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Comment by DiscourseFan | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I mean the supreme court already knocked down Trump's whole USAID thing. The US is very far from authoritarianism, the institutions seem quite strong and thats something I believe Americans recognized when they voted for him, that it was just a bit of a risk but it was unlikely he would actually be successful in toppling the government.

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There’s a dude that doesn’t hold any office telling everyone what to do, who to fire and what will be paid, including his own companies, and you feel like writing “American institutions are quite strong”, I must be living in a different planet.

I read that SCOTUS told the administration to pay for completed work. Considering USAID has been essentially dissolved, I wouldn't say they knocked down "the whole USAID thing". Unless I missed some news.

Amazingly, four of five justices said the President should be able to refuse to pay contractors for completed work from funds Congress had already allocated. WTF.

Or maybe it’s more amazing it wasn’t six of them saying that.

One really lovely part is how this would permanently make every government contract more expensive, if they got their way. Just great.

Right they won't even acknowledge that there was nothing unreasonable about those funds. Already allocated and promised. Why even say it's backed "by the reputation of the United States" if we won't even pay the bills we've already told we were going to pay. If they find fraud then sure cancel the deal. However they are using "abuse and inefficiency" as weasel words to get out of paying our debts and contracts that the current regime doesn't like.

SCOTUS said the money could not be frozen, but I don't think they put a deadline on when it had to be paid out. So it's not over.

The VP and Musk have both written recently about how the judiciary can't tell the executive branch what to do. I think Vance called it illegal. Regardless, law is meaningless if no one will enforce it.

The same supreme court gave him complete immunity

> Americans recognized when they voted for him, that it was just a bit of a risk but it was unlikely he would actually be successful in toppling the government

Americans voted in someone that risked their whole 200+ years of democratic history knowingly? That would make it all even more absurd than it already is, risking a whole system of government, trust from international partners, respect from adversaries, the trade-off would never make any sense.

> The US is very far from authoritarianism, the institutions seem quite strong

Do they? They haven't even be put to test yet, the Congress is definitely not strong (there's no pushback from any voice of reason from the president's own party), the Supreme Court is voting 5-4 on matters that are almost blatantly unconstitutional. I'll agree that institutions are strong when enforcement of a decision completely adversarial to the current administration's goals is put to test and prevail. At this exact moment there's no sign that American institutions are anywhere near as strong as it was once thought.

> when they voted for him, that it was just a bit of a risk

I'm genuinely speechless.

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