Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts more than Boeing--but my point is that it's a huge conflict of interest.
A person receiving very large amounts of money from the government is now deciding which parts of the government should be cut in order to "save taxpayers money".
If this sounds like something that would only happen in a place like Russia, or the DRC, it's because it's something that would only happen in those places.
In other democratic countries you go to jail for this sort of thing (i.e., Nicholas Sarkozy in France--not saying the situation is exactly the same, but there's an actual judicial system in place that doesn't exonerate someone just because they're president, like our SCOTUS did).
A big part of those $5 billion was not having to pay sales taxes on possible future Gigafactory production, for example, but that gigafactory never reached the initally planned size AFAIK.
Some of it is a loan, I know Tesla had a loan from the govt, they paid it back early if I remember correctly.
Plus all of that is in the past. What would be a huge problem is if the federal govt started throwing grant money at Tesla now, while Musk is running around playing in the govt.
All that said, I think it's a terrible state of affairs we find ourselves in, but I mean we voted Trump into power, what did we expect would happen? Rainbows and kittens?
WSJ also reported in October about how Musk has been in regular contact with Putin.
Luckily, that is unlikely to happen again. Now, the broligarchs are in power and the LA times has been captured and turned into a propaganda tool.
What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?
Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech.
Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpose, which is to enable the search for truth. Free speech is the goal of exchanging ideas between peoples, to foster competition in thought so that collectively we can understand our shared reality.
If such a market place were to become inefficient, or if such a market place were to resolve itself to serve the most attention grabbing takes, we would see much of what the media carries.
THIS ISNT the problem you face! This is the problem we discuss!
The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party. The media itself has no recourse but to play the game of advertizing to survive.
But once it is in service of an entity, then you can create your own justifications for war, and then declare victory yourselves.
This makes the most mercenary of politics the most succesful. It is the natural recourse of people who want to win at all costs. It is far more efficient than doing economic research to understand the pros and cons of a decision.
We can solve the problems we all mutuall face. There is more to life than our polarization.
However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.
The societies that exist have something that allows them to continue to exist. Free speech can allow a society to seek truth and being aligned with reality can be important in the survival of a society. But so can cohesion while being "wrong".
There's a lot of information floating around and there's a lot of play between truth seeking free speech and cohesion signaling going on. Esp. as noise has been added to all signals including the scientific channels both via corporations and via well meaning ideologues.
I'm sure this is naive but I assume most of us would just love to be able to filter the signal from the noise in places that are relevant to us and be able to ensure low malfeasance in the places that aren't.
Holmes was suprisingly nihilistic, and I feel his formation of the search and competition for truth held now idealized beliefs of human behavior.
He accepted that people woudl be driven by their passions and biases, including things like a desire to create cohesion. That this was also something traded as a value and motivating force.
I generally agree, but I also think this was a natural and probably unavoidable result of having many different sources of “news”.
Prior to the internet, pretty much all news in the US came from ~5 TV networks and 1 or 2 newspapers (per city). It wasn’t practical for any of those sources to align exclusively with either political party because then they would be alienating ~half of their potential customers.
Today, there are far, far more sources to choose from. People self select those sources that they agree with. In the “old days” the news was more middle of the road politically, but that’s largely gone now. This is a major source of polarization IMO.
Unless you know someone else is going to be doing this, or you know this doesnt interest you - then see how far this makes sense to you.
I did my soul searching the day Trump won. I had a 0% chance for that occurence, and my prediction was wrong.
I relooked at everything I believed, because I had made a high confidence prediction on how the world worked, and I had made the wrong call. If this was a massive stock play, I would have been broke.
My revised position made me stop asking why Harris lost, but instead focused on how Trump ran in 2016 in the first place.
I felt it forced me to take my thinking seriously, and my assumptions seriously. Perhaps it matters and will help you too.
Who exactly holds the magnets here? Is it even knowable or is it even necessary to know to address the problem? I agree regarding media but how do you get your information at national scale then? The world seems way more complex than what it once was, the interdependence feels more like grappling moves as we approach a malthusian crunch.
Seems there is a market place for truth . Truth has become ware and has price (which is not same as cost). All else follows..
One of my other conclusions is that, with gen AI, the old assumptions of truth are gone.
Instead we're at the dawn of something like the fiat money revolution, in analogy terms. Like the value of a idea isnt about how its based on fact, but on the relation between the person sharing it, and the person paying attention to it.
Im hoping someone makes a blog post about this.
Also - this used to be hacker news. As in who gives a shit about what is, its about what needs to change.
Think of it this way - this is just a puzzle that needs to be cracked. Take it as a job application problem, and see how it can be dissected over the weekend.
Come up with some theories, then go see if you can disprove them.
Fixing anything, comes from defining the right problem anyway.
Also, China is nominally a communist country. Vietnam is a communist country.
PT stopped being a left-wing party decades ago. The current vice president was once a presidential candidate and leader of a neoliberal party.
Maybe AI agents will be able to help identity bad reporting in the press and hold them more accountable. A sort of epistemic anti-virus.
American right-wing propaganda personalities and media outlets drive the negative sentiment to a large degree. They radicalize their audiences against traditional media institutions, and they do it very, very well. Sometimes there are kernels of truth to their criticisms. Mostly they are wildly exaggerated, or even totally fabricated. It sucks we can't have nice things, but it is what it is. Free speech is free speech.
But it won't really get better unless all that propaganda is successfully countered, even if you magically figured out how to build a perfect mainstream media.
Where things get really dangerous is when demagogues come along and join in, like Trump.
On the list of things to look for to tell if you're dealing with a rising authoritarian movement, near the top are sustained attacks on the press. Enemy of the people, Trump calls them. Zuckerberg gets threatened with life in prison. He encourages supporters to menace and attack reporters at rallies. The list goes on.
These all become the pretext for drastic anti-constitutional attacks on the free press, and we're seeing that take shape already in Trump 2.0.
We really have no way of knowing that. It's not like there is any organization that analyzes and critiques the mainstream press in any regular fashion. For instance, the press clearly knew that Biden had major cognitive impairments but they misreported it to the public. There was no accountability at all when the truth was discovered. Same with the story of Trump colluding with Russia, or the many, many different racial hate crime hoaxes. There is ZERO accountability for misleading the public.
I'm skeptical of all the talk about "authoritarianism." All those ideas seem be based on shoddy social science theorizing after WW2 - e.g. "The Authoritarian Personality." I don't think you can accurately predict the rise of a totalitarian leader based on what happened in Germany.
It was openly discussed that Biden was not looking sharp (even though Trump couldn't hold a debate with a mirror).
Biden Stepped down, mid cycle - this was something unthinkable to election strategists and pundits.
It remains one of the most amazing things I've seen, because I understand what it takes to do that, and what many others did in a similar position.
If you want to talk about how perceptions are made - consider that less is made of Biden's actions here, and more is made of the fact that he ran at all.
Did you know that the Russia case resulted in 8 guilty please and 1 conviction? Trump didn't get touched because they knew of the Russian interference, but didnt expect it to harm them.
A sitting president cant be indicted on federal crimes, so the obstruction of justice case was dropped.
This is unfortunate, since it gives ammunition to everyone, at which point it just becomes a team sport.
However, having seen authoritarian states, this is 100% from that play book. And yes, it feels insane and high strung to write that, but what can one do?
It looks like a wolf, it bites like a wolf, but maybe its just a massive dog.
The "mainstream press" is actually hundreds or thousands of individual institutions, some big, small, and each have their own flaws, strengths, biases, audiences, cultures and incentives. They compete with and often criticize/check one another. It's not even all that unusual for an editorial columnists to lambast their own publications.
I don't want to idealize it too much, but feedback loops for self-correction are baked into the pie, and they do actually work from time to time.
There's a completely different physics in the right-wing media world though, best illustrated by the aftermath of the 2020 election. Fox had to pivot hard to election denialism because they were getting killed in the ratings by upstarts like Newsmax and OANN who went all in on the election lies. The right-wing media feedback loops don't self-correct, they incentivize extremism, grievance and conspiracy theory.
> For instance, the press clearly knew that Biden had major cognitive impairments but they misreported it to the public. There was no accountability at all when the truth was discovered.
This is mostly right-wing media fiction. Stories and commentary on Biden's age were quite frequent in my experience.
(There's basically a whole genre of faux right-wing media criticism in the style of: "The mainstream media won't talk about X...", even while headlines about X all over the place in on "mainstream" media outlets)
> Same with the story of Trump colluding with Russia
It's not quite that simple. That's not a single story, it's was an ongoing series of stories and investigations that developed over time.
There was plenty of measured, careful reporting around all of that stuff. There was plenty of irresponsible reporting too. There was also plenty of self-flagellation afterwards over a lot of it.
(The Trump campaign, along with folks in it's orbit, did collude with Russia. People went to jail. Paul Manafort literally met a Russian spy on a park bench, kind of like you see in the spy movies, to covertly hand over proprietary voter data. Roger Stone was coordinating with Russian hackers and wikileaks to leak hacked DNC data, etc.)
> I'm skeptical of all the talk about "authoritarianism."
If you can't recognize it as a sign of authoritarianism when a sitting president nearly murdered an entire building full of cops, legislators, staff and his own vice president in a mad, desperate bid to nullify an election and seize power, I'm not sure what can break through.
But we are backsliding, there's no doubt about that. How far we fallback will depend on how effectively we oppose... well.. the current ruling party as it currently exists.
Honestly though, I'm in the same situation and I don't know.
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge). I unsubscribed to the Washington Post after they pulled their Harris endorsement (which was appalling), but their coverage since feels relatively thorough and they are well placed to report on all this so far, so I resubscribed. I already support PBS. I'll probably donate to Pro Publica next.
I expect media outlets will be under rapidly increasing pressure, so supporting them financially feels important and positive.
I've also have a standing donation to the NAACP legal defense fund from his first administration that I've just kept running.
So... money I guess?
I really hope so too. My pessimist side fears that the powerful are observing the US, seeing that it works there and will do the same thing here.
The parties turn on people who show up to do the work. There is a remarkable amount people can achieve if they show up as people who are willing to learn, do the work, and have their own eyes and ears open.
From my perspective, Trump voters distrust and dislike the old media so much, a newspaper telling them they shouldn't vote for Trump would only strengthen their resolve.
I'd rather not pay for that sort of thinking. However, I'd rather have the WaPo in its current form as opposed to severely diminished (or none at all).
No one's too rich to get shot by the world's largest superpower.
Zuckerberg didn't do a giant public 180 for funsies.
Both can be true. I also consider it a failure of regulation and humanity that a billionaire can just own a newspaper and nix stories for clout.
Yeah, same. Since the Brexit a lot of populist parties in the EU don't want to leave the EU anymore (only reform it). Let's hope that this is another warning that the destructive populist path doesn't lead anywhere good.
(And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)
I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge).
Yeah, independent, non-clickbait news is very important in these times. We recently renewed our newspaper subscription for three years.
When you are in the EU (or really anywhere non-US anyway), it's probably a good moment to start moving your data out of the US and away from US companies. So far Trump has done exactly what he promised, so a large trade war or, even worse, a war over Greenland is possible. Since pretty much anything is fair game now, blackmailing the EU using its dependency on US tech companies is not far-fetched anymore.
Get your data out and reduce your dependency on US tech.
As a Brit, so do I. However, despite all of the evidence showing it will be massively beneficial, we won't. Not fully, imho, for a good while. Best I'm hoping for is closer ties in a customs union, but that requires compromise I don't think will happen.
The best thing I can think of is to make the EU a strong, powerful, wealthy democracy that can defend itself from invasion and try to encourage other democracies around the world.
Which means we have a lot of work ahead, to put it mildly.
I think Trump decisively stripped the last of the illusions away, most people feel the vulnerability in their bones now.
But the new government of pro-russian neonazis (FPÖ) and conservatives (ÖVP) will probably be very anti-EU.
It's 2025. You can drive across most European countries in a day (a long day, in some cases, but still).
If Europe wants to stick to the borders a bunch of kings and princes hashed out in blood a hundred+ years ago it can, for the moment, but if we do, there's a decent chance it will just be crushed by the next global superpower (US, China, or weirdly enough maybe Russia considering how much influence they have over many US politicians now).
I love Europe. I was proud to become an EU citizen and my favourite scarf is an EU flag. I think it's an amazing place full of amazing countries and people. And it still can be! But for it to continue to exist, we MUST work together. Militarily, economically, and even practically (why is it so hard to book train tickets across 3 countries again?)
I know it stings, but the reality is the wolves are at the gates. Democracy has its back against the wall and we need a force that can fight back. Or government of the people, by the people, for the people, will soon perish from the Earth.
If the EU wants to stick to a technocratic structure pushing unpopular laws over the democratic institutions won in blood, it'll be probably be democratically a hard sell to give it more powers.
I agree that Europe should have more unification and coordinated action. But I don't love the EU. I quite liked social democracy, but then it was outlawed by the EU.
It was nice to have public control over the infrastructure, possibility to have industry for public benefit, possibility to nationalize out of control private sectors, possibility to retain assets and capital domestically, to control fiscal and monetary policy etc.
In the current form federal EU would be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch, and a semi-elected weak legistlative branch. Furthermore the populace has very little idea about what is happening in the EU and who to hold accountable, partly because the media doesn't cover it, and partly because the processes are extremely convoluted and quite opaque.
Such "democratic centralism" bureaucracy probably would have benefits like more stability for long term strategy, swift execution of policies and coordinated action, but it's also very prone to corruption and elite capture.
What do you mean? The European Parliament is directly elected.
be someting like having an unelected powerful executive branch
They (the EC) need to be approved by the European Parliament and the Parliament can dissolve the EC.
If you consider the structure of the EU undemocratic, the same would apply to most countries that are considered democratic.
That's far closer to a dystopia than anything the US has proferred recently.
The parliament is directly elected, but it doesn't have full legislative powers. It can't propose new laws and the Council of the EU has veto over the parliament. Dissolving the EC also needs a supermajority.
The structure is at least way less directly democratic than any EU country.
This is a global phenomenon. It’s part grassroots, driven by discontent with sclerotic establishment parties that are not solving problems, but also being driven by propaganda from authoritarian countries like Russia and China. The latter is opportunistic.
Personally, I am working on replacing any American made products or services I use myself or through my job. Both as an act of protest and in preparation for the upcoming economic war they plan to wage.
There's a reason that Germany's current main center-right parties were both born after the war.
Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment. SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a few special interests groups. Die Linke are borderline irrelevant.
We are in a strange situation where we have strong presence on populist left and right, but no decent political force in the center to contain them.
Ironically enough, this very much sounds like the "let's re-write and everything will be better" fallacy encountered in software engineering.
That aside, what you are wishing for is a war and/or revolution where the pillars of society have been shattered to pieces, the old incumbents removed/killed/retired, and where a new political landscape is built upon the ruins and ashes of what has been.
Be careful what you wish for..
Be careful what you wish for. If AfD would grab the power (unlikely at this point), it'll weaken Germany nationally and internationally like the US is being weakened now.
Meanwhile, increasing my focus on my immediate community and sharing my creativity are fulfilling activities within my power.
The “coup” happened a long time ago. The US has demonstrated that there’s no rule of law at the federal level for some time now. Once the Chief Justice leaned back and tolerated the open sale of the court, that was basically it.
We don’t have the same system of governance anymore… we’re like Italy 1936 or Argentina in 1948 now. We’ll invade Greenland instead of Ethiopia, and skip the funny hats.
The question is do we continue on this trajectory or is there a real coup with tanks on DC streets at some point.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-federa...
The world as we knew it is gone and we're not going back.
I don't know about that part... those red ball caps are pretty goofy looking.
This using an unaccountable fall guy to break the law at will, so that congress can avoid accountability is gross. Folks with your opinion like to wax on about constitutional principles, blah blah blah, as we stand by and watch the shitshow that is happening right now.
People voted for the administrative state in the 1930s, and they've been voting to cut back on it since 1980. Since then, the only President who won elections without promising to shrink government were Obama (in response to the disaster of Iraq and the Great Recession) and Biden (in response to COVID).
I don’t remember an article in the constitution that allows a rich crony to act in contempt of the laws established by congress as an officer of the government without appointment. But I guess our dedication to solemn constitutional principles varies.
So you can have a civil service (and the framers assumed there would be one) but Congress can’t insulate the civil service from the president’s direct supervision. That’s obviously true—because the presidential election is the only way people have to politically influence the internal operation of the executive branch itself.
Accountability means democratic accountability. The APA is not meaningful democratic accountability--it just means that lawyers like me end up running the country.
And I’ve never seen a clear explanation of how that change was constitutionally justifiable.
Most don’t even have sufficient clearances to know the names of random middle managers in many many offices in the CIA/NSA, let alone do anything to them.
The obsession with firing people is this weird narrative the right wingers are always obsessed with. The cognitive dissonance between these high and mighty principles and what our principled republican colleagues have and will do is beyond ridiculous.
Functional government is the goal of any mature stakeholder. We have 100+ years of spoils system that aptly demonstrates why that methodology doesn’t make sense in a modern society.
Most of Congress can’t acquire sufficient clearances to even learn the names of random middle managers in many offices in the IC, let alone to do anything about them.
Life isn’t an episode of the apprentice… nobody in congress sees their oversight role as firing random post office clerks. That’s idiocy. Congress controls the law and the purse. Conservatives have been wielding this power for years - that’s why single moms are routinely nabbed in audits for earned income fraud, while rich people get away with donating millions to phoney foundations that they control for years. (Congress limits funding for enforcement)
The executive has broad authority to take personnel actions while adhering to the law.
This doesn’t make sense, to suggest they have the opportunity to defund something that they don’t even know exists or what it includes is just not credible.
How could if possibly come to their attention in the first place?
My understanding is the USA executive is an obscenely powerful position by the standard of the rest of the Western world and they can also delegate that power to accomplish specific objectives.
Is this a coup of Musk against Trump or the executive doing things its not allowed to do or a coup of the executive against the legislature?
(Maybe tabooing (in the rationalist sense) the word "coup" might help...)
Aside: the article paints a very concerning picture about the consequences of contemptuous ignorant imposition of abrupt blanket rules on valuable complex systems. I thank the OP for posting it.
The reason it’s being used is a combination of the US having never experienced a real coup, and thus it’s citizens not really knowing what the word means, plus one side of politics being sore losers after having lost an election and using whatever insult they can think of in order to deflect rather than self reflect on why they lost.
How about "Gleichschaltung", or "synchronization" for the English speaking folks, instead?
The article doesn’t seem to be about abolishing the NIH and NSF. Instead it seems to be about NIH and NSF grants to third parties. That seems to fall squarely on the executive side of the line.
This is the third time I've seen someone pushing this line of thinking on HN in as many days and I'd like to know more about where it's coming from. Can you cite any source that supports it and justifies it?
FWIW, the conventional wisdom is that the independent agencies really are independent, and the president's control over them is exactly what is stipulated in the legislation that created them. If the statute of the Dept of XYZ and says the president can fire its governing board but only on weekends, then he has to wait til Saturday, period end of story. The idea that the president can interfere with the independent agencies because they're part of the executive branch was, AFAICT, invented out of whole cloth in the last couple of years, and has no constitutional support at all. So I'm curious to hear more about what this new theory is and how far it extends. In particular, if the president can decide to cancel NIH grants because the NIH is under the executive branch, what keeps him from raising and lowering interest rates?
edit to add: to be clear, the president does have a great deal of power over most of the independent agencies; in most cases he hires and fires their leaders. But he has that power because Congress specifically granted it, not because the executive branch is his personal fiefdom. If he wants to, say, get a pharmaceutical drug approved, he has to direct HHS to direct the FDA to do that in the usual way, not just decree it. This has little to do with thwarting his power and lots to do with effective and efficient governance.
There really is no limit to the power, but they say the check is impeachment -- if the people don't like it they can elect a congress that will impeach the president. But in reality it doesn't work that way when the president's party controls congress.
Article I says: "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." May Congressional staff exercise legislative powers independently of the Congressmen? Nobody thinks that.
Article III says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." May judiciary branch staff exercise judicial powers independently of Supreme Court Justices and lower-court judges? Nobody thinks that.
Article I says: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." May executive branch staff exercise executive powers independently of the President? My sixth grader could understand that the answer is "no."
There is nothing in here about the president being a "king." It's simply that the President controls the executive branch, in the same way the Congressmen control the legislative branch and the Supreme Court justices control the judicial branch.
It's Civics 101. You should have learned it in 8th grade. Congress makes the laws. The President executes the laws. It's also right there in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/ ("The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.").
If an independent agency is exercising "The executive Power," then it does so derivatively of the President. Article II doesn't say that "the executive branch" shall execute the law. It says: "he"--the President--"shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Note also the parallel structure with Article I ("All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States") and Article III ("The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish").
The President is the executive branch, in the same way Congress is the legislative branch, and the Supreme Court and the lower courts are the judicial branch. All of these branches have various offices and subdivisions, but they are within the control of one of those three constitutional actors.
Congress cannot create an entity that exercises executive powers but does not answer to the President any more than the President can create an entity that exercises legislative powers but does not answer to Congress.
> FWIW, the conventional wisdom is that the independent agencies really are independent, and the president's control over them is exactly what is stipulated in the legislation that created them.
That has not been the "conventional wisdom" for anyone who went to law school in several decades. The notion of an "independent agency" exercising executive power independently of the President was an absurd idea cooked up by a racist in the early 20th century who hated democracy and had fantasies of "scientific government" (https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...). It peaked in the mid 20th century, but the project of whittling it back to constitutionality has been ongoing my entire lifetime.
> If the statute of the Dept of XYZ and says the president can fire its governing board but only on weekends, then he has to wait til Saturday, period end of story.
The Supreme Court held in 1926 that the President's removal power over executive-branch officials is essentially unconstrained (Myers v. United States). The Court then reversed itself in 1935 (Humphrey's Executor v. United States) but that case has since been limited pretty much to its facts (Seila Law LLC v. CFPB).
But then you conflate illegal with "an overthrow" (of what?) to show its a "coup". This is incredibly hand-wavy and makes the "coup" language look like hyperbole.
Trump is essentially ruling by decree and taking actions far outside his authority. If successful, this will de facto strip Congress of much of its power and transfer it to the President. If you want to see what the outcome of that looks like, read about events in Germany in January-March 1933.
> Most of us will change the channel or scroll to the next social media clip. Most in the media will “both sides” the end of our democracy into a melisma of euphemisms and equivocations. Most of our political leaders will focus on the pitch for their next fund-raiser email. And if this oblivious, indolent cowardice continues as I fear it will, we will look back on these days of chaos, destruction, hatred and lunacy as only prelude. Unchecked, we are on the path not just to autocracy, but to the worst form of malevolent dictatorship.
> My reaction is not hysteria. It’s not exaggeration. It’s not premature. Where we are is a place we have never been in this country and the threat we face is by no means one that we can survive—because something precious and fragile is at dire risk of being lost.
They need periodic retrenchment -in the private sector there are economic pressures to re-organize; in the government the tendency is for greater taxation.
Throwing out the baby along with the bath water is not the answer but neither is the status quo.
Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).
So whether tens of millions of people voted for Trump doesn't mean Trump can just disregard law because people liked him and maybe even liked that he said he would disregard the law. As far as I know, that's not how the rule of law works in representative democracies.
Not if the elected official pledged to break the law before being elected.
> People can't vote to break the law.
That's exactly what they did.
> As far as I know, that's not how the rule of law works in representative democracies.
I fear that's also not what the US has become now.
List of dictators that achieved power via what were at the time, free and fair elections:
Adolf Hitler - 1933
Ferdinand Marcos - 1965
Alberto Fujimori - 1990
Robert Mugabe - 1980
Alexander Lukashenko - 1994
Hugo Chávez - 1998
Normally dictators don’t let go of power
Reality check.
This was attempt number one: https://youtu.be/Iludfj6Pe7w
All including the ones using violence against policeman were just freed less than a week ago.
"Republican Senator Graham calls Trump's Jan. 6 pardons a 'mistake'" - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-senator-graham-c...
"Mitch McConnell calls Donald Trump pardons a 'mistake,' Jan. 6 'an insurrection'" - https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5122585-trump-mcconnell-...
Not anymore.
But that’s not what happened.
A failed dictator is still a dictator. What's next, the events in South Korea weren't the result of a failed attempt at a coup?
Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.
Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He claimed he was going to end wars and immediately threatened war on multiple allies, with the latest being a threat of mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And on and on.
> coup: a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.
> Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He claimed he was going to end wars and immediately threatened war on multiple allies, with the latest being a threat of mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And on and on.
Voters appear to disagree with you. [His approval rating has never been higher while in office.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...)
Trump is doing an otherthrow of an existing government by a small group. That fits perfectly.
> the Supreme Court ruled nine to nothing that when Congress directs that money be spent, the president is obliged to do it. [...] Presidents can certainly send recommendations to Congress that funds should be cut. The Impoundment Control Act provides an expedited procedure for having those recommendations considered. But the president simply doesn’t have this unilateral authority.
https://www.vox.com/politics/398618/elon-musk-doge-illegal-l...
Democraties work with checks and balances, which are being broken right now.
On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents
I didn't claim everything he does is democratic. I claimed that what he is doing is as promised to voters. Don't take my word for it. He is now at the highest approval rating he has ever had in office (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...). People obviously feel he is delivering what he promised.
I don't think any checks and balances are being broken. Trump and the Republicans won the popular vote (which is kind of insane in an of itself), the Electoral College, the House, and the Senate. They have an unprecedented mandate to carry out unprecedented change by voters who were obviously VERY unhappy with the Democrat Party.
> On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents
I can't fathom what you're trying to argue with this. That we should stop elections because the people might elect an authoritarian?
> I don't think any checks and balances are being broken. Trump and the Republicans won the popular vote (which is kind of insane in an of itself), the Electoral College, the House, and the Senate.
Well but right now why isn't he using any of those then? Musk operates outside any legal framework.
Maybe Trump isn't as confident as you seem on the loyalty of his fellow non-MAGA Republicans.
> I can't fathom what you're trying to argue with this. That we should stop elections because the people might elect an authoritarian?
I'm just disproving the nonsensical argument "he's been elected, therefore it'll remain a democracy". Well no, that isn't a sufficient guarantee.
See Napoleon 3, Hitler himself...
Your opinion is revealing, if you already think he has full power, then you agree it's a coup.
As much as you personally disagree with these decisions, they are in line with the broad policy positions Trump et al communicated prior to the election, and can be considered the will of the people.
Challenging the mandate the public gave them, by hyperventilating over minor procedural hiccups that will inevitably be resolved by congress in favour of Trump, comes across to voters as undemocratic.
Shouldn't they then use Congress as intended rather than what they're doing now which bypasses it?
As a bystander in another country your line of argument is mind-boggling. You don't just throw out the constitution and way the government works because one guy won an election one time. But that seems to be what a lot of people are suggesting, that because Trump won the election whatever he does is democratic and therefore okay.
They can’t because of the filibuster [1]. They cannot bypass the filibuster without a 3/5 majority which they do not have. Thus any bill which the Democrats oppose will be blocked by filibuster in the Senate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_State...
Your reply also runs counter to the parent comment I was replying to where they state that Congress would repair any irregularities after the fact. Frankly it feels like people are making things up to support their guy doing things counter to the established mechanisms of government and your own constitution.
The filibuster remaining in place is a good thing because it encourages negotiations and compromise instead of a seesaw battle.
And secondly no, Trump also publicly lied about his positions by saying he had nothing to do with Project 2025.
But it doesn't matter if he did say the truth anyways, saying that you'll make a coup doesn't make the coup okay.
Neither of those numbers include any state revenue or tax.
US collects about $12Trillion in taxes total (30% ish of GDP), under $2trillion of that is given to the federal government for medicare, medicade and the military, they spend more than $5trillion, which is what they spend on medicare, medicade the military and the interest on the $37Trillion debt they have accumulated spending more than they were given by the states for medicare medicade and the military - mostly bank and insurance fund bailouts to prop up the failed US financial system, adding about $3trillion to the federal debt each year, which is why it has gone from $30trillion at the end of 2022, to $37trillion now.
Getting downvoted because I do my own research instead of believing the latest gormless chatbot, that's new.
My understanding is that's nowhere near enough.
The USA deficit is $1.8 Trillion a year with $30T total. The net worth of all USA billionaires is around $4.5T. So 5% would reduce the deficit by 10% until the billionaires wise up and move their wealth out of the country.
Even confiscating it all in a one-off pile reduces the national debt by about 15%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
It's pretty clever in its cruelty: Once you have cut taxes, it essentially doesn't matter which party wins the next election: The have to gut expenditures anyway.
See the current Labour government in the UK, who would very much like to spend money on government initiatives but can't because the Tories made sure there was nothing left.
Elect US senators and Representatives to go to the floor and debate about individual programs on CSPAN so people can actually hear arguments about it.
This is why, for example, the ISS didn't get cut, but the SSC did. Both were huge science programs that cost tens of billions of dollars and Clinton's administration explicitly wanted to keep both programs but the voting public, through senators and house reps, including democrat members of both forced them to pick only one.
Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean?
Trump does exactly how he promised he would do if you elected him, and you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that.
In a nation governed by a constitution and laws, absofuckinglutely not. The chief executive is supposed to operate within the bounds of the constitution and the laws created under it.
Trump is free to spend less than budgeted.
Not without approval from Congress:
"The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 provides that the president may propose rescission of specific funds, but that rescission must be approved by both the House of Representatives and Senate within 45 days. In effect, the requirement removed the impoundment power, since Congress is not required to vote on the rescission and, in fact, has ignored the vast majority of presidential requests."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...
The bounds and laws should have been finetuned long ago, reducing the power of the President on the one side, and reforming the government to be more representative instead of a two party Us vs Them system. But that is also a democratic process and neither side has had a majority or incentive to do so.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't speak up and call bullshit on what's happening. It's important to call it what it is. It's important to speak up.
The way things are going, speaking up can EASILY mean going to jail within a few months.
You should STILL speak up. Acknowledge that potetnial risk, respect people, and ask of it all the same.
Probably should tell people to clean their HN accounts if they elect not to risk themselves.
It's the right thing to do. Every one of us that does creates opportunities for others to do the same.
We're running towards fascism. We must fight back.
It may become necessary for Trump and Musk to show their potential for brutality before people's minds change, unfortunately. But it has worked, in the past. The Kent State shooting is a good example; the obviously excessive brutality of the state caused a massive increase in willingness to speak out, protest, strike, etc. That massive public response became too large to ignore.
I also recognize that by speaking up I may make myself a target for that brutality. At this point, I've decided "so be it, if that happens, it happens."
Evil wins when good people stand by and do nothing.
By the way, posting about how much you hate the government on bluesky is not revolutionary activity, and talking about expecting "brutality" in retaliation shows just how out of touch you are with reality.
And the head of the branch should still be subject to checks and balances.
Americans' blind faith that their peculiar system of government makes tyranny impossible will only lead them to deny reality even when it hits them in the face with a truncheon.
Even those who crafted the American system knew that it was not perfect. Benjamin Franklin said:
"I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others."
"In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government."
Source: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-se...
Most certainly not overwhelmingly:
Trump: 49.80% Harris: 48.32%
This is one of the more frustrating aspects of the United States. Not even 1.5% more and the result is "near total evisceration of the federal government" compared to "largely the same".
The result is even worse with the Senate. 55.9m votes for Democratic Senators, 54.4m for Republican Senators, and yet Republicans ended up with 53 seats.
And this doesn't even get into gerrymandering for House seats, which is predominantly Republican-driven.
This is by a good margin not a representative government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_Senate_elec...
When people vote for President, it is only to inform the State of how they want the State to vote, and the State has significant freedom to allocate its votes for President how it wishes e.g. some States use a proportional allocation instead of winner-takes-all.
Popular vote for Federal office was largely a 20th century invention.
The only votes that matter are the votes of the State. It may still not be "overwhelming" at 58% (312 out of 538) but pretending that wasn't the result only serves to muddy the water.
ALso a slim majority of the 60% who voted is not an overwhelming majority. Biden's win against Trump was bigger.
It is not a coup because he became president by force. It is a coup because he is consolidating power. (The president is not supposed to be all powerful.)
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/coup
The violent part and the army part seems to be optional
1) Remove all opposition for DOJ (already done)
2) Pass executive orders that should require congressional approval (doing)
3) Illegally seize control of the treasury (doing)
4) Broadly dismantle key government services (doing)
5) Watch politicians say, "you can't do that!" with no recourse (doing)
Continually take control more and more broadly until you have absolute power.
I'm not going to stop you calling it a coup, but your opponents will just smile and say "not true" and they would be right.
Musk is committing illegal acts, over a weekend, in taking government power by, at minimum, not being appointed and confirmed. This is a coup by the definition YOU provided.
Illegal acts TO CONSOLIDATE POWER. You're missing/ignoring a key phrase in your defense of fascist takeovers. This, right now, is still a coup. What about another time? I don't care. This time is happening now. We have a coup now.
The 6th January capitol attack was an attempted coup, what's happening now is Gleichschaltung. Please read up on "Gleichschaltung" [1] if you think that's in any way or form less of an condemnation as "coup".
[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gleichscha...
Next step is attacking enemies. They will start prosecuting political rivals.
I wonder if Trump and Vance in 2029 can somehow pull the Putin/Medvedev switch, where the real leader takes a nominal secondary position until they can fix the constitutional issue.
The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Now, you can make limited inroads to block executive actions with the courts, but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause, when that's done to advance an unpopular (majority-disapproved-of) agenda, it is usually a hollow and temporary victory. To get the policies you want, you need to win over voters. That's the part the DNC seems to be completely unaware of. You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting. You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values. The DNC has taken a position of "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
The left won't be competitive in elections until they learn what it is, why it results in alienation of people who would otherwise support them, and find a way to escape it.
The difference I think, is that the purity spiral on the left encompasses the entire party. If your perspectives are too moderate you are shunned from the entire hemisphere of politics and often suffer a barage of name calling (e.g. bigot) from your own 'side'.
On the right, this is far less often the case. The right is significantly more tolerant of people who fall outside of purity definitions. For example, the majority of republicans are pro-life, but co-exist with roughly a third of republicans who are pro-choice.
In contrast, most Democrats will not tolerate a pro-life member under any circumstance.
The party that chose Biden and Harris is in a purity spiral? They’re not exactly marxists…
And on the right it’s not the case? As soon as anyone disagrees with Trump they get steamrolled and labeled a traitor
You can be shunned from MAGA, while remaining republican. You can be shunned from the religious right, while remaining republican.
There is significantly more ideological diversity within the republican party than within the democratic party, and the result is democrats switching to republican at a rate 4 times higher than the republicans switch to democrats.
The right is every bit as bad at this as the left because at the end of the day people are going to people.
Democrats for life of America disagrees with your assessment. The organization has existed since 1999. Henry Cuellar is a member of the democratic party and is very "pro-life".
The issue is that "pro-life" has morphed into anti-choice. What is happening in Texas and other states is not pro-life. Forcing women to die is not a pro-life stance.
I believe the problem is that people need to learn how to feel loved. To realize that even our enemies are trying their best and most likely care about us a lot more than they would ever admit. Both sides struggle with this. People on the current left tend to just resign and give up on the relationships. People on the right tend to seek vengeance.
It's a big problem for the left because numerically they are now the minority of voters, but are still trending away from the center, and shedding their more moderate members.
It's a complete social poison pill in the city to have voted a certain way. Have had the same look of "how could you be that dumb" from people ranging from strippers to lawyers.
All I want is love and belonging, not sure how to feel love when I've heard the word "barbarian" to describe certain types of people. Not sure how to feel love when men's loneliness and suicide problems aren't being prioritized
Yeah, the hurt turns into anger sometimes, but yes, I need them too. For me to exist, my opposite has to exist, and I should love us both.
- Imagine if the president allowed Jeff Bezos to reprogram the Treasury’s payment system as if it were an online shopping cart.
- Picture the president authorizing Sam Altman to treat the federal payment system maybe as a live AI experiment.
- Envision the president allowing Larry Page to run the Treasury system.
- Imagine Mark Zuckerberg not only with the power to update federal payment rules, with access to all U.S. taxpayer data. Incredible coincidence Musk runs, privately, a social networking site...
I dont include an example with Palantir...Because some of the 19 years old bros working with the Musk team, were interns at Palantir. So I am just going to assume Thiel has all the info on all US citizens now...
No concerns with conflicts of interest, no vetting, no official role because...People voted for the current president? When did voting become a blank check?
Call it whatever you want, the fact of the matter is that you have an unelected private person, who happens to be the richest person on earth, taking control of federal agencies. I don't think anyone should consider this silly, as nobody thought it was silly when MAGA tried to actually stage a literal coup by force 4 years ago.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~
The last years have made it very clear that's exactly how you win. You seem to be under the impression that the democrats, not MAGAs, are unhinged in their rhetoric.
Valerie Jarret was UNELECTED. OMG OMG /s
See how dumb it sounds?
Because if people in the middle can be so damn gullible to vote for a criminal who said:
"I don't care about you, I only want your votes",
like Trump because he promised good economy I don't know how anyone can conclude that the issue here is with democrats and not the people's lack of critical thinking.
It's a bit late to correctly point out that focusing on demographics as you voter base is stupid and that it's interest groups you should focus on (as this should've been done in 2008 after Obama's victory), because this isn't a race between two sane candidates.
Name calling typically results in people viewing you as immature.
If the left ever want to reclaim the respect of voters, they need to lose this bad habit.
The left don't have to any soul searching to do when again the so called middle literally voted for a man who to their face told them that he doesn't care about them he just wants their votes, who yes is a criminal that has swindled, lied and now rug pulled.
Trump is 100% about names, holy shit.
I think the left needs to get better at name calling, and match the winning strategy. Maybe it needs to keep coming up with new funny names.
TO be serious - nthing the left does will likely work, because they have to somehow appeal to everyone. Be polite and strong, firm and flexible, forgiving and retributive.
Basically a unicorn.
The problem can be, someone can feel attacked even if the other person is treating them in a very kind and loving way, because they think it's fake.
On the contrary, someone could receive verbal and physical abuse and still not feel attacked because they maintain faith in their and the other person's good intentions.
So I think it's more about changing the behaviors of the person on the receiving end than on the giving end.
If this was true, Trump wouldn’t be president. Either that, or America doesn’t see an issue with immaturity.
The name calling is part of his blustery comedic Hollywood side, which people understand is different to his policy making side. Watch the all-in podcast episode with him if you genuinely want to see a different side to him.
In contrast, Democrats often come across as only having a singular serious facet to their personality, and so immaturity undermines their entire character.
The reason people are calling this a coup is not (only) because they disagree with what Trump/Musk are doing, but because their actions are illegal. A president is still expected to follow the rule of law and respect separation of powers. If there are no more checks and balances, then it's a coup. If Congress decided to allocate budget to something, the president should not ignore this. The legislature is losing its power.
As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway.
The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.
I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is part of the bureaucracy. But prove me wrong. Show me the legal opinions.
The 1995 buyout offer was passed by Congress and signed by Clinton.
https://clintonwhitehouse6.archives.gov/1995/04/1995-04-04-p...
Seven restraining orders. Seems like lots is not legal.
The current administration replaced the head of an agency and had that agency shut itself down. Shutting yourself down is clearly not a power given to any federal agency, so by the very policy you're citing either the judicial or executive branch must act to allow such a move.
Instead, our cheeto in chief decided that those other branches don't actually need to do any of that pesky work and it's a lot easier if everyone just does what he wants.
There's a word for that style of governance.
I think you meant legislative, not executive?
Shutting down an agency like USAID require congressional approval, but was done by executive order.
Withholding congressionally approved funding for government agencies is illegal.
Sharing sensitive documents from the fiscal service with (Doge) team members who do not have the appropriate security clearances is illegal.
Giving Elon Musk an unofficial seat and allowing him unfettered access to the entire federal government without any congressional confirmation is illegal and basically amounts to setting up a shadow government.
The list goes on...
At this point any discussion on HN about Trump delivering his campaign promises (which got him a resounding electoral victory) seems to be filled with elitist rage ("Every single IT board I'm on") and thus is just proving his point.
This is the blowback for the medical overreach of the covid years, for the 1984-esque re-labeling of open gender- and race-based discrimination as DEI, for basically shaming every opposing view as
> evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists
and many more transgressions.
I'm saying this as a non us citizen working in a sector in Europe that is very likely to get absolutely clobbered by Trump. The blame is simply to put at the losing side.
Them denying the merit of their loss, the lack of any introspection and instead just one-upping their everybody-i-disagree-with-is-hitler mantra is at least comforting in the sense that I know they shouldn't be in charge.
Then he certainly didn't say that he was going to dismantle the US government with Elon Musk outside of any legal framework (or I missed that). And even if he did, that wouldn't make it okay either.
> You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values
I feel like you haven't paid enough attention, this isn't a democracy anymore but a mixed regime, convincing opponents is still necessary but isn't enough to influence power anymore.
Look at Hungary if you want some indication of how it's going.
He's a conservative, and Project 2025 was from other conservatives.
You would expect there to be some overlap in policy perspectives because of the ideological overlap. It doesn't necessarily mean he's taking orders from the heritage foundation.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky
The guy who won did exactly all that
And what on earth did Trump do to convince the “reasonable middle” that he shares their values?
Who are these reasonable people who decide that Kamala spends too much time insulting people, so they’re better off voting for Donald Trump?
Sources requested for this statement, made unilateral with no evidence.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.
A single person, who somehow owns multiple major companies with, clear conflict of interest, is not a coup? What? He & his "engineers" reportedly have access to American citizen information. Where's the required oversight by Congress? I get trimming the government, but let's talk about it in the open rather than relying on his word and his word alone.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting.
Would you say that to Tea Party folks who widely protested Obama? What? This makes no sense. Didn't they also insult Obama and his birth? Or anyone who voted for Obama? Whataboutism.
Frankly, I feel you are delusional and have bought into the ruse of the current news cycle.
> "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
Trumps share of the vote was <50% via https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pres...