It's hard to imaging a more wasteful and destructive set of actions over the past year, except just shutting it all down. Money was still spent, less than usual, but in a way that ensured it was squandered, and that seeds that were planted could not grow.
However, it was apparently reauthorized on April 14, as my NIH newsletter this week linked to this April 21 announcement that SBIRs and STTRs are back!
https://grants.nih.gov/news-events/nih-extramural-nexus-news...
Who is going to stop a lawless Trump administration? Eventually the courts, at least at the lower levers. The Supreme Court is hyper political and continue making politically-driven rewriting of law, at least as much as the public lets them. Congress has completely abdicated their constitutionally mandated roles, such as being in charge of taxation and tariffs. The government has been completely taken over by a single party, and that party is burning the Constitution and its principles.
As for another example of gross mismanagment, of many many many more I could go on about, the National Cancer Institute's review board was completely disbanded, and put under the National Science Foundation where reviewers have less cancer experience, for example. To a pointy-haired-boss, that might sound like a cost savings measure but it's still the same cost, you just have less experienced people doing reviews.
All this is happening and getting reported on, but it doesn't get attention because every day is pure chaos filled with outrageous violations of what used to be normal activity in the government. And its all covered up by the most popular mainstream news sources, and there's a large body of the US population that has been completely brainwashed and literally refuses to accept any criticism of the Trump administration, outright rejected facts because it hurts their feelings.
I would say no. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just that the law was ignored.
This is not a gray area unless you're intentionally pretending to be an idiot to steal power.
Congress is the only branch allowed to declare war. Taking targeted military actions against another country repeatedly on their own soil with no provocation is not a "special military action" it's a fucking war.
It's not funny or coy or clever to pretend otherwise. The intent is abundantly clear and it is abundantly clear it is being violated.
The current setup has gone from "only Congress can declare war, requiring a majority of Congress" to "Congress has to pass a War Powers resolution to stop the president from going to war, with enough of a majority that they can override a presidential veto". That is a massively different standard, and was done without amending the Constitution.
So I agree with you. Just don't try to make this something special to Trump, because it's not.
Anyway, I agree with you fully. And I firmly believe the world would be a better place had we actually weighed each of those conflicts and voted to officially declare war or not. Those presidents knew what they were doing and should be tried for it.
Just like Trump should be today.
He's not special, but I'm not sure I can bring LBJ or Nixon back from the dead and stop the Vietnam War. Meanwhile this is an active conflict that can be stopped now.
Though I would argue that, yes, this time is different. At least those pretended to have a justification.
Even if this were how the system was designed, it is time to acknowledge that it is fundamentally broken and needs change. It is mind boggling that the response to these issues amounts to WONTFIX.
What happens if you refuse to be let go by someone that doesn't have authority?
"Why would anyone follow the mad, old king?"
And the answer is around the same:
"Because he will hurt you."
By who? and on what grounds?
The only people that have authority to fire are the people that are heads of that institution.
The president has no connection to this institution. He does not have any power in this context. His power stops at the federal level and even then his power is limited. Nobody has to abide by his orders. Yet, there are plenty of people doing so. Im not understanding why.
If he doesn't have authority to do what he is doing, nobody has to follow any of his actions. In fact I think there is an obligation not to follow the orders of a criminal.
The president does not have the power to declare war. We are at war with Iran.
The president does not have the power to unilaterally dissolve agencies or reproportion or refuse their funds or budgeting. Yet the department of education is being shuttered and numerous agencies are in ongoing lawsuits for DOGE.
It is illegal for the president to use the office for advertisement or personal gain. Yet he openly allows bribes to advertise products from the white House, creates cryptocurrencies, gives high-level positions to family.
The president is not allowed to direct an angry crowd to the capital with the express intent to stop the wheels of democracy and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. And yet.
The DOJ announced they will not prosecute the predators from Epstein's list after explicitly violating a law from Congress repeatedly for months on disclosing related files.
Congress is too afraid of his power to hurt their reelection. 33% of SCOTUS are his picks, with another 33% being aligned with the party, creating a supermajority. We've seen the majority of military leadership replaced this year. We've seen a plurality of agencies institute loyalty tests, most importantly the FBI. ICE has been repurposed to a private military / secret police.
You seem to believe there is some divine mandate that enforces the constitution. That the president must follow the rules.
There is not. He is not. He got away with it and continues to get away with it. We no longer live in a polite, rule-based society.
Because, fundamentally, might makes right. And the president of the United States has consolidated enough power that there is basically nothing to stop them but how far their cronies are willing to go.
So why can he do this? Because he can. And there's nothing you can do about it. And if you fight back there will be repercussions.
LOL. We'll see. You sound like you want this to happen and you dont care about the outcome. Good luck with that.
My alignment is to the common good. Im happy to work against a criminal that has no basis for these actions. We'll catch up, sooner rather than later.
You asked a question and I told you the actual answer.
If you're presented with the option to resist and force their hand so you can try to challenge it legally, please do, I respect that idea. But not everyone is willing to make personal sacrifices like that. Of course, everyone should still make sure to vote.
But at the end of the day, we only have representation because of the implied threat of violence if we didn't. And it very much seems like that threat being implied is not effective in this administration.
I dont see this as us forcing their hand.
I see this as them forcing our hand. We have all the power and they have none.
The longer we wait to get involved to make the world a better place, the worse it will get, for you and the people you love.
There really isn't a choice any more.
It’s not that hard.
To prevent it, someone in IT would have to actively prevent bosses from having those kind of admin privileges which in itself would be illegal.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/doge-institute-peac...
Or Musk "deputizing" his private security guards to be federal agents for his purposes:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
A new department head gets installed, DOGE selects people to fire, has complete access to IT etc.
What's not to understand? The government was completely in the control of Trump and DOGE. What type of "authority" do you think did not exist? This is the standard authoritarian playbook that's played out many times over the world over the past century, it's not hard to understand.
Edit: thanks for the links. You can tell they are operating without authority. I had been totally unaware of this
In the modern age there's no one set of things that people have seen, no common base of knowledge, and the process in this comment thread was super informative in the sense that if I had provided some links to start, a lot of confusion could have been avoided.
This is why they say lies go round the world before the truth gets its shoes on.
In the current environment - I would contact the TPOC - it could just be stuck in limbo.