Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left? The courts are themselves slow and ultimately roll up to allies of the despot.
People say that the midterms are crucial, but the midterms are only likely to be won if Democrats truly unify and apply winning strategies. Sadly the only winning strategies now seem to involve telling stories, not necessarily the truth.
And all of that essentially admits that the next two years are forfeit anyway.
Many actions the administration has taken are illegal. Not sure if those related to NIH are, but if they’ve been firing people, odds are good, since they’ve been doing that wrong most of the time it seems like. Congress could change the laws, but they haven’t. Lots of this junk is simply against the law. The courts are moving relatively fast, as such things go, but it takes time.
Congress is supposed to control spending and taxation. The administration is claiming a ton of powers related, especially, to spending. Various actions they’ve taken certainly violate the constitution and laws that exist to ensure Congress’ budget isn’t simply ignored by a president. This is another matter for the courts… unless the Supreme Court decides to rule that the radical and unprecedented far-right “unitary executive” interpretation is correct, in which case we’ve just entered a new and far worse era of American government, and it’s all “legal”. I give it 50/50 they do that.
Do they even need to, though? If the president cannot be prosecuted for any official acts, and has the power to pardon any subordinate for ignoring the law, and to fire (and then prosecute) anyone who insists on following the law, what does the law matter?
We're well past the point where something being illegal or not matters whatsoever. I'm surprised federal court rulings are being listened to at all, really. I'm not sure why they are.
alabastervlog says "Many actions the administration has taken are illegal. "
Not to pick on albastervlog specifically but HN is filling with posts like the one above, stating "this is illegal, that is illegal", posted by non-lawyers who have no idea whatsoever what is, and what is not, truly illegal.
Why state something is illegal when the statement is false or ambiguous at best? What does it contribute?
Why not instead state the simpler truth: "I don't like that!" or "I disagree with that!" and then get on with the rest of an argument?
To be clear, the article headline is deceptive clickbait.
NIH budgets aren't being cut. The NIH is simply requiring that at least 85% of the grant value goes to the actual grant recipients, rather than being siphoned off by the university for administration expenses.
At most universities this change has no impact, since they weren't taking more than 15% to begin with. This change mainly impacts Harvard and similar, as they were previously taking extortionate cuts. Harvard was taking 69%!
Perhaps. A lot of it is also the flip side of an executive order conjuring more government into existence.
The escalation of executive order from administration to administration, and the reliance on courts to make law results in what we have going on today.
Everyone was perfectly fine with the President doing whatever he wanted a couple months ago. Everyone was fine with the vague executive orders being treated as law.
At some point one party needs reign in the presidency while they have it. Democrats chose not to, then ran a losing campaign with a candidate voters did not nominate.
Neither party is principled on a national level. There are some individual exceptions, but they are few and far between.
We are deeply undemocratic right now. I can consent to differences of opinion on tax policy or government subsidies, but I can't consent to open betrayal of allies. I can't consent to the deliberate traumatiztion of the people who run the government so that unaccountable authority can be wielded without any checks or balances. I can't submit to literal deaths of people who are dependent on public healthcare and their children being robbed of their mother prematurely. I can't submit to a regulatory environment that puts rich Americans above the law. I can't consent to extreme changes in foreign policy or economic intervention that makes it so that our businesses don't have a predictable environment to operate in and foreign countries have no reason to believe our words.
Our own declaration of independence lists our founding principles and tells us what we already know is the answer:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The only answer we have left is to withdrawal consent.
> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left?
As the article states, these actions are illegal and violate the US constitution.
If "the people who decided to vote" expressed this decision, that decision would be implemented by an act of Congress to alter or eliminate these rules. Congress up until now passed no such law. Thus these changes bear no democratic or institutional support.
If however you frame these series of events as an overthrow of the regime and the start of something entirely different then that's a different debate.
I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak.
Caesar was elected consul. Hitler was elected chancellor. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza, came to power democratically on a platform of 'one election - which will be the last election'. Since the beginning of democracy, democracies have regularly voted themselves out of existence. It's a buggy feature. But democracy isn't the norm at all in history, and the likelihood here seems greater that America is regressing toward the mean than that it has something in its fiber capable of withstanding a hostìle takeover that no previous republic has had.
It’s not clear what good the midterms can do. It appears likely that the Supreme Court will hold that the president has the power to make these cuts regardless of any laws passed by congress. And even if he didn’t have that power already, he cannot be prosecuted for any official act, and he can pardon his subordinates at will. Beyond that, any action taken by congress is going to be reliant on individuals in the executive branch to execute, and the president can fire them at will until he finds someone who declines to follow the law.
The only thing Congress could do is impeach the president and remove him from office, but that seems unlikely when roughly half the country is ecstatic about what he is doing.
> roughly half the country is ecstatic about what he is doing
A number of his actions are wildly unpopular. The Jan 6th Pardons, and his pro-Putin agenda. His polling is historically poor for a month into a president's term, and there are large protests around the country. In another month, his polling will be completely underwater.
But the people who did vote for him explicitly voted for all the stuff he's doing right now. Nothing that he's currently doing is surprising, except maybe for the fact that a politician actually followed through on so many campaign promises.
In fact, he had less margin than any election since 2000. Even Hillary in 2016 had a larger popular vote margin of victory than Trump 2024 despite having lost the electoral college.
In all odds I think by the midterms we'll have seen:
* A massive recession as a result of tariffs, job losses, pullback in federal spending (e.g,. on infrastructure), and general economic uncertainty.
* A significant public health crisis (see measles in Texas for example)
* Russia continuing to wage war on Ukraine, and possibly further conflicts around the world as the US withdraws from international peacekeeping.
> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left?
If its just that, the other branches of government. Of course, Congress is not a remedy at the moment, though its conceivable they might move in response to popular pressure more easily than the White House.
Failing that, history is full of examples of ad hoc remedies where a leader unmistakeably exercised authority in a way which upset people without any formal systemic remedy, some of which took the shape of legal process despite the absence of preexisting formal law, and some of which did not.
I don't even know if I believe there's any chance of this myself but it's worth pointing out that Republicans currently have a House majority of... 2. It's unlikely but not inconceivable that a few house members could be persuaded to vote with Democrats to push back, simply because they're in a swing state and we keep seeing videos of very mad voters confronting their representatives. Anyone in a swing district interested in securing re-election should be considering it.
> Anyone in a swing district interested in securing re-election should be considering it.
Trump alone could easily tank almost any R congressman's reelection chances, and with big money backing him now, they can afford to bankroll the competitor's primary campaign.
What scares me is that even if a slim Pro-Sanity coalition exists in both houses, Trump can simply continue to violate the Constitution willy-nilly if a core of Republicans remain complicit and block removal from office.
After all, we're not just talking about an illegal retroactive on-demand line-item veto here, but plenty of other data-points, like a President that has blanket-pardoned criminals who already violently attacked congress in his name.
What's the plan for when the USPS suddenly has "breakdowns" or "misplaces" mail-in-ballots collected from certain districts? Or when IRS tax records from candidates are leaked to opposing conservative campaigns? Citizenships being "revoked" just enough to stop people from voting?
Strictly, sevearal things.
First, plurality. Second, they voted for Congress, as well. Where are they? Third, they trust in the entire system, even if their trust has been manipulated by some agents. That is why we are supposed to have checks and balances.
Or, reform your Presidency to be a constitutional role only, with executive power devolved to the party or parties of your elected representatives that is able to show the head of state that they have the numbers to govern.
E.g. like the President of Ireland, or the King of England (via the Governor General proxy) in countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Also, the Electoral College is an archaic anachronism, and may I recommend a system of proportional representation?
Devolution to "states rights" is exactly that, a devolution.
Alternatively: we need to rein in the powers of the presidency. Right now we've got a dynamic of "the president says what to do and the legislature obeys" (or, recently, "the president does stuff on his own"); we might be better off with "Congress decides what to do and the president makes it happen".
To Republicans' credit, they have not flipped on states' rights even when they dominate DC. Maybe this is a good time for everyone to (pretend to) be aligned on states' rights and ram through some measures to that end.
A) The answer is impeachment -- regardless of partisan policy discussions on what we should do with these agencies, there is a strong legal argument that overruling congress via impoundment and/or the actions discussed here violate the constitutions most basic precepts. Our founders, for better or worse, including one escape valve for such a situation: congress reasserting its power via impeachment.
I know recent history makes it hard to imagine a successful impeachment+conviction when both chambers are controlled by the president's party, but that doesn't change anything; there is literally no other legal path to reigning in an authoritative executive, especially with the 2024 presidential immunity ruling. Party bonds are strong, but at a certain point, even the most loyal congressperson will start to resent being made into a rubber-stamp like the legislatures of Russia & Hungary have been.
B) I really don't think the global scene backs up the idea that truth isn't effective -- there's lots of complex things going on, and some amount of emotional propaganda is always necessary, but we should never abandon the truth. Regardless of how effective it is in the short term, basing a political project on lies means it has no core, and can end up corrupted/way off track in short order.
> there is a strong legal argument that overruling congress via impoundment and/or the actions discussed here violate the constitutions most basic precepts
No there isn't. The text of the Constitution says the opposite: it makes appropriation a necessary condition for expenditures, but omits any clause making it a sufficient one. And the only case law on this issue is Train v. New York, which assiduously avoids ruling on the separation of powers issue. So there is neither any basis in the Constitution itself nor any basis in case law for your contention.
encourage all the laid off federal employees to move to the three special election counties, flip the house next month, use the house majority to push back on the most absurd/draconian moves, push harder at the midterms and try again two years later.
long term, figure out a better politically independent structure (perhaps similar to the fed) for important institutions.
Courts can't just step in when Congress decides not to do its job.
Someone needs to sue to bring a matter before the courts. And in a lot of these cases, there just isn't a party who has standing to do so outside of the narrow scope of say, employment law.
elections do not and should not mean that winner gets to ignore existing laws. They should nor mean the winner must operate unopposed without checks and balances.
Tight victory means even less in terms of the mandate.
> when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies
No candidate got a majority of votes. A majority means more than 50% of the votes. In this case, the leading candidate only received 49.5%, which is a plurality, not a majority.
What is really happening is that Billionaires are taking advantage of less educated voters by convincing them to vote against their self-interests. They do so by shifting focus to the "values and cultural issues" of the moment. In the past, it was gay marriage and abortion; today, it's trans kids and DEI. Once these issues dominate the conversation, little attention is paid to the real priorities and actions of these Billionaires: cutting funds to Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare programs, cuts to health insurance subsidies, cuts to education, cuts to medical research funding, cuts to development assistance to the poorest in the world and so on, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
What is the solution? Democrats should shift towards the center on the "values and cultural issues" in order to neutralize the conservative advantage, then they will be able to do things that the middleclass (and lower) cares about, such as healthcare and health research, education, consumer protections and so on, and make the Billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.
The debate can't be on "values and cultural issues", whatever they are, because that plays into Republican strengths.
I can't see the Democrats "shifting to the center" on trans kids when that will lead to more suicides when kids can't get their gender affirming care. That seems bad in every way.
Frankly, I am not at all convinced any further elections in the US will be free or fair given who is currently in power and what they've openly said about elections and what they want to do to them.
The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance, which I see as unlikely to occur (and which I am not necessarily advocating for here on HN).
Barring that, the reality is that scientific progress will move away from the US and towards our enemies, and we will just have to live with the consequences of the choices we made.
I appreciate the perspective, and I know it's trite, but it's important: how would you feel about a resident of 1933 Germany writing your comment? Some good people fled, true, but staying and complying because mass protest seems "unlikely" is almost definitely something posterity will frown upon -- not to mention the rest of the world. I think that's something that should give one pause.
Remember, mass protest to (push congress to) oust an authoritarian executive has never happened before in the USA -- but we've also never had an authoritative executive to anywhere near this extent before.
> The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance,
Maybe, just maybe, the opposition party could quit offering these shit sandwich candidates as an alternative?
I can't believe there's no Democrat politicians out there who could've beat Trump handily. But the DNC seems totally disfunctional in picking candidates.
> Frankly, I am not at all convinced any further elections in the US will be free or fair given who is currently in power and what they've openly said about elections and what they want to do to them.
The only legal answer I'm aware of is the states setting up a Constitutional Convention. (Well, either that, or having the cabinet declare the president incapacitated.) Good luck getting the majority of the states or cabinet on board.
True that. But I don't recall Trump campaigning on this policy.
In fact he's putting into play Project 2025, the thing that he explicitly disclaimed knowledge of prior to the elections.
It's a sad sign of the state of US politics that this, which would cause outrage in the past, barely merits a mention amidst all the other rage bait things he's doing.
His barmy executive orders, DOGE, that disgraceful display with Zelenskyy reminds me of the Wizard of Oz trying to distract people from the man behind the curtain.
> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left?
Support candidates that appeal to the electorate. Find common ground. Resist demonizing the opposition. Moderates shouldn’t have to choose between polarized extremes. If you are intellectually honest you may see the ripple effect created by unfairly shutting Bernie Sanders out of the democratic nomination in 2016 set the stage for this outcome .
While I agree about Bernie Sanders I really can't see the justification in describing Harris's candidacy as a "polarized extreme". Sanders is clearly more extreme than her. (I don't think he's extreme at all, just that he's further to the left)
My sentiments exactly. The level of despair I’m feeling is palpable. Especially when I think that to counter Trump it will take a unified Democratic Party with consistent messaging … (unlikely)
Yeah there isn't much to do -- the midterms are the next best option. Nobody voted for this.. Trump won with a narrow plurality, not even a majority of the votes and denied all knowledge of the Project 2025 plan that's been in full effect since Jan 20th.
Congress has completely abdicated their Constitutional mandate to control the purse and the executive branch is illegally impounding billions of dollars. It really is a constitutional crisis. The 'right' way to do this would be to draw up a budget (not a CR) that closes NIH and USAID and whatever else they're so desperate to destroy - but that would take 60 votes in the Senate and would subject them to months of terrible press while they negotiated it, so instead they're just ceding all authority to the President and Elon and letting them take a sledgehammer to our collective government. Sheer embarrassment.
The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"
I know I will get beat up for this comment but someone has to say it. I believe this direction is well deserved. Clearly they were given far too much trust and were operating as a rogue organization for far too long. Developing bio-weapons and dual use medicines on college campuses and then moving them to China once called out by Obama is cavalier, aggressive, dangerous, wanton disregard for life and absolute folly. And that's just what we know about. They can not take their own work seriously. To be clear I am not opposed to developing bio-weapons and dual use medicines rather I just want the people making these things to put a tremendous amount of safeguards friction and security around them. Move all the weapon development to highly secured military installations that are far away from everyone and require extensive scans before boarding a jet required to travel to that location and that is just to start their assignment. Once there they will have no privacy and will not leave until their work is completed and fully vetted.
The country is gripped by a fever, with 47.9% of the population basking in the heat. These individuals are indifferent to anything that doesn’t directly impact them. In fact, they quietly relish others’ complaints, seeing them as a sign that they’re somehow gaining the upper hand.
You're not wrong -- you're absolutely correct. The problem is that these changes will start impacting the supporters of the victors as well, it's just that the Administration will blame some other entity. We've seen the playbook before.
Not that I want anyone to lose their benefits, but perhaps there will be a sea change when people start losing their Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, Veteran benefits, just being able to forecast the weather reasonably well, flu vaccines, safe and competent air traffic control -- oh what else is on the chopping block...
This time around the changes might actually take effect quickly enough for people to feel them during the current administration.
Compared to the previous playbook of making changes and then blaming the effects on the next administration. While taking credit for everything good kicking in from the previous administration of course.
PubMed is sporadically down, by the way, along with the rest of https://nlm.nih.gov. I'm not sure if DOGE decided to pull the plug on it, or if there's an outage. I wonder if there's any SREs left to respond to the page.
When some other state-power, perhaps the Chinese, starts sucking up American intellectual capital, then the US will collapse. So long as the US still offers the highest standard of living for high-wage workers, there won't be any sort of collapse. Grants from the NIH will presumably move to the private sector. Is this a good thing? Perhaps not, but in the eyes of our new overlords the lifeblood of the economy is not public investment but in the collaborative spaces of creative minds working in diverse fields, as demonstrated, for them, by the productivity of big tech. And for individuals like Musk, this is limited by public institutions and can only be most fully explored via private investment.
The clickbait article title is completely unsupported by the actual content of the article.
The NIH isn't being slashed and burned. It's simply redirecting more of it's funding to actual grant recipients, to do actual research, rather than allowing NIH funding to be siphoned off by the universities for largely unrelated purposes.
Harvard siphoned off a whopping 69% of the grant amount, and it's not going to funding equipment or similar, those expenses also comes out of the remaining 31%.
If people actually cared about increasing the overall NIH research output, they should be supportive of these changes.
NIH grants are awarded in terms of direct costs, and indirect costs come on top of that. If you have a $500k/year grant and your university has negotiated 69% overhead rate, NIH pays the university $845k/year. If the overhead rate is slashed to 15%, the university gets $575k/year.
The remaining $270k/year probably won't be spent on anything, as the entire point is supposed to be cutting government spending.
This is not just about new grants. NIH R01 grants are 5 years long. Each year however, the PI must submit a progress report, after which NIH signs off for another year of funding. That isn't happening.
Labs which had years of funding lined up are suddenly contemplating layoffs, ending research midway.
It is devastating, stupid, and frankly, I am beyond angry. And I am also seeing the possibility that everything I've worked so hard to achieve over the last 20 years go to pieces.
We will have no king here, and we need to start remembering that fast.
Can somebody help me understand: say I have a research grant and my cap on how much university can take for its operations is 15%. Does it mean that from my 85% I can not buy/rent necessary equipment/facilities previously provided by university anymore?
I can think of two factors. First, some direct costs could be prohibited. But more importantly, to make this work universities would need to restructure to make all of their services fee-based, and researchers would need to allocate these fees item by item in their proposals. Which seems doable, but is no way to run an efficient operation. Even if the bottom line looked the same, the value to NIH and taxpayers would be far worse due to the inefficiency.
More likely, overpriced institutions like Harvard will cease to be competitive for grants, and those which offer better value for money will be better placed to submit competitive grant proposals.
You get 100% of the grant in both cases, as the total sum paid is 100% + overhead. You are not allowed to use that money on major expenses you didn't mention in the grant application. If the university gets less overhead and can't find alternate funding sources, it may kick you out of your lab, because nobody is paying for it anymore.
Research grants are ripe fruit to university administrations. But the new guidelines limit the cut a sponsoring institution can take out of a federal grant to 15%.
For instance Texas medical schools/institutions would previously take as much as half the money in a US grant from the researcher and use it for whatever they wish. I believe Trump's measures are intended to cut back on such situations.
I'm fairly certain the institutions will find a way around Trump's measures, given time. It's a cat-and-mouse game.
I work at a medical device company and I have heard that the people at the FDA we used to deal with are gone. the whole department. This is just nuts. I am totally in support of looking into efficiencies but the way they are going about it is totally destructive. Trump will be most impactful president in a long time. Domestically and internationally. They are tearing down everything we relied on for decades.
When covid shutdowns killed the hospitality industry, the workers found new careers and when things opened up again there was a huge labour shortage. Even in couple years if things are restored, who will want to return when they know the next government could just come in and pull another hatchet job.
>Even in couple years if things are restored, who will want to return when they know the next government could just come in and pull another hatchet job.
I'm pretty sure they're counting on that, which is why they're doing this in the most disrespectful way possible.
Readit News
People say that the midterms are crucial, but the midterms are only likely to be won if Democrats truly unify and apply winning strategies. Sadly the only winning strategies now seem to involve telling stories, not necessarily the truth.
And all of that essentially admits that the next two years are forfeit anyway.
Congress is supposed to control spending and taxation. The administration is claiming a ton of powers related, especially, to spending. Various actions they’ve taken certainly violate the constitution and laws that exist to ensure Congress’ budget isn’t simply ignored by a president. This is another matter for the courts… unless the Supreme Court decides to rule that the radical and unprecedented far-right “unitary executive” interpretation is correct, in which case we’ve just entered a new and far worse era of American government, and it’s all “legal”. I give it 50/50 they do that.
Do they even need to, though? If the president cannot be prosecuted for any official acts, and has the power to pardon any subordinate for ignoring the law, and to fire (and then prosecute) anyone who insists on following the law, what does the law matter?
Not to pick on albastervlog specifically but HN is filling with posts like the one above, stating "this is illegal, that is illegal", posted by non-lawyers who have no idea whatsoever what is, and what is not, truly illegal.
Why state something is illegal when the statement is false or ambiguous at best? What does it contribute?
Why not instead state the simpler truth: "I don't like that!" or "I disagree with that!" and then get on with the rest of an argument?
This forum is losing relevance b/c posters have
- forgotten about manners and
- forgotten about the logical fallacies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
NIH budgets aren't being cut. The NIH is simply requiring that at least 85% of the grant value goes to the actual grant recipients, rather than being siphoned off by the university for administration expenses.
At most universities this change has no impact, since they weren't taking more than 15% to begin with. This change mainly impacts Harvard and similar, as they were previously taking extortionate cuts. Harvard was taking 69%!
Perhaps. A lot of it is also the flip side of an executive order conjuring more government into existence.
The escalation of executive order from administration to administration, and the reliance on courts to make law results in what we have going on today.
Everyone was perfectly fine with the President doing whatever he wanted a couple months ago. Everyone was fine with the vague executive orders being treated as law.
At some point one party needs reign in the presidency while they have it. Democrats chose not to, then ran a losing campaign with a candidate voters did not nominate.
Neither party is principled on a national level. There are some individual exceptions, but they are few and far between.
Our own declaration of independence lists our founding principles and tells us what we already know is the answer:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The only answer we have left is to withdrawal consent.
As the article states, these actions are illegal and violate the US constitution.
If "the people who decided to vote" expressed this decision, that decision would be implemented by an act of Congress to alter or eliminate these rules. Congress up until now passed no such law. Thus these changes bear no democratic or institutional support.
If however you frame these series of events as an overthrow of the regime and the start of something entirely different then that's a different debate.
Caesar was elected consul. Hitler was elected chancellor. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza, came to power democratically on a platform of 'one election - which will be the last election'. Since the beginning of democracy, democracies have regularly voted themselves out of existence. It's a buggy feature. But democracy isn't the norm at all in history, and the likelihood here seems greater that America is regressing toward the mean than that it has something in its fiber capable of withstanding a hostìle takeover that no previous republic has had.
Deleted Comment
The only thing Congress could do is impeach the president and remove him from office, but that seems unlikely when roughly half the country is ecstatic about what he is doing.
A number of his actions are wildly unpopular. The Jan 6th Pardons, and his pro-Putin agenda. His polling is historically poor for a month into a president's term, and there are large protests around the country. In another month, his polling will be completely underwater.
You're not wrong. However the portrayal of a mandate is a bit of a media fiction. He didn't have notably more votes than any other recent president.
• 77,302,580 voted for this administration (49.8%)
• 77,935,722 voted against this administration (50.2%)
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43191410
* A massive recession as a result of tariffs, job losses, pullback in federal spending (e.g,. on infrastructure), and general economic uncertainty. * A significant public health crisis (see measles in Texas for example) * Russia continuing to wage war on Ukraine, and possibly further conflicts around the world as the US withdraws from international peacekeeping.
Impeachment. In a functioning government. Because the elected person campaigned on not doing any of these things.
If its just that, the other branches of government. Of course, Congress is not a remedy at the moment, though its conceivable they might move in response to popular pressure more easily than the White House.
Failing that, history is full of examples of ad hoc remedies where a leader unmistakeably exercised authority in a way which upset people without any formal systemic remedy, some of which took the shape of legal process despite the absence of preexisting formal law, and some of which did not.
Trump alone could easily tank almost any R congressman's reelection chances, and with big money backing him now, they can afford to bankroll the competitor's primary campaign.
After all, we're not just talking about an illegal retroactive on-demand line-item veto here, but plenty of other data-points, like a President that has blanket-pardoned criminals who already violently attacked congress in his name.
What's the plan for when the USPS suddenly has "breakdowns" or "misplaces" mail-in-ballots collected from certain districts? Or when IRS tax records from candidates are leaked to opposing conservative campaigns? Citizenships being "revoked" just enough to stop people from voting?
In short: states rights.
E.g. like the President of Ireland, or the King of England (via the Governor General proxy) in countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Also, the Electoral College is an archaic anachronism, and may I recommend a system of proportional representation?
Devolution to "states rights" is exactly that, a devolution.
I know recent history makes it hard to imagine a successful impeachment+conviction when both chambers are controlled by the president's party, but that doesn't change anything; there is literally no other legal path to reigning in an authoritative executive, especially with the 2024 presidential immunity ruling. Party bonds are strong, but at a certain point, even the most loyal congressperson will start to resent being made into a rubber-stamp like the legislatures of Russia & Hungary have been.
B) I really don't think the global scene backs up the idea that truth isn't effective -- there's lots of complex things going on, and some amount of emotional propaganda is always necessary, but we should never abandon the truth. Regardless of how effective it is in the short term, basing a political project on lies means it has no core, and can end up corrupted/way off track in short order.
No there isn't. The text of the Constitution says the opposite: it makes appropriation a necessary condition for expenditures, but omits any clause making it a sufficient one. And the only case law on this issue is Train v. New York, which assiduously avoids ruling on the separation of powers issue. So there is neither any basis in the Constitution itself nor any basis in case law for your contention.
long term, figure out a better politically independent structure (perhaps similar to the fed) for important institutions.
Doesn't matter how many people voted for him or why.
Someone needs to sue to bring a matter before the courts. And in a lot of these cases, there just isn't a party who has standing to do so outside of the narrow scope of say, employment law.
Tight victory means even less in terms of the mandate.
No candidate got a majority of votes. A majority means more than 50% of the votes. In this case, the leading candidate only received 49.5%, which is a plurality, not a majority.
What is really happening is that Billionaires are taking advantage of less educated voters by convincing them to vote against their self-interests. They do so by shifting focus to the "values and cultural issues" of the moment. In the past, it was gay marriage and abortion; today, it's trans kids and DEI. Once these issues dominate the conversation, little attention is paid to the real priorities and actions of these Billionaires: cutting funds to Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare programs, cuts to health insurance subsidies, cuts to education, cuts to medical research funding, cuts to development assistance to the poorest in the world and so on, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
What is the solution? Democrats should shift towards the center on the "values and cultural issues" in order to neutralize the conservative advantage, then they will be able to do things that the middleclass (and lower) cares about, such as healthcare and health research, education, consumer protections and so on, and make the Billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.
The debate can't be on "values and cultural issues", whatever they are, because that plays into Republican strengths.
The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance, which I see as unlikely to occur (and which I am not necessarily advocating for here on HN).
Barring that, the reality is that scientific progress will move away from the US and towards our enemies, and we will just have to live with the consequences of the choices we made.
We are in a techno-dystopia where control over attention bandwidth is the only thing that matters.
Remember, mass protest to (push congress to) oust an authoritarian executive has never happened before in the USA -- but we've also never had an authoritative executive to anywhere near this extent before.
Maybe, just maybe, the opposition party could quit offering these shit sandwich candidates as an alternative?
I can't believe there's no Democrat politicians out there who could've beat Trump handily. But the DNC seems totally disfunctional in picking candidates.
The last one doesn't seem to have been as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_efforts_to_di...
In fact he's putting into play Project 2025, the thing that he explicitly disclaimed knowledge of prior to the elections.
It's a sad sign of the state of US politics that this, which would cause outrage in the past, barely merits a mention amidst all the other rage bait things he's doing.
His barmy executive orders, DOGE, that disgraceful display with Zelenskyy reminds me of the Wizard of Oz trying to distract people from the man behind the curtain.
> In fact he's putting into play Project 2025, the thing that he explicitly disclaimed knowledge of prior to the elections.
He did explicitly disclaim knowledge and awareness.
And he explicitly, previously, called them out as some "good people who have some very strong ideas that would be very good for the country".
What is amazing, sadly, is just how little this impacts or affects him.
Support candidates that appeal to the electorate. Find common ground. Resist demonizing the opposition. Moderates shouldn’t have to choose between polarized extremes. If you are intellectually honest you may see the ripple effect created by unfairly shutting Bernie Sanders out of the democratic nomination in 2016 set the stage for this outcome .
Careful, you're spreading a little falsehood there, Trump got 49.81% which is not a majority. His first term was 46.09%.
Every other winner of the past 6 Presidential elections got >50% except for him.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024
The constitution is stronger than a narcissistic moron, these actions are illegal.
Congress has completely abdicated their Constitutional mandate to control the purse and the executive branch is illegally impounding billions of dollars. It really is a constitutional crisis. The 'right' way to do this would be to draw up a budget (not a CR) that closes NIH and USAID and whatever else they're so desperate to destroy - but that would take 60 votes in the Senate and would subject them to months of terrible press while they negotiated it, so instead they're just ceding all authority to the President and Elon and letting them take a sledgehammer to our collective government. Sheer embarrassment.
Dead Comment
Absolutely nothing about what's happening is a surprise. Anyone claiming otherwise is either lying or so uneducated that they shouldn't be voting.
He repeatedly denied knowledge of the Project 2025 plan that's now in action.
Zero sympathy for Americans that voted for this and the ones that stayed home.
I feel bad for the ones that voted Kamala and for the West.
I know I will get beat up for this comment but someone has to say it. I believe this direction is well deserved. Clearly they were given far too much trust and were operating as a rogue organization for far too long. Developing bio-weapons and dual use medicines on college campuses and then moving them to China once called out by Obama is cavalier, aggressive, dangerous, wanton disregard for life and absolute folly. And that's just what we know about. They can not take their own work seriously. To be clear I am not opposed to developing bio-weapons and dual use medicines rather I just want the people making these things to put a tremendous amount of safeguards friction and security around them. Move all the weapon development to highly secured military installations that are far away from everyone and require extensive scans before boarding a jet required to travel to that location and that is just to start their assignment. Once there they will have no privacy and will not leave until their work is completed and fully vetted.
Quietly? "Owning the libs" is their whole identity.
Not that I want anyone to lose their benefits, but perhaps there will be a sea change when people start losing their Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, Veteran benefits, just being able to forecast the weather reasonably well, flu vaccines, safe and competent air traffic control -- oh what else is on the chopping block...
Compared to the previous playbook of making changes and then blaming the effects on the next administration. While taking credit for everything good kicking in from the previous administration of course.
This was last seen in the 1990s, which Clinton fixed with tax increases, fiscal austerity and a strong real economy.
It remains to be seen, but I don't trust Trump or any of his loyalist appointees to steer the ship well.
The NIH isn't being slashed and burned. It's simply redirecting more of it's funding to actual grant recipients, to do actual research, rather than allowing NIH funding to be siphoned off by the universities for largely unrelated purposes.
Harvard siphoned off a whopping 69% of the grant amount, and it's not going to funding equipment or similar, those expenses also comes out of the remaining 31%.
If people actually cared about increasing the overall NIH research output, they should be supportive of these changes.
NIH grants are awarded in terms of direct costs, and indirect costs come on top of that. If you have a $500k/year grant and your university has negotiated 69% overhead rate, NIH pays the university $845k/year. If the overhead rate is slashed to 15%, the university gets $575k/year.
The remaining $270k/year probably won't be spent on anything, as the entire point is supposed to be cutting government spending.
Labs which had years of funding lined up are suddenly contemplating layoffs, ending research midway.
It is devastating, stupid, and frankly, I am beyond angry. And I am also seeing the possibility that everything I've worked so hard to achieve over the last 20 years go to pieces.
We will have no king here, and we need to start remembering that fast.
For instance Texas medical schools/institutions would previously take as much as half the money in a US grant from the researcher and use it for whatever they wish. I believe Trump's measures are intended to cut back on such situations.
I'm fairly certain the institutions will find a way around Trump's measures, given time. It's a cat-and-mouse game.
I'm pretty sure they're counting on that, which is why they're doing this in the most disrespectful way possible.