8 ms·

President is unilaterally shutting down federal agencies. If this goes on there really isn't a constitution anymore, not in practice anyway.

pwatsonwailes 2y ago
You never have one except because everyone decides they do. The moment anyone with a modicum of power decides to say it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  I think it’s important to clarify that in this case, having a “modicum of power” is in the form of being able to say it doesn’t exist without a riot and a beheading. It’s not in the form of money or command of an army, though those things definitely help.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  > In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps. > Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter. George Carlin, years ago. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1242679-boy-everyone-in-this-country-is-running-around-yammering-about https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1242679-boy-everyone-in-thi...
  - tomohawk 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - sirtaj 2y ago
      From the outside, it continues to surprise me when people bring this up, as if they're either too ignorant to know about the Dixiecrat schism or want to pretend that everyone else is. What's the point? It's so easy to look up.
      - immibis 2y ago
        It's just propaganda, optics, PR. Obviously the Democrat party in 1940 has absolutely no relation to the Democrat party in 2025, except for the name. People use that same name to smear the 2025 party because they can. And it works because propaganda works. That's how Germany got Hitler and it's how the USA got Elon.
      - tomohawk 2y ago
        [flagged]
- rsynnott 2y ago
  I mean, see, say, South Korea. Or, for a less spectacular example, see Boris Johnson's defeat in his attempts at a bit of tinpot dictatorship of his own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Minister_and_Cherry_v_Advocate_General_for_Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe... Really, in democratic societies there are three levels; those where the offending politician is actually deposed, those where their unconstitutional action is blocked by the courts or by another arm of government (as with Boris), and those where _they never do the thing in the first place because they realise they can't get away with it, and there'll be unpleasant consequences for them_ (this is by far the most common, particularly in parliamentary democracies, where Dear Leader can be fired at a moment's notice). If none of these happen, then typically the democracy ends. The US is probably unusually vulnerable to this sort of thing; it has an unusually powerful executive, and a highly politicised Supreme Court, in particular. Though, it kind of remains to be seen how far the Supreme Court will be pushed. Some or all of Trump's appointees may take the view that they got into the job to screw over minorities and aid business, but not necessarily to actually end democracy in the US. They are likely not all that beholden to him.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    R v Miller was important but ultimately overtaken by events - while Parliament did want to discuss Brexit, they were unable to find a viable solution and we still got no-deal Brexit where vital things like the status of Northern Ireland had to be patched up later. For whatever insane reason, the demand to eject us from the Single Market was just too strong.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      To be clear, there wasn't a no-deal Brexit in the end. There was what was originally called a hard Brexit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_withdrawal_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_withdrawal_agreement), but a no-deal Brexit would have been far worse. R (Miller) v The Prime Minister (not to be confused with R v Miller, or R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (the solution here is clearly to just stop naming people 'Miller', to avoid further confusion)) was probably ultimately more important in its precedent than its concrete outcomes, though, yeah.
mjfl 2y ago
The President has unitary power over the executive, within the bounds set by congress.
- guelo 2y ago
  trump really doesn't care about the bounds set by congress or anyone else
  - mjfl 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - labster 2y ago
      It’s not moral panic, it’s because Trump is reducing legitimacy and stability of the government. Killing foreign civilians is normal, locking everyone out of a government job with zero notice is not.
      - aqueueaqueue 2y ago
        [flagged]
        mjfl 2y ago
        deeply ironic
        labster 2y ago
        COIN sucks, civilians get killed, the closest thing to a fortress in modern warfare is a city. The US has a better record than most in protecting civilians but it’s impossible to save everyone.
        immibis 2y ago
        The US could save people by not starting wars. And by quickly finishing wars other people started (that means Ukraine) rather than drawing them out as long as possible to maximize shareholder profits from weapon sales.
asdasdsddd 2y ago
The president is fascist because he's, checks notes... , relinquishing governmental power by shutting down agencies? I think the only thing people have been habituated to is the enormity of the government; go back to any other point in history, was the government this big in terms of independent agencies, employee/contractor count, budget/debt as percentage of gdp? Sure the spoils system was bad, but the current iteration where you have hundreds of independent agencies that cannot be fired breathing down your neck with statutory power is fucking insane.
- palmotea 2y ago
  > The president is fascist because he's, checks notes... , relinquishing governmental power by shutting down agencies? You do know the president is not supposed to have that power, right? His job is to execute the law, which as currently written requires those agencies to exist.
  - asdasdsddd 2y ago
    Yes and FDR also skirted around constitutionality and even threatened to pack the courts to ram his reforms in. I don't agree with everything the president is doing, but the rail we are going down is just doomed. What is your proposition to stop interest from eating 100% of the federal budget. We just paid 1T of interest, do you think that is going to decelerate?
    - gambiting 2y ago
      >>What is your proposition to stop interest from eating 100% of the federal budget. We just paid 1T of interest, do you think that is going to decelerate? How is that related to shutting down agencies?
      - asdasdsddd 2y ago
        Because those agencies are funded by the federal budget. We are literally going into a deficit to send money to other countries. Do you realize how insane that is? And don't tell me this is just a small part of the federal budget. Oh its just a couple billion here and there. That's a lot of money that could go towards not being in debt. This level of fiscal irresponsibility is basically taxation without representation on the unborn.
isaacremuant 2y ago
[flagged]
- almostdeadguy 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - isaacremuant 2y ago
    [dead]
    - almostdeadguy 2y ago
      Google the word “aww”.
      - 13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago
        [dead]
- smackeyacky 2y ago
  The US has transcended “both sides are bad” sorry mate. Elon is evil, full stop.
  - isaacremuant 2y ago
    Yes. That is a common narrative from democrat leaning people. The same ones who called me a terrorist sympathesizer for not wanting to invade libya. The same ones that now think Trump/Musk are more evil than Bush who illegally invaded Iraq because that's what the narrative tells them. Forgive me if I laugh at your "full stops" and other absolutist statements. Cried wolf/nazi/evil too many times.
    - whamlastxmas 2y ago
      You’re wasting your breath. If people are going to claim democracy is being dismantled but only by republicans, then they’re a lost cause
randallsquared 2y ago
He’d have a long way to go to get down to the number of federal agencies that existed in 1900, let alone the number in 1800, yet the US had its constitution, then, too.
- tmvphil 2y ago
  Since 1800 congress has used its constitutional power to establish agencies. It is congress who has the constitutional power to shut them down, not the president. The president executes the laws passed by Congress.

pwatsonwailes 2y ago

You never have one except because everyone decides they do. The moment anyone with a modicum of power decides to say it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.

Waterluvian 2y ago
I think it’s important to clarify that in this case, having a “modicum of power” is in the form of being able to say it doesn’t exist without a riot and a beheading. It’s not in the form of money or command of an army, though those things definitely help.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
> In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps. > Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter. George Carlin, years ago. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1242679-boy-everyone-in-this-country-is-running-around-yammering-about https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1242679-boy-everyone-in-thi...
- tomohawk 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sirtaj 2y ago
    From the outside, it continues to surprise me when people bring this up, as if they're either too ignorant to know about the Dixiecrat schism or want to pretend that everyone else is. What's the point? It's so easy to look up.
    - immibis 2y ago
      It's just propaganda, optics, PR. Obviously the Democrat party in 1940 has absolutely no relation to the Democrat party in 2025, except for the name. People use that same name to smear the 2025 party because they can. And it works because propaganda works. That's how Germany got Hitler and it's how the USA got Elon.
    - tomohawk 2y ago
      [flagged]
rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, see, say, South Korea. Or, for a less spectacular example, see Boris Johnson's defeat in his attempts at a bit of tinpot dictatorship of his own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Minister_and_Cherry_v_Advocate_General_for_Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe... Really, in democratic societies there are three levels; those where the offending politician is actually deposed, those where their unconstitutional action is blocked by the courts or by another arm of government (as with Boris), and those where _they never do the thing in the first place because they realise they can't get away with it, and there'll be unpleasant consequences for them_ (this is by far the most common, particularly in parliamentary democracies, where Dear Leader can be fired at a moment's notice). If none of these happen, then typically the democracy ends. The US is probably unusually vulnerable to this sort of thing; it has an unusually powerful executive, and a highly politicised Supreme Court, in particular. Though, it kind of remains to be seen how far the Supreme Court will be pushed. Some or all of Trump's appointees may take the view that they got into the job to screw over minorities and aid business, but not necessarily to actually end democracy in the US. They are likely not all that beholden to him.
- pjc50 2y ago
  R v Miller was important but ultimately overtaken by events - while Parliament did want to discuss Brexit, they were unable to find a viable solution and we still got no-deal Brexit where vital things like the status of Northern Ireland had to be patched up later. For whatever insane reason, the demand to eject us from the Single Market was just too strong.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    To be clear, there wasn't a no-deal Brexit in the end. There was what was originally called a hard Brexit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_withdrawal_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit_withdrawal_agreement), but a no-deal Brexit would have been far worse. R (Miller) v The Prime Minister (not to be confused with R v Miller, or R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (the solution here is clearly to just stop naming people 'Miller', to avoid further confusion)) was probably ultimately more important in its precedent than its concrete outcomes, though, yeah.

mjfl 2y ago

The President has unitary power over the executive, within the bounds set by congress.

guelo 2y ago
trump really doesn't care about the bounds set by congress or anyone else
- mjfl 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - labster 2y ago
    It’s not moral panic, it’s because Trump is reducing legitimacy and stability of the government. Killing foreign civilians is normal, locking everyone out of a government job with zero notice is not.
    - aqueueaqueue 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - mjfl 2y ago
        deeply ironic
        labster 2y ago
        COIN sucks, civilians get killed, the closest thing to a fortress in modern warfare is a city. The US has a better record than most in protecting civilians but it’s impossible to save everyone.
        immibis 2y ago
        The US could save people by not starting wars. And by quickly finishing wars other people started (that means Ukraine) rather than drawing them out as long as possible to maximize shareholder profits from weapon sales.

asdasdsddd 2y ago

The president is fascist because he's, checks notes... , relinquishing governmental power by shutting down agencies? I think the only thing people have been habituated to is the enormity of the government; go back to any other point in history, was the government this big in terms of independent agencies, employee/contractor count, budget/debt as percentage of gdp? Sure the spoils system was bad, but the current iteration where you have hundreds of independent agencies that cannot be fired breathing down your neck with statutory power is fucking insane.

palmotea 2y ago
> The president is fascist because he's, checks notes... , relinquishing governmental power by shutting down agencies? You do know the president is not supposed to have that power, right? His job is to execute the law, which as currently written requires those agencies to exist.
- asdasdsddd 2y ago
  Yes and FDR also skirted around constitutionality and even threatened to pack the courts to ram his reforms in. I don't agree with everything the president is doing, but the rail we are going down is just doomed. What is your proposition to stop interest from eating 100% of the federal budget. We just paid 1T of interest, do you think that is going to decelerate?
  - gambiting 2y ago
    >>What is your proposition to stop interest from eating 100% of the federal budget. We just paid 1T of interest, do you think that is going to decelerate? How is that related to shutting down agencies?
    - asdasdsddd 2y ago
      Because those agencies are funded by the federal budget. We are literally going into a deficit to send money to other countries. Do you realize how insane that is? And don't tell me this is just a small part of the federal budget. Oh its just a couple billion here and there. That's a lot of money that could go towards not being in debt. This level of fiscal irresponsibility is basically taxation without representation on the unborn.

isaacremuant 2y ago

[flagged]

almostdeadguy 2y ago
[flagged]
- isaacremuant 2y ago
  [dead]
  - almostdeadguy 2y ago
    Google the word “aww”.
    - 13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago
      [dead]
smackeyacky 2y ago
The US has transcended “both sides are bad” sorry mate. Elon is evil, full stop.
- isaacremuant 2y ago
  Yes. That is a common narrative from democrat leaning people. The same ones who called me a terrorist sympathesizer for not wanting to invade libya. The same ones that now think Trump/Musk are more evil than Bush who illegally invaded Iraq because that's what the narrative tells them. Forgive me if I laugh at your "full stops" and other absolutist statements. Cried wolf/nazi/evil too many times.
  - whamlastxmas 2y ago
    You’re wasting your breath. If people are going to claim democracy is being dismantled but only by republicans, then they’re a lost cause

randallsquared 2y ago

He’d have a long way to go to get down to the number of federal agencies that existed in 1900, let alone the number in 1800, yet the US had its constitution, then, too.

tmvphil 2y ago
Since 1800 congress has used its constitutional power to establish agencies. It is congress who has the constitutional power to shut them down, not the president. The president executes the laws passed by Congress.