Elez, the guy who pushed the changes the devs were not allowed to review to the production payment system, is the guy that has just resigned because of hyper racist comments he made in the past that have come to light.
If in doubt, I recommend checking them out because they're incredibly awful, to the extent that it makes you wonder if the payment system he pushed to had ethnic information attached to it.
That, and the standard for rejecting racists shouldn't be set at "hyper racist." Especially since we are seeing supposedly well educated young men in an environment that has normalized anything less than "hyper."
It seems as good a time as any to point out that the environment in which people like this are making decisions is the one in which equal opportunity/affirmative action/DEI become tenable, if not necessary.
For those of you whinging about how unfair scope-broadening to force decision makers to at least consider marginalized people for opportunities is, the problem is not these initiatives, it's these people, who make it impossible to determine if someone is being rejected for merit or for some other reason.
In general, we have to get away from the idea that the highest score along a narrow measure is the be-all-end-all of merit, anyway. Set a reasonable floor of competence, and then either run a lottery or begin looking at other qualities.
What I've learned recently from these meritocracy advocates is competence is about your skin color. Black person working on a plane = disaster waiting to happen, no further evidence needed, but if you've got a nice and competent skin color and no other relevant credentials you're good to go at Andreessen Horowitz
My favorite example of this is Pete Hegseth. The fact that a man with zero qualifications, experience, or demonstrated aptitude to run an organization with 3.4 million employees and an $850 billion annual budget can go on and rail about how "woke hiring" allows unqualified people to rise to positions of prominence in government just shows that some people are completely incapable of shame or introspection.
The resumes of our former and current Sec of Defense:
General Lloyd Austin (Black):
- 12th Commander of United States Central Command
- 33rd Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
- 40th Director of the Joint Staff
Command:
- United States Central Command
- Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
- United States Forces – Iraq
- Multi-National Corps – Iraq
- XVIII Airborne Corps
- 10th Mountain Division
- 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division
- 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment
Awards: 31
Major Pete Hegseth (White):
- Fox News Weekend Host
Command: None
Awards: 4
When a guy with the second bio replaces a guy with the first bio under the banner of restoring meritocracy and rooting out DEI in the armed services, I think the message is clear what they mean by "meritocracy".
Expect a lot more fake stories about fraud and other nefarious doings from these guys to justify their crimes. The exact something happened with twitter.
Total nothing burgers but you still have people foaming at the mouth about whatever slanted headline they managed to cook up and do performative outrage over.
And to be clear, they all knew that going in. They're intentionally using false stories to attack and threaten people and organisations and have turned it into an industry.
You have to wonder given the Gaza mix up - they saw money going to "gaza" and assumed it was the usual one rather than Gaza, Mozambique - whether they are going to do anything competently.
I mean a techy seeing one word on a spreadsheet that looks iffy and putting hundreds of skilled people out of their jobs as a result is not a great way to run things.
One theory is it's a mixup about the Gaza in Mozambique:
> According to the HHS grants database, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Mozambique received more than $83m in funding since 2021 for reproductive health projects in two provinces: Inhambane and Gaza.
"Demolition Crew"? That's a very kind euphemism for a collection of sycophant clowns that have no experience in government. Indeed I could not find a single one that had any experience.
The definition of competence is "having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully."
You're posting in a forum mainly followed by engineers. Your average experience engineer knows well what a kid straight out of college brings in in terms of ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully. We know, because some of us are tasked with onboarding said kids to come straight from college. Some of us had the privilege of onboarding elite recruits from college, and even they need guidance to be effective at their job.
And you just assume these randos don't? They parachute into organizations, systems, and services they are completely oblivious about, they antagonize and are outright hostile to the existing staff and procedures, they even try to push code without knowing a thing about anything, and this doesn't raise any red flags with you?
> I think they can figure out a government ledger.
+1. And “figure out a government ledger” sounds like a friend who would ask why google spend so much money when “it’s just one page with a search box”. Government spending and the amounts involved in budgeting and appropriation etc are far more complex than that, even for small countries.
You don't need to type +1, there's a button for that.
Also, it must not be that complicated since they have already discovered tons of waste. They don't have to understand the whole thing, even 10% might be enough to be useful.
> Also, it must not be that complicated since they have already discovered tons of waste.
You need to be terribly gullible to believe that propaganda nonsense.
You're talking about a bunch of morons who tried to pass off a public health program to fight the spread of AIDS in Mozambique as funding for HAMAS just because they stumbled upon the keyword "Gaza".
> They don't have to understand the whole thing, even 10% might be enough to be useful.
Their goal is to fool gullible morons, the kind who go on online forums parroting "they have already discovered tons of waste" when they don't even know what "waste" is supposed to mean.
> You're talking about a bunch of morons who tried to pass off a public health program to fight the spread of AIDS in Mozambique as funding for HAMAS just because they stumbled upon the keyword "Gaza".
For one, Elon himself said recently this was a mistake, and two, most Americans don't want us fighting the spread of AIDS in Mozambique right now.
> Their goal is to fool gullible morons, the kind who go on online forums parroting "they have already discovered tons of waste" when they don't even know what "waste" is supposed to mean.
I'm hardly a moron, but thanks for killing the discussion. This is why Trump won the election. Anytime someone on the left is questioned at all, they jump to insults. Everyone is tired of it. You can go find their daily updates on X [0] where they share their updates. Yes, some of the cuts are politically driven, but this is what the majority of Americans voted for.
> What do you think the federal government is doing to make you "poorer" that deserves dismantling the government.
This is what you get after years of defunding or mishandling education. The oligarchs managed to convince the general public that the government is stealing from them. The past decades have seen a huge upward wealth transfer which peaked during covid and this was repackaged and sold back to the people as 'government bad'. Sure, government bad because they didn't go after the oligarchs, but dismantling it is not a solution.
There will be no tax cuts for the plebs after the government is 'leaner', I guarantee it. At most a marginal couple hundred bucks per year - at the cost of drastically cutting down the civil services, some of that invisible stuff that makes society run. By far the biggest beneficiaries of a weak impotent government will be the existing ruling class, the so-called 'elites' the angry 'deplorables' voted against.
My worry is that it's going to backfire and at the exact wrong time, when we need to deal with climate change, pandemics, crumbling old infrastructure and ongoing wealth consolidation. Fun times ahead.
Federalism has always been a fundamental, unresolved issue in American politics. At one end of the spectrum some people think that states should be reduced to mere administrative units and all real power should be centralized at the federal level. At the other end some people think that the federal government should only deal with external affairs, and everything else should be left to the states. The issue is largely a matter of ideology rather than about whether it's making us poorer or whether federal income taxes are too high.
Unfortunately this isn't the dividing issue. The right doesn't actually believe in the division between states and the federal government, it's just a convenient wedge for them to push their power grabs.
That much can be seen via both how they've weaponized abortion and anti-transgender policy. First they move to remove federal restrictions so that states can freely restrict the rights of individuals, then they add federal laws which force blue states to comply either by funding blackmail or through control of the supreme court.
It's incorrect to divorce this dynamic from its history, which is largely one of America's right wing/nativists using "states' rights" as a cover to infringe on the rights of marginalized people, which are supposed to be inalieanable from the federal government's point of view. You have to mention the applications of that ideology, which include secession, Jim Crow laws, and anti-abortion laws, among others.
High levels of government debt aren't exactly unique to America, however, America has the unique ability to issue it's own reserve currency that other countries will absolutely buy.
Also isn't by far the number one government spending item the military? Why aren't they starting there?
Social security is reported as 21% of the total spending. It is also financed through a dedicated payroll tax. This means the federal government only acts as an income redistribution system where payroll taxes collected today are redistributed as pensions paid today.
So even though social security shows up so high, it just reflects the income redistribution scheme where the current workforce maintains retirement pensions of workers who retired.
The second largest expenditure is national defense at 15%.
The US has a progressive income taxation so they've counterbalanced that through taxing the balance ultimately via inflation,which is regressive against the cash based poor.
I find it hard to have a real conversation when a person apparently makes a sockpuppet account to express an opinion, complains when called out after they share information from a known propaganda source, then refers to a conversation nebulously as "scheduled programming".
Which was unfortunate as I asked for technical comments on the wisdom of moving fast and breaking things when applied to a million humans aloft at any moment.
Not so long ago somebody on a forum made a half decent case that in real life Heinlein wasn't the turned up to 11 pro gun, anti authoritarian, libertarian, et al he projected.
The claim was he kept writing for his fans, paid attention to feedback, and played up the extremes as they sold.
I think there are two different things. One, Musk said the traffic control system crashed last week and they want to check how it's set up. Two they are looking at making a new satellite based air traffic control system which could be interesting if a bit self serving if it means all planes have to get starlink.
Satellite based air traffic control could be quite interesting - there have been people wanting to make a computerised system for ages but it's hard to do because firstly with existing systems the UK one has to talk to the French one which has to talk to the Tunisian one etc and it's hard to make that work and secondly your London - NY flight wants to get permission to land but there's no data signal mid atlantic.
What changes and what's any indication that they would ever have been positive regardless of these people?
Unilaterally taking a chainsaw to federal agencies, against their congressional establishment, in a rush in the first three weeks of the administration, is a terrible idea no matter who's running the show.
Even if that were somehow a positive thing, the goals range from ridiculously dubious to outright evil.
I assume the rush is so these changes get made law-by-budget.
Whatever they manage to cut will stay cut once Congress sets that as the ongoing budget and assuming a fairly balanced future, it could take decades to undo.
If the change was _technical_ (streamline systems for greater efficiency) I would be supporting it.
But it's clear the change is _ideological_. And even if you think that one ideology is better than the other, ideological purges of civil servants (who may hold personal political views but whose offices are apolitical and usually there for decades regardless of the party in power), are very dangerous -- just two steps away from fascism.
What we're seeing happen in the downsizing area is mostly from the Project 2025 policy manual.[1] The just-confirmed head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was one of the major authors of Project 2025.
It's worth reading that, at least the key sections. Trump has insisted that Project 2025 is not his policy, but what's happening is close to the manual.
The Project 2025 people couldn't agree on tariffs. So there are two contradictory sections by different authors, "Free Trade" and "Fair Trade". Trump seems to have picked the "Fair Trade" plan.
Trump's initiatives in Canada, Panama, Greenland, and Gaza were not part of the plan.
Greenland at least was mentioned in project 2025 as having security implications. Trump may have freestyled some extra policy on top of that.
> Concerning Greenland, the opening of a U.S. consulate in Nuuk is welcome. A
formal year-round diplomatic presence is an effective way for the U.S. to better
understand local political and economic dynamics. Furthermore, given Green-
land’s geographic proximity and its rising potential as a commercial and tourist
location, the next Administration should pursue policies that enhance economic
ties between the U.S. and Greenland.
and
> Established an office in Greenland to help counter China’s claims of being “a
near Arctic state” and reoriented its programming across Asia—including
establishing a USAID Mission to Central Asia—in line with America’s Indo-
Pacific strategy.
Not sure about "security implications", but a mining site writes "Greenland is considered one of the last frontiers for exploration by mining experts."[1]
There's oil, and some companies drilling, various gemstones, and iron.
It has nothing to do with cutting expenses or even optics as other's have said.
It's about power, and how much you can have. This presidency is pushing the limits well past where they are, with the intention they will be reeled back, but not all the way. "Shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars" strategy.
There isn't enough spending for them to cut the $2 trillion deficit. The federal spending is $6.75 trillion. Discretionary spending is $1.7 trillion, that is most of the departments and all of the military. The rest is entitlement spending that hard to be touched.
The only way to balance budget is to cut taxes, but Trump wants tax cuts.
Not really. It's about cutting expenses so that he can pass a large tax cut (primarily benefiting corporations and the wealthy). No one is worried about the deficit anymore.
Copem.All those criticising doge team haven't created anything worthwhile. All these people secretly wanted twitter to fail post elons take over. Bigballz is much better than all those who are criticizing you. I have seen detrimental effects of usaid creating social havoc in other countries.
Would like to point out that "finding corruption" -- as Trump today stated was the purpose of King Elon' efforts (which is odd because I thought it was to cut "waste") is _exactly_ the way that Xi Jinping was able to get rid of all opposition in China after being chosen as Premier, to where he is now completely unopposed in anything he may want to do. (Was living in China during those years.)
That some here are still blinded to the disastrous effects this will have on their country is baffling. How could you ever believe that giving all powers to egomaniacal billionaires would benefit you or anyone you know? Can't you see their best interests are 100% antagonistic to yours? What would it take for you to admit "ok that's too far"?
Uniparty probably references the fact that D and R parties have maintained a status quo and only differentiate themselves through inconsequential arguments. Kleptocracy in the way those Congress members have colluded to give money to their benefactors (unjust wars, subsidizing bank failures, subsidizing health insurance companies that screw most of us). It's not mysterious.
What are the “2 issues”? Why do they need to “restore” their “stranglehold” when every president for the past 100+ years has been either a Democrat or a Republican?
It is mysterious for those who have different world views or exist inside of a partisan bubble. I can easily imagine how they might characterize your above comment as a, "conspiracy theory". Interesting times.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could be an implementation of Retire All Government Employees (RAGE), an idea that is part of the Dark Enlightenment movement.
Another inspiration could be the Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation of Argentina. Over there they call it "the chainsaw".
Walk and talks like a duck. This is an attempt at Yarvin's Butterfly revolution. Failing too, because courts know how to prioritize and take past actions into account, but wasteful nonetheless.
I hear loads of Feds saying to hold the line. Less have taken Musk's RAGE offer than what normally retire in a given year.
That's an optimistic take unfortunately. From what I can see, the attempt is going tremendously well.
We'll have to see how brazen the trump admin really is prepared to be here. If they are all in, they'll ignore the courts and the doj will do nothing about it. Which has already been telegraphed.
From what ive seen, The feds are saying "hold the line" mostly to cope with the situation. If this admin wants to retire them, they will. Its hard to hold the line when your access is shut off and your paycheck stops coming in.
It's not a great situation. We're basically just sitting and waiting to see how much this administration is bluffing, with no reasonable answer for what to do if they are not -- in fact -- bluffing.
When they start ignoring the courts... what next? Do we hope the military intervenes?
I think we can both agree Clinton was neither trying to rob the government blind nor bypassing Congress completely in taking over and shuttering independent agencies. Nor was he implementing Yarvin's vision for RAGE as step 2 towards the Dark Enlightenment.
It’s difficult to have any serious political conversation on the internet these days. All of the places tend to be slanted so much in one direction.
Ironically the popularity of downvoting and algorithmic display of content is part of why people are always so surprised about such things, including trumps win.
People frequently take the most uncharitable interpretation, and suffer from attribution bias greatly.
> On his personal Substack, he wrote an essay titled “Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America,” according to press reports, and described failed U.S. attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from Congress amid allegations of sexual misconduct, as a “victim” of the deep state.
The fact that nobody is stopping these people is the clearest evidence anyone needs that there's no such thing as "the deep state". But they're actively trying to create one.
I'm incredibly depressed and disillusioned to see fellow software engineers drinking the Kool-aid so deeply while they dismantle the US federal government.
I've learned the hard way that many people in this country do NOT actually care about democracy. At all. I used to believe that most everyone agreed that democracy was good, and we just disagreed on policy. I no longer believe that.
I speak from personal history, but it's really easy to take a bunch of theoretically smart, high-achieving young people, give them a singular purpose, and have them work in overdrive with a level of arrogance that fits their lack of wisdom. It's essentially exactly how Mao was able to create the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.
Semi-counterpoint: the actually smart, high-achieving young people adapt to the status quo. The ones one rung lower, who the prevailing system cast aside for some deficit or other, begin their own independent revolutions (often at the margin of society, and achieving little).
The rubes who blindly join someone else's revolution are neither the smartest nor the most high-achieving; they're just... useful.
You're describing Yarvin. Smart, but not smart enough to make it in the mainstream because he has racist authoritarian leanings. So he was cast out of mainstream hacker culture to toil on Urbit and his dark enlightment projects. The rubes are the kids in TFA.
The Cultural Revolution did not have theoretically smart, high-achieving young people. Most of the atrocities were done by people who hated the "theoretically smart, high-achieving young people"
Not at all - I feel like you're saying that since the Cultural Revolution was anti-intellectual, it was thus against "theoretically smart, high-achieving young people".
But that analogy is even more apt for today - these young, energetic, just-out-of-school people want to tear down "elitist" institutions, just like students in the Red Guard did the same. One of the founders of the Red Guard who kicked off the Cultural Revolution was Nie Yuanzi, a Vice Chair of the Department of Economics at Peking University. I hope her Wikipedia page clarifies the analogy I was making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nie_Yuanzi
> Most of the atrocities were done by people who hated the "theoretically smart, high-achieving young people"
No, most of the atrocities were done to eliminate political threats by targeting everyone who had a semblance of power and did not fell in line. Academia was targeted not because of an anti-intellectual push but because they could counter the influence of the new totalitarian regime trying to establish itself. There's a good reason why the leaders of said authoritarian pushes were lauded as the brightest minds in the land, whose writings should be consumed with a religious fervor.
> And what power did most of these professors have if not their minds?
You're completely missing the point. Their academic careers put them in a position where their role was literally to shape and influence the next generation. As they were not fervent supporters, their role posed a threat to the regime. They could be profoundly dumb or grossly incompetent professors for what its worth. It's just that they didn't lockstep with the regime and the regime didn't wanted to risk it.
I think the current idea is for the violence to be done by prison guards in El Salvador. The kind of person that thinks SV "built the modern world", and that they're part of a new tier of human being for having gotten rich for stuff like having worked on a game for kids 11 years ago, and therefore are entitled to co-rule the world from now on, are just useful fools that help to enable that.
> I've learned the hard way that many people in this country do NOT actually care about democracy.
Our democracy has been eroding for decades. Congress collects paychecks while gridlocking progress, even on bipartisan issues that could help ordinary citizens. Super PACs and "campaign contributions" (aka bribes) ensure the wealthy control both parties. Democrats and Republicans both spend recklessly and divide the nation. Democrats won't admit it, but their approach has driven half the country to prefer what the Republicans have become: essentially a cult.
How do you fix wealth inequality? That's what I want to know. I feel like we're so far past the point of no return. I'm sure they're all eagerly rubbing their hands together waiting to be a Duke in Peter Thiel's new global Monarchy.
High tax on the rich. We did it in the UK in the first half of the 20th century with tax as high as 90%. But to do that you have to vote it in and it's not really popular with the electorate these days.
The most reliable way that has been found is to make everyone poor. Once disposable resources appear someone always becomes a more shrewd trader, even if means if production is otherwise equal. Then they trade those things for a greater share of the means of production...
> How do you fix wealth inequality? That's what I want to know.
This has been a topic of research for a long time in social science. Wealth redistribution via taxation, education, and strong social safety nets. There is some deadweight loss due to taxation in a single-shot model, but allows for more stable regimes when considering the long term.
Preserving wealth is actually an uphill battle. It likes to leak; the wealthy need the help of systems and institutions to keep their largesse intact. If you want it to diffuse throughout society, stop guarding it, stop bailing them out, and tax them like you mean it.
So many policy decisions are about who to throw under the bus; flip the incidence from "mostly people without wealth" to "mostly people with wealth".
A majority of Americans have never supported either policy, but the credentialed elites in both parties have done so for decades. And both things have been accomplished largely through executive action. E.g. turning H1B from a temporary worker program into a pathway to permanent residency, or free trade agreements.
If anyone else would simply commit to severely immigration and free trade, Trump’s hold on the GOP would evaporate. We have seen it happen in other countries—in Denmark the left capitulated on immigration and everything is fine again.
> Except the real issues are immigration and globalization.
The US is a country of immigrants, and has been so since it's inception.
H1Bs are not about limiting immigration at all. They are about having a workforce without basic rights and bestow corporations with the power of uprooting an employee's life and banishing them from the land if he even dares stepping out of line.
The axes hanging over the regular folk's head, such as corporate control over access to healthcare, is not enough to completely control the workforce. They still feel they need more control. That's why mechanisms like H1Bs exist, and why illegal immigrants are still widely employed and the ruling regime punishes workers but always protects the employers who insist in hiring them almost exclusively.
> The US is a country of immigrants, and has been so since it's inception.
As JD aptly put it, that’s wrong,[1] but, regardless, so what? America is first and foremost, a democratic republic. Sentimental 20th century notions designed to assimilate the last wave of mass immigration have no binding power on the electorate. Americans are entitled to decide that they’re done with immigration, and it’s the civil service’s job to put that into effect.
[1] The US is a nation created British settlers. Once that society was created, immigrants moved into it. There’s a fundamental difference between immigrants and settlers. https://youtu.be/ZpbYtZ5La8U?si=5gdZ-MGamBwZ4djb. Italian Americans speak English and live within a system of laws and civic customs inherited from a thousand years of English tradition and history. But English Americans don’t speak Iroquois or adhere to an Iroquois legal system or traditions.
That's a mind-numbing stupid take which is rejected by the faintest cursory ancestry analysis of the US population. The 2020 census alone points out that there is as many german americans as English americans, and I'm not seeing racist anti-immigration rants targeting germans. They are the predominant ethnic group in the Northeast and Midwest regions. If not by immigration then how do you explain their presence?
There’s many ethnic Germans in America, but there’s almost nothing German in broader American law and civic society. Thats the distinction between the settler population (British people and African slaves, with a relatively small proportion of Dutch, Spanish, and French) and the immigrant population (everyone else).
America is a country that happens to have a lot of people of immigrant ancestry. That’s an incidental feature. Because it’s a physically large country that was for a long time relatively unsettled. But that doesn’t define the country. There isn’t anything that commits the country to any particular policy re: immigration. In fact, the massive German, Irish, and Italian immigration of the 19th century led to a decades-long restriction of immigration staring in the 1920s, where the foreign born population dropped from 15% (similar to now) to under 5% by 1970.
> There’s many ethnic Germans in America, but there’s almost nothing German in broader American law and civic society.
Irrelevant. The disputed fact was that America was not a country of immigrants. The idiotic assertion raised in the parent post is a refresh of the argument that the Mayflower landed settlers and not immigrants, which is nonsense due to the fact that the bulk of the population of the US are undoubtedly immigrants.
Does that make America “a nation of immigrants?” Is it a defining characteristic or an incidental one? America is also a majority white nation. I wouldn’t say that’s a defining characteristic that should define our future immigration policies.
> Does that make America “a nation of immigrants?”
The vast majority of Americans are immigrants.
> Is it a defining characteristic or an incidental one?
Is this even a question? Again, the vast majority of Americans are immigrants.
> I wouldn’t say that’s a defining characteristic that should define our future immigration policies.
You can try to move the goalpost as far as you'd like and blow as many ignorant and ill-informed xenophobic dog whistles as you'd care to blow. You cannot outrun the fact that the US is a nation of immigrants.
I simply read your post to make it make sense. That is, you’re saying “America is a nation of immigrants” to refer to some articulated principle—like free speech or property rights—that should compel the electorate to adhere to some policy going forward.
If by “nation of immigrants” you mean merely the fact that most Americans have immigrant ancestry, your original post makes no sense. Why would that incidental fact have any bearing on what America’s immigration policy should be going forward? Mere accidents of history don't compel a democratic republic to maintain any particular course.
Democracy is 'good' mainly because it represents a vote of who would win a violent fight, and anticipating that, we can bypass all that and just defer to the victors without bloodshed. As means of violence becomes less equal amongst those granted suffrage, though, democracy becomes less stable as there is no longer clear visibility as to why the losers must defer.
If we weren't easily slaughtered meat sacks, I'd say democracy rather sucks.
Half of these people are software engineers, many in their early 20s. I don't even need the gender card to point out that the group seems highly biased.
Sincere question: are you and I using “democracy” to mean the same thing?
What Trump is doing is a reversion to how the federal government was run after the founding and during the 18th century (what’s derisively called the “spoils system”). Trump campaigned with a bunch of people with specific ideas (RFK, Musk, Gabbard, etc.) and then when elected put those people in positions of authority. Here, taking an axe to the civil service was Item #9 on Trump’s platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. He sent Musk as his surrogate to camp out in the key swing state of Pennsylvania the week before the election. For many Trump voters, this is what they voted for. For others, maybe DOGE wasn’t their thing, but they were content with it to get RFK Jr. or Gabbard or Tom Homan. And from all those people you got a winning coalition.
What you’re talking about sounds more like Wilsonian managerialism. Where elections are more like an input signal to a credentialed civil service service that applies its expertise to the problems of governance: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c....
You can make a fair case that governance by detached civil servants is better, but how can you possibly say that it’s more democratic?
Typically, democratic means voting people in Congress in, then Congress votes and represents their constituents.
There is a reason the President was not initially elected by the people. The spoils system and the current systems failings are precisely that foresight.
When Congress is weak, the Executive is unchecked. Go read the Old Whig 4
Sure, presidential electors should be appointed by state legislatures and the administrative state is unconstitutional.
But if we aren’t relitigating all that: we have an administrative state, to which Congress has delegated vast authority. Given that, how is it possible to argue that we should then further insulate that administrative state from accountability to the only elected official who can effectively hold it accountable—the President? What’s left?
That view reduces the elected government to a meta-government. Congress’s job is to make largely jurisdictional and procedural rules for the civil service to follow, and the president’s job is to mind adherence to those rules. But actual policymaking is delegated to the civil service, which is insulated from elections.
The spoils system is good, actually, and I’m persuaded that’s how the constitution was meant to work. People who voted for Trump loved that he put up a slate of people he was going to appoint with concrete visions of how they were going to run the government. That seems democratic to me.
Sorry but the spoils state is called corruption and is totally bad in all forms. If you want to curtail the so called administrative agency then the parties have to win elections by dicisive margins.
Or the president and judiciary can force Congress to pass laws.
I keep hearing on HN about how the US is being "taken over", that there is a "coup in place" and Musk is a "fascist" and so on (I'm not making these up, these are genuine HN comments in this thread and elsewhere).
I'd like someone to clearly explain to me, an outsider about why such hostility has been ushered in this community ? Please point me to specifics so that I can understand what law(s) are being broken? Why are we seeing blog posts like this "listing names".. like it's September 1, 1939 ?
I've been a member of HN for many years and have never seen this level of panic bubbling up, I've been trying to follow it but it's hard to follow a balanced discussion when I see half the comments downvoted and only one sided conversations are happening, which is quite upsetting for me, since one of the reasons I cherish this community, is because of its ability to provide nuanced discussions.
So if I may, I'd invite you (and others) to please engage in thoughtful discourse, so that I can genuinely be informed and make my own conclusions on the matter.
Please read this comment from elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42969050. Then go onto Google and read all the details about this person, including what he was given access to; how a federal court upheld his access just earlier today; and then how, hours later, he resigned when his recent social media commentary was discovered.
Quick primer: he was one of only two people who reports to Elon Musk at Doge who had access to the treasury department payment system. There is suspicion (to my knowledge not yet proven) that he had write access to the system, but there’s no debate that he had read access because an actual judge stated he could continue to have access today (judge’s decision was before the WSJ reported on the social media commentary and he resigned).
If I may, when you’ve had a chance to dig into this, would you reply here and give your take? Would you call it a major red flag? And given the contents of the social media commentary, do you see any parallels to 1939? And if you do see the parallels can you at all, I mean in the slightest, understand where the “panic” is coming from? You don’t have to be at your keyboard or phone crying “fascist!” Just wondering if you can see it, even a little bit. I can, even though I think the fascist language has lost most of its punch from overuse.
Note this is just one example of several over the last few weeks. It’s just a very clear one given there is little debate about the facts.
I think we’re seeing a lot of culturally rooted assumptions about the nature of government bubbling to the surface. There’s a lot of people who subscribe to progressive managerialism, which was championed by Woodrow Wilson. This is the dominant culture of knowledge workers. What Trump is doing is deeply upsetting to them. They will invoke things like records laws or the Impoundment Act or whatever, but nobody gets this worked up about laws requiring paperwork. They’re upset at the idea that you could just have a president who runs the executive branch however he wants regardless of what the civil service wants.
Most Americans, by contrast, are populists, either left-populists or right-populists. The breach of orderly practices doesn’t get them worked up. Look at how AOC frames what’s going on. She doesn’t talk about paperwork violations—her supporters wouldn’t care. She accuses Musk of robbing the Treasury, threatening to stop social security payments, etc. I don’t think those things are true, but it’s the kind of thing that would move her populist supporters to action.
That's a weird take. Given your other comments in this thread, you have ideological blinders on.
People are worried because Musk is doing whatever the hell he wants, dismantling power structures that could oppose him, and installing lackeys that are loyal to him. He won't face consequences for doing anything illegal because he has a puppet in the White House that the Supreme Court says has absolutely authority to pardon him for anything.
This is a naked power grab, and must be treated as such.
So, having read through the thread a few days after participating, and being more or less fully on the anti-current-actions camp by DOGE, I think raiyner is actually doing a pretty strong job presenting the facts as he, she, or they see it.
Stepping back quite a bit, the US constitution divides up responsibilities between the Legislator (Congress), the Executive (President), and the courts (Supreme Court).
The Legislator is given rights over declaring war, applying tariffs and levying taxes, federal budget, approving international treaties, and of course writing laws. Over the past 250 years, the legislative branch has slowly given the executive branch more discretion. In times of emergency, the legislative branch moves too slowly, so the executive branch is better suited to make snap decisions.
Trump, as soon as he's taken office, immediately used these powers to declare an emergency at the border (https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-pr...) and redirected the military to intervene. It's an abuse of the power, as the situation has been relatively stable (enough so that congress should have had time to meet and decide on next steps), but it's something he did in his last term as well (https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/pr...) so was expected. What wasn't expected was the repurposing of Guantanamo Bay (a military prison with a dark history outside the jurisdiction of most US courts) now being used for migrants (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0p1ykxyzjo). It's a worrying trend of moving undesirables somewhere out of sight of the general public. In his last term, there were detention centers inside of the US (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tornillo-texas-tent-camp-hou...) with poor conditions -- most notably, Trump pardoned one such sheriff (https://www.npr.org/2017/08/25/545282459/president-trump-par...) who was remarkably cruel and called the tent cities personal concentration camps. This shift to move migrants to more restricted areas is seen as a way to avoid oversight.
Trump likewise invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to levy tariffs against Canada (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/prog...), Mexico (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo...), and China (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo...). Again, these powers are usually invoked in response to war, so it's considered an abuse of power. Canada and Mexico are also close allies and a part of USMCA, which is a treaty promoting free trade between the three countries; Trump negotiated & signed the USMCA treaty when he was last in office, and has since called it a bad deal and these tariffs directly conflict with it. It's put the US in a situation where allies are being alienated. Trump has also threatened tariffs against the EU and Taiwan, both of which currently count on US military intervention in case of war, which is straining those relationships as well.
In Trump's previous term, he appointed several Supreme Court justices. The court is idealistically an unbiased and independent branch, and are given lifetime appointments as such, but the political leanings of the court have shifted with these new appointments. Abortion, a controversial topic in the US, was recently made illegal in several states after the court re-ruled, on party lines, a 50-year standing (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf). More recently, and relevantly, though, the supreme court ruled again on party lines that the president cannot be taken to court over illegal acts while in office (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf) and that only congress's power of impeachment can be used. With a republican majority in both houses of congress (and impeachment requiring 2/3rds approval to convict), there seem to be little to no recourse to anything Trump has done or plans to do regardless of legality. It's democratic in a sense -- the US population voted for a majority in the house and senate and so we're getting what we voted for -- but there's 2 years until the next election, so there's a prevailing sense of helplessness.
Getting into powers of the purse, as mentioned before, the executive branch is expected to dutifully carry out the budget and laws set by the legislative branch. This includes the creation and running of departments, as well as getting senate approval for department heads. Notably, Elon Musk is not a senate-approved department head, but he's been given dangerous amounts of access to the treasury (https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-department-doge-marko-e...) and other departments. This is without going through the normal vetting process (although, as President, Trump does have the power to bypass such requirements. It's simply against norms, and raises concerns about the possibility of blackmail, espionage, and hacking). Elon has also declared several departments as 'criminal organizations' (https://www.npr.org/2025/02/03/nx-s1-5285539/doge-musk-usaid...), Trump has fired anyone who has pushed back against Elon's requests, and funding for most departments has been paused pending review. Trump has also offered almost federal employees a Voluntary Exit Program (VEP) (https://www.opm.gov/fork/), although the legality of such a VEP is debated since past court cases (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1989/88-1943) have ruled that congressional approval is necessary. If that's the case, anyone who resigns may not end up being paid. This is seen as a wider purge (eg. https://apnews.com/article/trump-fbi-firing-a7b19a5f414ce82c..., https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-federal-inspectors-genera...) of the government to replace federal employees with loyalists to the president (instead of to the constitution).
And for Elon specifically, during Trump's inauguration he did his infamous "My heart goes out to you" salute (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw) which is seen as a poor attempt to signal to the far right and neo-nazi parties, that typically have supported the republican party, that they are welcome and in positions of power now. Elon also spoke at far-right rallies in Germany (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/elon-musk-appears-video...) championing lines of nationalist empowerment. At face value, it's innocent enough, but these terms are also seen as a dogwhistle for neo-nazis and so it's seen together as another vocalization of support for them.
Trump also pardoned everyone involved in the insurrection on January 6th, who had invaded the capital and attempted to abduct the congressmen and vice president to stop them from ratifying the peaceful transfer of power in 2020. This is seen as a nod from Trump that if you support him, you will have immunity for your actions.
---
The US populace voted for this, so if it's a coup it's a bloodless one. But everything Trump has done in the few weeks he's been in office is very extreme by the standards of the US. The transfer is power is usually peaceful, and builds upon the work of past presidents. This is a very abrupt departure from that, and no concern is given to impressions of corruption and nepotism.
> The US populace voted for this, so if it's a coup it's a bloodless one.
The role of Trump's normalization of political violence cannot be understated. It's well known that going against Trump results in death threat and spawns acts of stochastic terrorism.
>Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America
That's also a bit disingenuous. You can save America today by not being an ass to others, doing what you know is right and spending some of your free time helping others. Plenty of charities one can get involved with, locally as well.
The reason why they're there is because "I worked for Musk" in your CV translates to tens/hundreds of millions of dollars later in life.
That's true, but these are Yarvin acolytes. They literally don't believe in democracy. They think their superior intellect entitles them to rule over the rest of us.
Democracy in the US is well defined, even if someone does not understand it.
Simplified, the President executes laws written by Congress via the Executive branch. Congress passes laws that must agree with the US Constitution. The Judicial branch arbitrates disputes by interpreting the US Constitution. The Constitution can be changed per Article V.
> Musk at least is an agent of the guy who just won the election.
Yeah: The guy who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. That guy. Who wasn't elected absolute monarch, no matter what the unitary-executive crowd fondly believes.
So you’re saying it was transparent what people were voting for?
Trump isn’t governing like a monarch. He’s not regulating private conduct or imposing taxes or putting people in prison. What he’s doing is exercising the executive power, as vested in him by Article II.
(As an aside, Article II says what it says. We don’t need a label for it. What requires a label is the theory that there’s an independent civil service insulated from the President and political appointees.)
> What requires a label is the theory that there’s an independent civil service insulated from the President and political appointees.
The "executive power" is what's enumerated in Article II — most notably the All Other Officers Clause and the Take Care Clause. (It's been often said that it was no accident that the Framers put Article I first.)
So: If both houses of Congress pass a bill saying that Agency X is insulated from the president and political oversight — and the president signs the bill into law — then that should be the complete and utter end of the discussion until Congress and the president agree to change the law.
Those folks who've been bootstrapping a unitary-executive monarchy are engaging in ... let's just say, "creative lawyering" (spelled: making it up out of whole cloth). At least Marbury v. Madison has some policy grounds underlying it (the least dangerous branch and all that); the unitary-executive fantasy is devoid of such advantages.
BTW, just because Trump hasn't yet done all the things a monarchist could do, doesn't mean he's not a monarchist; saying otherwise is atrociously illogical.
Who are the domestic political prisoners you're talking about? The rioters who broke into the capitol, reportedly resulting in 5 deaths and at least a hundred injuries? Or different ones
I am not sold on these actions being done in good faith, or legally. There’s a lot of evidence of forceful behavior in obtaining access to highly sensitive systems.
Also, the government is here to run services, for us, with the money we give it in the form of taxes.
Removing all government services in order to save money (and provide tax cuts to the 0.1% richest people and corps.) seems to be based in the belief that we are here to serve the people at the top. This is not the spirit of democracy.
Another notable fact is that the current leadership consists of people who are not known for healthy governance providing care and benefit for many. They are known for maximizing extraction, and shocking lack of compassion and understanding.
Besides the open racism and sadistic dickishness. Which, to be fair, we’re a part of the hatred and fear-based platform.
I have lived experience dealing with selling software to government agencies. I have observed egregious activity, which to my company's government salesmen, didn't cause them to blink an eye. In one case, the DoD budget ran out of money, but the DoD budget for Disabled Veteran purchasing still had money, so we added 10% to the contract and resold through a disabled veteran's LLC, the taxpayer got screwed, the LLC-owner made a 6 figure fee for doing nothing, and we got paid. This, I was told, was literally nothing compared to what else our salesmen had seen! But I was scandalized as an honest 20-something worker bee.
Such a minor case of course. But this is a microcosm of the entire problem. No one cares, no one is incentivized, no one represents the taxpayer. How does a US politician on a $175k salary become worth $80 million after 30 years in congress? The system is rigged, and the majority of the American people see themselves as suckers and are tired of it.
> How does a US politician on a $175k salary become worth $80 million after 30 years in congress?
Which politician are we talking about here? Or are we being generic? From what I've seen, the majority of people in Congress started off rich because, well, you need to be rich (or at least rich-adjacent) to even consider running.
Not wishing to disparage the good name of "lawyersclubindia" and their guesstimates but OpenSecrets has him at just over $1M in 2018[0] and ThisNation has him at $900k in 2022[1]. (Neither sounds that plausible but they are definitely less shady than "lawyersclubindia".)
The only places that have him in the 10s of $M bracket look like spam content farms who've stolen the majority of their content from Wikipedia.
Nowhere did I mention that accountability for government spending is a bad thing or that government spending is not out of control. Especially with military contracts.
Of course we should address overspending. Of course we should have accountability. Of course we should end the brazen insider trading, and end citizens united, and reform campaign financing.
Defunding USAID, defunding Medicare, deregulating profits on medications, defunding NPR etc. are none of these things and we all know it.
The Pentagon has been failing audit after audit. How come we are not starting with that? (Rhetorical question).
Subsidies for industries that don’t need subsidies.
Let’s not pretend that the waste is in the essential historically underfunded services.
> With DACA, Obama unilaterally decided not to enforce laws duly enacted by congress.
>
> So what keeps Trump from unilaterally deciding not to spend money duly appropriated by congress?
I had to think about this.
What's the point/goal of giving the power of the purse to Congress if it's actually just a slush fund?
If Congress can allocate money for the courts, but the executive is the one tasked with execution (DOJ) and decided not spend that, we are saying there is no real need to balance power.
So if there's no authority to direct spending, what prevents the executive from spending money on replacing the courts and Congress?
I think the issue is Congress enacting a slush fund and then getting mad that the executive is treating it as such.
Congress does have the authority to direct spending, but doesn’t always do so.
Here’s an example appropriation for USAID:
> development assistance
> For necessary expenses to carry out the provisions of sections 103, 105, 106, 214, and sections 251 through 255, and chapter 10 of part I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, $3,000,000,000
If you look at the foreign assistance act it’s extremely broad. That’s how you end up with USAID giving money to AFL-CIO to fund labor movements in Bangladesh. They get three billion dollars to spend however they can creatively fit under the general categories of things like “education.” So what supervisory role has Congress really left itself over that money?
It could choose to direct the same billion to DOE, or FCC instead and end up with very different outcomes.
Let's assume it is all one giant slushfund for the executive. What now enables checks on the slush funds use?
If Congress says "here's 10 billion to spend on X and Y but not on Z. And the executive says "nah, I'm going to actually not spend it on X, but Y and Z sure." So Congress says "ok here's half as much so you can't spend it on Z "
Executive replies "now I spend it all on Z"
Congratulations you've discovered a defunding spiral I guess?
To be clear, I don’t think the executive can just ignore the difference between a billion to the FCC versus a billion to USAID.
My point is that, having given a large slush fund to USAID with only vague guidance on how to spend it, they’ve put the ball in the President’s court. The President isn’t obligated to spend the money on the priorities career USAID people want to spend it on. He can spend it on whatever smart lawyers can justify as being within the broad terms of the corresponding appropriation bills. Congress never specifically appropriated money for grants to bankroll left wing labor organizations in Bangladesh. The executive did that and the executive can undo that. And they can see where they stand in terms of total program funding after all that’s done.
And it’ll take time to see whether he’s going to end up spending less than appropriated for statutory programs, such that there’s an impoundment. Remember, USAID isn’t going away, it’s keeping 600 or so mission critical employees.
> To be clear, I don’t think the executive can just ignore the difference between a billion to the FCC versus a billion to USAID.
>
Right, he tried that last term with the wall and didn't win in the courts.
> My point is that, having given a large slush fund to USAID with only vague guidance on how to spend it,
How certain are you that it's as vague as you claim?
>The President isn’t obligated to spend the money on the priorities career USAID people want to spend it on. He can spend it on whatever smart lawyers can justify as being within the broad terms of the corresponding appropriation bills.
I think it's a large assumption to say the POTUS can spend the money for an organization on lawers meant to defend dismantling the organization.
What statues do you believe enable this?
>Congress never specifically appropriated money for grants to bankroll left wing labor organizations in Bangladesh. The executive did that and the executive can undo that.
Not familiar with the specifics you are waving at, do you have more information?
> And it’ll take time to see whether he’s going to end up spending less than appropriated for statutory programs, such that there’s an impoundment.
So logically the lawyers mentioned earlier by you, could demand a fee sum large enough to ensure the spending, and try to prevent any impoundment?
> Remember, USAID isn’t going away, it’s keeping 600 or so mission critical employees.
You don't have to take all the water away from a tree to kill it, but take away enough water, for long enough time, and it can only wither and rot.
Shutting down everything isn't an audit. Looking at some top level line items is not an audit. An audit takes time and you have a plan and reasons to back it up when it's done.
What is happening is things are being indiscriminately torn down.
Maybe it's for the best, but as there's no analysis, people are rightfully concerned about what is happening.
Technically this was superseded and USAID was legally established by statute in the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 [1]. Perhaps you forgot to take notes when that happened.
USAID still exists, it's now under the State Department. It is true that one could argue where the authority of the President starts and stops, but that's going to be figured out in the courts.
And the Trump administration was smart to start with USAID. It's been an arm of the CIA since it's origination. Look at the role it played in the Vietnam War - arming of a militia under the guise of "development". It also was the org that funded the fake "polio vaccination campaign" in the search for Bin Laden.
And it's funny to see the pearl clutching going on when only 3-4 years ago there were numerous press reports on just how unaccountable USAID was to the federal government.
I don't see how the current actions are leading to a reduction in waste. Could you elaborate on how the recent actions are connected with improved spending outcomes?
1. There is question of legal authority for the executive branch to be doing what it is doing.These departments were established by acts of congress and an act of congress would need to shut them down. What DOGE is doing is by passing congress and de facto shutting them down by not letting them operate. Eventually the courts will probably catch up and and say DOGE has to stop doing X,Y, and Z, but in the short-term they are taking advantage.
2. It is of legal question whether Musk should have been confirmed by congress given the the access and power he is wielding.
Yes, Trump was democratically elected and yes, Musk was appointed, but democracy requires the rule of law to be followed or the whole thing starts to fall apart.
Winning the popular vote does not make you dictator. It makes you president within the existing laws.
You want to change the way things are done? That's fine. You have a mandate to do so based on the vote? Also fine. Do it within the existing laws.
There are laws in a number of areas (firing federal employees, impoundment, spoils system, probably others that don't come to my mind immediately) that Trump seems to be violating. He doesn't get to do that. He has to stay within the law, because it's the law that makes him president instead of "most popular guy this year".
And it doesn't seem to be that he just missed a few steps. He doesn't seem to care about the law at all. That's democracy failing - having a president who thinks he can do whatever he wants, and the law doesn't bind him. That's a president who's trying to be a king.
Now, that's kind of a "vibe" thing. It's not one action; it's more a perception of the cumulation of all his actions. Which means that other people can perceive it differently from how I do, because they assign different weights to his actions. But to me, the trend of the whole is troubling.
Trump disavowed Project 2025 during the campaign and his voters believed him. If democracy worked, he would be held accountable for this enormous bait-and-switch.
Trump disavowed Project 2025 during the campaign, is just a performance appreciated by his voters, as many of his voters believed “be a racist but don’t say it”.
The same reason that one of the DOGE youth got fired, not because he is a racist, but because his racism remark got caught.
Part of the difficulty of arguing about this is that the effectiveness is very clearly not there. The following is from treasury.gov[1]:
21 % Social Security
15 % National Defense
14 % Health
13 % Net Interest
13 % Medicare
9 % Income Security
6 % Veterans Benefits and Services
3 % Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services
2 % Natural Resources and Environment
2 % Transportation
2 % Other
To get the level of cuts they want they cannot legally do it without Congress.
Laws are being broken, Congress is being bypassed, and power is being consolidated by the executive branch and a private unelected citizen. The next part of the playbook is to ignore orders by the court. The goal is to dismantle democracy. The playbook is so obvious - Trump himself even said nobody would have to worry about voting for him again because they would "fix it".
No, he is closing down an agency using Executive Orders; however, as currently constituted, only Congress can shut down the agency.
> The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.) established USAID as its own agency. In a section titled “Status of AID” (22 U.S.C. 6563) it states:
>> (a) In general
>> Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5.
Because the agency is an independent agency, it cannot be interrupted without going through the appropriate channel.
But the DOJ replied to that independent judiciary that was not bound by their decision... It wasn't appealed to a supreme court that would likely overrule the lower court, it was simply asserted that the judges order didn't matter. That is the sort of thing I find concerning. Firing non appointed law enforcement officers without stated cause too. If you walk down the autocratic playbook for the rise to power, there are way too many parallels for comfort. Ask chatgpt to provide them along with relevant quotes from well known autocrats. Some of the judicial orders do seem to be getting followed now, I have some bit of hope that the supreme court won't do anything too obviously biased.
> OK, we have an independent judiciary to decide on the legality.
You don't.
> Just because you say it's illegal doesn't mean it is.
It's illegal to the point it even violates the US constitution.
> Biden unilaterally cancelled a trillion dollars of college debt, which the Supreme Court said was illegal, (...)
The Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Education didn't had the authority to enact such a large program and needed to seek approval from congress, and the rule was called by Trump's appointees.
Biden's student loan debt programs still went ahead because, unlike the original claim, the department of education already was running student debt forgiveness programs before and during Trump's first term, and those existing programs were never questioned as being illegal or unconstitutional.
The fact that you are trying to compare this event to Trump's string of illegal and unconstitutional efforts to shut down and dismantle the whole federal government, not to mention the whole sabotage campaign involving threatening long-standing allies of military invasion and economic war, speaks volumes of how disingenuous you're being.
And what's even worse, the person you replied to may lot even realize how disingenuous they are being. This is the level of propaganda that is tearing through the US.
> The access that DOGE and Elon has is strictly legal via standard government processes.
Nope, you are mistaken. The EO gave access for DOGE and unclassified systems. Treasury has quite a bit that is classified. This is why the lawsuits to stop them have merit.
This isn’t a serious request. The ability of authorities to grant arbitrary people access to classified information has been the law of the land forever. If you are unfamiliar with this then you are not in a position to make a credible argument. I am not going to play a game of “fetch a rock” with someone incapable of cursory research.
Where you have made your claim isn't 'your world,' it's the open web. You may or may not spend any time at all, but taking people at their word was ruined by 4chan and other trolls.
Since I'm pretty sure you're wrong, and I actually chatted about my questions with people who operate in the space, let me add more information to the conversation.
First, governing documents:
Executive Order 13526
- Governs classification of national security information, including Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential levels.
- Who Can Override? President
- Override Process: The President can declassify or reclassify any classified information at will.
Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA)
- Controls handling of classified information in legal proceedings.
- Who Can Override? Federal Courts (Judges)
- Override Process: Judges can determine whether classified evidence can be disclosed in court.
National Industrial Security Program (NISP) (Executive Order 12829)
- Regulates access to classified information by contractors and private entities.
- Who Can Override? President, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)
- Override Process: The President can issue waivers; DCSA can grant or deny access based on security clearances.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
- Regulates intelligence gathering on foreign entities and individuals.
- Who Can Override? FISA Court (FISC)
- Override Process: Judges can approve or disapprove classified surveillance requests.
Atomic Energy Act (AEA) of 1954
- Governs access to classified nuclear information ("Restricted Data").
- Who Can Override? President, Department of Energy (DOE), Congress
- Override Process: The President and DOE can declassify certain nuclear information. Congress can pass legislation altering classification.
Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978
- Regulates access to presidential records, including classified materials.
- Who Can Override? Incumbent President
- Override Process: The sitting President can restrict or release prior administration records.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
- Allows public access to government records but exempts classified materials.
- Who Can Override? Agencies, Courts, President
- Override Process: Agencies can deny requests, courts can order disclosure, and the President can override agency decisions.
Department of Defense (DoD) Information Security Program (DoDM 5200.01)
- Regulates access to military and defense-related classified information.
- Who Can Override? Secretary of Defense, President
- Override Process: The Secretary of Defense can restrict access within DoD, and the President can override classifications.
While a President could certainly grant access to classified (and sensitive) systems, there are still laws that prevent hostile takeovers like what Elon Musk and DOGE have done (which, you recall, were explicitly given access by executive order to unclassified systems).
The laws, acts, and regs I would have expected you to cite include:
- FISMA (2014)
- CISA (2015)
- EO 13800
- Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (2004)
- CFAA (Title 18, USC Sec.1030)
Can the president override these restrictions? Not directly -- while the prez has authority over classified information and executive agencies, federal laws explicitly prohibit unauthorized access to IT systems, even by high-ranking officials such as DOGE.
IT systems within agencies like the Treasury, OPM, and USAID operate under internal security policies and congressional oversight. A president attempting wholesale access to these systems without proper legal justification can lead to legal challenges (as it has), congressional investigations, and potential violations of federal law.
Some of the policies in these agencies, based on decades of experience in securing the systems, are
- DoD Instruction 8500.01 (Cybersecurity) - established RBAC and principle of least privillege
- DoD Instruction 8530.01 (Cybersecurity Activities Support to DoD Information Network Operations) -- monitoring of privileged users
- Army Regulation (AR) 25-2 (Army Cybersecurity) - MFA requirements -- Army specific, but similar regs at other agencies.
Now, what if someone with authority grants unauthorized access? You're talking espionage act now. CFAA too. Privacy act. Insider threat (EO 13587). Granting unauthorized access to federal IT systems, classified data, or sensitive records is a serious crime. If national security is compromised, penalties become even harsher under espionage laws.
Now, if you're actually in this world, I welcome your substantive additions to the conversation.
Personally, I like the bold approach. I really dislike Trump and would never ever consider voting for the guy. This isn’t the outcome that I hoped for, but I appreciate that he’s trying to do something at least, even if it fails. Only 34% of Americans trust the government for a lot of valid reasons. We’ve been at war for pretty much forever. We keep innerworkings of government secret for ‘national security’. And, I have never liked how we influence elections and governments around the world. It always felt so gross.
I’ve done work with USAID and have seen first hand their ineffective humanitarian aid programs. It’s not surprising that they haven’t made much progress in over 50 years when you consider the perverse incentives.
Pretty much. Person asks "how did Americans allow this?". Someone responds and get downvoted and flagged to hell.
Funny enough, that also models the reason why people are in shock? "How could this happen, all the posts, media, and polls I saw were predicting a Harris win? Was it the Russians? The aliens?". Yet here someone responding honestly, and they get downvoted to hell and disappear. Next cycle it will be the same, "how could this happen, everything I read and everyone I asked all agreed with ... and then ..."
> Good faith requires facts, which this current administration does not use.
I don't know, the OP (or GP?) post said they were wanted to continue discussing the issue in good faith. I'll take them at their word until I see them saying something else, what else should we do, downvote and flag everyone to hell? And it seems it's not about the administration having good or bad faith or good or bad facts but the OP presenting their case.
> Or perhaps you'd be surprised to learn they aren't eating pets in Springfield?
There are farms around there, for sure. Some chickens or cows may even have names and eventually get eaten, too. Who knows. I had never been, but was just South of it, in Yellow Springs. A nice little town and big a dairy farm with their own ice-cream and rides and everything.
> Claiming the new Haitian community threatened “the good White residents” of Springfield, Blood Trump members descended on the city in August during Springfield’s annual Jazz & Blues festival, marching downtown while displaying guns and waving swastika flags.
That's horrible. The city sued them, hopefully they all land in jail for a long time.
> “the Blood Tribe made good on those threats,” noting that the city and its residents received at least 33 bomb threats in subsequent weeks
That looks like a slam dunk case, hopefully the city judges and prosecutors there have no problem handling it.
I'd would think the fact that disgusting group marched there and made bomb threats would make the community and the government protect them even more. The city launched a law suite after all.
Now ask the question -- if Trump hadn't amplified allegations of this community as illegal immigrants eating dogs and cats, would they have been harassed and threatened?
To me, the counterfactual clearly points to no.
The Harris/Trump debate gave a set of clear accusations on film, so many that the denizens of the internet made several clever remixes to fight bullies with humor.
Always helpful to review the guidelines. Thanks for the opportunity to do so [0]
> In Comments
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
This isn't comprehensive, but it is enough to identify what you and I may take for granted from others in the community. If you feel I have abused good faith in my comments, I request you delineate what, exactly, you feel is not in good faith.
tomrod, you're a serial abuser of the guidelines. You should take some time to think about what you say and do on HN and whether you are adding to the discourse are detracting from it. I think you could adjust your tone on almost all your political comments to be more thoughtful and less combative. It would be less work to point out cases where you observe the spirit of these guidelines than where you violate them. I'm sure you wouldn't wish to be so prejudiced, but you come across as an ideologue. Is that really who you want to be?
Yet Trump claimed they (Haitian immigrants) were eating people's dogs and cats.
So your first part of the comment could have been an exercise towards food faith, and your latter part, perhaps mildly excusable as an ill attempt at humor in normal times, is for most who read it an attempt to muddy the very clear facts that Trump lies all the time.
> The fact that nobody is stopping these people is the clearest evidence anyone needs that there's no such thing as "the deep state".
What do you mean? I see plenty of people trying to stop DOGE. Not very successful so far, considering the President does have significant powers over the Executive function.
And the "deep state" is nothing special. It's simply the unelected government employees. It's the same thing you see in big private corporations and the reason why CEOs tend to fire all the VPs and each org "cleans house" - people who don't agree with your mission will work to oppose it.
> I'm incredibly depressed and disillusioned to see fellow software engineers drinking the Kool-aid so deeply while they dismantle the US federal government.
Please point to a single component of the US federal government in its founding document, the Constitution, that has received as much as a glance.
The last century of cruft, corruptly driven by people not standing for election is where the action is found.
$37T of debt later, we're at the end of a cycle.
Let's just make sure DOGE is not a cure worse than the disease.
In the US power is divided between three branches of government to prevent any one bench from becoming too powerful through checks and balances. Consolidation of power in one branch would mean unchecked, dictatorial powers.
-> How did you come to that conclusion from their comment?
Consolidating power in the executive branch is about creating a dictatorship. How could it be anything else? They're trying to neuter the other branches of government. Trump has explicitly and repeatedly expressed a desire to be a dictator.
> TLDR: a sufficient amount of congress implicitly endorses trumps activities.
Which is because Congress has been captured by the autocrat that wants to turn himself into a dictator. They've rolled over and are allowing it to happen. They are setting up a system that will allow them to hold into power for perpetuity, and prevent future elections from changing that.
I’ll believe it when a constitutional amendment happens.
In any case congress has hardly been captured. People keep saying this nonsense as if it’s been many years. It hasn’t even been a month. Once the constituents digest the activity congress will adjust accordingly.
Most of trumps EOs have been blocked or frozen for now. The system is balancing as intended.
> Not really - if you’ve studied political science there’s a concept called unitary executive theory, which basically says (...)
If you read up on unitary executive theory, you won't need to look too hard to stumble upon the fact that it is rejected as being sugar-coated totalitarianism.
Having lived under authoritarianism, I strongly urge you to firmly and swiftly form a negative opinion regarding an executive fully exetcising bypass of the legislature and courts.
Musk is a liar who lies all the time and is lying about the purpose of DOGE. His actual goal is to settle scores and shut down any departments that he doesn't like. What is is doing is VERY illegal and a Democratic DOJ could very well arrest him for it.
What is in the constitution is that ONLY Congress has the power to control spending tax dollars. DOGE has no legal authority to stop any payments that Congress has approved.
Arrogant Silicon Valley CEOs think the world belongs to them. They want liberal democracy to fail and transition to a "tech monarchy".
Quite frankly, I don't think the 2026 and 2028 elections will happen.
Look up Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, Steve Bannon, Marc Andreessen, and other figures involved with the "Neo-Reactionary accelerationist" Dark Enlightenment movement. One of Elon's little DOGE lackeys (Edward Coristine) has "there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see" as his twitter bio. "Cathedral" is Curtis Yarvin's word for the "cultural hegemony" of universities and the government, hence why he wants to destroy the federal Department of Education especially as well as any federal agency and the federal government from the inside.
It turned out that the whole American experiment of tech-capitalism out of Silicon Valley was a huge failure and a existential threat to decency, stability, and order in the Western world.
Even Paul Graham will lightly chastise Elon Musk on twitter, but is largely fine with what Musk is doing.
You are correct. It's ironic that they wave the American flag and claim to be patriots, and yet no one hates the American government more than the Trump MAGA cultists who wave the American flag the hardest. The cruelty is the point. Millions of federal workers who are decent and hard-working folks will lose their jobs. Millions of poor people in the Global South will die, but this is what they want because most of these NRx insurrectionists are also racists and white supremacists, including DOGE staffer Marko Elez who had to resign for the racist tweets that were uncovered by WSJ. White supremacist influencers like Nick Fuentes, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Paul Joseph Watson, and so on have poisoned the world. And Elon Musk retweets these trendy white supremacists and neo-nazies. Elon even confirmed that the Roman salute was what everyone thought it was the first time with a meme, and then is interfering with Germany's election by pressing his thumb to lift up the neo-nazi AfD party. No one seems to care and Paul Graham is still friendly with Elon Musk. Billionaires will always stay pals with fellow billionaires. Fascism is essentially another word for corporatism. They want the government to be small and weak so that their corporations can be more powerful than the government.
Always interesting to remember how they came, in a big way, for aid recipients and transgender people first, probably the most vulnerable. While also cancelling anything DEI, Meals on Wheels, you mention it.
This presidency so far has some real “First They Came…” vibes.
smelly Musk thinks his sledgehammer method at head count reduction at the federal level makes any real significant is a fool's errand without a deep working knowledge of government. what about all the monies incurred from inept procurement deals and revolving door policy. Ask about federal fiscal spending when our enemies see no one is manning the gate. “We are being led by weak and feckless leadership who only serve to enrich themselves.”
Vought, the new head of OMB -- the agency which no one has heard of but which actually is extremely influential in terms of government agencies -- is one of the major authors of Project 2025. Let that sink in a bit.
So yeah, Trump was lying about Project 2025 (but what else is new?)
DOGE is what you get when you take the performance management culture of big tech and apply it to government. Make big changes with 0 testing then no matter the outcome brag loudly about it. Move fast and break things indeed
I’m not following - no one has the skill of understanding and solving problems in any domain. There’s no reason elons experience in the tech sector makes them uniquely capable
I think the sycophants cheering these moves on are so interesting. I have absolutely no sense that any of these changes are going to have meaningful positive impacts in my life. "We all benefit" in what sense? Aesthetically? What does USAID have to do with me? What positive impact will I see from banning the X gender marker? How do undocumented migrants affect my life negatively?
I have health issues that I can't get help with because of my insurance, my rent increased significantly last month, and my grocery bills have never been higher. I have real life problems to deal with. The X gender marker does not even register as a problem in my universe. Our government seems to be more concerned with policing 0.5% of the population than with dealing with real life problems. Perhaps that's why?
Of many folks I know I’m perhaps the least bothered/most open to what they are trying to do in spirit but can you share more about this impact? To date it seems like the amounts we are talking about are small in relative numbers and fraud has a pretty specific meaning which doesn’t apply to anything I’m aware of.
That’s true, all those people who now can’t get lifesaving HIV medication for themselves and their babies sure did benefit from this. Ditto the charities that relied on grants to provide basic health care, food, etc, and now have to close. Bravo!
PEPFAR, created by _Republican_ George W. Bush, is dead as part of this, here's _Republican_ George W. Bush claiming it saved 25 million lives in a talk two years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIOUWlL_HLQ
Unless we're all pointing at everyone we don't like, regardless of if they were the most notable _Republican_ of the past few decades except for maybe Trump, and calling them Democrats.
Empire maintenance is hard. USAID was a form of soft power that prevented the necessary use of blunt force.
Given the rhetoric against China, the consolidation of power and rise of nationalistic fervor. I suppose we’re just a few years from war with China. Presumably under a false flag operation ala Gulf of Tonkin style.
The voters chose it. Those that voted against it lost. The courts have superpowered the executive and he is taking full advantage of it. The system is working as designed.
You had me until "The system is working as designed."
The system is most definitely not working as designed, primarily because Congress has completely abdicated their congressional duty as a co-equal branch of government. Their are good congressional reasons why high-level advisors to the president need to be approved by the Senate. The fact that Musk and his cabal are doing an end run around this congressional requirement by posing as some sort of "special government employee" or whatever is laughable.
Never mind that funding can't just be cancelled because the executive branch doesn't want to spend it, and that is completely contrary to the "power of the purse" that is the purview of Congress.
> Congress has completely abdicated their congressional duty as a co-equal branch of government
The voters also elected people to Congress that are aligned with his agenda, so they are allowing him to do what he wants.
> The fact that Musk and his cabal are doing an end run around this congressional requirement by posing as some sort of "special government employee" or whatever is laughable.
A judge just signed off on it so it seems to be legal.
> that is completely contrary to the "power of the purse" that is the purview of Congress.
Some of us don’t agree with the rampant waste in our government. Some of us also don’t have faith that the system can fix itself without drastic measures like this.
I’ll admit I’m wrong if and when it turns out that I am. Until then, I’m cheering it on.
Rather than tearing the system down, let's identify the areas of rampant waste to a degree more lucid than what a news channel or podcast claims. Most areas people claims for alleged waste are legally required/statutory or spindoctored (especially grant topics).
Social security isn't waste, but it is on the chopping block.
It blows my mind that people are so hungry to hurt so many others and themselves in the process.
“Notably, the views among DOGE supporters differ when it comes to where to draw the line: The first of the three people with knowledge of its work told Semafor the “entire federal government” is up for grabs. The second person suggested the line would be drawn at areas affecting national security and initiatives providing direct benefits.”
So I've been paying for social security my whole life and you think it's a waste and you have the right to take the program away from me? Will I be getting a refund?
FWIW, the US Supreme Court ruled[0] in a famous 1960 case that Social Security is an ordinary income tax and you are not entitled to receive any benefit of that payment, same as income tax. Whether we like it or not, that has been the law of the land for 65 years. Most Americans are simply ignorant of this reality.
> Like 1/4 of everything I make goes to social security.
If you want to be taken seriously, don't make false claims. It weakens your other arguments. Social Security is 6.2% (12.4% if self-employed since the employer takes care of half) on the first $176,100 of your net income (which for the median US taxpayer is on all their income). Medicare is 1.45% (2.9% if self-employed, same as Social Security).
So if you are self-employed, you pay at most 15.3% of your income below $176,100 in combined Social Security and Medicare. That's a lot, but it's not 25%. If you are not self-employed, you're paying 7.65% on income below $176,100 to both Social Security and Medicare which is very far from 25%.
If you're earning over $176,100 your effective Social Security tax rate will drop.
I agree, that was a striking claim to make. Perhaps the person you responded to puts a lot into their 401k thinking it is social security or thinks income tax is FICA?
We've had since FDR to try and curb the post WW2 federal hyper expansion. Regulations keep growing, our prison population reaches one of the highest rates in world, and we get vanishingly little infrastructure or other benefits for the taxes the common man pays.
Patience has expired.
There was lots of time to use the scalpel. The doctor never showed up, so the pre med dropout showed up with a sledgehammer, dumb and self serving as he may be. Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.
> Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.
To this, we agree. To better understand a why so many are resisting, I encourage you to read up on Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment, then who has associated themselves with that movement. The overlap in the Executive branch and Trump's more outlandish ideas are substantial. Technofascism and neofeudalism are not acceptable solutions.
This is silly. USAID was investigating the usage of Starlink in Ukraine, which by the way Musk provided completely free of charge at a time when no one else was doing anything for Ukraine.
DOGE found that USAID has actually spent taxpayer dollars to funding terrorists.
I have no idea how we try to connect these dots to be “personal”. USAID was a sham and it’s been exposed.
I think maybe you're missing the negatives Musk/Starlink did in Ukraine.
And they alleged terrorism. They did not show it, FISA and other courts aren't engaged, and they have Flynn, a foreign agent, making those claims and boosting them.
How did DOGE determine that the funds went to terrorists? Do you know? I certainly don't. I want to know, so we can put the right guardrails in place for the future, and frankly, I don't trust musk at all. He lies whenever it's convenient.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we should be ensuring it's shining everywhere.
I don't know but it sure is interesting that White House is saying Elon Musk will now be reviewing his own conflicts of interest [1] as a man heavily invested in companies with large government contracts or beneficiaries of government incentive schemes.
Or maybe it's just too avoid having to worry about sexually harassing his employees[2].
I’ve heard lots of people say that, and you’re entitled to that opinion. But I have yet to hear a single coherent argument explaining why that’s the case.
I’m open minded but so far all I’ve heard is Musk/Trump haters clanging the alarm that somehow they’re going to take over the government or ruin America or whatever. With no explanation and no facts to back it up.
The evidence is fairly smacking you in the face. Have you seen the number of Executive Orders that Trump has been signing? Many of which are almost certainly to be overturned?
Because your democracy is being run by fiat, and many of those Executive Orders are batshit insane, or just plain illegal. And you seem to be OK with this.
His Executive Order blocking birthright citzenship was blocked. And that is batshit insane - literally thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) would suddenly be affected by that EO.
And DOGE. You know they are going in and changing safety systems at the FAA, right? Insane.
I would be much happier if this was being done with any form of thought behind the actions. Put together a report of the "wasteful" spending and target it. The whole department destruction at the whims of one man is the concerning part. Doubly so given he's appearing to target departments that has "wronged" him in the past.
Cool, so when the fascists have dismantled government and taken over power, at least we might have your apology, although I doubt it even then, you'll just shift the goalposts.
I don't agree with the waste in our government, but Musk has shown himself to be a habitually dishonest individual, so when he says he is out to cut waste, I don't believe him, I think his goal is to target his personal and political enemies while finding ways to redirect funds into his own ventures.
But... you saw that Trump said he wanted to turn the Gaza Strip into an Arabic Riviera and dispossess all the Palestinians... and he wants to take over Greenland, which is not an American territory?
> Some of us don’t agree with the rampant waste in our government.
Sure, there's waste as in any large organization, and streamlining is great. But to say that all US foreign aid is "rampant waste" and USAID should be shut down? Because it's not being shut down because it was "wasteful" but because it's full of "radical leftists" (supposedly).
None of the purges at any of these agencies so far have had anything to go with "government waste". They are based on ideology.
Come on, open your eyes -- they're being pretty open about what this is about.
You do realize that what Musk and DOGE is doing is completely unconstitutional, right? ONLY Congress has the right to spend tax dollars. DOGE has no legal right whatsoever to stop any payments Congress has approved.
A Democratic DOJ could very well arrest and charge Musk for what he is doing.
I didn’t allow anything. But compared with the folks running against him? Yeah, I’d pick him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Get us a real candidate from the Democratic Party and we could have a discussion but Kamala was even less qualified than trump and what many non-Americans seem to miss is that Americans care about policy A LOT. We generally don’t give a shit if our president is a meanie head or says not nice things. In general we care a LOT about what they say they’re going to do.
Trump’s plans for the nation sounded pretty good to myself and a whole heck of a lot of other Americans winning the popular vote, the electoral college, and (my memory is fuzzy) every swing state except 1?
How do you figure Harris is less qualified than Trump? I never heard Harris say she would try to take over Greenland. I never heard her say it's a good idea to inject bleach to get rid of Covid...
Trump supported a violent attempt to overturn the results of an election. In other democratic countries that's called an attempted coup. Not to mention Trump's own attempts to pressure states not to certify the results.
I don't care if Trump has amazing plans or is Mother Teresa and Henry Ford and Benjamin Franklin rolled into one, he is anti-democracy and that automatically disqualifies him, and those who support him should be ashamed of themselves for not caring. (and that's before we get into his character; I kind of liked Trump way back at the beginning, thought he might be a Ross Perot type of guy; but once that recording of him talking about women came out (before the 2016 elections), I lost all respect for him. And all of his actions since then have been completely self-serving. There is no way someone like that should have so much power, not just over the country but as commander in chief of the military.)
So when you have someone who is such a poor character, and who is anti-democracy, policy doesn't really matter.
It took almost 40 years of constant GOP propaganda from things like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. People like the Koch brothers have been dedicated to this goal for a very long time.
People who read "a great deal of" political news, from any source, went for Harris by 8%. People who never read any political news went for Trump by 20%.
Only if political news media is somehow a neutral, purely unbiased source that just tells plain facts, sure. "They are just not informed", "they are stupid", etc. If the media is partisan or biased, the situation reverses, and now the Harris voters are living in some media bubble with their own cnns, reddits and other friendly outposts, and then scratching their heads at the outcome in the end -- "How could this possibly be? All our polls were predicting a win. Maybe if we had 35 indictments instead of 34, that would have tipped the balance, for sure".
Much of Trump's voter base derives from people who distrust the "news". I don't blame them, and those folks would be just as quick to point out the ignorance of DNC voters, a party repeatedly shooting their supporters in the foot every election.
It has been a decades long journey getting here. There are so many contributing factors it is hard to even know where to begin. The most important thing to remember is that about half the country is very unhappy with the way things are going.
If this was happening under Obama’s tenure the headline would read something like “whip-smart youths revitalizing government by removing calcified waste!”
If in doubt, I recommend checking them out because they're incredibly awful, to the extent that it makes you wonder if the payment system he pushed to had ethnic information attached to it.