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).
WSJ also reported in October about how Musk has been in regular contact with Putin.
Luckily, that is unlikely to happen again. Now, the broligarchs are in power and the LA times has been captured and turned into a propaganda tool.
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.
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?
What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?
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.
So... money I guess?
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.
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.
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.
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.
No one's too rich to get shot by the world's largest superpower.
Zuckerberg didn't do a giant public 180 for funsies.
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!
There's a good summary of all the changes at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/technology/meta-mark-zuck...
> I must say though, this "billionaires as terrified victims" narrative is hilarious.
Do you not think Putin's oligarchs fear him? They're immensely wealthy, but they live within the reach of the guy in charge.
Trump previously threatened Zuck with life in prison. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...
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.
(I don't think they'll be successful in appeasing him, but they're visibly trying.)
Both can be true. I also consider it a failure of regulation and humanity that a billionaire can just own a newspaper and nix stories for clout.
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.
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).
I really hope so too. My pessimist side fears that the powerful are observing the US, seeing that it works there and will do the same thing here.
Meanwhile, increasing my focus on my immediate community and sharing my creativity are fulfilling activities within my power.
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.
But the new government of pro-russian neonazis (FPÖ) and conservatives (ÖVP) will probably be very anti-EU.
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.
What do you mean? The European Parliament is directly elected.
be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch
They (the EC) need to be approved by the European Parliament and the Parliament can dissolve the EC.
If you consider the structure of the EU undemocratic, the same would apply to most countries that are considered democratic.
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.
That's far closer to a dystopia than anything the US has proferred recently.
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).
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.
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 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.
I think Trump decisively stripped the last of the illusions away, most people feel the vulnerability in their bones now.
There's a reason that Germany's current main center-right parties were both born after the war.
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.
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.
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.
Be careful what you wish for..
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.
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.
Also, China is nominally a communist country. Vietnam is a communist country.
PT stopped being a left-wing party decades ago. The current vice president was once a presidential candidate and leader of a neoliberal party.
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.
Seems there is a market place for truth . Truth has become ware and has price (which is not same as cost). All else follows..
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.
Im hoping someone makes a blog post about this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 don't know about that part... those red ball caps are pretty goofy looking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-federa...
The world as we knew it is gone and we're not going back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Accountability means democratic accountability. The APA is not meaningful democratic accountability--it just means that lawyers like me end up running the country.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
How about "Gleichschaltung", or "synchronization" for the English speaking folks, instead?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
I think Myers v. United States was correctly decided: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/#tab-opin...
"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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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).
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.
Not if the elected official pledged to break the law before being elected.
> People can't vote to break the law.
That's exactly what they did.
> As far as I know, that's not how the rule of law works in representative democracies.
I fear that's also not what the US has become now.
List of dictators that achieved power via what were at the time, free and fair elections:
Adolf Hitler - 1933
Ferdinand Marcos - 1965
Alberto Fujimori - 1990
Robert Mugabe - 1980
Alexander Lukashenko - 1994
Hugo Chávez - 1998
Normally dictators don’t let go of power
Not anymore.
But that’s not what happened.
This time looks very different.
Reality check.
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.
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.
Come on.
"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.
"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.
Even Trump claiming the election was stolen wasn't new. Hillary Clinton did the exact same thing.
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?
This was attempt number one: https://youtu.be/Iludfj6Pe7w
All including the ones using violence against policeman were just freed less than a week ago.
"Republican Senator Graham calls Trump's Jan. 6 pardons a 'mistake'" - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-senator-graham-c...
"Mitch McConnell calls Donald Trump pardons a 'mistake,' Jan. 6 'an insurrection'" - https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5122585-trump-mcconnell-...
Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_State...
The filibuster remaining in place is a good thing because it encourages negotiations and compromise instead of a seesaw battle.
That's called democracy.
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.
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%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
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.
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.
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.
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.
Four; federal fiscal years 1998-2001, had a federal surplus, per OMB figures: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD
But, through that entire period (almost every quarter, and definitely every year) the federal debt still increased: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
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.
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.
Neither of those numbers include any state revenue or tax.
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."
Fortunately Trump hasn't destroyed revenue reporting yet. This contains info for FY2024:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover...
Is bad math.
Or if you spend $5.5T a year and your debt increases $3.5T you had $2T in revenue.
But here you go Medicare 2023 https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-government-s... $848.2 billion
Medicade 2023 $606 billion https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/medicaid-financing-...
Military 2023 https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-... $820 billion
848+620+820 = $2.2T
National debt https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-749929... $30,928 end of FY 2022 $33,167 end of FY 2023
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?
Good luck buddy.
That was kinda my entire point, Its on its way back to at least the 15% of the 1980s.
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.
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.
Democraties work with checks and balances, which are being broken right now.
On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
https://www.vox.com/politics/398618/elon-musk-doge-illegal-l...
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.
> 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.
Voters appear to disagree with you. [His approval rating has never been higher while in office.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...)
Trump is doing an otherthrow of an existing government by a small group. That fits perfectly.
See Napoleon 3, Hitler himself...
Your opinion is revealing, if you already think he has full power, then you agree it's a coup.
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.
And then the head of state in the Weimar republic really was the chancellor, that's why Hitler could dismantle the republic.
Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean?
Trump does exactly how he promised he would do if you elected him, and you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The way things are going, speaking up can EASILY mean going to jail within a few months.
You should STILL speak up. Acknowledge that potetnial risk, respect people, and ask of it all the same.
Probably should tell people to clean their HN accounts if they elect not to risk themselves.
It's the right thing to do. Every one of us that does creates opportunities for others to do the same.
We're running towards fascism. We must fight back.
Trump is free to spend less than budgeted.
Budgets are an approval to spend up to a certain amount, not a requirement to spend a certain amount.
We passed laws about that because of a previous Republican president who was also fond of executive overreach.
Exactly how else are you supposed to get this tested by the courts?
Not without approval from Congress:
"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."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...
And the head of the branch should still be subject to checks and balances.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_Senate_elec...
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.
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.
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."
Source: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-se...
ALso a slim majority of the 60% who voted is not an overwhelming majority. Biden's win against Trump was bigger.
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.)
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/coup
The violent part and the army part seems to be optional
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.
1) Remove all opposition for DOJ (already done)
2) Pass executive orders that should require congressional approval (doing)
3) Illegally seize control of the treasury (doing)
4) Broadly dismantle key government services (doing)
5) Watch politicians say, "you can't do that!" with no recourse (doing)
Continually take control more and more broadly until you have absolute power.
Next step is attacking enemies. They will start prosecuting political rivals.
I'm not going to stop you calling it a coup, but your opponents will just smile and say "not true" and they would be right.
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.
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".
[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gleichscha...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
All that matters is that Trump wins elections. This isn’t even a secret, this is literally what many Trump voters have said.
And since when do Repubs care 1 whit about enemies?
Finally - you are free to believe what you like. If this makes you feel better, so be it. I have no desire to take it from you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The party that chose Biden and Harris is in a purity spiral? They’re not exactly marxists…
And on the right it’s not the case? As soon as anyone disagrees with Trump they get steamrolled and labeled a traitor
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.
Can you really? Who is that?
This poll is a little old, but in 2023 only 38% of republicans identify as MAGA republicans
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2023/04/07/first-ever-vande...
And here's a list of prominent republicans who are not MAGA republicans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_oppose...
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.
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.
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.
Name calling typically results in people viewing you as immature.
If the left ever want to reclaim the respect of voters, they need to lose this bad habit.
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.
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.
Basically a unicorn.
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.
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?
So no that is not what I am saying the problem isn't even changing their behavior as a priority but instead it's the fact they are that gullible.
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.
> 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.
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.)
If this was true, Trump wouldn’t be president. Either that, or America doesn’t see an issue with immaturity.
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.
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.
If your primary personality is perceived as immature, it's going to cost you votes.
If you can connect with people on multiple levels, you can broaden your appeal by appeal to people with preferences for different levels of maturity.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Valerie Jarret was UNELECTED. OMG OMG /s
See how dumb it sounds?
- 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?
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.
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.
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.
There's a word for that style of governance.
I think you meant legislative, not executive?
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.
The list goes on...
Seven restraining orders. Seems like lots is not legal.
The 1995 buyout offer was passed by Congress and signed by Clinton.
https://clintonwhitehouse6.archives.gov/1995/04/1995-04-04-p...
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky
The guy who won did exactly all that
And what on earth did Trump do to convince the “reasonable middle” that he shares their values?
Who are these reasonable people who decide that Kamala spends too much time insulting people, so they’re better off voting for Donald Trump?
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.
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.
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.
Trumps share of the vote was <50% via https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pres...