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Comment by InsideOutSanta | Hacker News Reader

There are laws, but you will get fired if you try to follow them, and lawsuits to remedy that take time.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-sec...

Is it true to say that in practise there are no laws here? If anyone in DOGE breaks the law, can't the President just issue a blanket pardon?

If the President himself breaks the law, he argues that it was in the course of his official duties [1].

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

I'm assuming this is what they're betting on.

Don't know, but I read somewhere that the president can't pardon breaks of federal law.

It's the other way around; the presidential pardoning power is limited to federal offenses.

Perhaps why yesterday he was saying he should take over the running of DC..

DC is already controlled federally.

Ah, thanks!

What I found significant here is that Trump (yesterday) and/or the Whitehouse stated that Elon Musk does not work for Doge and has no authority over it at all, that Elon Musk has no authority regarding anything and is solely an advisor to the president.

Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.

Cynically, Trump and Musk are using each other. They both want huge swaths of the federal government dismantled—Trump found his whims stymied by laws and regulations and the bureaucrats who abide by them in his first administration, while federal regulations are constraining both Tesla (cars should work and be safe) and Space-X (starships blowing up shouldn’t pollute, Starlink shouldn’t clutter space, etc).

Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time, Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his bounds—I have already seen this talking point privately from GOP operatives. They’ll both have gotten what they wanted, and we’ll all be stuck footing the bill.

IMO, this sounds totally like what happened in China.

Trump will get his unchallenged power like Xi or Mao did.

Not just that, but DoJ lawyers are simultaneously (in different court cases) arguing DOGE both is and is not a federal agency.

> Is it true to say that in practise there are no laws here? If anyone in DOGE breaks the law, can't the President just issue a blanket pardon?

For federal laws, yes.

If you can find a state-level law that's been violated then he has no jurisdiction to pardeon.

Trump himself was charged at the state level twice (and already convicted once):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_...

See also the civil case against him for rape:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._T...

There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices. We balance that against a Supreme Court in the US, but that court is almost uniquely powerful & active in forming policy relative to its place in the rest of the world, and right now, most of it has been appointed by fascists; Ultimately the population will have its say in the long term.

Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?

I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.

If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.

The electoral college was intended to serve this purpose.

The purpose of the electoral college was to protect slavery.

For those who tend to fall for right wing talking points:

“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”

James Madison

I really wanted to believe that it would step up to the occasion, but twice now, it didn't.

I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.

Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.

I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".

I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.

> I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system.

What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.

"Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?"

There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)

*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...

>There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head.

That metaphor breaks down here and is not really applicable. If two people are chained to each other at the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only way to save their own life is to take that of the other person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is asinine.

The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the other person irreversibly. But any time that is suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together, that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people all chained together, and now people are upset that the other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at their ankles.

>and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote

Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.

This isn't 1861, sectionalism isn't strong enough. One part of what's going on here is cities at odds with the countryside, another part is the internet, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, filter bubbles. People are physically present in the same locations but they are not eating the same bread and drinking the same water, metaphorically speaking. I recommend looking at this Wikipedia article for a possible best-case scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...

In the UK, the Prime Minister has a lot less discretionary power, but much more ability to get legislation changed.

So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.

That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.

> Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.

It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.

There is one, it is called a Constitution, and any rules where changes are only accepted by a qualified majority not of 50% but of 66% aka 2/3rds.

> There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices.

Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".

This comment is asinine. It is like saying "Tomato is a fruit". Except if we were using the definition of fruit from 1825.

Democracy as a term has been defined to include represtative Republics for at least a century. Stop being a retrograde pedant.

In that case, can't the next president just illegally imprison Elon or trump or whoever for their entire administration, ignore supreme court rulings or lawsuits or whatever, and then issue themselves a pardon at the end?

Yes, and restrict the 2nd amendment by fiat, etc...

But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do it.

But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law.

That's the problem with the argument that Republicans need to be careful about setting precedents that Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes that any Democratic president will actually do this. In fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that there will ever be another Democratic president.

Based on last year's Supreme Court rulings and what Trump/DOGE have gotten away with thus far, it'd seem so. However, democrats insist on wearing kid gloves to a chainsaw massacre, so don't count on anything like that (or, more realistically, within a lesser order of magnitude) ever happening.

Trump has explicitly said he is above the law: "He who saves the country cannot break the law" is what he posted.

He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE employees is child's play -- but it would never get that far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not fully subservient to Trump.

> He pardoned people who stormed the capital

you mean "He pardoned people who were guided in by the security staff working the capital building"?

I hope that's sarcasm, but if not please watch this[0] and explain how this looks like a guided tour

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z3YBtzwmHk

Yes, that is always true. It usually doesn't happen. Mainly because DoJ usually doesn't look. Congress can perform oversight and impeach if need be.

And when you have an executive on one hand stating that only the president and the AG can interpret laws for the executive [0] and that you can't break laws if you're "saving the country" [1], that approach also just doesn't seem too promising.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu... Sec. 7

[1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140091792251...

This will end badly and it will not be fun at all in the end, but it is fascinating to watch how this new wave of fascism unfolds.

Yeah, if we (even in other countries) weren't all personally affected by it, I couldn't stop laughing. The way things are, I'd rather go with Max Liebermann, who reportedly commented on the previous wave of fascism with the words "I couldn't eat as much as I would like to throw up" ("Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte" - https://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/93763).

A good read: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-purge-of-the-deep-sta...

Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You really have to read it twice to understand just how far out that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?

Or Trump fucking referring to himself as king yesterday .. signs are clear.

Honest question: who else, internal to the executive branch, and besides the president, should be able to interpret the laws for the executive branch?

By my reading, this is a clarification that if an agency makes a significant policy change or regulation, they ought to run it by the president first.

It doesn't preclude other branches of government from checking this power.

Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it’s frequently useful to have them hash out agreements for the same reason that it’s useful for scientists to get peer review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it’s good to have multiple people validate your reasoning.

Easy for me to say, but I would like to think I would say, "Fire me, assholes." And have a good story for the grand children.

obviously your young family would already be grown then.. and the house paid off?

Perhaps why 'easy for me to say' was the first part.

Would be interesting to know if the poster would financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to, you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?

You'd like to think that there are at least some people for whom doing the Right Thing is more important.

Which laws? The article describes security clearance.

Security clearances are based on laws, such as the ones compiled in Title 50 U.S. Code §3341.

So if DOGE have security clearances (unclear if the have) then their audit is legal?

IANAL, but there are other laws governing what DOGE is doing that they are violating, such as transparency laws.

> So if DOGE have security clearances (unclear if the have) then their audit is legal?

They're also responsible liable for keeping the data safe, which has already been broken at least once:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43052432

Possibly violating:

> Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— […]

* https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798

As long as they keep the data safe the audit is legal?

CIGIE has done similar stuff in the past, it was created under George W Bush

> continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;

> develops plans for coordinated, Government wide activities that address these problems and promote economy and efficiency in Federal programs and operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit, investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or entity;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Inspectors_Gene...

It is possible to do legal audits of secret data. DOGE is not doing an audit.

Clearance does not allow indiscriminate access, it just means you are theoretically trustable. You still need a reason to access the data, usually negotiated with the data owners, who is legally responsible for protecting the data. DOGE has bypassed all of that to just hoover up whatever they can.

They were hired to, and authorized explicitly by the President to access that data. In writing.

That's as valid of a reason as you can get in the executive branch.

Not really, whoever allows access could be prosecuted for failing any of a number of laws and regs for just rolling over so it would come down to a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The proper way to do it would be to work through both the organization's chain of command and send clearances through the security chain. Maybe that's being followed, but given the stories and timelines, I doubt it- Musk's war boys wouldn't even have time to obtain a clearance from scratch 3 weeks into the administration.

The clearances have already been granted [1].

There is no "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The President and agency directory have authorized and ordered it. Career bureaucrats are not legally required to resist their bosses because they disagree with them.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memo...

Anyone who has a clearance has signed numerous statements acknowledging their personal responsibility to protect the information in their care. If you want access, follow the procedures, then that responsibility is fulfilled. And if DOGE posts whatever to some unsecured S3 bucket its on them, not the bureaucrat (well, let's be real, contractor) who let them in.

Statutes can't really constrain the president's authority to do this sort of thing (firing appointees, firing employees for cause, laying people off, auditing the executive agencies). Constitutionally the president is just plenipotent within the executive branch.

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