4 ms·

Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" but it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. I encourage a

Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" but it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx. EDIT: I'm not making any judgment about whether this particular thing is legal or not--just pointing out that it doesn't matter if it's legal if nobody in power intends to enforce the law.

_qbxi 2y ago
Illegal acts should be called out, even if our government is failing to enforce the law. Otherwise it will become easy for the acts to get ignored entirely.
- iamEAP 2y ago
  Unless you’re a member of congress or a civil servant in the executive branch, paying any attention to this is wasted energy. We already saw this play out in his last term. Directing how laws are enforced is a function of the executive branch. Nothing will be done. Your energy is better spent identifying and articulating the values you hold that these actions are an affront to and shouting that out.
  - _qbxi 2y ago
    At minimum, drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a different batch of congressional representatives in the future. Politics doesn't always act on instant gratification.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      We are kind of locked into what we have. A single digit percentage of House races are ever contested. The vast majority of House districts are won by the party that already holds them[1]. 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/30/decade-after-decade-more-than-three-quarters-of-us-house-districts-have-consistently-been-won-by-the-party-that-holds-them/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/30/decade-af...
      - ipaddr 2y ago
        If 4% or 18 seats were switched four years ago why wouldn't that matter because currently the majority is thin and only a few seats. That could flip in two years. My guess after the gaza comments is more likely than not to switch.
        malnourish 2y ago
        I'd love to believe that, even if only it meant our collective memory can recall events from 2 years ago.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      >At minimum, drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a different batch of congressional representatives in the future. >Politics doesn't always act on instant gratification. The odds are slim to none since the public didn’t already act, 4 years after the previous act of treason by Trump, on top of the fact that he campaigned on pardoning his treasonous co-conspirators. In fact, he was rewarded with control of all 3 branches of government.
      - ipaddr 2y ago
        The Democrats were leading by 8 or more until the worst debate performance in history followed by a weak replacement. People never really cared about the capital riot. They cared about getting costs down... costs are going up with tariffing the world and businesses will suffer when they are shut out of foreign markets. Things have already changed since the last election.
        paulryanrogers 2y ago
        Many people cared about the attempted coup. Sadly not enough
      - Applejinx 2y ago
        I would say an extraordinary amount of effort from foreign adversaries had to be undertaken to get that outcome. Careful not to assume the public is composed of rational actors all of whom have good information, when they're demonstrably not and haven't. Drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a huge amount of buyer's remorse among people who tried hard not to pay attention to the election in hopes things could be more 'normal' if they voted for what they thought would be the political party they knew.
  - reverendsteveii 2y ago
    This. Remember when he literally did a commercial for Goya products from the resolute desk? His justification was that they were being "cancelled" and that the law surrounding the white house endorsing products for political support was his to enforce or not and he was just not gonna enforce it.
- jdross 2y ago
  It would be nice if anyone would state a law being violated. A lot of people seem to be making a lot of assumptions too about what DOGE/Elon are doing vs what the president or directors of the agencies (for instance) are doing
  - _qbxi 2y ago
    I do agree that citing specific laws is best. However, if the building is on fire, I want the alarm bells on immediately even if it's low specificity. What sort of assumptions have you been seeing?
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      > if the building is on fire If you're already allowing the question to be begged, there's really no need for specificity in the argument. Because if there was no law being broken, that means that the building was not on fire. People tell me that shouting "fire!" is supposed to be bad when there is no fire. I don't think they would accept it as being "low-specificity."
      - shigawire 2y ago
        There's a bunch of smoke so let's call the fire dept first and let them assess.
  - bagels 2y ago
    Here's some reading after a quick googling. https://time.com/7212753/trump-elon-musk-federal-laws-legal-analysis/ https://time.com/7212753/trump-elon-musk-federal-laws-legal-... Definitely in uncharted territory, but these are some possible laws that have been violated: Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Internal Revenue Code’s Section 6103.
- intended 2y ago
  Sure. Remember this when people say that the dems constantly complain about the repubs, and that people are tired of hearing people say things are illegal. My guess is that at this point, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. So saying the same thing, just a different language. And no: I have zero clue what the actions would look like. Maybe suing the govt?
i80and 2y ago
Things can be illegal even if there's no enforcement mechanism, and while it's a really frustrating situation, people are right to be vocal and proactive about saying it.
- inetknght 2y ago
  Yes, and it would be valuable to help understand what enforcement agencies people think can/should do enforcement, and also to help educate those people when they're wrong.
ziddoap 2y ago
>it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced. Consider that non-enforcement doesn't suddenly make something legal. Enforcement can start at any time. (Will it? Who knows!)
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  The larger problem is that they are at the border of or past crimes that either will get prosecuted eventually or we are at the end of democratic controls (starting at term limits) so that these people never get prosecuted.
- danielheath 2y ago
  > It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced. It seems somewhat vacuous to say it when it applies to every second administrative act.
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    Enabling act? Executive order? Administrative regulation? The Administrative Procedure Act? What is an administrative act in this context?
    - danielheath 2y ago
      "action by the new US administration"?
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  But for purposes of debating what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal and if we're only concerned about outcomes it's rational to treat them as equivalent.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    >what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal Illegal + unenforced can generate the same outcome as legal. Or someone can get arrested later when the enforcement begins. There's a big difference.
netsharc 2y ago
Indeed... welcome to the newest "failed state". Although, that term reminds me of Sarah Chayes' book on corruption, reviewed at length in [1]. > But, as Chayes studied the graft of the Karzai government, she concluded that it was anything but benign. Many in the political élite were not merely stealing reconstruction money but expropriating farmland from other Afghans. Warlords could hoodwink U.S. special forces into dispatching their adversaries by feeding the Americans intelligence tips about supposed Taliban ties. Many of those who made money from the largesse of the international community enjoyed a sideline in the drug trade. Afghanistan is often described as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly trying, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether” — the enrichment of its own members. Washington supported Hamid Karzai and his ministers and adjutants in the hope that they could establish a stable government, help pursue Al Qaeda, and keep the Taliban at bay. But the Karzai government wasn’t a government at all, Chayes concluded. It was “a vertically integrated criminal organization.” [1] https://archive.is/E6zXj https://archive.is/E6zXj
epicureanideal 2y ago
Also, sounding illegal and being illegal are two different things. I really hope these discussions lead to more posts to neutral reference material, rather than just asserting things are illegal. For example: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3-15-2/ALDE_00013108/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3... https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3-15-3/ALDE_00013109/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...
marcosdumay 2y ago
The OPs procedure expect normal people to break the law. Any observation you have for the oligopolists being able to commit mass murder or whatever won't apply to that people.
pessimizer 2y ago
> I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx. I encourage before doing that to find out if the thing is actually illegal, and to cite the law that it violates. This will be better than relying on sounds or smells.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  [dead]
jameshart 2y ago
If you work for a local government, say, and your boss says ‘hey, here’s my plan: you stop coming to work, and I’ll make sure you get paid anyway for a few months’, if you accept those terms and go along with that plan, and then later on it turns out your boss was not allowed to do that, and you got paid a bunch of government money illegally… Normally that might come back to bite you, potentially years later. That’s the exact kind of shape and form of various public corruption scandals. I would be very nervous about personally benefitting from what might amount to a scheme to embezzle government funds. Just because nobody in government today is interested in looking into whether or not this is legal doesn’t mean it will never come under scrutiny.
- spacemanspiff01 2y ago
  I like the analogy, additionally, it seems like just 'stopping coming to work' is something that you could be fired for cause for. So if it comes up later that hey, this person has not been working due to a agreement that the government had no right to agree to. Well we'll be nice and just fire them, won't even ask for salary to be returned.
  - protocolture 2y ago
    They have a lawful direction to stop working and keep getting paid coming from their management. If they were terminated for following a lawful direction they would have pretty easy recourse.
    - staticman2 2y ago
      It's not a "lawful direction" if the order is illegal.
      - protocolture 2y ago
        You would have to go pretty far to prove to a standard I would accept that "Go work from home, and do nothing, we will keep paying you" is an illegal order. Firstly: Its telling these people to work from their principle place of work, their home. Something thats been commonplace since covid. Secondly, "Do Nothing" seems like a very legal thing for these people to be doing. I suspect that theres not a court in the land that would convict a government employee for doing nothing.
creer 2y ago
I expect a vast sea of lawsuits. There are multiple ways that things can be enforced or not. But for some things, sure, if say, both enforcement duty and presidential pardons are used or not used to fit, then for these cases, illegal doesn't matter anymore. "It's not illegal if the president does it", was it? In the case of taking early retirement, or accepting a pile of money for doing X / nothing, then you better be somewhat certain that it will last long enough.
- bagels 2y ago
  Let's say the lawsuits are won. Here are the two inevitable outcomes for the ones that matter: Appealed to Supreme Court which is overrepresented by Trump cultists. Trump's DOJ refuses to enact whatever verdict the court determines.
selfhoster 2y ago
> Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" And the last four years, for which Biden pardoned his son, certainly nothing illegal in his doings I'm sure.
anigbrowl 2y ago
It matters a lot in that it makes the difference between whether you can get a court injunction or not, and in that if there are sufficiently high levels of demonstrable illegality, a government would lose political legitimacy and citizens/military might simply cease obeying it. I am not taking a position on this particular policy being legal or not, it's too technical for me to know about and it's not something I want to research.
UncleOxidant 2y ago
True. The rule of law died on Jan 20. Musk is likely doing a lot of things that are strictly illegal, but it seems quite likely that Trump has assured him he has his back with pardons if need be. Also, Trump controls federal law enforcement agencies that have likely been told to look the other way. The only legal vulnerability would be at the state level and they're not doing things there.
- refurb 2y ago
  > The rule of law died Jan 20 This kind of hyperbole isn’t helpful when the outgoing President hands out pardons like they were coupons, nor when the President can’t remember signing EOs and is known to have limited mental faculties for the past few years, all while being shielded by his inner circle. I mean the Constitution is pretty specific about a President not fit to do their job. If you had said “the rule of law stayed dead on Jan 20th” I might disagree but it’s at least a defensible opinion.
  - error_logic 2y ago
    The reason it's defensible is that now checks and balances are gone because there aren't even token checks/balances from partisanship--the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party, purging anyone who isn't loyal and willing to do whatever they deem justified. They're paving a road to hell.
    - refurb 2y ago
      > the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party You realize that the check and balances never required that different parties head each branch of government? I'm not sure you have even a basic understanding of how the US government is organized by the US constitution.
      - krapp 2y ago
        >You realize that the check and balances never required that different parties head each branch of government? They do in effect, because the existence of political parties means there is no reason for members of the same party to check and balance each other across different branches, as opposed to collaborating across branches to consolidate their power. Which is exactly what's happening.
snowwrestler 2y ago
It will be enforced by a future administration, is the answer. If a federal civil servant receives payroll, but does no work, for months on end, they have not taken a buyout, they have defrauded the federal government. What is the statute of limitations for that crime? Longer than 4 years. And Trump is term-limited. That said, I agree with others that the more likely outcome in this specific case is that everyone who takes the “buyout” simply has their payments cut off rather quickly.
adastra22 2y ago
I've worked for the federal government before. Garden leave is 100% go-straight-to-prison illegal. It is defrauding the government. There's a lot of stuff that is bog standard in industry, but cannot be done in government service.

_qbxi 2y ago

Illegal acts should be called out, even if our government is failing to enforce the law. Otherwise it will become easy for the acts to get ignored entirely.

iamEAP 2y ago
Unless you’re a member of congress or a civil servant in the executive branch, paying any attention to this is wasted energy. We already saw this play out in his last term. Directing how laws are enforced is a function of the executive branch. Nothing will be done. Your energy is better spent identifying and articulating the values you hold that these actions are an affront to and shouting that out.
- _qbxi 2y ago
  At minimum, drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a different batch of congressional representatives in the future. Politics doesn't always act on instant gratification.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    We are kind of locked into what we have. A single digit percentage of House races are ever contested. The vast majority of House districts are won by the party that already holds them[1]. 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/30/decade-after-decade-more-than-three-quarters-of-us-house-districts-have-consistently-been-won-by-the-party-that-holds-them/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/30/decade-af...
    - ipaddr 2y ago
      If 4% or 18 seats were switched four years ago why wouldn't that matter because currently the majority is thin and only a few seats. That could flip in two years. My guess after the gaza comments is more likely than not to switch.
      - malnourish 2y ago
        I'd love to believe that, even if only it meant our collective memory can recall events from 2 years ago.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >At minimum, drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a different batch of congressional representatives in the future. >Politics doesn't always act on instant gratification. The odds are slim to none since the public didn’t already act, 4 years after the previous act of treason by Trump, on top of the fact that he campaigned on pardoning his treasonous co-conspirators. In fact, he was rewarded with control of all 3 branches of government.
    - ipaddr 2y ago
      The Democrats were leading by 8 or more until the worst debate performance in history followed by a weak replacement. People never really cared about the capital riot. They cared about getting costs down... costs are going up with tariffing the world and businesses will suffer when they are shut out of foreign markets. Things have already changed since the last election.
      - paulryanrogers 2y ago
        Many people cared about the attempted coup. Sadly not enough
    - Applejinx 2y ago
      I would say an extraordinary amount of effort from foreign adversaries had to be undertaken to get that outcome. Careful not to assume the public is composed of rational actors all of whom have good information, when they're demonstrably not and haven't. Drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a huge amount of buyer's remorse among people who tried hard not to pay attention to the election in hopes things could be more 'normal' if they voted for what they thought would be the political party they knew.
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  This. Remember when he literally did a commercial for Goya products from the resolute desk? His justification was that they were being "cancelled" and that the law surrounding the white house endorsing products for political support was his to enforce or not and he was just not gonna enforce it.
jdross 2y ago
It would be nice if anyone would state a law being violated. A lot of people seem to be making a lot of assumptions too about what DOGE/Elon are doing vs what the president or directors of the agencies (for instance) are doing
- _qbxi 2y ago
  I do agree that citing specific laws is best. However, if the building is on fire, I want the alarm bells on immediately even if it's low specificity. What sort of assumptions have you been seeing?
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > if the building is on fire If you're already allowing the question to be begged, there's really no need for specificity in the argument. Because if there was no law being broken, that means that the building was not on fire. People tell me that shouting "fire!" is supposed to be bad when there is no fire. I don't think they would accept it as being "low-specificity."
    - shigawire 2y ago
      There's a bunch of smoke so let's call the fire dept first and let them assess.
- bagels 2y ago
  Here's some reading after a quick googling. https://time.com/7212753/trump-elon-musk-federal-laws-legal-analysis/ https://time.com/7212753/trump-elon-musk-federal-laws-legal-... Definitely in uncharted territory, but these are some possible laws that have been violated: Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Internal Revenue Code’s Section 6103.
intended 2y ago
Sure. Remember this when people say that the dems constantly complain about the repubs, and that people are tired of hearing people say things are illegal. My guess is that at this point, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. So saying the same thing, just a different language. And no: I have zero clue what the actions would look like. Maybe suing the govt?

i80and 2y ago

Things can be illegal even if there's no enforcement mechanism, and while it's a really frustrating situation, people are right to be vocal and proactive about saying it.

inetknght 2y ago
Yes, and it would be valuable to help understand what enforcement agencies people think can/should do enforcement, and also to help educate those people when they're wrong.

ziddoap 2y ago

>it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced. Consider that non-enforcement doesn't suddenly make something legal. Enforcement can start at any time. (Will it? Who knows!)

snailmailstare 2y ago
The larger problem is that they are at the border of or past crimes that either will get prosecuted eventually or we are at the end of democratic controls (starting at term limits) so that these people never get prosecuted.
danielheath 2y ago
> It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced. It seems somewhat vacuous to say it when it applies to every second administrative act.
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  Enabling act? Executive order? Administrative regulation? The Administrative Procedure Act? What is an administrative act in this context?
  - danielheath 2y ago
    "action by the new US administration"?
reverendsteveii 2y ago
But for purposes of debating what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal and if we're only concerned about outcomes it's rational to treat them as equivalent.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal Illegal + unenforced can generate the same outcome as legal. Or someone can get arrested later when the enforcement begins. There's a big difference.

netsharc 2y ago

Indeed... welcome to the newest "failed state". Although, that term reminds me of Sarah Chayes' book on corruption, reviewed at length in [1]. > But, as Chayes studied the graft of the Karzai government, she concluded that it was anything but benign. Many in the political élite were not merely stealing reconstruction money but expropriating farmland from other Afghans. Warlords could hoodwink U.S. special forces into dispatching their adversaries by feeding the Americans intelligence tips about supposed Taliban ties. Many of those who made money from the largesse of the international community enjoyed a sideline in the drug trade. Afghanistan is often described as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly trying, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether” — the enrichment of its own members. Washington supported Hamid Karzai and his ministers and adjutants in the hope that they could establish a stable government, help pursue Al Qaeda, and keep the Taliban at bay. But the Karzai government wasn’t a government at all, Chayes concluded. It was “a vertically integrated criminal organization.” [1] https://archive.is/E6zXj https://archive.is/E6zXj

epicureanideal 2y ago

Also, sounding illegal and being illegal are two different things. I really hope these discussions lead to more posts to neutral reference material, rather than just asserting things are illegal. For example: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3-15-2/ALDE_00013108/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3... https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3-15-3/ALDE_00013109/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...

marcosdumay 2y ago

The OPs procedure expect normal people to break the law. Any observation you have for the oligopolists being able to commit mass murder or whatever won't apply to that people.

pessimizer 2y ago

> I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx. I encourage before doing that to find out if the thing is actually illegal, and to cite the law that it violates. This will be better than relying on sounds or smells.

barfbagginus 2y ago
[dead]

jameshart 2y ago

If you work for a local government, say, and your boss says ‘hey, here’s my plan: you stop coming to work, and I’ll make sure you get paid anyway for a few months’, if you accept those terms and go along with that plan, and then later on it turns out your boss was not allowed to do that, and you got paid a bunch of government money illegally… Normally that might come back to bite you, potentially years later. That’s the exact kind of shape and form of various public corruption scandals. I would be very nervous about personally benefitting from what might amount to a scheme to embezzle government funds. Just because nobody in government today is interested in looking into whether or not this is legal doesn’t mean it will never come under scrutiny.

spacemanspiff01 2y ago
I like the analogy, additionally, it seems like just 'stopping coming to work' is something that you could be fired for cause for. So if it comes up later that hey, this person has not been working due to a agreement that the government had no right to agree to. Well we'll be nice and just fire them, won't even ask for salary to be returned.
- protocolture 2y ago
  They have a lawful direction to stop working and keep getting paid coming from their management. If they were terminated for following a lawful direction they would have pretty easy recourse.
  - staticman2 2y ago
    It's not a "lawful direction" if the order is illegal.
    - protocolture 2y ago
      You would have to go pretty far to prove to a standard I would accept that "Go work from home, and do nothing, we will keep paying you" is an illegal order. Firstly: Its telling these people to work from their principle place of work, their home. Something thats been commonplace since covid. Secondly, "Do Nothing" seems like a very legal thing for these people to be doing. I suspect that theres not a court in the land that would convict a government employee for doing nothing.

creer 2y ago

I expect a vast sea of lawsuits. There are multiple ways that things can be enforced or not. But for some things, sure, if say, both enforcement duty and presidential pardons are used or not used to fit, then for these cases, illegal doesn't matter anymore. "It's not illegal if the president does it", was it? In the case of taking early retirement, or accepting a pile of money for doing X / nothing, then you better be somewhat certain that it will last long enough.

bagels 2y ago
Let's say the lawsuits are won. Here are the two inevitable outcomes for the ones that matter: Appealed to Supreme Court which is overrepresented by Trump cultists. Trump's DOJ refuses to enact whatever verdict the court determines.

selfhoster 2y ago

> Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" And the last four years, for which Biden pardoned his son, certainly nothing illegal in his doings I'm sure.

anigbrowl 2y ago

It matters a lot in that it makes the difference between whether you can get a court injunction or not, and in that if there are sufficiently high levels of demonstrable illegality, a government would lose political legitimacy and citizens/military might simply cease obeying it. I am not taking a position on this particular policy being legal or not, it's too technical for me to know about and it's not something I want to research.

UncleOxidant 2y ago

True. The rule of law died on Jan 20. Musk is likely doing a lot of things that are strictly illegal, but it seems quite likely that Trump has assured him he has his back with pardons if need be. Also, Trump controls federal law enforcement agencies that have likely been told to look the other way. The only legal vulnerability would be at the state level and they're not doing things there.

refurb 2y ago
> The rule of law died Jan 20 This kind of hyperbole isn’t helpful when the outgoing President hands out pardons like they were coupons, nor when the President can’t remember signing EOs and is known to have limited mental faculties for the past few years, all while being shielded by his inner circle. I mean the Constitution is pretty specific about a President not fit to do their job. If you had said “the rule of law stayed dead on Jan 20th” I might disagree but it’s at least a defensible opinion.
- error_logic 2y ago
  The reason it's defensible is that now checks and balances are gone because there aren't even token checks/balances from partisanship--the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party, purging anyone who isn't loyal and willing to do whatever they deem justified. They're paving a road to hell.
  - refurb 2y ago
    > the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party You realize that the check and balances never required that different parties head each branch of government? I'm not sure you have even a basic understanding of how the US government is organized by the US constitution.
    - krapp 2y ago
      >You realize that the check and balances never required that different parties head each branch of government? They do in effect, because the existence of political parties means there is no reason for members of the same party to check and balance each other across different branches, as opposed to collaborating across branches to consolidate their power. Which is exactly what's happening.

snowwrestler 2y ago

It will be enforced by a future administration, is the answer. If a federal civil servant receives payroll, but does no work, for months on end, they have not taken a buyout, they have defrauded the federal government. What is the statute of limitations for that crime? Longer than 4 years. And Trump is term-limited. That said, I agree with others that the more likely outcome in this specific case is that everyone who takes the “buyout” simply has their payments cut off rather quickly.

adastra22 2y ago

I've worked for the federal government before. Garden leave is 100% go-straight-to-prison illegal. It is defrauding the government. There's a lot of stuff that is bog standard in industry, but cannot be done in government service.