[polairscience]

This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour.

The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at NSF with total disregard for what they were doing or why. Not evaluated efficiency cuts. Just thrashing about.

Science in the US will be chaotically torn apart by this and a host of other decisions.

https://www.wired.com/story/national-science-foundation-febr...

[abirch]

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding.

We may be looking at a lost decade.

[polairscience]

We'll be very lucky if it's a lost decade. One of the many factors that made the US a technical powerhouse were the long threads across disciplines where people could do focused research. you had to reapply for grants but generally could be sure that important programs would stay in place. This breaks all of that. It seems poised to break research as we know it.

As one of the many researchers that will likely lose their career to this, I will be forced to choose between stopping work that benefits both the public and industry or moving abroad to one of the many nations that do appreciate such effort. We are about to not only lose our future efforts but also hemorrhage current talent.

I'm surely not the only person who's inbox\phone exploded with messages after the news broke with collaborators abroad offering to help me start a lab at their institute. Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.

[peterlada]

China is not losing this decade, the scientific gap will add to the growing chasm of future outcomes between the two superpowers.

[teleforce]

This reminds me the so called dark ages where western people just conveniently skipped through 1000 years of very productive knowledge of development and contributions from the Arab and Muslim world centered around Toledo, Spain and Baghdad, Iraq as it never happened [1].

The false narative is that it's straight from Greek and Roman era to the Renaissance era as if mathematicians and scientists were just fall asleep in the entire world where in actual fact in the Arab and Muslim world many thousands of books from Greece/Rome/India/China were painstakenly translated (no Google translate, no printing press) and many more new books were written.

[1] Toledan Tables:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledan_Tables

[rob74]

And this is just one of many ways the US is currently shooting itself in the foot (or, if you prefer, cutting off its nose to spite its face). Thanks, Elon! Putin and Xi must be cheering...

> Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.

...until the extreme-right populists (supported by the current US administration) come to power there too?

[ViewTrick1002]

Given that European countries and the EU except a few outliers runs on proportional representation it is way harder for the extreme right to win a majority.

We’ve been dealing with our own extreme right parties for the past 20-30 years. They generally bounce between 10-25% of the vote depending on where in the political cycle they are. Like all parties do.

Never enough to dictate policy, but enough to influence when at the top of their cycle.

Compare with the US where only ~25% is needed to take over a party due to abysmal turnouts and electoral system.

These 25% can then win an election allowing the extreme right to dictate policy, as we now see in the US.

[esbranson]

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the US party systems.

The "parliamentary party" is probably to which you refer. The elected congressfolk and legislators.

The political party, the people who run the party, is often elected at the precinct and county level. No idea how European parties work, but I suspect something similar (the UK Conservatives are similar).

Americans may realize that they're a party member and they've never once voted for a party officeholder, and don't even know they can or should be. Whatever percent it is to take over a party, we actually don't know because there is rarely a public vote. They are able to because the leftwing propaganda (NPR etc) have made their consumers dumb as hell. It's a twisted self-perpetuating system with which we have little visibility much less participation.

[rob74]

> Given that European countries and the EU except a few outliers runs on proportional representation it is way harder for the extreme right to win a majority.

Harder, but it still happens. That's why Trump is a big fan of Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party:

Fidesz won a supermajority in the 2010 election, adopted national-conservative policies, shifted further to the right and became Eurosceptic. The 2011 adoption of a new Hungarian constitution was highly controversial as it consolidated power with Fidesz. Having set Hungary on a path of democratic backsliding, its majority of seats remained after the 2014 election, and following the escalation of the migrant crisis, Fidesz began using right-wing populist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Following the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, it currently holds a majority in the National Assembly with 135 seats. It has also held the presidency since 2010, has endorsed the election of every president since 2000, and it enjoys majorities in all 19 county assemblies, while being in opposition in the General Assembly of Budapest. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidesz)

Let's see how the United States will look like in 15 year's time...

[tialaramex]

Populism requires that you're popular. Brexit clones were extremely popular for the right across Europe right up until Brexit actually happened, and then suddenly they all remembered they'd never wanted anything to do with such a stupid plan and began scrubbing praise for it from their materials, back to "reform" and tinkering at the edges.

The trick is to be First. You can sell "Just do X and it'll be great" unless the people have already seen what a disaster X is.

[rob74]

Well, the AfD wants Germany to withdraw from the EU, and the only reason why ruling right-wing populist parties in eastern Europe (e.g. Hungary) don't do it is because it's the hand that still feeds them money (despite them continuously biting it).

TBF, Brexit was a particularly bad idea because of the Northern Ireland situation, so others can still feed the illusion that their *exit would be "cleaner"...

[richrichardsson]

Reducing the problems of Brexit to the Northern Ireland situation is quite blinkered.

Businesses (especially smaller ones) have suffered immensely as a result of supply chain issues, lopsided bureaucracy and red-tape.

[michael1999]

And AfD has topped out at 20% after Musk's "help".

[graemep]

> until Brexit actually happened, and then suddenly they all remembered they'd never wanted anything to do with such a stupid plan

Why is Brexit perceived so badly in the EU? Economically the UK has done about as well or better than the other big European economies.

[acdha]

What makes you think the UK is doing better? Most reports have found the opposite, with costs in the hundreds of billions range versus where the economy would otherwise have been:

https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/12/brexit-here-is-...

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/london-mayor-says-brexit-ha...

https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-new-report-suggests-uk-311...

One potential confound is that the UK was starting with a strong position so if you just compare it to, say, Portugal it’s still looking better but that doesn’t tell you the gap wouldn’t have otherwise been even wider.

[stevesimmons]

Because Brexit solved nothing and made lots of things worse.

[cinntaile]

Can you show us some statistics to back that up? From the time of brexit until now seems like a good time period.

[Terr_]

In the places that already did X, it will limp along as supporters try to deny that they that they chose something predictably dumb.

[BLKNSLVR]

> We may be looking at a lost decade.

We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation of prior allies, reduced safety nets for the vulnerable, increased rhetoric against poorly defined 'foreign types', anti-intellectualism.

It's a helluva vacuum being created, and I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going to fill it.

[UncleOxidant]

I keep oscillating between are they just stupid or are they malicious and I'm starting to settle on the latter given the kinds of actions this administration is taking. Ironic that their voters thought they'd be mAkINg AMeRIcA gREaT aGAin when in fact they're going to cause us to lose our leadership role in many areas.

[esalman]

It's a good thing you are "starting to settle" 2025. I mean before 2020 they disbanded federal bodies for pandemic prep and look what happened.

[gwd]

But was that malice, or stupidity? Do you think they disbanded pandemic prep because they wanted people to die in a pandemic? It seems much more likely that they were too stupid to realize that being unprepared for a pandemic is way more costly than being prepared for one.

There's certainly a lot of malice: asking for names of FBI agents who worked on Jan 6 cases, and in putting Tulsi Gabbard over the CIA, refusing to enforce the laws against offering bribes to foreign officials, cutting agencies regulating Trump's and Musk's businesses. But cutting pandemic prep, firing people working on basic technology... that shows that they're both malicious and stupid.

[freejazz]

It doesn't really matter what their intent is when the result is the same.

Also...

> Do you think they disbanded pandemic prep because they wanted people to die in a pandemic

Are you familiar with the term reckless?

[esalman]

Saying this is stupidity is an underestimation. One does not simply become the most powerful and the richest man on earth by playing stupid. In fact we are stupid for believing so- that's exactly what they want.

[zombot]

Still, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

[ruytlm]

To put it simply: this is not adequately explained by stupidity.

[kgwxd]

I really hate that aphorism. Malicious people love it though. “Fool me once…”

[_DeadFred_]

Except these people have stated their intentions as malicious over and over and over so there is no need to 'ascribe' anything to them.

[naijaboiler]

in a practical sense, well executed stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

[throw0101c]

> Still, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

¿Porque no los dos?

> “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/flo...

[freen]

Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

[_DeadFred_]

They have stated/published that their intentions are malicious over and over again. But for some reason people keep wanting to steelman their position into something different than what they say it is.

[lonelyasacloud]

The confusion is caused by a belief that it is Trump [0] who is making calling the shots.

[0] He probably believes it as well.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I genuinely believe that Elon Musk just "wants to do something , because he promised efficiency" , does the worst job at it because he's incompetent at such stuff and tries to oversell what he does.

I once saw a video of a guy explaining genuinely how elon can technically reach its number of $ tax payers saved, it required US to invest highly in a digital system like that of estonia.

But oh no , he's going to take your grandma s social security.

Elon musk is both stupid and malicious.

I am not pro billionare , I genuinely believe that there might be very billionaire who aren't ruthless in their business and even a little malicious.

I think its totally possible that Elon can be stupid and be the richest man in the world. I have gotten a Elon Musk biography and I really used to admire him untill he bought twitter and renamed it X. to me , it was something of a collosal waste of branding. Twitter is Twitter , not X , yet Elon made it X , what is its relation ? , its like facebook naming itself J or whatever , I don't know.

It has all been a bad show after that. I think he has shown signs of being both stupid and malicious. He called somebody a pedo without no reason I think. He has a fragile ego , I don't know .

I think we need to stop glorifying ruthless bussinessman like billionaires , I think its hard to say this on a startup forum.

I don't know , I think you can appreciate startups / the freedom it brings (if you are genuinely interested in some tech and feel limited by current employment opportunities) and also dislike billionaires if they are fragile ego.

These two aren't contradictory.

[andix]

You forgot "wilfully letting go of democracy". US democracy is far away from dying, but who knows how much longer it can keep holding up.

[digitaltrees]

It’s not far away from dying. I would argue that it’s already too late. The trump administration has shown that it can seize the power to control spending which is constitutionally an exclusive power if congress and courts can’t and won’t do anything about it. We are past a constitutional crisis, republicans had a theory of a unitary executive and prove they can stream roll other branches. Now trump and others are talking about a third term. They play it off as a joke but that’s how they have succeeded in moving the goal posts already.

[InsideOutSanta]

The US spent the last hundred years shifting power from congress to the president, because nobody in congress wanted the blame for any decisions and be either primaried, or lose the election. Trump isn't seizing power, he's just using the power voluntarily given to him. American democracy wasn't ended by a revolution, it was ended by lawfully elected cowards.

[digitaltrees]

No. He is seizing it explicitly as laid out in project 2025. There is an explicit theory of a unitary executive that they say give him power. But they also mapped out the levers of power, control and possible resistance and are systematically and aggressively going after them. I would also point out that the American people didn’t vote for this because trump explicitly denied he would follow project 2025, and yet is implementing every detail down to the letter.

[pizza]

Here are some new concrete developments that I doubt the founders of the democracy would say are fine:

- the Executive Branch now has presumptive - if not absolute - immunity against all criminal official acts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_%282024...

- universities must obey Trump's culture war agenda, otherwise they will be de-accredited and a fine equal to the value of the entire university endowment will be leveraged - https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-vows-to-seize-endowm...

- President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers have long cited impoundment, a little-known legal theory [... that] essentially claims that any president has unilateral authority to ignore Congress’s funding bills and withhold or “impound” funds meant for programs, agencies, or departments deemed unsuitable by the White House. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3244202/...

[joquarky]

> otherwise they will be de-accredited

Who decides the ultimate authority on accreditation anyway?

Why can't we just start a new trust network?

[_heimdall]

Impoundment, or rather the idea that it is an issue, is a weird concept in general. Congress legislates executive directives that should be acted upon and provides a budget. They don't say "spend every dollar we give" and they rarely define metrics for success to know if the executive branch is meeting their goals.

The fact that the Trump administration is able to so easily chest the game and roll back agencies is a side effect of congress writing thousands of pages of legislation without ever bothering to define precisely what is expected of the executive branch.

[_heimdall]

Trump is continuing a trend that has been going on since at least Bush Jr. Presidents for a couple decades now have been moving more power into the executive branch.

Obama and Biden both talked about undoing this, but neither did. The Patriot Act still exists, three letter agencies still have authority to spy on American citizens, and immigration laws still defy what's written on the Statue of Liberty (I think most have forgotten how harsh Obama was on southern immigration).

[mindslight]

... which has been allowed and caused by the Republican congressional obstructionism going on since the 90's. Bush, Obama, and Biden could have reduced their own use of executive power, but they couldn't undo it - rather it was Congress that would have had to reign them in and shrink executive power. Just as the current Congress is ultimately allowing Trump's ongoing authoritarian power grabs, rather than passing laws and impeaching.

For another example, take the frequent neofascist argument that the federal agencies are "unaccountable" unless they are under the direct command of the President. No, the agencies were created by Congress, and have always been accountable to Congress. But Congress has not been doing its job, which is why they seem unaccountable.

[freejazz]

>Trump is continuing a trend that has been going on since at least Bush Jr. Presidents for a couple decades now have been moving more power into the executive branch.

Are you familiar with the constitution? It describes which powers belong to the executive and which don't.

[brigandish]

Since Woodrow Wilson.

[malcolmgreaves]

False equivalence.

[cyberax]

The US is a strong federative country. Individual states are almost literally _states_ (as in "country") and have a lot of power. They can impose their own carbon taxes, net neutrality rules, fund research, etc.

And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.

[zamfi]

Actually, in many cases they cannot.

Take a look at the EPA "exception" that California has needed in order to impose more stringent fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

Many forms of commerce or communication that are relevant across state lines (net neutrality rules, etc.) are considered a federal prerogative and states have limited ability to control these.

Yes, states could do more to fund research--and hopefully they will--but no state has the same level of tax rate as the federal government, and while the NSF budget is "noise" in the federal budget ($10B/$1.7T discretionary) it would be quite a big outlay for most states, even for California it would represent 3%+ of the total state budget to reproduce.

Though, now that I look at that number, maybe it's actually an opportunity for CA...

[hackyhacky]

> And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.

I guess you never heard of gerrymandering.

[archagon]

States need a military to enforce their independence, but almost none have one of note. The National Guard is under the executive branch and state guards tend to be tiny (e.g. just 900 enlisted for CA).

[ajross]

States have "power", but not money. There are no state level science grants anywhere at the scale of the linked article.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

Unless states have their own sovereign militaries that do not and cannot answer to the federal government that is of minor importance.

[UncleOxidant]

And yet states aren't allowed to form alliances with other states according to Article 1 section 10. Sure, states might be able to fund research, but most states on their own aren't going to be able to afford to do this effectively - but if several states could band together to, say, keep funding climate science that might help keep us on track and keep scientists employed until better times come back. But they can't do that.

[malcolmgreaves]

Except that the states have no power because an unchecked executive branch can just claim that it had authority and the states have no recourse to resist.

The US has an incredibly weak form of government.

[rayiner]

1) The fact that the President embodies the executive branch is just what Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The same people who say that’s “just a theory” also think that “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re not serious people.

2) Trump hasn’t seized the spending power. Congress was the one that delegated spending power to the executive branch by appropriating multi-billion line items and directing the executive branch to spend the money with only the vaguest instructions. Live by the delegation sword die by the delegation sword.

[dylan604]

1) While Article II says....it also depends on a checks and balance system with the other two branches of government. We've already seen where the congressional branch is laying down for the executive, and we've also seen where the judicial branch has granted immunity essentially giving carte blanche to the executive. Without equal branches providing checks and balances, you've just ceded power the Constitution requires. Any of the lower courts trying to hold on to any semblance of checks and balance will eventually be reversed once it reaches SCOTUS.

[digitaltrees]

Neither point is accurate. The executive power doesn't include the ability to create a fake department (DOGE), with a fake head (Elon Musk), lie that he isnt running it in court, and then run roughshod over the regulations and laws congress passed around employment regulations.

You know what the constitution does require, advise and consent. Not a single thing elon musk is doing is legal and yet their are seizing the power to remake departments created and funded by congress. If you want to eliminate USAID or any other department have CONGRESS pass a law to make the change, anything else is a constitutional seizure of power.

The executive power doesn't include a concept such as impoundment, yet the trump administration seized $80mil of FEMA funds from the the city of new york bank account.

[bruce511]

Bearing in mind that this administration won the election and a lot of what they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on, I'm not sure democracy is at risk.

One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.

This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to regret their vote, yes they likely didn't understand what they were voting for, but that's the flaw in democracy we're aware of.

Is this what everyone wants? Clearly not. But democracy is about majority rule, not consensus.

When an election is canceled then one can talk about democracy dying.

But right now, Americans are just getting what the majority voted for. They may not necessarily like it, but they voted for it. And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.

Like if or not, the "democracy" part is working well.

[jltsiren]

This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy.

Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the voters want.

A constitution in itself a worthless document, and the checks and balances have no power. The power comes from conventions. Conventions on how the constitution should be interpreted and how the people in power should act within the constitutional framework. If too many people ignore the conventions and interpret the laws and regulations literally to their advantage, democracy will die. It died in the Roman Republic, and it has died in many modern republics. Plenty of authoritarian states maintain nominally democratic institutions. And many of them became like that in a way that was at least nominally legal.

[bruce511]

Ultimately the checks and balances are also elected. Directly in the case of congress, indirectly in the case of the judiciary. (Mitch McConnell obstructed merrick garland and was rewarded for it.)

Of course unrestrained majority decisions lead to terrible outcomes. This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.)

Democracy is objectively a flawed system for this reason. It has never promised to deliver the best, or even good, government. It is what it is.

I agree, this is a literal interpretation of democracy. It is "the will of the people". I'm not sure that anything else could still be even called a democracy.

[coliveira]

One thing Americans don't seem to realize is that the current constitution needs to be rewritten once we get out of this mess. One of the consequences of dictatorships is that they deform the constitution for their purposes. It seems that republicans have done enough to deform the system in an irreparable way.

[_heimdall]

> This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy.

Attempting to run a democracy in a non-literal way seems like a recipe for disaster.

That seems to imply that citizens get to cast a vote and have their voice heard...unless those in charge decide the citizens don't know what is best for them.

As a country we picked Trump. For better or worse we made that bed and we now have to lie in it.

[rayiner]

This is Orwellian double-speak. You’re defining “democracy” to mean “not democracy.”

Nor does the “constitution” support your view. Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

What you’re calling “democracy” and the “constitution” is neither. It’s Wilsonianism, an idea invented by a eugenicist who hated the constitution as well as democracy: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...

[andix]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

Edit: you can use a democratic process to kill off democracy. In the end democracy is dead, and it doesn't really matter anymore why.

[coliveira]

You're right, but that's a flaw of democracy itself. It is known since ancient Greece.

[amluto]

This:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/19/donald-trump-king-i...

doesn’t really sound like democracy.

[bruce511]

Democracy is not about what he does. It's all about how he comes to power.

In 4 years the people will vote again.

[andix]

That's just a prank. But it shows how little the president cares about democracy, or even monarchy.

[rurp]

> voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.

Except that this is completely false. These haphazard cuts are a miniscule portion of the federal budget, even assuming they don't incur a whole bunch of second and third order costs. The exact same administration doing those is going to burn literal orders of magnitude more money on tax cuts for billionaires, border security theater, and other corrupt nonsense. Federal finances were in bad shape a year ago and are going to be absolutely horrid a few years from now.

[bruce511]

Oh, I agree, finances are going to be poor. But these departments cost a lot more than salaries, so firing everyone does save real coin.

And it plays very well with an electorate who wants to see "big changes". That thr changes will hurt them is the point missed by most.

Killing federal departments also plays well with those encumbered by red tape. If there's no CFB there's no one getting in my way to treat customers badly.

USaid buys (bought) a lot of food from US farmers , so in effect that subsidy is going away (without the bad press). The money "going to Ukraine" was being spent at US munition suppliers, so really, it'll hurt those suppliers.

[pstuart]

> they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on,

He campaigned on bringing prices down and exacting revenge. So far failing on the former and going strong on the latter.

This administration has made it clear that they think that the current President should have the power of a king, and the reign to match. We're in uncharted waters and there's rocks ahead.

[BLKNSLVR]

I mostly agree. Trump is behaving in a way that's consistent with his prior rhetoric.

Where I disagree is that there may have been an expectation that the systems outside of "The President" would have stood up for themselves more, offered more resistance and slowed him down more. The slow-moving of government is (was though to be) it's own protection to some extent.

[bruce511]

I'm not sure what evidence suggests that Republicans in congress would grow a spine to resist this. Conversely the evidence since 2016 suggests they actively applaud it.

The voters have voted out any congress people who resisted, sending a clear message that they want this path.

This may not be the pretty side of democracy, but it is democracy.

My point above (which I see is being downvoted) is not thst I see this as "good" , but rather that I see it as democratic. Everything going on is literally because the people voted for it. The stacking of the Supreme Court, the obstructionist behavior in congress, the tolerance for (Trump) crimes- this has all been rewarded, not penalized by voters.

If democracy is the will of the people , then what you see seeing is the power of that will.

[scarface_74]

Trump specifically disavowed Project 2025 when he ran and now is embracing it. He never said he was going to put an unelected billionaire in charge and disregard the Constitution.

> And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.

They are worried about getting primaried and their primary opponent being financed by Musk.

[bruce511]

He disavowed project 25, but it was written by all his inner circle, and he hired them into govt. So, if the voter believed him, well duh.

Musk was a big part of the inner circle before the election. His track record is well known.

In other words everything that is happening was predictable and predicted. Voters knew what they were voting for. Those who are surprised really weren't paying any attention.

[_heimdall]

Wasn't Doge floated before the election, with Trump embracing the idea?

Regardless, Trump has made a living as a (slimy) business man. No one should have heard his campaign speeches and taken them at face value.

He didn't even have to be lying at the time, he could have simply changed his mind. The man seems to be driven only by two motivations: his family and making deals. The first one is often seen as admirable or honorable, the second means you'll do whatever it takes to negotiate a situation where you're better off by whatever metrics matter to you (usually money and status).

[majormajor]

Trump specifically ran saying he didn't agree with many of these plans.

His actions are consistent with cheaper federal government but not smaller federal government. Just a centralized executive government that does what he says.

The method is simple: say what you need to to get approval, do what you always wanted to do after you get it.

See also Kennedy walking back his anti-vaccine positions to get crucial votes out of Republican senators in committee and then promptly revealing he is still anti-vax.

So when he makes comments about at third term and claiming even more power... how consistent do you think that is with smaller federal government or continuing democracy?

[bruce511]

Trump ran on saying whatever to whomever. his intentions though were obvious. He ran on cutting spending by 2 trillion. Where did people think this was going to come from? He ran on ending red tape. He ran on reducing regulation.

These days folk getting approved by the senate just have to show up. No one believes RFK when he says he's changed his mind on vax. I mean, these guys are lackeys, not stupid.

Democracy is about letting people who have no understanding, who pay minimal attention, who are easily led by media and populism, choose who should be in charge.

It is working as designed.

Do we need a better system? I'd argue yes. But all the others are worse.

If the population votes him a 3rd term, If they vote for congress who supports that- that is democracy. The people will get what they vote for.

We are literally seeing what "govt by the people" looks like. This is not democracy dying. It's democracy showing its flaws.

[dylan604]

We're only one skipped election away from democratic death.

[kelnos]

How would you "skip" an election, though? Every single blue state and swing state will hold elections in 2026 and 2028. The federal government has no say in that.

If the red states don't feel like having elections, then I guess their legislatures will be directly appointing electors to send to the electoral college. Outcome will be the same, more or less, as if they held elections.

[dylan604]

Don’t care about state elections as that’s not the point. If someone that was currently in the last term of their Constitutionally limited position decided some sort of martial law that delayed/postponed/canceled an election that would replace them using their SCOTUS provided blanket immunity for official acts while the congressional branch refuse to impeach/convict, then there would not be an election. Anything the states did wouldn’t matter as the complicit congress would just choose to not recognize anything the states did.

It might seem like a bizarre thing to say about the USofA, but we were not far from not certifying the previous election with an opposition led congress.

[rayiner]

This is democracy! You can say it’s a bad idea or whatever. But Trump had Musk on stage promising to do this then we elected him. That’s democracy. Tyranny of the majority.

Also people like it: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HHP... (pp. 29-32)

[watwut]

Democracy involves rule of law.

[rayiner]

In a sense, but not in the sense of all the political branches having to run every decision by lawyers and judges.

[panta]

There have been electoral fraud and a massive disinformation campaign operated by a foreign country. This is not democracy.

[insane_dreamer]

"America First" strategy turns out to be "American Second". (I guarantee you that China will not be idle, and will do everything in its power to fill the void. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen, but it has the best chance it's ever had.)

[anal_reactor]

> It's a helluva vacuum being created, and I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going to fill it.

The biggest asset of the US was that it was a trustworthy business partner. US would fuck you over, but in 90% of cases within the limits of law. Dollar is the world's currency because long-term, it's the most stable currency. And so on.

I think that only Europe has the established institutions to replace the US. Yes, China is powerful, but China is not trustworthy enough to make long-term deals with. Yes, Europe is a much worse option than the US, but it's the second-best thing. Now, if Europe also falls to authoritarianism, then modern world as we know it will end.

[alfiedotwtf]

> We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

It’s not hard to understand why people believe Trump Is a Russian asset

[acdha]

Yes - we don’t have proof that he is, but looking at things like the way he’s handling the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it a fair question to ask whether it would be any different if he was.

I’ve had a similar debate over the DOGE effort to install political commissars throughout the executive branch. There’s one alarm about how skipping a lot of safeguards would make it easier for an adversary to get inside (either by compromising one of their people or relying on the defense being so disrupted) but there seems to be an equally strong argument that a foreign intelligence agency might choose to stay out because nothing they could do would harm U.S. interests more and getting caught might trigger a strong enough reaction to halt the damage.

[alfiedotwtf]

> we don’t have proof that he is

Sorry, I wrote that thinking that everyone know about his financiers. Trump’s business and personal loans aren’t from Americans banks… I’ll give you one try to guess which country they come from!

[groby_b]

This is not "letting go", this is "deliberately giving away and dismantling".

Nobody is that incompetent to do this accidentally.

[trhway]

>We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

many here see it way (me too, though i'm well aware that many times whenever i was critical of Musk, he happened to be right, and in this case - Musk is naturally not anti-science guy, so i'd guess there must be some other reason for him doing that which i'm just not able to see).

I wonder whether somebody from the opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions. In particular what is the expected state near, mid, and longterm and how the current actions are supposed to result in it. It would be great to have it with some ballpark estimates.

[20after4]

Their actions are pretty clearly to consolidate power, replace everyone with loyalists, cut taxes on the rich, deport and depopulate the country and transfer assets to their associates. Once the economy is tanked they can go on a buying spree and pick up all sorts of private assets for bargain price.

[cancerhacker]

I keep thinking about musks group having all this financial data (that his business competitors do not!) and feeding it into a model to find signal he can use to further his empire / investments. I also see his stated intention to make the “one app to rule them all” (for govt ID, banking, etc) as another route to the same data. His payments to / cleaving to trump really accelerated his underlying goal.

[majormajor]

Musk is interested in money and power. Not science.

His interest in money has led him to beliefs that he gets the most money if he cuts as aggressively as possible and pushes others to do as much as they can for as little as they will take. "Efficiency" to protect him from things like taxes or regulation, at the expense of anyone else's desire to not be cut to the bone.

And he's getting power by making a trade - he gets Republican approval by cutting a Federal workforce that right-wingers have long complained about. In exchange they give him power. So even if those cuts don't make a material dent on the national budget or debt, he'll have taken advantage of that power to make a few specific actions to benefit him personally.

Look at the difference between how he talks about space and how NASA does, say. Mars? Not science, not research, but just a place to plant a colony beholden to him that he can tax (without using those words) as much as he wants.

[throwawaymaths]

> I wonder whether somebody from the opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions.

i am not on trump's side (i hate trump; i am neutral on musk except these past few weeks i think he's said -- but not yet really done -- things that are a bit beyond the pale, even for him) but i think this will be positive for American science.

as i posted in sibling comment:

> to steelman the issue: what if there was overinvestment in science? as in we chased money after talent that didnt exist, or was mismatched to the difficulty of the available and fundable open questions.

two things: you'd expect a lot of fraud and misallocated science to have been recently uncovered (Reproducibility crisis, amyloid hypothesis scandals e.g.).

after the cuts, you would expect the quantity of science to go down, but the quality to go up.

i guess technically this isn't a logocal explanation since i dont think trump is doing this in good faith but i think the US might be better off in the end.

[frozenport]

No because these cuts do nothing to address fraud.

In the immediate it seems to have cut short the next generation of scientists leaving more of the entrenched old hands.

[throwawaymaths]

im not arguing intent, I'm arguing effect. the effect depends on how bad the rot is. the existing system is so bad it seems incapable of self-policing (tessier-lavigne was exposed by an undergraduate journalism major, not a fellow scientist). maybe it's time to start over, any 'partial' solution will have a hell of a time figuring out who to cut and who to keep.

[bruce511]

Musk's motivations are simple; the rich have been promised tax breaks, which means deep spending cuts. So gutting the parks service means no parks open to the public, but balances a tax break to billionaires.

Same for "science". That's a long term investment with long term returns. Kill that now for immediate tax breaks. Let someone else worry about the fallout 10 years from now.

Then there's direct interest. The CFB regulates companies processing payments to protect consumers. X wants to process payments without that pesky oversight. CFB is gone.

Musk and Trump sell this to the masses as saving money. Which the masses assume means lower taxes for them. Whereas the billionaires understand it's to remove services from the masses to route more money to themselves. The masses are easily duped - this is literally democracy in action.

[jfengel]

In 2016 they had tax breaks without spending cuts. And he's not actually saving all that much money. The employees are only a small part of the budget.

He's doing it because hate for government employees has been a talking point since Reagan. He's getting huge accolades for sticking it to the evildoers. It's popular and fun.

[trhway]

that is the question - for example SpaceX needs FAA permits. With the federal employees severely cut in that future that Musk/Trump builds how that will be solved - 1. no FAA permits required or 2. SpaceX gets same-day service (or even total blanket exception) while everybody else waits 3 years?

[vel0city]

> So gutting the parks service means no parks open to the public, but balances a tax break to billionaires

That's the stupid thing in the end. Gut the parks service, here's your $500 tax break on your several hundred million+ income.

[bruce511]

It's a lot more than $500. For the few. It's $0 for the masses. A 1% reduction in corporate tax means millions in their pockets.

Billionaires aren't the ones going to national parks. So they don't care if they're closed.

[_heimdall]

Well I'm not from "the other side" as I don't align with either party, but I do live in a very red part of the country.

In the short term, as I understand it, the goal is to root out fraud and abuse. For decades many people from both sides of the aisle have believed the government wastes money, that is nothing new. The current moves somewhat rhyme with the early Clinton administration. Whether that is Trump's goal or not is largely speculative, but those I've talked to that support him see this as the goal.

The mid and long term goals vary wildly depending on who I talk to. Some still view it like old school republicans, small government and states' rights. Others want a government just as large and powerful as today but focused on different goals and moral views.

The question I've yet to hear raised or disavowed by the Trump supporters I know is whether this is leading to fascism. A supposed billionaire running the country with his billionaire friends in toe sure seems like industry take over of government.

Similarly though, I rarely heard the other side of the aisle acknowledging whether the other path was intentionally leading to Marxism - a similar number of parallels existed there as well and in either case the outcome is authoritarianism and massive federal powers.

[watwut]

This has zero to do with rooting put fraud, this is literally making goverment more corrupt.

And the whole "democrats are Marxists" talking point is ridiculous. There are no paralels here, just a authoritarian and anti democratic movement successfully demonizing other side regardless of truth.

[_heimdall]

You're being too black and white here in my opinion.

From what I've seen we don't yet have a clear vision of what their end goals really are. They've talked about waste and fraud, and what they've done so far could be to that end. Going out a layer and you find people around them, and Project 2025, that seem to talk much more towards privatizing the government. I haven't seen enough to know which way it will go, but its been moving so quickly that I can't keep up with everything.

I didn't say "democrats are Marxists" and I didn't intend to imply that. To say there are no parallels is disingenuous at best. Wealth distribution is a great example that is common in both groups, as is anticapitalist and anti-meritocratic views and policies.

That doesn't mean democrats are Marxists or that the party is Marxist. It does, though, mean that there are policies many Democratic voters or politicians support that align with arguments Marx made (and that doesn't inherently mean the ideas are bad ones).

[malcolmgreaves]

The Democratic Party is about as far away as you can get from any sort of Marxist political ideology as you can. There’s not a single even minor US political movement that is even remotely related to Marxism.

[_heimdall]

That seems like a hard claim to stand behind when Harris's father was a Marxist economist. BLM was also a very popular movement among the Democratic party, and it was organized and run by Marxists.

How do you land on the party being as far from Marxism as a party can be?

[throw939449]

> opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions

Maybe it is like with Mozilla. You send money to Firefox development, but it pays for Marxist get-away conference in Africa.

Once academia gets rid of bloat, there will be far more money for science and engineering!

[watwut]

They slashed grants that pay science. Science ia going to be cut.

[bcrl]

Science has this pesky problem of generating facts. Where we're going, we don't need facts!

[btilly]

Trump I have no explanation for except corruption.

But Musk and DOGE, there is a simple explanation. Musk has learned that you take a chainsaw to sacred cows, then fix the 10% that were really bad mistakes, and that is the easiest way to cut through bureaucracy. So he's trying that, at scale.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like he'll notice most of his bad mistakes. Because it is at scale, and his attention doesn't go that far.

[MyOutfitIsVague]

Yeah, this slash and burn approach is legitimately good in many circumstances. You cut through cruft, break down old unneeded processes, and things that are needed but were undocumented become quickly documented and maybe refurbished. Things that break are quickly noticed and reinstated.

It really doesn't work for huge complex systems where the breakages aren't felt fully for many years, and building the systems back up take decades, and things break so far down the line that it's impossible to even tell what needs to be fixed.

I have to hope that the intentions are actually good, because the appearances from the outside look a lot like the start of a dictatorship.

[cancerhacker]

When you’re refactoring a system (which is really what he’s claiming to want to do) you don’t just delete the repository and start with main(). You figure out where the edges are, how they fit together, where are the Chesterton Fences and how can we protect them until they’re understood. A/B unit testing.

This takes a non-zero amount of time and it takes careful consideration by subject experts.

I can’t really speak to your hopefulness of good intentions - as a parent that relies on government agencies to help my special needs child with the tools she needs, I see no hope here.

What does success look like? How long should the chaos and pain last before you’re beyond hope? Will there be remuneration for people that are materially hurt by this scorched earth policy? How will you be hurt, personally?

[ajmurmann]

Lost decade for the US and the beginning of the Chinese century for others

[bongodongobob]

We're losing an entire generation at least. The pain that these cuts are going to cause won't be felt overnight. It will be felt over decades. "Things have been set into motion that cannot be undone".

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

Just like the Supreme Court :(

[dang]

Recent and related:

Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43144940 - Feb 2025 (646 comments)

[jmcgough]

Biochemist friend moved across the country for a post-doc and three months into it is waiting to be let go. She is now looking at options outside the country, specifically China, given the incredible instability here.

[grandempire]

1. Most science PhD students are international. So funding their education has questionable domestic political value.

2. Those people don’t just disappear. If there aren’t PhD programs they will do something else.

3. It’s hard to argue we are at some optimal level of PhD students and that if we cut back the system won’t work. Most academics agree we have too many.

[seanmcdirmid]

Maybe China will start accepting international PhD students? I don’t see anyone else who could pick up the slack.

[mnau]

No point unless coupled with ability to immigrate. Why would China educate foreigners only to see them leave? There is no payoff.

It makes sense in US because of for-profit universities and easier immigration. That is not situation over there.

[seanmcdirmid]

The US doesn't really have many for-profit universities, and those that are for-profit don't attract a lot of international PhD students. We do (or did?) have a lot of research to be done, and we would never be able to do it without international PhD students (including from China and India).

China has some immigration, and people will be attracted to stay if the research jobs are good and accessible. If China takes over the USA's role of the preeminent world power, they will have access to and need to leverage world talent to do so.

[carterschonwald]

My fear as well. I’m not sure if even a magic wish to rearrange stuff back to the before January state of affairs is possible at this point.

Write to your representatives. I fear that if they don’t pull off something the only ethical and responsible thing is civil war. This shit is insane and will destroy everything I like about our government.

Also to quote every true patriot: the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

I’m so angry and mad and wanting to help fix it. My near term approach is write expansively to all my city state and congressional reps.

We already have diarrhea inducing corruption happening in plain view. We have walking piñatas for an urgent need to do campaign finance reform.

I’m not sure if there’s any way to save some of the institutions and programs that make this country actually great without a straight up secession/civil war for the coastal states.

I’m very very scared. And angry.

[neilv]

On HN, "revolutionary" is an adjective, and it means making a lot of money. :)

[setikites]

Calling your elected representatives daily is more effective. The app 5 calls makes it easy.

[gs17]

Unfortunately, mine very proudly proclaim how much they agree with what's going on. And they're also very proud of gerrymandering the state so they don't need to listen to anyone.

[scarface_74]

Unless you are in a swing district that isn’t gerrymandered to death, your representative could care less about what you think. Their first objective is not to get primaried.

The biggest check on the administration is the Senate which confirms executive nominees. The Senate is definitely not “representative” of anything when Wyoming gets two Senators just like California.

[20after4]

5 * 0 is still 0. They aren't listening.

[cvwright]

Calling for civil war is the least ethical or responsible thing you can do. You’re willing to get yourself and all your friends (and most of us here) killed over a few MM of federal funding?

Shame on you.

[throwawaymaths]

to steelman the issue:

what if there was overinvestment in science? as in we chased money after talent that didnt exist, or was mismatched to the difficulty of the available and fundable open questions.

a few things: you'd expect a lot of fraud and misallocated science to have been recently uncovered.

after the cuts, you would expect the quantity of science to go down, but the quality to go up

[mplewis]

[flagged]

[throwawaymaths]

go get a degree in science and come back with your take.

[consumer451]

Sean Carroll has a very informative, and impressively apolitical post/podcast about the recent de-funding of science in the USA.

I have seen it appreciated across the political spectrum. It is worth a read or listen, and hopefully a share. This is the most sober-minded analysis of this turn of events that I have seen so far.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/12/bonu...

[intermerda]

It was already bad last time when the objective was to just enrich the fossil fuel industry - https://archive.is/DywH6. This time the purge is all-encompassing. If science and education is suppressed, it's easier to control the masses.

[jhbadger]

And the worst thing is that they may have misunderstood what "probationary employees" were. In federal speak, they are new employees, but the new regime may have thought they were "bad" employees, based on the idea of "probation" in the criminal justice sense.

[MengerSponge]

It looks more like they're just trying to fire everyone. You know, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

[consumer451]

We live in such a moronic time that I believe the reason that we are dropping the post-WWII Rules Based Order, is that it is also called the "Liberal" International Order. [0]

Watching a historic empire destroy itself is beyond words. I will miss Pax Americana.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order

[insane_dreamer]

If it's intentional, then they are deliberately sabotaging the US's leadership in technological research for the sake of looking like they're doing something. Which is a terrible strategy.

If it's unintentional, then DOGE faile the critical thinking test. Doesn't say much for them or their leadership.

[whalesalad]

The loss of their jobs is all part of gods plan, apparently https://www.mediaite.com/politics/house-republican-tells-fir...

[insane_dreamer]

true, except the GOP didn't bother to look up which gods the plan belongs to (turns out its the plan of the Chinese gods)

[hayst4ck]

> This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist.

It is a decapitation strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decapitation_(military_strateg...

Ukraine is more or less a proxy war between America and Russia, which is also between John Locke's Social Contract and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, which said simply is whether rules are made in respect to reason (law) or in respect to power (order). It's also a fight over who are the final enforcers of law. Are citizens the last line of enforcers of the law or is "law" always enforced by the strong against the weak?

America has the world's largest military and a world ending nuclear arsenal, so direct conflict is unconscionable. That means what's left is high leverage asymmetric warfare. Russia corrupted America's elites (and German elites to a significant degree, too), either through money, compromising material, or the promise of power. Some of those elites are people like Peter Thiel, who are absolute power houses of the American surveillance capitalist state. Private intelligence companies were leveraged to divide the American public and then conquer it.

America is experiencing a decapitation strike. By compromising our leadership, our economy and technological flywheel is being destroyed, our ideology is being corrupted, and trust in us has been decimated. Our closest allies now see us as someone who must be weakened and defended against. We abandoned Ukraine. There is no argument that Trump's America is good faith in any way.

It's a decapitation strike.

The point is to damage us and our future, and we're letting it happen. Our military that took an oath to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic have failed their obligation. Now America at large is rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears. Americans are obeying in advance.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/decapitation-strike (https://archive.is/1xkxK)

[chii]

If you've read the three-body problem series (or the tv show) [spoiler incoming]

- - - -

the way to stop humanity from being able to fight back (against alien invasion) is not via weapons, but via disabling science. It's a long term strategy.

So the conspiracy theory that trump is a russian asset (or is influenced by them at the least), seems plausible, if you imagine that such removal of science and research funding is meant to disable american technological progress for decades to come. This would be a strategy that outlasts the tenure of the russian asset.

[andix]

Those concepts are not science fiction, they were very often used in the past already. Just read about how the most famous dictators in history came to power, and what they did first.

Discrediting scientist is a standard step for most dictators. They only keep the bare minimum they need for the military and surveillance.

[late2part]

Who is the dictator here? Obviously the states that run these schools will raise taxes to fund the state schools, no?

[ncallaway]

> Who is the dictator here?

I’d say the leader of the executive branch who is unconstitutionally restricting (without an act of Congress) money that Congress lawfully appropriated, thereby seizing most of the power of the purse.

[MyOutfitIsVague]

The dictator is still in the oven, but it's nearly ready. Just needs a topping of constitutional crisis and a suspension of elections and it'll be done.

[dragonwriter]

You don't need to suspend elections you just need to subvert them. For-show elections make good dictatorial theater.

[MyOutfitIsVague]

Yeah, I was going to say that the most likely thing is "making the voting process more secure and reliable to make sure elections are fair" by setting up voting machines and counting processes run entirely by loyalists, but that's less punchy and didn't fit the metaphor.

[hayst4ck]

The constitutional crisis was Trump's pardon of Joe Arpaio's contempt of court.

If the president can pardon contempt, then the president has the power to exempt a person from the obligation to show up in court, admit guilt, or experience consequences for their crime.

That was the moment of structural executive supremacy and an actual constitutional crisis -- when the law contradicts itself calling the laws themselves into question.

[throwawaymaths]

there are two tiers of program managers. there are those that are pulled from academia, as you say, but theres a 3-5x? multiple of "junior' PMs that are say MS or BS scientists, rarely PhD (usually the case when the PhD is... subpar), these are career and eventually thet are promoted to senior management and decision making roles.

[rsfern]

I don’t know what the distribution of advanced degrees is among NSF program managers, but I strongly reject the implication that career program managers are somehow a lower tier or less well suited for the job. I’ve personally served a few times as an NSF panel reviewer for a career PM that does not hold a PhD, and they are awesome. They have a background in the startup world and ask really insightful question and know how to build effective groups of experts and efficiently guide discussion to get actionable feedback from them in a really short timeframe. A lot of PhDs are not great with these skills, and I’ve learned a ton about evaluating the potential impact and risks of research proposals by interacting with this person.

Also, this attitude is kind of counter to the egalitarian notion a lot of HNers hold that you don’t need a formal CS degree to be a great software dev.

[throwawaymaths]

yeah well i worked with a high level DARPA PM that it turned out her phd was overinterpreting noise and her PI (francesco stellaci) railroaded the postdoc that tried to call foul. by the way, that PM, last i checked had left DARPA and was working on a microfluidics nanodrop blood diagnostics company -- you cant mke this shit up!! and a DOE biotechnology pm that was excited to be on the project -- but by his own admission couldn't remember what a promoter was. fucking clown cars.

> you don’t need a formal CS degree to be a great software dev.

not at all the same. the point here is about incentive structure. If you're a great scientist, why aren't you doing the science? something made you decide instead to be a career bureaucrat.

[rsfern]

sure - there are absolutely lousy PMs as well as great PMs, but this kind of situation happens in all kinds of organizations and I think you are overgeneralizing.

There are lots of reasons that excellent scientists might not want to actively do research anymore. Being a PM seems like a nice way to get a broad exposure to cutting edge research without dealing with the (IMO) overwhelming incentive structure in academic science, driving a narrow research program at a national lab, or leaving the world of open science to as an industry researcher.

[_heimdall]

> Not evaluated efficiency cuts. Just thrashing about.

Personally I'm not sold on their tactics so far, but there is another way to view this than thrashing out.

Non-probationary federal employees are protected and not easily fired. If one honestly believes the government is bloated and so far into debt that the budget needs to be balanced at all costs, cutting anyone and anything you can may make sense.

Normally you wouldn't throw good food overboard, but if the ship is sinking you may have no choice other than to throw out anything that isn't bolted down.

[consumer451]

Where exactly is the proof that the ship of government funded science in the USA was sinking?

If you don't mean just US funded science, then what evidence is there that the USA was sinking in general? When I look at the graph of debt increase, it was actually decreasing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1366899/percent-change-n...

[_heimdall]

I meant US budget in general. If they believed the ship that is the US federal government balance sheet is sinking, they would jettison whatever they could.

It isn't about funding science in my scenario, its about funding the government.

[kortilla]

“The debt is increasing at a slower rate” isn’t really enough when interest rates are non zero. As the US has to keep rolling its debt to higher interest rates it’s going to continue to escape decline even with significant cuts to spending

[consumer451]

OK, but if the debt was the actual issue of concern, then we certainly wouldn't be cutting taxes (income) at the same time, would we?

[fragmede]

Are you trying to say that the efforts to reduce the deficit are a circus, designed to get us riled up and entertained, so we don't notice the absolute dismantling of proper constitutional procedure so that billionaires pay lower taxes? Whaaat? That can't be possible!

[russdill]

Government employee payroll makes up a tiny fraction of the budget. It's actually a horrible place to start.

[_heimdall]

> It's actually a horrible place to start.

That depends on what the options are. The executive branch likely does have authority to fire probationary employees. They likely don't have authority to immediately fire non coronation dry employees or to end programs and departments created congress.

This may be the best lever they think they legally have today. If that is the case, and that's an if, they are trying to stick within the letter of the law despite how it is often being reported.

[russdill]

They legally have all the branches. They can use Congress to cut programs they don't want

[pjc50]

This view of the balance sheet is of course bananas.

The worst thing is that the fear of the US becoming Argentina may drive a series of actions that turns the US into Argentina. Well, I'm using them as the poster child here, but really a lot of the Latin American countries have similar economic problems which have been through socialist revolution/CIA-backed coup or vice versa and come off worse each time. It seems this has spread north.

[alabastervlog]

Probationary employees also require a layoff process if you want to do layoffs. They didn’t do it.

[stronglikedan]

> Science in the US will be chaotically torn apart by this and a host of other decisions.

Seems unnecessarily alarmist speculation to me. :shrug: I'd rather see how this plays out, since no one can possibly know at this point.

[freen]

We have seen it happen over and over again.

When was the last time real science came out of Russia?

[hayst4ck]

I wouldn't put down Russia's achievements.

They did manage to effectively disable their greatest geopolitical enemy and cause us to destroy ourselves.

All the weaponry in every other country on earth couldn't harm America more than what they did with social media, some highly skilled "recruitment," and smart leveraging of monetary resources.

They got us to vote against Ukraine at the UN without a gun. Even the worlds best weapons aren't that effective.

[BLKNSLVR]

Further than that, they got the President of the United States to claim the Ukraine started the conflict.

All it took was Putin explaining to Trump the scale of the mineral wealth of Ukraine that they could split between them.

Thank fuck Australia is a long way from Russia. But on the other hand: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-22/australia-meets-china...

[freen]

That not science, but yes, Putin has completely succeeded geopolitically.

As has been shown multiple times in debates, the only actually adversarial environment Trump has allowed himself to participate in (Obama went to the GOP and explained the ACA to them for three hours, in a town hall setting, completely televised.) Trump has shown himself to be completely and totally manipulatable. Easily baited, played like a glass harp, so to speak.

But that is not science.