This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those responsible accountable.
The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (taxpayer) grants and contracts.
Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts more than Boeing--but my point is that it's a huge conflict of interest.
A person receiving very large amounts of money from the government is now deciding which parts of the government should be cut in order to "save taxpayers money".
If this sounds like something that would only happen in a place like Russia, or the DRC, it's because it's something that would only happen in those places.
In other democratic countries you go to jail for this sort of thing (i.e., Nicholas Sarkozy in France--not saying the situation is exactly the same, but there's an actual judicial system in place that doesn't exonerate someone just because they're president, like our SCOTUS did).
Most of that $5 billion in the LA times article was not received by Musk's companies at the time, and I'm not sure if they ever received the full amount as it was contingent on reaching several milestones in the span of 20 years.
A big part of those $5 billion was not having to pay sales taxes on possible future Gigafactory production, for example, but that gigafactory never reached the initally planned size AFAIK.
The big question then is did the incentives then get clawed back. The pattern I'm familiar with says probably not; usually the company building the factory doesn't lose much of anything they were given when they fail to meet the milestones.
First, it's usually structured that you meet X target, you get Y incentive. Second, what doesn't get clawed back is true of all companies though. So it's not unique to Tesla in any way.
Some of it is a loan, I know Tesla had a loan from the govt, they paid it back early if I remember correctly.
Plus all of that is in the past. What would be a huge problem is if the federal govt started throwing grant money at Tesla now, while Musk is running around playing in the govt.
All that said, I think it's a terrible state of affairs we find ourselves in, but I mean we voted Trump into power, what did we expect would happen? Rainbows and kittens?
Yeah sometimes you can't reason with people because they're dug in. In this case with Trump and Republicans, it's like Catholics being unable/unwilling to deal with pedophile priests, because group loyalty is so important to them. Tribalism is meant to override reason. Get them to turn on their brains first (eg by reflecting on values most important to them), and it becomes much easier.
He's at USAID because USAID ended apartheid in South Africa, which Elon Musk grew up in. [1] But not just "grew up in" by happenstance. His grandfather selected South Africa and Apartheid specifically for the privileges because they were Nazi sympathizers [2][3].
The standard is to remove all possibility and/or appearance of conflict of interest. "Some guy gave me control of all the money and said I shouldn't take any for myself" is so far below this standard it's comical.
Firstly, someone ultimately has to have control of agency spendng, so that cannot be deemed a conflict of interest by itself.
Secondly, I don't believe Musk has any direct authority to make any changes within these agencies whatsoever. DOGE is only permitted to review agency operations and make recommendations, not to execute them.
The changes that are being attributed to Musk, are perhaps being done at his recommendation, but there is an agency director signing off on all of this.
To be clear, "is there evidence the world's richest person has a profit motivation behind his sudden interest in unpaid public service" is your question?
Yes, though I wouldn't call his interest in public policy sudden.
If we're honest this is all just unfounded speculation.
Financially, he's likely going to benefit from a deregulatory agenda, but is it enough to offset his investments to get Trump elected (buying Twitter, America PAC)? Who knows
Is his work at USAID in any way related to his financial outcomes? Who knows
Would he make just as much sitting on the couch while the republicans do their thing? Probably
Does he even care about making more money, given he's got more than he can possibly spend already? Who knows.
If I were to guess, he's at a point in his life where money isn't his main motivator, and instead he's seeking to make an impact.
Musk owes quite a lot of his virtual fortune to government subsidies. That alone should prevent him from being anywhere near the government. The appearance of impropriety is corrosive because it undermines public trust in the government. You don’t need improper actions to be in a conflict of interest.
We also know that he has no moral compass and no qualm whatsoever using any lever he can to make money. The moment to worry about this is before he leaves with the till. Because everyone knows he will, and by then it will be too late.
> The White House said Elon Musk, the billionaire leading President Donald Trump’s government cost-cutting efforts, will determine if there are conflicts of interest between his work reviewing federal spending and his overlapping empire of six companies.
what mental gymnastics are you having to do to believe Trump, who is a proven pathological liar -- I mean, come on, that's not even a question of debate
I believe 0% of what Trump says.
But even if that were true, it doesn't resolve the conflict of interest story. Gov money being cut from _fill in blank of gov agency_ means that there's more money available for what's important to Musk (corp tax cuts, for example; gov spending that benefits his company, his business interests in China, etc.)
> Gov money being cut from _fill in blank of gov agency_ means that there's more money available for what's important to Musk
Not really. Government spending doesn't need to be balanced like a household budget. Whether or not policies are enacted which financially benefit Musk is not dependenant on whether he can find savings or not.
Right now all we have is speculation on your behalf that Musk is acting unethically by ignoring a conflict of interest, versus a public statement from the president that he's not being permitted to do so.
They are both operating completely outside the bounds of the law here and there's no ethical justification for that at all.
You can set your defaults to 'trust Trump/Elon' if you really want to I guess, but that's a highly unreasonable default (to put it mildly). Both have a long and clear public history as bad actors.
At it's most benign, this is dangerous clownishness mostly for show, but even that is far too charitable.
You're forgetting that it's necessary to cut gov spending in order to finance a corporate tax cut.
Anyway, you're clearly in the "I trust Trump" camp, so whatever. It's a small shame that you'll be disappointed in the end. But the bigger shame is all the lives that will be destroyed because of his self-serving policies.
I actually don't have much of an issue with the GOP as a party (other than their groveling to Trump once they realized their only political choice was to serve him or die). But Trump is a disgrace and could not even get a job as the principal of my child's primary school--that's how low his supporters set the bar for their president.
As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity.
What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?
I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences.
Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech.
Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpose, which is to enable the search for truth. Free speech is the goal of exchanging ideas between peoples, to foster competition in thought so that collectively we can understand our shared reality.
If such a market place were to become inefficient, or if such a market place were to resolve itself to serve the most attention grabbing takes, we would see much of what the media carries.
THIS ISNT the problem you face! This is the problem we discuss!
The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party. The media itself has no recourse but to play the game of advertizing to survive.
But once it is in service of an entity, then you can create your own justifications for war, and then declare victory yourselves.
This makes the most mercenary of politics the most succesful. It is the natural recourse of people who want to win at all costs. It is far more efficient than doing economic research to understand the pros and cons of a decision.
We can solve the problems we all mutuall face. There is more to life than our polarization.
However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.
I like how you analyzed that, one addition: I also think some form of the anthropic principle is at play.
The societies that exist have something that allows them to continue to exist. Free speech can allow a society to seek truth and being aligned with reality can be important in the survival of a society. But so can cohesion while being "wrong".
There's a lot of information floating around and there's a lot of play between truth seeking free speech and cohesion signaling going on. Esp. as noise has been added to all signals including the scientific channels both via corporations and via well meaning ideologues.
I'm sure this is naive but I assume most of us would just love to be able to filter the signal from the noise in places that are relevant to us and be able to ensure low malfeasance in the places that aren't.
Read a commentary on the Abram's dissent, where Holmes made the first step toward articulating a "marketplace of ideas".
Holmes was suprisingly nihilistic, and I feel his formation of the search and competition for truth held now idealized beliefs of human behavior.
He accepted that people woudl be driven by their passions and biases, including things like a desire to create cohesion. That this was also something traded as a value and motivating force.
> The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party.
I generally agree, but I also think this was a natural and probably unavoidable result of having many different sources of “news”.
Prior to the internet, pretty much all news in the US came from ~5 TV networks and 1 or 2 newspapers (per city). It wasn’t practical for any of those sources to align exclusively with either political party because then they would be alienating ~half of their potential customers.
Today, there are far, far more sources to choose from. People self select those sources that they agree with. In the “old days” the news was more middle of the road politically, but that’s largely gone now. This is a major source of polarization IMO.
Well, if you think so, then dont get me wrong about this - do something about it! Read up, diagnose, deconstruct, break this theory.
Unless you know someone else is going to be doing this, or you know this doesnt interest you - then see how far this makes sense to you.
I did my soul searching the day Trump won. I had a 0% chance for that occurence, and my prediction was wrong.
I relooked at everything I believed, because I had made a high confidence prediction on how the world worked, and I had made the wrong call. If this was a massive stock play, I would have been broke.
My revised position made me stop asking why Harris lost, but instead focused on how Trump ran in 2016 in the first place.
I felt it forced me to take my thinking seriously, and my assumptions seriously. Perhaps it matters and will help you too.
> However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.
Who exactly holds the magnets here? Is it even knowable or is it even necessary to know to address the problem? I agree regarding media but how do you get your information at national scale then? The world seems way more complex than what it once was, the interdependence feels more like grappling moves as we approach a malthusian crunch.
One of my other conclusions is that, with gen AI, the old assumptions of truth are gone.
Instead we're at the dawn of something like the fiat money revolution, in analogy terms. Like the value of a idea isnt about how its based on fact, but on the relation between the person sharing it, and the person paying attention to it.
The problem is, in America, both magnets pull to the right. We have a far right republican party and a center right democratic party. There is no leftwing party to provide balance. There’s not a single democrat who would be considered a leftist outside America.
One magnet is the media, the other magnet is an orwellian party/media firm.
Also - this used to be hacker news. As in who gives a shit about what is, its about what needs to change.
Think of it this way - this is just a puzzle that needs to be cracked. Take it as a job application problem, and see how it can be dissected over the weekend.
Come up with some theories, then go see if you can disprove them.
Fixing anything, comes from defining the right problem anyway.
The parent was asking about political parties. In Vietnam, the leftist party runs the country. If "in charge of a politically stable, economically growing country for decades" doesn't meet the definitions of "successful or meaningful" in the context of a political party you're going to have to be more specific.
People who express this sentiment seem to consider "the world" to be composed of North America and Europe. Why do you ignore the conservatives of Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia in your assessment of what "average" is?
Public trust in the media is at an all time low along with other institutions. People are turning to social media because the press is unreliable. Reform that institution and fix many of our problems.
Maybe AI agents will be able to help identity bad reporting in the press and hold them more accountable. A sort of epistemic anti-virus.
There are a lot of arsonists complaining about fires on this particular point. The mainstream press is mostly decent.
American right-wing propaganda personalities and media outlets drive the negative sentiment to a large degree. They radicalize their audiences against traditional media institutions, and they do it very, very well. Sometimes there are kernels of truth to their criticisms. Mostly they are wildly exaggerated, or even totally fabricated. It sucks we can't have nice things, but it is what it is. Free speech is free speech.
But it won't really get better unless all that propaganda is successfully countered, even if you magically figured out how to build a perfect mainstream media.
Where things get really dangerous is when demagogues come along and join in, like Trump.
On the list of things to look for to tell if you're dealing with a rising authoritarian movement, near the top are sustained attacks on the press. Enemy of the people, Trump calls them. Zuckerberg gets threatened with life in prison. He encourages supporters to menace and attack reporters at rallies. The list goes on.
These all become the pretext for drastic anti-constitutional attacks on the free press, and we're seeing that take shape already in Trump 2.0.
We really have no way of knowing that. It's not like there is any organization that analyzes and critiques the mainstream press in any regular fashion. For instance, the press clearly knew that Biden had major cognitive impairments but they misreported it to the public. There was no accountability at all when the truth was discovered. Same with the story of Trump colluding with Russia, or the many, many different racial hate crime hoaxes. There is ZERO accountability for misleading the public.
I'm skeptical of all the talk about "authoritarianism." All those ideas seem be based on shoddy social science theorizing after WW2 - e.g. "The Authoritarian Personality." I don't think you can accurately predict the rise of a totalitarian leader based on what happened in Germany.
the press brought this up! Dont mistake the no true scotsman fallacy here.
It was openly discussed that Biden was not looking sharp (even though Trump couldn't hold a debate with a mirror).
Biden Stepped down, mid cycle - this was something unthinkable to election strategists and pundits.
It remains one of the most amazing things I've seen, because I understand what it takes to do that, and what many others did in a similar position.
If you want to talk about how perceptions are made - consider that less is made of Biden's actions here, and more is made of the fact that he ran at all.
Did you know that the Russia case resulted in 8 guilty please and 1 conviction? Trump didn't get touched because they knew of the Russian interference, but didnt expect it to harm them.
A sitting president cant be indicted on federal crimes, so the obstruction of justice case was dropped.
This is unfortunate, since it gives ammunition to everyone, at which point it just becomes a team sport.
However, having seen authoritarian states, this is 100% from that play book. And yes, it feels insane and high strung to write that, but what can one do?
It looks like a wolf, it bites like a wolf, but maybe its just a massive dog.
> We really have no way of knowing that. It's not like there is any organization that analyzes and critiques the mainstream press in any regular fashion
The "mainstream press" is actually hundreds or thousands of individual institutions, some big, small, and each have their own flaws, strengths, biases, audiences, cultures and incentives. They compete with and often criticize/check one another. It's not even all that unusual for an editorial columnists to lambast their own publications.
I don't want to idealize it too much, but feedback loops for self-correction are baked into the pie, and they do actually work from time to time.
There's a completely different physics in the right-wing media world though, best illustrated by the aftermath of the 2020 election. Fox had to pivot hard to election denialism because they were getting killed in the ratings by upstarts like Newsmax and OANN who went all in on the election lies. The right-wing media feedback loops don't self-correct, they incentivize extremism, grievance and conspiracy theory.
> For instance, the press clearly knew that Biden had major cognitive impairments but they misreported it to the public. There was no accountability at all when the truth was discovered.
This is mostly right-wing media fiction. Stories and commentary on Biden's age were quite frequent in my experience.
(There's basically a whole genre of faux right-wing media criticism in the style of: "The mainstream media won't talk about X...", even while headlines about X all over the place in on "mainstream" media outlets)
> Same with the story of Trump colluding with Russia
It's not quite that simple. That's not a single story, it's was an ongoing series of stories and investigations that developed over time.
There was plenty of measured, careful reporting around all of that stuff. There was plenty of irresponsible reporting too. There was also plenty of self-flagellation afterwards over a lot of it.
(The Trump campaign, along with folks in it's orbit, did collude with Russia. People went to jail. Paul Manafort literally met a Russian spy on a park bench, kind of like you see in the spy movies, to covertly hand over proprietary voter data. Roger Stone was coordinating with Russian hackers and wikileaks to leak hacked DNC data, etc.)
> I'm skeptical of all the talk about "authoritarianism."
If you can't recognize it as a sign of authoritarianism when a sitting president nearly murdered an entire building full of cops, legislators, staff and his own vice president in a mad, desperate bid to nullify an election and seize power, I'm not sure what can break through.
But we are backsliding, there's no doubt about that. How far we fallback will depend on how effectively we oppose... well.. the current ruling party as it currently exists.
Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route?
Honestly though, I'm in the same situation and I don't know.
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge). I unsubscribed to the Washington Post after they pulled their Harris endorsement (which was appalling), but their coverage since feels relatively thorough and they are well placed to report on all this so far, so I resubscribed. I already support PBS. I'll probably donate to Pro Publica next.
I expect media outlets will be under rapidly increasing pressure, so supporting them financially feels important and positive.
I've also have a standing donation to the NAACP legal defense fund from his first administration that I've just kept running.
The parties turn on people who show up to do the work. There is a remarkable amount people can achieve if they show up as people who are willing to learn, do the work, and have their own eyes and ears open.
Genuinely curious if you think a WaPo endorsement could have swayed the election, and if not, why it mattered at all.
From my perspective, Trump voters distrust and dislike the old media so much, a newspaper telling them they shouldn't vote for Trump would only strengthen their resolve.
Not the poster, but I don't think a newspaper pulling an endorsement out of fear of reprisal is a great sign of a free press (or, to the poster's point, a press you care to pay for.)
Yup, this. I think it had zero impact on the election, but it was an absurd and gutless decision.
I'd rather not pay for that sort of thinking. However, I'd rather have the WaPo in its current form as opposed to severely diminished (or none at all).
It is far more likely that Bezos and Zuckerberg support Trump than fear being shot. Zuckerberg particularly, what makes you think this was a 180? The man has been doing machismo stuff like throwing spears at goats and challenging people to boxing matches for years. And have you seen the way Facebook is moderated, even years ago relative to the way Twitter was moderated under their old owners? Supporting Trump is in-character for Zuckerberg, even more so than Bezos.
I must say though, this "billionaires as terrified victims" narrative is hilarious. I hope the Democratic party rescues these poor billionaires from the man they're publicly supporting!
You're hysterical. Trump hasn't suspended habeas corpus, nor can he, nor has he even said he would. He claimed about ten thousand times, probably literally as many times as that, that he would put Hillary Clinton in prison. Has he? Has he even tried? Anybody who takes his bullshit at face value is a moron.
This country is filled with tens of millions of people openly defying Trump. None of them have been illegally arrested for it, none of them have been assassinated for it. Reddit's executive team isn't on the run from Trumpian death squads trying to murder them for defying Trump. There is no credible threat to people for defying Trump, least of all to people with the extreme resources available to Zuckerberg and Bezos.
We’re, what, two weeks in? If the most powerful person in the country threatens jail time, says his enemies are the enemies of the country, absolves the crimes of those who attacked the capital and assaulted police officers, etc etc I sure as hell will take those the threats he makes seriously.
Publicly, openly musing about imprisoning his enemies gives Bezos, Zuckerberg, et. al. fairly reasonable cause to believe that playing nice with Trump is necessary to avoid the full weight of the regulatory apparatus now under his control being directed at their companies.
(I don't think they'll be successful in appeasing him, but they're visibly trying.)
Should ownership of newspapers be limited to mere millionaires? Or do you mean that private ownership of newspapers should be abolished?
This country was built on privately owned newspapers wielded as weapons by their owners; I'm sure you've heard of Benjamin Franklin. The First Ammendment protects this more than anything else for this reason.
Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route?
Yeah, same. Since the Brexit a lot of populist parties in the EU don't want to leave the EU anymore (only reform it). Let's hope that this is another warning that the destructive populist path doesn't lead anywhere good.
(And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge).
Yeah, independent, non-clickbait news is very important in these times. We recently renewed our newspaper subscription for three years.
When you are in the EU (or really anywhere non-US anyway), it's probably a good moment to start moving your data out of the US and away from US companies. So far Trump has done exactly what he promised, so a large trade war or, even worse, a war over Greenland is possible. Since pretty much anything is fair game now, blackmailing the EU using its dependency on US tech companies is not far-fetched anymore.
Get your data out and reduce your dependency on US tech.
> (And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)
As a Brit, so do I. However, despite all of the evidence showing it will be massively beneficial, we won't. Not fully, imho, for a good while. Best I'm hoping for is closer ties in a customs union, but that requires compromise I don't think will happen.
The best thing I can think of is to make the EU a strong, powerful, wealthy democracy that can defend itself from invasion and try to encourage other democracies around the world.
Which means we have a lot of work ahead, to put it mildly.
The EU suddenly feels flimsy and badly defended. I hope that negative motivation puts the fear into people and motivates action faster than this reality can be exploited by bad actors, who seem to be ready and waiting.
Agreed, but I don't think I'd say sudden. Some have been pointing out that weak militaries and pacifism were a luxury afforded only through naivete and wishful thinking. Hell, Ireland's whole defense strategy is "but everyone likes us!" and "well I'm sure Britain will help in a pinch".
I was always receptive to those arguments, but I think even the people making them only felt them conceptually. The thick layer of civilization and “end of history” vibes just felt impenetrable. Then around brexit times it started to feel a little shaky, and more so with the Ukraine war.
I think Trump decisively stripped the last of the illusions away, most people feel the vulnerability in their bones now.
For that to work, the individual governments need to give more of their responsibilities up to the EU level, which is unfortunately somewhat unpopular.
It may be unpopular but Volt is increasing its presence on all levels from local councils to European Parliament, so there’s a desire among some voters for more EU federalism. In Germany they may come close to the results of FDP on the upcoming elections.
Fortunately in my country of Austria the liberal party (NEOS from the EU Renew Europe faction) already supports a "United States of Europe", but it "only" has around ~10% at the moment (though it is growing).
But the new government of pro-russian neonazis (FPÖ) and conservatives (ÖVP) will probably be very anti-EU.
It's 2025. You can drive across most European countries in a day (a long day, in some cases, but still).
If Europe wants to stick to the borders a bunch of kings and princes hashed out in blood a hundred+ years ago it can, for the moment, but if we do, there's a decent chance it will just be crushed by the next global superpower (US, China, or weirdly enough maybe Russia considering how much influence they have over many US politicians now).
I love Europe. I was proud to become an EU citizen and my favourite scarf is an EU flag. I think it's an amazing place full of amazing countries and people. And it still can be! But for it to continue to exist, we MUST work together. Militarily, economically, and even practically (why is it so hard to book train tickets across 3 countries again?)
I know it stings, but the reality is the wolves are at the gates. Democracy has its back against the wall and we need a force that can fight back. Or government of the people, by the people, for the people, will soon perish from the Earth.
> If Europe wants to stick to the borders a bunch of kings and princes hashed out in blood a hundred+ years ago it can
If the EU wants to stick to a technocratic structure pushing unpopular laws over the democratic institutions won in blood, it'll be probably be democratically a hard sell to give it more powers.
I agree that Europe should have more unification and coordinated action. But I don't love the EU. I quite liked social democracy, but then it was outlawed by the EU.
It was nice to have public control over the infrastructure, possibility to have industry for public benefit, possibility to nationalize out of control private sectors, possibility to retain assets and capital domestically, to control fiscal and monetary policy etc.
Unpopular because it is undemocratic. The EU is a bureaucracy that works against democracy. Its goal is to steal more and more power from national governments that are run by elected representatives towards a bureaucracy that decides their next actions in Davos.
The European Parliament is directly elected by the citizens of the European Union. The European Council consists of government leaders of the EU countries, which are also chosen in most countries based on the results of elections. The only exception is the European Commission, which is chosen by indirect democracy (nominated by member countries, approved by the parliament, and they can dissolve the EC).
Why is the EC a problem? In many democracies the executive branch is instated and kept in check by a parliament. The EC are not always my picks and there is definitely a lot of politics involved, but I think it's an asset that people with some level of expertise are selected and that the executive branch is somewhat protected against making very short-term decisions because they have to think about their next election.
People should stop bashing the EU. Like any democracy it has its issues, but it is hugely successful in avoiding war between countries that have been in war for centuries, plus the EU actually has a spine and has generally (with exceptions) protected people's privacy, protected people against large companies, etc.
The primary weakness of the EU is that it cannot do enough yet (but every crisis makes leaders realize that working together at the EU-level is more successful than trying to operate as a single country).
I've heard this often and I don't understand it at all.
Every government in the world has a permanent set of employees which enact policy and turn political intentions into legislation. Usually these are split into departments, each headed by temporary political appointee.
So exactly like the European Commission, then. Why is it only "undemocratic" when the European Union does it?
Are you suggesting that all 32000 people working for it should be elected? I'm quite certain there is no government in the world which does that and it seems quite impractical.
Or should every political appointment be directly elected, instead of appointed by a head of state? You could do that, but I am not aware of any major government which does so, so if that's the sole reason to call it "undemocratic" then it's a double standard.
The EC desires to get more and more power over EU countries' policy, with the excuse of "doing its job". In a normal country, the executive branch is also elected by the population. In the EU, they get there by appointment, so they are an extra step removed from democracy. It is just the opposite of what you want to do to improve democracy. Instead of more opportunities for people to control government, you're creating an extra level of indirection that makes control even harder.
Democratic and EU unfortunately doesn't mesh that well.
In the current form federal EU would be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch, and a semi-elected weak legistlative branch. Furthermore the populace has very little idea about what is happening in the EU and who to hold accountable, partly because the media doesn't cover it, and partly because the processes are extremely convoluted and quite opaque.
Such "democratic centralism" bureaucracy probably would have benefits like more stability for long term strategy, swift execution of policies and coordinated action, but it's also very prone to corruption and elite capture.
Yes, a more accurate characterization would be someting like partially elected legislative branch.
The parliament is directly elected, but it doesn't have full legislative powers. It can't propose new laws and the Council of the EU has veto over the parliament. Dissolving the EC also needs a supermajority.
The structure is at least way less directly democratic than any EU country.
People in the EU need to pay attention and think hard before voting for similar candidates and parties.
This is a global phenomenon. It’s part grassroots, driven by discontent with sclerotic establishment parties that are not solving problems, but also being driven by propaganda from authoritarian countries like Russia and China. The latter is opportunistic.
Americans voted for this and I find it very hard to believe they didn't know what they were voting for. So that's on them.
Personally, I am working on replacing any American made products or services I use myself or through my job. Both as an act of protest and in preparation for the upcoming economic war they plan to wage.
If you're in Germany or know some Germans, talk as much as you can about how this is what Musk wants to do via the AfD to us here. The election is a little over two weeks away. Right now, the CDU/CSU ("normal" conservatives) look to be getting the largest number of votes, but nowhere near enough to govern on their own. They've been a little too flirty with the AfD (currently in second place), and the worst thing that could happen is that they forget what they learned in school about what happened to the centrist and conservative parties in the early 1930s, and take the AfD as their coalition partner instead of trying to work something out with the SPD and Greens.
There's a reason that Germany's current main center-right parties were both born after the war.
Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.
Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment.
SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a few special interests groups. Die Linke are borderline irrelevant.
We are in a strange situation where we have strong presence on populist left and right, but no decent political force in the center to contain them.
> Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.
Ironically enough, this very much sounds like the "let's re-write and everything will be better" fallacy encountered in software engineering.
That aside, what you are wishing for is a war and/or revolution where the pillars of society have been shattered to pieces, the old incumbents removed/killed/retired, and where a new political landscape is built upon the ruins and ashes of what has been.
Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.
Be careful what you wish for. If AfD would grab the power (unlikely at this point), it'll weaken Germany nationally and internationally like the US is being weakened now.
At this point the biggest weakening factor is our political mainstream. In 100 years, if nothing changes, Germany will be Argentina of today. I’m not afraid of AfD, they lack practically everything to become new NSDAP. I’m afraid that whatever next coalition is, they will miss every opportunity to make a difference.
Yes, he sold out after he left office and was criticized for it heavily. Earlier he stood up to the US criticizing the second Iraq war.
(Most of Europe, including Britain, got gas via Nordstream and its distribution network. France and The Netherlands also owned part of it but are never criticized.)
>Yes, he sold out after he left office and was criticized for it heavily.
No I'm fairly certain he sold out in office and then reaped the rewards upon leaving.
>Earlier he stood up to the US criticizing the second Iraq war.
Which is ultimately good but largely unrelated.
>Most of Europe, including Britain, got gas via Nordstream and its distribution network.
Most of Europe is easily divided and Russia made it worthwhile for those involved.
At the end of the day tho I believe from Russia's end it was about taking away bargaining power and influence from various eastern european countries. A pricing map for their gas showed it's wielded as a political pressuring tool. There was no capacity limit to existing pipelines nevertheless when european countries got cold feet Russia was happy to turn down the tap and blame it on north stream's shutdown despite every other avenue being wide open.
>France and The Netherlands also owned part of it but are never criticized.)
Their companies being involved should be duly criticized perhaps. But let's be honest. A head of state so blatantly doing something like that is an easy thing to notice and target. Especially when related policy decisions went well beyond north stream.
I deleted my Twitter account after a period of ghost-quitting that platform. However, this action doesn't seem all that significant, so I'm hopeful I can use my energy more effectively.
Meanwhile, increasing my focus on my immediate community and sharing my creativity are fulfilling activities within my power.
JFK wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” - no courageous people are around.
The “coup” happened a long time ago. The US has demonstrated that there’s no rule of law at the federal level for some time now. Once the Chief Justice leaned back and tolerated the open sale of the court, that was basically it.
We don’t have the same system of governance anymore… we’re like Italy 1936 or Argentina in 1948 now. We’ll invade Greenland instead of Ethiopia, and skip the funny hats.
The question is do we continue on this trajectory or is there a real coup with tanks on DC streets at some point.
I’m pretty sure the coup happened in the 1930s when the government created the modern system of unaccountable executive agencies and a Supreme Court, under duress, approved it.
For nearly a hundred years, the people have voted for those reforms. That’s called governance and democracy. Reactionary people have always been upset about any change.
This using an unaccountable fall guy to break the law at will, so that congress can avoid accountability is gross. Folks with your opinion like to wax on about constitutional principles, blah blah blah, as we stand by and watch the shitshow that is happening right now.
Ignoring the constitution isn't a "reform" it's lawlessness. There's no other developed country in the world where the government's actual structure is so divorced from its written constitution.
People voted for the administrative state in the 1930s, and they've been voting to cut back on it since 1980. Since then, the only President who won elections without promising to shrink government were Obama (in response to the disaster of Iraq and the Great Recession) and Biden (in response to COVID).
The constitution doesn’t say there cannot be a civil service or whatever you are mad about. Congress is empowered to enact laws.
I don’t remember an article in the constitution that allows a rich crony to act in contempt of the laws established by congress as an officer of the government without appointment. But I guess our dedication to solemn constitutional principles varies.
So you can have a civil service (and the framers assumed there would be one) but Congress can’t insulate the civil service from the president’s direct supervision. That’s obviously true—because the presidential election is the only way people have to politically influence the internal operation of the executive branch itself.
Why this amorphous "the government" wording? The people elected Congress and Presidents, who did this over decades with popular support.
Executive agencies are not unaccountable. They have specific charters and there is a huge volume of rules they have to follow. eg:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act). Congress writes their budgets every year and the heads of those agencies are reviewed at congressional and presidential levels.
Accountability means democratic accountability. The APA is not meaningful democratic accountability--it just means that lawyers like me end up running the country.
Yeah it’s hard to reconcile a permanent layer of unelected officials, that can’t be sacked by either the President or Congress, with many parts of the constitution.
And I’ve never seen a clear explanation of how that change was constitutionally justifiable.
Most don’t even have sufficient clearances to know the names of random middle managers in many many offices in the CIA/NSA, let alone do anything to them.
They can be fired, there’s a variety of processes to do so.
The obsession with firing people is this weird narrative the right wingers are always obsessed with. The cognitive dissonance between these high and mighty principles and what our principled republican colleagues have and will do is beyond ridiculous.
Functional government is the goal of any mature stakeholder. We have 100+ years of spoils system that aptly demonstrates why that methodology doesn’t make sense in a modern society.
Viable processes don’t suddenly pop into existence just because someone says so…?
Most of Congress can’t acquire sufficient clearances to even learn the names of random middle managers in many offices in the IC, let alone to do anything about them.
They can defund the whole office, subdivision, or function.
Life isn’t an episode of the apprentice… nobody in congress sees their oversight role as firing random post office clerks. That’s idiocy. Congress controls the law and the purse. Conservatives have been wielding this power for years - that’s why single moms are routinely nabbed in audits for earned income fraud, while rich people get away with donating millions to phoney foundations that they control for years. (Congress limits funding for enforcement)
The executive has broad authority to take personnel actions while adhering to the law.
> They can defund the whole office, subdivision, or function.
This doesn’t make sense, to suggest they have the opportunity to defund something that they don’t even know exists or what it includes is just not credible.
How could if possibly come to their attention in the first place?
Precedent holds that Congress has the power to establish executive branch agencies and lay out their jurisdiction and functions. It also holds that, once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated. There’s a constitutional distinction between this power to create/define (legislative) and the power to run (executive).
The article doesn’t seem to be about abolishing the NIH and NSF. Instead it seems to be about NIH and NSF grants to third parties. That seems to fall squarely on the executive side of the line.
> once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated.
This is the third time I've seen someone pushing this line of thinking on HN in as many days and I'd like to know more about where it's coming from. Can you cite any source that supports it and justifies it?
FWIW, the conventional wisdom is that the independent agencies really are independent, and the president's control over them is exactly what is stipulated in the legislation that created them. If the statute of the Dept of XYZ and says the president can fire its governing board but only on weekends, then he has to wait til Saturday, period end of story. The idea that the president can interfere with the independent agencies because they're part of the executive branch was, AFAICT, invented out of whole cloth in the last couple of years, and has no constitutional support at all. So I'm curious to hear more about what this new theory is and how far it extends. In particular, if the president can decide to cancel NIH grants because the NIH is under the executive branch, what keeps him from raising and lowering interest rates?
edit to add: to be clear, the president does have a great deal of power over most of the independent agencies; in most cases he hires and fires their leaders. But he has that power because Congress specifically granted it, not because the executive branch is his personal fiefdom. If he wants to, say, get a pharmaceutical drug approved, he has to direct HHS to direct the FDA to do that in the usual way, not just decree it. This has little to do with thwarting his power and lots to do with effective and efficient governance.
You're hearing the "unitary executive" theory, which posits that the president is essentially a king. It's based on a purposeful misreading of the Constitution, of course. To arrive at this philosophy, you have to essentially ignore the entire point of the Revolutionary War, the writings of the founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, Article I, Article III, Article IV, the Bill of Rights, and the president's oath of office.
There really is no limit to the power, but they say the check is impeachment -- if the people don't like it they can elect a congress that will impeach the president. But in reality it doesn't work that way when the president's party controls congress.
It's not a "theory," it's simply reading Section 1 of Articles I, II, and III at a 6th grade reading level.
Article I says: "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." May Congressional staff exercise legislative powers independently of the Congressmen? Nobody thinks that.
Article III says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." May judiciary branch staff exercise judicial powers independently of Supreme Court Justices and lower-court judges? Nobody thinks that.
Article I says: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." May executive branch staff exercise executive powers independently of the President? My sixth grader could understand that the answer is "no."
There is nothing in here about the president being a "king." It's simply that the President controls the executive branch, in the same way the Congressmen control the legislative branch and the Supreme Court justices control the judicial branch.
See, that's what I mean about ignoring all of American history to come to your unitary executive theory.
The Constitution establishes control and checks on that control. "checks and balances". Unitary executive theory is all control, no checks. How does Congress conduct oversight of the executive branch in this scenario?
And you're also trying to do the same thing to me right here. To accept that unitary executive theory isn't about being a king, I'd have to ignore everything the advocates of the theory have said and done. He argued in court that he has absolute immunity to commit crimes, including directing the government to kill his political opponents. You can't argue that in court and then tell me it's not about being a king. That's dictator logic.
Look at the executive right now, he's essentially got the power of a king. He can't be arrested, charged, or investigated. Can commit crimes and hide them. Can direct others to commit crimes and pardon them. Can direct his DOJ to investigate and prosecute anyone he wants. Can control and direct his military without review. Congress can't conduct oversight. Can you explain how the president is now functionally different from a king, and square that with the point of the Revolutionary War?
> This is the third time I've seen someone pushing this line of thinking on HN in as many days and I'd like to know more about where it's coming from. Can you cite any source that supports it and justifies it?
It's Civics 101. You should have learned it in 8th grade. Congress makes the laws. The President executes the laws. It's also right there in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/ ("The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.").
If an independent agency is exercising "The executive Power," then it does so derivatively of the President. Article II doesn't say that "the executive branch" shall execute the law. It says: "he"--the President--"shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Note also the parallel structure with Article I ("All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States") and Article III ("The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish").
The President is the executive branch, in the same way Congress is the legislative branch, and the Supreme Court and the lower courts are the judicial branch. All of these branches have various offices and subdivisions, but they are within the control of one of those three constitutional actors.
Congress cannot create an entity that exercises executive powers but does not answer to the President any more than the President can create an entity that exercises legislative powers but does not answer to Congress.
> FWIW, the conventional wisdom is that the independent agencies really are independent, and the president's control over them is exactly what is stipulated in the legislation that created them.
That has not been the "conventional wisdom" for anyone who went to law school in several decades. The notion of an "independent agency" exercising executive power independently of the President was an absurd idea cooked up by a racist in the early 20th century who hated democracy and had fantasies of "scientific government" (https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...). It peaked in the mid 20th century, but the project of whittling it back to constitutionality has been ongoing my entire lifetime.
> If the statute of the Dept of XYZ and says the president can fire its governing board but only on weekends, then he has to wait til Saturday, period end of story.
The Supreme Court held in 1926 that the President's removal power over executive-branch officials is essentially unconstrained (Myers v. United States). The Court then reversed itself in 1935 (Humphrey's Executor v. United States) but that case has since been limited pretty much to its facts (Seila Law LLC v. CFPB).
Thanks for responding at length, though your derisive tone isn't winning you any converts. Is it your position then that the president can legally wield any power described in any legislation? If not, what can't he do? Can he, for example, raise and lower interest rates over the objection of the Fed? Approve an IPO that the SEC rejected? Lend money to his supporters through the SBA and deny loan applications from his adversaries? Refuse to deliver Hunter Biden's mail? If not, why not? I'm not trying to play gotcha here, but it seems like your position is that he can do these things.
"The vesting of the executive power in the President was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws. But the President, alone and unaided, could not execute the laws. He must execute them by the assistance of subordinates. This view has since been repeatedly affirmed by this Court. Wilcox v. Jackson, 13 Peters 498, 38 U. S. 513; United States v. Eliason, 16 Peters 291, 302; Williams v. United States, 1 How. 290, 42 U. S. 297; Cunningham v. Neagle, 135 U. S. 1, 135 U. S. 63; Russell Co. v. United States, 261 U. S. 514, 261 U. S. 523. As he is charged specifically to take care that they be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication, even in the absence of express words, was that, as part of his executive power, he should select those who were to act for him under his direction in the execution of the laws."
The Constitution, of course, imposes limits on executive power, and statutes create private rights and obligations and provide procedures and substantive standards. But if the executive power otherwise may be exercised, Congress cannot constitutionally insulate the exercise of that power from the President's influence. Put differently, the procedural framework of a law can't merely be there to insulate the exercise of executive power from the President's influence.
To address your examples:
> Can he, for example, raise and lower interest rates over the objection of the Fed?
Probably.
> Approve an IPO that the SEC rejected?
It depends. The securities laws regulate private conduct--that's important--and impose various standards and procedures. So the president can't alter private rights without following those procedures and standards. But can the president supervise and direct how the SEC does it's job? Yes. The Arthrex case is relevant here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf.
> Lend money to his supporters through the SBA and deny loan applications from his adversaries? Refuse to deliver Hunter Biden's mail?
No to both, because nobody at SBA or USPS could permissibly do those things.
> No to both, because nobody at SBA or USPS could permissibly do those things.
I don't see why. A specific person at the SBA is empowered to approve or deny the loan, and that person works for someone who works for someone who works for the president, right? I assume we both agree that Trump could likely get the loan approved indirectly, by ordering the SBA administrator to get it done and replacing him if he refuses. What's the difference between that, and Trump accomplishing the same thing faster via executive order, "As president I have reviewed this loan and all relevant regulations and determine that it is approved"?
For me and (despite what you say) conventional wisdom, the difference is that the SBA is empowered by statute to loan money and the president isn't. Under your interpretation, I don't think there is a difference and he really could do that. What would stop him? At least in the case of the SEC, someone might plausibly argue that he had broken a law, but I believe the criteria the SBA uses to approve loans are departmental regulations, which by your reasoning ought to be subject to the same presidential whims.
edit- I just realized that I used firing earlier as an example - "If the statute of the Dept of XYZ and says the president can fire its governing board but only on weekends, then he has to wait til Saturday" - which is probably why you brought up Myers. I don't really disagree with Myers (or Seila for that matter), but I also don't think it's very relevant to the larger question of whether creating an agency to do X is tantamount to empowering the president to personally do X.
The SBA stature provides for various procedures for underwriting the loans. The executive must follow those procedures, because they relate to the substantive operation of the program and determination of private rights. So it can’t just be done by EO. But could Trump actually sit down and do all the work and make the loan? I don’t see any reason why not.
Myers happened to be about removal, but it articulated a broader principle:
> As he is charged specifically to take care that they be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication, even in the absence of express words, was that, as part of his executive power, he should select those who were to act for him under his direction in the execution of the laws.
It would seem to follow that the executive’s power to run has limits itself. If the legislative has the power to create an entity and the executive runs that entity at such minimal function that the entity effectively doesn’t exist, that usurps the legislative of their creation powers. You could tarpit any agency they establish. The power to run still means you must run the agency in good faith.
I don't disagree with that. But what's discussed in the article--exercising control over grants--is squarely within the domain of running, rather than abolishing.
I thin you want to be a little more precise in your definition. A president doing things they dont have the authority for would probably mean every president conducted a coup.
Musk's operations likely are using illegal means and are an overextension of power, while legislative and judicial branches, as well as internal executive branch watchdogs, have abdicated their roles in oversight and control. This is effectively an overthrow.
When I read your comment I am sympathetic to your characterization that its illegal. I expect it will be litigated.
But then you conflate illegal with "an overthrow" (of what?) to show its a "coup". This is incredibly hand-wavy and makes the "coup" language look like hyperbole.
Trump is essentially ruling by decree and taking actions far outside his authority. If successful, this will de facto strip Congress of much of its power and transfer it to the President. If you want to see what the outcome of that looks like, read about events in Germany in January-March 1933.
Routinely reaching past the defined limits of the executive branch could be described as a coup. Depending on the event/circumstances, it's congress being overthrown, or the constitution, etc.
Assuming a definition of coup like "violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group" there's a reasonable case to be made.
> Routinely reaching past the defined limits of the executive branch could be described as a coup.
That ship sailed several decades ago, at the least. Presidents have been routinely testing the limits of executive authority longer than I've been alive. Everyone is perfectly happy to rationalize it with motivated reasoning until it is their ox being gored. The histrionics over the current flavor of the month betrays an ignorance of what has been historically routine in Washington DC for a long time or hypocrisy. People only pay attention when they are told to pay attention.
As a matter of principle, one side doesn't get to reserve tools of abuse for themselves. I'd rather a system where this was not a thing at all, but since it is, a lot of the shrillness has a "leopards eating faces" vibe. The wheel turns, and it will continue turning.
Calling this "routine" is completely insane. When has a President ever done something like the instant unilateral dismantling of USAID? Talk about motivated reasoning. This is completely unprecedented and is an attempt to sideline Congress entirely. And it looks likely to succeed.
Why would that weaken the argument? Until Congress passes a law authorizing this stuff, it's still a blatant power grab and very much not like what has come before.
The bureaucracy isn't actually a branch of government recognized by the Constitution. Nominally it's within the executive branch, which the president is in charge of.
> Routinely reaching past the defined limits of the executive branch could be described as a coup
Not accurately. It would apply to probably every president. Biden with student loans for example.
This definition is also too broad: "alteration of an existing government by a small group". That would apply to every President. Every president has a cabinet and changes the government. I think you need more precision in your definition.
There are several laws and constitutional restrictions that prevent the president from doing whatever the fuck he wants.
Under what coherent legal theory is Biden not allowed to cancel student debt obligations to the federal government, but Trump is allowed to cancel government grants explicitly required by law?
1) The student loans are specifically for provided by a detailed statutory scheme.
2) The grants are being made out under general delegations of authority and budgeting power, and are not “explicitly required by law.”
To my knowledge, Congress has not specifically appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars e.g. to Catholic refugee resettlement charities. Those grants are being made under discretionary agency action. Correct me if I’m wrong.
SCOTUS overturned Biden's loan forgiveness on the basis that the "general delegation of authority and budgeting power" given to him by statute wasn't sufficiently clear to let him do so, and so the Major Questions doctrine kicks in.
And the stuff being paused that's statutorily authorized is USAID--Trump is attempting to unilaterally dismantle an executive agency.
I had an idea in my head about what the word "coup" means and why it is bad and I'm struggling to figure out how it applies to this situation (possibly because being no-American I don't get their news).
My understanding is the USA executive is an obscenely powerful position by the standard of the rest of the Western world and they can also delegate that power to accomplish specific objectives.
Is this a coup of Musk against Trump or the executive doing things its not allowed to do or a coup of the executive against the legislature?
(Maybe tabooing (in the rationalist sense) the word "coup" might help...)
Aside: the article paints a very concerning picture about the consequences of contemptuous ignorant imposition of abrupt blanket rules on valuable complex systems. I thank the OP for posting it.
It’s not a coup in any literal sense of the word, not even in the autocratic sense.
The reason it’s being used is a combination of the US having never experienced a real coup, and thus it’s citizens not really knowing what the word means, plus one side of politics being sore losers after having lost an election and using whatever insult they can think of in order to deflect rather than self reflect on why they lost.
We have better words for that than "coup", esp. because is is not clear at all if Trump will uphold the constitution, law and traditions of the USA by just abdicating at the end of his 2nd and final term.
How about "Gleichschaltung", or "synchronization" for the English speaking folks, instead?
> Most of us will change the channel or scroll to the next social media clip. Most in the media will “both sides” the end of our democracy into a melisma of euphemisms and equivocations. Most of our political leaders will focus on the pitch for their next fund-raiser email. And if this oblivious, indolent cowardice continues as I fear it will, we will look back on these days of chaos, destruction, hatred and lunacy as only prelude. Unchecked, we are on the path not just to autocracy, but to the worst form of malevolent dictatorship.
> My reaction is not hysteria. It’s not exaggeration. It’s not premature. Where we are is a place we have never been in this country and the threat we face is by no means one that we can survive—because something precious and fragile is at dire risk of being lost.
Democracy is a broken, hackable system and it shows why. Theoretically in democracy you're supposed to be elected by the majority and then ensure the rights of the minority. When you're elected by the majority and then make the life of minorities as hard as possible, that's fascism- which is what real world practice of democracy has become.
They need periodic retrenchment -in the private sector there are economic pressures to re-organize; in the government the tendency is for greater taxation.
Throwing out the baby along with the bath water is not the answer but neither is the status quo.
You don't get to just pretend these things aren't created and funded by congress, and that their operation hasn't been solidified and formed over decades and decades through interaction with the judicial branch as well.
The executive branch has an obligation to execute the laws - they don't get to arbitrarily pick and choose how to do that without constraint. Period.
If these were somehow created by executive action, it would be a completely different conversation. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.
Apparently Mayorkas didn't have to execute the laws if he didn't want to and moreover got to decide if he wanted to subvert them as well by granting asylum to whomever asked as well as providing transport, guidance, etc., etc.
Democrats make people upset by not applying laws --all the thievery etc that AGs went light on, etc., and the Republicans make people upset by applying laws to a greater extent (being tougher on crime and deportations --though Obama wasn't a laggard in the latter either)
They're not being dismantled. Funding is being paused while they are audited --and the audits are showing very concerning waste, potential fraud and are being reorganized under a different department.
This is a good thing. They should not get to waste our tax dollars without oversight and fraud detection.
O RLY? You might try reading literally anything the people involved are putting out there. They're open about trying to shut down USAID and the department of Education, and interfering so deeply in places like NIH is beyond the plausible legal limit (which is part of the point during an authoritarian takeover).
I know that HN is supposed to be a place of reasoned discourse, but your takes are so removed from reality I can't take you seriously. I hold your authoritarian apologism in utter contempt and disgust. Be better.
I think everyone should be concerned how the government is spending our money and every government administration should have its spending audited and any graft, fraud and waste eliminated with a waste-0 initiative. This should be transparent to the voters. We should know how they are spending our money and where. The purpose of the government agencies isn't to be a jobs program.
> This should be transparent to the voters. We should know how they are spending our money and where.
The fact that you think this is what's happening right now is fucking hilarious. It's also hilarious that you don't seem to know just how much public information IS available from these institutions.
Some random, ketamine addicted, un-elected oligarch with a cadre of teenage lackeys being let loose with unlimited authority over giant institutions in a process with zero accountability or transparency is your fucking idea of an audit? Like the rest of your arguments here, that's either phenomenally stupid or a mediocre astroturfing job.
So you think voters were aware of how USAID moneys were being spent?
Causing instability overseas, paying Reuters, Catholic charities, BBC, NYT, Politico, etc., for disinformation, people smuggling, etc. It's ridiculous. I'm glad it's happening. The corruption is being exposed. It could be Stalin's great-grandkid doing this and I would welcome the exposure of our waste.
Of course Soros junior so mad his manoeuvering isn't as effective no more.
> So you think voters were aware of how USAID moneys were being spent?
What the fuck? We're talking about the availability of information, not what random idiots have bothered to make themselves aware of.
> Causing instability overseas, paying Reuters, Catholic charities, BBC, NYT, Politico, etc., for disinformation, people smuggling, etc. It's ridiculous. I'm glad it's happening. The corruption is being exposed. It could be Stalin's great-grandkid doing this and I would welcome the exposure of our waste.
Nothing is being exposed. There are legal ways to pursue "audits" and "efficiency", but nobody can seriously believe that's what's happening now. USAID could be evil incarnate, and the current power grab would still be illegal and a threat to the very existence of our country (and we're not ONLY talking about USAID, they just started there).
Just admit it - you're an authoritarian at heart and you're happy daddy is going to decide everything now. Real life is too complex to bother trying to understand.
> Trump and Musk are actively destroying the separation of powers of the branches of government.
I'm afraid that's just factually wrong. What Trump and Musk are doing is called impoundment of appropriated funds[1] and it is Constitutional and consistent with the separation of powers, and was in fact considered one of the powers of the President until 1974.
In 1974, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act, making it illegal (but not unconstitutional), and that will no doubt be fought in the Courts, but it seems likely the the current Supreme Court will overturn the act, making what Trump and Musk are doing legal.
Click through to the Train decision. It has been firmly held that per the Article 1 separation of powers, Congress determines how money is spent. Impoundment is used (and it certainly is used routinely) only when the executive determines that a disbursement will not serve it's intended purpose. Quote from Train, "the president cannot frustrate the will of Congress by killing a program through impoundment". I have no doubt Trump is attempting to trigger a new case in an effort to overturn Train and he may well succeed, but he'll likely end up overturning Article 1 in the process.
This goes right back to his first impeachment where we got a clear lesson on this. Congress authorized money for the defense of Ukraine. It went through multiple mandatory controls with DoD and other agencies to ensure the specific disbursement was likely to reach it's intended target. Those controls could have triggered impoundment if they found any flaws, but they did not. Then it was stopped by the president expressly to extort a political favor from Ukraine. In this case, the House voted to impeach and the Senate refused to convict likely due to political loyalty. Now that he knows Congress likely won't stop him, he can abuse his authority as he pleases.
> I have no doubt Trump is attempting to trigger a new case in an effort to overturn Train and he may well succeed, but he'll likely end up overturning Article 1 in the process.
The Train decision came nearly 200 years after Article 1 was written, and during that time impoundment was practiced by Presidents beginning with Thomas Jefferson. Overturning Train would in fact restore the original meaning of Article 1.
There is no way in hell the founders thought a president could unilaterally disassemble an entire agency that was explicitly empowered by Congress. Thomas Jefferson didn't want to buy ships. He didn't try to disband the Navy. And it's possible the SC would have stopped him if Congress had the will. There is not a long history of impoundment being a major tool of executive authority. When Nixon tried to shut down multiple programs within an agency, he was shot down in court and Congress passed a law delineating exactly what he could and could not do. There is no reason to think that law runs afoul of the Constitution. Article 1 does not grant any right to impoundment. The actions of past presidents aren't precedent or else (in the case of Jefferson) we'd still have slavery.
If you disagree, please type the words: "The President can unilaterally disband a federal agency empowered by Congress whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants and no one can stop him". Because that is what you are implying.
I think it's clear that the founders never considered the possibility of a president disbanding a modern federal agency because they didn't think such large agencies would exist. They tried to reserve most power for the states. And if they had known the modern federal government could become so big, they would support shutting it down. The president is meant to act as a check on Congressional spending too.
They also couldn't envision women voting. The president has veto power over the budget. That is their check on spending. They absolutely positively do not have any authority to cancel a Congressional appropriation and they never have.
You know what else the founders definitely did not envision? A standing federal army. Trump is honor bound to the soul of George Washington to disband the DoD and reclaim $800B. Surely that is 100% his prerogative and nobody has any right to stop him.
Funny how democracy works, I recall an election recently not a coup.
Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).
When an elected official goes far beyond their legal powers to take control of the country, that's called a coup. Yes, even if they were perfectly legally elected.
People don't vote for the millions of public employees. They vote for the president. Everything Trump has said so far indicates Musk is doing all of this at the discretion of Trump.
People voting for an elected official is different than that elected official breaking the law. People can't vote to break the law. They can vote to rewrite the law, sometimes, depending on how the law is written. Often in the US we vote for elected officials who write law and then the elected president who enforces the law.
So whether tens of millions of people voted for Trump doesn't mean Trump can just disregard law because people liked him and maybe even liked that he said he would disregard the law. As far as I know, that's not how the rule of law works in representative democracies.
A riot where he specifically told them in the speech before "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." ?
This doesnt seem to change the fact there was a riot at all?? Surely you at least admit its a stain on the movement that this was the only non-peaceful transfer of power in a looong time, and if you consider how many western democracies have peaceful transfers of power, this is a huge abboration and absolutely not normal
Sure, it obviously wasn't great and obviously Trump handled it horribly. I'm just a little sick of people deliberately ignoring facts because it suits them politically.
Even Trump claiming the election was stolen wasn't new. Hillary Clinton did the exact same thing.
After being told to "fight like hell" that day or else they "wouldn't have a country anymore"? And that since trials in a court of law hadn't worked, "let's have trial by combat"? And when informed that the crowd couldn't get close to the stage because of their weapons and the metal detectors, Trump snapped at his staff that they're "not here to hurt me"?
Somehow, though all the plausible deniability winking and nodding, his fan base got the message; You can see it plainly throughout their communications and postings before and throughout the attack.
Because "fight" can only ever be used to mean a physical altercation?
More or less right after the "fight like hell" part of his speech:
"So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.
The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
It's clear (even through his rambling) that he meant they should march down there give the Republicans/Pence the guts (or whatever) to send it back to the states to recertify.
> Trial by combat
That was Giuliani, apparently, who said that.
“Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail,” he told the crowd that day. “So, let’s have trial by combat.”
Yes, clearly he's talking about an actual trial by combat.
Honestly though, what were they even "protesting" about? If you say against a rigged election, you need way more than "I think it happened" you need evidence - which they tried very hard to find and never did, not to mention the supposed election rigger left office 4 years later, much more peacefully and smoothly than Trump did. I dont even understand what the hell they were supposed to be mad about, what was he trying to do if not overturn the election?
Trump actually outlines that in the speech before the riot, although he does it in such a meandering Trump-y way that it's hard to parse. He wanted Pence to send it back to the states to have a better look at things, although that would have been messy as hell.
"So as an example, in Pennsylvania, or whatever, you have a Republican legislature, you have a Democrat mayor, and you have a lot of Democrats all over the place. They go to the legislature. The legislature laughs at them, says we're not going to do that. They say, thank you very much and they go and make the changes themselves, they do it anyway. And that's totally illegal. That's totally illegal. You can't do that.
In Pennsylvania, the Democrat secretary of state and the Democrat state Supreme Court justices illegally abolished the signature verification requirements just 11 days prior to the election."
"More than 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania were illegally counted, even though they were received after Election Day. In other words, they were received after Election Day. Let's count them anyway."
There's a ton more. Some true, some not, etc. The annoying part is the media completely disregarded stuff like this, which only enraged his base more.
The real issue in my opinion that we don't have enough systems and transparency in place to be 100% sure our elections are fair. We should have random audits.
Hijinks with what same states pulled with their election laws during COVID shouldn't happen. Hillary Clinton claimed Trump stole the election from her, so this isn't a new feeling - Trump just had an actual support base he could rile up. Unfortunately for all of us, with the political system being so partisan I fear nobody can even propose more election security without coming off like a crazy person.
> He wanted Pence to send it back to the states to have a better look at things
"To have a better look at things" is a very euphemistic way of saying "to override the vote counts." In fact, Trump had a very specific plan for what Pence should do, involving slates of fake electors that Pence should seat, in place of the actual electors chosen through the electoral process. Those fake electors would then cast their votes for Trump, overturning the will of the voters. The whole thing failed because Pence refused to go along with such a blatantly illegal scheme. That's why the rioters that Trump whipped up set up a gallows outside the Capitol to hang Pence on.
> Hijinks with what same states pulled with their election laws during COVID shouldn't happen
Allowing people to vote without endangering themselves during a pandemic is not "hijinks."
> the Democrat state Supreme Court
It's the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Period. Not the "Democrat state Supreme Court." They made an entirely reasonable decision, based on their understanding of the law: any ballot put in the mail before the election deadline was valid. There was a legal dispute over this, the court made a ruling well before the election, and those were the rules for the election.
Really, that attempt was several steps down the line. First it was many attempts to overturn the election by convincing states to change their reported votes or just sending different electors. January 6th was the last-ditch attempt after those efforts failed.
I do recall Trump not wanting to let go of that power, in it? It wasn't out of his own magnanimity that he stepped down. Checks and balances still worked, appallingly sure, but they still worked.
He was unprepared last time, and made the strategic mistake of having a few non-sycophants around in positions of power who could tell him that he had to surrender.
Please read the Jack Smith final report. He broke laws to stay in power, he did not give up any power willingly. And if the Supreme Court hadn't delayed things so much, he would have gone to trial and been found guilty before he could be reelected.
Just because he's an absolute dumbass who had no idea how to effectively overturn the election doesn't mean he didn't try and doesn't mean the attempt wasn't violent.
I like how your literal argument is that Trump failed at becoming a dictator so he's obviously not one. Despite you know, demanding people find votes and organizing a riot.
A failed dictator is still a dictator. What's next, the events in South Korea weren't the result of a failed attempt at a coup?
We don't have a monarchy (yet). The Constitution does not say "anything in here is void at the whim of the President". An electoral win does not allow him to unleash a gang of thugs through all of the agencies, to shut down Congressionally mandated agencies, to violate civil service protections, etc. Presidents swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He claimed he was going to end wars and immediately threatened war on multiple allies, with the latest being a threat of mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And on and on.
You could make arguments of overreach but they don't come even close to "coup."
> coup: a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.
> Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He claimed he was going to end wars and immediately threatened war on multiple allies, with the latest being a threat of mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And on and on.
Trump and the Republicans control all three branches of government: the office of the President, the House, and the Senate. Who exactly are you contending they are overthrowing?
That's not how any of this works. Read up on separation of powers. Just to take one example...
> the Supreme Court ruled nine to nothing that when Congress directs that money be spent, the president is obliged to do it. [...] Presidents can certainly send recommendations to Congress that funds should be cut. The Impoundment Control Act provides an expedited procedure for having those recommendations considered. But the president simply doesn’t have this unilateral authority.
We’ll see in a year or two how this really works. My view is that there was a coup against the Constitution about 90 years ago and as a result we have decades of judicial Calvinball that need to be sorted through. Just to start with, can you find the part of the Constitution that authorizes NIH and NSF to exist in the first place?
In terms of following the strictures of the Constitution, nothing the administration has done has made things any worse in that regard and in fact, has the potential to make things much better. The bureaucracy has grown into an extraconstitutional (which is to say, unconstitutional) fourth branch of government with separated powers of its own. Destroying that independence and returning executive power to the elected executive is a massive step in the right direction.
I don't think he lied about Project 2025. It is a collection of more than 700 policy proposals. Some completely normal, milquetoast Republican policies. Some more extreme. No matter what Trump implemented, it would have covered some of those policies, leading to accusations that he's "doing Project 2025". I don't think he would ever have read 900 pages, so I don't think he read it, and I don't think he lied.
I didn't claim everything he does is democratic. I claimed that what he is doing is as promised to voters. Don't take my word for it. He is now at the highest approval rating he has ever had in office (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...). People obviously feel he is delivering what he promised.
I don't think any checks and balances are being broken. Trump and the Republicans won the popular vote (which is kind of insane in an of itself), the Electoral College, the House, and the Senate. They have an unprecedented mandate to carry out unprecedented change by voters who were obviously VERY unhappy with the Democrat Party.
> On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents
I can't fathom what you're trying to argue with this. That we should stop elections because the people might elect an authoritarian?
That doesn't look a very convincing argument. So Trump is coincidentally close to the Project 2025 members and both executing their playbook on day one but somehow that's not a connection?
> I don't think any checks and balances are being broken. Trump and the Republicans won the popular vote (which is kind of insane in an of itself), the Electoral College, the House, and the Senate.
Well but right now why isn't he using any of those then? Musk operates outside any legal framework.
Maybe Trump isn't as confident as you seem on the loyalty of his fellow non-MAGA Republicans.
> I can't fathom what you're trying to argue with this. That we should stop elections because the people might elect an authoritarian?
I'm just disproving the nonsensical argument "he's been elected, therefore it'll remain a democracy". Well no, that isn't a sufficient guarantee.
> That doesn't look a very convincing argument. So Trump is coincidentally close to the Project 2025 members and both executing their playbook on day one but somehow that's not a connection?
And I don't find the argument convincing that because some of his policies are similar to Project 2025's, he must subscribe to ALL of them.
> Well but right now why isn't he using any of those then? Musk operates outside any legal framework.
Donald Trump gave Elon Musk the power of Special Government Employee (SGE), which is defined under U.S. federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 202. Further laws which cover this title are 5 CFR § 2641.104 and 17 CFR § 200.735-12. Musk is performing legal duties, entitled to him under democratically instituted and operationalised laws.
> I'm just disproving the nonsensical argument "he's been elected, therefore it'll remain a democracy". Well no, that isn't a sufficient guarantee.
I'm not making any claims about the future. I don't have a crystal ball. I am clearly arguing that you should accept the will of the people in a democracy.
> And I don't find the argument convincing that because some of his policies are similar to Project 2025's, he must subscribe to ALL of them.
Otherwise why he would be personally so close to this project then? That doesn't make sense.
> Donald Trump gave Elon Musk the power of Special Government Employee (SGE), which is defined under U.S. federal law
That's not enough to make what Musk is doing legal, this status is mostly for an advisor and Musk is an active executive member. The real way of making it legal is going through congress.
Not to mention the other DOGE workers which as far I know have no status at all.
> I'm not making any claims about the future. I don't have a crystal ball. I am clearly arguing that you should accept the will of the people in a democracy
Well there's two things which are not true here in this sentence. First he lied about his actions (unless you can find me a statement where he says that he'll put Musk in charge of dismantling the government), so it's not the will of the people, it's the will of Trump.
Secondly, he's not using the executive and legislative right now so it's hardly democratic, it's something you see in authoritarian regimes. In the EU, only Hungary works like that.
Hell of a coincidence. When an influential think tank puts out a guidebook for what their party’s nominee should do after winning the presidency, and then that person puts a bunch of the people involved in his administration and starts carrying it out, I’m not inclined to think this is all by chance.
A lot of accepting what's going on requires us to ignore the broader context of current events, and all of American history, as well as the history of democracies including those who have fallen to an authoritarian dictator.
It still wouldn't make sense. A democratically elected president conducting a coup is a tautology. He can't suddenly seize power by force because he already has it. You could be worried about him refusing to cede power at the end of his term, and should that occur, with the use of the military, you could describe that as a coup. We are many years away from that word making sense.
So if a presidential promises to execute all of his opposition in the legislature and execute the judges that disagree with him and execute anyone in the bureaucracy that fails to obey his orders, and then he gets elected, and then he does those things, while blatantly breaking any and all previously passed laws that he cares to, is it a coup?
Neither Napoleon nor Hitler were ever elected as heads of state. Hitler was eventually appointed Chancellor, but that is the head of government. The head of state is the President. Hitler was able to manoeuvre into that position using his personal army to murder opposition. Napoleon had an old fashioned military coup in 1799, then attempted to legitimise it with a falsified plebiscite in the following year.
In both cases, the issue was the murder, not the democracy. It is important that we not blame democracy for the actions of evil men.
The left need to accept that they lost the election, that Trump won the presidency and the Republicans won control of congress.
As much as you personally disagree with these decisions, they are in line with the broad policy positions Trump et al communicated prior to the election, and can be considered the will of the people.
Challenging the mandate the public gave them, by hyperventilating over minor procedural hiccups that will inevitably be resolved by congress in favour of Trump, comes across to voters as undemocratic.
> The left need to accept that they lost the election, that Trump won the presidency and the Republicans won control of congress.
Shouldn't they then use Congress as intended rather than what they're doing now which bypasses it?
As a bystander in another country your line of argument is mind-boggling. You don't just throw out the constitution and way the government works because one guy won an election one time. But that seems to be what a lot of people are suggesting, that because Trump won the election whatever he does is democratic and therefore okay.
Shouldn't they then use Congress as intended rather than what they're doing now which bypasses it?
They can’t because of the filibuster [1]. They cannot bypass the filibuster without a 3/5 majority which they do not have. Thus any bill which the Democrats oppose will be blocked by filibuster in the Senate.
The existence of the filibuster seems to be a current part of things working as intended. That they might hypothetically get filibustered and have trouble passing legislation doesn't provide carte blanche to do whatever. Rather it should suggest that the rules around the filibuster should be amended beforehand or perhaps after it actually appears as a material issue.
Your reply also runs counter to the parent comment I was replying to where they state that Congress would repair any irregularities after the fact. Frankly it feels like people are making things up to support their guy doing things counter to the established mechanisms of government and your own constitution.
Yes, they could remove the filibuster. But then if the Democrats retake the Senate in the midterm elections they will benefit from the removed filibuster and be able to undo everything the Republicans did in the first place.
The filibuster remaining in place is a good thing because it encourages negotiations and compromise instead of a seesaw battle.
> But then if the Democrats retake the Senate in the midterm elections they will benefit from the removed filibuster and be able to undo everything the Republicans did in the first place.
The same people typically argue that whatever Trump is right anyway. For example when he lost the last election people rallied behind is made-up election fraud claims.
So first the US isn't a monarchy last time I checked, Trump doesn't have the mandate to do what he's doing now, no matter how much you agree with his decisions or not.
And secondly no, Trump also publicly lied about his positions by saying he had nothing to do with Project 2025.
But it doesn't matter if he did say the truth anyways, saying that you'll make a coup doesn't make the coup okay.
not really a coup, its a default. US government is already using pension fund money to pay its bills since early January (aka special measures), the interest on their national debt is already more than they collect in taxes.
In case anyone was curious, the interest being paid on the national debt is of the order of $1 trillion per year, while the amount collected in taxes (federally only) is of the order of $5.5 trillion per year.
federally only is about $1.6Trillion, the rest is state taxes and never goes near the federal government to cover the interest on their debt. ($1.8Trillion at a poultry 5% interest)
dont know where you are getting your numbers. sounds like are confusing revenue and spending. relying on some AI maybe?
US collects about $12Trillion in taxes total (30% ish of GDP), under $2trillion of that is given to the federal government for medicare, medicade and the military, they spend more than $5trillion, which is what they spend on medicare, medicade the military and the interest on the $37Trillion debt they have accumulated spending more than they were given by the states for medicare medicade and the military - mostly bank and insurance fund bailouts to prop up the failed US financial system, adding about $3trillion to the federal debt each year, which is why it has gone from $30trillion at the end of 2022, to $37trillion now.
Getting downvoted because I do my own research instead of believing the latest gormless chatbot, that's new.
Of that, individual income tax was about $2.4 trillion, payroll tax was $1.7 trillion, corporate income tax was $530 billion, and there's about $253 billion of "other."
How exactly are you saying they spent 2T more than they collected in revenue again? Is this a Joe Biden forget where he put it or smth?
Meanwhile
Debt now
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
$36.4T
=$33,167 end of FY 2023, spent $3.3T on interest, Collected and spent $2.2T on medicare,medicade and the military.
= $33.1 +3.3 -2.2 +2.2 = $36.4T
good luck have fun. Im out. enjoy your fantasy economics for the few months it has left. Last group of federated states with group finances in a similar position was the USSR circa early 1991, pop quiz, can you guess what I think happens to the US next?
You sure did edit the hell out of your post. Obviously you aren't operating in good faith. But I should have figured that when, in your first post, you claimed the US collects $12T in taxes without reference and then ignored my reference showing it false. Have a great week.
The states of the united states collect about $12T in taxes total.
That is GDP times taxation as a % of gdp
roughly $36T times 30%
Precisely what that is doesnt matter, could be $10T, could be $20T
The federal government collects its tax from the states which it does through programs approved in congress.
Those programs are medicare, medicade and military spending + a few hundred billion total in scraps like the FAA or NASA. in total that sums to around $2T, which is all the states are obliged to give the federal government from the taxes they collect, if they dont like it they can choose the nuclear option and simply exit the union - California has a reasonable campaign long time ongoing to do exactly that called calexit - although right at this moment it lacks momentum. According to wikipedia there are growing movements in Alaska, California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and New Hampshire to secede.
Those movements will grow very very quickly when the states are actually presented with the now inevitable choice of doubling what they give the federal government while the federal government stops spending on pretty much every federal program - which is the only way the federal government can sustain paying its bills now the interest on their debt is larger than they take in revenue.
> The federal government collects its tax from the states which it does through programs approved in congress.
You’re aware that income tax, corporate income tax and payroll tax are paid directly to the federal government from individuals and companies right? The states don’t collect on the federal government’s behalf.
>nuclear option
There is no nuclear option. The country decided that 160 years ago.
I think it's just my belief that government should be slow and methodical, that the government should be thorough, and coming in and slashing and burning, without seemingly even checking whether they're legally allowed to do it, just seems to be a vengeful fit. I want government to be stable, relatively predictable, and wanting to follow the laws more than any other entity in the country. If the government doesn't respect the law deeply, why would any other organization?
It has to be in the first two weeks, 90%+ of DC voted for Kamala. There's going to be resistance and lack of support. People are going to want to keep their jobs. Layoffs suck but there's not a great way to do them, and the government shouldn't be immune to them.
This wasn't a surprise to people following him. People like his head of OMB from his first term was on Tucker talking all about this. They've talked about the legal aspect of things and have prepared. They've had 4 years to prepare for the resistance to change in DC and the law will be used to resist.
> If the government doesn't respect the law deeply, why would any other organization?
I think this is the biggest issue we have in society. Trump supporters have been screaming that this has already been an issue for decades. The majority of Trump supporters would 100% agree with you. While everyone is pointing their fingers at Trump and calling his supporters conspiracy theorists, we aren't looking at the crimes our corrupt government has committed. There is no trust that our DOJ is on the side of the people and not just another tool of the corrupt establishment. The list of accusations made by Trump supporters is large and damning and absolutely deserve to have their questions answered. The hate and neglect of Trump supporters includes a massive blind eye to evil in DC that's been going on for decades
This is what i never understand. Okay, not enough money, soooo _tax more_. Or at least stop giving tax cuts to the richest people in the history of the planet? Like, implement a 5% tax on their wealth, and just fix all the problems. We could have services _and_ rich people, we just have to make insanely rich people contribute to our world like we all do to theirs
> Like, implement a 5% tax on their wealth, and just fix all the problems.
My understanding is that's nowhere near enough.
The USA deficit is $1.8 Trillion a year with $30T total. The net worth of all USA billionaires is around $4.5T. So 5% would reduce the deficit by 10% until the billionaires wise up and move their wealth out of the country.
Even confiscating it all in a one-off pile reduces the national debt by about 15%.
It's a strategy, called Starve the Beast. The idea is to collect taxes, which then forces the current government to cut expenditures. The current Trump administration is no difference, this is what all the talk about government bloat is about.
It's pretty clever in its cruelty: Once you have cut taxes, it essentially doesn't matter which party wins the next election: The have to gut expenditures anyway.
> Once you have cut taxes, it essentially doesn't matter which party wins the next election: The have to gut expenditures anyway
See the current Labour government in the UK, who would very much like to spend money on government initiatives but can't because the Tories made sure there was nothing left.
The worst part about it is we already have a playbook to actually reduce the US debt, which we did very well in the 90s.
Elect US senators and Representatives to go to the floor and debate about individual programs on CSPAN so people can actually hear arguments about it.
This is why, for example, the ISS didn't get cut, but the SSC did. Both were huge science programs that cost tens of billions of dollars and Clinton's administration explicitly wanted to keep both programs but the voting public, through senators and house reps, including democrat members of both forced them to pick only one.
> The worst part about it is we already have a playbook to actually reduce the US debt, which we did very well in the 90s.
Uh, we didn't. Even in the “balanced budget” years 1998-2001, the debt increased.
Unless you mean reducing the debt to GDP ratio, which we did in parts of the 1990s, and some periods since, but that's not much explained by the spending control methods you discuss, but by growing the economy.
I thought we actually ran a surplus for a year or two? My impression is the "how", though, was "take in more revenue than expected because of the tech bubble", which isn't exactly a "how" we could or should replicate.
So, not really a demonstrated playbook to reduce the debt.
OTOH, for a longer period in the 1990 (starting about 1995), in the last half of the long and strong 1990s expansion, the arguably more important debt: GDP ratio was going down. The 2010s might have seen something similar -- it had roughly, though more noisily than in the 1990s, plateaud before the Trump tax cuts, and might have dropped even with similar spending patterns without them.
But, yeah, the secret there is largely strong economic expansion, though you can still screw it up on the fiscal policy side.
People want the US debt number to at the very least, stop going up. I'm not in any hurry to see the debt go to zero this decade, but some people insist it's necessary (I don't agree) and they got enough sway to own our country this political cycle.
I said we have a playbook to reduce the US debt. A more correct statement would have been "We already have a playbook to audit and reduce US government spending".
It is NOT done by giving one of the least competent ketamine junkies in front of a computer with a list of budget item names and tweeting the ones he finds most offensive.
Air that shit in congress where it can face PUBLIC scrutiny and debate, not in a forum literally controlled by the guy doing it. That's how we got rid of the unfortunate boondoggle SSC and kept the better ISS.
The fed reports a doubling of tax receipts from 1990 to 2000. There has been at least another doubling since then. Because Trump is a corrupt grifter and a shill for certain corps, he has already floated a plan to cut more taxes. Trump supporters do not want to bring taxes back up on companies apparently. They'd rather keep seeing their own taxes go up.
So they're going to cut stuff. Probably good stuff, probably important stuff. I'm saying there is a demonstrated productive way to cut stuff in the US system while limiting the pain and cutting of actually important stuff and that's what they would be doing if they actually wanted to fix any problem
Also I'm pretty sure the GAO has a standing list of things to do. That would also be better than this.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. That’s not why MElon elected a president using twitter to brainwash people. They are there to get rich, not to share their wealth.
>Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean?
In a nation governed by a constitution and laws, absofuckinglutely not. The chief executive is supposed to operate within the bounds of the constitution and the laws created under it.
NIH and NSF ultimately report to the executive branch and if their reach can be expanded under executive fiat in a democratic administration, I don't see why they can't be limited under a republican one?
"The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 provides that the president may propose rescission of specific funds, but that rescission must be approved by both the House of Representatives and Senate within 45 days. In effect, the requirement removed the impoundment power, since Congress is not required to vote on the rescission and, in fact, has ignored the vast majority of presidential requests."
Supposed to, but the consequences for not doing so are... overly complicated, see the various impeachments and court cases he's already had and defeated.
The bounds and laws should have been finetuned long ago, reducing the power of the President on the one side, and reforming the government to be more representative instead of a two party Us vs Them system. But that is also a democratic process and neither side has had a majority or incentive to do so.
Totally agree that there have been several past failures to reinforce the system and make it less of a good faith / handshake agreement to keep it on the rails.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't speak up and call bullshit on what's happening. It's important to call it what it is. It's important to speak up.
But you knew he doesn’t care. Your highest court ruled that laws don’t apply to the man. He can be a dictator if he wants and „whatcha gonna do ’bout it”?
Protest, support others who protest, annoy the shit out of my representatives, and loudly declare "THIS SHIT IS ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" whenever the opportunity presents itself.
It may become necessary for Trump and Musk to show their potential for brutality before people's minds change, unfortunately. But it has worked, in the past. The Kent State shooting is a good example; the obviously excessive brutality of the state caused a massive increase in willingness to speak out, protest, strike, etc. That massive public response became too large to ignore.
I also recognize that by speaking up I may make myself a target for that brutality. At this point, I've decided "so be it, if that happens, it happens."
Evil wins when good people stand by and do nothing.
You guys did this the last 4 years he was in office and nothing happened. I'm going to sign myself in for another 4 years of screaming while nothing happens.
By the way, posting about how much you hate the government on bluesky is not revolutionary activity, and talking about expecting "brutality" in retaliation shows just how out of touch you are with reality.
Americans' blind faith that their peculiar system of government makes tyranny impossible will only lead them to deny reality even when it hits them in the face with a truncheon.
>> Americans' blind faith that their peculiar system of government makes tyranny impossible will only lead them to deny reality even when it hits them in the face with a truncheon.
Even those who crafted the American system knew that it was not perfect. Benjamin Franklin said:
"I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others."
"In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government."
> you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that
Most certainly not overwhelmingly:
Trump: 49.80%
Harris: 48.32%
This is one of the more frustrating aspects of the United States. Not even 1.5% more and the result is "near total evisceration of the federal government" compared to "largely the same".
The result is even worse with the Senate. 55.9m votes for Democratic Senators, 54.4m for Republican Senators, and yet Republicans ended up with 53 seats.
And this doesn't even get into gerrymandering for House seats, which is predominantly Republican-driven.
This is by a good margin not a representative government.
Both the President and the Senate are representatives of and voted on by the States, not the people. The only representative of the people in the US Federal government is aptly named House of Representatives.
When people vote for President, it is only to inform the State of how they want the State to vote, and the State has significant freedom to allocate its votes for President how it wishes e.g. some States use a proportional allocation instead of winner-takes-all.
Popular vote for Federal office was largely a 20th century invention.
And? That doesn't change the fact that he was not "overwhelmingly" elected. He won by a slim margin. People acting like he has a massive mandate from the people are at best ignoring the facts, and are mostly trying to delegitimize the opposition.
My point is that the popular vote is misdirection no matter who uses it, people weren't voting to get the most votes nationally and strategy reflects that. It focuses people on a thing that doesn't matter to push a narrative.
The only votes that matter are the votes of the State. It may still not be "overwhelming" at 58% (312 out of 538) but pretending that wasn't the result only serves to muddy the water.
I think you’re making an academic rather than practical point. Sure, he won a much larger share of the electoral college than the popular vote and the existence of the electoral college likely influences some voting patterns. Even then though, in PA he won with barely 1.5% more of the vote yet got all 19 electoral votes. Given the how close the election was forecast and how important PA was, I don’t think the electoral college drove much of the voting patterns. So my point still stands: he barely has a mandate and most certainly did not win an overwhelming victory. And yet, he gets to implement a radically destructive gutting of the federal government.
Uh maybe read the declaration of independence and some of the writings of the founders? They most certainly did NOT want the executive branch to be a king...
ALso a slim majority of the 60% who voted is not an overwhelming majority. Biden's win against Trump was bigger.
This is not a coup, because Trump is still in his lawful 2nd and final term. Until then let's call it Gleichschaltung [1], because that's what it is: bringing all aspects of society under totalitarian control.
Him assuming the office of the president is legal. But him trying to replace the law which has gone through due process using executive orders is unlawful.
It is not a coup because he became president by force. It is a coup because he is consolidating power. (The president is not supposed to be all powerful.)
The Wikipedia-article explains why "consolidating power" as part of the government is Gleichschaltung and not a coup. A coup is the sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government [1] which is not the case here.
No one is going to start calling this Gleichshaltung, so stop trying to make it happen. Words can be flexible. The current situation approximates a coup, and so people will call it a coup. Honestly, splitting hairs over definitions while our government is being stripped for parts? This is part of the problem!
I mean, to be fair to them, Gleichshaltung is a good word for what's happening. I'm not opposed to discussing the analogues between current events in the US and Hitler's consolidation of power in Germany. But I find the insistence on "proper" terminology tiresome. I don't think it's the other commenter's fault in this case, so maybe I shouldn't be so snippy, but it's a really common tactic among bad-faith actors to "well, actually..." a discussion into a debate about semantics rather than a debate about the actual matters of real import. It's a learned defensive behavior on my part, but not right in this situation. What matters is that we see what is happening and can describe it in a way that we all understand, not that we use specific technical terminology.
Fair enough, I yield. I'm on your side, it is dire times, and we have more urgent things to do than discussing proper distinctions on an internet forum. Any action now is better than the perfect action later, so let's get out on the streets and protest, instead.
Definition 2: a sudden illegal, often violent, taking of government power, often by the army
Musk is committing illegal acts, over a weekend, in taking government power by, at minimum, not being appointed and confirmed. This is a coup by the definition YOU provided.
whatshisface uses whataboutism! it was not very effective.
Illegal acts TO CONSOLIDATE POWER. You're missing/ignoring a key phrase in your defense of fascist takeovers. This, right now, is still a coup. What about another time? I don't care. This time is happening now. We have a coup now.
The 6th January capitol attack was an attempted coup, what's happening now is Gleichschaltung. Please read up on "Gleichschaltung" [1] if you think that's in any way or form less of an condemnation as "coup".
"Gleichschaltung" is literally just how the administrative coup was implemented in Nazi Germany. Just because you'd rather talk about the logistics of how to coup once you are already in power doesn't make it not a coup.
It’s true, Vladimir Putin never did a coup either. He became a dictator through ostensibly democratic steps (without any actual democracy of course).
I wonder if Trump and Vance in 2029 can somehow pull the Putin/Medvedev switch, where the real leader takes a nominal secondary position until they can fix the constitutional issue.
As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter input.
The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Now, you can make limited inroads to block executive actions with the courts, but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause, when that's done to advance an unpopular (majority-disapproved-of) agenda, it is usually a hollow and temporary victory. To get the policies you want, you need to win over voters. That's the part the DNC seems to be completely unaware of. You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting. You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values. The DNC has taken a position of "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
The left won't be competitive in elections until they learn what it is, why it results in alienation of people who would otherwise support them, and find a way to escape it.
One could argue the right with its views on abortion and religion suffers the same problem, one they've largely tackled by voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering.
The difference I think, is that the purity spiral on the left encompasses the entire party. If your perspectives are too moderate you are shunned from the entire hemisphere of politics and often suffer a barage of name calling (e.g. bigot) from your own 'side'.
On the right, this is far less often the case. The right is significantly more tolerant of people who fall outside of purity definitions. For example, the majority of republicans are pro-life, but co-exist with roughly a third of republicans who are pro-choice.
In contrast, most Democrats will not tolerate a pro-life member under any circumstance.
I do think purity spirals exist on the right, but they are not as all emcompasssing as on the left.
You can be shunned from MAGA, while remaining republican. You can be shunned from the religious right, while remaining republican.
There is significantly more ideological diversity within the republican party than within the democratic party, and the result is democrats switching to republican at a rate 4 times higher than the republicans switch to democrats.
So ... 4 senators and 2 representatives are not MAGA. Everyone else has had to swear fealty to Trump or leave. And you say that's diversity of opinion?
The list is not an exhaustive list of non-MAGA republicans, it is a list of non-MAGA republicans who publically opposed Trump's election even after he won the primary.
Non-MAGA republicans overall are about half the republican party.
Bro I'm a gun owner and a big time first amendment proponent and all that. I've been called a socialist, communist, American hater, a racist and more by those on the right as soon as I contradict dear leader slightly.
The right is every bit as bad at this as the left because at the end of the day people are going to people.
Democrats for life of America disagrees with your assessment. The organization has existed since 1999. Henry Cuellar is a member of the democratic party and is very "pro-life".
The issue is that "pro-life" has morphed into anti-choice. What is happening in Texas and other states is not pro-life. Forcing women to die is not a pro-life stance.
In other words, the left needs to learn how to love the right (and many people within the left). But I don't know if that's the case. I think there are a lot of people on the right who want the left to love them but believe that the people on the left do not love them.
I believe the problem is that people need to learn how to feel loved. To realize that even our enemies are trying their best and most likely care about us a lot more than they would ever admit. Both sides struggle with this. People on the current left tend to just resign and give up on the relationships. People on the right tend to seek vengeance.
Purity spirals are a social dynamic where members of a group compete to demonstrate ever-increasing levels of ideological purity. Moderate perspectives are seen as dissenters and are shunned as the group becomes more radicalised.
It's a big problem for the left because numerically they are now the minority of voters, but are still trending away from the center, and shedding their more moderate members.
We know it's not as much of a problem on the right, because the rate of party switching is still far lower on the right than the left, by a factor of about 1:4.
On the right, you can be shunned by MAGA or shunned by the religious right, but still be welcome within the republican party.
On the left, you cannot challenge with any of the tent pole policies without being shunned entirely.
I think YMMV here based on who you're around. If you're right-leaning in an urban setting or a coastal city, you'll find a lot of heterodox views. If you live in the Rural South or Rural Midwest and do not almost literally worship Donald Trump, you are shunned.
The opposite is true for the left and the Democratic Party. Those circles tend to be very orthodox if you live in a lefty urban area. Disagree with one major platform issue and you're immediately suspected. If you're in the suburbs or a rural area you'll find that left-leaning people are much more heterodox.
Purity spirals are most intense in enclaves, which are echo chambers.
You'll find the same phenomenon online with regard to echo chambers. If you're in a left or right wing echo chamber, the purity spiral phenomenon is intense.
I am exactly who you are talking about, I live in a very purple city in the midwest. I grew up in a town of 3000 people, my family was Amish 4 generations ago. I'm also a 90s kid and grew up on south park. Turned into a redneck hippy.
It's a complete social poison pill in the city to have voted a certain way. Have had the same look of "how could you be that dumb" from people ranging from strippers to lawyers.
All I want is love and belonging, not sure how to feel love when I've heard the word "barbarian" to describe certain types of people. Not sure how to feel love when men's loneliness and suicide problems aren't being prioritized
Yeah, the hurt turns into anger sometimes, but yes, I need them too. For me to exist, my opposite has to exist, and I should love us both.
I appreciate you sharing this story. I'm from the suburbs of Detroit and while I voted for Kamala, I have a lot of friends and family who either openly voted for Trump or who I imagine secretly did. And while it can be so hard for me to not call them stupid (I tend to default to insulting people's intelligence sometimes because I feel so confident in mine), I try really hard to see how they're really just struggling/suffering.
And it can hurt me so much when I see people in my life attack people very hard for voting for Trump. The ones in my life who voted for him sometimes seem to be the ones who are craving the most social connection, the most interaction, and don't get it. They seem to want to engage with people and sometimes the best way to engage is to say something controversial. Like the kid who can't get the mom's attention and so starts hitting her in the leg.
People on the right are not a basket of deplorables, they're human beings who want love and attention, often from those who they fear think they're better than them. Often from those they admire the most, who keep ignoring them and running away from them.
So thank you for sharing this and helping me see this even more deeply and lovingly.
People have despaired of making common cause, because bipartisanship IS punished within the republican party, and by FOX.
I can apprecaite my fellow man, but I must also answer the question posed by the success of their tactics. I know that during the Bush era, the republicans would be AGHAST at someone like him. Someone who openly doubted McCain?? Good gravy, that would have been something to see.
But reality has drifted, and political success has dependend more and more on extremism and animosity. They can dispute the existence of evolution, and succeed in making it an issue!
Today, all that seems to matter is poltical efficiency. People have voted for Trump even KNOWING that he is going to be terrible, but because he is better for their goals.
I can feel for everyone, but as the right likes to say - who gives a frig about your feelings?
What matters is winning.
Make emapthy win. Make bipartisanship work again, then you have a chance. But why should the republicans ever do that? Their approach has given them everything they have ever desired.
Gaining voters from the right shouldn't be the Democrats primary focus.
Their primary focus should be retaining voters, by broadening the range of opinions which are acceptable within the party.
They are a decade down a purity spiral, which has resulted in the range of acceptable opinions within the party shrinking considerably, and the shunning of many individuals unnecessarily, who either stop voting altogether or find company on the right.
I gave the example above of how the republican party is able to accomodate a significant number of both pro-life and pro-choice members. The Democrats will similarly need to learn to expand their umbrella as well. Perhaps not with abortion rights, but maybe by shedding some of their zero-sum economic thinking, or race-centric thinking.
If they can fix this, they will grow, because their biggest source of new members is young adults becoming eligible to vote, not people they pull away from the right. The Democrats just need to stop churning so many people away.
> Perhaps not with abortion rights, but maybe by shedding some of their zero-sum economic thinking, or race-centric thinking.
I think this is the big one here. Race and gender, this seems to be the only thing Dems can even talk about. I just saw videos from the recent DNC winter meeting. Watch for just 75 seconds starting here: https://youtu.be/1pHvkq4ehkE?t=93
I guess this apparently plays well among the tiny base that the DNC still has, but when most independents and moderates look at this nonsense, this party is a caricature of itself.
And my point isn't that they need to pull the far right into their tent somehow. But rather that most people including the average first-time voters, are much more moderate than the current DNC has positioned itself now, and it seems like Dems mostly just want to shock them rather than win their hearts.
> I know that during the Bush era, the republicans would be AGHAST at someone like him.
The Bush era has been the worst disaster for the right wing this century in both the US and potentially globally. He was a warmonger, an economic vandal and an unprincipled man at the helm of a state that flubbed any chance at setting up for meaningful long term success in favour of the patriot act and slaughtering goat herders in the middle east. Under his eye the Republicans exiled the right from cultural relevance for around a decade. The party around him were cut from the same cloth.
There is a reason the modern Republican party went with Trump rather than another person who looked like Bush. The entire Trump story has been the Republicans - without too much recrimination - attempting to purge the remains of the Bush era because they were a gross embarrassment whos legacy has been little short of a disaster. If the US Democrats had undertaken the same purge instead of embracing the leadership of the same era then they wouldn't have tried to run Biden then Kamala.
This is what is annoying - you saw a noun, and talked about that noun.
Not about the conversation we were having which is about standards of decency expected from the Dems in speech.
And how those standards don’t matter on the right.
Bush was an idiot, does stating that satisfy you ? Would that allow you the peace to reconnect with the point ? (Also yeah. Warmongers suck. Surprisingly something everyone agrees on. The anti war position is the OG leftie position, so it’s great to see it on the right.)
Maybe make your point more directly next time. It seems that point was winning is the only thing that matters and that is driving change in the Republicans.
That isn't what is happening; if they were focused on winning at all costs they wouldn't ever nominate Trump. The man has some of the most dedicated enemies out there short of those found in a multi-generational religious war and he doesn't poll especially well. The female half of the population tend to be a bit lukewarm towards him and that doesn't help win elections either since there are a lot of them.
The Republicans are engaged in an ideological reform to clear out specifically the people who were active in the Bush years. That happens to be a broader election winner too.
You see the same desperation when a religion starts faltering/drying up. Loads of good folks start to break away. Those that remain tend to be beneficiaries from the system, or are sociopaths who don't know how to adapt, or are gullible folks who don't know how to discern lying, or are andbusy folks for whom inertia is less painful than change.
I see that in politics in a lot of ways. I'm still figuring out my concept model for it, but the experience of religious exit is showing similarities.
What I lost would not have been changed by ignoring reality. A too large share of people in the country support a traitor, amongst other deplorable qualities. The reason why informs me to how I should play the game.
In the short term, I am sure I will benefit greatly from Trump’s leadership, just like I did last time. In the long term, I need to plan for what is best for my family to live in a country (world?) with less and less societal trust/cohesion (including family members).
Maybe the reality of this level of tribalism was always there, temporarily hidden from me by my youth and economic momentum from previous decades.
It is funny, ironic, but moreso sad, to complain about the loss of societal trust and cohesion whilst actively engaging in an ideological purity spiral that merely worsens that loss.
Not really. Traitors are traitors, and people who oppose women’s rights are people who oppose women’s rights. It seems expected to not trust someone who attacks your country, much less one’s mother/daughter/sister/etc.
Sure, you can say I support killing babies. It is black and white that a woman (and her doctor) should have zero qualms about doing whatever they need to prioritize the woman’s health.
Literally no one is killing babies who can survive outside of their moms for fun. They are all medically necessary healthcare procedures.
Doubling-down on the dehumanization and simplification of your enemies is not how you convince others that you actually care about societal trust or cohesion.
I am not dehumanizing anyone. I know they are humans, which is why they are behaving as they are. Humans just don’t happen to be better than most other animals when change in relative status (and hence power) is happening.
I used to think we were a little better, though.
For the record, I actually like some of Trump’s ideas, like no (earned) income tax, about Gaza, and I would still buy a Tesla (although I would prefer if a different automaker that isn’t led by someone who makes Nazi salutes would make buying a car as easy as Tesla).
But he’s not the guy I want my kids to see as the leader of their country, both for his character and his support of other policies/traitors/racism/general chaotic nature.
Your black and white thinking is dehumanizing. By being so rigid in your stance you're being neglectful of other peoples view of the world. It comes across so invalidating and dismissive, the lack of curiosity as to why people have these world views makes it even worse. The flavor of neglect feels very much like the kind growing up in a devoted christian home. You don't get to have a personality or have a valid view of the word because "god".
Stop being so intolerant! You know the existence of vaccines is religious persecution as they make it so there are fewer lepers to be embraced. </s>
As a libertarian who voted conservative (democratic) nationally for the first time in 2020, this narrative is so upside down. The overriding dynamic is that of the wedge issue, where republicans dredge up things our society either took for granted or at least agreed to disagree on and reanimate the old arguments. They find or craft the worst hyperbolic instances that appeal to thirty second attention spans, and then harp on them until there are enough "independent thinkers" staking out a contrarian position to make it an "issue".
The democratic party has its problems and is still fundamentally working to serve the corporate status quo. But contrast the soul searching that's been going on even since November, to the unapologetic doubling down of "stop the steal" in response to an objectively disastrous first Trump term.
The real answer is that people are squeezed, angry, don't know how good they actually have it, don't want to listen to reason, and just want to fuck shit up. Well, now we're all going to get it good and hard.
(edit: added /s tag to mitigate Poe's law, as it's 2025)
Well we can sit and hope that the other side solves the problem, while they sit and hope we solve it, and remain stuck in a never-ending cycle of blame and waiting.
Or someone can have the courage to change the situation. The nice benefit is that by ridding the hate in ourselves, we feel better even if the other side doesn't.
Not sure if this was to me (I hate that HN anonymizes so much, it doesn't understand the importance of personal context in communication), but I just looked up purity cycle and didn't find anything but found purity spiral, is that what you meant?
> A purity spiral is a theory which argues for the existence of a form of groupthink in which it becomes more beneficial to hold certain views than to not hold them, and more extreme views are rewarded while expressing doubt, nuance, or moderation is punished (a process sometimes called "moral outbidding").[1] It is argued that this feedback loop leads to members competing to demonstrate the zealotry or purity of their views.[2][3]
Free and fair elections are likely a thing of the past in the United States after this administration has completed its term, so it doesn't really matter if the left is competitive. They'll be a placeholder opposition party without any change of taking power for the foreseeable future. Trump and Johnson were already colluding to refuse certification of the 2024 election if Trump lost. They'll have a far more robust plan prepared next time.
A simple mental exercise using analogies, might help explain why the current branch of the simulation should be backtracked asap...
- Imagine if the president allowed Jeff Bezos to reprogram the Treasury’s payment system as if it were an online shopping cart.
- Picture the president authorizing Sam Altman to treat the federal payment system maybe as a live AI experiment.
- Envision the president allowing Larry Page to run the Treasury system.
- Imagine Mark Zuckerberg not only with the power to update federal payment rules, with access to all U.S. taxpayer data. Incredible coincidence Musk runs, privately, a social networking site...
I dont include an example with Palantir...Because some of the 19 years old bros working with the Musk team, were interns at Palantir. So I am just going to assume Thiel has all the info on all US citizens now...
No concerns with conflicts of interest, no vetting, no official role because...People voted for the current president? When did voting become a
blank check?
Exactly. Voting for someone, even if they say they will break the law, doesn't mean they're allowed to break the law. AFAIK, that's not how representative, constitutional democracies work.
Trump said so many things, so many outlandish things that I think a sizeable percentage of the people who voted for him didn't quite believe he would do. I don't have hard data on that but I did speak with several repubblican voters who dismissed the worries saying that he was just joking to provoke the libs.
He did. I only hope next time that the people who voted for him because of the truthiness of what he said (vs the actual truth) will think twice the next time they vote.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Call it whatever you want, the fact of the matter is that you have an unelected private person, who happens to be the richest person on earth, taking control of federal agencies. I don't think anyone should consider this silly, as nobody thought it was silly when MAGA tried to actually stage a literal coup by force 4 years ago.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~
The last years have made it very clear that's exactly how you win. You seem to be under the impression that the democrats, not MAGAs, are unhinged in their rhetoric.
The only elected members of the executive branch are the President and VP. The president is employing Musk. Your claims of him being unelected is irrelevant.
You could have just condensed this down to: democrats bad and only their fault.
Because if people in the middle can be so damn gullible to vote for a criminal who said:
"I don't care about you, I only want your votes",
like Trump because he promised good economy I don't know how anyone can conclude that the issue here is with democrats and not the people's lack of critical thinking.
It's a bit late to correctly point out that focusing on demographics as you voter base is stupid and that it's interest groups you should focus on (as this should've been done in 2008 after Obama's victory), because this isn't a race between two sane candidates.
The left don't have to any soul searching to do when again the so called middle literally voted for a man who to their face told them that he doesn't care about them he just wants their votes, who yes is a criminal that has swindled, lied and now rug pulled.
Well if the left wants to lead, it should never stop doing soul searching. Why not ask ourselves, "What have we done that may have contributed to people in our lives wanting to support such vengeful behaviors? How might have we and other people like us hurt these people over the years?"
You're more than welcome citing where I stated the left should never do any soul searching, I specifically said that when it comes to people being so gullible to vote for Trump despite his character is no argument for democrats having to do any soul searching because there is nothing to be reflecting about that.
Yes and im saying if we have people we love in our lives who were gullible to that, should we give up on them or fight harder to love them? I choose the latter and that requires me to do soul searching, of mine and theirs.
Please actually read what I wrote because you say that, but at the same time you've now twice projected assumed positions of mine that only would make sense in your mind if I was some progressive liberal stereotype.
Because no, I have never said that I would ignore those gullible people.
Ontop of this I fail to see what supposed soul searching we need to do, for example if I believe in free speech and the gullible voter voted for a president because they promised to flattered them while also promising to remove free speech and jail anyone who speak unfavorablely about them.
Or how about a real example, what soul searching did the republicans have to do when the south seceed? Or how about the social democrats, liberals and the few conservatives who were executed by the nazis, they should've have been more antisemitic? While Hitler took control via technicality rules?
What I'm saying is that it sounds like you're saying there's nothing people can do, that it's other people's behaviors that need to change, that nothing we can do will change their behaviors regarding this specific instance. Is that what you're saying? That it is the other people's responsibility to fix this, not ours?
Okay, well my brother voted for Trump because he believes ~affirmative action~ I mean DEI is ruining the world and hurting him specifically.
He gets extremely angry when NFL players do "N*** behavior", like get in a bar fight, and has never once talked about a white football player doing things like, IDK, stealing from charities.
Any time he drinks whiskey at all, he uses it as an excuse to get very very very aggressive and attack strangers in bars.
He thinks the solution to school shootings is for teachers to be armed. My mother, a teacher of 35 years who has had to literally break up two large teenage boys trying to kill each other, explained that she doesn't get paid enough to learn how to operate a firearm safely around kids, and that's asking for more trouble than it would help. She also used to make daily jokes about running over the bad kids in the school parking lot, so I think it's not a great idea either.
He used to fly a confederate flag as "honoring his heritage". He is french canadian from northern maine, so his heritage is: Marrying native americans princesses because you left the wife at home, murdering those slaving bastards from the south for the glory of the union, and being oppressed by the KKK restarting in our state because we are french catholic
He insists he has never been sicker than since he has gotten the COVID vaccine. In high school he spent a month shitting blood due to a rare medical defect and didn't go to the hospital because he thought he was dying from being an alcoholic. Before COVID existed, he was infamous in our family for exhibiting the worst "man colds" we have ever known of periodically.
He insists that education is liberal brainwashing despite never setting foot in an education institution past high school, which he spent failing biology and learning how to repair cars instead in the vocational wing, and his own mom being a college adjunct professor for decades.
He TAUGHT my nephew to hate Biden. He didn't tell my nephew "here's some things biden and democrats have done that make life worse for people", he just says, multiple times a day in front of the child, "democrats are evil". For reference, our mother did not tell us basically any political opinion for our entire life. He was allowed to go listen to absurd AM radio without anyone telling him what was right or wrong. I thought she DID teach us empathy though.
He thinks Unions are evil.
My sister runs one of the most successful childcare program businesses in the southern part of the state, and has been successfully running businesses involving childcare since 2006. My brother has run zero business other than buying stuff off Facebook marketplace and flipping it to a dumber buyer for a profit. He tried to give her business advice, and became extremely hostile to her when she told him that his advice didn't make sense and was wrong.
He believes we need to strengthen the US border with Mexico to keep out immigrants for our national safety and that immigrants are taking our jobs. His lifelong best friend, who has the same opinion and voting history, is the heir and operator of one of the largest farms in northern maine. Every year they bus in hundreds of people who don't speak english, sleep 50 to a shack, and get paid under the table to pick crops. They've never committed crime while in town.
During the BLM protests, he informed my mother that there were violent protests in my city. The protest was 12 young adults silently laying on the ground in front the entrance to the police station. Our state has high requirements for being a police officer, and even progressives around here have faith in the police, possibly without reason as the shooting with Robert Card showed.
His explicit opinion is that spending $25 to give a junkie a second chance with Narcan is wrong because "it's your choice to ruin your life with drugs". He has had a nicotine addiction since 14 that his wife has begged him to stop for a decade and he has promised he doesn't have anymore.
My brother does not believe women and black people are his equal, full stop. He admits he doesn't like Trump and admits that Trump did not win the 2020 election and people saying he did are nuts. He genuinely believes himself to be "centrist", not republican, and claims he only votes for republicans because of Gun Rights.
He has firsthand experience, multiple times of getting stuff stolen from him and the police basically giving him a shrug because they don't feel like doing their job. He is FRIENDS with most of the police that do this. He believes that crime is going up and not being reported because of democratic scheming. Our state had a republican governor at the time the cops didn't want to do their jobs.
He's "NEVER wrong", and he believes that 100%. I don't know any other way to say this, but that statement is incredibly incorrect.
He is wrong, or lying. The story is identical with 80% of my family. They believe themselves the best thing since sliced bread, and believe that a few diversity programs trying to get black people and women into jobs they have never wanted have irreparably damaged the country and their lives. They have, not an exaggeration, never ever ever been in competition with black people or women for any position, any job, any task, etc.
The only difference between my fairly empathetic liberal reality and his "Democrats should be shot" (exact quote) one is that I grew up reading books and having my open minded friend asking me how gay marriage ACTUALLY hurts me and admiring my single mom for being such a powerful force despite the deck stacked against her and learning how science actually works, and he grew up hanging out with people who told N-word jokes and meant it and insisted the civil war was "the war of northern aggression", and claimed science doesn't work, without evidence mind you.
I won't pretend your brother is great and reasonable, but just want to point out a couple things that again, point to why your favorite side lost.
> DEI is [...] hurting him specifically.
He's not wrong on this, since DEI promotes hiring based on skin color and not on merit. There isn't much room to dispute this. Considering race when making your hiring decisions may in some people's value systems be justifiable to right wrongs perpetrated hundreds of years ago (I disagree) but the effect on the people now factually is: to harm people below some arbitrary level of melanin by pushing everyone else to the front of the line. It assumes that everyone making hiring decisions would otherwise hire racistly, which is absurd and offensive to anyone not stupid enough to judge people based on color.
> My brother does not believe women and black people are his equal, full stop
With that, he agrees with the DNC too, since they believe women and black people are automatically better than him. The only difference between their flavors of racism is which color is fantasized to be inherently morally superior at birth.
> He's not wrong on this, since DEI promotes hiring based on skin color and not on merit.
DEI does not promote hiring based on skin color and not on merit, DEI promotes tracking hiring demographics, and identifying and rectifying/mitigating issues that result in perpetuating existing underrepresentation, such as inadequate exposure of traditionally underrepresented communities in the hiring funnel.
Hiring based on “skin color” (or race, which is not the same thing, though some races have names that come from color words, or ethnicity, or sex, or many of the other axes of concern for DEI) remains explicitly and blatantly illegal, and DEI proponents do not oppose such laws, and in fact tend to prefer extending them to additional axes of concern (DEI opponents, OTOH, are more likely top both expose such extensions and to oppose existing anti-discrimination laws.)
But name calling works goddamit! Why shouldnt everyone do that??
Trump is 100% about names, holy shit.
I think the left needs to get better at name calling, and match the winning strategy. Maybe it needs to keep coming up with new funny names.
TO be serious - nthing the left does will likely work, because they have to somehow appeal to everyone. Be polite and strong, firm and flexible, forgiving and retributive.
When the left called the right "weird" that had more effect at driving liberal enthusiasm than any PDF of a policy ever has. Because it worked pretty well.
One problem is that the "left" has NO media at all. Republicans opt in to a completely controlled media platform, on Truth Social which is owned by Trump, on Fox News which multiple times has had to argue in court that nobody would take anything they say seriously, and also was knowingly lying to their audience, on AM radio which is used to yell at you 24/7 about how the dems are going to destroy you ANY DAY NOW, on Joe Rogan the podcast viewed by a hundred million people as it talks about how oppressed and cancelled it is and also if Biden said that it's evidence of brain damage but if Trump said that he didn't mean it, on our local news which is bought and paid for by a conglomerate that contractually obligates it's stations to pretend they came up with a story on their own and run identical pieces all across the country about how "damaging to our democracy" democrats are".
What do liberals have to push whatever message they want pushed?
Reddit? Nah, it's half dead, most activity is literally bots reposting year old threads comment for comment to build up karma, it has the cultural pull of HN if HN didn't have YC behind it.
Facebook? You can call people mentally disabled on there now for the crime of being born with genitals that don't match your brain.
CNN? Give me a break. Nobody has trusted CNN since at least the original gulf wars. After that Malaysian airlines plane vanished they asked a aviation expert if it could have been a black hole that swallowed up the plane. They were bought recently by new people, who want to be more pro Trump, mostly because it's just outright more profitable. People watched more CNN during Trump's first term because shit was always being broken, while nobody watched during Biden's term, because nobody expected biden to do anything.
MSNBC? Weirdly popular with "liberal" celebrities and hollywood, but nobody on the east coast cares about it. Even on a good day it has HALF the viewership of Fox News. It's also more like "Laugh at republicans doing stupid things" than actually about liberal policy. MSNBC will tell you that what Trump is doing is illegal, but they wont comprehensively explain why
Liberals and progressives don't seem to be even remotely as willing to opt in to a purposely ideological media stream. I guess AOC does well when she goes on twitch, but even on that platform, the big """leftist""" streamer is a bad person and Noam Chomksy style "america bad" concern troll, and there are multiple much more popular streamers who teach literal children that if video games don't have hyper exaggerated overly sexualized anime women in them, they're "woke". The "I'm a child who likes video games, I'm going to watch video game content" to "I hate women" pipeline is truly insane. Even the people who are part of it don't seem to understand the part they are playing. A group of 12 year old boys met one of their favorite streamers from the Fresh and Fit podcast, and after getting a selfie with him, chanted "I hate women, kill all women", as the podcaster went "what, no no don't hate women!"
90% of the Fresh and Fit podcast is the hosts, men, complaining about how women are inherently less rational than men, complaining that women overreact, complaining that women are shallow on a podcast ostensibly about "gains", bringing very very drunk women on to argue with them about, anything, and shouting them down if the women try to make a point, and threatening them with legal action if they argue too much by claiming the women (who have been invited onto the show) are "trespassing", complaining that women are less accepting of outright facts than men like the fact "women are inherently less rational than men", complaining that women are whores and use sex as a weapon...
But he had a shocked pikachu face when his 12 year old fan said he hates women.
I agree. Both sides need to stop calling names, but more deeply, need to see the goodness in the other side (and in ourselves).
The problem can be, someone can feel attacked even if the other person is treating them in a very kind and loving way, because they think it's fake.
On the contrary, someone could receive verbal and physical abuse and still not feel attacked because they maintain faith in their and the other person's good intentions.
So I think it's more about changing the behaviors of the person on the receiving end than on the giving end.
I agree in principle but how could you work together when republicans they follow the newt gingerich doctrine which to literally demonize the democrats for political brownie points?
I think it's a very valid strategy. First, it can help me a lot. Second, it can help them. Going around thinking I'm surrounded by people who don't care about me is probably the fastest way to misery and loneliness. On the contrary, if I think most people are dealing with many conflicts at the same time and trying their best, I feel so much connected to life itself.
Also, most conflict is back-and-forth attacks and counterattacks. You reject me, I ignore you, you call me names, I block you, etc. Instead, if you reject me, then I tell you it hurts you said that to me, and yet I imagine you've had a long day and are trying your best, it breaks the cycle.
It's not about caring it's about being aware of the ones who will abuse and exploit you with malice.
Life is not some break and forgive world, it's neutral if you bring a child in this world through rape and destruction, that is innately equal to consentual, kind and forgiving child rearing.
I agree with you in spirit. Everyone is equally responsible on "how" they communicate. When the giving side is coming from a place of contempt and disgust, the work for improvement shouldn't be trivialized.
But the receiving side can also get better at receiving contempt and disgust and realizing the pain the other person is going through. Honestly, working on how to receive punches has helped me so much in my life. An ex-girlfriend of mine lied to me about being pregnant (I think). And at first, I was furious. Then I realized that if she were to lie about that, she must have been going through so much pain, and I probably did something to contribute to that pain. I apologized to her and felt a lot better and it also allowed me to regain trust in women again, maybe even deepening my trust.
This is going to sound partisan, but I genuinely think it’s because Trump connects with people on more levels than the Democrats do.
The name calling is part of his blustery comedic Hollywood side, which people understand is different to his policy making side. Watch the all-in podcast episode with him if you genuinely want to see a different side to him.
In contrast, Democrats often come across as only having a singular serious facet to their personality, and so immaturity undermines their entire character.
I have the same perspective. On top of it, society has gotten use to seeing reality TV shows. DC looks like a reality TV show for ugly people to them. It's not even done well.
Whatever different side you are seeing is the act, the name calling is part of his normal behavior. I don't want to say too much, but I have a family member who had to deal with Trump briefly in the 00s. From the things I heard back then, I know for sure that he tries to bully people to get what he wants and will end up shouting threats if things don't go his way.
It goes from "its the lefts fault, and maybe you shouldnt call people Nazi."
To "It works for Trump!"
to "trump connects to people. the left doesnt"
Lol. This is like when you are in an abusive relationship, and you are always wrong, and theres no real way to explain why you are always wrong - until you accept that one side is meant to be the loser in an abusive realtion.
Yes thats the key word. Control perception, and you can win. Which is what the repubs do. They can make someone who says heinous things, sound presidential.
The dems need to create that. Its cheaper, its more efficient, and it works.
I'd love for someone to come up with a workable alternative, but until they figure that technique out, the dems should figure out how to emulate what is working. Within their constraints of course. They are still a big tent party, so they cant do the same things as trump.
> They can make someone who says heinous things, sound presidential.
They do that by lying and gaslighting their voters. Fox News will call January 6 a "day of peace" and refuse to show the footage from that day of the insurrection, to the point where when Republican voters are shown footage of insurrectionists beating cops with American flags and crushing them in doors, they are surprised that's what actually happened.
That's the degree of information control that's necessary to make Trump sounds presidential, and we shouldn't wish our own representatives to gaslight and lie to us like that.
I don’t wish this anywhere in the world. But until the righteous find a solution to this tactic, people need to emulate it, if only to bring their political battle to parity.
Restraint IS a value, and it might well be yours. But the value needs someone to create a path for it to be viable and competitive. Otherwise your choice is simply between restraint and electoral irrelevance, or between combat and a chance to get some votes.
What about the right? Trump is a champion name caller and garnered sufficient respect to win his election after he pushed our country to the closest it ever has been to an actual coup.
> The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as [...]
The reason people are calling this a coup is not (only) because they disagree with what Trump/Musk are doing, but because their actions are illegal. A president is still expected to follow the rule of law and respect separation of powers. If there are no more checks and balances, then it's a coup. If Congress decided to allocate budget to something, the president should not ignore this. The legislature is losing its power.
Who says they are illegal? Can you cite some sources please? Like actual legal experts, not the guardian.
As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway.
The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.
I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is part of the bureaucracy. But prove me wrong. Show me the legal opinions.
Boy howdy there's a lot to pull apart here but ;et's start with your core statement regarding chevron deference. The recent (and wildly stupid, I think but besides the point) Chevron deference ruling says, in summary, that federal agencies have very little latitude in deciding their internal policies where not explicitly defined by congress.
The current administration replaced the head of an agency and had that agency shut itself down. Shutting yourself down is clearly not a power given to any federal agency, so by the very policy you're citing either the judicial or executive branch must act to allow such a move.
Instead, our cheeto in chief decided that those other branches don't actually need to do any of that pesky work and it's a lot easier if everyone just does what he wants.
Overturning the 14th amendment of the constitution by executive order is illegal.
Shutting down an agency like USAID require congressional approval, but was done by executive order.
Withholding congressionally approved funding for government agencies is illegal.
Sharing sensitive documents from the fiscal service with (Doge) team members who do not have the appropriate security clearances is illegal.
Giving Elon Musk an unofficial seat and allowing him unfettered access to the entire federal government without any congressional confirmation is illegal and basically amounts to setting up a shadow government.
Congress mandates that weed is illegal, funds the DEA to go after it, yet no one complains when Obama, Trump, and Biden decided not to enforce that law. Executives clearly have discretion.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
At this point any discussion on HN about Trump delivering his campaign promises (which got him a resounding electoral victory) seems to be filled with elitist rage ("Every single IT board I'm on") and thus is just proving his point.
This is the blowback for the medical overreach of the covid years, for the 1984-esque re-labeling of open gender- and race-based discrimination as DEI, for basically shaming every opposing view as
> evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists
and many more transgressions.
I'm saying this as a non us citizen working in a sector in Europe that is very likely to get absolutely clobbered by Trump. The blame is simply to put at the losing side.
Them denying the merit of their loss, the lack of any introspection and instead just one-upping their everybody-i-disagree-with-is-hitler mantra is at least comforting in the sense that I know they shouldn't be in charge.
So first he did lie about that on record saying he had nothing to do with Project 2025.
Then he certainly didn't say that he was going to dismantle the US government with Elon Musk outside of any legal framework (or I missed that). And even if he did, that wouldn't make it okay either.
> You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values
I feel like you haven't paid enough attention, this isn't a democracy anymore but a mixed regime, convincing opponents is still necessary but isn't enough to influence power anymore.
Look at Hungary if you want some indication of how it's going.
This is flatly false. He is running the Project 2025 playbook which he expressly disavowed. It is also reasonable to assume he meant to propose a smaller budget, not supercede Congress.
> He is running the Project 2025 playbook which he expressly disavowed
He's a conservative, and Project 2025 was from other conservatives.
You would expect there to be some overlap in policy perspectives because of the ideological overlap. It doesn't necessarily mean he's taking orders from the heritage foundation.
Before he got inaugurated the narrative is that the democrats are crazy for thinking that he would enact such unhinged policies, he himself said he knows nothing about it. Now the narrative is "that was expected".
> Trump denied having read Project 2025, and refused to commit to following it.
On the small chance that he said that in good faith and wasn't lying through his teeh. Does it really matter if he read the playbook or not? Maybe he just surrounds himself with people that have contributed to it (he does), maybe he had chatgpt summarize it to him. If the policies he implements come directly from that menu of suggestions, does it really matter?
> but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause
Sources requested for this statement, made unilateral with no evidence.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.
A single person, who somehow owns multiple major companies with, clear conflict of interest, is not a coup? What? He & his "engineers" reportedly have access to American citizen information. Where's the required oversight by Congress? I get trimming the government, but let's talk about it in the open rather than relying on his word and his word alone.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting.
Would you say that to Tea Party folks who widely protested Obama? What? This makes no sense. Didn't they also insult Obama and his birth? Or anyone who voted for Obama? Whataboutism.
Frankly, I feel you are delusional and have bought into the ruse of the current news cycle.
> "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
A coup? This was a general election and the person who won the election is allowed to choose his staff to run the executive branch. Pretty much everyone in the executive branch except the president and maybe the vice president is unelected. Was it a coup when the current people at the NSF got their jobs?
