Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in and have access? Tell them to kick rocks until they have proper clearances.
US government was simply never designed for scenarios like this.
I wonder why.
You could argue there have been 4 Republics - articles of confederation, Washington, Lincoln, FDR marking the turning point. The world has changed a lot. It feels like the time is right to rethink the federal governments scope and function and how it relates to her people and the world.
People have higher expectations of what their government should be able to do.
DOGE is usurping Congress' role.
Or it was designed such that the exutive branch may not appoint or use independent organisations or consultants to perform audits?
I dont think that is accurate.
What is extraordinary is doing so with (a) no thought to privacy or security, (b) using teenagers with no security clearances, (c) by a billionaire who seems to just be going after his enemies e.g. USAID was investigating SpaceX.
Everyone has the necessary clearance. People need to stop treating clearances like a magic totem, the executive can grant access like candy if they wish, and often does when expedient.
DC is organized around minimizing the need for a formal clearance/access process because it is slow. Between the executive carte blanche and various title authorities with their well-understood loopholes, you can often just do things.
Then why did a Federal Judge just restrain DOGE from their work because of a violation of the Privacy Act: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-and-18-states-sue-trum...
That doesn't mean doing so it can't be a problem when they do. This article is exactly why doing so is problematic and justifies the existence of the clearance process.
If they hadn't circumvented the process, the FBI would have found this information instead of Wired, and it could have been handled properly instead of in the public by the media. Going around this process opens people up to being blackmailed or extorted -- what if foreign intelligence found leverage over one of these people before our media and used it to extract government secrets? We don't even know if these people have been trained to handle classified and sensitive information. Do they even know their own rights and responsibilities?
The first is the obvious one. Congress is captured by a bunch of ineffectual assholes that either don't care enough to stop this or actively support ceding power to the executive.
But the second is that Congress has no actual enforcement mechanism. There are a few Congress members that are trying to stop this, but the executive can just play games with the court and lock out Congress members from any sort of oversight. If the executive refuses to abide by the laws of the country, who has control to stop it?
Three years ago J.D. Vance and others were already thinking about this and anticipating court cases:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...
To quote the article: “I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” [Vance] said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” “And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
They've been preparing themselves to ignore judicial rulings and they may well do that.
https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-comment-questioning-court-...
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My two cents. Congress has a singular enforcement mechanism: impeachment.
If the Congress refuses? A constitution doesn't envision the government ceasing. What happens next requires a lot of imagination because it's not written in any text.
There's an example of Principate from when the Roman republic ceased and the empire began. It had the veneer of a republic, and maybe it fooled some people, I don't really know. But today it's considered an empire, not a republic, for the > 250 year period of the Principate. It was an autocracy, with an emperor. The senators were decoration.
The better question is what are all the Congressmen doing cozily on Capitol Hill. Like, not one has walked over to these departments to try and physically stop these kids from gaining the keys to the kingdom?
(EDIT: Whoops, they have.)
Look at Seoul. The balls on those lawmakers saved their democracy. I’m not seeing that strength or resolve in the Congress anywhere.
The right moment is only obvious in retrospect.
Instead, we have whatever this is. Doesn't look like it's complying with the normal process of the political system, which is designed to punish an electoral bait-and-switch. Looks more like Russian elections and populace-management.
Now it's my understanding that members of congress can't be truly arrested during session; so the above argument doesn't entirely stick for me.
Source? The House isn’t close enough to a supermajority, and the Senate goes by actual votes.
MAGA outlet Tucker Carlson had Mike Benz on this week. Mike Benz had been vocally opposed to all CIA or foreign interference programs during the election campaigns. This week he recanted, talked without his usual eloquence and said that USAID is not all that bad! So MAGA is being reprogrammed.
If nothing really changes, the Democrats (who were avid neocons in the past four years) won't mind. Which could explain the meek protests of Schumer etc.
The treasury story is way more difficult, we have to wait for more information.
Almost certainly not. The President can’t reorganise e.g. the CIA and Federal Reserve under HHS, for example.
Where I agree with you is in USAID not being politically worth the fight. And after the last 8 years (and Biden’s twilight) it’s hard for Democrats to argue for the rule of law per se.
Any sentence that begins with "The President can't" can safely be disregarded. The executive branch has all the lawyers, all the guns, virtually all the media, and (now) all the money.
Everything we were taught was an ironclad law of American constitutional governance has turned out to be a "guideline," a "custom," a "tradition," a "gentlemens' agreement," or "nothing that my pet judges can't fix."
Not to mention the blanket ruling from the supreme court that says "if the president does it, it's legal."
Judges do exist, and they matter more than any lawyer.
> virtually all the media
How does the executive branch control the media?
1: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/04/nx-s1-5248299/cartoonist-quit...
2: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5288181/why-cbs-stands-...
Also, bear in mind the history of America's most popular cable news network. Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, and that was always the idea. After Watergate took down Nixon, the GOP swore the same oath that the Holocaust victims did: Never again. Never again would something like Watergate be allowed to play out in an unbiased, uncontrolled media environment. Ailes and Murdoch answered the call (https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created) and the rest is history.
>Statute law also places USAID under "the direct authority and policy guidance of the Secretary of State".[4]
Source?
Voting for the President is in part voting for this. They don't need to ask permission from the bureaucracy nor can they be impeded by process because it is a Constitutional authority.
Americans really do seem to know nothing about how the Federal government works. This kind of drama happens every four years, they've just never paid attention before. Every administration change brings in a coterie of poorly vetted people like this and gives them the keys to the kingdom. Dialing up the outrage media this particularly time is manipulative. I've been close enough to this action across several administration changes to be pretty blasé about what has occurred so far.
Something something terrorism, but i don't buy it. terrorism is the scapegoat for which we have massively eroded privacy and rights, in the same way that CSAM is the scapegoat for trying to ban encryption every 5 years.