It was designed for this. The safeguard is supposed to be Congress protecting their own powers out of self interest. They aren't. That's the where the "framers" screwed up.
I think the problem goes deeper than that, for two reasons.
The first is the obvious one. Congress is captured by a bunch of ineffectual assholes that either don't care enough to stop this or actively support ceding power to the executive.
But the second is that Congress has no actual enforcement mechanism. There are a few Congress members that are trying to stop this, but the executive can just play games with the court and lock out Congress members from any sort of oversight. If the executive refuses to abide by the laws of the country, who has control to stop it?
My two cents. Congress has a singular enforcement mechanism: impeachment.
If the Congress refuses? A constitution doesn't envision the government ceasing. What happens next requires a lot of imagination because it's not written in any text.
There's an example of Principate from when the Roman republic ceased and the empire began. It had the veneer of a republic, and maybe it fooled some people, I don't really know. But today it's considered an empire, not a republic, for the > 250 year period of the Principate. It was an autocracy, with an emperor. The senators were decoration.
To quote the article: “I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” [Vance] said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
They've been preparing themselves to ignore judicial rulings and they may well do that.
Arguably it was designed explicitly for the chief executive having control of the executive branch we just haven’t had executives with this level of interest in making major changes in 40+ years. Was somewhat common to shake up the scope of the federal gov’t when the bureaucracy was much smaller in the 1800’s and early 1900’s
Correct. It’s hard for people to imagine but the country functioned very differently before FDR and before him Lincoln. We’ve lived in FDRs government for 75 years and it’s served well for a good deal of that time. But nothing lasts for ever and even wine doesn’t continue to get better forever.
You could argue there have been 4 Republics - articles of confederation, Washington, Lincoln, FDR marking the turning point. The world has changed a lot. It feels like the time is right to rethink the federal governments scope and function and how it relates to her people and the world.
You’re right that previous governments did not just recklessly disband entire agencies based on the wishes of an unelected billionaire and a bunch of teenagers.
So....
The US government was designed to -deny- the executive branch
oversight and answers from the departments and agencies that
the exutive branch runs?
Or it was designed such that the exutive branch may not
appoint or use independent organisations or consultants
to perform audits?
Not sure what you are talking about. Audits happen all the time in government.
What is extraordinary is doing so with (a) no thought to privacy or security, (b) using teenagers with no security clearances, (c) by a billionaire who seems to just be going after his enemies e.g. USAID was investigating SpaceX.
Everyone has the necessary clearance. People need to stop treating clearances like a magic totem, the executive can grant access like candy if they wish, and often does when expedient.
DC is organized around minimizing the need for a formal clearance/access process because it is slow. Between the executive carte blanche and various title authorities with their well-understood loopholes, you can often just do things.
> the executive can grant access like candy if they wish
That doesn't mean doing so it can't be a problem when they do. This article is exactly why doing so is problematic and justifies the existence of the clearance process.
If they hadn't circumvented the process, the FBI would have found this information instead of Wired, and it could have been handled properly instead of in the public by the media. Going around this process opens people up to being blackmailed or extorted -- what if foreign intelligence found leverage over one of these people before our media and used it to extract government secrets? We don't even know if these people have been trained to handle classified and sensitive information. Do they even know their own rights and responsibilities?
> Why are high level figures in these departments just letting them walk in
The better question is what are all the Congressmen doing cozily on Capitol Hill. Like, not one has walked over to these departments to try and physically stop these kids from gaining the keys to the kingdom?
Thank you—missed this. I’d still say there is an escalation step missing in trying to stop the DOGE bros from entering the premises, up to and including getting arrested.
Look at Seoul. The balls on those lawmakers saved their democracy. I’m not seeing that strength or resolve in the Congress anywhere.
Resistance in democracy needs to be well-timed. Too early, and you don't have a critical mass of force to oppose the ruling regime and appear unreasonable. Too late, and it's too late to do anything.
This, plus you must consider the risks of taking bold action that can be framed as insurrectionary. I don't see a lot of haste to immediately and unequivocally declare the elected President, a usurper. Some would say the trouble is, the man got large numbers of legitimate votes under false pretenses, in a system where such an act is expected to lead to buyers' remorse and midterm losses through the political system.
Instead, we have whatever this is. Doesn't look like it's complying with the normal process of the political system, which is designed to punish an electoral bait-and-switch. Looks more like Russian elections and populace-management.
The democratic leadership has allegedly advised the members on congress to not get arrested, as they are already in the minority. Given too many arrests, the republican majority will be able to easily pass nearly anything through congress.
Now it's my understanding that members of congress can't be truly arrested during session; so the above argument doesn't entirely stick for me.
Regarding USAID: That is under Rubio now, who was confirmed unanimously. So I suspect it will be resurrected in some form and continue at least regime change operations.
MAGA outlet Tucker Carlson had Mike Benz on this week. Mike Benz had been vocally opposed to all CIA or foreign interference programs during the election campaigns. This week he recanted, talked without his usual eloquence and said that USAID is not all that bad! So MAGA is being reprogrammed.
If nothing really changes, the Democrats (who were avid neocons in the past four years) won't mind. Which could explain the meek protests of Schumer etc.
The treasury story is way more difficult, we have to wait for more information.
Almost certainly not. The President can’t reorganise e.g. the CIA and Federal Reserve under HHS, for example.
Where I agree with you is in USAID not being politically worth the fight. And after the last 8 years (and Biden’s twilight) it’s hard for Democrats to argue for the rule of law per se.
Almost certainly not. The President can’t reorganise e.g. the CIA and Federal Reserve under HHS, for example.
Any sentence that begins with "The President can't" can safely be disregarded. The executive branch has all the lawyers, all the guns, virtually all the media, and (now) all the money.
Everything we were taught was an ironclad law of American constitutional governance has turned out to be a "guideline," a "custom," a "tradition," a "gentlemens' agreement," or "nothing that my pet judges can't fix."
> Any sentence that begins with "The President can't" can safely be disregarded. The executive branch has all the lawyers, all the guns, virtually all the media, and (now) all the money.
Not to mention the blanket ruling from the supreme court that says "if the president does it, it's legal."
If you weren't paying attention when people like Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos were elbowing each other out of the way to pay tribute to Trump (1) -- or when CBS 'settled' a lawsuit that was widely seen as a certain win for them (2) in exchange for a $15M donation to the Trump Presidential Library, matching an earlier contribution in the form of an unnecessary 'settlement' from ABC, you probably aren't going to pay any attention to this comment, either. But for the record:
Also, bear in mind the history of America's most popular cable news network. Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, and that was always the idea. After Watergate took down Nixon, the GOP swore the same oath that the Holocaust victims did: Never again. Never again would something like Watergate be allowed to play out in an unbiased, uncontrolled media environment. Ailes and Murdoch answered the call (https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created) and the rest is history.
Because the DOGE people have the proper clearances and authority. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point. The executive branch can immediately grant clearance and access to random people at their discretion, and they routinely do in every administration. You don't even need to apply for a security clearance, never mind hold one. If the DNI wants to read in a Starbucks barista on the secret space alien bunker program, they can do that.
Voting for the President is in part voting for this. They don't need to ask permission from the bureaucracy nor can they be impeded by process because it is a Constitutional authority.
Americans really do seem to know nothing about how the Federal government works. This kind of drama happens every four years, they've just never paid attention before. Every administration change brings in a coterie of poorly vetted people like this and gives them the keys to the kingdom. Dialing up the outrage media this particularly time is manipulative. I've been close enough to this action across several administration changes to be pretty blasé about what has occurred so far.
Nothing to see here folks. All very normal. Remember aliens? Aren’t they cool. Don’t y’all remember when O’biden gave all those illegals access to the Jade Helm. What a blasé coterie of manipulative lamestream media.
Why do we care so much about classified information? Why is there a reverence for our government hiding information from its people? Why shouldn't the government operate out in the open in all ways?
Something something terrorism, but i don't buy it. terrorism is the scapegoat for which we have massively eroded privacy and rights, in the same way that CSAM is the scapegoat for trying to ban encryption every 5 years.
They didn’t publish it all for everyone to use, did they? Not much transparency here, since all they did was steal it and use selectively for their purposes.
They don't just have classified information. There is a lot of sensitive personal information on you and me in these databases. Information that can be used for blackmail and other nefarious purposes.
