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You forgot "wilfully letting go of democracy". US democracy is far away from dying, but who knows how much longer it can keep holding up.
by andix 2y ago
You forgot "wilfully letting go of democracy". US democracy is far away from dying, but who knows how much longer it can keep holding up.
- late2part 2y ago[flagged]
- digitaltrees 2y agoIt’s not far away from dying. I would argue that it’s already too late. The trump administration has shown that it can seize the power to control spending which is constitutionally an exclusive power if congress and courts can’t and won’t do anything about it. We are past a constitutional crisis, republicans had a theory of a unitary executive and prove they can stream roll other branches. Now trump and others are talking about a third term. They play it off as a joke but that’s how they have succeeded in moving the goal posts already.
- pizza 2y agoHere are some new concrete developments that I doubt the founders of the democracy would say are fine: - the Executive Branch now has presumptive - if not absolute - immunity against all criminal official acts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_%282024%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_%282024... - universities must obey Trump's culture war agenda, otherwise they will be de-accredited and a fine equal to the value of the entire university endowment will be leveraged - https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-vows-to-seize-endowments-from-universities-practicing-discrimination-under-the-guise-of-equity/ https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-vows-to-seize-endowm... - President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers have long cited impoundment, a little-known legal theory [... that] essentially claims that any president has unilateral authority to ignore Congress’s funding bills and withhold or “impound” funds meant for programs, agencies, or departments deemed unsuitable by the White House. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3244202/trump-impoundment-federal-bureaucracy-trigger-supreme-court-battle/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3244202/...
- joquarky 2y ago> otherwise they will be de-accredited Who decides the ultimate authority on accreditation anyway? Why can't we just start a new trust network?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _heimdall 2y agoImpoundment, or rather the idea that it is an issue, is a weird concept in general. Congress legislates executive directives that should be acted upon and provides a budget. They don't say "spend every dollar we give" and they rarely define metrics for success to know if the executive branch is meeting their goals. The fact that the Trump administration is able to so easily chest the game and roll back agencies is a side effect of congress writing thousands of pages of legislation without ever bothering to define precisely what is expected of the executive branch.
- tsimionescu 2y agoNo, this is quite wrong. It is well understood in American law that "spend every dollar we give" is exactly what the budget approved by Congress means. It is then the duty of the executive branch to do so in an effective manner. Laws shouldn't need to go into details on exactly how every last dollar is to be spent, they set the amount and the goals, and the executive exists to handle the details. The problem is that the Trump administration is ignoring the laws they don't like. They're even trying to ignore a very explicit constitutional amendment (birthright citizenship). Writing more detailed laws would do nothing to make the Trump team follow the law.
- pfannkuchen 2y agoA lot of people don’t like that “regulation” has been delegated to unelected agencies instead of having congress make laws. Is the current structure of agencies with delegated regulatory powers specified in the constitution? I don’t think so. It isn’t explicitly forbidden, but it’s not like it’s what the founders had in mind or wrote down. The current administration’s approach is activist in the sense that it would be more direct to just outlaw the current structure via congress. I suspect that isn’t possible at the moment due to the entanglement of corporate interests, regulatory agencies and lobbying money. Activist action isn’t exactly new though. Maybe it hasn’t happened on the right wing as much in America in living memory, it feels like they felt like they were above it for a long time. They don’t feel like that anymore.
- cyberax 2y agoThe US is a strong federative country. Individual states are almost literally _states_ (as in "country") and have a lot of power. They can impose their own carbon taxes, net neutrality rules, fund research, etc. And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.
- ajross 2y agoStates have "power", but not money. There are no state level science grants anywhere at the scale of the linked article.
- cyberax 2y agoCA spends around $11B on the University of California system. The NIH budget is $47B. I haven't done the math, but I would hazard that the total amount of money spent on science by the Federal and the individual state authorities would be comparable. It's just that historically the Federal government was leading with the fundamental research, but if push comes to shove, states can start spinning up replacement programs.
- Braxton1980 2y agoIsn't CA a particularly rich state and not a good example of what states are capable of doing when compared to the federal government?
- directevolve 2y agoI foresee three big challenges to funding science at the state level. Shifting to state-level funding would require states to independently raise new taxes. Each state would have to work within the constraints of its state level constitution for levying that tax. Research would no longer be pork. This seems politically difficult. States would have to either coordinate on which grants to fund or accept a siloed, fragmented system. That seems inefficient. Institutes at lower-income states would not be subsidized by higher-income states and fail. That seems wasteful. All that said, it might be the only alternative.
- _heimdall 2y agoTrump is continuing a trend that has been going on since at least Bush Jr. Presidents for a couple decades now have been moving more power into the executive branch. Obama and Biden both talked about undoing this, but neither did. The Patriot Act still exists, three letter agencies still have authority to spy on American citizens, and immigration laws still defy what's written on the Statue of Liberty (I think most have forgotten how harsh Obama was on southern immigration).
- malcolmgreaves 2y agoFalse equivalence.
- brigandish 2y agoSince Woodrow Wilson.
- _heimdall 2y agoThe Dangerous History Podcast has a very interesting series in Wilson. The host was not a fan.
- brigandish 2y agoI'm going to give it a listen, thanks. I found this funny and interesting interview with the host, safe to say, you're right he's not a fan! :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usXS9ciS0gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usXS9ciS0gs
- rayiner 2y ago1) The fact that the President embodies the executive branch is just what Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The same people who say that’s “just a theory” also think that “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re not serious people. 2) Trump hasn’t seized the spending power. Congress was the one that delegated spending power to the executive branch by appropriating multi-billion line items and directing the executive branch to spend the money with only the vaguest instructions. Live by the delegation sword die by the delegation sword.
- dylan604 2y ago1) While Article II says....it also depends on a checks and balance system with the other two branches of government. We've already seen where the congressional branch is laying down for the executive, and we've also seen where the judicial branch has granted immunity essentially giving carte blanche to the executive. Without equal branches providing checks and balances, you've just ceded power the Constitution requires. Any of the lower courts trying to hold on to any semblance of checks and balance will eventually be reversed once it reaches SCOTUS.
- rayiner 2y agoThe system has specific, well-defined checks and balances. For example, Congress can limit the executive’s control over spending by enacting specific appropriations bills with concrete line items. But it hasn’t done so for decades. It has done things like appropriate single $1.7 billion line items for USAID, leaving it to the executive’s discretion how to spend it with only the vaguest guidelines. Congress having done that, it’s not for say the courts to “check” that by insisting that the executive can’t exercise all the discretion Congress provided it. And your point about immunity is misinformed. The Supreme Court held that the President has immunity for official acts. This is a no-brainer. You can’t sue Congressmen for their official acts either, or judges. If the President didn’t have immunity, Georgia prosecutors would be able to indict and convict Joe Biden in some red county in connection with the murder of Laken Riley, on the theory that Biden recklessly or negligently opened the border leading to her death.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoThe US spent the last hundred years shifting power from congress to the president, because nobody in congress wanted the blame for any decisions and be either primaried, or lose the election. Trump isn't seizing power, he's just using the power voluntarily given to him. American democracy wasn't ended by a revolution, it was ended by lawfully elected cowards.
- digitaltrees 2y agoNo. He is seizing it explicitly as laid out in project 2025. There is an explicit theory of a unitary executive that they say give him power. But they also mapped out the levers of power, control and possible resistance and are systematically and aggressively going after them. I would also point out that the American people didn’t vote for this because trump explicitly denied he would follow project 2025, and yet is implementing every detail down to the letter.
- bruce511 2y agoBearing in mind that this administration won the election and a lot of what they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on, I'm not sure democracy is at risk. One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening. This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to regret their vote, yes they likely didn't understand what they were voting for, but that's the flaw in democracy we're aware of. Is this what everyone wants? Clearly not. But democracy is about majority rule, not consensus. When an election is canceled then one can talk about democracy dying. But right now, Americans are just getting what the majority voted for. They may not necessarily like it, but they voted for it. And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it. Like if or not, the "democracy" part is working well.
- andix 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 Edit: you can use a democratic process to kill off democracy. In the end democracy is dead, and it doesn't really matter anymore why.
- coliveira 2y agoYou're right, but that's a flaw of democracy itself. It is known since ancient Greece.
- amluto 2y agoThis: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/19/donald-trump-king-imagery-021013 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/19/donald-trump-king-i... doesn’t really sound like democracy.
- andix 2y agoThat's just a prank. But it shows how little the president cares about democracy, or even monarchy.
- rayiner 2y agoThis is democracy! You can say it’s a bad idea or whatever. But Trump had Musk on stage promising to do this then we elected him. That’s democracy. Tyranny of the majority. Also people like it: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HHP_Feb2025_vFinal.pdf https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HHP... (pp. 29-32)
- watwut 2y agoDemocracy involves rule of law.
- rayiner 2y agoIn a sense, but not in the sense of all the political branches having to run every decision by lawyers and judges.
- selimthegrim 2y agoSo judicial review is out too?
- panta 2y agoThere have been electoral fraud and a massive disinformation campaign operated by a foreign country. This is not democracy.
- dylan604 2y agoWe're only one skipped election away from democratic death.
- kelnos 2y agoHow would you "skip" an election, though? Every single blue state and swing state will hold elections in 2026 and 2028. The federal government has no say in that. If the red states don't feel like having elections, then I guess their legislatures will be directly appointing electors to send to the electoral college. Outcome will be the same, more or less, as if they held elections.
- dylan604 2y agoDon’t care about state elections as that’s not the point. If someone that was currently in the last term of their Constitutionally limited position decided some sort of martial law that delayed/postponed/canceled an election that would replace them using their SCOTUS provided blanket immunity for official acts while the congressional branch refuse to impeach/convict, then there would not be an election. Anything the states did wouldn’t matter as the complicit congress would just choose to not recognize anything the states did. It might seem like a bizarre thing to say about the USofA, but we were not far from not certifying the previous election with an opposition led congress.