Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor?
Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
Then why did Fauci lie to Congress and got the Biden's pre-emptive pardon?
NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
We're way past lofty ideals like equal application of the law. It's going to take a reconsideration of our social contract in order to live in a society where we once again protect the innocent and punish the guilty.
I agree with restorative justice, but the people using a law as a weapon do not so I hope they see the same mercy they show their victims.
"Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH, told Congress in May that the NIH "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.""
which we know is a blatant lie - see NIH EcoHealth Alliance Wuhan grants (which even had the "Human Subjects Included" checkbox checked. As a bonus read on how they made there the coronavirus which was successfully infecting and killing mice engineered to have human cells).
See also https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-dr-fauci... and https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-dr-fauci...
You seem to think that any manipulation of a virus is "gain-of-function." The technical term that regulators use of "gain of function of concern." There's a specific definition of that term that was drawn up in the 2010s, and that's what NIH applies.
And btw https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/
" “gain of function research of concern,” includes the generation of viruses with properties that do not exist in nature."
So, even NIH defintion does cover Wuhan. So, Fauci lied. Blatantly. Even by NIH defintion.
And this
https://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/documents/gain-of-function.pd...
"Gain-of-function studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease,"
The last link is exactly that 2014 document based on which the gain of function research was moved from US to in particular Wuhan. And Fauci was instrumental in that move.
Edit: to the commenters below who cares so much about the definition that Fauci uses - please do tell what is that magical definition which doesn't match even the NIH documents (see the links above).
> It was his professional duty to add to his answer that the gain of function they funded in Wuhan that the Congress was asking him about isn't fitting whatever narrow technical definition NIH uses.
No, it isn't. You would think a Senator in charge of regulating the NIH would ask one of his aides to explain to him before the session what "gain of function" means.
> yes, that old "i didn't have s-x with that woman".
Since you are alluding to Clinton impeachment, I would say people who voted for Trump or defend him lost any benefit of doubt they ever cared about respectability, morality or ethics of that situation. Or lying for that matter.
Why did Fauci raise the possibility of a lab leak on Feb 1, 2020, if he was trying to cover that possibility up?
Time and time again we see conspiratorial claims with nothing to back them up.
it is actually in the report of the subcommittee:
"Members questioned Dr. Fauci about his facilitation and promotion of a singular COVID-19 narrative, his clearly misleading statements before Congress and the public, ..."
and Biden pre-empively pardoned Fauci. So, what else do you need?
>Why did Fauci raise the possibility of a lab leak on Feb 1, 2020
He didn't. He was told in that meeting that it may be a lab leak, and he suppressed it then and after.
>Time and time again we see conspiratorial claims with nothing to back them up.
Interesting, the people arguing against me, like you for example, haven't provided any links/documents so far, where is i provided references and links to the government docs, reports, grants backing up my statements.
To me, at least.
But ye it usually happens to some extent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowin...
To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms.
They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.
All the Europeans who have died revolting against totalitarian governments are rolling in their graves.
The US Constitution grants Congress, not the executive branch, the power to determine how the federal government’s money is spent.
Elon Musk’s team within the Executive Office of the President have reportedly gained full admin access to the payment system of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service at the Department of the Treasury, which is responsible for the majority of the federal government’s payments, and are using that access to prevent certain payments from being made. Among other things, they are also attempting to close down the US Agency for International Development, which was established and funded as an independent agency by an act of Congress.
With regards to the constitution specifically the power of the purse seems a little vague. In 1974 the Impoundment Control Act was passed as a response to, and to prevent, presidents from unilaterally impounding.
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/impoundment-threat-explain...
This is a very interesting way of saying "following the law."
I would encourage you to learn more about that day. Most people that were charged did not go into the building. And the few that did were literally waved in by police, including many being escorted around inside by police.
And no, being elected to a public office is no blank cheque to dismantle checks on that office by other branches of government.
Does that mean that the real coup happened when Trump picked the supreme court justices? Perhaps, but again it was very legal, and not particularly out of step from previous norms.
If you compare that to germany in the 1930s, a common example of a self-coup, you'll see some similarities but also large differences...
> The Reichstag building... caught fire... Hitler immediately accused the Communists of being the perpetrators... Using this justification, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to enact the Reichstag Fire Decree. The decree abolished most civil liberties, including the right to speak, assemble, protest, and due process... the Nazis declared a state of emergency and began a violent crackdown against their political enemies... Hitler submitted a proposal to the Reichstag that if passed would immediately grant all legislative powers to the cabinet... allow Hitler's government to act without regard to the constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 (Edited for brevity)