"The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. "
Of course down below it says something like "subject to applicable law".
Nevertheless I think the scary sentence will be stricken by the supreme Court
What it says is bad enough. Those agencies are independent for a reason. They're not supposed to be the president's political agents. Loss of that independence is a serious, damaging thing.
Next question: Why does Trump want control of those agencies? General principles? People around him told him to? Ego (proving that he's the Big Man In Charge)? Or does he actually intend to use that power? If so, for what?
This is a big deal. This is reducing the US federal government's ability to competently govern, and that's going to hurt, in concrete ways, before too long. If this stands, we're going to regret it.
If. I still have hope for the court system to overturn this.
Well half of them outright won't for obvious reasons. And so what if a state says no? That doesn't change anything. He is now saying his word is above the legislative and judicial branch and all enforcement and regulatory powers of the federal government answer exclusively to his will.
This is America's Gleichschaltung. The president is now the absolute authority of the entire administrative state.
Unless he makes a series of public orders that says he will install Apparatchiks in every independent agency and law enforcement agency for compliance, will (and does) fire anyone who goes against his will, then states that he is the sole arbiter of law for all law enforcement and military members.
Then he very much can have that authority if enough people comply. And, if you look around, it's pretty obvious the police and executive are complying.
Since the President’s power ultimately relies on others compliance, what if a bunch of very high ranking officials in the military simply decide they’re going to ignore the President? No more power.
At the end of the day, there is no true forcing function that forces people to comply if they don’t want to. It can all come crumbling down. Trump is playing a dangerous game.
And then they'll lose federal funding for all sorts of things. The states will sue, possibly win, and Trump will say "make me", and the judiciary will sigh and say "we can't".
“ Sec. 7. Rules of Conduct Guiding Federal Employees’ Interpretation of the Law. The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties. No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.”
This does not bode well for that country’s democracy.
This has nothing to do with "democracy" in any way. This is the equivalent of a CEO publishing a memo telling employees how to interpret things that happen outside of the company (e.g., new laws, social trends, etc.) It's the CEO's job to align their workforce to have the same interpretation of information. Federal judges can still rule on issues brought before them but the judges have to provide Constitutional- or precedent-related rulings.
Why are Americans acting so surprised that the President has this authority? That is his job, as it was for all presidents before him. This executive order is saying that the "employees under the CEO" do not have the authority to usurp the "CEO's" interpretations of law. Checks and balances still apply, of course; Congress can intervene if the President is acting in ways that Congress doesn't like. That's what impeachment is for--and impeachment is a process regardless of whether the President is issuing "illegal" executive orders or doing something else like what Nixon did.
The process works; blame Congress for not holding the President accountable in the ways outlined by the Constitution.
If you ignore all context, their support of the unitary executive (anti-american) theory, and the recent comments that "if a president does it, it isn't breaking the law" and "going against the will of the president is going against the will of the people"...
If you ignore ALL of that then you have a talking point worth debating.
I've been seeing posts like this all over hacker news. They appear to be structured like rational arguments but really make no logical sense.
I have no doubt that these people know exactly what they are doing, and are intentionally lying and spreading these "very reasonable" arguments as a blueprint for others to copy.
Their goal is to fluster and confuse the situation.
It may be the case. I also genuinely think some people are not paying attention and think in a vacuum. They fail to see the malice and the words and writings from these people wanting to destroy the function of the government.
The problem with the CEO as president metaphor is that the CEO of a company is functionally a dictator. If the company is private, then there are no checks on the CEO at all.
Calling someone a dictator is an accusation, something every American was taught was wrong in school. Calling someone a CEO is a compliment, something our collective media has taught us to aspire to.
CEO is just a softer word that makes submission easier, or even logical, while it hides the truth of that power structure which is functionally the same for both.
"The CEO metaphor re-frames political rule as a business operation, which makes executive overreach appear logical rather than dangerous."
A large component of the right-wing media campaign for the last, well, all of my life has also been to normalize their actions by accusing The Other Side of doing it first. "Activist judges" was the most notable one.
> The operative portion I see is as follows: “The President and the Attorney General [...] shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch" [...] This doesn’t touch the judicial branch in any way.
What? Trump has just asserted that the Judicial Branch's interpretation of federal law--almost its entire job under our US Constitution, and widely understood to include laws authorizing and controlling how government programs work--is entirely void in places where it's mattered for generations.
The correct response to that is: "That's an unprecedented assertion contrary to established principle, and arguably unconstitutional."
Not: "Gee golly willickers, I just can't see why you're all overreacting, it's not like the justices have to obey his interpretation of the law when they do things every day, so it's all fair-n-square!"
> [I]t seems clear to me that the prevailing narrative is both consistent and being constructed in bad faith.
The bad-faith here is your willful blindness, where you construct textual apologetics by dismissing the consequences of what's being said. (Compare: "He only said Big Mickey should wear concrete overshoes and sleep with the fishes, you people are all making bad-faith arguments against someone just trying to give honest lifestyle advice!")
You're misunderstanding the order. It's not saying these interpretations overrule any judicial interpretations. The context you're missing here is that before this order various departments under the executive branch of government interpreted the law in their own, sometimes 'creative' ways. These interpretations are now not only subject to judicial and legislative oversight, but also to executive oversight as well. In reality this was already the case, but this is making it where interpretations will need to be defacto approved beforehand, rather than 'adjusted' after the fact.
If the attorney general says this law says [x] and the judiciary disagrees with an action based on that interpretation, they still have the exact same powers to halt/block said action.
>"but the central point I’m trying to make here isn’t simple whataboutism"
Next sentence:
>"I want to point out that everything that the Left is breathlessly calling fascism has immediate and direct corollaries even in the most recent Democrat administration"
Could have fooled me.
As for your statement; no, you're wrong. Everything was (D)ifferent last admin, Biden didn't go for gutting the SEC's independence when they went for his billionaire right-hand man that's going around gutting other agencies with unchecked power.
Let's say we have a democracy where the only rule is highest vote wins. Let's say 51% of the people vote to enslave/oppress the other 49%.
Maybe they vote for literal chattel slavery. Maybe they vote for healthcare for themselves but not the others. Maybe they vote to tax the others at the maximum possible or implement tax policies that dis-proportionally affect the 49%. Maybe they vote the 49% cannot own homes and therefore must pay rent to a landlord. Maybe they vote that the 49% must register for the draft, but not them. Maybe they vote that the 49% aren't eligible for public school while they are. Maybe they vote that the 49% is not able to own stock or register for a company. Let's pretend those are legal, it is definitely possible. Slavery at one point was constitutionally allowed.
Is that a Democracy? A Liberal Democracy? A Democratic Republic? A Constitutional Democratic Republic if the law were enshrined on paper?
Would you want to live in that country? Would you want to live in that country if you were in the 49%?
What is the key ingredient that makes something a "Democracy" rather than tyranny of the majority, "mob rule," or "might makes right"?
Well, it is a democracy, the key being that the majority of people voted for some law. Whether you'd want to live in the country is a different story. Sometimes, democracies are not always the best form of government, they are as susceptible to systemic issues as any other form of government.
So you do not understand what a democracy is and how it works.
Balance of the three branches of government and the rule of law and protection of minorities are the complementary requirements to the majority vote, to qualify for a democracy.
In the simplest sense of the word, none of that is needed. Athens had such a democracy, where a majority of people made a decision so. You are putting more stipulations on the word than are strictly necessary, hence why I said the democracy examples you gave would not be great places to live in.
You referring back to only Athens when we have had several centuries of political history and progress, is embarrassing.
The Constitution of the USA was especially a model of its kind. Until we realized its implementation went lacking from true believers, for what we can witness since January 20th.
Check also the constitutions of modern democracies throughout the world.
Something that depends only on the rule of the majority, without constitutional guarantees of the respect of the law, without a self-defense system against abuse of power is a relic of the past prototype democracies.
You asked whether something is a democracy, not a modern democracy, hence why I gave the examples I did. And even in a modern one, I am unconvinced that just because there are features like you mention for modern democracies does not make them not actual democracies. They very well can be, by the dictionary definition of the word, just not free ones.
Also, no need for the ad hominems, there is no reason to accuse me of not understanding something or it being "embarrassing," that is not helpful to any sort of conversation.
I get your point. But calling your argument embarrassing is not an ad hominem.
I’m not saying you do not understand. I am implying that in a discussion in the XXIth century about the concept of democracy as it has evolved in both the littérature and the history, and has been demonstrably stable and efficient, “democracy” is understood in the modern acception, and especially here, in the context of the USA Constitution - and there it has the requirements I laid out.
Turning any country today into an antique democracy rule would make no sense, unless you accept a peculiar instability. We have experienced, in many nations, how to adjust and balance how a democracy can work and self-sustain. However, we also still experience how fragile they stay.
And the disappointment is abysmal. Hence, perhaps, me being a tad tense in my words, for that I present my apologies.
> You referring back to only Athens when we have had several centuries of political history and progress, is embarrassing.
> The Constitution of the USA was especially a model of its kind.
Then how is it that the US in its inception, like Greece, did not allow neither women nor all men (slaves) to vote? Clearly not much progress had been made by then. Much of the progress was made in the Civil rights movement, for example. That was last century, not "several centuries".
To be clear, summarizing my other replies to your comments, I am 100% with you that all of the things you mention are good things, and that they should be defended. But your redefinition of democracy (and American democracy in particular) doesn't parse and seems to be the product of historical revisionism.
I may have been more fussy than revisionist then, sorry for that.
What I was (unexplicitly enough) implying is that I don’t see how a stable democracy, going forward, could work, without implementing those improvements mechanisms that emerged through time and experience.
A pure Athenian democracy today at the scale of a country, with the complexities of the day, wouldn’t hold for more than a few years, at best.
That would exclude every parliamentary democracy in Europe, so no.
Also, the word 'democracy' does not appear in either the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, so it's weird to make the argument you are making. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a party system to begin with. Women and obviously slaves could not vote. The US has only been getting more democratic over time. Your argument looks a bit like historical revisionism to me.
The earliest "democracy" (demokratia) dates back to the Greeks (and for free men, anyway), and Aristotle's Politica will tell you a bit about it.
> That would exclude every parliamentary democracy in Europe, so no.
There are variants (especially executive and legislative work more closely) but please list those where there is no constitutional or customary such a balance between executive, legislative and judiciary?
Thanks for suggesting I don’t know my classics, you seem not so certain about modern European democracies.
You don't need separation of powers to "qualify for democracy", per your statement above. That just simply isn't true. Democracy is, simply put, a form of government where power emanates from the people. That the separation of powers is for the best we obviously agree on, but to say that it is suddenly a necessary requirement for "democracy" is simply just redefining what the word "democracy" means.
I think a lot of people that are freaking out are missing that this applies to the executive branch, over whom the President has already perfectly well established. Literally the first statement of article 2 of the US Constitution (which lays out the power/rules for the executive branch) is "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."
The main point of this executive order is likely part of the ongoing issues related to the chevron deference. [1] Chevron deference [1] was a (IMO very weird) legal standard that was overturned in 2024. It required the judicial to completely defer to the executive branch in cases where the laws around executive departments (generally relating to the the limits of their regulatory power/authority) were ambiguous. When this was overturned, the judiciary regained their independence and were once again able to hear and independently judge cases around these executive departments.
This order is now stating that the executive branch departments themselves will no longer be independently interpreting the law at all, but instead defer to the legal opinions of the head of the executive. The order itself also makes it clear that it does not allow rejecting or unreasonably redefining the laws applying to the various departments - instead the main issue is where potential ambiguities and related limits/allowances will be determined. And of course those determinations could then be challenged by either the judiciary or the legislative (by passing overriding laws).
The short version of this is "Executive departments will now be directly accountable to all three branches of government - executive, legislative, and judicial."
This is just a statement of the unitary executive theory. Unitary executive theory is controversial, and the controversy there did not (until, oh about last month) align with party lines.
> It required the judicial to completely defer to the executive branch in cases where the laws around executive departments (generally relating to the the limits of their regulatory power/authority) were ambiguous.
Why doesn’t congress do its job and write laws that do things?
I don't disagree with you, and neither would the Founding Fathers. In fact they were even opposed to the concept of political parties, but the power/convenience they enable means that lasted all of 5 seconds. But I would say that Congressmen being threatened with being primaried if they do unpopular things is literally the entire point of representative democracy.
I think the question is when that pressure to obey is coming from the people and when it's instead coming from the party. In the ideal scenario the party and the people (at least the constituency) would be in lockstep. In any case term limits would help. If you're going to be out of office in at most two terms, it eliminates any point about sacrificing your values for some sort of long-term favor/benefit with the party.
The solution is to fix congress, rather than further consolidate executive branch. Later leads to very predictable outcomes, and they aren’t exactly democratic.
I’ll choose stale democracy over striving autocracy each day every day.
The way regulatory authority works is that Congress writes laws that offer general guidance, and then regulatory body creates rules around that guidance. It can enable them to quickly react to changing scenarios, and also offer greater expertise or more detail than may be reasonable to expect of Congress. The issues arises when it's unclear if actions and guidance are aligned.
For a contemporary example, part of the CDC's power comes from Section 361 of the Public Health Services Act [1], which grants them the power to execute orders to prevent the spread of disease into the country or in between states. Examples included inspection, pest extermination, fumigation, and so on. The CDC invoked this power to prevent landlords from evicting delinquent tenants during the COVID stuff.
That was a gross enough (and also, critically, harmful enough) violation of their mandate that it was able to be challenged in the courts and eventually tossed even in the Chevon Deference era, but a lot of scenarios are much more ambiguous. So now their actions will be fully subject to oversight from all branches of government. The end result is that executive departments will have a much harder time overstepping the bounds of authority granted to them by Congress.
It'll take some time, but I would highly recommend reading the oral argument transcript for the Chevron decision. You'll see some good history and opinions on why Congress now does what it does.
It wasn't always so. In 1979, when Chrysler wanted federal loan guarantees, Congress passed a specific act to do so. Contrast that with what's now a blanket check to agencies thru an Omnibus
We’re not “missing” anything, your interpretation of the Constitution is incorrect. You may want to scroll up and read Article I, which constrains Article II (that’s why it comes first).
Your understanding of Chevron deference is also incorrect, for what it’s worth.
> You may want to scroll up and read Article I, which constrains Article II (that’s why it comes first)
What in Article I imposes constraints on the presidency? It's almost all about the legislature itself, and hardly mentions the executive. Specifically, I don't see anything that lends credence to the idea that Congress can control the workings of executive departments.
Article I defines the powers of Congress. Having been assigned to Congress, those powers are not available to the president.
Instead, the president is responsible for faithfully executing the laws. So if the law defines how an agency is staffed and makes policy, the president is bound by that.
If this seems like an imposition upon the president, please remember that the president agrees to these impositions in advance by signing the laws.
> if the law defines how an agency is staffed and makes policy
Strongly contingent upon this, right? Wasn't the whole "administrative state" / "Chevron deference" argument that Congress did the bare minimum in defining what an executive agency is supposed to do, left it up to the executive to direct it as it sees fit? And worse, the supposedly apolitical career civil servants in charge of these agencies may from time to time thwart the will of the democratically elected head of the executive?
The original Chevron ruling was an expansion of executive branch power; it said courts should give “deference” to agencies in matters where Congress was not specific—usually in detailed findings of fact and definition of regulations, the work of the agency. Congress usually is specific about structure and governance.
The recent decision to formally overturn this precedent was a reduction in power for the executive branch, since it greatly expanded the scope of when a judge could overrule agencies. However, judges were mostly already doing this, so the big headline ruling was more like a funeral than a murder.
> I don't see anything that lends credence to the idea that Congress can control the workings of executive departments.
Along with what others have said, you might want to recognize that Congress controls the purse. They dictate how much the executive should spend on each item, though that can be nuanced (as in "up to this much" vs "exactly this much")
Congress created those departments, and specified how they should be staffed and operated, and what powers they were granted.
That's because the executive does not have the power to create those departments (Article II does not grant that power).
It's an undeniably weird setup: the departments are staffed and run by the executive branch, and they report up into the president, but they are still accountable to Congress, which is where their power to do anything is derived from.
You're misunderstanding the EO. It has nothing to do with the Chevron deference (and you are also misunderstanding the impact of the Chevron deference)
Thank you for your comment. Overall, this lifted me up and helped me learn some more about what was in the Declaration. (I went and read it for the first time after seeing your comment.)
> deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Unfortunately, unlike 1776, today's king was given power by the governed, and the majority (of those who care enough to vote) still support him. So I don't know where those of us who are horrified go from here.
With absolutely no malice intended: you step back a bit, lick your wounds, and try to figure out why your message and candidate failed - just like the GOP did for the past four years.
Four years feels like a long time when it has just started; it isn’t so long at all in hindsight. Moreover, you have two years before the next opportunity you have to disempower Trump (midterm elections). The campaigns for those start in a year or so, so if you’re going to cripple Trump by taking back Congress now is the time to be introspective.
The electorate is not irreconcilable, but change doesn’t happen when you double down on the same course.
Thank you for a non-malicious response, but (also respectfully) I am not a Democrat, and your response seemed to me more geared toward answering "How can I deal with policy changes that I disagree with?" I am more concerned about the potential for the complete capitulation of American democracy to totalitarianism than any particular platform issues. What's happening right now is only a small part standard disagreements between parties (the GOP banning trans athletes, rebalancing the budget, approaching foreign relations differently) and much more about half the country being entranced by a cult of personality while the leaders in a position to stop a president from becoming a king instead are bowing down to him.
> try to figure out why your message and candidate failed
I don't like Harris' message. I probably disagree with her on a majority of political debate topics. I am a centrist and would agree with her on some things, but I would have considered myself a right leaning centrist more than a left leaning centrist. Her message failed for me too. I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man? And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.
I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.
> I am not a Democrat, and your response seemed to me more geared toward answering "How can I deal with policy changes that I disagree with?"
Yep, 100%. My biases are showing :)
> I am more concerned about the potential for the complete capitulation of American democracy to totalitarianism than any particular platform issues. What's happening right now is only a small part standard disagreements between parties (the GOP banning trans athletes, rebalancing the budget, approaching foreign relations differently) and much more about half the country being entranced by a cult of personality while the leaders in a position to stop a president from becoming a king instead are bowing down to him.
Yes, I’m concerned about the risks I’m seeing too. Where I’m really struggling is in trying to connect that emotion to facts. So far, every headline, article, and statement I’ve seen has turned out to be somewhere between “misleading” and “outright malicious falsehood” upon closer inspection.
Still, I read and give each one a fair chance to change my mind. The accusations being made are so extreme it would be wrong for me not to.
What really concerns me is that this extreme partisan rhetoric would make it much easier for Trump or someone near him to actually take control. When people have seen months and months of these sorts of assertions being made, only to investigate them and discover that isn’t what was happening at all… at some point, people are going to stop listening. That’s when things get really dangerous IMO.
My biggest fear with this administration is that they’ll actually do the things they’re being accused of, I’ll see it for what it is, and I won’t be able to get anyone to listen to me because of “outrage fatigue”.
ETA: a second response is coming for the last section :)
I agree in the principle that extraordinary claims must be backed by fact and evidence.
I disagree that there is an excess of hyperbole going on.
I truly believe that Trump/Musk/Vance and the unitary-executive/techbro-cult, if they are not soon stopped in their tracks, will have subverted American political and economic power for generations.
Europe and Canada and the world can no longer trust the United States as a long-term partner. This isn't about subtle pivots and diplomacy. This is betrayal of values on our closest political, military and economic allies.
He is actively destroying the apolitical civil service and trying to gut the pipeline of young, skilled workers into federal government. The only motive for the actions they are taking are to destroy our government. I would not be shocked to hear reports in the coming months of military officers being asked who they voted for in 2024.
He is claiming (and trying to exert!) levels of executive power that generations of Americans were taught by Nixon were forbidden.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
"If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented and that means we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.”
I'm always happy to engage in friendly political discussion!
> I truly believe that Trump/Musk/Vance and the unitary-executive/techbro-cult, if they are not soon stopped in their tracks, will have subverted American political and economic power for generations.
I actually agree with this statement. The difference is that I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. From my perspective those power structures have been in the control of the left[†] for my entire life; they've had near-complete control since at least FDR, and substantial influence back to ~1900.
[†]: "the left" isn't a great descriptor here, but I don't really have an objective way to name the group I'm referencing. I think you know what I mean, if not feel free to ask and I'll expound on it.
--
Note: I wrote this section by doing my best to empathize with Trump and put myself mentally in his position. I'm assigning my own perceptions of his motivations and perceptions. Please don't take statements made here as my attesting to them being fact. When I make an assertion here, it's because I believe Trump himself would make it, not because I necessarily agree with it or believe it to be true.
Trump intended to "play ball" and steer the federal government through the normal mechanisms in his first term. He was met with far more substantial resistance than he expected and had little success. Then he lost a hotly contested election for a second term, hurting his ego - and I think we all agree that ego is a powerful motivator for Trump.
... but then the Biden administration took control of those same levers of power that Trump had difficultly moving, and turned them on Trump. He was smeared by the media, continued to be mocked even after serving as President, spied upon, and ultimately was the target of multiple political prosecutions. His wealth and his very freedom were directly threatened. This was an extreme escalation. His options in 2024 were binary: he could win the Presidency or have his life destroyed. He won, and now his actions are being driven almost exclusively by righteous indignation.
He's going scorched earth. He's using every available lever of power and pulling them as hard as he can. He's doing things he knows are going to get shot down in the courts and taking actions he knows are "gray" at best, and he's doing as many things at once as possible in an attempt to saturate both the other branches of government and the attention of the electorate.
His goal isn't to leave a legacy in the traditional sense, or to implement a typical policy agenda - he's trying to dismantle century-old entrenched systems of power that have cloaked themselves in the mantle of democracy in an attempt to take control of the same.
--
All of that said, I believe the American people elected him for the same reason I voted for him: because the status quo is unjustifiable, and no other path toward reform is apparent.
I want Trump to destroy the majority of government power and authority. My reasons for that are different than Trump's, and different from most Republicans I've met. Trump voters by and large are framing this as a fight against the "deep state", while I want to see a continuous, gradual reduction in government through redundancy. I'm an anarchist, but not "that kind" of anarchist - I don't want to murder the government, I want it to die of neglect because it's no longer necessary.
The methods he's using scare me. He's pushing the boundaries of Presidential power without question, and almost certainly exceeding them already in some ways. I fully expect that he will continue to do so in larger and more impactful ways.
Even if I'm 100% correct in inferring Trump's intentions, it's still a very dangerous approach. Those power structures are so entrenched because they have inordinate (and inappropriate) influence on the process in p...
I admire (though do not agree with) the spirit of your argument. What I don't understand is how, given everything we know and have seen about Trump and the content of his character, you could possibly expect him to do the "honorable thing" when push comes to shove.
The Founders fought and bled and sacrificed together for the free principles that this country was founded on. Trump has done none of these things. In fact, he goes out of his way to show contempt for large swathes of the citizenry on a regular basis. The man is famous for refusing to pay his bills. Why would one expect this nakedly self-interested man to show a shred of honor at the eleventh hour when he has the chance to become a powerful tyrant for the remainder of his life?
I live in Canada and let me tell you we're not covering ourselves in glory when it comes to democracy either. Between laws like bill C-63[1], which would effectively criminalize "bad" online speech and the prime minister suspending parliament[2] for political expediency we're not looking too good.
> I don't like Harris' message. I probably disagree with her on a majority of political debate topics. I am a centrist and would agree with her on some things, but I would have considered myself a right leaning centrist more than a left leaning centrist. Her message failed for me too.
I’m an extremist without question, just not the popular type. Think less “Donald Trump” and more “Ron Paul” :)
> I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man?
The alternative was someone with no obvious positions other than her predecessor’s, who was not elected by her party, and who was honestly just unlikeable as an individual for most people.
Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two: I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone (though I also don’t have sufficient evidence to believe he definitely didn’t), and I don’t think “only self interested” is quite right. I think his motivations are a bit more complex than that, and are more rooted in personal pride and revenge than anything else. I don’t think he intended to win the first time, and I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.
I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.
I don’t believe for a moment that he’s being selfless or altruistic. He’s acting out of self-interest, but not in the way most people would mean that statement.
> And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.
As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.
> I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.
Thank you, for both responses. There are little things we could quibble about further, but it's late, so I'm going to keep it short [edit: I failed] and then go to bed happy that you and I were able to have a discourse that felt respectful, well reasoned, and beneficial - something I've felt so lacking for recently. Despite being able to quibble about details, I understand a lot of what you are saying and agree with many of your points.
> As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.
The one thing I'd like to pick at tonight is this. I don't think many of the people who voted for him would have agreed with all of this a year ago, but they get stuck agreeing with it now out of confirmation bias and because he's on their team, and they want their team to win. It seems more like everything Trump does is approved by the vast majority of his base, no matter what that ends up being.
Before the election I enjoyed the debate between Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris[1]. Shapiro's main point was that though he didn't like a lot of what Trump said, he liked a lot of what Trump did in his first term. Shapiro was of the opinion that Trump wouldn't do all the things he said and that his second term would look a lot like his first.
It is my opinion that, a month into it, Trump's second term now looks nothing like his first, and Trump is making good on all the things he said he would do during his campaign. Everyone isn't Shapiro, but a lot of people listen to him and think like him. Taking Shapiro as an example, I would say he was clearly wrong. But if you watch Shapiro today, he accepts what Trump is doing full stop. He's not out there saying, "I didn't think Trump would actually do all of this." He's acting like this is what he wanted. And, thanks to Shapiro's confirmation bias and a good healthy dose of audience capture, it is what he wanted - at least the part about Trump being right, now that "right" has changed.
Anyway, I typed way longer than I intended to. Thank you for a good civil discussion.
> I’d be happy with Obama v. McCain at this point.
Chiming in, this point is a important one. Many people who voted Trump didn't actually believe he would do all the things he said. His whole thing is that he talks big. Its and incredible power really. If he says "I'm going to do <objectively bad thing>", and his critics call him out on it. His supporters say: its just talk to get a reaction, you're taking it out of context, etc. This happened a lot during the first term (big talk, not follow-through) and then lots of big talk during the campaigning for this term with the expectation it would likewise have little follow-through. But then he starts doing it, and his supporters immediately switch to "he said he would do this and he's doing it and he has our support".
Example during the first term was the "Lock her up" talk about Hillary. He didn't do anything about her at all. And people just accepted it as big talk. Hi supporters (mostly) didn't really expected him to go after her with the DOJ or whatever. It was just campaigning bluster. But today he says he's going to start unnecessary trade wars with allies and people said "its just bluster, he's not really going to do it", immediately to "of course he's going that, he said he would".
When he said that people would not need to vote again if he's elected a second time, was that bluster? Taken out of context? Not to be taken seriously? That's what his supporters said then. But what he starts making moves to actually make that happen? Then its "he said he would do that and was voted in, so that's what america wants". It's a wild to say its what people want when they didn't believe he would do it.
>Then its "he said he would do that and was voted in, so that's what america wants". It's a wild to say its what people want when they didn't believe he would do it.
It is what people want. Just look at how many people on HN are aggressively carrying water for Trump and DOGE in these threads. They aren't the minority, they're the mainstream. You can't simply pretend the majority of Trump voters who absolutely do want him to do the things he says either don't exist or didn't vote.
The inflection point has been quick - and I think a lot of that is due to Musk injecting himself into the process, and Trumpists spending the last four years organizing. They know they wasted the potential of their last term and don't intend to make the same mistake again.
But people have been warning about this all the way back during the alt-right/Tea Party days of Obama, which Trump was a direct response to.
It's been like watching the slowest train crash in progress, all while half the country accuses the other half of derangement for believing trains are even real.
>The alternative was someone with no obvious positions other than her predecessor’s, who was not elected by her party, and who was honestly just unlikeable as an individual for most people.
We used to live in a democracy, not a dimocracy. There were more options than the 2 major parties. Always have been.
> I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone
Yeah, and his name totally didn't show up in Maxwell's black book, and he totally wasn't a pal of Jeffrey Epstein. /s
You're fucking kidding me.
> I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.
My brother in Christ, financial enrichment has been the only goal of Donald Trump, ever. He ran in 2016 expecting to lose so he could use the base as viewers of the new Fox-alt media platform he was trying to raise money for.
This is a guy whose life mission is to convince everyone else he's a billionaire, while simultaneously threatening to sue anyone who claims he isn't, while also simultaneously avoiding lawsuits that would open his finances up to discovery. He tried to sue his own biographer when said biographer claimed he wasn't a billionaire. Trump dropped the case when it went to discovery.
>I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.
His first run was in 2000. His second run was 2012. Third run got him elected. His fourth run saw him defeated. His fifth run got him re-elected. Get your facts straight.
Thanks, I am appreciating reading this discussion.
> Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two
So then you agree that he tried to overthrow an election? This is the wild part to me. I don't know whether his actions after losing the 2020 election were technically illegal or not, but in my opinion this was the clearest threat to America's peaceful transition of power I've ever witnessed. I thought "okay, this is at least 50x worse than Watergate, even Trump won't survive this." Then amazingly (to me), he won in 2024. My only hypothesis for how that happened is that 99% of people who voted for him believed his unfounded claims regarding the 2020 election. But you seem to be an interesting counterexample.
Point blank, he won because of Biden’s weaponization of the justice department. The American people saw it happening right in front of their faces and they were utterly tired of it. It’s possible that Biden did this because he truly felt that Trump could not be allowed a second term, but when he made the decision to go down that path, he made a binary bet. If it worked, he would have saved democracy. If it failed, Trump would rise to power, hellbent on revenge. He made this careless bet without an actual strategy in place, and he predictably lost. In a way, Biden created the very thing he feared.
As someone who currently studies public policy I find the centrist declaration interesting because I used to consider myself a centrist until I started reading more on the actual positions of many politicians.
In my limited view Obama was very centrist, as was Hillary, and with some notable exceptions it looked like Kamala would continue the trend (while expediently skewing left and sometimes even slightly right when necessary).
I think if you were to pie chart policy even into Trumps first term you’d see presidential action being both majority in volume and majority in impact as centrist.
So while I agree that Kamala’s messaging failed to point this out during the election, and DEI rhetoric and action being a notable exception to my argument, Kamala was at the end of the day the centrist candidate IMO and thus the 2.0 correction would be more transparency to that reality.
As Americans that believe in the Republic, what exactly are we supposed to do about this? Should we continue to implore congress to take action against this lawless behavior?
Trump is bringing up the point that this Republic's constitution only provides for three branches of a government, not 4.
This reminds me of a supreme Court ruling a few years ago where the rights of native Indians had been trampled on in Oklahoma for 100 years. The court said something like "well, now that you bring it up--stop it!"
Trump is bringing up the point that all employees of the executive branch owe fealty to him, and must act directly in accordance with is directives above Congress.
In my personal life, I have resolved not to be silent if confronted with a pro-Trump opinion being voiced. To state unequivocally and without needing to elaborate that what is occurring is something un-American and goes beyond partisan differences, that Trump and his lieutenants are destroying our Federal government for a generation or more while permanently damaging our place among democracies in the world. That the people who voted for him are making America a worse and weaker country for their children.
I'm going to write essays to those I care about and also coordinate action plans with like minded individuals to be ready for scenarios of neo-nazi rallies or certain extreme behaviors, should they occur in my city.
I'm debating protesting solo with signs along our roads; someone did that recently in my city and said they had to flee because Trump supporters surrounded him and threatened him. But it needs done.
The actual answer here is to exercise actual power.
Oligarchs are always greatly outnumbered.
The only thing that is genuinely effective is mass movement. A coalition of labor unions could shut down all of Elon and Trumps businesses in hours. Block the entrances to the factories. General strikes, boycotts, that kind of thing. It’s not actually that complicated.
Instead the modern Democratic Party is in love with appeals to the referees. They think that if they can just convince some court or The NY Times editorial board or a 75 year old former republican special prosecutor they’ll win.
As we have seen that approach is a total and complete failure.
If someone in opposition was able to generate mass collective action however the change would be swift. Nobody is really trying that though.
What the modern Democratic Party knows, but understandably doesn’t go around trumpeting, is that they cannot organize mass collective action because there’s not enough people on their side. You talk about “a coalition of labor unions”, but even union members barely lean Democratic these days. There’s very few groups outside of the Democratic Party infrastructure which are polarized enough to take a side.
There are absolutely enough people on "their side" in the sense that there are plenty of people on the side of working people, way more than enough.
The problem is the actual leadership of the Democratic Party isn't on the side of working people at all, and is actually actively hostile to those in favor of classic labor policies.
Don't get me wrong the other side is absolutely not on the side of working people either, that's more than apparent.
But with those caveats out of the way, a bona-fide labor movement could make short work of all this bullshit. Unfortunately the purpose of the modern Democratic Party appears to be to occupy the place in our system where a labor party is supposed to reside.
I agree with a lot of what this article has to say, and it's true that the politics of the US would be quite different if one of the major parties were a bona fide labor movement. But they're not, and I worry that the label of "elites" makes it harder to see why they're not. It's genuinely challenging - although I agree sometimes necessary! - to explain to someone who's really fired up about racial justice or climate change that they're not representative of the public and their concerns need to take a back seat to kitchen table issues.
It's also not obvious to me that a bona fide labor movement would take a particularly strong stance on an executive order curtailing independent agencies. Being invested in the details of how paper-pushing agencies are structured is a very elite concern.
> to explain to someone who's really fired up about racial justice or climate change that they're not representative of the public
To some extent yes. But also those issues have big implications for working people. It's possible to talk about them in a way that inspires and builds a movement, or in a way that makes people feel stupid and excluded from the conversation. Often they choose the latter.
> It's also not obvious to me that a bona fide labor movement would take a particularly strong stance on an executive order curtailing independent agencies
It should be absolutely obvious why the labor movement might be opposed to what is literally the largest layoff in American history.
I'm not saying that nobody supports the Democrats over the Republicans. There's two interrelated points:
* Supporting the Democratic Party against its main opponent is very different from supporting it in its own right. There's a lot of people in the US who would prefer for Chuck Schumer to be the majority leader, but very few who look to him for cues on what they ought to believe or fight for.
* There's very few spaces where the Democrats are dominant enough to form a nucleus of mass resistance. 50-43 among union members is a nonzero lead, but if you go to your union local to organize an anti-Trump protest, that 43% represents quite a lot of voices who won't agree with the premise that there's anything to protest.
Irrespective of sides, I would imagine that most Americans believe they are on the 'side' of democracy and a constitutional republic. When they become aware that this is being taken away, I might suggest that many will change their vote.
> As Americans that believe in the Republic, what exactly are we supposed to do about this?
If you are in a red state/district, first step would be to contact your elected federal rep(s) and tell them that you're displeased.
Use language like "Trump was elected to correct Biden's overreach, but he's now overreaching in a much worse way." Put it in language where you frame things like a 'Constitutionalist' and 'limited government'. The stereotypical small-government, Originalist GOPer.
If you come off sounding like a Democrat they'll probably ignore you, but if the (so-called) 'grass roots' MAGA folks are thought to be upset then you'll probably get more traction.
I called both my senators' offices yesterday, because I still haven't gotten a response to my emails from a few weeks ago. Still waiting to hear back.
I also told them that working on legislation for protecting George C Marshall's house, and protecting bourbon, are not valuable uses of their time given the destruction currently being waged on the US Government.
There is no social cohesion or solidarity in the US, that's the biggest problem
In France if they'd raise the price of baguettes by 10% you'd have strikes from teachers, public transportation drivers, dock workers, train drivers, doctors, trash truck drivers, &c. all at once, after a week it would be complete chaos and the government would have no choice but to negotiate
In the US everyone is playing their little game on their side, decades of free for all capitalism at work
First, don't listen to the "we're so f*cked" posts on reddit. Only actions lead to results.
If you are a Republican but don't approve of how the GOP majority has basically rolled over and abdicated its duty as a check on the president, remind your congresspeople that they owe loyalty to their constituents, not to other politicians. Taxpayers pay their salaries.
The Democratic party is also in desperate need of repairs if you are interested in direct political action. They have been self-destructing over the past couple of years, plagued by infighting, deer-in-the-headlights paralysis, political tone-deafness, and incompetence in messaging.
In addition, the increasingly authoritarian shift by the Federalist society ought to make room for a new counterpart promoting the rule of law. IANAL but have always wondered why the Federalist society had no similarly prominent opposing organization.
I am furious at the Democratic Party for bringing this about. They are the only organization capable of losing to this guy TWICE. With everything at stake, they actually thought it was a good idea to put up an unpopular president who had dementia, and tried to sneak him past the electorate like this is Weekend at Bernie’s 3. Then when that idea collapses, they just give it to the default next person in line. This should have been an easy win.
The current guy in power has just as many cognitive issues, but it is a few years younger, is louder and doesn't have a stutter. That is, apparently, enough.
Democrats did screw up by not allowing the people to choose the candidate. They also screwed up again by not preemptively creating safeguards in case Trump won, and by not strengthening the elections. Too many ballots were thrown out.
Now they are further enabling this by basically displaying no opposition.
I am furious at the gutless Republican Party for making this happen. While different choices should have been made by Democrats, blaming them is not helping the situation. The Republicans did this, their media and propaganda apparatus created this disaster, they own this completely. If we lose our republic permanently, I hold each and every Republican voter personally responsible.
Honestly, I donate enough money to politicians to make them stand up and take notice when I email or call them and share my thoughts, which leads me to the conclusion that people in the middle and lower class are going to need to find ways to pool money in such a way that they can change their party politics. It's not that all politicians are completely motivated by money, but IMO you unfortunately have to aim at the lowest common denominator.
You can only donate $3500 to any politician. (legally, if you do something illegal and are not caught...). There are complex limits notice when you say something. (for a small city that limit will make them listen, but nothing national or even a large city)
What you can do is get out votes. People knocking on doors is still one of the largest drivers of votes so if you organize those systems they will listen to you.
I am not at all familiar with the US system. How come there is a $3500 donation limit to politicians, but the tech billionaires have donated hundreds of millions to the inauguration fund?
I donate to the party, and I donate at the individual limit. At that level they still care because people who donate at that level are connected with other people who donate at that level, and those people tend to reach out and coordinate. Periodically I get emails from other donors who ask me to reach out to such and such a person, a candidate or a party rep, and encourage that they take a look at X issue through a particular perspective.
I think more people would benefit from forming Super PACs and using that as leverage in pushing political change with parties.
I hope it doesn't go that far, but it is always an option. It only has a chance of working if the army either goes with, or at least is so divided they won't stand against you.
So far it seems at least half of the people do agree, though.
And the US military doesn't answer to the people at least not directly. I don't think it should be swayed by public opinion like that. I mean, we're talking about a military coup here. I despise Donald Trump and would like nothing more than to see him drummed out of office, but the military making that happen means we don't have a democracy anymore.
<sarcasm> Maybe we should try to stop believing in money next and see where that gets our experiment in civilization. </sarcasm> All of this 'believing in ideas' is an experiment that requires years of indoctrination. It is extremely dangerous to play with the jenga game of removing core beliefs.
I think that the most effective way to get change would be if the economy tanked, that's the one thing the electorate seems to be motivated by. A general strike would be one way to do that, but I doubt that one could be organized on any meaningful scale. I'd love to be wrong about that.
I'm trying to restrict my spending as much as possible. No new car, no vacation (or at least nothing big), limiting eating out, etc. I'm cutting back on as many unnecessary expenses as I can, and being mindful of what businesses I do spend my money on.
I’m gonna be straight with you. I used to think this way — that living small was a form of protest against the ills of society. But life is too short. For many of us, that cardiac arrest, car accident, or pandemic-related terminal illness is right around the corner. Don’t say no to things that bring meaning, joy, purpose, and expansion to your life. You only have one life to live.
This will probably get flagged, but if you read this, spent a few minutes trying to understand the gravity of this specific EO. Every federal employee even in independent agents must and will jump when Trump says so. Even if he asks them to do something illegal (close the congress! Jail a democrat!), they must follow his orders. Because HIS interpretation of the law cannot be superseded.
If he wanted to fire anyone who disagreed with him, this EO wouldn’t have been necessary. With very few exceptions, executive branch employees serve at the pleasure of the President.
This is how it is, how it has been, and is entirely consistent with the Constitution.
So, if not that, then why issue this EO?
First of all, it’s a statement: “Resistance to this agenda from within the executive branch will not be effective”
Secondly, it helps ensure that when the President issues a statement, it’s not immediately met with bureaucrats making statements to the contrary.
> If he wanted to fire anyone who disagreed with him, this EO wouldn’t have been necessary.
Nonsense! This is the exact opposite! This is EO shows Trump trying even harder to fire all the people who refuse to go along with his crimes.
He is asserting that when the Judicial branch concludes his firings are illegal, he's going to ignore it, and then fire anyone else who refuses to help him illegally fire people.
It's the democracy-destroying version of a Monty Python sketch: The people who followed the law have been sacked. The people who didn't sack the people who followed the law have also been sacked.
> He is asserting that when the Judicial concludes his firings are illegal, he's going to ignore it, and fire anyone else who refuses to help him illegally fire people.
"No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law"
Immediately succeeded by “, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.”
… and preceded by “The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch”
Nothing in that says anything about countermanding a judicial ruling. If anything, it says that the President should set the strategy during litigation rather than one federal case making one argument while another makes a contradictory argument in reference to the same law.
You’re wrong, many jobs are protected by congressional law. The executive branch can’t do just anything he wants. Sure some agencies he can but now all. This shit was decided a long time ago and there are several laws covering it. Congress is not doing their job and impeaching and firing this president. GOP don’t care if he’s a criminal as long as he is their criminal
I dunno, it makes sense that the federal branch that manages interest rates is independent of the president. Didn't we have a whole thing where Trump couldn't force rate increases or decreases back in 2020? Do we really want Trump to declare interest rate changes via tweeting or whatever?
What about things like drug approvals? I don't want Trump to ban certain drugs just because they didn't donate to his campaign. I don't want Trump to approve Elon Musk's brain chips just because Musk told him to.
It makes sense that we don’t elect a fed chairmen, but if the fed chairmen doesn’t report to any elected official then where do they get their authority?
Supreme Court Judges are appointed by elected officials, but then don’t report to anyone. Maybe a fed chairmen is like that? But there is no constitutional office like that. Surely congress can’t make up offices which are then untouchable?
I don’t want trump playing transactional games with the FDA either, but I don’t see how that can be balanced with the powers. He is the chief executive.
I mentioned in another comment that one angle that would make more sense than arguing that agencies are “independent” is to argue that trump is not enforcing the law already written by congress, so taking away the power of the legislature. That seems like a more fruitful take.
> It makes sense that we don’t elect a fed chairmen, but if the fed chairmen doesn’t report to any elected official then where do they get their authority?
Congress put in a process for a fed chairman to be appointed in a way that jointly incorporates president, house and senate. Similarly firing them also needs joint cooperation, then the people have some say by electing/unelecting a congress or president that fucks it up. Same for FDA, USPS, etc etc. I definitely want a formalized process to hire and fire these guys and not just up to whims of individual executives.
> it makes sense that the federal branch that manages interest rates is independent of the president.
You left out who the federal reserve is controlled by. It's not completely independent right? In its current form, it is owned and controlled by regional federal reserves which are controlled by the banks.
You are advocating for the corporate bank control of the money supply (and interest rates). One definition of fascism is the merger of corporate and government power. One sign of oligarchy is when corporations control the regulation of their industry.
"Independent government agencies" is just a code word for industry controlled government agencies (which are a form of fascism or oligarchy).
The Fed is a bit of an odd duck because it's structured quite a bit differently than most federal agencies.
But sure, Trump could absolutely instruct the FDA to rescind certain drug approvals. There are of course processes that legally need to be followed in order to do that, but he could do it.
When the history books are written, this executive order, along with the past few weeks of actions, will be seen as the seeds of the 2nd American revolution.
The USA had a solid 250 year run but technology, money, and greed have unfortunately undone the very core of what America stood for.
We cannot know at this point where this is going, but it seems like fascism is the inevitable course. My fear is that if you combine that path with the power of the US military, the world is in for a very scary time.
When inflation starts to be a problem again (it's already rising) they'll still blame him. Fascism requires scapegoats. Ironically, that is their downfall too, because they are utterly incapable of introspection and self-improvement.
The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”.
So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business?
On the other hand, one of the issues brought up in the Obama years was whether a president can choose not to enforce a law like immigration. If congres’s laws can be ignored than what power do they have?
Genuine question. Does anyone have a constitutional framing for the duties of the executive branch in prioritizing enforcement or implementation of law?
Congress has lots of power, it's a question of whether they do anything. Currently the Republicans are uniformity falling in line with the authoritarian executive orders, even those that abrogate well established congressional powers.
Remember we are still in the first 100 days. Congress typically falls in line for the first few months (not always 100 days, but it is a good round number). As the term goes on though congress tends to start looking to the next election and they start to opposed unpopular things because they will lose in 2 years. Trump is risking a democrat super majority in the house in 2 years if he is too unpopular, and 20 republicans are up for election in the senate, if even half of them turn that would be a majority for the democrats and a shot that the other republican senators (who want to win election in 2-4 more years) will pay attention to.
But we need to get through the first few months before any of this will play out. And after that there is still a long time before the 2026 elections.
What on earth gave you the idea this administration will be anything like a previous one? I don’t think we can assume the rules will just stay the same.
So long as there are elections in 2026 the looming election will have an effect. I doubt Trump can get away with trying to stop elections or even manipulating them (much - there is always manipulation). As such congress will soon start behaving like elections matter and they might not be elected if they are unpopular.
I think this is a good point. I'm not convinced that we can take all that much for granted during this presidential term. Trump is all about violating norms, and now he has Musk flipping votes in Congress by threatening to fund primary challengers.
But the cynic in my knows that a big chunk of a legislator's job is figuring out how to get re-elected next term. If (when) Trump does things unpopular with regular Republicans, and legislators are seen to be doing nothing to help their constituents, they'll start to worry they won't get re-elected.
It'll be the same thing that's happened with Democrats: Republican voter turnout will suffer because the candidates in front of them aren't doing anything useful for them.
True, but even in either party's most wildest predictions, a supermajority in the House or Senate is vanishingly unlikely.
I guess there's a chance Trump will do something so horribly unpopular that there will be extreme bipartisan support for limiting his power in some ways. But I'm not sure I'd rely on that either.
If your question is whether the “independent” agencies are Constitutional, the answer is yes. Congress makes the laws and the laws can constrain the behavior of the President. If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot.
So who are such agencies accountable to? Congress. Just like the president is accountable to Congress.
They don't have to be part of any branch. The usual branches are descriptive concepts. (Or they can be part of the executive branch yet still not be part of the "unitary executive" part. The law allows for any kind of exemptions and special-casing.)
Friend, I think I see your concern, and I may have an answer. Most of the bureaucracy is apolitical. However, the heads and higher-ups of each agency are appointed by the currently in-office politicians.
So the upper management is composed of political appointments. And like any other organization, the upper management has considerable discretion in setting priorities.
re: "politically selective law enforcement" is not a good thing, because laws are one of the things that are supposed to constrain politicians.
They're not "accountable to nobody". Assuming they have the votes, congress can revoke any law, at any time, for any reason. And typically laws specifying the appointment of specific people also have provisions for removing that person.
The reason for this is stability. Congress, businesses, international allies, and most US citizens typically don't want things to dramatically change every new presidential administration. And the primary way to ensure that stability is to make it so the same people are working in various government offices from administration to administration. And I think people are quickly learning why that stability is desirable, as the current administration attempts to dismantle it with no consideration for the consequences.
They are part of the executive branch, but the law governs and constrains the behavior of the executive in managing them.
You can’t even say that Congress is solely the source of those constraints since the laws creating and governing these agencies were signed by… the president!
Most of these agencies have already been challenged in court and the Constitutionality of their structure and governance affirmed.
I agree. Taking trump to court for not carrying out existing law is a winning case. Saying he can’t replace X person because they are in an independent branch is not going to hold up. And I suspect they know that and want the court to rule on it.
Unless someone can make an argument that they actually report to congress.
Part of the executive power in the US is that the president influences the judicial branch, and ultimately the judicial branch is going to determine who gets to do what. They do this in many ways, a big one being they can prioritize any case they want, and simply decline to even hear certain ones. So if the president wants to do something, congress pushes back and challenges it and it goes to court, the president can effectively “get away with it” as long as the judiciary is fine with it
Sure, in an ideal world. These folks all attend the same parties, and by many accounts seemingly think the same thoughts, which is pretty wild!
All three branches are now run by ideologues. There is no independent thought. There may be independence on paper, and on that we would agree. But the situation here in reality isn’t really related to what’s on paper. In fact these folks mean to ignore all the current laws and just do whatever the fuck they want and I’m not making that up. I’m reporting what I see.
The president influences the judicial branch by appointing its members. There are now lots of federal judges, and several Supreme Court justices, appointed by Trump during his first term, who seem happy to allow Trump to do whatever he wants to do.
Certainly that's not universal. Some Trump appointees will likely balk when Trump goes too far in their estimation. But this is what happens when the GOP politicizes their judicial appointments.
Congress can only make laws if they don’t infringe on the constitution. If they want laws that aren’t constitutional, they have to make constitutional amendments, which is probably never going to happen ever again because of how dysfunctional they are and have been for decades.
The president has a lot of constitutional protection to run the executive branch, though obviously congress has ways to pass laws and influence that, too.
The president isn’t accountable to congress but there are checks and balances both ways
This is just flatly incorrect. Humphrey's Executor (which may not be long for this world as precedent, anyway) lays out specific cases where "for cause" requirements on termination are Constitutional, but otherwise the President's power to dismiss subordinate officers of the executive branch is absolute.
The Court distinguished between executive officers and quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial officers. The Court held that the latter may be removed only with procedures consistent with statutory conditions enacted by Congress, but the former serve at the pleasure of the President and may be removed at his discretion. The Court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission was a quasi-legislative body because it adjudicated cases and promulgated rules. Thus, the President could not fire a member solely for political reasons. Therefore, Humphrey's firing was improper.
“If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot.”
This is, indeed, flatly incorrect. Congress cannot pass a law requiring that the Secretary of State or Defense or Treasury be fired only for cause. The SCOTUS case knocking it down would likely be 9-0.
“Congress writes the laws and can make them say whatever they want” totally ignores separation-of-powers concerns that the Constitution and its guardians in Article III courts take very seriously.
> Congress cannot pass a law requiring that the Secretary of State or Defense or Treasury be fired only for cause. The SCOTUS case knocking it down would likely be 9-0.
No one is saying Congress can restrict the President from firing political appointees or his Cabinet.
We're talking about the quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial agencies here. In the case you cite, Humphrey was on the FTC, and Roosevelt tried to fire him. The Court said the President couldn't him because Congress wrote it in the law. That's exactly what the other poster was saying, so how are they flatly incorrect?
The quote I was referring to as “flatly wrong” is repeated above. Nowhere there or in the original post are the phrases “quasi-legislative” or “quasi-judicial”. Instead a much more general claim is made that the Congress’ power to constrain acts of the Executive is unlimited because they write the laws. That’s not at all how our system works.
The oral arguments in Selia Law v. CFPB may be enlightening here:
Just stop. The sentence before the one you said is flatly wrong mentions “independent agencies” — those are the “quasi-legislative” agencies like the FTC.
The other poster was right and you posted case law proving their point.
You’re begging the question: What makes an agency “independent”? The answer given by the original poster was “because Congress says so, and they can”. That is, again, flatly wrong.
Congress can’t reorganize the Treasury as an independent agency. Why not? Making the sole director of the CFPB dismissible only for cause was ruled unconstitutional. Why?
Taking the claim made by the original poster as accurate would lead you to get both of these important questions wrong.
Your comment is way too vague to be declaring anything as flat out wrong. At any rate, federal employees have numerous protections from being fired arbitrarily as laid out by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, a law passed precisely to limit arbitrary firing of federal employees, especially for politically motivated reasons.
They aren't 'independent' they are 'a mix between executive and legislative'. The Supreme Court decisions are Meyers v US and Hunters Executor v US. And I'm not a constitutional scholar but my reading of it is that the protections in question come from the legislative delegating some of their power to the executive, think legislative actions (researching laws, etc) but retaining their constitutional prerogative to protect them from executive control.
This is something that has existed for a very long time but has been changing lately and will almost certainly show up in the Supreme Court again.
“ Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), was a United States Supreme Court decision ruling that the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials, and does not need the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body.”
It’s astounding the regularity over the last 100 years that conservatives have used immigration narratives to fire up their base regardless of what statistical data shows.
Obama may have deported lots of people, but Trump famously used the same institutions to detain and torture minors indefinitely... Which of those is "harder" against immigration?
It's the same issue that is happening now. Biden deported a lot more people, but he focused on people entering the US or caught doing something. Trump is deporting a low fewer people, but he randomly taking people from their homes, workplaces and schools. Which one do you think appears "harder" on TV?
So in other words his supporters are a bunch of sadistic idiots who would rather see kindergartners tortured than a cartel member deported into custody because it means a hard tough man is in charge!
Maybe it's more a case of rampant mathematical illiteracy all over the press and people paying more attention to extraordinary events. I really don't know.
I'm talking about the policy of deporting the parents and keeping children detained waiting for the result of "refugee" requests that were never even filled. And no, Biden stopped that really quickly.
The "cages" are the same whether you keep people there for a couple of days waiting for a flight back into their country or for months for no good reason.
> But our government doesn’t have independent branches.
In theory it does, that is the whole idea and genius of the constitution.
In fact at the moment it does not, because Trump has so captured the Republican party that the legislature has almost no power to stand up to him. The Supreme Court has a long history of judges aligning with the political party that seated them, and Trump put 3 of them into their seat.
In a democracy the three branches are independent. Democracy is not just 'you get to elect the guy on top', it also attempts to preserve the rights of the population. If the population does not have rights, democracy soon becomes very fake. E.g., I don't like this or that party so I throw anyone in jail during election day if I know that they would vote for the wrong party. The general principle is that if a person/organization has too much power they will generally find a way to abuse it. The famous split-up in three branches is employed to a greater or lesser extend in all countries where the rights of the population are respected.
>To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
So yes, Congress has wide leeway to create agencies to administer particular executions of laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.
Furthermore, we don't have untouchable officials. What does that hypothetical have to do with anything?
The heads of these agencies that Trump is removing are protected from being fired immediately, fired without Congressional notification, and from being fired without cause.
Rank-and-file civil servants are protected from being fired unrelated to performance precisely so we don't revert to the patronage systems of the 1800s.
No one says they get a lifetime claim, just that some cannot be legally fired without cause. Not sure why you are going to the extreme of "untouchable officials" and "lifetime claim" when no one has suggested that's the case.
If the law is that that an official cannot be fired without cause, then that's that, if there's no cause. Maybe they have a term of employment in that position, and when it ends, they leave. Maybe Congress can fire them via some other appropriate mechanism. But if the law says the president cannot fire them without cause, then that's just not a power the president has.
Congress makes lots of rules about how the executive can wield power:
* FOIA tells the executive branch when/how to share documents.
* APA tells executive agencies what they have to do to make a rule.
* Congress gives line item budgets, and the executive doesn't get to reassign funds.
* Executive agencies must submit to audits from GAO (within congress)
It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive agency heads can be hired/fired too. After all, it's agencies that congress enacted and gave power too, and for legitimiate reasons that congress has.
There is no central FOIA office. Each agency has is responsible for their own FOIA requests. IF you are referring to this news story [1] That was just the FOIA office at OPM.
Yeah, don't be so hard on Musk and Trump. They're destroying oversight agency by agency, not all at once. Starting with the agency in charge of HR oversight.
Why is that the question? I think it's clear that some of them work for the president, and the president (perhaps filtered through cabinet members and others) tells them what to do. But that doesn't mean that Congress can't put limits on when and how the president can fire them.
That isn't necessarily the case for all officials. For example, I believe Congress can't prevent the president from firing a member of the cabinet. But that doesn't mean the president can do whatever he wants to anyone.
The Administration is required to follow the law and to implement it with due care as the legislation intended.
The Legislature can impeach the Administration, it can hold it's officers in contempt, and it can pass laws constraining the Administration.
It's a simple problem: NO ONE IS DOING THEIR JOB. This is because they can get away with it and you don't actually have the power to vote them out. The media is part of the problem and is no longer serving the interests of the citizens. The monopolized corporations ensure you cannot use the Internet to meaningfully solve this problem. Look at this garbage thread. Look at all these garbage threads on here every time some political problem comes up. It's all compromised claptrap designed to appeal to corporate American but in no way to connect and govern in a modern fashion with each other.
Look at turn out on voting day when a presidential election is not slated. It's typically less than 25% of the voting age population that turns out. If you sit and think about this for one minute you will see why we are where we are.
The problem here is that if you impeach Trump, then you get Vance, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. You impeach Vance, and you get Johnson, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. And so on, down the line. Eventually you run out of people in the presidential line of succession, and then you have a real problem. I suppose eventually you get to the point where you have a president who doesn't feel like getting impeached? But by then the damage to the institution has been done.
> it can hold it's officers in contempt
Who is going to enforce any orders (fines, imprisonment) around those contempt rulings? Congress and federal courts don't really have much law enforcement personnel to speak of. Trump controls federal law enforcement, and he can instruct them to ignore contempt rulings.
I guess the House (for example) has the Sergeant at Arms, but their law enforcement staff is limited, and I don't think they're going to want to get into a conflict with, say, the Secret Service, if they go to arrest a cabinet member, but Trump says no.
> and it can pass laws constraining the Administration.
There are already laws constraining the administration, and Trump and Musk are running roughshod over them. Why would they obey new laws they don't like?
I think you’re right… impeachment is the main mechanism by which they can complain that he’s not enforcing the law. I’m struggling to think of what else they can do.
So disappointed by the irrational and hyperbolic comments from my fellow nerds. Why are folks reading into this so much!? Clearly folks aren’t actually reading the content and just reacting based on a headline. Read, contemplate, compose. This really shouldn’t be an inflammatory exec order - from what I can tell this is precisely within the purview of a POTUS and precisely in line with historical exec orders. Why the cray cray reactions? Just cause Trump I guess. For shame. Be nerds. Look stuff up. Stop with the hyperbolic “fascist” “coup” business. If you disagree with strategy, fine!! But at least recognize that these ideas aren’t new - nor fascistic - they’re inherently American and we’re in the midst of an adjustment cycle where these old ideals will be expressed in new modalities that we don’t all agree with. Doesn’t make it “fascist”. Ugh. So juvenile.
> Nor any techie lose their minds when someone without a security clearance gets access to sensitive national networks.
There's something peculiar about how liberals are now so offended by "security" when the federal government has showed complete incompetence over the past decade or even more.
All the security clearance data was leaked from federal servers. What else do we have to lose. Never mind that countless federal employees see your social security info. It's regularly fraudulently submitted by illegal foreigners too.
None of the criticisms I've seen from you or others are alarming.
What was alarming was watching Biden for 4 years completely non compos mentis and a media filled with liberals who would censor and ridicule ANY mention of this obvious fact. That's the GRAVEST national security threat, everything else PALES in comparison, and not a peep from the people who lit their entire political capital on fire over the ridiculous patently-false charades to never admit fault.
The red line for Trump's people unfortunately isn't doing anything bad. He could shoot a man on fifth avenue and not lose them. It would take him doing something which shows actual human decency and actually helps people. If he attempted to create "Trump-care" providing unconditional healthcare for all he would be impeached and out on his ass. God forbid if he were to recognize LGBTQ rights and acknowledge their legitimacy, that action would literally kill people from shock.
Exactly, the one area where he would lose the crowd is if he goes against the conservative "christians". ie: if he openly embraces LGBTQ, fully supports abortion rights, taxes churches etc. Only then would these people revolt.
I guarantee this will be the case, as it's been the case every election since forever including 2020 when liberals were fear-mongering (like they always do) when they were out of power.
Funny that just a few hours after this post, Trump starts referring to himself as "the King" on social media. I wonder if it’s a hint of something, like the time he said people won’t need to vote in 4 years.
That doesn't actually argue anything, though. One group can be wrong about something, and another group can be right about a similar thing in a different context and different time.
(For the record, I don't agree with GP, and do believe that we'll have free and fair elections in 2028.)
Progressives are using words like Nazi and fascist, purely as a slur against a political rival, without really understanding what those words mean nor the attrocities they represent.
What the Nazi's did was horrifici, and it's incredibly insensitive, inappropriate, and, yes, juvenile, to water that down by using it for political point scoring.
They’re literally erasing transgender people from all federal websites. Even going so far as removing the T from all LGBT references. If that’s not information control and erasure of humanity from these individuals I don’t know at what point you will draw the line.
I guarantee you’ll still be seeing people doing this long after Trump is dead. The point isn’t that there is an actual line. The point is that there IS NO actual line. The goalposts will shift forever.
Not only progressives are calling it fascism or proto-fascism, do you understand the steps fascism takes to fully take hold? Don't you see any parallels? Have you read any books on the subject?
It seems like you get butthurt from reading people calling moves very similar to fascism done by politicians you support, fascism takes many flavours, Italian fascism was different from German fascism. The way it's going the past month looks like to be shaping an American flavour of fascism.
There's no watering down, you are seeing with your own eyes a movement happening where the leader of the executive is attempting to snatch power, it never happens at once, it's always through salami slicing. What will be the breaking point for you, specifically? What signs do you expect so it can be called fascism?
You are all around this forum whining about "progressives" trying to heed a call about a dark path being traced. You never seem to acknowledge there are very worrying moves happening, for some reason you do not want to hear it, you want to shut off the discussion at every turn by using progressives as a slur, and anything said by that out-group as wrong or hysterical a priori. Can't you see how stupid it is? You are always attempting to throw a wrench into these discussions with vitriol, as a non-American I really ask you to inform and educate yourself better, to learn about the process of fascism before coming with knee-jerk reactions because you don't like "progressives".
Go read "Hitler's Beneficiaries", read any book on historical recounts of the process of fascism unravelling from the 1920s to the 1930s, you are behaving exactly as the citizens enabling Mussolini and Hitler. American Fascism will not be Nazi or Italia Fascista, it has its own shape and form (such as not being anti-semitic, completely different to Nazis) but even though the topography differs, the core principles are pretty much the same.
Don't be an enabler, you won't like to be on the wrong side of history.
Few days ago, in Poland died a journalist, historian and former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner. He was known for speaking every year there. His last speech was - remain vigilant.
I think that speaks for itself and I need not to comment on this.
Americans, why? Why are you so keen on dabbling with a homegrown fascism of yours? Why are you so keen on setting the world aflame?
> What signs do you expect so it can be called fascism?
I think some people just know a few images from the Nazis at the height of their power. Or the death camps, that were only discovered because the Nazis lost the war (the plan was to erase all traces, after all). No concept of the 1920s, not even "Mein Kampf", nothing.
That's been my impression too, seems like people (even more Americans) are extremely uneducated about the whole process of fascism. Instead they end up with this cartoonesque picture of what it looks like: SS officers standing guard over concentration camps, Hitler's speeches to huge crowds wearing swastika armbands, war.
No, that's the fucking end point of it, after all is done and the wheels have been far gone from the wagon, the process itself is much more nuanced and step-wise but the uneducated ones never ever heard of it. Feels like they live in a world where someone turned on a switch and everything changed at once...
Worst: it's coming from people who have lived through a pandemic, watched the social strife and divisions unfolding right in front of their faces, how can those same people not see that massive social movements aren't ever clear-cut? It's all just so stupid and ignorant.
As an American, I'm not surprised, unfortunately. When we learn about history in grade school, we don't really learn about the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 30s. If we do, little time is spent on it. Most of the time is spent on WWII itself, with of course a bunch of self-congratulatory stuff about how the world would have burned if the US hadn't joined in (conveniently ignoring how long it took for the US to join in).
Most Americans couldn't tell you much about how Hitler came into power. (Or Mussolini? Forget it.) The majority of what Americans know about it all are exactly what you said: black-and-white scenes of SS officers, Hilter giving speeches, and swastika armbands.
There's no lingering WWII war damage in the US. We don't have monuments dedicating places where major battles were fought. The war wasn't fought here. We don't see reminders of what all that was like.
When I was born, WWII was only 35 years behind us. Many of the people who were involved in it at the time (politicians, soldiers, etc.) were not only alive, but still active in public discourse in major ways. But today, WWII ended 80 years ago. Most everyone who experienced it is dead. Awareness of all of it is still present in Europe because it was all literally close to home. Not so in the US.
This honestly shouldn't be all that surprising. History repeats and rhymes, over and over throughout the decades and centuries. All it takes is a couple generations to forget its lessons.
I see comments in these threads from people who lived through the forming of dictatorships in their countries. I wish more people would listen to them.
> "Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"
> "Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
> "Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.
> "We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."
Fascism is a reaction to a capitalist crisis, Nazis weren't socialists by any definition except for using populist agendas like sharing of profits and welfare to rally their base.
Nazis never nationalised any industry and rather used corporatism to take hold of them while those were still private entities, same in Italy, industry and fascist regimes walked hand-in-hand.
Saying those are equivalent to socialism just due to populist rhetoric is misleading and historically wrong...
Saying they are free market capitalists is misleading and historically wrong.
This complaint is also like saying communists weren’t authentic because the government withheld power from the Soviet’s and used the Soviet narrative to gain popular support.
We compare ideologies on a political spectrum. It’s harder to compare implementations because they all look like corruption. Hitler is one person in a political movement. He did write the platform I linked to though.
They did actually implement many of these things, such as universal healthcare (for their race).
We aren't in agreement that the continuum has only two opposite ends: socialism-free market where anything not free market is immediately socialism, definitely not.
Ok. But the nazi platform is labor unions, universal healthcare, retirement programs, profit redistribution, etc. your quote doesn’t contradict this.
If you have some specialized definition of socialism that this doesn’t meet. That’s fine. But this is nothing like the libertarianism or small government conservatism.
Stated platform can be an absolute lie, have you fucking read what I mentioned about how the Nazi government almost literally erased all forms of labour unions? Did you check anything about the German Labour Front instituted by them? Have you read any of the history about how labour unions were treated by the Nazis?
Seriously, why would you believe the stated goals instead of their actions? Do you trust Nazis?
> If you have some specialized definition of socialism that this doesn’t meet.
I don't know that “when the working class democratically (either via democratic control of the state, through democratic control at the level of individual firms or industries, or otherwise) control the means of production” is actually a “specialized” definition of socialism.
Socialism is not centrally about the state providing goods, Its about who controls the means of production. Provision of public goods by the state is an expected outcome of the kind of socialism where a democratic state is the vehicle of proletarian control of the means of production, but it is not the production and delivery of those goods, independent of the nature of the state and who is empowered to control the means of production through it, that makes the system “socialist”
Führerprinzip is about as opposed to socialism as any element of any real or hypothetical system can be.
Kushner said it best. "Noone goes as low as Trump." So you also get to deal with what politics looks like when it reaches its lowest, nastiest form.
Trump's a hero to the right, but on the left there's a pretty reasonable sense that Trump's actions have already amounted to literal treason if you consider him to have an obligation to uphold the oaths he has taken.
He attempted to get Zelensky to go on US TV and execute a political attack on Democrats as a condition of the US helping Ukraine.
He attempted to get the 2020 election flipped by making mafia-don style calls to Georgia asking them to "find" precisely the number of votes which would have made him win that election. He next asked Pence to change the result for him. All of these were acts of open treason against the People of the United States, so long as you count the People of the United States as including people who didn't vote for him.
To make it crystal f**ing clear: him changing the policy of the US isn't treason. Cozying up to Russia or trying to reduce the size of the government are his prerogative as elected leader in a way that trying to change the result of an election is not. Ohh yeah and I forgot that he tried to get everyone to stop counting the votes while he was ahead! That also goes in the treason most foul bucket.
Rather than gesturing generally at all of these "irrational" and "hyperbolic" comments, why not take the time to thoughtfully rebut any specific comment that you believe is engaging in irrationality and hyperbole?
I would also cool it with the dismissive tone and avoid saying things like "cray cray" before accusing anyone else of being juvenile.
We have a government that has been completely capture by the elite. Democrats are the oligarchs good cops offering performative resistance while ultimately consenting to anything that boosts their brokerage accounts and re-election budgets, while republicans are the oligarchs bad cops, directly weakening regulation of those with power, protections for those without, and systematically destroying any force that can stand up to the insanely wealthy. Republicans are setting the wealthy up for the mass privatization of public property and services as well as the purchase of all the assets firesold to sustain life during a disaster, like your parent's house when social security/medicare doesn't cover the cost of living, or like farmland that isn't profitable to farm because it's too expensive to import fertilizer.
The elite capture is multiplicitively damaging because the elite own nearly all major media outlets. WaPo, NYT, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Neutrality is implicit support for power over justice. Justice requires challenging those with power, because those with power are the default victors in conflict. Evil wins when good men do nothing.
The Hacker News algorithm is easily gamed. Downvoting and flagging will sink any post, but resigned consent to a fait accompli is the win condition for this coup. The less they are publicly challenged, the easier it is to seize power without resistance. The easier it is to keep exercises of power unchecked.
State AGs and members of the house of representatives are making public official statements with the power of their office that we are experiencing a coup. This is historic.
I really wish dang would privilege more of these discussions about the end of constitutional rule from the automatic downward moderation of controversy and flagging.
The number of largely independent media platforms which allow for open and public discussion without major algorithmic influence is few. Failing to challenge power, submitting to it, or protecting yourself from attention is the easy thing to do, and right now we all have the privilege of doing so, but this slow moving disaster will seep into every area of our lives as the scaffolding of trust is eroded and the lack of consequences for those who exercise arbitrary power will make it a winning strategy to take advantage of people.
I understand hacker news is a place for curiosity, but curiosity is not allowed when obedience is demanded, and that is what authoritarians do, demand obedience. Maintaining one day's curiosity at the cost of tomorrow's defeats the goal of being a place for curiosity. The right to question authority... the right to be curious must be defended.
I still don't buy the bothsidesism. You say at first they are part of the coup, quietly approving of what is happening, then pointing out the commentary by state AGs that this is a a power grab.
We agree this is a catastrophe, but I don't think that media and the liberal political parties are willful codefendants.
I think there is a need to distinguish between AGs who write such letters and party organizations (i.e., democrats) that have allowed corruption such as insider trading within their ranks. A non-complicit to oligarchy democrat party would never have allowed nancy pelosi to be a completely unchecked insider trader.
One would think then I saw an NYT article that basically went up for bat for RFK jr. and danced entirely around his rhetoric on research cuts. So that ship is certainly lost at this point.
This is obviously alarming, and if used to disregard the Judiciary's interpretation of law, unconstitutional. But I'm puzzled by the exemption of the Federal Reserve and FOMC. He's previously beefed with them, and would presumably find the additional leverage useful. Why explicitly exclude them?
Money is by definition zero sum, otherwise the word "inflation" would have no meaning. There are good questions around what an over leveraged loan is, but fundamentally, the supply of money is to some degree fixed at any given moment.
The wealthy and powerful keep their money in tax benefited, inflation tracking assets. Many of those assets are stocks, and a major business cost is labor. Wages are generally not inflation tracking. That amplifies the benefit of inflation to the wealthy. So the buying power lost by suppressed wages and devalued savings, as well as the devaluing of all money currently in flight such as paychecks, is exactly gained by those with wealth/ownership. Inflation also makes loan's cheaper to pay off, further benefiting those with enough assets to get a loan.
When the market stagnates or companies freeze hiring or do mass layoffs, it puts employees in an even worse negotiating position resulting in even more suppressed wages past the first order effect of inflation.
So what's even better for the rich than tax breaks is inflation.
The fed is the beating heart of the economy, it pumps money through its sluices.
The fed is in many ways the Balrog deep in Moria.
Oligarchs do answer to other oligarchs, even if they don't answer to law, and there's a good chance that many of them see the impending potential disaster of either stagflation -- people won't have enough money to buy goods and the economy stalls and maybe doesn't restart, or hyperinflation -- the definitive end of American hegemony as countries move to a different reserve currency and America is no longer able to fund its military. The economy is also directly tied, if not most directly tied, to the legitimacy of the ruling regime, so a policy of choosing loyalists over qualifications or letting it be corrupted by someone selling out tomorrow for today is likely to lead to actual civil unrest instead of performative civil unrest.
My guess is that the finance business oligarchs see it as a red line because the moment the fed is corrupted, it's no longer their fed, but Trump's fed, and that will be equivalent to the moment Putin gathered all of Russia's oligarchs, with one of them in a diminutive cage in a court room, and then said "half" and held out his ring with the implication of the power relationship being clear (part of the greater story of the Magnitsky act).
It's also worth noting that normally you would get capital flight once the wealthy get scared, but the US has told every foreign country that American citizens in that country are under American jurisdiction and therefore all wealth must be reported to the US government, so while in the past an oligarch might have been happy to cause civil unrest with their unchecked greed, America's deep financial reach means that many will pay a hefty price, if they are even allowed exfiltrate the majority of their fortunes at all, binding them to the outcome of fed decisions as well.
But I'm very far from an expert, so probably wrong about some of that.
But capital gains - and business income taxes in a way, given how profit is calculated - do pay an inflationary tax since they're calculated on nominal gains, so I'm not at all convinced that the wealthy don't care about inflation since it erodes their wealth.
This effect can be minimized or neutered if their assets grow in real terms, but that only works in a growing-pie world, too
Wait how is this debatable. We saw wealth inequality explode in ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 and ‘23 as the wealthiest Americans navigated rapid inflation and then rate cuts by strategically buying everything they could and then turning into activist investors and forcing RTO and mass layoffs despite record profits.
Wealthy people can take advantage of economic turmoil by selling high and buying low, the greatest example being Buffets mass sell off and subsequent repurchasing.
Wealth inequality was previously at its highest point in the US during the Gilded Age, when the US was still on the gold standard and inflation was not as much of a thing (and deflation often reined):
US wealth inequality only really started rising in the 1980s—as inflation went down. Further, as The Guardian graph shows, concentration has gone up from the 1990s up until now, even though the last few decades have had the lowest, and most stable, inflation numbers in history:
So the link between inflation and wealth concentration does not appear to have any correlation according to the historical data.
I would hazard to guess that a more promising link to wealth concentration/inequality would be the cutting of tax rates (both corporate and personal) starting during the Reagan administration, and how it reduced redistribution of money to the lower- and middle-class.
> Wait how is this debatable. We saw wealth inequality explode in ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 and ‘23 as the wealthiest Americans navigated rapid inflation
What "rapid inflation"? Inflation was right around the historical average for 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. The only outlier was 2022 with 8% inflation, but that's still far from "rapid" historically speaking: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...
I wonder who you saw debating that. It looks really settled down and unanimous to me. Inflation is extremely harmful to poor people.
The only debate I see is about whether the Austrian school has a point and merely printing money is already harmful or if harm comes only when prices increase.
Also,
> But the opposite, deflation, hits the poor much harder.
> I wonder who you saw debating that. It looks really settled down and unanimous to me. Inflation is extremely harmful to poor people.
The debate is about the alternatives / counter-factuals: would <0% inflation (read: deflation) be better or worse for poor people than >>0% inflation? How do those two compare to ~0% (e.g., 2%, the Fed target) inflation?
There's a reason why I linked to articles on the topic of the 'cross of gold' and austerity. We've had other ways of doing things in the past and are on the current system for a reason.
A lot of folks seem to want to get rid of the Fed, get back to gold, mercantilism (which is basically what Trump's tariffs are attempting), and generally go back to the 1800s way of doing money/finance:
Try reading Project 2025's chapter on the Federal Reserve:
> Free Banking. In free banking, neither interest rates nor the supply of money is controlled by the government. The Federal Reserve is effectively abolished, and the Department of the Treasury largely limits itself to handling the government’s money. Regions of the U.S. actually had a similar system, known as the “Suffolk System,” from 1824 until the 1850s, and it minimized both inflation and economic disruption while allowing lending to flourish.[23]
[…]
> As in the Suffolk System, competition keeps banks from overprinting or lending irresponsibly. This is because any bank that issues more paper than it has assets available would be subject to competitor banks’ presenting its notes for redemption. In the extreme, an overissuing bank could be liable to a bank run.[!] Reckless banks’ competitors have good incentives to police risk closely lest their own holdings of competitor dollars become worthless.[24]
> Money is by definition zero sum, otherwise the word "inflation" would have no meaning.
Not sure that I agree, nor that the one follows from the other.
Without having the advantage of an Economics degree, I have witnessed when rising tides have lifted all boats and a majority of U.S. society benefited. Perhaps "wealth" is not a zero sum.
And if that is case, talking about "money" is orthogonal. We should talk instead about disposable income, standard of living, etc.
Discretionary income, really, not disposable. What we really should care about is the cash people have left over after they've paid for all their essentials, not just what's left over after taxes.
It might seem like it would sound impressive to say that someone has $20k/month of disposable income, but not so much if the housing market has gone crazy and groceries have become scarce and they have to spend $15k/month on a small apartment and barely enough food to feed themselves.
The way I see it, the excuse for moving to a fiat currency was that the rich people owned all the gold and social mobility had stagnated, so they decided that an elastic money supply would provide some social mobility and could go towards rewarding and building up an intellectual class.
But what happened is that a small subset of elites managed to capture the flow of new fiat money, creating even more concentration. Some social mobility was made possible, but only at the behest of this tiny number of elites... And now it's looking like we're reaching the end of that cycle and social mobility is screeching to a halt... The sheer, grotesque misallocation of fiat money has become hard to ignore. The misallocation appears to be unlimited and serves political agendas. Unlike in the gold-backed era where the elites had to provide actual value to earn their scarce gold, the elite of the current era (and their hand-picked minions) got their wealth mostly through rent-seeking and monopolization of government institutions which provided access to unlimited streams of money.
So now we have no social mobility, inequality is worse than ever (and accelerating) and we have an elite class which is ill-equipped to run any kind of economy which creates value. We are in a situation even worse than the gold-backed money era. At least then, the money was in the hands of people who COULD leverage it to deliver real value out of it. People could dig themselves out of their poverty by providing value which was worth its weight in gold. It was a level playing field. The only people who had priority access to gold were those who dug it out of the ground at great risk/expense to themselves. Nowadays, there is no heuristic or logic that you can use to dig yourself out of poverty. There is no logic behind social mobility aside from social scheming; to be chosen/funded by the elite; which produces no economic value for anyone, not even the elite. They don't even know what they want anymore so they use their money to engage on wild zero-sum political manipulations; billionaires throwing huge amounts of money against each other; going mostly into the pockets of lunatic 'activists' and nothing gets done either way; all the billionaires agendas cancel out; it just creates more crazy people with money roaming around, creating intense divisions over nothing. At the end of the day, all these 'ideological' lunatics (aka experts) funded by billionaires just care about money and they're making up all kinds of nonsense arguments to justify their paychecks... Pretending that they actually care about all this stuff when really, it's all 100% about paychecks. They're literally fighting over money, using all sorts of other ideas and social agendas as pretexts.
The people who have all the money to decide the direction of our economy and society do not have the ability or even the desire to improve it to make it work efficiently in any broad sense; they are only skilled in terms of wealth concentration, not wealth creation.
At this stage, I'm convinced that the economy would work better if the government just started handing out millions of dollars of free money to everyone and let global hyperinflation happen.
If he were to mess with the Fed it would impact Wall Street, particularly by making the market indices go down.
For whatever reason he cares about that in ways he doesn’t care about his approval ratings or the historical norms of the office. See how fast he reached a deal on tariffs earlier in the month when the markets reacted to them? Since then they’ve been slowly leading tariffs to get the message out so when the tariffs come the market will have priced it in.
He’ll get to the Fed. But it won’t be overnight. The administration will start messaging it and choreographing the change long enough before so it won’t spook Wall Street.
This is the key, there is a reason why the Fed Chairman doesn't ad-lib any of their public speeches. They read a carefully prepared statement and that's it.
Just a small wink, nod or a pause somewhere might cause panic on Wall Street.
I know it sucks, but ELon also has SpaceX, Twitter, xAI and oddballs like neurolink and boring company that would still keep him outrageously wealthy if Tesla collapses.
Also Tesla won't collapse because it's investors are the most brain damaged investors, and frankly their self-fulfilling prophecy has kept them repeatedly buying any dip back up. It's been extremely profitable to be a mindless Tesla investor.
He hasn't "given" society anything, we pay these companies for their services (often with taxpayer dollars!)
It doesn't suck that SpaceX or Tesla exists. It sucks that the person who has profited most from those entities is using their power to destroy government agencies that oversee his companies, and more broadly, to constantly lie and try to destroy the federal government.
> He hasn't "given" society anything, we pay these companies for their services
He’s given society new products and services that didn’t exist before, the option to purchase from those companies, and the tax revenue from those companies (to the tune of hundreds of billions)
Tesla technically existed on paper before Musk, but they didn’t even have a working prototype, and their facility was a home garage. In all practical terms he founded Tesla as well.
Twitter he bought obviously, which is why I didn’t mention it.
"No, Elon Musk did not found Tesla; the company was originally founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Musk became involved later as an investor and eventually took on leadership roles, including CEO, after a legal battle over the title of founder."
I'd really expect that he is actually at a loss on all of those except for SpaceX which has a clear path towards being cash flow positive if it isn't already
You don't have to make money to be worth an astronomical amount. HN should know this better than anywhere.
I hate "fictitious" valuations as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day it's what people are willing to pay for equity that determines value, not what it's books look like.
His approval rating is quite high considering the circumstances. Will take months to really understand, but at least half of America abhors the federal government.
His project2025 handlers (lets be clear hes not that smart) have calculated exactly how much opposition each outrageous thing can stand, beyond which there would be too much coordinated pushback. So its all about divide everybody against their own little thing to try and get as much fuckery through as possible
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.
conveys respect to the judiciary branch, and states that this only applies to situations where the executive branch is interpreting laws in isolation during their enforcement of them (which happens quite often).
However, following that line:
> No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.
Feels weirder, because it implies that when executive branch employees find themselves between a rock and a hard place on when a law is interpreted differently between the President and Judicial branches they must follow the Presidential interpretation; or they'll presumably be fired.
The way I see it: This isn't a broad departure from the behavior of the system two weeks ago. The office of the President, especially under Trump, has regularly taken the action of replacing employees who are unaligned with the President's agenda. When the rubber hits the road and we get to a material matter that the President and the Judicial branch disagree on, what it might come down to is: the Judicial branch can bring a suit against the employees to follow their interpretation, but the President could fire them if they do, and the President could pardon them if they instead follow the Presidential way. That's, essentially, the same situation the American system has been in for hundreds of years; the only difference right now is that we have a President who might actually do that.
Which draws back to something I've said a few times: Presidents from both parties, over the past 50 years, but especially Bush and Obama, have been relentless in interpreting the law in a direction which centralizes power into the Executive. The "normalcy" of the office until Trump was never enforced through legality; it was only decorum. It was only a matter of time before someone rejected this decorum, born out of congressional deadlock and the dire state of many Americans' wellbeing, to make the government and executive branch actually do something about it.
This isn't the first time America has had to face this question; not even close. Trump isn't exposing new weaknesses in our system; the weaknesses have always been there. Worcester v. Georgia (1832) is a great example. It ended with the President saying F.U. to the Supreme Court, refusing to enforce one of their interpretations, and, well, the Trail of Tears happened.
"Weakness", however, is an interesting term to deploy for this; it implies that the default state of the American system is that you need supermajority alignment for the government to accomplish anything, and if actors in the system find a legal way around that requirement, its a "weakness". Phrased more simply: Strength is inaction, Weakness is action. Of course, many Americans would disagree with any assertion that this is desirable, especially in the unstable geopolitical and economic situation we're in. Trump was elected, by majority electoral and popular vote, to take action; most Americans would not call the cracks he is cleaving open to accomplish his agenda a "weakness" of the system.
The only reason supermajority is required in the current Senate is because a Senator can hold a "pocket filibuster" which in practice gives any single Senator the power to veto any legislation at any time for any reason for as long as they are in the senate. Were they to change their procedure and require Senators to actually speak in order to exercise a filibuster you would see this change pretty quickly. Strom Thurmond spoke for days to filibuster the civil rights laws, and he eventually had to stop because he got tired. He had aides holding buckets under the podium for him to relieve himself at times.
I mean, yes, technically it's "not new" for the President and Judiciary to disagree at this level. But doing so results in events like the Trail of Tears, which is pretty bad.
People are alarmed and concerned because they know it's not new. It's not difficult to find horrors in American history. Decorum and norms exist for the purpose of attempting to smooth over these stress points and make a safer power structure that hopefully prevents tragedies like this. The relative peace and safety we've enjoyed for the half century or so has been largely based on a modern era of good feelings and respectful norms.
When those norms go away and the authoritarian president dares the court to enforce the laws he breaks, people, rightly, get scared. The courts don't control the army, he does. I hope the generals remeber their oath, but oh yeah, he's been replacing them with loyalists too.
We know it isn't new. We've seen the horrors of history. That's why it's scary.
Yeah yeah, America lived on and stuff after all of that. But a lot of oppressed minorities didn’t. And if you're any minority group that the ruling party doesn't like right now, you are totally justified in being deathly afraid.
(For the record, I was against centralization of executive power under Obama and Bush too. But open and blatant disrespect like this is as especially alarming and should be treated as such, not normalized or justified)
I don't disagree; except on the point that this is open and blatant disrespect. I don't have the impression that the purpose of this action is to subvert the judicial branch toward the goal of centralizing power into the executive branch. It could be interpreted that way, but the reality is that constitutional law on this is pretty clear, and Trump hasn't gotten to the point of breaching the constitution (yet).
If you've followed Trump for long enough, one of the things he talks about a lot are the "unelected bureaucrats" in the government making the real laws that end up impacting Americans day-to-day, more than Congress oftentimes. That's who this is targeted at; subordinates within the executive branch. This isn't a law, or even an interpretation of an existing law, or an expansion of executive branch powers, or even an expansion of the powers of the office of the President (because legally, as far as I know, the President has always had this power); its best described as a memo elaborating a process.
One example that might be applicable here is Net Neutrality. FCC enforcement of Net Neutrality goes back and forth; it was about to happen, until Trump in 2017 when the ruling was cancelled, and then in 2023 it came back, and now it probably won't happen again. What you're seeing there is, in the most accurate sense, something this action would expressly cover. There's zero congressional law dealing with net neutrality. Every time the FCC has touched the topic, its been the unelected bureaucratic appointment of the latest elected President making a new rule that can just as quickly be overturned or interpreted differently by the next President. Trump's new action just recognizes a process that's already been happening, basically forever.
What net neutrality really needs is the same thing a ton of these bureaucratic agencies need: a law, passed by congress. Write it in stone.
But, this is a rare thing in modern America, and maybe it always has been. Our legislative branch sucks. Seems like our Founding Fathers may have wanted it that way, but I doubt they fully understood the consequences. Getting it to do anything is like pulling hair, and that's why Executive Actions (read: authoritarian rule) have become so common. Trump, to some degree, through his mass layoffs, the defunding of various parts of the government, and now the codification of the process that the President makes decisions on-behalf-of the executive branch, is trying to scale the bureaucratic state back. Is that a good goal? Will it be successful? I don't know. But that is, under my interpretation, the best description of his aims.
> Trump isn't exposing new weaknesses in our system; the weaknesses have always been there.
exactly there; the system relies on everyone following the rules and doesn't have much in the way of remediation, other than impeachment, if the president just decides to ignore the other two branches. possibly SCOTUS, but they've hamstrung themselves with their recent decisions
And interestingly; its not clear to me that we'd have a better system if many of these weaknesses were patched. As software engineers might say, the quickest way to fix all the bugs in a system is to delete the system; the quickest way to a government perfectly resilient to authoritarian control is a government which simply can't do anything. This services no one.
At the end of the day, you can build safe-guards, and the American system of safeguards is among the best in the world. But, we also need leadership that can and will act to solve emergent problems, lest we cannot adapt to an evolving world. And, honestly, America has struggled for the past 20 years, especially since 2008. Our solution to everything has been "throw money at it", when we don't have the money we abuse our position as global reserve currency to just print more, and no one in charge has had any desire to think critically about how we get out of that hole, or how we solve any of the other problems the country faces smarter not richer.
I don't know if Trump and his team will make the problem better or worse. I feel pretty confident that they'll make it worse for some already-marginalized people, and I wish that wasn't the case, but the world that is likely to happen should we not solve these problems will not be kinder to them than the one they're in right now. Someone like Trump was guaranteed to happen after our insane, elitist, kick-the-can-down-the-road response to the GFC and COVID. There were saner voices in the room at those times. No one listened to them.
The way the US political system works is that the legislative passes laws, the executive enforces laws, and the judicial interprets laws and ensures the constitutionality/legality of it all. This is relevant because in this scenario each body plays a critical role, but they 'beat' each other in different ways, almost like a game of rock, paper, scissors. The executive beats the legislative by vetoing laws, the judicial beats the executive by blocking/halting orders/enforcements of laws, and the legislative can beat the judiciary by passing new laws or even changing the constitution (though there you'd also need the states' approval).
This simplifies some things (like the fact that congress can beat the executive by overriding a veto), but I think generally captures the essence of the system. And a key point here is that judicial beats executive. The executive can interpret a law however they want, but if the judiciary disagrees then the judiciary wins. So nothing needs to be "used" to disregard the judiciary's interpretation of laws - it simply doesn't matter what the executive's interpretation of a law - that's the role of the judiciary.
The reason for this law is simply to bring the various agencies under executive authority in line. Instead of each individual organization interpreting the law (generally around the limits of their powers) at their own discretion, those interpretations will now need to pass through the attorney general.
> So nothing needs to be "used" to disregard the judiciary's interpretation of laws - it simply doesn't matter what the executive's interpretation of a law - that's the role of the judiciary.
Which is important considering that Chevron doesn't exist anymore, where the judiciary found itself out of their water, so to speak, about how to implement the law (note I say implement here, meaning that what the law says, the org does, but the details or ambiguous terms are up to the org). So, this actually re-implements Chevron in a forceful way, because it says that the judiciary, which tasked again with overseeing how laws are implemented by the executive whenever they are ambiguous.
The Fed is statutorily independent, and organized in a manner that the current Court has validated (unlike the CFPB). Just like Trump can't assert legislative superiority over Congress, he cannot unilaterally compromise the independence of the Fed.
I agree with Kasey, too, but I think the exception here is mostly legalese.
It seems like it would be a good idea to move the global financial system off the shaky ground before it opens up into a bottomless sinkhole, but what do I know about global finances?
OK, so I have $1 trillion in Treasuries, and I sell them. What do I do with the cash? Presumably I'd like other government debt. The trouble is that I need to put this into another market, so what do I choose? The total euro government bond market is 8 trillion euros, so I'm probably gonna move that market in a way that's not good for me. That's the point I'm trying to (badly, apparently) make.
They're not fully exempted, the order does apply to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in connection with its conduct and authorities directly related to its supervision and regulation of financial institutions.
In other words, when it comes to banking regulation, the President has the final say.
I think everything has to be voluntary and well-informed, except in self-defence.
I may be wrong, but I think in the US enough voters have been deceived by Donald that they were not well-informed, and so elections are no longer valid.
By this, he is in power, and Congress and Senate have been subverted.
I also see Donald looking to have complete and untrammeled control, and this is one more act in that direction.
I’m pretty sure you know. Forgive me for not responding further, but your username doesn’t inspire confidence that you’d be willing to engage in an honest exchange of ideas. I hope to be wrong, but experience says that people who feel the need to advertise their tribal affiliation so overtly are seldom open to challenging their personal world view.
I don't know actually, perhaps I didn't follow context closely enough to see which team you affiliated yourself with. Either way that's okay if you aren't capable of standing by what you wrote or arguing in good faith, then my experience tells me that it's a good signal that it's not worth engaging with anyway.
Most likely the 2020 election, which involved the January 6 insurrection and Trump's fake electors plot [1] (which goes beyond falsely claiming that the election was stolen).
I don't agree because they were simply talking election denial, so 2016 and 2020 both equally fit. Unfortunately there looks to be a lot of denial and conspiracy theories around 2024 too now, which is very dangerous to democracy.
Is it" hysterical" to point out this section of the EO?
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.
Because, to put it in plain words, this is ordering all members of the executive to obey exclusively the President and the Attorney General when it comes to how all law should be enforced. That includes the U.S. Marshals Service that provides enforcement duties for federal courts and the Supreme Court.
How is that related to a dictatorship though? The executive comes under the control of its democratically elected head, which is pretty normal and not considered a dictatorship.
Forget the police, I thought the US president actually has much more direct and undisputed power over the military than some other executive agencies, which could be much more dangerous in the wrong hands, yet that is still is not considered a dictatorship (e.g., not even when Obama ordered the extrajudicial execution of a US citizen and was protected by presidential immunity, nor when past presidents have launched undeclared wars of aggression or interventions and bombing campaigns against sovereign nations), at least not in mainstream political thinking.
This EO seems like just shuffling responsibility around within the executive, moving interpretation of laws directly under the president rather than delegating it out to various unelected bureaucrats in different agencies making their own interpretations. I'm sure there are argument for and against it but it doesn't seem outlandish, or an kind of crazy power grab beyond what the executive branch already has.
It's the equivalent of the cops pulling you over and using a slightly dim tail light to search your entire car, make you get out, spread your legs, and get a pat-down.
Every large government department in every country in the world has some waste. All of them. All of the time.
This is why it's so disingenuous for Trump/Musk supporters to point at tiny bits of waste or whatever and scream "See! See! We found it! They deserve what they got!"
It's not coincidentally one of the justifications used by Russia to invade Ukraine. They claimed they were after Nazis. So what if Ukraine has Nazis!? So does every other damned European country! American has Nazis! Russia has Nazis!
It's the drill sergeant making you do 100 push ups because there was a barely visible scratch on your boots. His boots have scratches too. That's not the point. It's an excuse to make you jump.
My advice is: Any time anyone uses such a claim, or anything like it, always ask yourself: Okay, but what is the base rate for this thing they've suddenly decided is objectionable? Is it higher or lower elsewhere?
Elon Musk's people have been remarkably bad at finding real examples of waste. Their hit rate is extremely low - almost everything they publicize turns out to be wrong.
You'd think they'd be able to scour the Federal budget and find a few real examples of waste to crow about, but instead they give us things like: $50 million in condoms sent to Gaza so that Hamas can make bombs??? And of course, that instantly turned out to be fake news.
All the same, try not being distracted by the smoke and noise of the circus, it's all just a massive dead cat on the table to distract while other quieter changes are made.
In short, Trump is claiming full and direct authority and control over any and all federal agencies, with the express directive of "The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. "
> Section 1. Policy and Purpose. [..] Since it would be impossible for the President to single-handedly perform all the executive business of the Federal Government [..]
Yup. You gotta have some time left to golf with your cronies..
That point comes to HN at least once an hour since the start of 2025.
For a site primarily intended to be about computer tech, the funding and business of tech startups, with explicit guidelines suggesting to reject US politics there are still large numbers of active threads on US politics, DOGE, Musk, et al daily.
.. and that's after 9x decimation.
So, throttled back to allow room for other submissions is largely what happens here, "hidden" is a tad hyperbolic.
In fairness, the US tech industry made it extremely hard to discuss them without discussing politics too, since they’re getting themselves more and more involved in policy.
many with more than 100 points, some with > 1000 points and >1000 comments.
[flagged] just pushes them off of the front page, they're still highly active and [showdead] can show you the comments being killed - largely they're hyper-partisan (either side), full nazi, crazy kill the rich, etc. Not many polite reasoned comments being killed regardless of stance.
I'm Australian BTW - it's all a sideshow to me, aside from the crazy tariffs and nuclear threat parts, etc.
minor at best given my age, location, and general setup.
I was probably in more danger in Rajasthan on 11 May 1998 when India suprise detonated three nukes within our visual horizon and impounded our aircraft on landing.
Risk is relative.
My father is down the hall watching TV ATM, he was born in 1935 and caught rabbits and such to feed his younger borothers and sisters when his father went off to WWII, Singapore fell amd trade in and out of the state ceased for a few years.
Don’t you think that’s selfish? I don’t live in most countries of the world (obviously) but I can still empathise with fellow human beings struggling elsewhere in this globalised planet. I don’t believe other problems are unimportant because they don’t directly apply to me.
Considering all the environmental protections being rolled back, you and your family will be affected sooner than you think.
Considering that Silicon Valley exists within the US, it's significant that the US has turned into a dictatorship — the implications are beyond political on this one.
This is sadly one of the last few places online where rational discussion of the topic by at least some mostly smart people is at all likely to happen. It's also one of the last few places where discussion will get pretty instantly shut down if it devolves into chaos, so let's all at least try our level best to keep those discussions either productive or interesting.
I enjoy discussing politics, but flagged this because the title is so absurdly far beyond sensationalized and links to a friggin Reddit post which then amps the hyperbole up even further. It's not going to be conducive to interesting or informative discussion for anybody, and seems mostly intended to mislead.
Donald has direct control of entire Federal Gov, controls their budgets, has installed his men in every agency, and will now decide interpretation of law.
Congress and Senate both wholly passive (subverted, I would say).
That leaves the States and the courts. I think the courts will go next.
Donald may have direct control of the entire Executive branch, but guess what, that's pretty much what the Constitution says. Where exactly is the "dictatorship" here?
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
The Constitution gives Congress a great deal of oversight over how the executive branch is run. The President is supposed to execute the laws that Congress passes, spend the money that Congress appropriates in the way that Congress says it should be spent, etc. The President can't even appoint his own officials without the Senate's approval.
Beyond the Constitution, there is a long tradition of independent agencies running according to certain laws and principles that are laid out to them. The President is not supposed to directly order the people at these agencies what to do. Think the Department of Justice: you don't want the President ordering prosecutions. You want those decisions to be impartial. Trump just crossed a massive red line in dropping the prosecution of Eric Adams, and he did so purely in order to gain political leverage over Adams. Now, the NY mayor has to do what Trump says, or else Trump can order the DOJ to start prosecuting him again.
Trump has now openly declared on social media that he does not have to even follow the law, because he's "saving the country." He's trying to establish an elective dictatorship. Americans vote every 4 years, and whoever wins runs the entire government however they want, regardless of what the courts or Congress say.
But "without prejudice" which is how they have the hold over him (because they can refile any time he's not doing their bidding). If it was truly dropped, they'd have no leverage.
> "The order is for all charges against Adams to be dismissed, and the dismissal is without prejudice, the official said, meaning charges could be refiled in the future."
> The President is not supposed to directly order the people at these agencies what to do.
The Constitution disagrees with you, since it expressly directs the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". It's literally not possible to "take care" of this without issuing orders to that effect.
The clause that you cited does not in any way contradict what I said.
"Independent" agencies are supposed to function with a high level of autonomy. The president does not have to give individual orders to underlings at the DOJ in order to ensure that Congress' wishes are faithfully executed.
> and if it goes beyond the scope of executive powers, it will be curtailed or shut down.
The position of the executive order is that only the President can interpret laws, including executive orders about interpreting laws.
That is to say, if the courts try to stop it, Trump may try to say "the courts don't have that power" and order the DoJ and/or military to block anything they do.
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.
"The executive branch" includes the DoJ and the United States Marshals Service, who do all the actual boots-on-the-ground work for the judiciary.
This is an obvious lead in to "the President's interpretation is that the courts can go screw themselves", at which point the deciding factor becomes entirely whether law enforcement listens to the courts or listens to the bosses who pay them.
This EO has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the courts or their interpretation of the law.
This is entirely focused on aligning the executive branch, that’s it. This is the kind of confusion that comes with trusting a Reddit post instead of getting your news from a reputable source.
It’s bad because it’s an attempt at removing independence from certain independent organizations such as the SEC and the Federal Reserve, but it is not about claiming all legal authority rests with the executive. It will fail as an EO because the executive can’t violate the law, which has set out the independent nature of these organizations.
"Aligning" the executive branch by ordering everyone to obey the legal interpretations of the President and Attorney General, including the people who form the enforcement arm of the Supreme Court, very obviously has something to do with the courts.
> It will fail as an EO
It will fail as an EO if members of the executive branch follow the Constitution rather than the boss who pays them. The EO itself is explicitly ordering boots-on-the-ground federal law enforcement to follow the President instead of the courts.
There isn’t an enforcement arm of the Supreme Court. If you ever, at any point, thought the US Marshals mattered one iota in all of this, you completely misunderstood the role of the judiciary in the US government.
Congress has the power of the purse, the executive has the power of the sword, and the judiciary has… the hope that the other two branches will listen. Federalist 78 would be a good read for you now, if you think this has any relevance at all towards the judiciary’s ability to enforce anything.
> The exact same rhetoric was used from 2016 to 2020, even before Trump was elected the first time.
Awesome false equivalence, exaggeration, and straight disinformation, considering that 60%-70% of Republican respondents in multiple surveys believed that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election [1].
> Two Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polls conducted in February and July 2021 found that two-thirds of Republican respondents believe Biden was illegitimately elected in 2020.
> A January 2021 Morning Consult survey of 1,990 registered voters nationwide showed 65% responded that they believe the 2020 election was "free and fair." But when those results were broken down by party affiliation, only one-third of Republicans were in agreement with that statement. When asked what sources helped lead them to believe the election was fraudulent, a majority of Republicans cited former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed without evidence that his loss was not legitimate.
The 60%-70% figure persisted as late as June 2022 [2].
> With remarkable consistency, a scant one-quarter of Republican voters tell pollsters that Biden won legitimately. That was the view they shared in the spring of 2021, and the fraction remains about the same today.
> Agree that Biden was legitimately elected
> Poll Date All Democrat Republican Independent
> Economist/YouGov Jun. 1, 2022 60% 90% 25% 57%
Both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris conceded defeat in a day, Trump has been complaining about the 2020 election for years (still does), and Trump voters prepared for months to avoid certifying the 2024 results if they were to turn out badly for Trump [3]. Trump also attempted a fake electors plot to overturn the 2020 election [4].
“Attacked” what does this even mean? The courts have zero power in the first place, and never have. The judiciary, all the way back to Marbury v. Madison, has had to rely on the assent from the other branches that its rulings matter.
BTW, it's not Trump we're going to have to worry about. It's the next guy, who will have Trump imprisoned or executed for treason. This one won't be a blunderer, though, and will seize these levers of control much more firmly and competently.
Stephen Miller worked the DHS and HHS the way you described in the first Trump administration. Presumably Biden had ample time to “seize these levers” no?
Biden chose not to use the power available to him to its full extent. He could have done something really extreme with the immunity he was granted by SCOTUS, but instead, he disavowed it.
That's because people who are not power-hungry see the dangers in becoming too powerful (and therefore often best suited to be in power). Not saying Biden was the best president ever or anything, but power-hungry leaders for the most part do not work out well for citizens -- history is full of examples.
I don't see the point you are making? It isn't politicians that are getting elected to be White House Liaisons, they will almost certainly be appointed.
They already are, via cabinet members and their deputies/undersecretaries. Those people are appointed by the president, but need to be confirmed by the Senate as a check on the president's power.
Trump is doing another end run around the confirmation process with his "liaisons".
Well, some of them are, indirectly. But there are also those allegedly independent agencies (which, although maybe not a bad idea, is probably unconstitutional—we don’t have a fourth branch).
It's the Leninist model of governance which was the reason China was able to defy Western expectations that economic freedom would eventually lead to political freedom.
But there is one difference which is that the Leninist model also involves party loyalists being appointed to corporations. The US isn't there yet.
Not yet, but now we have major corporate leaders very publicly aligning themselves with the party and in the case of Musk actively directing party policies.
In Germany the legal executive branch is “Weisungsgebunden” which mean it follows the lead of the politicians instead of acting on own behalf. Because of this international warrants which come from Germany do not get followed since they can’t be trusted.
It would be better to have independent judges but hey it doesn’t lead to a dictatorship and the end of the world directly as propagated everywhere.
Judges in Germany are independent and most of the time appointed for life. German state attorneys are not independent. Their warrants are not recognized internationally, not even in the EU in fact.
Judges are independent in Germany. Prosecutors are not.
> Because of this international warrants which come from Germany do not get followed since they can’t be trusted.
I think you mean the European Arrest Warrant[1], and you are right that it is not accepted when issued by German prosecuters, because they are not indepepndent[2]
You say these things as if the very frameworks of our country were not under attack. I think it's hard to describe how far beyond our constitution we really are here. Our constitution and especially our institutions are no match for what the right wing is doing.
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Your neighborhood dictator
Of course down below it says something like "subject to applicable law".
Nevertheless I think the scary sentence will be stricken by the supreme Court
Next question: Why does Trump want control of those agencies? General principles? People around him told him to? Ego (proving that he's the Big Man In Charge)? Or does he actually intend to use that power? If so, for what?
This is a big deal. This is reducing the US federal government's ability to competently govern, and that's going to hurt, in concrete ways, before too long. If this stands, we're going to regret it.
If. I still have hope for the court system to overturn this.
This is America's Gleichschaltung. The president is now the absolute authority of the entire administrative state.
Unless he makes a series of public orders that says he will install Apparatchiks in every independent agency and law enforcement agency for compliance, will (and does) fire anyone who goes against his will, then states that he is the sole arbiter of law for all law enforcement and military members.
Then he very much can have that authority if enough people comply. And, if you look around, it's pretty obvious the police and executive are complying.
At the end of the day, there is no true forcing function that forces people to comply if they don’t want to. It can all come crumbling down. Trump is playing a dangerous game.
This does not bode well for that country’s democracy.
Why are Americans acting so surprised that the President has this authority? That is his job, as it was for all presidents before him. This executive order is saying that the "employees under the CEO" do not have the authority to usurp the "CEO's" interpretations of law. Checks and balances still apply, of course; Congress can intervene if the President is acting in ways that Congress doesn't like. That's what impeachment is for--and impeachment is a process regardless of whether the President is issuing "illegal" executive orders or doing something else like what Nixon did.
The process works; blame Congress for not holding the President accountable in the ways outlined by the Constitution.
And for all the stupidity of congress, if the fail to protect against a self-coup, that doesn't make it any less likely.
If you ignore ALL of that then you have a talking point worth debating.
I have no doubt that these people know exactly what they are doing, and are intentionally lying and spreading these "very reasonable" arguments as a blueprint for others to copy.
Their goal is to fluster and confuse the situation.
But hey, the president is like a CEO, right?
Calling someone a dictator is an accusation, something every American was taught was wrong in school. Calling someone a CEO is a compliment, something our collective media has taught us to aspire to.
CEO is just a softer word that makes submission easier, or even logical, while it hides the truth of that power structure which is functionally the same for both.
"The CEO metaphor re-frames political rule as a business operation, which makes executive overreach appear logical rather than dangerous."
This is a very effective manipulation technique.
https://commonslibrary.org/frame-the-debate-insights-from-do...
What? Trump has just asserted that the Judicial Branch's interpretation of federal law--almost its entire job under our US Constitution, and widely understood to include laws authorizing and controlling how government programs work--is entirely void in places where it's mattered for generations.
The correct response to that is: "That's an unprecedented assertion contrary to established principle, and arguably unconstitutional."
Not: "Gee golly willickers, I just can't see why you're all overreacting, it's not like the justices have to obey his interpretation of the law when they do things every day, so it's all fair-n-square!"
> [I]t seems clear to me that the prevailing narrative is both consistent and being constructed in bad faith.
The bad-faith here is your willful blindness, where you construct textual apologetics by dismissing the consequences of what's being said. (Compare: "He only said Big Mickey should wear concrete overshoes and sleep with the fishes, you people are all making bad-faith arguments against someone just trying to give honest lifestyle advice!")
If the attorney general says this law says [x] and the judiciary disagrees with an action based on that interpretation, they still have the exact same powers to halt/block said action.
Next sentence:
>"I want to point out that everything that the Left is breathlessly calling fascism has immediate and direct corollaries even in the most recent Democrat administration"
Could have fooled me.
As for your statement; no, you're wrong. Everything was (D)ifferent last admin, Biden didn't go for gutting the SEC's independence when they went for his billionaire right-hand man that's going around gutting other agencies with unchecked power.
Let's say we have a democracy where the only rule is highest vote wins. Let's say 51% of the people vote to enslave/oppress the other 49%.
Maybe they vote for literal chattel slavery. Maybe they vote for healthcare for themselves but not the others. Maybe they vote to tax the others at the maximum possible or implement tax policies that dis-proportionally affect the 49%. Maybe they vote the 49% cannot own homes and therefore must pay rent to a landlord. Maybe they vote that the 49% must register for the draft, but not them. Maybe they vote that the 49% aren't eligible for public school while they are. Maybe they vote that the 49% is not able to own stock or register for a company. Let's pretend those are legal, it is definitely possible. Slavery at one point was constitutionally allowed.
Is that a Democracy? A Liberal Democracy? A Democratic Republic? A Constitutional Democratic Republic if the law were enshrined on paper?
Would you want to live in that country? Would you want to live in that country if you were in the 49%?
What is the key ingredient that makes something a "Democracy" rather than tyranny of the majority, "mob rule," or "might makes right"?
Balance of the three branches of government and the rule of law and protection of minorities are the complementary requirements to the majority vote, to qualify for a democracy.
The Constitution of the USA was especially a model of its kind. Until we realized its implementation went lacking from true believers, for what we can witness since January 20th.
Check also the constitutions of modern democracies throughout the world.
Something that depends only on the rule of the majority, without constitutional guarantees of the respect of the law, without a self-defense system against abuse of power is a relic of the past prototype democracies.
Also, no need for the ad hominems, there is no reason to accuse me of not understanding something or it being "embarrassing," that is not helpful to any sort of conversation.
I’m not saying you do not understand. I am implying that in a discussion in the XXIth century about the concept of democracy as it has evolved in both the littérature and the history, and has been demonstrably stable and efficient, “democracy” is understood in the modern acception, and especially here, in the context of the USA Constitution - and there it has the requirements I laid out.
Turning any country today into an antique democracy rule would make no sense, unless you accept a peculiar instability. We have experienced, in many nations, how to adjust and balance how a democracy can work and self-sustain. However, we also still experience how fragile they stay.
And the disappointment is abysmal. Hence, perhaps, me being a tad tense in my words, for that I present my apologies.
> The Constitution of the USA was especially a model of its kind.
Then how is it that the US in its inception, like Greece, did not allow neither women nor all men (slaves) to vote? Clearly not much progress had been made by then. Much of the progress was made in the Civil rights movement, for example. That was last century, not "several centuries".
To be clear, summarizing my other replies to your comments, I am 100% with you that all of the things you mention are good things, and that they should be defended. But your redefinition of democracy (and American democracy in particular) doesn't parse and seems to be the product of historical revisionism.
What I was (unexplicitly enough) implying is that I don’t see how a stable democracy, going forward, could work, without implementing those improvements mechanisms that emerged through time and experience.
A pure Athenian democracy today at the scale of a country, with the complexities of the day, wouldn’t hold for more than a few years, at best.
Also, the word 'democracy' does not appear in either the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, so it's weird to make the argument you are making. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a party system to begin with. Women and obviously slaves could not vote. The US has only been getting more democratic over time. Your argument looks a bit like historical revisionism to me.
The earliest "democracy" (demokratia) dates back to the Greeks (and for free men, anyway), and Aristotle's Politica will tell you a bit about it.
There are variants (especially executive and legislative work more closely) but please list those where there is no constitutional or customary such a balance between executive, legislative and judiciary?
Thanks for suggesting I don’t know my classics, you seem not so certain about modern European democracies.
The main point of this executive order is likely part of the ongoing issues related to the chevron deference. [1] Chevron deference [1] was a (IMO very weird) legal standard that was overturned in 2024. It required the judicial to completely defer to the executive branch in cases where the laws around executive departments (generally relating to the the limits of their regulatory power/authority) were ambiguous. When this was overturned, the judiciary regained their independence and were once again able to hear and independently judge cases around these executive departments.
This order is now stating that the executive branch departments themselves will no longer be independently interpreting the law at all, but instead defer to the legal opinions of the head of the executive. The order itself also makes it clear that it does not allow rejecting or unreasonably redefining the laws applying to the various departments - instead the main issue is where potential ambiguities and related limits/allowances will be determined. And of course those determinations could then be challenged by either the judiciary or the legislative (by passing overriding laws).
The short version of this is "Executive departments will now be directly accountable to all three branches of government - executive, legislative, and judicial."
[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference
Why doesn’t congress do its job and write laws that do things?
Even right now, congressmen have been threatened with being primaries if they don’t toe the line.
There has been multiple decades of very public efforts to degrade and break the American system. Ever since watergate.
Congress was broken.
I think the question is when that pressure to obey is coming from the people and when it's instead coming from the party. In the ideal scenario the party and the people (at least the constituency) would be in lockstep. In any case term limits would help. If you're going to be out of office in at most two terms, it eliminates any point about sacrificing your values for some sort of long-term favor/benefit with the party.
Post watergate, Conservatives built FOX, they laid out their plan to break the american system, and take over to push their agenda.
No one took it seriously, and now when its happening, people are still unable to look at it.
You have the pantomine of a party. They have debates. They have primaries. They have a media organization which is 'independent'.
I’ll choose stale democracy over striving autocracy each day every day.
For a contemporary example, part of the CDC's power comes from Section 361 of the Public Health Services Act [1], which grants them the power to execute orders to prevent the spread of disease into the country or in between states. Examples included inspection, pest extermination, fumigation, and so on. The CDC invoked this power to prevent landlords from evicting delinquent tenants during the COVID stuff.
That was a gross enough (and also, critically, harmful enough) violation of their mandate that it was able to be challenged in the courts and eventually tossed even in the Chevon Deference era, but a lot of scenarios are much more ambiguous. So now their actions will be fully subject to oversight from all branches of government. The end result is that executive departments will have a much harder time overstepping the bounds of authority granted to them by Congress.
[1] - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-8773/pdf/COMPS-877... (page 405)
You could’ve fooled me.
It wasn't always so. In 1979, when Chrysler wanted federal loan guarantees, Congress passed a specific act to do so. Contrast that with what's now a blanket check to agencies thru an Omnibus
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...
Your understanding of Chevron deference is also incorrect, for what it’s worth.
What in Article I imposes constraints on the presidency? It's almost all about the legislature itself, and hardly mentions the executive. Specifically, I don't see anything that lends credence to the idea that Congress can control the workings of executive departments.
Instead, the president is responsible for faithfully executing the laws. So if the law defines how an agency is staffed and makes policy, the president is bound by that.
If this seems like an imposition upon the president, please remember that the president agrees to these impositions in advance by signing the laws.
Strongly contingent upon this, right? Wasn't the whole "administrative state" / "Chevron deference" argument that Congress did the bare minimum in defining what an executive agency is supposed to do, left it up to the executive to direct it as it sees fit? And worse, the supposedly apolitical career civil servants in charge of these agencies may from time to time thwart the will of the democratically elected head of the executive?
Where is the people's recourse then?
The recent decision to formally overturn this precedent was a reduction in power for the executive branch, since it greatly expanded the scope of when a judge could overrule agencies. However, judges were mostly already doing this, so the big headline ruling was more like a funeral than a murder.
Along with what others have said, you might want to recognize that Congress controls the purse. They dictate how much the executive should spend on each item, though that can be nuanced (as in "up to this much" vs "exactly this much")
That's because the executive does not have the power to create those departments (Article II does not grant that power).
It's an undeniably weird setup: the departments are staffed and run by the executive branch, and they report up into the president, but they are still accountable to Congress, which is where their power to do anything is derived from.
So he gets to tell police what the law is and who to arrest within the "law" that he proclaimed.
> deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Unfortunately, unlike 1776, today's king was given power by the governed, and the majority (of those who care enough to vote) still support him. So I don't know where those of us who are horrified go from here.
Four years feels like a long time when it has just started; it isn’t so long at all in hindsight. Moreover, you have two years before the next opportunity you have to disempower Trump (midterm elections). The campaigns for those start in a year or so, so if you’re going to cripple Trump by taking back Congress now is the time to be introspective.
The electorate is not irreconcilable, but change doesn’t happen when you double down on the same course.
> try to figure out why your message and candidate failed
I don't like Harris' message. I probably disagree with her on a majority of political debate topics. I am a centrist and would agree with her on some things, but I would have considered myself a right leaning centrist more than a left leaning centrist. Her message failed for me too. I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man? And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.
I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.
Yep, 100%. My biases are showing :)
> I am more concerned about the potential for the complete capitulation of American democracy to totalitarianism than any particular platform issues. What's happening right now is only a small part standard disagreements between parties (the GOP banning trans athletes, rebalancing the budget, approaching foreign relations differently) and much more about half the country being entranced by a cult of personality while the leaders in a position to stop a president from becoming a king instead are bowing down to him.
Yes, I’m concerned about the risks I’m seeing too. Where I’m really struggling is in trying to connect that emotion to facts. So far, every headline, article, and statement I’ve seen has turned out to be somewhere between “misleading” and “outright malicious falsehood” upon closer inspection.
Still, I read and give each one a fair chance to change my mind. The accusations being made are so extreme it would be wrong for me not to.
What really concerns me is that this extreme partisan rhetoric would make it much easier for Trump or someone near him to actually take control. When people have seen months and months of these sorts of assertions being made, only to investigate them and discover that isn’t what was happening at all… at some point, people are going to stop listening. That’s when things get really dangerous IMO.
My biggest fear with this administration is that they’ll actually do the things they’re being accused of, I’ll see it for what it is, and I won’t be able to get anyone to listen to me because of “outrage fatigue”.
ETA: a second response is coming for the last section :)
I disagree that there is an excess of hyperbole going on.
I truly believe that Trump/Musk/Vance and the unitary-executive/techbro-cult, if they are not soon stopped in their tracks, will have subverted American political and economic power for generations.
Europe and Canada and the world can no longer trust the United States as a long-term partner. This isn't about subtle pivots and diplomacy. This is betrayal of values on our closest political, military and economic allies.
He is actively destroying the apolitical civil service and trying to gut the pipeline of young, skilled workers into federal government. The only motive for the actions they are taking are to destroy our government. I would not be shocked to hear reports in the coming months of military officers being asked who they voted for in 2024.
He is claiming (and trying to exert!) levels of executive power that generations of Americans were taught by Nixon were forbidden.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
"If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented and that means we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.”
These quotes should frighten every American.
> I truly believe that Trump/Musk/Vance and the unitary-executive/techbro-cult, if they are not soon stopped in their tracks, will have subverted American political and economic power for generations.
I actually agree with this statement. The difference is that I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. From my perspective those power structures have been in the control of the left[†] for my entire life; they've had near-complete control since at least FDR, and substantial influence back to ~1900.
[†]: "the left" isn't a great descriptor here, but I don't really have an objective way to name the group I'm referencing. I think you know what I mean, if not feel free to ask and I'll expound on it.
--
Note: I wrote this section by doing my best to empathize with Trump and put myself mentally in his position. I'm assigning my own perceptions of his motivations and perceptions. Please don't take statements made here as my attesting to them being fact. When I make an assertion here, it's because I believe Trump himself would make it, not because I necessarily agree with it or believe it to be true.
Trump intended to "play ball" and steer the federal government through the normal mechanisms in his first term. He was met with far more substantial resistance than he expected and had little success. Then he lost a hotly contested election for a second term, hurting his ego - and I think we all agree that ego is a powerful motivator for Trump.
... but then the Biden administration took control of those same levers of power that Trump had difficultly moving, and turned them on Trump. He was smeared by the media, continued to be mocked even after serving as President, spied upon, and ultimately was the target of multiple political prosecutions. His wealth and his very freedom were directly threatened. This was an extreme escalation. His options in 2024 were binary: he could win the Presidency or have his life destroyed. He won, and now his actions are being driven almost exclusively by righteous indignation.
He's going scorched earth. He's using every available lever of power and pulling them as hard as he can. He's doing things he knows are going to get shot down in the courts and taking actions he knows are "gray" at best, and he's doing as many things at once as possible in an attempt to saturate both the other branches of government and the attention of the electorate.
His goal isn't to leave a legacy in the traditional sense, or to implement a typical policy agenda - he's trying to dismantle century-old entrenched systems of power that have cloaked themselves in the mantle of democracy in an attempt to take control of the same.
--
All of that said, I believe the American people elected him for the same reason I voted for him: because the status quo is unjustifiable, and no other path toward reform is apparent.
I want Trump to destroy the majority of government power and authority. My reasons for that are different than Trump's, and different from most Republicans I've met. Trump voters by and large are framing this as a fight against the "deep state", while I want to see a continuous, gradual reduction in government through redundancy. I'm an anarchist, but not "that kind" of anarchist - I don't want to murder the government, I want it to die of neglect because it's no longer necessary.
The methods he's using scare me. He's pushing the boundaries of Presidential power without question, and almost certainly exceeding them already in some ways. I fully expect that he will continue to do so in larger and more impactful ways.
Even if I'm 100% correct in inferring Trump's intentions, it's still a very dangerous approach. Those power structures are so entrenched because they have inordinate (and inappropriate) influence on the process in p...
The Founders fought and bled and sacrificed together for the free principles that this country was founded on. Trump has done none of these things. In fact, he goes out of his way to show contempt for large swathes of the citizenry on a regular basis. The man is famous for refusing to pay his bills. Why would one expect this nakedly self-interested man to show a shred of honor at the eleventh hour when he has the chance to become a powerful tyrant for the remainder of his life?
I live in Canada and let me tell you we're not covering ourselves in glory when it comes to democracy either. Between laws like bill C-63[1], which would effectively criminalize "bad" online speech and the prime minister suspending parliament[2] for political expediency we're not looking too good.
[1] https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/06/viranis-failed-human-rig...
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/court-challenge-prorogue-pa...
I’m an extremist without question, just not the popular type. Think less “Donald Trump” and more “Ron Paul” :)
> I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man?
The alternative was someone with no obvious positions other than her predecessor’s, who was not elected by her party, and who was honestly just unlikeable as an individual for most people.
Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two: I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone (though I also don’t have sufficient evidence to believe he definitely didn’t), and I don’t think “only self interested” is quite right. I think his motivations are a bit more complex than that, and are more rooted in personal pride and revenge than anything else. I don’t think he intended to win the first time, and I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.
I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.
I don’t believe for a moment that he’s being selfless or altruistic. He’s acting out of self-interest, but not in the way most people would mean that statement.
> And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.
As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.
> I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.
I’d be happy with Obama v. McCain at this point.
> As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.
The one thing I'd like to pick at tonight is this. I don't think many of the people who voted for him would have agreed with all of this a year ago, but they get stuck agreeing with it now out of confirmation bias and because he's on their team, and they want their team to win. It seems more like everything Trump does is approved by the vast majority of his base, no matter what that ends up being.
Before the election I enjoyed the debate between Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris[1]. Shapiro's main point was that though he didn't like a lot of what Trump said, he liked a lot of what Trump did in his first term. Shapiro was of the opinion that Trump wouldn't do all the things he said and that his second term would look a lot like his first.
It is my opinion that, a month into it, Trump's second term now looks nothing like his first, and Trump is making good on all the things he said he would do during his campaign. Everyone isn't Shapiro, but a lot of people listen to him and think like him. Taking Shapiro as an example, I would say he was clearly wrong. But if you watch Shapiro today, he accepts what Trump is doing full stop. He's not out there saying, "I didn't think Trump would actually do all of this." He's acting like this is what he wanted. And, thanks to Shapiro's confirmation bias and a good healthy dose of audience capture, it is what he wanted - at least the part about Trump being right, now that "right" has changed.
Anyway, I typed way longer than I intended to. Thank you for a good civil discussion.
> I’d be happy with Obama v. McCain at this point.
Fully agreed.
Good night.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTnV5RfhIjk&t=3s&pp=ygUWYmVu...
Example during the first term was the "Lock her up" talk about Hillary. He didn't do anything about her at all. And people just accepted it as big talk. Hi supporters (mostly) didn't really expected him to go after her with the DOJ or whatever. It was just campaigning bluster. But today he says he's going to start unnecessary trade wars with allies and people said "its just bluster, he's not really going to do it", immediately to "of course he's going that, he said he would".
When he said that people would not need to vote again if he's elected a second time, was that bluster? Taken out of context? Not to be taken seriously? That's what his supporters said then. But what he starts making moves to actually make that happen? Then its "he said he would do that and was voted in, so that's what america wants". It's a wild to say its what people want when they didn't believe he would do it.
It is what people want. Just look at how many people on HN are aggressively carrying water for Trump and DOGE in these threads. They aren't the minority, they're the mainstream. You can't simply pretend the majority of Trump voters who absolutely do want him to do the things he says either don't exist or didn't vote.
A few days ago I was worried they might pull all their troops out of Europe. Today… I think I’m more worried they won’t.
But people have been warning about this all the way back during the alt-right/Tea Party days of Obama, which Trump was a direct response to.
It's been like watching the slowest train crash in progress, all while half the country accuses the other half of derangement for believing trains are even real.
We used to live in a democracy, not a dimocracy. There were more options than the 2 major parties. Always have been.
> I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone
Yeah, and his name totally didn't show up in Maxwell's black book, and he totally wasn't a pal of Jeffrey Epstein. /s
You're fucking kidding me.
> I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.
My brother in Christ, financial enrichment has been the only goal of Donald Trump, ever. He ran in 2016 expecting to lose so he could use the base as viewers of the new Fox-alt media platform he was trying to raise money for.
This is a guy whose life mission is to convince everyone else he's a billionaire, while simultaneously threatening to sue anyone who claims he isn't, while also simultaneously avoiding lawsuits that would open his finances up to discovery. He tried to sue his own biographer when said biographer claimed he wasn't a billionaire. Trump dropped the case when it went to discovery.
>I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.
His first run was in 2000. His second run was 2012. Third run got him elected. His fourth run saw him defeated. His fifth run got him re-elected. Get your facts straight.
> Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two
So then you agree that he tried to overthrow an election? This is the wild part to me. I don't know whether his actions after losing the 2020 election were technically illegal or not, but in my opinion this was the clearest threat to America's peaceful transition of power I've ever witnessed. I thought "okay, this is at least 50x worse than Watergate, even Trump won't survive this." Then amazingly (to me), he won in 2024. My only hypothesis for how that happened is that 99% of people who voted for him believed his unfounded claims regarding the 2020 election. But you seem to be an interesting counterexample.
In my limited view Obama was very centrist, as was Hillary, and with some notable exceptions it looked like Kamala would continue the trend (while expediently skewing left and sometimes even slightly right when necessary).
I think if you were to pie chart policy even into Trumps first term you’d see presidential action being both majority in volume and majority in impact as centrist.
So while I agree that Kamala’s messaging failed to point this out during the election, and DEI rhetoric and action being a notable exception to my argument, Kamala was at the end of the day the centrist candidate IMO and thus the 2.0 correction would be more transparency to that reality.
If a scientist going up against a fraud, and the fraud wins the debate, then it’s not a debate.
This is what happened back when experts went to Fox and talked about climate change in the 90s.
They were simply obliterated. Even if a point was made, it would be killed and something else floated during the evening shows.
Because it’s not a debate. It’s not about truth, or democracy.
Trump dodged every debate after Harris came on the scene. He was not humiliated for this.
One team wants to win. The other team wants a functioning nation.
The electorate is functionally irreconcilable if the message never gets to them, and their party punishes bipartisan behavior.
And this is not what america was set up to survive. It was assumed that people would reach across the aisle.
Even if you win the next election. The ground work for Trump 3.0 and beyond remains.
People need to look at Fox News, and develop ways to get past their censorship and message curation.
This reminds me of a supreme Court ruling a few years ago where the rights of native Indians had been trampled on in Oklahoma for 100 years. The court said something like "well, now that you bring it up--stop it!"
checks notes
Castrating the other 2 in an effort to consolidate the third! Yeah!!
I'm going to write essays to those I care about and also coordinate action plans with like minded individuals to be ready for scenarios of neo-nazi rallies or certain extreme behaviors, should they occur in my city.
I'm debating protesting solo with signs along our roads; someone did that recently in my city and said they had to flee because Trump supporters surrounded him and threatened him. But it needs done.
Oligarchs are always greatly outnumbered.
The only thing that is genuinely effective is mass movement. A coalition of labor unions could shut down all of Elon and Trumps businesses in hours. Block the entrances to the factories. General strikes, boycotts, that kind of thing. It’s not actually that complicated.
Instead the modern Democratic Party is in love with appeals to the referees. They think that if they can just convince some court or The NY Times editorial board or a 75 year old former republican special prosecutor they’ll win.
As we have seen that approach is a total and complete failure.
If someone in opposition was able to generate mass collective action however the change would be swift. Nobody is really trying that though.
I think they need to split their approach into two.
One for to keep Their base energized.
One to use the system and protect itself. The courts, the local elections.
What is being taken out are the systems that run the country. The dems have to be the one to defend it.
But frankly, I think the battleground is a media battleground.
The problem is the actual leadership of the Democratic Party isn't on the side of working people at all, and is actually actively hostile to those in favor of classic labor policies.
Don't get me wrong the other side is absolutely not on the side of working people either, that's more than apparent.
The entire dynamic we're seeing right now is a battle between two competing groups of elites. More on that concept here: https://www.compactmag.com/article/doge-as-class-war/
But with those caveats out of the way, a bona-fide labor movement could make short work of all this bullshit. Unfortunately the purpose of the modern Democratic Party appears to be to occupy the place in our system where a labor party is supposed to reside.
It's also not obvious to me that a bona fide labor movement would take a particularly strong stance on an executive order curtailing independent agencies. Being invested in the details of how paper-pushing agencies are structured is a very elite concern.
To some extent yes. But also those issues have big implications for working people. It's possible to talk about them in a way that inspires and builds a movement, or in a way that makes people feel stupid and excluded from the conversation. Often they choose the latter.
> It's also not obvious to me that a bona fide labor movement would take a particularly strong stance on an executive order curtailing independent agencies
It should be absolutely obvious why the labor movement might be opposed to what is literally the largest layoff in American history.
And I'm not sure it's a fair assessment to say union members 'barely' lean Democrat https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/17/key-facts...
> There’s very few groups outside of the Democratic Party infrastructure which are polarized enough to take a side.
The last 2 presidential elections saw the highest turnouts since 1968. It seems like people aren't having a problem picking sides.
* Supporting the Democratic Party against its main opponent is very different from supporting it in its own right. There's a lot of people in the US who would prefer for Chuck Schumer to be the majority leader, but very few who look to him for cues on what they ought to believe or fight for.
* There's very few spaces where the Democrats are dominant enough to form a nucleus of mass resistance. 50-43 among union members is a nonzero lead, but if you go to your union local to organize an anti-Trump protest, that 43% represents quite a lot of voices who won't agree with the premise that there's anything to protest.
If you are in a red state/district, first step would be to contact your elected federal rep(s) and tell them that you're displeased.
Use language like "Trump was elected to correct Biden's overreach, but he's now overreaching in a much worse way." Put it in language where you frame things like a 'Constitutionalist' and 'limited government'. The stereotypical small-government, Originalist GOPer.
If you come off sounding like a Democrat they'll probably ignore you, but if the (so-called) 'grass roots' MAGA folks are thought to be upset then you'll probably get more traction.
Or you'll just be ignored regardless.
I also told them that working on legislation for protecting George C Marshall's house, and protecting bourbon, are not valuable uses of their time given the destruction currently being waged on the US Government.
In France if they'd raise the price of baguettes by 10% you'd have strikes from teachers, public transportation drivers, dock workers, train drivers, doctors, trash truck drivers, &c. all at once, after a week it would be complete chaos and the government would have no choice but to negotiate
In the US everyone is playing their little game on their side, decades of free for all capitalism at work
That was an unexpectedly good turnaround vs the first statement. Damn, I was not expecting to have such a hard laugh.
You should also add "social" media to your picture. I think that has ravaged whatever was left of social cohesion over here.
If you are a Republican but don't approve of how the GOP majority has basically rolled over and abdicated its duty as a check on the president, remind your congresspeople that they owe loyalty to their constituents, not to other politicians. Taxpayers pay their salaries.
The Democratic party is also in desperate need of repairs if you are interested in direct political action. They have been self-destructing over the past couple of years, plagued by infighting, deer-in-the-headlights paralysis, political tone-deafness, and incompetence in messaging.
In addition, the increasingly authoritarian shift by the Federalist society ought to make room for a new counterpart promoting the rule of law. IANAL but have always wondered why the Federalist society had no similarly prominent opposing organization.
They got us here. The party needs to be gutted.
Democrats did screw up by not allowing the people to choose the candidate. They also screwed up again by not preemptively creating safeguards in case Trump won, and by not strengthening the elections. Too many ballots were thrown out.
Now they are further enabling this by basically displaying no opposition.
What you can do is get out votes. People knocking on doors is still one of the largest drivers of votes so if you organize those systems they will listen to you.
I think more people would benefit from forming Super PACs and using that as leverage in pushing political change with parties.
I have no idea how you even propose that to happen
And the US military doesn't answer to the people at least not directly. I don't think it should be swayed by public opinion like that. I mean, we're talking about a military coup here. I despise Donald Trump and would like nothing more than to see him drummed out of office, but the military making that happen means we don't have a democracy anymore.
I'm trying to restrict my spending as much as possible. No new car, no vacation (or at least nothing big), limiting eating out, etc. I'm cutting back on as many unnecessary expenses as I can, and being mindful of what businesses I do spend my money on.
This is how it is, how it has been, and is entirely consistent with the Constitution.
So, if not that, then why issue this EO?
First of all, it’s a statement: “Resistance to this agenda from within the executive branch will not be effective”
Secondly, it helps ensure that when the President issues a statement, it’s not immediately met with bureaucrats making statements to the contrary.
Nonsense! This is the exact opposite! This is EO shows Trump trying even harder to fire all the people who refuse to go along with his crimes.
He is asserting that when the Judicial branch concludes his firings are illegal, he's going to ignore it, and then fire anyone else who refuses to help him illegally fire people.
It's the democracy-destroying version of a Monty Python sketch: The people who followed the law have been sacked. The people who didn't sack the people who followed the law have also been sacked.
Where?
… and preceded by “The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch”
Nothing in that says anything about countermanding a judicial ruling. If anything, it says that the President should set the strategy during litigation rather than one federal case making one argument while another makes a contradictory argument in reference to the same law.
What about things like drug approvals? I don't want Trump to ban certain drugs just because they didn't donate to his campaign. I don't want Trump to approve Elon Musk's brain chips just because Musk told him to.
Supreme Court Judges are appointed by elected officials, but then don’t report to anyone. Maybe a fed chairmen is like that? But there is no constitutional office like that. Surely congress can’t make up offices which are then untouchable?
I don’t want trump playing transactional games with the FDA either, but I don’t see how that can be balanced with the powers. He is the chief executive.
I mentioned in another comment that one angle that would make more sense than arguing that agencies are “independent” is to argue that trump is not enforcing the law already written by congress, so taking away the power of the legislature. That seems like a more fruitful take.
Congress put in a process for a fed chairman to be appointed in a way that jointly incorporates president, house and senate. Similarly firing them also needs joint cooperation, then the people have some say by electing/unelecting a congress or president that fucks it up. Same for FDA, USPS, etc etc. I definitely want a formalized process to hire and fire these guys and not just up to whims of individual executives.
This is established in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Delivering reports to is different than them being able to hire and fire. Presidents appoint fed chairmen.
You left out who the federal reserve is controlled by. It's not completely independent right? In its current form, it is owned and controlled by regional federal reserves which are controlled by the banks.
You are advocating for the corporate bank control of the money supply (and interest rates). One definition of fascism is the merger of corporate and government power. One sign of oligarchy is when corporations control the regulation of their industry.
"Independent government agencies" is just a code word for industry controlled government agencies (which are a form of fascism or oligarchy).
Literally DOGE
Literally DOGE
But sure, Trump could absolutely instruct the FDA to rescind certain drug approvals. There are of course processes that legally need to be followed in order to do that, but he could do it.
When the history books are written, this executive order, along with the past few weeks of actions, will be seen as the seeds of the 2nd American revolution.
The USA had a solid 250 year run but technology, money, and greed have unfortunately undone the very core of what America stood for.
We cannot know at this point where this is going, but it seems like fascism is the inevitable course. My fear is that if you combine that path with the power of the US military, the world is in for a very scary time.
So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business?
On the other hand, one of the issues brought up in the Obama years was whether a president can choose not to enforce a law like immigration. If congres’s laws can be ignored than what power do they have?
Genuine question. Does anyone have a constitutional framing for the duties of the executive branch in prioritizing enforcement or implementation of law?
Cooperation which has been deemed too transparent, too vulnerable to actually caring about what is being destroyed.
So maybe congress has a kind of veto power here?
But we need to get through the first few months before any of this will play out. And after that there is still a long time before the 2026 elections.
But the cynic in my knows that a big chunk of a legislator's job is figuring out how to get re-elected next term. If (when) Trump does things unpopular with regular Republicans, and legislators are seen to be doing nothing to help their constituents, they'll start to worry they won't get re-elected.
It'll be the same thing that's happened with Democrats: Republican voter turnout will suffer because the candidates in front of them aren't doing anything useful for them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55510151
I guess there's a chance Trump will do something so horribly unpopular that there will be extreme bipartisan support for limiting his power in some ways. But I'm not sure I'd rely on that either.
So who are such agencies accountable to? Congress. Just like the president is accountable to Congress.
If it’s that clear will it be easy to take this to the Supreme Court?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
So the upper management is composed of political appointments. And like any other organization, the upper management has considerable discretion in setting priorities.
re: "politically selective law enforcement" is not a good thing, because laws are one of the things that are supposed to constrain politicians.
The reason for this is stability. Congress, businesses, international allies, and most US citizens typically don't want things to dramatically change every new presidential administration. And the primary way to ensure that stability is to make it so the same people are working in various government offices from administration to administration. And I think people are quickly learning why that stability is desirable, as the current administration attempts to dismantle it with no consideration for the consequences.
You can’t even say that Congress is solely the source of those constraints since the laws creating and governing these agencies were signed by… the president!
Most of these agencies have already been challenged in court and the Constitutionality of their structure and governance affirmed.
Unless someone can make an argument that they actually report to congress.
How? Judicial branch is independent.
All three branches are now run by ideologues. There is no independent thought. There may be independence on paper, and on that we would agree. But the situation here in reality isn’t really related to what’s on paper. In fact these folks mean to ignore all the current laws and just do whatever the fuck they want and I’m not making that up. I’m reporting what I see.
Certainly that's not universal. Some Trump appointees will likely balk when Trump goes too far in their estimation. But this is what happens when the GOP politicizes their judicial appointments.
The president has a lot of constitutional protection to run the executive branch, though obviously congress has ways to pass laws and influence that, too.
The president isn’t accountable to congress but there are checks and balances both ways
Sounds like what the parent was saying, so not flatly incorrect.
“If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot.”
This is, indeed, flatly incorrect. Congress cannot pass a law requiring that the Secretary of State or Defense or Treasury be fired only for cause. The SCOTUS case knocking it down would likely be 9-0.
“Congress writes the laws and can make them say whatever they want” totally ignores separation-of-powers concerns that the Constitution and its guardians in Article III courts take very seriously.
No one is saying Congress can restrict the President from firing political appointees or his Cabinet.
We're talking about the quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial agencies here. In the case you cite, Humphrey was on the FTC, and Roosevelt tried to fire him. The Court said the President couldn't him because Congress wrote it in the law. That's exactly what the other poster was saying, so how are they flatly incorrect?
The oral arguments in Selia Law v. CFPB may be enlightening here:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/19-7
The other poster was right and you posted case law proving their point.
Congress can’t reorganize the Treasury as an independent agency. Why not? Making the sole director of the CFPB dismissible only for cause was ruled unconstitutional. Why?
Taking the claim made by the original poster as accurate would lead you to get both of these important questions wrong.
This is something that has existed for a very long time but has been changing lately and will almost certainly show up in the Supreme Court again.
It limits that power when it comes to the quasi-legislative agencies.
That was the unambiguous law of the land for nearly 100 years until the current court whittled down the exclusion in Seila in 2020.
In some ways he was even harder than Bush during the post 9/11 response.
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not
It’s astounding the regularity over the last 100 years that conservatives have used immigration narratives to fire up their base regardless of what statistical data shows.
Obama may have deported lots of people, but Trump famously used the same institutions to detain and torture minors indefinitely... Which of those is "harder" against immigration?
It's the same issue that is happening now. Biden deported a lot more people, but he focused on people entering the US or caught doing something. Trump is deporting a low fewer people, but he randomly taking people from their homes, workplaces and schools. Which one do you think appears "harder" on TV?
Maybe it's more a case of rampant mathematical illiteracy all over the press and people paying more attention to extraordinary events. I really don't know.
Are you talking about the "cages" that were built under Obama and continued under every president thereafter, including Biden? Or what?
The "cages" are the same whether you keep people there for a couple of days waiting for a flight back into their country or for months for no good reason.
Perhaps you should view this through the lens of the Biden administration.
It's astounding the regularity that people bring Obama when they want to avoid discussing reality.
Here's a link for some numbers that include Biden: https://www.newsweek.com/immigrant-deportations-removals-tru...
tl;dr: Biden seems to have deported more than any other president
In theory it does, that is the whole idea and genius of the constitution.
In fact at the moment it does not, because Trump has so captured the Republican party that the legislature has almost no power to stand up to him. The Supreme Court has a long history of judges aligning with the political party that seated them, and Trump put 3 of them into their seat.
Yes, it does, by the nature of them existing and Congress establishing them. Show me where in the Constitution that they can't do that.
It would be strange if congress can designate untouchable officials. Why don’t they just grant themselves office for life?
So yes, Congress has wide leeway to create agencies to administer particular executions of laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.
Furthermore, we don't have untouchable officials. What does that hypothetical have to do with anything?
The heads of these agencies that Trump is removing are protected from being fired immediately, fired without Congressional notification, and from being fired without cause.
Rank-and-file civil servants are protected from being fired unrelated to performance precisely so we don't revert to the patronage systems of the 1800s.
That cannot be true. They do not get a lifetime claim to the treasury which is not revocable by elected officials.
The members of the executive branch work for the chief executive.
If the law is that that an official cannot be fired without cause, then that's that, if there's no cause. Maybe they have a term of employment in that position, and when it ends, they leave. Maybe Congress can fire them via some other appropriate mechanism. But if the law says the president cannot fire them without cause, then that's just not a power the president has.
* FOIA tells the executive branch when/how to share documents.
* APA tells executive agencies what they have to do to make a rule.
* Congress gives line item budgets, and the executive doesn't get to reassign funds.
* Executive agencies must submit to audits from GAO (within congress)
It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive agency heads can be hired/fired too. After all, it's agencies that congress enacted and gave power too, and for legitimiate reasons that congress has.
[1] https://www.commondreams.org/news/cnn-foia-office-of-personn...
In some limited employment law sense , maybe. The question is who gives these people orders? Who do they work for? And the answer can’t be themselves.
That isn't necessarily the case for all officials. For example, I believe Congress can't prevent the president from firing a member of the cabinet. But that doesn't mean the president can do whatever he wants to anyone.
The Administration is required to follow the law and to implement it with due care as the legislation intended.
The Legislature can impeach the Administration, it can hold it's officers in contempt, and it can pass laws constraining the Administration.
It's a simple problem: NO ONE IS DOING THEIR JOB. This is because they can get away with it and you don't actually have the power to vote them out. The media is part of the problem and is no longer serving the interests of the citizens. The monopolized corporations ensure you cannot use the Internet to meaningfully solve this problem. Look at this garbage thread. Look at all these garbage threads on here every time some political problem comes up. It's all compromised claptrap designed to appeal to corporate American but in no way to connect and govern in a modern fashion with each other.
Look at turn out on voting day when a presidential election is not slated. It's typically less than 25% of the voting age population that turns out. If you sit and think about this for one minute you will see why we are where we are.
The problem here is that if you impeach Trump, then you get Vance, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. You impeach Vance, and you get Johnson, who will do the same stuff Trump is doing. And so on, down the line. Eventually you run out of people in the presidential line of succession, and then you have a real problem. I suppose eventually you get to the point where you have a president who doesn't feel like getting impeached? But by then the damage to the institution has been done.
> it can hold it's officers in contempt
Who is going to enforce any orders (fines, imprisonment) around those contempt rulings? Congress and federal courts don't really have much law enforcement personnel to speak of. Trump controls federal law enforcement, and he can instruct them to ignore contempt rulings.
I guess the House (for example) has the Sergeant at Arms, but their law enforcement staff is limited, and I don't think they're going to want to get into a conflict with, say, the Secret Service, if they go to arrest a cabinet member, but Trump says no.
> and it can pass laws constraining the Administration.
There are already laws constraining the administration, and Trump and Musk are running roughshod over them. Why would they obey new laws they don't like?
At what point are your personal thresholds crossed?
I dont understand personally, how any conservative could tolerate this man.
Nor any techie lose their minds when someone without a security clearance gets access to sensitive national networks.
I’ve seen more complex plans used by spies to break into state secrets.
Yet, people are surprisingly chill.
So perhaps I am wrong. And perhaps there are other signs I should be looking for.
At what point should I or anyone say “major redlines have been crossed.”
There's something peculiar about how liberals are now so offended by "security" when the federal government has showed complete incompetence over the past decade or even more.
All the security clearance data was leaked from federal servers. What else do we have to lose. Never mind that countless federal employees see your social security info. It's regularly fraudulently submitted by illegal foreigners too.
None of the criticisms I've seen from you or others are alarming.
What was alarming was watching Biden for 4 years completely non compos mentis and a media filled with liberals who would censor and ridicule ANY mention of this obvious fact. That's the GRAVEST national security threat, everything else PALES in comparison, and not a peep from the people who lit their entire political capital on fire over the ridiculous patently-false charades to never admit fault.
What are your personal red lines? I am serious. Sure. Biden may have been whatever, But you will still have some personal lines you wouldn’t cross.
You have values, you have things you would like to know you stood up for.
What are they? This isn’t a gotcha. If you think the line is not crossed, no problem.
But tell me what your lines are.
- there are non Republican candidates to vote for
- the right to vote hasn't been crippled somehow
- elections are fair
(For the record, I don't agree with GP, and do believe that we'll have free and fair elections in 2028.)
Have you done your nerd research on how Nazis dismantled the democratic state? If so, at what step would you have gatekept calling it fascist?
Blanket calling worried people as "juvenile" as a dismissal is in itself pretty fucking juvenile, hope you can see that.
What the Nazi's did was horrifici, and it's incredibly insensitive, inappropriate, and, yes, juvenile, to water that down by using it for political point scoring.
It seems like you get butthurt from reading people calling moves very similar to fascism done by politicians you support, fascism takes many flavours, Italian fascism was different from German fascism. The way it's going the past month looks like to be shaping an American flavour of fascism.
There's no watering down, you are seeing with your own eyes a movement happening where the leader of the executive is attempting to snatch power, it never happens at once, it's always through salami slicing. What will be the breaking point for you, specifically? What signs do you expect so it can be called fascism?
You are all around this forum whining about "progressives" trying to heed a call about a dark path being traced. You never seem to acknowledge there are very worrying moves happening, for some reason you do not want to hear it, you want to shut off the discussion at every turn by using progressives as a slur, and anything said by that out-group as wrong or hysterical a priori. Can't you see how stupid it is? You are always attempting to throw a wrench into these discussions with vitriol, as a non-American I really ask you to inform and educate yourself better, to learn about the process of fascism before coming with knee-jerk reactions because you don't like "progressives".
Go read "Hitler's Beneficiaries", read any book on historical recounts of the process of fascism unravelling from the 1920s to the 1930s, you are behaving exactly as the citizens enabling Mussolini and Hitler. American Fascism will not be Nazi or Italia Fascista, it has its own shape and form (such as not being anti-semitic, completely different to Nazis) but even though the topography differs, the core principles are pretty much the same.
Don't be an enabler, you won't like to be on the wrong side of history.
I think that speaks for itself and I need not to comment on this.
Americans, why? Why are you so keen on dabbling with a homegrown fascism of yours? Why are you so keen on setting the world aflame?
I think some people just know a few images from the Nazis at the height of their power. Or the death camps, that were only discovered because the Nazis lost the war (the plan was to erase all traces, after all). No concept of the 1920s, not even "Mein Kampf", nothing.
No, that's the fucking end point of it, after all is done and the wheels have been far gone from the wagon, the process itself is much more nuanced and step-wise but the uneducated ones never ever heard of it. Feels like they live in a world where someone turned on a switch and everything changed at once...
Worst: it's coming from people who have lived through a pandemic, watched the social strife and divisions unfolding right in front of their faces, how can those same people not see that massive social movements aren't ever clear-cut? It's all just so stupid and ignorant.
Most Americans couldn't tell you much about how Hitler came into power. (Or Mussolini? Forget it.) The majority of what Americans know about it all are exactly what you said: black-and-white scenes of SS officers, Hilter giving speeches, and swastika armbands.
There's no lingering WWII war damage in the US. We don't have monuments dedicating places where major battles were fought. The war wasn't fought here. We don't see reminders of what all that was like.
When I was born, WWII was only 35 years behind us. Many of the people who were involved in it at the time (politicians, soldiers, etc.) were not only alive, but still active in public discourse in major ways. But today, WWII ended 80 years ago. Most everyone who experienced it is dead. Awareness of all of it is still present in Europe because it was all literally close to home. Not so in the US.
This honestly shouldn't be all that surprising. History repeats and rhymes, over and over throughout the decades and centuries. All it takes is a couple generations to forget its lessons.
I see comments in these threads from people who lived through the forming of dictatorships in their countries. I wish more people would listen to them.
> "Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"
> "Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
> "Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.
> "We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatint...
Nazis never nationalised any industry and rather used corporatism to take hold of them while those were still private entities, same in Italy, industry and fascist regimes walked hand-in-hand.
Saying those are equivalent to socialism just due to populist rhetoric is misleading and historically wrong...
This complaint is also like saying communists weren’t authentic because the government withheld power from the Soviet’s and used the Soviet narrative to gain popular support.
We compare ideologies on a political spectrum. It’s harder to compare implementations because they all look like corruption. Hitler is one person in a political movement. He did write the platform I linked to though.
They did actually implement many of these things, such as universal healthcare (for their race).
On Hitler about the Socialist moniker, I posted this earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101676
If you have some specialized definition of socialism that this doesn’t meet. That’s fine. But this is nothing like the libertarianism or small government conservatism.
Sturmabteilung occupied all trade unions, arrested union leaders and threw them into concentration/labour camps.
Go read about the Nazi creation of the German Labour Front a little before spewing this absolute bullshit.
Why are you trying to rewrite history?
Seriously, why would you believe the stated goals instead of their actions? Do you trust Nazis?
I don't know that “when the working class democratically (either via democratic control of the state, through democratic control at the level of individual firms or industries, or otherwise) control the means of production” is actually a “specialized” definition of socialism.
Socialism is not centrally about the state providing goods, Its about who controls the means of production. Provision of public goods by the state is an expected outcome of the kind of socialism where a democratic state is the vehicle of proletarian control of the means of production, but it is not the production and delivery of those goods, independent of the nature of the state and who is empowered to control the means of production through it, that makes the system “socialist”
Führerprinzip is about as opposed to socialism as any element of any real or hypothetical system can be.
Trump's a hero to the right, but on the left there's a pretty reasonable sense that Trump's actions have already amounted to literal treason if you consider him to have an obligation to uphold the oaths he has taken.
He attempted to get Zelensky to go on US TV and execute a political attack on Democrats as a condition of the US helping Ukraine.
He attempted to get the 2020 election flipped by making mafia-don style calls to Georgia asking them to "find" precisely the number of votes which would have made him win that election. He next asked Pence to change the result for him. All of these were acts of open treason against the People of the United States, so long as you count the People of the United States as including people who didn't vote for him.
No, that function is within the purview of the legislature, not the executive branch.
I would also cool it with the dismissive tone and avoid saying things like "cray cray" before accusing anyone else of being juvenile.
The elite capture is multiplicitively damaging because the elite own nearly all major media outlets. WaPo, NYT, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Neutrality is implicit support for power over justice. Justice requires challenging those with power, because those with power are the default victors in conflict. Evil wins when good men do nothing.
The Hacker News algorithm is easily gamed. Downvoting and flagging will sink any post, but resigned consent to a fait accompli is the win condition for this coup. The less they are publicly challenged, the easier it is to seize power without resistance. The easier it is to keep exercises of power unchecked.
State AGs and members of the house of representatives are making public official statements with the power of their office that we are experiencing a coup. This is historic.
I really wish dang would privilege more of these discussions about the end of constitutional rule from the automatic downward moderation of controversy and flagging.
The number of largely independent media platforms which allow for open and public discussion without major algorithmic influence is few. Failing to challenge power, submitting to it, or protecting yourself from attention is the easy thing to do, and right now we all have the privilege of doing so, but this slow moving disaster will seep into every area of our lives as the scaffolding of trust is eroded and the lack of consequences for those who exercise arbitrary power will make it a winning strategy to take advantage of people.
I understand hacker news is a place for curiosity, but curiosity is not allowed when obedience is demanded, and that is what authoritarians do, demand obedience. Maintaining one day's curiosity at the cost of tomorrow's defeats the goal of being a place for curiosity. The right to question authority... the right to be curious must be defended.
We agree this is a catastrophe, but I don't think that media and the liberal political parties are willful codefendants.
Money is by definition zero sum, otherwise the word "inflation" would have no meaning. There are good questions around what an over leveraged loan is, but fundamentally, the supply of money is to some degree fixed at any given moment.
The wealthy and powerful keep their money in tax benefited, inflation tracking assets. Many of those assets are stocks, and a major business cost is labor. Wages are generally not inflation tracking. That amplifies the benefit of inflation to the wealthy. So the buying power lost by suppressed wages and devalued savings, as well as the devaluing of all money currently in flight such as paychecks, is exactly gained by those with wealth/ownership. Inflation also makes loan's cheaper to pay off, further benefiting those with enough assets to get a loan.
When the market stagnates or companies freeze hiring or do mass layoffs, it puts employees in an even worse negotiating position resulting in even more suppressed wages past the first order effect of inflation.
So what's even better for the rich than tax breaks is inflation.
The fed is the beating heart of the economy, it pumps money through its sluices.
The fed is in many ways the Balrog deep in Moria.
Oligarchs do answer to other oligarchs, even if they don't answer to law, and there's a good chance that many of them see the impending potential disaster of either stagflation -- people won't have enough money to buy goods and the economy stalls and maybe doesn't restart, or hyperinflation -- the definitive end of American hegemony as countries move to a different reserve currency and America is no longer able to fund its military. The economy is also directly tied, if not most directly tied, to the legitimacy of the ruling regime, so a policy of choosing loyalists over qualifications or letting it be corrupted by someone selling out tomorrow for today is likely to lead to actual civil unrest instead of performative civil unrest.
My guess is that the finance business oligarchs see it as a red line because the moment the fed is corrupted, it's no longer their fed, but Trump's fed, and that will be equivalent to the moment Putin gathered all of Russia's oligarchs, with one of them in a diminutive cage in a court room, and then said "half" and held out his ring with the implication of the power relationship being clear (part of the greater story of the Magnitsky act).
It's also worth noting that normally you would get capital flight once the wealthy get scared, but the US has told every foreign country that American citizens in that country are under American jurisdiction and therefore all wealth must be reported to the US government, so while in the past an oligarch might have been happy to cause civil unrest with their unchecked greed, America's deep financial reach means that many will pay a hefty price, if they are even allowed exfiltrate the majority of their fortunes at all, binding them to the outcome of fed decisions as well.
But I'm very far from an expert, so probably wrong about some of that.
This effect can be minimized or neutered if their assets grow in real terms, but that only works in a growing-pie world, too
It’s also why there’a always some level of inflation: Modest inflation is a sign of a healthy economy.
Debatable.
But the opposite, deflation, hits the poor much harder.
It was deflation, the gold standard, and the insistence of balanced budgets that caused revolutions all over the world:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity:_The_History_of_a_Da...
It was dropping prices that caused ferment in the US:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech
It was FDR getting off the gold standard and balance budgets that helped the US recover:
* https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-money-makers-how-roosevelt-...
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24945314-the-money-maker...
> Money is by definition zero sum, otherwise the word "inflation" would have no meaning.
I have no idea what this even means.
> Debatable
Wait how is this debatable. We saw wealth inequality explode in ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 and ‘23 as the wealthiest Americans navigated rapid inflation and then rate cuts by strategically buying everything they could and then turning into activist investors and forcing RTO and mass layoffs despite record profits.
Wealthy people can take advantage of economic turmoil by selling high and buying low, the greatest example being Buffets mass sell off and subsequent repurchasing.
What am I missing?
Wealth inequality was previously at its highest point in the US during the Gilded Age, when the US was still on the gold standard and inflation was not as much of a thing (and deflation often reined):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression
During the 1970s, US inflation was quite high:
* https://www.investopedia.com/inflation-rate-by-year-7253832
and yet during the same time period the wealth ownership of the top 0.1% went down:
* https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i...
US wealth inequality only really started rising in the 1980s—as inflation went down. Further, as The Guardian graph shows, concentration has gone up from the 1990s up until now, even though the last few decades have had the lowest, and most stable, inflation numbers in history:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moderation
So the link between inflation and wealth concentration does not appear to have any correlation according to the historical data.
I would hazard to guess that a more promising link to wealth concentration/inequality would be the cutting of tax rates (both corporate and personal) starting during the Reagan administration, and how it reduced redistribution of money to the lower- and middle-class.
What "rapid inflation"? Inflation was right around the historical average for 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. The only outlier was 2022 with 8% inflation, but that's still far from "rapid" historically speaking: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...
The only debate I see is about whether the Austrian school has a point and merely printing money is already harmful or if harm comes only when prices increase.
Also,
> But the opposite, deflation, hits the poor much harder.
Yes. Two different things can be true.
The debate is about the alternatives / counter-factuals: would <0% inflation (read: deflation) be better or worse for poor people than >>0% inflation? How do those two compare to ~0% (e.g., 2%, the Fed target) inflation?
There's a reason why I linked to articles on the topic of the 'cross of gold' and austerity. We've had other ways of doing things in the past and are on the current system for a reason.
A lot of folks seem to want to get rid of the Fed, get back to gold, mercantilism (which is basically what Trump's tariffs are attempting), and generally go back to the 1800s way of doing money/finance:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression
Try reading Project 2025's chapter on the Federal Reserve:
> Free Banking. In free banking, neither interest rates nor the supply of money is controlled by the government. The Federal Reserve is effectively abolished, and the Department of the Treasury largely limits itself to handling the government’s money. Regions of the U.S. actually had a similar system, known as the “Suffolk System,” from 1824 until the 1850s, and it minimized both inflation and economic disruption while allowing lending to flourish.[23]
[…]
> As in the Suffolk System, competition keeps banks from overprinting or lending irresponsibly. This is because any bank that issues more paper than it has assets available would be subject to competitor banks’ presenting its notes for redemption. In the extreme, an overissuing bank could be liable to a bank run.[!] Reckless banks’ competitors have good incentives to police risk closely lest their own holdings of competitor dollars become worthless.[24]
* https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...*
Yay! Bank runs!
Not sure that I agree, nor that the one follows from the other.
Without having the advantage of an Economics degree, I have witnessed when rising tides have lifted all boats and a majority of U.S. society benefited. Perhaps "wealth" is not a zero sum.
And if that is case, talking about "money" is orthogonal. We should talk instead about disposable income, standard of living, etc.
It might seem like it would sound impressive to say that someone has $20k/month of disposable income, but not so much if the housing market has gone crazy and groceries have become scarce and they have to spend $15k/month on a small apartment and barely enough food to feed themselves.
But what happened is that a small subset of elites managed to capture the flow of new fiat money, creating even more concentration. Some social mobility was made possible, but only at the behest of this tiny number of elites... And now it's looking like we're reaching the end of that cycle and social mobility is screeching to a halt... The sheer, grotesque misallocation of fiat money has become hard to ignore. The misallocation appears to be unlimited and serves political agendas. Unlike in the gold-backed era where the elites had to provide actual value to earn their scarce gold, the elite of the current era (and their hand-picked minions) got their wealth mostly through rent-seeking and monopolization of government institutions which provided access to unlimited streams of money.
So now we have no social mobility, inequality is worse than ever (and accelerating) and we have an elite class which is ill-equipped to run any kind of economy which creates value. We are in a situation even worse than the gold-backed money era. At least then, the money was in the hands of people who COULD leverage it to deliver real value out of it. People could dig themselves out of their poverty by providing value which was worth its weight in gold. It was a level playing field. The only people who had priority access to gold were those who dug it out of the ground at great risk/expense to themselves. Nowadays, there is no heuristic or logic that you can use to dig yourself out of poverty. There is no logic behind social mobility aside from social scheming; to be chosen/funded by the elite; which produces no economic value for anyone, not even the elite. They don't even know what they want anymore so they use their money to engage on wild zero-sum political manipulations; billionaires throwing huge amounts of money against each other; going mostly into the pockets of lunatic 'activists' and nothing gets done either way; all the billionaires agendas cancel out; it just creates more crazy people with money roaming around, creating intense divisions over nothing. At the end of the day, all these 'ideological' lunatics (aka experts) funded by billionaires just care about money and they're making up all kinds of nonsense arguments to justify their paychecks... Pretending that they actually care about all this stuff when really, it's all 100% about paychecks. They're literally fighting over money, using all sorts of other ideas and social agendas as pretexts.
The people who have all the money to decide the direction of our economy and society do not have the ability or even the desire to improve it to make it work efficiently in any broad sense; they are only skilled in terms of wealth concentration, not wealth creation.
At this stage, I'm convinced that the economy would work better if the government just started handing out millions of dollars of free money to everyone and let global hyperinflation happen.
If he were to mess with the Fed it would impact Wall Street, particularly by making the market indices go down.
For whatever reason he cares about that in ways he doesn’t care about his approval ratings or the historical norms of the office. See how fast he reached a deal on tariffs earlier in the month when the markets reacted to them? Since then they’ve been slowly leading tariffs to get the message out so when the tariffs come the market will have priced it in.
He’ll get to the Fed. But it won’t be overnight. The administration will start messaging it and choreographing the change long enough before so it won’t spook Wall Street.
Just a small wink, nod or a pause somewhere might cause panic on Wall Street.
If Tesla crashed, so would Elon’s power.
Also Tesla won't collapse because it's investors are the most brain damaged investors, and frankly their self-fulfilling prophecy has kept them repeatedly buying any dip back up. It's been extremely profitable to be a mindless Tesla investor.
It doesn't suck that SpaceX or Tesla exists. It sucks that the person who has profited most from those entities is using their power to destroy government agencies that oversee his companies, and more broadly, to constantly lie and try to destroy the federal government.
He’s given society new products and services that didn’t exist before, the option to purchase from those companies, and the tax revenue from those companies (to the tune of hundreds of billions)
What a weird way to say that. He “gave” us spacex or Tesla.
No, he founded them.
Tesla technically existed on paper before Musk, but they didn’t even have a working prototype, and their facility was a home garage. In all practical terms he founded Tesla as well.
Twitter he bought obviously, which is why I didn’t mention it.
… also I was looking at your comments, your rate of Elon glaze per min is really impressive.
You seem to be acting in bad faith here.
https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-fou...
"No, Elon Musk did not found Tesla; the company was originally founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Musk became involved later as an investor and eventually took on leadership roles, including CEO, after a legal battle over the title of founder."
That is a complete and utter lie. Even Hannity made this obvious in his interview yesterday and the look on Elon’s face was priceless.
I hate "fictitious" valuations as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day it's what people are willing to pay for equity that determines value, not what it's books look like.
And its dropping from the low point it started at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...
I don't know what "considering the circumstances" are but his approval ratings are historically abysmal, not quite high.
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.
conveys respect to the judiciary branch, and states that this only applies to situations where the executive branch is interpreting laws in isolation during their enforcement of them (which happens quite often).
However, following that line:
> No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.
Feels weirder, because it implies that when executive branch employees find themselves between a rock and a hard place on when a law is interpreted differently between the President and Judicial branches they must follow the Presidential interpretation; or they'll presumably be fired.
The way I see it: This isn't a broad departure from the behavior of the system two weeks ago. The office of the President, especially under Trump, has regularly taken the action of replacing employees who are unaligned with the President's agenda. When the rubber hits the road and we get to a material matter that the President and the Judicial branch disagree on, what it might come down to is: the Judicial branch can bring a suit against the employees to follow their interpretation, but the President could fire them if they do, and the President could pardon them if they instead follow the Presidential way. That's, essentially, the same situation the American system has been in for hundreds of years; the only difference right now is that we have a President who might actually do that.
Which draws back to something I've said a few times: Presidents from both parties, over the past 50 years, but especially Bush and Obama, have been relentless in interpreting the law in a direction which centralizes power into the Executive. The "normalcy" of the office until Trump was never enforced through legality; it was only decorum. It was only a matter of time before someone rejected this decorum, born out of congressional deadlock and the dire state of many Americans' wellbeing, to make the government and executive branch actually do something about it.
This isn't the first time America has had to face this question; not even close. Trump isn't exposing new weaknesses in our system; the weaknesses have always been there. Worcester v. Georgia (1832) is a great example. It ended with the President saying F.U. to the Supreme Court, refusing to enforce one of their interpretations, and, well, the Trail of Tears happened.
"Weakness", however, is an interesting term to deploy for this; it implies that the default state of the American system is that you need supermajority alignment for the government to accomplish anything, and if actors in the system find a legal way around that requirement, its a "weakness". Phrased more simply: Strength is inaction, Weakness is action. Of course, many Americans would disagree with any assertion that this is desirable, especially in the unstable geopolitical and economic situation we're in. Trump was elected, by majority electoral and popular vote, to take action; most Americans would not call the cracks he is cleaving open to accomplish his agenda a "weakness" of the system.
People are alarmed and concerned because they know it's not new. It's not difficult to find horrors in American history. Decorum and norms exist for the purpose of attempting to smooth over these stress points and make a safer power structure that hopefully prevents tragedies like this. The relative peace and safety we've enjoyed for the half century or so has been largely based on a modern era of good feelings and respectful norms.
When those norms go away and the authoritarian president dares the court to enforce the laws he breaks, people, rightly, get scared. The courts don't control the army, he does. I hope the generals remeber their oath, but oh yeah, he's been replacing them with loyalists too.
We know it isn't new. We've seen the horrors of history. That's why it's scary.
Yeah yeah, America lived on and stuff after all of that. But a lot of oppressed minorities didn’t. And if you're any minority group that the ruling party doesn't like right now, you are totally justified in being deathly afraid.
(For the record, I was against centralization of executive power under Obama and Bush too. But open and blatant disrespect like this is as especially alarming and should be treated as such, not normalized or justified)
If you've followed Trump for long enough, one of the things he talks about a lot are the "unelected bureaucrats" in the government making the real laws that end up impacting Americans day-to-day, more than Congress oftentimes. That's who this is targeted at; subordinates within the executive branch. This isn't a law, or even an interpretation of an existing law, or an expansion of executive branch powers, or even an expansion of the powers of the office of the President (because legally, as far as I know, the President has always had this power); its best described as a memo elaborating a process.
One example that might be applicable here is Net Neutrality. FCC enforcement of Net Neutrality goes back and forth; it was about to happen, until Trump in 2017 when the ruling was cancelled, and then in 2023 it came back, and now it probably won't happen again. What you're seeing there is, in the most accurate sense, something this action would expressly cover. There's zero congressional law dealing with net neutrality. Every time the FCC has touched the topic, its been the unelected bureaucratic appointment of the latest elected President making a new rule that can just as quickly be overturned or interpreted differently by the next President. Trump's new action just recognizes a process that's already been happening, basically forever.
What net neutrality really needs is the same thing a ton of these bureaucratic agencies need: a law, passed by congress. Write it in stone.
But, this is a rare thing in modern America, and maybe it always has been. Our legislative branch sucks. Seems like our Founding Fathers may have wanted it that way, but I doubt they fully understood the consequences. Getting it to do anything is like pulling hair, and that's why Executive Actions (read: authoritarian rule) have become so common. Trump, to some degree, through his mass layoffs, the defunding of various parts of the government, and now the codification of the process that the President makes decisions on-behalf-of the executive branch, is trying to scale the bureaucratic state back. Is that a good goal? Will it be successful? I don't know. But that is, under my interpretation, the best description of his aims.
exactly there; the system relies on everyone following the rules and doesn't have much in the way of remediation, other than impeachment, if the president just decides to ignore the other two branches. possibly SCOTUS, but they've hamstrung themselves with their recent decisions
At the end of the day, you can build safe-guards, and the American system of safeguards is among the best in the world. But, we also need leadership that can and will act to solve emergent problems, lest we cannot adapt to an evolving world. And, honestly, America has struggled for the past 20 years, especially since 2008. Our solution to everything has been "throw money at it", when we don't have the money we abuse our position as global reserve currency to just print more, and no one in charge has had any desire to think critically about how we get out of that hole, or how we solve any of the other problems the country faces smarter not richer.
I don't know if Trump and his team will make the problem better or worse. I feel pretty confident that they'll make it worse for some already-marginalized people, and I wish that wasn't the case, but the world that is likely to happen should we not solve these problems will not be kinder to them than the one they're in right now. Someone like Trump was guaranteed to happen after our insane, elitist, kick-the-can-down-the-road response to the GFC and COVID. There were saner voices in the room at those times. No one listened to them.
This simplifies some things (like the fact that congress can beat the executive by overriding a veto), but I think generally captures the essence of the system. And a key point here is that judicial beats executive. The executive can interpret a law however they want, but if the judiciary disagrees then the judiciary wins. So nothing needs to be "used" to disregard the judiciary's interpretation of laws - it simply doesn't matter what the executive's interpretation of a law - that's the role of the judiciary.
The reason for this law is simply to bring the various agencies under executive authority in line. Instead of each individual organization interpreting the law (generally around the limits of their powers) at their own discretion, those interpretations will now need to pass through the attorney general.
Just to be very clear, since it actually matters... this is an executive order, not a law. No one voted on it, it was just declared to be true.
Which is important considering that Chevron doesn't exist anymore, where the judiciary found itself out of their water, so to speak, about how to implement the law (note I say implement here, meaning that what the law says, the org does, but the details or ambiguous terms are up to the org). So, this actually re-implements Chevron in a forceful way, because it says that the judiciary, which tasked again with overseeing how laws are implemented by the executive whenever they are ambiguous.
I agree with Kasey, too, but I think the exception here is mostly legalese.
Am I missing something here?
I recommend productive investments. Whatever the other person who had the money was doing. Growing corn, for example, or making cars.
In other words, when it comes to banking regulation, the President has the final say.
I may be wrong, but I think in the US enough voters have been deceived by Donald that they were not well-informed, and so elections are no longer valid.
By this, he is in power, and Congress and Senate have been subverted.
I also see Donald looking to have complete and untrammeled control, and this is one more act in that direction.
Are you talking about the 2016 election or the 2020 election?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.
Because, to put it in plain words, this is ordering all members of the executive to obey exclusively the President and the Attorney General when it comes to how all law should be enforced. That includes the U.S. Marshals Service that provides enforcement duties for federal courts and the Supreme Court.
Forget the police, I thought the US president actually has much more direct and undisputed power over the military than some other executive agencies, which could be much more dangerous in the wrong hands, yet that is still is not considered a dictatorship (e.g., not even when Obama ordered the extrajudicial execution of a US citizen and was protected by presidential immunity, nor when past presidents have launched undeclared wars of aggression or interventions and bombing campaigns against sovereign nations), at least not in mainstream political thinking.
This EO seems like just shuffling responsibility around within the executive, moving interpretation of laws directly under the president rather than delegating it out to various unelected bureaucrats in different agencies making their own interpretations. I'm sure there are argument for and against it but it doesn't seem outlandish, or an kind of crazy power grab beyond what the executive branch already has.
Every large government department in every country in the world has some waste. All of them. All of the time.
This is why it's so disingenuous for Trump/Musk supporters to point at tiny bits of waste or whatever and scream "See! See! We found it! They deserve what they got!"
It's not coincidentally one of the justifications used by Russia to invade Ukraine. They claimed they were after Nazis. So what if Ukraine has Nazis!? So does every other damned European country! American has Nazis! Russia has Nazis!
It's the drill sergeant making you do 100 push ups because there was a barely visible scratch on your boots. His boots have scratches too. That's not the point. It's an excuse to make you jump.
My advice is: Any time anyone uses such a claim, or anything like it, always ask yourself: Okay, but what is the base rate for this thing they've suddenly decided is objectionable? Is it higher or lower elsewhere?
You'd think they'd be able to scour the Federal budget and find a few real examples of waste to crow about, but instead they give us things like: $50 million in condoms sent to Gaza so that Hamas can make bombs??? And of course, that instantly turned out to be fake news.
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
All the same, try not being distracted by the smoke and noise of the circus, it's all just a massive dead cat on the table to distract while other quieter changes are made.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
In short, Trump is claiming full and direct authority and control over any and all federal agencies, with the express directive of "The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. "
Basically : L'État, c'est moi.
All bets now off.
https://archive.is/qOYI2
God help us all.
Yup. You gotta have some time left to golf with your cronies..
For a site primarily intended to be about computer tech, the funding and business of tech startups, with explicit guidelines suggesting to reject US politics there are still large numbers of active threads on US politics, DOGE, Musk, et al daily.
.. and that's after 9x decimation.
So, throttled back to allow room for other submissions is largely what happens here, "hidden" is a tad hyperbolic.
many with more than 100 points, some with > 1000 points and >1000 comments.
[flagged] just pushes them off of the front page, they're still highly active and [showdead] can show you the comments being killed - largely they're hyper-partisan (either side), full nazi, crazy kill the rich, etc. Not many polite reasoned comments being killed regardless of stance.
I'm Australian BTW - it's all a sideshow to me, aside from the crazy tariffs and nuclear threat parts, etc.
So it’s all a sideshow to you, apart from the threats to your life and way of living? Those seem kind of important to wave off.
I’m also not American, but I have no illusions that what happens there won’t have consequences for the rest of the world.
minor at best given my age, location, and general setup.
I was probably in more danger in Rajasthan on 11 May 1998 when India suprise detonated three nukes within our visual horizon and impounded our aircraft on landing.
Risk is relative.
My father is down the hall watching TV ATM, he was born in 1935 and caught rabbits and such to feed his younger borothers and sisters when his father went off to WWII, Singapore fell amd trade in and out of the state ceased for a few years.
Considering all the environmental protections being rolled back, you and your family will be affected sooner than you think.
What, specifically?
> but I can still empathise with fellow human beings struggling elsewhere in this globalised planet.
Good for you. What makes you think I can't?
> Considering all the environmental protections being rolled back
in the US?
> you and your family will be affected sooner than you think.
You're a few generations late to the game for that now.
There is one, it’s called “vouch”. If this was flagged, it’s not anymore.
Edit: Spoke too soon, it’s flagged again.
Congress and Senate both wholly passive (subverted, I would say).
That leaves the States and the courts. I think the courts will go next.
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Don't be on the wrong side of history.
The Constitution gives Congress a great deal of oversight over how the executive branch is run. The President is supposed to execute the laws that Congress passes, spend the money that Congress appropriates in the way that Congress says it should be spent, etc. The President can't even appoint his own officials without the Senate's approval.
Beyond the Constitution, there is a long tradition of independent agencies running according to certain laws and principles that are laid out to them. The President is not supposed to directly order the people at these agencies what to do. Think the Department of Justice: you don't want the President ordering prosecutions. You want those decisions to be impartial. Trump just crossed a massive red line in dropping the prosecution of Eric Adams, and he did so purely in order to gain political leverage over Adams. Now, the NY mayor has to do what Trump says, or else Trump can order the DOJ to start prosecuting him again.
Trump has now openly declared on social media that he does not have to even follow the law, because he's "saving the country." He's trying to establish an elective dictatorship. Americans vote every 4 years, and whoever wins runs the entire government however they want, regardless of what the courts or Congress say.
But "without prejudice" which is how they have the hold over him (because they can refile any time he's not doing their bidding). If it was truly dropped, they'd have no leverage.
> "The order is for all charges against Adams to be dismissed, and the dismissal is without prejudice, the official said, meaning charges could be refiled in the future."
The Constitution disagrees with you, since it expressly directs the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". It's literally not possible to "take care" of this without issuing orders to that effect.
"Independent" agencies are supposed to function with a high level of autonomy. The president does not have to give individual orders to underlings at the DOJ in order to ensure that Congress' wishes are faithfully executed.
The position of the executive order is that only the President can interpret laws, including executive orders about interpreting laws.
That is to say, if the courts try to stop it, Trump may try to say "the courts don't have that power" and order the DoJ and/or military to block anything they do.
> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.
"The executive branch" includes the DoJ and the United States Marshals Service, who do all the actual boots-on-the-ground work for the judiciary.
This is an obvious lead in to "the President's interpretation is that the courts can go screw themselves", at which point the deciding factor becomes entirely whether law enforcement listens to the courts or listens to the bosses who pay them.
This is entirely focused on aligning the executive branch, that’s it. This is the kind of confusion that comes with trusting a Reddit post instead of getting your news from a reputable source.
Here, read this before going any further: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/18/trump-order-power-i...
It’s bad because it’s an attempt at removing independence from certain independent organizations such as the SEC and the Federal Reserve, but it is not about claiming all legal authority rests with the executive. It will fail as an EO because the executive can’t violate the law, which has set out the independent nature of these organizations.
> It will fail as an EO
It will fail as an EO if members of the executive branch follow the Constitution rather than the boss who pays them. The EO itself is explicitly ordering boots-on-the-ground federal law enforcement to follow the President instead of the courts.
Congress has the power of the purse, the executive has the power of the sword, and the judiciary has… the hope that the other two branches will listen. Federalist 78 would be a good read for you now, if you think this has any relevance at all towards the judiciary’s ability to enforce anything.
Perhaps we should refrain from calling the US a de facto dictatorship until that point then?
Awesome false equivalence, exaggeration, and straight disinformation, considering that 60%-70% of Republican respondents in multiple surveys believed that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election [1].
> Two Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polls conducted in February and July 2021 found that two-thirds of Republican respondents believe Biden was illegitimately elected in 2020.
> A January 2021 Morning Consult survey of 1,990 registered voters nationwide showed 65% responded that they believe the 2020 election was "free and fair." But when those results were broken down by party affiliation, only one-third of Republicans were in agreement with that statement. When asked what sources helped lead them to believe the election was fraudulent, a majority of Republicans cited former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed without evidence that his loss was not legitimate.
The 60%-70% figure persisted as late as June 2022 [2].
> With remarkable consistency, a scant one-quarter of Republican voters tell pollsters that Biden won legitimately. That was the view they shared in the spring of 2021, and the fraction remains about the same today.
> Agree that Biden was legitimately elected
> Poll Date All Democrat Republican Independent
> Economist/YouGov Jun. 1, 2022 60% 90% 25% 57%
Both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris conceded defeat in a day, Trump has been complaining about the 2020 election for years (still does), and Trump voters prepared for months to avoid certifying the 2024 results if they were to turn out badly for Trump [3]. Trump also attempted a fake electors plot to overturn the 2020 election [4].
[1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/feb/02/viral-imag...
[2] https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/jun/14/most-republic...
[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/2024-election-certificati...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
a. Congress and Senate are wholly passive and unable to act.
b. The courts will be attacked, and so be unable to act.
c. If the courts act, by the time they act, it will be too late; the harm will have been done and will be irreversible.
Wow. Literally installing political officers in agencies.
BTW, it's not Trump we're going to have to worry about. It's the next guy, who will have Trump imprisoned or executed for treason. This one won't be a blunderer, though, and will seize these levers of control much more firmly and competently.
I am very confident that you probably do understand that.
Seems fine that the bureaucrats to whom executive power is delegated should be answerable to the executive.
How else is the executive supposed to align fed bureaucrats to his goals?
It makes sense to me, as a worker bee, i know I have to do what the boss says
Trump is doing another end run around the confirmation process with his "liaisons".
But there is one difference which is that the Leninist model also involves party loyalists being appointed to corporations. The US isn't there yet.
It would be better to have independent judges but hey it doesn’t lead to a dictatorship and the end of the world directly as propagated everywhere.
Judges are independent in Germany. Prosecutors are not.
> Because of this international warrants which come from Germany do not get followed since they can’t be trusted.
I think you mean the European Arrest Warrant[1], and you are right that it is not accepted when issued by German prosecuters, because they are not indepepndent[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Arrest_Warrant [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4ischer_Haftbefehl#D... [2]
Exactly! It's the same in Austria btw. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_(Deutschland)#Dienstau... and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatsanwaltschaft_(Deutschlan...