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The tactic right now seems to be to cause as much chaos as possible, to find and point to one silver lining and then to move on as quickly as possible. Ignoring all the irreparable harm caused along the way.
Social security and Medicare payments will continue to be made. That’s the essential stuff. Everything else can tolerate some disruption.
Did you ever consider what you and everybody else will lose by allowing all this to happen in such ways? One random example from the sea of examples - US within a month lost all the international respect it ever built after WWI lets say. I mean all of it, and its not coming back anytime soon.
Now its a fat bully who kicks kids randomly including former friends, chokes them from all lunch money and some more. Literally China looks like our new best buddy from European perspective. Once we move to their ways of working and their financial flows, petrodollar will never ever be the same power projection it once was. And you know what China has to do to achieve all this soft power win? Absolutely nothing, just sit back and enjoy the view of an orange man have his mental fits and petty vengeful fights on all sides (apart from russia obviously, they were always great friends to US and its democracy).
What international respect? People in my corner of the world are quite happy about Trump revealing the U.S. meddling in south Asian affairs. Liberal internationalism is deeply unpopular outside Western Europe, because it generally invokes America meddling in the internal affairs of Asian and middle eastern countries.
Also, Americans clearly don’t care about “international respect”—in the sense you’re talking about it. Your example is the archetype of the problem: you have government filled with liberal internationalists who have particular values that don’t reflect the electorate. Most democrats don’t care about American hegemony—they just like Obamacare. And since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disastrous Iraq War, most Republican voters want to turn inward and close the border.
But somehow the internationalists have burrowed into the federal government and you can’t get rid of them. Similarly, support for increasing immigration has never been over 34% but somehow immigration keeps increasing. Affirmative action keeps being resurrected and renamed. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get these people out of the government.
What respect? All its relevant allies - whole Europe, Canada. Half a billion of wealthy democracy aligned folks in Europe and Canada. Remove them and most of the remaining world doesnt share at all core values with what we call western democracies. Those wont ever be long term allies.
China seems very happy with his moves, so is India with current government. And thats about it for important players. I did expect him to be friendly towards russia but speed and intensity of his ass kissing and ignoring basic facts is quite something. But somebody ignoring his own constitution from Day 1 can't be expected to deliver much.
In 2003 the USA invaded Iraq because the "intelligence community" made up claims about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,700 coalition troops; and the rise of ISIS. You think Trump's actions in the past month are worse than that?
I don’t think most people in Australia are really paying that much attention to what is happening in the US. And the fact remains that Australia needs the US and doesn’t really have any other real option. Our immediate neighbours are either even weaker than we are (New Zealand) or too culturally different to make a military alliance a viable option (Indonesia). The average Australian isn’t willing to incur the risk or cost of “going it alone” on national security. The UK is too far away to help us. The US is far away too, but the US retains an ability to project power globally which the UK has largely lost.
And if the polls are right, we are going to elect Dutton as our next PM, who even though he occasionally criticises Trump, on the whole is closer to Trump than our current government is.
Even my teenage kids hate the US now because of how Trump talks about Nato and that’s just because of how they talk in their War Thunder teams. Cozying up to Russia will do that for you. And they already didn’t respect the US because of how the government treats its own citizens.
It’s very hard to gain respect. It’s very easily lost.
Congressional representatives. You can share what you know with your representative and ask they investigate. Congress regularly calls in bureaucrats to talk about budgets. If your case bears out, ask your members of Congress to propose amendments to the next budget cutting or fixing bad programs. And representatives very often add amendments targeting specific programs, or even sponsor such bills. We don't often hear about them because they're not sexy enough for news.
The goals toward which we spend tax dollars must be debated by representatives of the people. The executive branch will then be told the goals, the structure, the controls, and the budget. If the executive agrees, they sign the bill. Afterwards, the executive's power is in deciding who will carry out the goals and how to adapt to the situation on the ground while staying within the boundaries of the law. If the law is too restrictive, the executive can talk to Congress.
What must not happen is an executive deciding to ignore a law voted on by the majority of Congress and signed by a president. That's not an executive power, that's just an unconstitutional power grab. If we allow that, there's basically no point to Congress.
The specific grants Trump is freezing were determined by the executive itself. They can be cancelled by the executive too. At some point, of course, Trump will need to seek recession under the impoundment act if USAID isn’t going to use its full appropriation. But in the meantime it’s totally within his authority to cancel specific grants that were decided by the executive in the first place.
Like, here's an example: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2617... (search USAID)
> UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
> Funds Appropriated to the President
> operating expenses
> For necessary expenses to carry out the provisions of section 667 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, $1,743,350,000
I would strongly recommend listening to Rory Stewart's commentary in the first half of this podcast about the function and role of USAID as an expression of soft power.
If you take away the premise that the US is doing something good, like for PEPFAR, then what is left? A gun wielding maniacal imperial power that you have no reason to deal or treat with. This is bad for the US and bad for the world
Well, a quarter of the population can barely read, so makes sense.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States )
For example, I don’t personally care for RFK. I’m the opposite of an anti-vaxxer, I think the government should vaccinate you in your sleep. But he was part of the pitch and MAHA was part of the coalition and I voted for the platform and was happy to see him confirmed. That’s how political coalitions work.
Then who are you supposed to vote for if you want X and Y but are against Z (but think X or Y is more important than Z)?
"The newly released House GOP resolution proposes a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase while allocating $4.5 trillion in new deficits for the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee."
Even if DOGE finds $29 billion in waste, it would essentially be a rounding error compared to those numbers.
This is almost the definition of a dysfunctional workplace. The best you can hope for with this kind of organization is that it barely keeps limping along. (Of course, we already know that Republicans want to “drown [the federal government] in a bathtub,” so I imagine the trauma will only get worse.)