed just tribal unga bunga monkes which learned to walk, talk and do stupid shit. Some more than others.
Is economic dominance the right metric to be looking at?
Yes, the US is the biggest economy. This doesn’t mean its ability to pay liabilities is infinite. Every amount of income has a particular amount of debt and interest that it is able to pay.
Take the largest company. It would not be able to service infinite debt. Apple could not service $5 trillion in debt, just like the US could not service 300 trillion.
I get why some people are concerned about the US’s liabilities and its global police status.
Also stopping giving many other countries billions of dollars a year after might be drastic. But I see why some people may not like this. Individuals can give to charities instead if this is really such a problem for them.
Now cutting research and other things is really dumb. Glad they reversed that quickly. Also needlessly licking fights with our neighbors is also really dumb.
Now only if we can reduce our military spending as well.
absolutely. and now look at the inflation and fed rate of late 70s and 80s. we have not yet won the inflation war and fed has already paused the rate lowering cycle. so if we need to increase the rate higher to bring inflation down to 2%, imagine the % of debt payment as part of revenue; in 70s/early 80s, the fed rate was as high as 15% compared to 4-5% now.
The US is tethering on the brink of hyperinflation due to not just the last 4 but the last 40 years. Interest on the debt is insurmountable.
You can argue whether the chosen approach is right, but no matter what, a drastically different course is needed as 'business as usual' is a sure way to disaster.
I for one hope the US get their act together at home rather than dragging the world into WWIII.
Your model for the economy is just utterly wrong. The US is in zero danger of hyperinflation, and probably has the smallest debt issues of any country (certainly of any major country).
Now, the problem is - what to do about how badly informed you and millions of Americans are. That you cheer for the destruction of valuable and painfully built state capacity for completely spurious reasons. It’s almost funny, except for all the innocent people who get hurt along the way.
Please substantiate your claims. I am not 'cheering'. I am 100% prepared to be converted.
As I see it that debt counter is compounding fast, and with BRICS gaining steam your abilities to keep shoving it onto the rest of the planet are diminishing.
The US has debt denominated in its own currency, a large and growing economy, vast natural and human resources, no prospect of a foreign invasion and debt declining relative to GDP the last few years (this last point is not even that important but just for the record).
I can’t even begin to tell you how far the US is from hyperinflation or any major debt issues - the only real risk the US faces is internal stupidity (I don’t only mean the current situation, idiocies like the ongoing debt ceiling nonsense apply too).
Look, prudence is not a bad thing, and it’s worthwhile to have sensible management. But talk of hyperinflation is either severe mis-calibration of risks, deep misunderstanding of how economies work, or intentional propaganda.
You’re the one making extraordinary claims, you’re the one that has to substantiate them.
What do you think is more likely, that you’re an economic genius and you can see an impending crisis that 50 years worth of economists couldn’t, and that somehow that crisis is going to happen in the next few years? Or maybe you don’t actually understand how macro economics works and have been manipulated into thinking this way by your inherent dislike of government spending?
It is worth remembering that the inflation rate is always a policy choice - it is impossible to have hyperinflation without someone running a printing press at high speeds. So when you say "on the brink of hyperinflation" what you are implying is the Fed are considering adopting hyperinflation as a policy. That is unlikely; everyone knows how hyperinflations end and they are unlikely to just randomly adopt a policy known to be disastrous. Even if pressured by something big like the collapse of the US dollar or the US being in a position where no-one will buy their debt at an interest rate they can handle.
If the US has a problem, it'll look like some fairly substantial hit (eg, external forces closing their current account deficit) and a longish period of being economically weakened due to a lack of investment in productive capital. Maybe some riots since the pain will probably not be spread evenly.
It is a catastrophe, but mainly a catastrophe of opportunity costs. We've had a counterfactual running in China over the last 20 years of what could have been happening in the US economy if they hadn't mucked up their overall strategy (particularly energy policy and banking regulation) so badly. Plus there is an impression forming that they are actually a lot weaker militarily than had been assumed to date, I wouldn't put money on Taiwan's long term independence right now. The US doesn't have the funds to handle all the military problems if overseas nations stop picking up the tab.
The U.S. national debt has been increasing at a rate of approximately $1 trillion every 100 days, which equates to about 10 days to add $100 billion. When do we hit the panic button?
Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.
Look at how that turned out for Bismark's Germany after he was gone. His successors were high on their own supply, and in pursuit of short-term wins, destroyed the careful network of relationships and alliances that he curated.
Beijing is, no doubt, finding this entire folly amusing.
Soft power seems like mostly wishful thinking at best and a fraud on the taxpayer at worst. I don't think the noble savages feel forever indebted to their kind and wise master for throwing them a few scraps. Countries align with what interests them. Look how quickly countries all over Africa, South America, Middle East, the subcontinent turn to China and Russia. All the vaccines and condoms in the world aren't going to stop people and countries wanting to get the best price for the things they buy and sell.
USAID also has a fairly sketchy record in funding regime change efforts, so countries cooperate with it on a purely transactional basis, "trust" is zero.
if you are talking about the formation of germany,
That was also a lot of soft power and politics to keep socialists from gaining any real political power and a lot of soft power to get all other german states to form into germany.
there where two major wars during that time which mattered for the formation of germany, (the franco prussian war and the austro-prussian war, which was an extent of the politicals about who should form the german state).
> Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.
I was asking specifically about how US economic dominance is a factor. Why is USAID more important when US economic dominance is high.
Helping people out before things get really bad and there are more wars abroad is a good investment. That's why the military has generally been supportive of USAID.
In general, it's also better to have friends in the world rather than going around being loud-mouthed jerks that no one likes.
Yes, though it's unclear USAID is fit for that purpose considering it also funds civil unrest and regime change so some might say is a jerk that no one likes. But questions of its effectiveness and efficiency aside, none of that answers my question about US economic dominance. Why is USAID very important when US economic dominance is high.
I was specifically wondering about that particular part of the comment by the original poster, it just seems quite interesting to me what the connection there is.
Working against apartheid in South Africa would also count as "fomenting unrest" so I don't know how useful that metric is. Even what you linked is basically equivalent to the US projecting soft power and pro-capitalist sentiment (inappropriate, IMO, but probably within agency mission parameters).
It really doesn't matter if you know how useful that metric is or not, it is what I was specifically talking about and what the parent poster asked about. I'm just glad to be able to blow their mind by proving these "huge allegations".
Is this really a drastic action? As others in this thread have pointed out, these programs are a single-digit percentage of the Federal budget. We could delete these completely and still have a budget that is 90% the same as last year.
Wow. That’s a refreshing take on the reducing the corruption angle.
If these programs are so small, why aren’t they going after the real grift? It’s too hard? Why the small, more relevant to citizens programs get cut first?
Because its easy to avoid the military spending and the black box that represents.
First, these are symbolic, it is very hard to concretely argue that these programs are good for Americans, since even proponents of these programs say it's about "soft power". Corollary to this is that cutting something like social security is seen as cutting benefits to Americans (ditto with Defense)
Second, these programs are seen as funding "professional democrats" in a way that social security or defense are not. So this is also about cutting out their opponents support structures.
If these programs are so small, why do you care so much?
Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.