Whether or not you agree or disagree with the merits of USAID is beside the point. A single unelected and unqualified person must not be given the authority to dismantle a massive US government program.
elections have consequences. We have a representative democracy and administrative employees serve at the pleasure of the head of the administration. "shoulds" and "musts" only go as far as the political will to enforce them. The overwhelming majority of the electorate seems to care about how expensive their personal lifestyle is with various takes on individual liberty vs enforced morality used as wedge issues (neither party is consistently on one side or the other of this balance, fwiw.)
as an institutionalist myself, I agree with you that this is terrible governance.
i for one am pretty exhausted by "elections have consequences" being codeword for all previous rules systems norms obligations and institutions are totally ok to be thrown in the hopper. it's an exhausting and ridiculous shrug of the shoulder that in no way meets the moment, that is just the laziest "what can you do" nothing.
you'd hope that an internal insurrection against the United States would not be so ragingly popular. and part of the reason it's let slide, is so poorly seen as what it is is because of "elections have consequences". it's bad.
They could have passed a law to shut down USAID, that would have been the proper, legal way to do this. They didn't. The executive legally can't do whatever they want, but the Republicans in the legislative simply stood by and cheered while the administration trampled over their legislative responsibilities and powers.
And to be clear, they couldn't have passed that law because doing so would be extremely unpopular. I.e. they would not have been able to gain the required support for their actions.
It’s more complicated than that. You have to read the specific statutes in question to see what they require or don’t require.
The USAID-related litigation has largely been unsuccessful because the appropriations bills don’t necessarily require USAID to do particular programs. Most of the appropriations bills appropriate money for the State department.
When it comes to government spending programs, according to our constitution the elections that have consequences are those for seats in Congress. The executive doesn’t have the authority to cancel USAIDs funding, nor the funding of specific programs within it.
On top of that, the executive has a responsibility to plan its work ahead of time and make such plans known before enacting them.
There are many cases currently in litigation regarding these failures.
Elections certainly have consequences, and I wish acting outside constitutional scope had consequences, too. (maybe this specific issue is within scope or there is a reasonable question about it, but so many other issues seem unreasonably out of scope, IMHO)
Rubio dismantled the program, as the Senate confirmed political appointee of the duly elected head of the executive branch.
You can debate whether the President has the power to dismantle USAID under the relevant statutes. Those lawsuits are winding their way through the courts. But if he does have the power, then it would be perverse if he couldn’t exercise the power due to HR rules. You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
There's something about the trick of abusing a process set up to hire temporary staff quickly for overseas disasters and pandemics to take over and destroy a government department you don't like that feels LLM-like to me.
I wonder if Musk's team is using AI to find loopholes in laws he can abuse.
Seems unlikely to me. We even gave up on Trump's tax returns, and gave up the emoluments clause given that he is the CEO of a publicly traded company and has multiple cryptocurrency scams. This administration has plot armor. Feel free to fill in the reason as to "why"; my opinions would likely get me banned.
It will be interesting to see whether in the next Admin/Congress , if Democrat, will investigate and declare these actions unlawful (done without Congressional approval) and whether a new DOJ will investigate the individuals like this DOGE dude as having broken the law for operating outside their authority because the proper procedures weren’t followed. It’s going to be interesting to see whether/who winds up in jail.
We’ll be reading about the crimes of dodge for years, similar to secrets of the CIA coming out in the 1970s. Wish politicians in US weren’t so spineless about going after them.
Hopefully the midterms results in massive investigations of Trump and everyone in his orbit, but if we get “we all need to come together” faux-centrism I wouldn’t be surprised.
We need to fully destroy the notion the DOJ isn’t independent, and make a number of changes that bring us back to having a modern country.
Its the curse of the two-party system. Politicians are not risking splitting from their party, because that would mean the end of their political career.
Whether or not you agree or disagree with the merits of USAID is beside the point. A single unelected and unqualified person must not be given the authority to dismantle a massive US government program.
Did his actions exceed the authority granted to the executive branch which employed him?
Spending is supposed to be decided by congress not the executive branch so quite obviously yes.
So that means congress exercised their authority to check and balance the executive and everything turned out ok?
Budget allocation, and managing authority are different things, though.
If there's no record, was the executive really employing him?
When things get allegedly autopenned under Biden's administration: THE PRESIDENT'S AUTHORITY IS BEING HIJACKED!
When undocumented temporary-employee friends of Trump allies do whatever they want: This is fine.
That’s the correct question. That question is winding its way through the courts.
elections have consequences. We have a representative democracy and administrative employees serve at the pleasure of the head of the administration. "shoulds" and "musts" only go as far as the political will to enforce them. The overwhelming majority of the electorate seems to care about how expensive their personal lifestyle is with various takes on individual liberty vs enforced morality used as wedge issues (neither party is consistently on one side or the other of this balance, fwiw.)
as an institutionalist myself, I agree with you that this is terrible governance.
i for one am pretty exhausted by "elections have consequences" being codeword for all previous rules systems norms obligations and institutions are totally ok to be thrown in the hopper. it's an exhausting and ridiculous shrug of the shoulder that in no way meets the moment, that is just the laziest "what can you do" nothing.
you'd hope that an internal insurrection against the United States would not be so ragingly popular. and part of the reason it's let slide, is so poorly seen as what it is is because of "elections have consequences". it's bad.
The US is hardly alone in this. The UK voted to shoot themselves in the face, because brown people are scary.
Elections (and referenda) do indeed have consequences.
It is however perfectly reasonable to look further up the causal chain and say "propaganda influences elections".
They could have passed a law to shut down USAID, that would have been the proper, legal way to do this. They didn't. The executive legally can't do whatever they want, but the Republicans in the legislative simply stood by and cheered while the administration trampled over their legislative responsibilities and powers.
And to be clear, they couldn't have passed that law because doing so would be extremely unpopular. I.e. they would not have been able to gain the required support for their actions.
It’s more complicated than that. You have to read the specific statutes in question to see what they require or don’t require.
The USAID-related litigation has largely been unsuccessful because the appropriations bills don’t necessarily require USAID to do particular programs. Most of the appropriations bills appropriate money for the State department.
When it comes to government spending programs, according to our constitution the elections that have consequences are those for seats in Congress. The executive doesn’t have the authority to cancel USAIDs funding, nor the funding of specific programs within it.
On top of that, the executive has a responsibility to plan its work ahead of time and make such plans known before enacting them.
There are many cases currently in litigation regarding these failures.
Elections certainly have consequences, and I wish acting outside constitutional scope had consequences, too. (maybe this specific issue is within scope or there is a reasonable question about it, but so many other issues seem unreasonably out of scope, IMHO)
Rubio dismantled the program, as the Senate confirmed political appointee of the duly elected head of the executive branch.
You can debate whether the President has the power to dismantle USAID under the relevant statutes. Those lawsuits are winding their way through the courts. But if he does have the power, then it would be perverse if he couldn’t exercise the power due to HR rules. You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
Only Congress had the power. But Congress didn’t call the Executive branch on it, so … here we are.
There's something about the trick of abusing a process set up to hire temporary staff quickly for overseas disasters and pandemics to take over and destroy a government department you don't like that feels LLM-like to me.
I wonder if Musk's team is using AI to find loopholes in laws he can abuse.
Are we going to prosecute these people or what?
Seems unlikely to me. We even gave up on Trump's tax returns, and gave up the emoluments clause given that he is the CEO of a publicly traded company and has multiple cryptocurrency scams. This administration has plot armor. Feel free to fill in the reason as to "why"; my opinions would likely get me banned.
One can hope. The tide seems to be turning with Trump becoming toxic to a majority of voters.
If the GOP loses big in the midterms, we might finally see MAGA and the GOP turn on each other in an internecine frenzy.
they are, at best, woefully corrupt and abusive.
they are, in all likelihood, foreign agents or acting on behalf of them.
That will become a point in a court...
It will be interesting to see whether in the next Admin/Congress , if Democrat, will investigate and declare these actions unlawful (done without Congressional approval) and whether a new DOJ will investigate the individuals like this DOGE dude as having broken the law for operating outside their authority because the proper procedures weren’t followed. It’s going to be interesting to see whether/who winds up in jail.
Interesting to see how USAID in the title is like the bat signal for scumbags
Huh? Can you elaborate?
Certain political topics bring out bots and narrative-pushing. It's very obvious with certain topics.
Just the deaths of hundreds of thousands, nothing to see here.
That 28 year old is responsible for around the same number of deaths as the Rwandan genocide. [0] [1]
[0] https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=proj...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
Impressive achievement for a 28 year old dude.
Breaking things is easy. Morality is difficult.
omg have the political bots been directed at Hacker News. WTH?
Have been for years.
this has been going on for ages, mate.
HN doesn't have the kind of filters that the big social media platforms do, either.
We’ll be reading about the crimes of dodge for years, similar to secrets of the CIA coming out in the 1970s. Wish politicians in US weren’t so spineless about going after them.
Hopefully the midterms results in massive investigations of Trump and everyone in his orbit, but if we get “we all need to come together” faux-centrism I wouldn’t be surprised.
We need to fully destroy the notion the DOJ isn’t independent, and make a number of changes that bring us back to having a modern country.
Its the curse of the two-party system. Politicians are not risking splitting from their party, because that would mean the end of their political career.
> We’ll be reading about the crimes of dodge for years
I know their tendancy to have wiring faults could certainly stand to be improved but jeez, that's a bit harsh