[jklinger410]

> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation

This narrative infuriates me. Either you are right, and entire wings of our government are abetting a coup, or you are wrong, and our government has huge back doors that no one is watching.

Both realities reveal something urgently broken with the United States. In a way that should scare the entire western world to its core.

[darth_avocado]

DOGE is not illegal. However the legality of some of the things they do is under question. The current government, including DOGE is being operated like “Just do as many things as possible, so that the lawsuits can’t keep up”. While lawyers are busy trying to stop big things, many small but important items will slip through the cracks and will take decades to undo.

Edit: BTW this strategy has always been available, it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.

[randallsquared]

> it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.

That's not why: Reagan, Clinton, W, and Obama all had the opportunity for sweeping changes of this magnitude without regard to further political careers, but none of them wanted to make radical changes. Their view of the US government (even Reagan's!) was "basically doing a good job, but maybe needs a tweak". The current administration does not appear to share this view, though we'll see how that goes.

[nitwit005]

The presidents aren't kings. They need congressional support to get anything major done. They rarely support sweeping changes.

And more recently, congress essentially won't do anything, period. Either because the president is not of their party, or more recently, chaos within the Republican party itself.

Which is why you see presidents trying to do things with executive orders, but typically the courts (correctly) block overreach there. Trump is busy accumulating court rulings against his administration.

[ty6853]

A simplified view: since FDR the main difference in presidential action is whether to crank progress at 1 or 11 in the ever expanding book of regulations, favored tax nook and crannies, and various benefits plans for pay-to-play voters like SS recipients.

Trump is threatening to turn that knob to -1 or lower, for good or ill.

[shafyy]

> BTW this strategy has always been available, it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.

Or, you know, maybe it's also because politicians who are not total psychos don't want to fuck over an entire country for their own gains.

[gitaarik]

Yes, or the psychos that were in control before were very happy with how the money machine was running for them, so they didn't need to change anything.

Now that some other psychos are taking over, the people that got used to the previous psychos are uneasy because change it not easy, especially rigorous change.

But maybe this will make people actually realize that the system was always flawed. The current administration just exposes that.

[shafyy]

How can you even compare the level of psycho-ness of the Biden administration to the Trump administration?

[jklinger410]

> While lawyers are busy trying to stop big things, many small but important items will slip through the cracks and will take decades to undo.

So the government is designed in such a way that someone can do illegal things without those currently running the systems simply saying "no?"

They have the power to do the things, and then we have to wait for it to be litigated. Watching the cases against Trump drop like flies after he got elected, knowing the Supreme Court is packed full of members of one party. This doesn't seem like a reliable solution.

[darth_avocado]

Yes. That’s how branches of government are set up. Judicial and legislative branches are supposed to keep the executive branch in check. Judicial branch is right now working to keep things in check but it will take time, resources and money to address every small thing. Opening the floodgates is a good strategy to overwhelm this branch. Which is where the legislative branch comes in. If they see the executive branch over reaching, you act to stop it. But our legislative branch is not acting (on both sides of the aisle). Btw this is the same problem a lot of modern democracies are facing and is not unique to the US.

[jfengel]

One side of the aisle is powerless. They can make speeches, but all legislative progress requires the approval of the Speaker of the House. Who will refer any legislation to a committee, which is also controlled by a committee chair of the same party.

[darth_avocado]

I don’t buy that argument because that side of the aisle has been voting with the other side on pretty much everything in the new term. I also don’t buy this argument because like I said in my original comment, the tactic of using presidential powers in this way was always available, including when this side of the aisle had the majority.

[ty6853]

Judicial branch has basically no enforcement. They can judge all they like, if the other branches or even states tell them to shove it up their ass, what can they do?

Not long ago Hawaii told the Supreme Court 'spirit of aloha' and the broken paddle trumps _Bruen_. And nothing stops them, the Supreme court has a few armed marshalls and little else.

[darth_avocado]

Yes that does happen and ideally the executive branch is responsible for enforcement, which creates an opportunity for the President to say no. But that undermines the courts and affects the faith people have in the Judicial system. The ramifications of that trust eroding are far and wide, and the economy would take a massive hit. People will then vote differently in 2 years and hope the legislative branch does its job.

One thing to also consider is that sometimes, the execution of the court orders will rely on local governments and locally elected officials in local enforcement bodies (like the Sheriff’s Office or the local PD). In that case, enforcement will vary across the country.

[intended]

The government isn't designed for one party to decide to play winner take all politics. It was assumed that people would find a way to work together, not that one party could punish bipartisanship within its own ranks, and then be rewarded for it.

Furthermore America has been moving towards this for decades. There has been openly shared plans on how this was to be achieved, for multiple different stages. From stacking the courts, to gerry mandering, to creating Fox, to strategies to stack the SC, to more recently project 2025.

---

I am feeling dumb for having to mention this, after re-reading your message. Am i right in suspecting you are aware of these strategies and are driving to a specific point?

[timeon]

> It was assumed that people would find a way to work together

This is not in line with first-past-the-post voting system. If you want to have "people work together" you need coalitions.

[mrguyorama]

The late 1700s predate most mathematical analysis of voting systems.

[intended]

Congress deadlock is part of that idea, that people have to find common cause to work together.

[gkoberger]

Yes.

If Elon says one thing and someone else thinks the opposite, it comes down to a battle of wills... and Elon doesn't back down. Sure, it can go to the courts, but the courts only matter if they're listened to or enforced. Neither of which will happen here.

[jfengel]

Yes. Precisely.

It's not reliable. It worked because Presidents had always been decent about it. The alternative would be to tie the system even further into knots, just to avoid a problem that would require cartoonish villainy.

Until now.

[timeon]

What would you expect from system that did not change much since 18th century? As example France had like 5 iterations in between.

[dangus]

lol, DOGE is obviously illegal. Trump created a fake department of the government without congressional appropriation of funds.

[darth_avocado]

Not everything in the government needs congressional appropriation of funds.

[dangus]

How do DOGE employees get paid?

If the answer is “they don’t” then they aren’t government employees or contractors and shouldn’t be inside private areas of government buildings and systems.

If the answer is anything else then it’s either a misappropriation of funds or an illegal private pay scheme.

[HumblyTossed]

> Both realities reveal something urgently broken with the United States.

Our government operations expect people to conduct themselves as adults.

Clearly, if we survive Elon's coup, we need to encode these norms into law.

[llamaimperative]

IMO it might be a good time for a constitutional convention after this. Our system has always had gaping holes in it and I think the outcome of all this could be catastrophic for so many normal Americans across the political spectrum that they'd be willing to actually close many of them in good faith.

[jltsiren]

The broken part is the idea that the legislative and judicial branches can act as checks and balances for the executive branch. In the end, the executive branch is the only branch with the ability to do something. The other two are just a bunch of talking heads.

Many other republics have split the executive branch into multiple semi-independent centers of power. The head of state and the head of government can be separate roles. A directly elected president may be responsible for signing laws and appointing senior officials, while a prime minister subordinate to the parliament may be in charge of running the executive branch. And government departments may have dual leadership with a politically appointed minister setting the directions and a career director appointed by the president running the department. Because the director's term is independent from the political appointees, they can refuse to comply if the minister asks something illegal.

Republics have all kinds of failure modes. For example, Hungary was supposed to be a robust parliamentary republic. But due to non-proportional elections, slightly over 50% of votes were enough for a sufficient supermajority to rewrite the constitution.

[neom]

DW covered this today with a professor who seems to generally know what he's talking about and from what I could tell is not spinning anything in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpKhyL9PEPQ

He does a good job of explaining the facts of the legalities etc.

[taurknaut]

I'm not really sure if you can call it a "coup" if all parties involved admit he was legitimately elected. Furthermore, this isn't exactly a bait-and-switch. He told us what exactly what he wanted to do. We already knew he would try to do illegal stuff. If you break the law and nobody who voted for you complains (unrealistic I realize, but bear with me), is the rule of law really that secure? If we only criticize Trump when he breaks the law, but not the democrats when they send arms to Israel in blatant violation of the Leahy Laws, how can we get upset when people push the boundaries further?

It's been more than 20 years (or might be about that?) that we passed the law that said "if you prosecute Bush for warcrimes we will invade the Hague". Granted, we were never a treaty cosigner (sharing the lovely company of Russia, North Korea, and Iran), but it's very convenient we have a "laws for thee but not for me" attitude.

Look I'm just saying we've been headed in this direction for a while and I don't expect the institutions we're supposed to care about preserving doing much to stop it. Americans need to get a lot more mad if they want politicians to represent them well. I'd hazard a guess most americans have never contacted their representatives, vote in their non-swing state (effectively making their vote worthless), and pat themselves on the back for a civic duty well done. I think we've gotten ourselves into a position where politicians who have spent most of their careers failing to pass legislation now need to pull political ability from who the hell knows where to actually follow through on their promise to fight facism. Very grim times.

[moogly]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

[exceptione]

What most people do seem not to grasp here is that MAGA is full steam working to make sure it doesn't matter who you are going to vote. Trump is just the smoke screen.

IF, by a rare circumstance, the media moguls decide to not sane-wash the incredible fire-hose of lies, corruption, fake news, and religious extremism, and the DEMs get into office in some next term, those DEMs will find the state destroyed beyond repair.

Health epidemics, broken foreign relation relations, dysfunctional government agencies (filled to the brim with stupid or evil clients from the shadow elites), downright abolished agencies, information sphere completely muddied in Musk-style, tech oligarchs sworn allegiance to MAGA (done), abolishment of fact checkers (in progress), removal of experts and intelligentsia (busy), impoverished voters (in progress).

You can enter the cockpit, but MAGA makes sure you are never going to fly again. If you want to get somewhere, you will need the fixers.

People here are discussing legalities with a situational awareness of 3 millimeter maximum. This feverish is understandable, we MUST interpret things like they are normal. If you want to keep it that way, don't read the next sentence.

As soon as the news broke of Trumps reelection, all cases where dropped quickly. That is all you need to now.