Using this military metaphor to describe operations against America's own government is absolutely wild to me. It's legitimately shocking to me how extreme people have become over the past ten years.
The size of the federal workforce has not grown in 50 years.
These cuts will make no impact on the federal debt.
DOGE is breaking every federal records law there is with no oversight.
Elon Musk has clear, undeniable conflicts of interest at play here.
But people are celebrating because the federal government is .. slow, relies on the interpretation of complex law and procedure, and I guess is nice to women and minorities.
Executive branch employees coined the term “Resistance” to declare their opposition to the democratically elected president’s agenda in 2017. So the war metaphor seems quite fitting. The shock and awe will stop when the public can be confident that civil servants will work just as hard to implement the agenda of the president regardless of which party wins the election. That is fundamental to our system of democracy.
And the unelected government isn’t nice to us “minorities.” it’s full of ideologues who categorize us into meaningless groups like “Hispanic” and “Asian,” fund random NGOs that we have never heard of that purport to speak for us, and want to implement a system of racial preferences in gerrymandering. I’d love to see how many grants went to “Asian” organizations that promote the idea that “AAPI hate” is more of a problem than rising crime or affirmative action.
Easier is just to point out that polls show that all of this DOGE stuff is deeply unpopular [1] (as is Elon himself, incidentally). We don't have to speculate as to which of the president's agenda items have a popular mandate; we can just ask the electorate.
Racially discriminatory SBA loans and affirmative action in colleges also are deeply unpopular, but Democrats keep pursing those policies because they’re important to a portion of their coalition.
Trump is the first Republican in memory that understands coalition politics (because he was a Democrat). Most republicans don’t like Gabbard and/or RFK Jr. But, like Musk, they were advertised as part of the package deal and Trump voters satisfied themselves they could live with it.
If civil servants invoke Hitler to justify declaring “Resistance” to the democratically elected President, and said President turns out not to be Hitler, then they invite the reaction that results.
I was promised Muslim internment camps in 2017. There having been none, I’m cheering on the DOGE strike teams.
I'd cheer if the DOGE strike teams in OMB, etc., were to be arrested, indicted, duly tried and convicted, and imprisoned for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and possibly the Economic Espionage Act. But I'm under no illusion that this would ever happen with Trump controlling the DOJ. Maybe Maryland's Democratic state government can make some state-law crime stick if the DOGE people ever venture across the District line.
Maybe less than four years. The mid-terms are next year, and I've been reading that a lot of GOP officeholders are terrified of what's going on but also terrified of opposing The Dear Leader — because of fears for their personal safety and that of their families.
CFAA is predicated on “without authorization.” I’m pretty sure they all have Trump’s and Bessent’s authorization. It would be like prosecuting the IT guy hired by the CEO for going into the system. What am I missing?
> I’m pretty sure they all have Trump’s and Bessent’s authorization.
From what I've (very-superficially) read, zero of the prescribed clearance protocols were followed before giving the DOGE Boys access to highly-confidential systems and data. Perhaps Trump has authority to waive those protocols — but did he do so? He seems to be letting Musk run wild. And when Trump was in trouble for taking classified documents with him to Florida, didn't he claim that he'd "mentally" declassified the documents?
So the prosecution would be based on the notion that access was “unauthorized” because certain “protocols” weren’t followed even though the legally relevant principals had provided apparent authorization?
In that case, I’d support applying similarly creative and capacious legal interpretations in hunting for ways to prosecute civil servants that participated in “Resistance” activities. Prosecuting government employees for breach of disclosure obligations is always like shooting fish in a barrel. There were also widespread reports of career employees misrepresenting facts or withholding information from political appointees. I bet you could premise 18 USC 1001 prosecutions based on that.
It's better to live in a transparent society where everyone knows who has the mindset of "people I don't like are Hitler", so they can make efficient decisions on who they associate with and how they interact with certain types of people.
Does the US constitution have an emergency decree mechanism whereby the president can effectively assume full power and suspend civil rights?
Are the republican party committing acts of violence against their opposition, so as to push them out of Congress and establish a supermajority?
Has the US come out of a major recession exacerbated by a harsh post-war reparations treaty, resulting in hyperinflation and an angry and desperate population?
So what you really mean by "blindingly-salient historical parallels" is "there's an person in power who I don't like", so a typical leftist case of "everyone I don't like is Hitler".
Bit emotionally incontinent isn't it, letting your understanding of history be distorted by your desire to call a president you don't like bad names
> Are the republican party committing acts of violence against their opposition, so as to push them out of Congress and establish a supermajority?
Update: "The judge, for her part, seemed initially unconvinced that FBI agents could definitively prove that they were about to face political retaliation, saying, “a fear of something happening is not sufficient, even if the fear is a serious one,” she said. [¶] But she changed her tone by the end of the day. At one point, they could not guarantee that the DOJ has not already leaked the list, with lawyers specifying that DOJ has not “officially” done so. [¶] “There is no question that it would put a number of FBI agents and significant danger,”" [0]
> Does the US constitution have an emergency decree mechanism whereby the president can effectively assume full power and suspend civil rights?
It could well be in the offing: Egged on by Musk, Miller, etc. — and putting his people in position to give orders to the folks with badges and guns — Trump is seeing what he can get away with by way of executive orders. He's getting zero pushback from the governing GOP majority in Congress nor from any of his cabinet. That's Trump's long-established M.O.: Test the boundaries and guardrails, then go charging through the identified weak spots.
> Are the republican party committing acts of violence against their opposition, so as to push them out of Congress and establish a supermajority?
Pretty close: You might not have seen the news reports of GOP senators and representatives who've said privately that they oppose what Trump has been doing but they're afraid to cross him, out of fear of personal danger to themselves and their families from lunatic MAGA thugs who fancy themselves to be Trump's warriors — e.g., the January 6 rioters whom Trump whipped into a frenzy and then sent charging off to the Capitol.
(GOP senators' fear of personal danger reportedly was also part of the reason there weren't enough GOP Senate votes to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, where conviction would have disqualified him from any office.)
> Bit emotionally incontinent isn't it, letting your understanding of history be distorted by your desire to call a president you don't like bad names
Call it what you will: I've been around for awhile and was long ago trained to look at trends, not just individual data points. (Life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie.) IMHO my take on events is sounder than what you've written; eventually we'll see whether one of us has his head in a warm dark place.
It’s also reveals civil servants that can’t be trusted to do the people’s business. I’m in DC—many people were crying in 2017. The people who voted for Trump have no reason to afford those folks the presumption of objective professionalism civil servants demand. The stories about civil servants just being terrible employees because they can’t put aside their feelings is sickening: https://x.com/restoreorderusa/status/1886771416235663833
What I'm reading then is that it's not about actually about workforce spending or federal debt at all. That's sort of what I expected.
Curious if you have thoughts on Elon Musk's conflicts of interest? Both as a large federal contractor, and as someone with business dependence on China. Also the breaking of federal records laws (e.g. using signal and not retaining any other records).
It is about spending and trust over spending. I was skeptical Elon was going to find meaningful cuts. But the again I thought USAID was spending $50 billion on things like vaccines for kids in Bangladesh. Then I find out that it’s funding anti-Trump groups like Kristol’s (https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1886647920566636637) and left-wing government destabilization abroad. So now I want Elon’s nerds to trace every payment and find out how much USAID money went to “democracy” NGOs to do stuff like encourage the recent overthrow of the government in Bangladesh.
The narrative emerging here is that the same permanent-government gremlins that we always knew bankrolled efforts to destabilize the rest of the world are perfectly okay with turning those same tactics inward if the wrong candidate wins the election. If we can put these people out of business and find even $25 billion a year in the process it will be worth it.
I don’t care about Elon’s conflicts. Worst thing from that is we get a giant EV credit next year. I’m much more worried about the conflict from federal employees who overwhelmingly support one party funneling federal money to aligned NGOs.
This is the part that I'm so surprised about. It turns out that people don't actually care about the law when it's inconvenient. And it turns out that people are willing to accept and support crazy things: conflicted/unqualified leaders, the sacrifice of American influence and stability, the alienation of our allies, the purposeful cost-raising for American consumers. What matters most apparently is the culture war.
It's clear that we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it here -- so you're welcome to the final word if you want it -- but I think the feeling that resonates with me in these conversations is "I don't care about the law or other consequences as long as I get my way." That feels bad to me.
And when people making those points disagree with me on it -- this week it's justification to kill USAID and give treasury control to Musk, next week it will be the destruction of the department of education, soon it will be ignoring the 14th amendment of the constitution -- it's hard to tell if they aren't being honest with me or if they aren't being honest with themselves.
This is about upholding the highest law. The Framers intended the executive branch to be responsive to elections. Federalist 39 spends a lot of time analyzing the best way for people with authority in the “administration” to be appointed by the politically accountable President and confirmed by the politically accountable senate. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_2_2-3s.... The Constitution requires that voters must be able to effectively change government policy through the election of the president. It does not envision presidential elections as being some mere signal provided as an input to a permanent administration.
That legal rule does not depend on voters’ motivations. If they want to deport all the illegal immigrants—an executive action within the discretion of the president—that’s their prerogative. How civil servants feel about that is immaterial. Voters’ cultural and policy preferences must win out. And the problem we have now is that, regardless of who wins the elections, the government remains overwhelmingly controlled by a group with particular cultural preferences.
This isn’t about “law” versus “culture war.” The culture war is simply the factual context in which a legal dispute of tremendous gravity is playing out.
Using “government” here in the British sense to refer to the administration. And it’s Congress that forgot about Article I. Live by the unconstitutional delegation sword die by the unconstitutional delegation sword.
> Live by the unconstitutional delegation sword die by the unconstitutional delegation sword.
Now that comment is just lawless — it's in the same general category as the "thinking" that led to Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and others having to face suspension or even disbarment in multiple states.
(For lurkers:) For decades, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional for Congress to delegate authority to executive-branch agencies to deal with changing conditions — as long as the delegation was properly cabined, with administrative procedures, political accountability through presidential appointments and Senate confirmations, judicial review, etc.
The "conservative" movement, though hates that "delegation doctrine"; those folks want only Congress to be able to restrict what people can do, by passing laws. According to me, for many of those folks, it's because they just can't stand having anyone tell them they can't do whatever they want (a.k.a. "You're not the boss of me!").
These soi-disant conservatives know that in the modern era, Congress is largely dysfunctional when it comes to enacting restrictive laws. So, a long-term project of crippling agency authority has been the best way for them to free themselves to do whatever TF they feel like — negative effects on the rest of us be damned.
And indeed, in recent years, the "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court has been hacking away at Congress's ability to delegate. The conservatives on the Court have announced new ipse-dixit rules such as the "major questions doctrine" (MQD), in which SCOTUS purports to reserve to the judicial branch the authority to overrule agency interpretations of the law in areas that the justices regard as "major questions." (That goes back to Chief Justice John Marshall's jaw-dropping bootstrapping of judicial-review authority in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803.)
Bottom line: What Rayiner seems to be saying above is this: Oh, so it's OK for Congress to delegate to agencies? Fine, then it's OK (he implies) for President Trump to go along with allowing out-of-their-depth strangers — Elon Musk and the DOGE Boys — to aggressively "disrupt" absolutely-vital functions of the national government, with no evident oversight from anyone (it's not at all clear that President Trump is paying any attention himself).
Identify for me the error? Congress delegates sweeping authority to the executive branch and appropriates a slush fund instead of discrete appropriations. Having done so, why can’t the executive branch then exercise that discretion as he sees fit? Your only counter argument is something about “oversight”—but what’s the constitutional standard for how much the president needs to supervise those to whom he delegates authority?
If Congress has become “dysfunctional,” as you put it, isn’t it even more important for the executive branch to be highly responsive to elections? Otherwise you’re positing a system where all the governance is performed by a civil service comprised 90% of laptop class democrats, with elected Congress merely laying out procedural rules for how policy should be adopted and the elected president merely supervising compliance with those rules. I can see why democrats love this idea, but I can’t imagine why you’d think it would be a persuasive argument to anyone else.
Speaking of “lawless”—if legal conservatives stooped to finding constitutional principles in “emanations from penumbras” we’d have a heck of a lot more fun. Why not have a “living constitution” that reflects our view of what modern developments demand?
Isn’t Second amendment incorporation to the states (and the completely expected result of undocumented immigrants claiming firearms rights) basically what you’re asking for?
Edit: And it's not just presidential supervision, it's the whole checks-and-balances thing — designed as safeguards against just the sort of thing we're seeing now.
Minorities have no rights in your conception of democracy except what they can defend by force. You really think that’s the big picture take of the Federalist papers?
The divergence of civil servants from the public on issues like affirmative action or immigration go to policy preferences, not rights. Individual rights are enforced primarily by courts in any event.
I brought this on myself for making a political comment on a forum, but I'm curious how much spending you think goes to this. Like of every $1 in taxes you pay - how much do you think goes to USAID (or the entire federal workforce)?
When you see the answer you might question the honesty of the cost-savings argument here.
I'd ballpark USAID at maybe half a percent? It's an easy win. A few more of these and Elon will have made a meaningful dent in the wastage of my tax dollars.
I'd consider even a 3% reduction in spend a massive success. The percentage of money being wasted is much higher, somewhere between 30% and 70% (estimates vary.)
If you've ever worked for a government contractor you've seen the immense waste/scam firsthand.
There's a great dishonesty in this argument, because it intentionally ignores the fact that this is only the opening couple of weeks in something that's going to continue for 4 years, Milei-style.
So obviously it's not a matter of what percent savings comes from closing USAID specifically, but in what total savings the posture behind that is going to create over the next 4 years.
Is your position that if someone can't say the exact percent, that's the end of the argument and the US government should continue its unbounded deficit spending?
If that's what it turns out to be, that no matter what happens politically, the government absolutely cannot do anything to bring its spending under control, then the US is effectively a failed state, and in that case, DOGE's role is a diagnostician.
But I seriously doubt that's the case. What's more likely is that it is perfectly possible to bring spending under control, and that the people who are complaining are doing so because they've had their lips taken off the teat.
So there are a few bigger levers the US can use to reduce spending.
1. Raise taxes to pre-2017 TCJA levels and eliminate deficit spending. Pay down the debt. A much, much bigger chunk of our spending is debt interest (17%) than anything DOGE is targeting.
2. More aggressive Medicare/Medicaid service and drug price negotiation. This is 39% of the budget, and even a few percent here would have a bigger impact than anything DOGE is disrupting.
DOGE is a performative gimmick. It's hugely disruptive, mostly just to "own the libs."
The biggest and easiest lever the GOP has to bring spending under control is to let the 10-year TCJA tax rates expire without renewal. Do you think they will do that?
