I found this helpful to keep me up to date on the legal situation of various executive orders: https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-legal-challenges... . Overall for me, 8 executive orders subject to restraining orders sounds like the executive branch vastly exceeding its authority, which for three weeks of government, sounds like a constitutional crisis.
A “constitutional crisis” is a situation where the constitution does not provide a specific way to resolve a dispute between branches of government. Seems to me that in every case we have seen so far with Trump’s use of EOs, there is still open the possibility that courts or congress can intervene to resolve the ones in dispute.
In fact where we have seen significant disagreement with Trump’s EOs, courts have already intervened and paused EOs or portions of EOs where there is a reasonable question of the executive branch overstepping their authority. Ultimately if the executive branch successfully defends their actions when it reaches SCOTUS (or even in lower courts), there is no longer a dispute. You may not agree with that outcome, but that is different from something being a constitutional crisis.
Sounds good! Maybe you can start a business and have a low-stakes regional airport work with you. I think the main way to do it is as an add-on/assistant for the existing toolset.
Since you know the people in question, do you have any ideas? I am honestly mystified myself and hopeful someone who knows the people in question can shed some light.
Do you have specific questions? I really don’t think it is complicated. They’re doing what they say they are doing: instrumenting up the government to see what it is doing, and reorganizing it from the ground up to be more efficient. So far all their actions are in line with this.
It’s like a creditor-initiated bankruptcy proceeding. An agent comes in and stops all transactions, audits the assets and liabilities, and comes up with a plan. That’s what they are working on right now.
I’m trying to be objective in my description. I’ve personally worked for the government before and I think they are being hopelessly naïve in thinking that the government can fixed in this way, and also appear to be dangerously ignorant of the law (or counting on executive pardons). But I do t think there is any intentional malice or corrupt intentions here.
They know absolutely nothing about running the government or administering these programs, and these idiots are pushing to prod in a system that controls 1/5th of the US economy.
>Do you have specific questions? I really don’t think it is complicated. They’re doing what they say they are doing: instrumenting up the government to see what it is doing, and reorganizing it from the ground up to be more efficient. So far all their actions are in line with this.
I think this is pretty much correct. The media, however, is taking full advantage of creating as much panic as possible.
I am curious though - what do you think about Curtis Yarvin being invited to the Coronation Ball in DC? It's things like that that make these theories spread. Why are they friends with a guy who openly calls for the fall of democracy and even invited him to high-level events?
Gotcha. The reason I was mystified is that the budget is written by Congress, so I would guess a phone call to a leader in Congress with a desired budget number would do the job. Given that this doesn't seem to be the plan, I couldn't tell if maybe they had some other goal. I hope that explains how someone could be mystified.
It is not the budget that is the issue to them, except maybe in the total size. I'm sure they think it can be done cheaper. Rather it is how the money is spent that they are looking at. That's within the executive branch's authority, not Congress.
No, you are absolutely wrong about that. The whole point of the Revolutionary War was we didn't want an executive who decided how to spend our tax money.
Congress doesn't just give the executive branch a slush fund they can use to implement whatever political agenda the administration has. The money is for specific things, and the president has to spend it on them. He also can't just not spend it. His just is to make the money go from A to B, not to decide whether or not it gets to B.
Yes, the executive can set a policy agenda, and they have powers within the executive branch to administer the agencies, but one of those power is not the ability to spend or hold up congressionally appointed funds. The president's job is to spend that money on our priorities, not his. Many times his priorities will align with the voters, but at the end of the day he is the president for everyone, not just Republicans. This is the whole system of representation we have been living under for 200+ years.
We pay those taxes, we vote for our representatives, they allocate spending, the president makes sure the funds are lawfully spent. That is the system. You seem to be suggesting some other system where the president gets to decide how the money is spent. That's not how the system works.
Have you worked in government? I have. I helped manage a program that was an actual line item on the national budget. I'm quite familiar with how it works.
There is a lot of executive leeway in interpreting how to spend money allocated in congressional authorizations. As I said, I was managing a program that was in the 10's of millions of dollars and a line item on my agency's budget. The actual wording of the authorization was quite short, and there was a lot of executive agency in deciding how to structure it.
But most of your comment doesn't seem to be addressing what my comment was saying, and is politically charged enough that I don't think it would be fruitful for us to continue this conversation. I wish you the best.
As an employee of the government responsible for these items, you are beholden to follow the law. If you break the law you are prosecuted. You have to go through background checks, get training on what you're legally allowed to do, receive training for security clearances and how to handle sensitive data, go through that whole vetting process. You must preserve documents, be free of conflicts of interest, your work is auditable, and your department must respond to FOIA requests. The bar is high for you because the public puts our trust in you to spend our money.
None of this is true for Musk. He's not treating any of this with care, and we can see this in real time as USAID food/medicine is held up and rotting at borders. How is that not wasteful?
If you were to make those kind of capricious decisions as a government employee leading to people going hungry and staying sick or worse dying... Congress would rightfully be demanding answers and your resignation.
I think it should be obvious to everyone we are not dealing with an instance of a regular employee exercising routine and precedented discretion here, when Congress is up in arms, agency employees are up in arms, class action lawsuits are being filed. How often does a response of this scale happen when you make a decision?
Trillions of debt is a congress issue. Maybe this congress can pass some bills to resolve it. Not sure how that's relevant to 25 year olds since there are no current 25 year old congress members.
Get sued. You described a pure scam scheme. Of course there were underwrites and the usual dilution of responsibility, but even in this case "I wasn't able to predict that I can't handle it" will not work.
There is a need - Twitter is now an excellent platform for propaganda and manufacturing consent. If Twitter defaults on the loans, my assumption is the creditors take control, and Musk gets a ton of value from being in control of Twitter.
In developed countries it's not quite that straightforward, but "his" plane will be owned by Totally Not Musk LLC, not Musk himself, so any putative drugs on it are not his problem.
In developing countries, anything goes. I've paid $15 for "VIP" clearance in Indonesia, which means I sit in a lounge sipping tea and my passport comes back to me stamped without me ever seeing an immigration official.
Ketamine is diverted from official sources, usually where it is produced(India, Denmark are common). It's not worth it to make in a lab given how plentiful it is. Its everywhere, in every city. He probably has a guy that gets it online. You can easily buy ounces on darknet markets. I don't recommend you do this-- I just find it interesting how this stuff is all going on as a second blackmarket economy in absolutely huge quantities.
If he’s using it he probably just has a prescription or a doctor that provides it to him. Ketamine isn’t all that hard to get prescribed and it is, frankly, a pretty mellow drug.
Specifically ketamine is only a Schedule III controlled substance. Any physician can prescribe it to any patient and it's available through the normal pharmaceutical system. It's not one of those really dangerous, addictive Schedule I drugs like marijuana.
To not lose all of it. Musk is shareholders and while shareholders make the decisions(or at least decide who do) they are also last to get any value when things go to receivership.
I thought it was because of Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, from a state that tries to bill itself as the "Insurance Capital of the World" [2]
If it had been 39 Republicans, it would have been 2 Democrats.
Obama campaigned for Joe Lieberman afterwards as an independent against Ned Lamont, who had won the Democratic primary. Lieberman tanked the public option for the Democrats, and Obama was paying his debt.
Democrats would have paid the price at the polls for getting rid of the public option. Lieberman took the hit for the rest of them; he was the cheapest, because he already publicly held right-wing positions. If they had needed another vote, they would have had to find another Democrat to risk their political career to do it. Probably with a cushy lobbyist job at a health insurer after getting voted out.
Seven restraining orders. Seems like lots is not legal.