I see it very simply. This is one hundred percent on Congress alone. Trump is a total non-factor in this mess despite being the source of so much consternation. His expanded executive powers...
Exemplary
I see it very simply. This is one hundred percent on Congress alone.
Trump is a total non-factor in this mess despite being the source of so much consternation. His expanded executive powers derive from the Patriot Act and its tampering with the 'separation of powers' principle (plus twenty years of scope creep that both Obama and Biden were only too happy to encourage). Those presidential powers, and many forms of inter-agency co-operation (largely information-sharing), plus all the expanded citizen spying powers, vanish the instant that act is repealed. It would hamstring Trump's entire plan instantly and all he would be able to do about it is pout.
Fun fact, the Patriot Act was written to be sunset the moment it becomes 'objectionable' to continue with those expanded powers, so it's designed to be cancelled from day one. I think it might be unique in that regard, even the nearly unanimous count of representatives voting for it during the 9/11 hysteria had some inkling they were playing with fire. Well, here we are, nice going guys. Real smart move there.
It never has been cancelled because dealing with separation of powers is a colossal pain in the ass (as intended). Our government does not want to give up 'easy mode' and go back to 1995. On the other hand, public support for repealing the Patriot Act would be astronomical, it's a slam dunk. It is wayyyy past the expiration date. We know what we are doing now when it comes to terrorism - we've had just a bit more experience over the two and a half decades since it passed.
Trump and the federal judges get to go back and forth playing cat and mouse over technical details. Trump will easily win that fight because he does fifteen things to abuse his power every day before lunch. It is a total (and astonishingly effective) blitz. By the time the judges can even review a single action from today's crisis menu weeks or months later, the damage is already done and it's a moot point. Every judge and lawyer in the country couldn't keep up with this pace even with unlimited resources (which they do not have). For every order they block, he'll re-issue it again with legal objections amended for (or not) just to chew up their time - and worse, he'll spin every tiny setback in his momentum on those 'activist' justices to turn public opinion against them (successfully, too).
This will continue for Trump's entire term (and his third one, which he already hinted he'd run for) unless Congress steps up and takes back the power it used to have by repealing the Patriot Act. Simplest problem in the world to have, and to solve. I find it amusing that nobody has even talked about this in the media yet. The government would rather live through Trump than give up those powers and do things the proper American way again.
Fun fact about federal departments. Congress controls the purse strings, and they may also both create or close federal agencies - but never run them at all or be involved in running them in any capacity. Those agencies do report information to Congress, but they answer to the courts and the president, not to Congress. Technically, no federal agency has to interact with or answer congress on anything, ever - though that's never how things have been run before. It's not typically adversarial until some senator with an axe to grind starts hunting for classified information above their station - then they get stonewalled.
The question of if the executive branch can create departments of its own volition, or repurpose them (which is how DOGE was put together) is an awful lot more dicey because it's never been formally codified, it's always been a seat of the pants affair. Several presidents have created smaller departments or repurposed them in the past, though it's not very common. I think the EPA, DOD, and NASA are the big three created by presidents rather than Congress (though NASA was later authorized by Congress, so they are safe). Yes, that means Trump can legally close and fire the entire EPA with a single pen stroke, and Congress can't do a damn thing about it (except recreate it the next day under their own authority, which they won't because Republicans). Don't tell the pumpkin and maybe the EPA will last the year, but I doubt it. I'd bet they are next after the DOE.
What Trump did to create DOGE out of Obama's IT force is legal and has precedent. It's dirty pool certainly, but that does not matter because he does have that power, and that power does not come from the patriot act either.
I wouldn't worry about the US Military falling for a coup, though. Their oath is not one of blind loyalty, it is one of protecting the country from foreign and domestic threats - which means in the event of an actual coup, they will be escorting Trump directly to jail the same afternoon. The generals have to believe in the president's orders and intent in order to follow them, and every single soldier in the army is not to follow orders that violate their conscience. Trump has no options to compel the military to do anything they see as a danger to the country, and that's by design.
America does not have coups, but we do have asshole parties that occasionally make a mess of things, just like this. The worst that happens here is they jail everyone on down the line for the presidency, the acting president fires everyone who was involved and appoints a new cabinet, then we have an election. In order to coup this thing you'd have to coup all three branches and the military halfway down from the top with accomplices, and that's never going to happen. It's too many people to even keep that sort of thing a secret.
You'd have better luck convincing Texas and California to secede together on the same day, if you want to create a proper shitstorm for the USA. Stop confusing the world's longest running democratic republic for a poor young country with no experience in this stuff. We've done it all before, and we'll do it again too, until we get good at it. Sit back and enjoy the Trump show and stop panicking (unless you work for the fed, in which case that early retirement severance is pretty generous and probably looking mighty good right now).
Instead take the time to appreciate that baby himmler is still locked into adult day care, he just can't see it for what it is anymore. The more he pisses off the entire government, the more they will all come together and bend rules to weigh him down. Seriously, Trump is not Nixon, not even close. In all of this perhaps our courts will awaken from their eternal slumber and remember that they still have the final say on the law in this country. I'd consider that real progress.
I must admit that despite all the shenanigans, I am richly enjoying the neverending expose of our ludicrous budget allocations. So far nearly all of the things I see Musk going on about are things I would never support with taxes, period. It's well past shameful or disgusting, it's gone to pure schadenfreude at this point. I am digging the audit, and I'd like to audit the entire government this way, top to bottom, including the federal reserve, and claw back every last penny - and do it every single year for the rest of time as well. If this is how our money is spent, that has to change, or it's time for a tax strike.
Once upon a time, that was a core purpose of the Republican party, back in the Goldwater era. Reagan ended that with his big spending push, and once the republicans saw that nobody was complaining, they were thrilled to back him up. It's been a surprise to see Trump bring sensible budgeting cuts back with such gusto. Pity he's just doing it to score populism points for whatever he's planning in the future. Right audits, wrong reasons for them. I'll take what I can get, I guess. /facepalm
I cannot even imagine how insane this mess must look to the rest of the world.
Goading mentally ill kids into admiting to being a terrorist and otherwise harassing regular citizens, mostly. We certainly haven't seen a meaningful decrease in domestic terrorism. Remember: We...
We know what we are doing now when it comes to terrorism
Goading mentally ill kids into admiting to being a terrorist and otherwise harassing regular citizens, mostly. We certainly haven't seen a meaningful decrease in domestic terrorism.
I honestly chuckled at that one. :) I would agree that the Patriot Act has been... a wash at best, and frankly just a very very very bad idea all around. We all knew it, but there was no holding...
I honestly chuckled at that one. :) I would agree that the Patriot Act has been... a wash at best, and frankly just a very very very bad idea all around. We all knew it, but there was no holding back that knee-jerk reaction to being attacked. Hey, at least Bernie was smart enough to vote no on it from day one. The democrats do have their own populist in house, not that they'd ever have the balls to use him. He could have crushed Trump, and so could Tulsi or Yang (who had 10% of Trump's base loving him) for that matter. The DNC needs to up their game big time or face collapse and be replaced by something a lot less... geriatric in nature.
We don't get a third party. Instead, we get one party reforming and collapsing and refactoring (which the Republicans have done now) and they crush it until the other party goes through the same process and comes back swinging. Better start your engines for 2028 right now and get out in front of it, guys. We need you back in there asap.
Well I agree with a few things that you said about congress abdicating its responsibilities, but there's no way that an audit of wasteful spending is worth the damage that is being caused. First...
Well I agree with a few things that you said about congress abdicating its responsibilities, but there's no way that an audit of wasteful spending is worth the damage that is being caused.
First of all, I don't want incompetent and mentally ill buffoon Elon Fucking Musk doing an audit of anything. Why in the world would you think it's ok for someone who is known to be unethical and unstable to have this much power? For just one example, he had a tweet today where said some wrong things about how the social security database works, then someone said "Elon has never used SQL", and then Musk replied "This retard thinks government uses SQL". There are multiple levels of stupidity in that, including an (unelected) government official calling someone "retard". In fact, I'm not sure that this tweet isn't a parody, but it doesn't matter because we all know it tracks with his known behavior and past statements.
Second, the government is a complicated system and has a lot of safety checks in it, a lot of institutional knowledge, and a lot of sensitive data that are being thrown away and spewed around the world by untrustworthy and inexperienced people. This is dangerous in a way we can't even understand, and there is a lot of alarming warnings from legal experts and security experts. Are you really sure that some audit is worth the thousands of deaths this is going to cause?
And Trump may be a baby in a crib, but is ridiculous statements about taking over Canada and Greenland, and calling into question the validity of the treasury seem specifically designed by Putin to tear the country apart from the inside. He has done immeasurable harm to the soft power and reputation of the country.
I'm not sure why you are worried about your taxes being wasted when Trump is literally pissing away trillions in soft power, trade relations, reputation and economic power. It's all exactly what a manchurian candidate would do.
Research universities across the nation are having to gut programs now. Even if funding gets restored after legal wrangling, there are going to be projects that die because the requisite check...
Research universities across the nation are having to gut programs now. Even if funding gets restored after legal wrangling, there are going to be projects that die because the requisite check wasn't cut at the right time.
Novel medical advances mostly come out of research universities. This is going to set progress back decades.
Oh, no argument from me there. In fact, all of your points are fair, but they won't stop this from happening. My point is that this audit is about fifty years overdue and I'm glad that at least...
but there's no way that an audit of wasteful spending is worth the damage that is being caused.
Oh, no argument from me there. In fact, all of your points are fair, but they won't stop this from happening. My point is that this audit is about fifty years overdue and I'm glad that at least one good thing is coming out of this mess - cuts to pointless spending. Americans have already seen enough negligence reported so that audits like this are going to be back on the agenda in politics again for a long, long time.
I would love to explain but I'm too burned out. America get your shit together already pleaasseeee this is insufferable. Also you're giving our idiot right wingers ideas and we really don't need that.
I cannot even imagine how insane this mess must look to the rest of the world.
I would love to explain but I'm too burned out. America get your shit together already pleaasseeee this is insufferable.
Also you're giving our idiot right wingers ideas and we really don't need that.
Hmm, it does look like it changed in 2020, I wasn't aware of that myself. After digging into it, looks like some provisions were renewed and some expired, but I'm no expert on the nitty gritty of...
Hmm, it does look like it changed in 2020, I wasn't aware of that myself. After digging into it, looks like some provisions were renewed and some expired, but I'm no expert on the nitty gritty of it. I just know that expanded executive order power comes directly from it, and Trump is certainly still using those powers.
That'd mean it's not a simple 'repeal' of the original, instead you'd have to hunt down and deal with the separate parts still in effect, or have congress pass something that overrides it. Either way though, ball is in Congress' court on this one. They can reign him in.
They can also impeach and convict but it doesn't look like they'll do that. Perhaps repealing the Patriot Act would be less politically difficult for them.
They can also impeach and convict but it doesn't look like they'll do that. Perhaps repealing the Patriot Act would be less politically difficult for them.
For sure. With his mandate, no way the Republicans impeach him, and I don't think it is possible without their votes. Their constituents would riot and they'd lose re-election. Repealing expanded...
For sure. With his mandate, no way the Republicans impeach him, and I don't think it is possible without their votes. Their constituents would riot and they'd lose re-election. Repealing expanded powers, however, is something very near and dear to the hearts of every Republican, and would be a far easier sell than impeachment.
They might wait to do it, though, for strategic reasons - at least until after the 2026 mid-terms or until after Trump has already done most of what they want him to do. I suppose it depends on how much the other Republicans hate him - and a lot of them do even if they are paying lip service right now. Frankly I think everyone is still shell shocked that any president has the capacity to do something like this in... three weeks total time. Absolutely no one is used to a government that moves this fast in America. It only ever happens when one party wins a blowout and gets a majority in the house and the senate, allowing them to ignore the other party completely. Trump didn't get that, thank god. He's just pretending that he did.
What does “his mandate” mean really? He claims he has one. Maybe because he won the electoral college and the popular vote? It was no landslide and I think he claimed mandate in his first term...
What does “his mandate” mean really? He claims he has one. Maybe because he won the electoral college and the popular vote? It was no landslide and I think he claimed mandate in his first term while losing the popular vote but just lying about how the election was rigged.
Is his mandate because there is a slim Republican majority in both houses of congress?
Btw I’m not attacking you, but I think the idea that he has a mandate is largely republican propaganda. He’s the most divisive politician in US history and although he has a fixed floor of support the swing voters will start hating him any day now as he messes up more and more.
No worries, I'm an old hat at talking politics so I don't offend. You are right, it's almost entirely propaganda. Repeat it until it sticks. I'm disappointed that trick always works. The truth of...
No worries, I'm an old hat at talking politics so I don't offend. You are right, it's almost entirely propaganda. Repeat it until it sticks. I'm disappointed that trick always works. The truth of the mandate he has is that around 7% of people who usually vote blue voted red this time. Not independents who always swing around, I mean 7% of hardcore democrats voted for him this time. That is pretty unusual, but it has more to do with the DNC trying to cover up Biden's health and anoint Harris by fiat than anything to do with Trump. One does not skip the primary in America if one expects to win, period.
So Trump's smallish mandate does not come from anything that he himself did. It comes from blue rage, and just plain angry Americans who don't care about policy as much as they care about shaking up the fed to punish them. They sent Trump in like a vengeful nuke to break the government so all the people working in government get to feel their pain and suffer. Mission accomplished and then some. If nothing improves, next time they will send someone even worse than Trump and they will send him in with a bigger mandate. They don't care which color the party is, they want results.
Despite doing more damage than a rabid Tasmanian devil let loose at the start of the world championship domino tournament, Trump is fulfilling campaign promises. He's used his tariffs to bully Mexico and Canada into border security action, just like he said he would. They aren't paying for a wall, but they are paying into the border now. He is saving billions from being wasted through the audits. He's reducing the budget and cutting redundant employees. He just secured a half trillion dollar mineral deal in Ukraine. It's week three. Care to guess what week fifty looks like at this pace? I don't. :P
My problem is that I don’t trust him and I don’t believe that he has done anything effective. I think his tariffs are a complete mistake. I don’t think Canada or Mexico made any real concessions...
My problem is that I don’t trust him and I don’t believe that he has done anything effective.
I think his tariffs are a complete mistake. I don’t think Canada or Mexico made any real concessions at all. They already agreed to move troops around or whatever. He just alienated them and drove them to look to other trade partners. Remember, he was the author of the USMCA which he violated.
With Ukraine, he is essentially blackmailing them and I seem to remember him getting impeached for blackmailing them in his first term.
Regarding the audits, there is no way in hell that these are going to save billions of dollars. There will be a bunch of unverified claims from him and Musk that it’s done that, and they’re already making these claims. Meanwhile I’m sure it’s cutting valuable things or actually creating damage that will be discovered for decades later.
In addition to the organizations mentioned on the linked page, it's also worth noting that the ACLU is also fighting various things in court. They've filed suits over the citizenship issue,...
In addition to the organizations mentioned on the linked page, it's also worth noting that the ACLU is also fighting various things in court. They've filed suits over the citizenship issue, transgender issues, deportations, Guantanamo and Musk's access to sensitive information.
I just gave them a donation earlier in the week (which my employer matched).
Yeah, they're great overall. I believe in the product, and the benefits are good, so I can't complain too much. We have a portal that lets you make donations to pretty much whatever you want (even...
Yeah, they're great overall. I believe in the product, and the benefits are good, so I can't complain too much.
We have a portal that lets you make donations to pretty much whatever you want (even local orgs), aside from PACs or such, and their maximum match is something crazy. If I remember correctly it's well more than I make, but enough to keep C-suite types from doing something big.
Yes, it is a coup. Yes, it is happening right now, and at as fast of a speed as the backers of Project 2025 can sprint. The mainstream media is being either silenced or brought to heel through a...
Yes, it is a coup. Yes, it is happening right now, and at as fast of a speed as the backers of Project 2025 can sprint.
The mainstream media is being either silenced or brought to heel through a variety of threats and lawsuits. Checks and balances of power are being systematically destroyed. The institutions that could oppose the coup are being gutted and their employees removed and/or replaced with loyalists. Specific 'internal enemies' have been named and are both being blamed for all ills, while also being targeting for persecution and likely far, far worse. Our closest allies are being betrayed for the shortest-term of possible gains, and our soft power and influence on the world stage is being handed over, gift-wrapped, to China while the orange makes efforts to push Ukraine to surrender either to Russia, or to surrender their resource sovereignty to the US.
Perhaps worst of all, the coup is happening in the nation with the most powerful military in the world (yes, China is catching up fast but they aren't quite there yet) and is encouraging further military destabilization all over the world stage.
It's sad that many Americans don't see or care. I've always found it amusing that a native-born American actually can know literally nothing about how the US government works (or should work) and...
It's sad that many Americans don't see or care.
I've always found it amusing that a native-born American actually can know literally nothing about how the US government works (or should work) and still vote. With America's anti-intellectual culture and a voting system that codifies "ignorance is as good as knowledge", this moment always seemed inevitable.
Alex Garland's Civil War articulates this so well in two instances. One, the group finds themselves in a dress shop in a libertarian town that isolated themselves to the extreme, and the other,...
Alex Garland's Civil War articulates this so well in two instances.
One, the group finds themselves in a dress shop in a libertarian town that isolated themselves to the extreme, and the other, the photographer's description of her parents: "at home pretending like nothing's happening"
The movie was harrowing and so wildly timely. The only shame is that my Canada isn't a safe bystander, but a primary target :(
Welp lets start with the basics: A lacking definition, especially for political science/philosophy, but a starting point. We could argue the details of "What's decisive", get into fun things like...
Welp lets start with the basics:
a sudden and decisive change of government illegally or by force
A lacking definition, especially for political science/philosophy, but a starting point.
We could argue the details of "What's decisive", get into fun things like Marbury vs Madison or the ongoing expansion of executive (and governmental) power, talk about if its a coup if it doesn't actually work and on and on.
The truth is though that's not really what's being discussed. What's being discussed is "Is this ok".
The obvious answer is no, no it is not. This is, at the absolute best, the peak of stupid, and much more likely a blatant if incompetent power grab.
The problem is, if this was somehow legal, and this was somehow not using force (which, so far, is still mostly true), would anyone who's pissed now care? Some small %, but I suspect no, not really.
The laws of the US are written in such a way that we could be seeing a lot of what is happening through congress legally instead, and frankly the political spectrum is such that I'd say that sort of is what we're seeing (by passing the buck to the executive so they can both get the outcomes they desire but wash their hands of the consequences/blame should anything go wrong). If for some reason they felt they couldn't do it that way and were on the floor passing these laws, would that be ok?
If the supreme court finds some contorted ruling that doesn't violate previous ones but vastly reinterprets our freedoms, is that ok?
The answer to most of this is almost certainly "no", and thus its why I somewhat roll my eyes when the word coup is thrown around.
Between some mix of yes, flooding the zone, and another of crying wolf (because it gets engagement) it's not really helping actually fix the problem which is the public apathy to the current situation.
Why is the public apathetic? Because it isn't really affecting them enough.
BUT THE PRICE OF EGGS, yes. Yes we all know groceries are going up, jobs are getting lost, tariffs are being done in the ultimate "fuck around/find out" manner, and so so so much more that's going to affect a lot of people. But if you look at the day to day life of someone who's not terminally submersing themselves in politics (which is probably healthier given the amount of alarmist bullshit that's always thrown around), shit has been hard since at least 08 and this isn't that new.
Yes there's a breaking point, yes we might even hit it, but until we do throwing around the word coup is poisoning the well of the discussion. Frankly that was already done when people decided that the Jan 6th riot's were a coup.
Technically, they were, but like many things trump they're a really awkward example of a mixture of extreme incompetence making it harder to prove, and also a massive amount of people focusing on the wrong damn point. A mixture of idiots, misfits, and morons marching on the capital in a manner supported by the president (both in speech and in removal of security) is alarming, but there is no way that the march itself was any real threat to the government. A very real threat to the lives of members of it, but not to the actual continual functioning of democracy in a pragmatic manner. I don't think 99% of those rioters had a plan (because of course they didn't), and had the few % who had serious ill intent gotten their way (kidnappers, murderers, and the attempted bomber) we might have found out real fast where the loyalties of the US military were.
The real threat was the plot to basically kidnap the vice president to actually prevent the certification of the election and do god knows what from there, with the riot serving as the usual mixture of Trump "make noise and throw shit at the wall" strategy. This is vastly under-reported on, because it's "boring" compared to talking about hypothetical felony murder charges for people you don't like, and more confusingly because of the lack of focus it's hard to convince people it was even a thing when Pence still appears to mostly toe the line despite the sitting president if not directly encouraging him being killed or kidnapped, certainly not against the issue. That's not even going into sitting members of congress actively being involved and, again, having the issue mostly ignored outside of very specific circles (who are prone to their own bias and over-inflation of facts).
In short, I'm very solution focused in my approach to serious matters. I don't think a site like this is going to do anything except reinforce the anxiousness and outrage of those already anxious and outraged, while causing the average person who just cannot begin to have time to give a shit to care. If you want to use the word coup, you better have some really strong "hey this shit is affecting you NOW" situations.
Otherwise there's a million other ways to focus on the message. Personally I think pointing out that Trump and team, at best, are showing why society has worked very very hard to transition things smoothly for decades, and just how many people are losing their jobs from this. Not "random government worker X in department of thing that people already have issues with", should it be legal or not, but alll the industries that are SCREWED because we decided to just plop out tariffs without even trying to prep our internal infrastructure.
Maybe it would be better to ask how much what’s going on in the US government this year resembles previous coups? They’re using the tools of a corporate takeover rather than military force. Are...
Maybe it would be better to ask how much what’s going on in the US government this year resembles previous coups?
They’re using the tools of a corporate takeover rather than military force. Are there previous changes in government that worked like that?
If it becomes a coup, it would be a self coup if the Donald stays in power. But the constitution specifies how power can legally be used in the United States. Trampling that for some corporate...
If it becomes a coup, it would be a self coup if the Donald stays in power.
But the constitution specifies how power can legally be used in the United States. Trampling that for some corporate model is illegal.
And importantly: Many of the things trying to get implemented don't just skirt constitutional law...they smash into it head on. Birthright citizenship for example, if it holds, we've defacto given...
And importantly: Many of the things trying to get implemented don't just skirt constitutional law...they smash into it head on.
Birthright citizenship for example, if it holds, we've defacto given the president the right to rewrite the constitution on his word.
It's a coup via legal wrangling....just like Hitler.
I've seen election subversion, authoritarian creep, institutional capture, and possible oligarchic takeover. I haven't seen a what I would call a coup. If Trump completely sidelines the judiciary,...
I've seen election subversion, authoritarian creep, institutional capture, and possible oligarchic takeover. I haven't seen a what I would call a coup.
If Trump completely sidelines the judiciary, legislature, suppresses political opponents, cancels elections, or refuses to step down... that's a coup.
I see it very simply. This is one hundred percent on Congress alone.
Trump is a total non-factor in this mess despite being the source of so much consternation. His expanded executive powers derive from the Patriot Act and its tampering with the 'separation of powers' principle (plus twenty years of scope creep that both Obama and Biden were only too happy to encourage). Those presidential powers, and many forms of inter-agency co-operation (largely information-sharing), plus all the expanded citizen spying powers, vanish the instant that act is repealed. It would hamstring Trump's entire plan instantly and all he would be able to do about it is pout.
Fun fact, the Patriot Act was written to be sunset the moment it becomes 'objectionable' to continue with those expanded powers, so it's designed to be cancelled from day one. I think it might be unique in that regard, even the nearly unanimous count of representatives voting for it during the 9/11 hysteria had some inkling they were playing with fire. Well, here we are, nice going guys. Real smart move there.
It never has been cancelled because dealing with separation of powers is a colossal pain in the ass (as intended). Our government does not want to give up 'easy mode' and go back to 1995. On the other hand, public support for repealing the Patriot Act would be astronomical, it's a slam dunk. It is wayyyy past the expiration date. We know what we are doing now when it comes to terrorism - we've had just a bit more experience over the two and a half decades since it passed.
Trump and the federal judges get to go back and forth playing cat and mouse over technical details. Trump will easily win that fight because he does fifteen things to abuse his power every day before lunch. It is a total (and astonishingly effective) blitz. By the time the judges can even review a single action from today's crisis menu weeks or months later, the damage is already done and it's a moot point. Every judge and lawyer in the country couldn't keep up with this pace even with unlimited resources (which they do not have). For every order they block, he'll re-issue it again with legal objections amended for (or not) just to chew up their time - and worse, he'll spin every tiny setback in his momentum on those 'activist' justices to turn public opinion against them (successfully, too).
This will continue for Trump's entire term (and his third one, which he already hinted he'd run for) unless Congress steps up and takes back the power it used to have by repealing the Patriot Act. Simplest problem in the world to have, and to solve. I find it amusing that nobody has even talked about this in the media yet. The government would rather live through Trump than give up those powers and do things the proper American way again.
Fun fact about federal departments. Congress controls the purse strings, and they may also both create or close federal agencies - but never run them at all or be involved in running them in any capacity. Those agencies do report information to Congress, but they answer to the courts and the president, not to Congress. Technically, no federal agency has to interact with or answer congress on anything, ever - though that's never how things have been run before. It's not typically adversarial until some senator with an axe to grind starts hunting for classified information above their station - then they get stonewalled.
The question of if the executive branch can create departments of its own volition, or repurpose them (which is how DOGE was put together) is an awful lot more dicey because it's never been formally codified, it's always been a seat of the pants affair. Several presidents have created smaller departments or repurposed them in the past, though it's not very common. I think the EPA, DOD, and NASA are the big three created by presidents rather than Congress (though NASA was later authorized by Congress, so they are safe). Yes, that means Trump can legally close and fire the entire EPA with a single pen stroke, and Congress can't do a damn thing about it (except recreate it the next day under their own authority, which they won't because Republicans). Don't tell the pumpkin and maybe the EPA will last the year, but I doubt it. I'd bet they are next after the DOE.
What Trump did to create DOGE out of Obama's IT force is legal and has precedent. It's dirty pool certainly, but that does not matter because he does have that power, and that power does not come from the patriot act either.
I wouldn't worry about the US Military falling for a coup, though. Their oath is not one of blind loyalty, it is one of protecting the country from foreign and domestic threats - which means in the event of an actual coup, they will be escorting Trump directly to jail the same afternoon. The generals have to believe in the president's orders and intent in order to follow them, and every single soldier in the army is not to follow orders that violate their conscience. Trump has no options to compel the military to do anything they see as a danger to the country, and that's by design.
America does not have coups, but we do have asshole parties that occasionally make a mess of things, just like this. The worst that happens here is they jail everyone on down the line for the presidency, the acting president fires everyone who was involved and appoints a new cabinet, then we have an election. In order to coup this thing you'd have to coup all three branches and the military halfway down from the top with accomplices, and that's never going to happen. It's too many people to even keep that sort of thing a secret.
You'd have better luck convincing Texas and California to secede together on the same day, if you want to create a proper shitstorm for the USA. Stop confusing the world's longest running democratic republic for a poor young country with no experience in this stuff. We've done it all before, and we'll do it again too, until we get good at it. Sit back and enjoy the Trump show and stop panicking (unless you work for the fed, in which case that early retirement severance is pretty generous and probably looking mighty good right now).
Instead take the time to appreciate that baby himmler is still locked into adult day care, he just can't see it for what it is anymore. The more he pisses off the entire government, the more they will all come together and bend rules to weigh him down. Seriously, Trump is not Nixon, not even close. In all of this perhaps our courts will awaken from their eternal slumber and remember that they still have the final say on the law in this country. I'd consider that real progress.
I must admit that despite all the shenanigans, I am richly enjoying the neverending expose of our ludicrous budget allocations. So far nearly all of the things I see Musk going on about are things I would never support with taxes, period. It's well past shameful or disgusting, it's gone to pure schadenfreude at this point. I am digging the audit, and I'd like to audit the entire government this way, top to bottom, including the federal reserve, and claw back every last penny - and do it every single year for the rest of time as well. If this is how our money is spent, that has to change, or it's time for a tax strike.
Once upon a time, that was a core purpose of the Republican party, back in the Goldwater era. Reagan ended that with his big spending push, and once the republicans saw that nobody was complaining, they were thrilled to back him up. It's been a surprise to see Trump bring sensible budgeting cuts back with such gusto. Pity he's just doing it to score populism points for whatever he's planning in the future. Right audits, wrong reasons for them. I'll take what I can get, I guess. /facepalm
I cannot even imagine how insane this mess must look to the rest of the world.
Goading mentally ill kids into admiting to being a terrorist and otherwise harassing regular citizens, mostly. We certainly haven't seen a meaningful decrease in domestic terrorism.
Remember: We had the intelligence about 9/11 brought forward to Bush's daily brief in advance, multiple times. It was systematically ignored by the people who were supposed to take action.
I honestly chuckled at that one. :) I would agree that the Patriot Act has been... a wash at best, and frankly just a very very very bad idea all around. We all knew it, but there was no holding back that knee-jerk reaction to being attacked. Hey, at least Bernie was smart enough to vote no on it from day one. The democrats do have their own populist in house, not that they'd ever have the balls to use him. He could have crushed Trump, and so could Tulsi or Yang (who had 10% of Trump's base loving him) for that matter. The DNC needs to up their game big time or face collapse and be replaced by something a lot less... geriatric in nature.
We don't get a third party. Instead, we get one party reforming and collapsing and refactoring (which the Republicans have done now) and they crush it until the other party goes through the same process and comes back swinging. Better start your engines for 2028 right now and get out in front of it, guys. We need you back in there asap.
Well I agree with a few things that you said about congress abdicating its responsibilities, but there's no way that an audit of wasteful spending is worth the damage that is being caused.
First of all, I don't want incompetent and mentally ill buffoon Elon Fucking Musk doing an audit of anything. Why in the world would you think it's ok for someone who is known to be unethical and unstable to have this much power? For just one example, he had a tweet today where said some wrong things about how the social security database works, then someone said "Elon has never used SQL", and then Musk replied "This retard thinks government uses SQL". There are multiple levels of stupidity in that, including an (unelected) government official calling someone "retard". In fact, I'm not sure that this tweet isn't a parody, but it doesn't matter because we all know it tracks with his known behavior and past statements.
Second, the government is a complicated system and has a lot of safety checks in it, a lot of institutional knowledge, and a lot of sensitive data that are being thrown away and spewed around the world by untrustworthy and inexperienced people. This is dangerous in a way we can't even understand, and there is a lot of alarming warnings from legal experts and security experts. Are you really sure that some audit is worth the thousands of deaths this is going to cause?
And Trump may be a baby in a crib, but is ridiculous statements about taking over Canada and Greenland, and calling into question the validity of the treasury seem specifically designed by Putin to tear the country apart from the inside. He has done immeasurable harm to the soft power and reputation of the country.
I'm not sure why you are worried about your taxes being wasted when Trump is literally pissing away trillions in soft power, trade relations, reputation and economic power. It's all exactly what a manchurian candidate would do.
Research universities across the nation are having to gut programs now. Even if funding gets restored after legal wrangling, there are going to be projects that die because the requisite check wasn't cut at the right time.
Novel medical advances mostly come out of research universities. This is going to set progress back decades.
Oh, no argument from me there. In fact, all of your points are fair, but they won't stop this from happening. My point is that this audit is about fifty years overdue and I'm glad that at least one good thing is coming out of this mess - cuts to pointless spending. Americans have already seen enough negligence reported so that audits like this are going to be back on the agenda in politics again for a long, long time.
I would love to explain but I'm too burned out. America get your shit together already pleaasseeee this is insufferable.
Also you're giving our idiot right wingers ideas and we really don't need that.
I'm no expert on the Patriot Act, but didn't it expire in 2020?
Hmm, it does look like it changed in 2020, I wasn't aware of that myself. After digging into it, looks like some provisions were renewed and some expired, but I'm no expert on the nitty gritty of it. I just know that expanded executive order power comes directly from it, and Trump is certainly still using those powers.
That'd mean it's not a simple 'repeal' of the original, instead you'd have to hunt down and deal with the separate parts still in effect, or have congress pass something that overrides it. Either way though, ball is in Congress' court on this one. They can reign him in.
They can also impeach and convict but it doesn't look like they'll do that. Perhaps repealing the Patriot Act would be less politically difficult for them.
For sure. With his mandate, no way the Republicans impeach him, and I don't think it is possible without their votes. Their constituents would riot and they'd lose re-election. Repealing expanded powers, however, is something very near and dear to the hearts of every Republican, and would be a far easier sell than impeachment.
They might wait to do it, though, for strategic reasons - at least until after the 2026 mid-terms or until after Trump has already done most of what they want him to do. I suppose it depends on how much the other Republicans hate him - and a lot of them do even if they are paying lip service right now. Frankly I think everyone is still shell shocked that any president has the capacity to do something like this in... three weeks total time. Absolutely no one is used to a government that moves this fast in America. It only ever happens when one party wins a blowout and gets a majority in the house and the senate, allowing them to ignore the other party completely. Trump didn't get that, thank god. He's just pretending that he did.
What does “his mandate” mean really? He claims he has one. Maybe because he won the electoral college and the popular vote? It was no landslide and I think he claimed mandate in his first term while losing the popular vote but just lying about how the election was rigged.
Is his mandate because there is a slim Republican majority in both houses of congress?
Btw I’m not attacking you, but I think the idea that he has a mandate is largely republican propaganda. He’s the most divisive politician in US history and although he has a fixed floor of support the swing voters will start hating him any day now as he messes up more and more.
I think his mandate is his threat of terrorism against members of congress.
No worries, I'm an old hat at talking politics so I don't offend. You are right, it's almost entirely propaganda. Repeat it until it sticks. I'm disappointed that trick always works. The truth of the mandate he has is that around 7% of people who usually vote blue voted red this time. Not independents who always swing around, I mean 7% of hardcore democrats voted for him this time. That is pretty unusual, but it has more to do with the DNC trying to cover up Biden's health and anoint Harris by fiat than anything to do with Trump. One does not skip the primary in America if one expects to win, period.
So Trump's smallish mandate does not come from anything that he himself did. It comes from blue rage, and just plain angry Americans who don't care about policy as much as they care about shaking up the fed to punish them. They sent Trump in like a vengeful nuke to break the government so all the people working in government get to feel their pain and suffer. Mission accomplished and then some. If nothing improves, next time they will send someone even worse than Trump and they will send him in with a bigger mandate. They don't care which color the party is, they want results.
Despite doing more damage than a rabid Tasmanian devil let loose at the start of the world championship domino tournament, Trump is fulfilling campaign promises. He's used his tariffs to bully Mexico and Canada into border security action, just like he said he would. They aren't paying for a wall, but they are paying into the border now. He is saving billions from being wasted through the audits. He's reducing the budget and cutting redundant employees. He just secured a half trillion dollar mineral deal in Ukraine. It's week three. Care to guess what week fifty looks like at this pace? I don't. :P
My problem is that I don’t trust him and I don’t believe that he has done anything effective.
I think his tariffs are a complete mistake. I don’t think Canada or Mexico made any real concessions at all. They already agreed to move troops around or whatever. He just alienated them and drove them to look to other trade partners. Remember, he was the author of the USMCA which he violated.
With Ukraine, he is essentially blackmailing them and I seem to remember him getting impeached for blackmailing them in his first term.
Regarding the audits, there is no way in hell that these are going to save billions of dollars. There will be a bunch of unverified claims from him and Musk that it’s done that, and they’re already making these claims. Meanwhile I’m sure it’s cutting valuable things or actually creating damage that will be discovered for decades later.
In addition to the organizations mentioned on the linked page, it's also worth noting that the ACLU is also fighting various things in court. They've filed suits over the citizenship issue, transgender issues, deportations, Guantanamo and Musk's access to sensitive information.
I just gave them a donation earlier in the week (which my employer matched).
It sounds like you have a good employer.
Yeah, they're great overall. I believe in the product, and the benefits are good, so I can't complain too much.
We have a portal that lets you make donations to pretty much whatever you want (even local orgs), aside from PACs or such, and their maximum match is something crazy. If I remember correctly it's well more than I make, but enough to keep C-suite types from doing something big.
I just set up a monthly donation.
Yes, it is a coup. Yes, it is happening right now, and at as fast of a speed as the backers of Project 2025 can sprint.
The mainstream media is being either silenced or brought to heel through a variety of threats and lawsuits. Checks and balances of power are being systematically destroyed. The institutions that could oppose the coup are being gutted and their employees removed and/or replaced with loyalists. Specific 'internal enemies' have been named and are both being blamed for all ills, while also being targeting for persecution and likely far, far worse. Our closest allies are being betrayed for the shortest-term of possible gains, and our soft power and influence on the world stage is being handed over, gift-wrapped, to China while the orange makes efforts to push Ukraine to surrender either to Russia, or to surrender their resource sovereignty to the US.
Perhaps worst of all, the coup is happening in the nation with the most powerful military in the world (yes, China is catching up fast but they aren't quite there yet) and is encouraging further military destabilization all over the world stage.
It's sad that many Americans don't see or care.
I've always found it amusing that a native-born American actually can know literally nothing about how the US government works (or should work) and still vote. With America's anti-intellectual culture and a voting system that codifies "ignorance is as good as knowledge", this moment always seemed inevitable.
The ignorant and uneducated are far more easily controlled.
The lack of knowledge is not coincidental.
Alex Garland's Civil War articulates this so well in two instances.
One, the group finds themselves in a dress shop in a libertarian town that isolated themselves to the extreme, and the other, the photographer's description of her parents: "at home pretending like nothing's happening"
The movie was harrowing and so wildly timely. The only shame is that my Canada isn't a safe bystander, but a primary target :(
Yep, it’s a coup. Although you’d never know that if you were viewing the world through the lens of Fox News or others like it.
Welp lets start with the basics:
A lacking definition, especially for political science/philosophy, but a starting point.
We could argue the details of "What's decisive", get into fun things like Marbury vs Madison or the ongoing expansion of executive (and governmental) power, talk about if its a coup if it doesn't actually work and on and on.
The truth is though that's not really what's being discussed. What's being discussed is "Is this ok".
The obvious answer is no, no it is not. This is, at the absolute best, the peak of stupid, and much more likely a blatant if incompetent power grab.
The problem is, if this was somehow legal, and this was somehow not using force (which, so far, is still mostly true), would anyone who's pissed now care? Some small %, but I suspect no, not really.
The laws of the US are written in such a way that we could be seeing a lot of what is happening through congress legally instead, and frankly the political spectrum is such that I'd say that sort of is what we're seeing (by passing the buck to the executive so they can both get the outcomes they desire but wash their hands of the consequences/blame should anything go wrong). If for some reason they felt they couldn't do it that way and were on the floor passing these laws, would that be ok?
If the supreme court finds some contorted ruling that doesn't violate previous ones but vastly reinterprets our freedoms, is that ok?
The answer to most of this is almost certainly "no", and thus its why I somewhat roll my eyes when the word coup is thrown around.
Between some mix of yes, flooding the zone, and another of crying wolf (because it gets engagement) it's not really helping actually fix the problem which is the public apathy to the current situation.
Why is the public apathetic? Because it isn't really affecting them enough.
BUT THE PRICE OF EGGS, yes. Yes we all know groceries are going up, jobs are getting lost, tariffs are being done in the ultimate "fuck around/find out" manner, and so so so much more that's going to affect a lot of people. But if you look at the day to day life of someone who's not terminally submersing themselves in politics (which is probably healthier given the amount of alarmist bullshit that's always thrown around), shit has been hard since at least 08 and this isn't that new.
Yes there's a breaking point, yes we might even hit it, but until we do throwing around the word coup is poisoning the well of the discussion. Frankly that was already done when people decided that the Jan 6th riot's were a coup.
Technically, they were, but like many things trump they're a really awkward example of a mixture of extreme incompetence making it harder to prove, and also a massive amount of people focusing on the wrong damn point. A mixture of idiots, misfits, and morons marching on the capital in a manner supported by the president (both in speech and in removal of security) is alarming, but there is no way that the march itself was any real threat to the government. A very real threat to the lives of members of it, but not to the actual continual functioning of democracy in a pragmatic manner. I don't think 99% of those rioters had a plan (because of course they didn't), and had the few % who had serious ill intent gotten their way (kidnappers, murderers, and the attempted bomber) we might have found out real fast where the loyalties of the US military were.
The real threat was the plot to basically kidnap the vice president to actually prevent the certification of the election and do god knows what from there, with the riot serving as the usual mixture of Trump "make noise and throw shit at the wall" strategy. This is vastly under-reported on, because it's "boring" compared to talking about hypothetical felony murder charges for people you don't like, and more confusingly because of the lack of focus it's hard to convince people it was even a thing when Pence still appears to mostly toe the line despite the sitting president if not directly encouraging him being killed or kidnapped, certainly not against the issue. That's not even going into sitting members of congress actively being involved and, again, having the issue mostly ignored outside of very specific circles (who are prone to their own bias and over-inflation of facts).
In short, I'm very solution focused in my approach to serious matters. I don't think a site like this is going to do anything except reinforce the anxiousness and outrage of those already anxious and outraged, while causing the average person who just cannot begin to have time to give a shit to care. If you want to use the word coup, you better have some really strong "hey this shit is affecting you NOW" situations.
Otherwise there's a million other ways to focus on the message. Personally I think pointing out that Trump and team, at best, are showing why society has worked very very hard to transition things smoothly for decades, and just how many people are losing their jobs from this. Not "random government worker X in department of thing that people already have issues with", should it be legal or not, but alll the industries that are SCREWED because we decided to just plop out tariffs without even trying to prep our internal infrastructure.
Maybe it would be better to ask how much what’s going on in the US government this year resembles previous coups?
They’re using the tools of a corporate takeover rather than military force. Are there previous changes in government that worked like that?
If it becomes a coup, it would be a self coup if the Donald stays in power.
But the constitution specifies how power can legally be used in the United States. Trampling that for some corporate model is illegal.
Edit also the administrative procedures act
And importantly: Many of the things trying to get implemented don't just skirt constitutional law...they smash into it head on.
Birthright citizenship for example, if it holds, we've defacto given the president the right to rewrite the constitution on his word.
It's a coup via legal wrangling....just like Hitler.
I've seen election subversion, authoritarian creep, institutional capture, and possible oligarchic takeover. I haven't seen a what I would call a coup.
If Trump completely sidelines the judiciary, legislature, suppresses political opponents, cancels elections, or refuses to step down... that's a coup.
He will have to choose whether to defy the judiciary within the next week.
It can’t be a coup, those only happen in shithole countries. This, this, is a new Golden Age, clearly.