6 ms·

I think it's more Libertarian extremists feeding the public an excuse to execute the Libertarian dream of minimal government oversight

_heimdall 2y ago
That's yet to be seen. Going for a limited government would require closing a lot of these agencies down, that requires congress. If the fear of fascism raised by some is accurate, it seems more likely we'll see these agencies gutted and rebuilt as whatever the Trump administration wants them to be instead. No smaller government, just a different one.
- bwestergard 2y ago
  "No smaller government, just a different one" I live in D.C. and many of my neighbors are non-political civil servants of all kinds. All signs point to a dramatically smaller and weaker federal government without congressional action. Whether these agencies that congress created and funded for decades will continue to exist in any meaningful way is de facto getting decided by congress right now. The Vought/Musk group has fired 200,000 employees already, and is offloading real-estate as quickly as possible. That action is consistent with gutting, but not rebuilding, these agencies. So congress either has to exercise its power over the executive to prevent this in the next few weeks, or the loss of capacity will have occurred and rebuilding will take many years and be dramatically more costly than maintenance would have been.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    > The Vought/Musk group has fired 200,000 employees already Were those full-time employees or contractors of some type? Normally I would just look this up myself, but things have been moving so quickly that the info I find is all over the place and I haven't found a short list of sources to trust. My understanding was that they "offered" early retirement, not sure how much of an option it was versus a demand. I had also heard they cancelled a lot of contract work, I wouldn't consider that being fired but yeah it does still impact people similarly.
    - bwestergard 2y ago
      "My understanding was that they "offered" early retirement" That was an earlier wave, but things are moving so quickly it's understandable people are getting confused. The two hundred thousand terminated I referred to above are (roughly) all the employees in their probationary period (which is typically two years, but it varies by position) across the whole federal public sector workforce. If we were to include contractors (e.g. USAID contractors), more than two hundred thousand people have been terminated by executive action since the start of the administration. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/15/trump-purges-real-world-consequences-disasters-00204475 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/15/trump-purges-real-w...
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        That's definitely more serious than I had heard clear reports of, thanks for the details. Unfortunately this kind of comes with the territory when granting power to an authority - jobs can be created, they can also be taken away. Whether this is "right" for our country is probably a matter of perspective, but I do feel for everyone impacted directly. This is a pretty shitty situation to find yourself in and I don't know what the job market will look for them short term - if its anything like tech the last year or so its pretty miserable.
- jordanb 2y ago
  > that requires congress Elon is literally closing agencies like the CFPB and USAID down, in defiance of congress and the law. They are working under a legal theory that the president can do that, and are expecting their stacked supreme court to agree with them.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    > Elon is literally closing agencies Is he? I mean this as an honest question, things have moved quickly enough that its hard to keep up. My understanding that they have been temporarily closing offices or stopping work. I wouldn't consider that as "literally closing agencies" though, at least for me that reads as closing them down permanently rather than temporarily closing the doors. I don't ask this to defend what they're doing at all. I think we could be much worse off if they're only gutting the agencies without closing them completely. The executive branch has been given an immense amount of authority over the last half century or so, if that is used to rebuild different agencies technically still fulfilling congressional mandates for USAID or CFPB we could be in for a rude awakening. Authority is fine when you agree with it, but as soon as the wrong person has that same power you may find you wish it was never granted in the first place.
- behringer 2y ago
  Congress will only shut down these services if they don't perform. Musk is making sure they don't perform.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    That wouldn't necessarily be true. Congress could better, more clearly define what they require of these departments and services. Most of them were pretty weakly defined and they were given legal precedent to define what their own authority was (unless specifically defined by Congress). The departments could be kept with more clear definitions of what they need to do and what success looks like.
    - behringer 2y ago
      They could, but they won't, since Musk and republicans in Congress want the same thing, which is to privatize the government.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        > which is to privatize the government. That isn't clear yet from what I've seen. Destroying or knee capping departments is one thing rebuilding them as private or functionally private organizations is another level. If they are planning to do this I don't think we've seen any direct signs of it yet, though I don't know how it could be anything other than fascism at that point.
      - fragmede 2y ago
        Privatize it, or just not have it at all?
        behringer 2y ago
        Yes you're correct, both are involved.
- jaredhallen 2y ago
  I don't see why the supreme court couldn't rule a lot of these departments unconstitutional. The justification for many of them is flimsy at best, and seems to be to be in direct contradiction to the "only those rights specifically enumerated" deal.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    I wouldn't hold my breath for SCOTUS overturning precedence regarding the interstate commerce clause.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I don't actually think the question is whether a strong argument could be made there. There's no political will to challenge it.
  - bwestergard 2y ago
    "I don't see why the supreme court couldn't rule a lot of these departments unconstitutional." Because they are, in fact, obviously constitutional. The mechanism for eliminating them contemplated by the constitution is for congress to pass a law eliminating them. If you disagree with my view on this, perhaps you'll be persuaded by voluminous case law over decades upholding the constitutionality of all of these Federal government agencies in face of challenges of precisely the kind you're motioning toward.
    - ModernMech 2y ago
      > If you disagree with my view on this, perhaps you'll be persuaded At this point I feel like anyone who disagrees with this should explain how things work in the alternative. If the executive can just unilaterally declare laws invalid, how does anything get done? Why pass laws at all?
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        The executive doesn't have to declare a law invalid here. From where I sit the question is whether a budget approved by congress must be spent or should be considered a "do not exceed" spending cap. There is gray area when Congress says we need a department to manage our education system, for example, and sets a budget. Congress is only approving the spending there, at least to me that means it can be spent but doesn't have to be spent in full. Now it is the executive branch's job to execute on that department. I think it would be a stretch for them to just not create the department. Their job is to properly and effectively implement what congress asked for though, and it is reasonable for someone coming in to say that what was done in the past isn't meeting Congress's request. That isn't to say Trump is making a legitimate or reasoned argument in that vein, but the power is there at which point you have a weird legal battle attempting to decide who can make a better case for the success of any specific department. With congress defining little to no metrics for success that battle seems largely to be in the eye of the beholder.

_heimdall 2y ago

That's yet to be seen. Going for a limited government would require closing a lot of these agencies down, that requires congress. If the fear of fascism raised by some is accurate, it seems more likely we'll see these agencies gutted and rebuilt as whatever the Trump administration wants them to be instead. No smaller government, just a different one.

bwestergard 2y ago
"No smaller government, just a different one" I live in D.C. and many of my neighbors are non-political civil servants of all kinds. All signs point to a dramatically smaller and weaker federal government without congressional action. Whether these agencies that congress created and funded for decades will continue to exist in any meaningful way is de facto getting decided by congress right now. The Vought/Musk group has fired 200,000 employees already, and is offloading real-estate as quickly as possible. That action is consistent with gutting, but not rebuilding, these agencies. So congress either has to exercise its power over the executive to prevent this in the next few weeks, or the loss of capacity will have occurred and rebuilding will take many years and be dramatically more costly than maintenance would have been.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  > The Vought/Musk group has fired 200,000 employees already Were those full-time employees or contractors of some type? Normally I would just look this up myself, but things have been moving so quickly that the info I find is all over the place and I haven't found a short list of sources to trust. My understanding was that they "offered" early retirement, not sure how much of an option it was versus a demand. I had also heard they cancelled a lot of contract work, I wouldn't consider that being fired but yeah it does still impact people similarly.
  - bwestergard 2y ago
    "My understanding was that they "offered" early retirement" That was an earlier wave, but things are moving so quickly it's understandable people are getting confused. The two hundred thousand terminated I referred to above are (roughly) all the employees in their probationary period (which is typically two years, but it varies by position) across the whole federal public sector workforce. If we were to include contractors (e.g. USAID contractors), more than two hundred thousand people have been terminated by executive action since the start of the administration. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/15/trump-purges-real-world-consequences-disasters-00204475 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/15/trump-purges-real-w...
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      That's definitely more serious than I had heard clear reports of, thanks for the details. Unfortunately this kind of comes with the territory when granting power to an authority - jobs can be created, they can also be taken away. Whether this is "right" for our country is probably a matter of perspective, but I do feel for everyone impacted directly. This is a pretty shitty situation to find yourself in and I don't know what the job market will look for them short term - if its anything like tech the last year or so its pretty miserable.
jordanb 2y ago
> that requires congress Elon is literally closing agencies like the CFPB and USAID down, in defiance of congress and the law. They are working under a legal theory that the president can do that, and are expecting their stacked supreme court to agree with them.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  > Elon is literally closing agencies Is he? I mean this as an honest question, things have moved quickly enough that its hard to keep up. My understanding that they have been temporarily closing offices or stopping work. I wouldn't consider that as "literally closing agencies" though, at least for me that reads as closing them down permanently rather than temporarily closing the doors. I don't ask this to defend what they're doing at all. I think we could be much worse off if they're only gutting the agencies without closing them completely. The executive branch has been given an immense amount of authority over the last half century or so, if that is used to rebuild different agencies technically still fulfilling congressional mandates for USAID or CFPB we could be in for a rude awakening. Authority is fine when you agree with it, but as soon as the wrong person has that same power you may find you wish it was never granted in the first place.
behringer 2y ago
Congress will only shut down these services if they don't perform. Musk is making sure they don't perform.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  That wouldn't necessarily be true. Congress could better, more clearly define what they require of these departments and services. Most of them were pretty weakly defined and they were given legal precedent to define what their own authority was (unless specifically defined by Congress). The departments could be kept with more clear definitions of what they need to do and what success looks like.
  - behringer 2y ago
    They could, but they won't, since Musk and republicans in Congress want the same thing, which is to privatize the government.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      > which is to privatize the government. That isn't clear yet from what I've seen. Destroying or knee capping departments is one thing rebuilding them as private or functionally private organizations is another level. If they are planning to do this I don't think we've seen any direct signs of it yet, though I don't know how it could be anything other than fascism at that point.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Privatize it, or just not have it at all?
      - behringer 2y ago
        Yes you're correct, both are involved.
jaredhallen 2y ago
I don't see why the supreme court couldn't rule a lot of these departments unconstitutional. The justification for many of them is flimsy at best, and seems to be to be in direct contradiction to the "only those rights specifically enumerated" deal.
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  I wouldn't hold my breath for SCOTUS overturning precedence regarding the interstate commerce clause.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I don't actually think the question is whether a strong argument could be made there. There's no political will to challenge it.
- bwestergard 2y ago
  "I don't see why the supreme court couldn't rule a lot of these departments unconstitutional." Because they are, in fact, obviously constitutional. The mechanism for eliminating them contemplated by the constitution is for congress to pass a law eliminating them. If you disagree with my view on this, perhaps you'll be persuaded by voluminous case law over decades upholding the constitutionality of all of these Federal government agencies in face of challenges of precisely the kind you're motioning toward.
  - ModernMech 2y ago
    > If you disagree with my view on this, perhaps you'll be persuaded At this point I feel like anyone who disagrees with this should explain how things work in the alternative. If the executive can just unilaterally declare laws invalid, how does anything get done? Why pass laws at all?
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      The executive doesn't have to declare a law invalid here. From where I sit the question is whether a budget approved by congress must be spent or should be considered a "do not exceed" spending cap. There is gray area when Congress says we need a department to manage our education system, for example, and sets a budget. Congress is only approving the spending there, at least to me that means it can be spent but doesn't have to be spent in full. Now it is the executive branch's job to execute on that department. I think it would be a stretch for them to just not create the department. Their job is to properly and effectively implement what congress asked for though, and it is reasonable for someone coming in to say that what was done in the past isn't meeting Congress's request. That isn't to say Trump is making a legitimate or reasoned argument in that vein, but the power is there at which point you have a weird legal battle attempting to decide who can make a better case for the success of any specific department. With congress defining little to no metrics for success that battle seems largely to be in the eye of the beholder.