DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation, and I really do hope it will be get reined in before they can cause an issue so big that _even trump's croniest cronies_ have to admit what is going on.
For someone who claims to love freedom of speech, Elon is pretty quick to determine who can say what, and how much access to _his_ data people have.
I was assured right here on HN that the data was public to begin with, and downvoted for suggesting it was possible unseen corruption. Hopefully if that is true they find it just matches what has released publicly.
It is hard for me to imagine any entrenched civil service being cooperative with plans to shit can their jobs. So I'm not sure that means much. Almost by human nature, most people are uncooperative ( and deemed such ) with plans to end their dental plan and rent money.
Yeah, I mean Musk has literally tweeted that DOGE is "dismantling the radical-left shadow government."[0] This is not about efficiency or rooting out corruption, it's about persecuting political enemies and purging wrongthink.
Which was something people here screamed bloody murder about when they accused Biden of doing it, just by asking Twitter to moderate content, but I guess this is all fine now.
President doesn't have authority to shut them down by EO either. Congress does, yes.
(It's one of those "power of the purse" things. If Congress has created an organization and funded it, the executive is required to spend that money on it.)
Yeah, that why I said both. It depends on what they are doing. USAID probably needs congress, but other things might just need an EO. The point is DOGE isn't doing this, the President is. Elon doesn't have authority that Democratics are saying he does. He simply informs the President, "Hey, USAID is spending taxpayers money to fund xyz in xyz you might want to shut it down". The President then goes "Yeah, I think we should shut it down let's freeze it and we'll abolish it". Then they go down the path of abolishing it and with the USAID they will probably get congress to do it. Until then they can freeze it because he appoint Marco Rubio has the acting admin.
I imagine the legality of that depends on the exact details of the law that created the organization. If it specifies that it be an independent organization, then that's probably not allowed either. If it's just "these things must be done" then State could probably handle it.
(Either way, the exact way they've approached it so far with the total freeze and shutdown, saying they'll totally start doing the job again somewhere else later on, seems sketchy.)
That would make the executive orders illegal, or at best invalid. It wouldn't make DOGE illegal. DOGE is private citizens giving their opinions about how the government should work to a politician who happens to be listening to them (for now, but probably not long given that politician's track record for getting into feuds with former allies.)
Citizens voicing their opinions about the government is clear cut First Ammendment activity, of precisely the sort the first ammendment was intended to protect in the first place. People need to get a grip.
> DOGE is private citizens giving their opinions about how the government should work to a politician who happens to be listening to them
No, DOGE was formalized as a division of the US Digital Service. Employees of DOGE are federal government employees. Some of them, like Elon are "Special Government Employees" which is a short-term category and avoids certain disclosures.
Creating DOGE and enabling them to have access to certain IT systems is legal ... but what data, how much control they have, what they can demand of other departments is subject to all sorts of laws and controls which may or may not be being followed at the moment.
That sounds weird. I can understand that you cannot take money that was promised for thing X and spend in thing Y but if you can reduce the X spending I don't think there is any issue.
Now I do not know if Congress has explicitly required X to provide certain thing. If they did then there might be some issue if X fails to provide it. It's probably easy to say someone is accountable for it if it's something objective (let's say building for Congress) but if it's subjective it could get tricky.
neither have happened and virtually all employees of USAID have been put on leave at the orders of the acting deputy administrator.
(via CNN) - It is not legal for the president to unilaterally “abolish, move, or consolidate USAID”. He needs to have congressional authorization to do so.
DOGE gets its authority through the president. The president definitely has the authority to audit and/or stop illegal, fraudulent or just wasteful transactions.
The exact shape or form of USAID is also up to the president. It was created through an executive order, and can of course also be transformed through one.
It was consolidated into the Department of State as part of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 as an agency with an administrator and responsibility for administrating the distribution of aid under certain preexisting laws. So it is straightforwardly outside of the authority of the president to disband the agency, as Congress has provided that it shall exist. And it is likewise outside of the authority of the president to reduce it to an inactive status, as it has certain Congressionally-established responsibilities that it must perform.
I have seen this regurgitated several times on this site now. This is blatantly false, congress passed a law in 1998 to establish USAID. The EO was made with authority that had been granted by another law.
That law does not allow the President to abolish it:
> 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.
The actual law is a high dimensional interaction of all active legislation. Predicting what the legal system will do is hard and often cannot be achieved with high reliability with a google search.
This is why lawyers exist. Presumably doge and trump have access to good lawyers. I’m not asserting that they are right, just that a shallow legal analysis is error prone and looking at a single law likely does not yield useful prediction making capability.
Also malicious compliance is an option. Maybe they could name a single person the official administrator, given them an office in a basement and officially comply, while effectively shutting everything down. The extent to which fulfilling the intent of legislation vs relying on the discretion of the executive to interpret it within, and as a matter of precedent deferring to executive discretion by default in court cases, probably enables many more abuses than have been contemplated prior to this presidency.
The OP asserted that USAID was created by EO and that the president is free to do what he wants with it. That statement is blatantly false. How does court decide is not relevant to this discussion, because as you said it is speculative.
Well my luck, turns out he can't do transformations either.
> Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated ... may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by ... the United States Agency for International Development ... without prior consultation ... with the appropriate congressional committees.
> (b) ... a reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to
> (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas ...
> (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024.
DOGE didn’t shut down USAID. Musk talked Trump and Rubio into doing it and they did.
Musk is essentially a presidential advisor, and legally an advisor can advise the President to do pretty much anything. Even if the thing they are advising the President to do is illegal, the President is the one who bears the legal responsibility for the action, not the advisor.
In really extreme cases, like if Musk were advising Trump to commit genocide, or carry out a military coup, or transfer a billion dollars out of US Treasury into someone’s personal bank account, and Trump followed the advice, Musk might be held legally liable for having given it. But shutting down a government agency isn’t anything like that. The legality of shutting it down is debatable, but even if ultimately held to be illegal, it isn’t the genocide or military coup or blatant corruption kind of illegal.
Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?
There is a lack of recent SCOTUS precedents on the topic, and you can’t assume the current SCOTUS majority will answer “Yes”. If they answer “No”, then the USAID shutdown is likely legal.
It is not debateable at all, the President has to ask Congress to rescind appropriated funds if the President doesn’t want to spend the money allocated by Congress. If Congress chooses not to rescind the allocated funds, then the president must spend the money.
The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 is explicitly clear about this, there is absolutely no room for debate.
> Title X of the Act, also known as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation. Congress is not required to vote on the request and has ignored most presidential requests.
I mean, there are many political leaders who would put Musk in prison in a heartbeat for the DOGE stuff. It's not paranoia. This is separate from "do you think this is illegal", but it's absolutely reasonable, from their perspective, to think that "everyone is after them".
In American democracy winning a single election doesn't change the constitution or even the laws at all. There are separate processes for those things that haven't happened. The monetary decisions the executive branch is making right now are explicitly reserved for Congress, which notably hasn't passed a law for it.
Voting for someone doesn't imply they aren't bound by existing rules.
Edit: There's also more to be said here about restrictions on American democracy (e.g. gerrymandering, first past the post, disenfranchisement, financial barriers to entry for candidates, lack of choice for political parties, etc) that make the US not some bastion for democratic governance. I'm not an expert but the current chaos is at least partially enabled by the flaws in American democracy (rigid 2 party control is a good example of a generally undemocratic force, many Americans would prefer more parties but aren't being represented, that is enabling executive overreach).
Are we complaining about the millions the feds pay SpaceX for their starlink terminals? Are we concerned about the government subscriptions to Bloomberg feeds?
I'll get rage-y about this one when someone explains what a Politico premium subscription provides and why it was a corrupt purchase. Maybe it's a valid information data service that provides key information to whatever agency purchased it, purchased using an appropriate bidding contract. Or maybe it wasn't.
But the point is show me why that was an inappropriate purchase while Starlink and Bloomberg feeds aren't.
Unfortunately doing that takes investigation and due-process, and it doesn't score the same propaganda points as just yelling "See?! My political opponent had the government as a customer!!"
Since we are doing whataboutism, let's also bring up the ~$1 trillion PPP program, ripe with fraud, enabled and designed by Donald Trump, which helped kick off the current wave of inflation.
>The cost per job saved for one year was $169,000 to $258,000, which was much higher than the average amount—$58,200—paid in wages and benefits to small-business employees in 2020. [1]
have them audited by the Office of the Inspector General.
Which is not very easy right now as Trump illegally fired many of them across 17 different offices.
The illegality and unconsitutionalism of the actions being taken to dismantle agencies and placement private citizens without background checks or proper auditing / security procedures inside of highly critical and often classified systems are the issue, not whether or not USAID should be audited or abolished. There are proper channels for that. they are being bypassed (even though fully available to the President with all three branches of government in Republican control).
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Stupid question but don't the Republicans control all branches of government? Couldn't they just declare whatever DOGE is doing legal (if it's indeed illegal)?
Not familiar with "filibuster". Does it mean that Democrats could effectively prevent a potential "DOGE is legal" bill from passing by endlessly debating it?
Originally, yes. These days a "talking filibuster" like that is almost never used, apart from occasionally when someone wants to be dramatic about it.
There's a thing called a vote for cloture, meaning a vote you take about whether to stop debate and vote on the issue. In the US Senate, a cloture vote requires 60 votes (out of 100) to pass. So there's a "procedural filibuster", whereby one side will announce that they're not going to vote for cloture, but the other side won't force them to actually keep talking so the chamber can move on and do other things.
This used to be quite uncommon, and things would regularly become law with a bare 50%+1 majority, but nowadays there's a de-facto "nothing that can't get 60% support in the Senate can become law" rule in effect. (With a specific carve-out for a few things that're not allowed to be filibustered, mostly around passing a budget, that are just barely keeping the government functioning.)
Oh, that would be nice for a change. My understanding is they no longer debate it, they just send an email to the Senate saying "I filibuster" and the bill is tabled.
Congressional inaction isn't assent. The Constitution clearly and explicitly gives the power of the purse to Congress (and this is also the understanding of I think Madison in the Federalist Papers and the interpretation we've had for now almost the entire history of the US so there's no reasonable dispute of this). Until Congress passes a law allowing this the president is constitutionally obligated to take care of the laws passed.
Though you do have a point of even if it's illegal who will enforce it? The courts have started to some but are necessarily reactive and slow.
In what ways is a president restricted from acting like a king when the other two bodies of government meant to act as a check and balance have capitulated any of those checks and essentially give carte blanche to the president?
You and I would like to think that, but he's been given carte blanche by the people who should be his checks and balances and the supreme court has made anything he does in the course of his duties legal.
This is all the Curtis Yarvin influence. There is that period in US history that the president was acting more like a king, Taft to FDR. They were doing much more executive orders then that we have been use to the past 80 years.
It all is quite unsettling. Then the fact it is Trump doing this is just something else all together too.
I am a bit worried how the country is going to deal with this level of change. We aren't even 3 weeks in.
I would say yes, insofar as the text and SCOTUS interpretations of the constitution count as law, so anything that violates, for example, the separation of powers would be illegal.
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation
You might not like it (why?!?)
But there’s nothing illegal about it.
DOGE has zero power, it exists for a limited time to shine a light into dark places of government spending and advise the executive branch about it. Who can choose to completely ignore that advice.
Zero power? Explain that to USAID, Treasury, OPM, and GSA. Actors working on behalf of digital services (i.e. DOGE) are commandeering IT systems and sending out ultimatums to the workforce about complying with their orders at risk of being punished with administrative leave for insubordination. It is a highly unlawful operation that goes far beyond the consult and advise mission you’re alluding to.
My understanding is that most the actions you listed above were performed as standard Executive Orders or OMB Memos. Each one may or may not be illegal, but are being done through a standard channel despite the marketing around DOGE.
The questionable activity sees to be things like the physical and IT system access being given to DOGE employees.
Is anyone aware of direct action by DOGE employees that constitutes orders (vs just being routed to the whitehouse to ship out orders via the EO/OMB)?
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation
What laws does it break?
I like to watch those "Auditors" on Youtube who film in public places. Every cop assures them that filming a police officer / police station / inside a public library is illegal. About 25% of the time they detain them, and about 10% of the time they arrest them.
When they ask what law they've broken, they never get a straight answer.
I think the one they're going for is that being a senior officer with material authority requires confirmation per the appointments clause, constitutional law instead of a federal statute.
Whether musk is operating as such seems dubious but possible.
I don't have an opinion on the political aspects of this, but I find the choice of uploading all your data to a central server by default an insane choice, and I hate that this is the default in the modern world.
Why can't software come in a box, like it used to - then it can run on a machine that I control, and only talk to machines that I control too.
Then it's not a matter of belief and blind trust and hoping against hope that nobody's spying on me - it's the matter of basic common sense and due diligence.
Practically, this probably doesn't make a difference. FOIA relies on at least one person in the department to not be antagonistic towards the process. Otherwise they can just make up excuses. That's the standard experience for people sending requests.
I don't think anyone from the new DOGE would actually be helpful in responses anyway.
Slack can't just willy-nilly hand over US government data to the public. There's a process that needs to be followed for FOIA requests as some classes of information are just not public. In fact, most of the data on a government Slack server would probably fall under those FOIA exemptions.
The title here is poor. Its not that Slack is subject to FOIA and other systems are not - its that the org structure of DOGE is being transition from being under OMB to directly under the executive office. If they use Slack there it would be presumably not be subject to FOIA.
> This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now.
> "Just changing the name alone under the Executive Order doesn't affect DOGE's recordkeeping status,” Jason R. Baron, professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration told 404 Media in a phone call. “The administration apparently has made a determination that DOGE will be a presidential component subject to the Presidential Records Act. However, that will surely be challenged in the courts in connection with FOIA lawsuits. Under FOIA, it will be for the courts to decide whether under existing DOGE is acting more like a federal oversight agency or as a presidential component that solely advises the President.”
"The President decides..." within the limits of his constitutional powers. Which do not include, for example, impoundment or unilaterally shutting down agencies authorized by Congressional acts.
Judge John McConnell disagrees with you. His decision placing a hold on the spending freeze cites the Impoundment Control Act as part of his finding that the lawsuit is likely to succeed on the merits.
Exactly. I made this comparison elsewhere, but it still fits. They are akin to the US Chemical safety board. They have investigative powers, but that's it. They can't actually change anything, just issue recommendations.
Now, USCSB makes some incredible YouTube videos, I somehow doubt Doge will do the same
> They're advising the President, and the President is cleaning house.
That may be a distinction without a difference. The reason to have advisors around is so you can rely on them to make a proposal you can sign off on, because they understand your overall vision. If they're not proposing cuts he agrees with, he'll replace DOGE leadership until he finds people who do.
That's probably part of the goal. Get people to quit and not replace them. One party has been on the "break the government to prove the government doesn't work" warpath for decades now
I agree. What's worrying is any stable working environment that exists now can become volatile like this overnight. It is more uncommon with Federal employment, but is pretty common in the private sector unfortunately.
I can see the Founders of the US now, one of the things they did when setting up the government was organise it so a South African billionaire should be able to take over and reorganise it with zero accountability.
> Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,
> The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,
> This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now.
Regardless of where you stand on the topic of cutting federal budgets, the lack of transparency should be alarming to everyone.
Broad actions like this should have the utmost transparency, not a team of lawyers doing their best legal maneuvering to keep it out of the public's reach.
I remember that time that my parents got to vote for Nick Civella as the local crime boss and got to confront him, with no consequences whatsoever, at an open meeting about how he was spending the Central States Pension Fund on Vegas casinos.
Modern 'democratic' govts are actually a sophisticated form of the what is typically considered the mafia. Killing their rivals has been replaced with 'defeating' their rivals in an election. So now they need to worry less if their rivals will kill them.
Then they also they send you a nice itemized printed tax bill versus the the mafia which would send their henchmen to knock at your door for the protection money. All in all in the west humanity has progressed! /s
And why did you go straight to whataboutism? Just because one person does bad things it doesn't excuse other people from doing the same bad things. You don't see serial killers lawyers arguing, "I know my client killed 17 people, but what about that Jeffrey Dahmer, eh?"
Probably not, but there would definitely be some sort of resistance, strikes, refusal to comply, etc.
In France public service employees have a very high level of protection (they're very hard to fire), and are legally allowed to disobey "obviously illegal" orders, I suppose this case would qualify?
All of this was implemented immediately after WW2 as a way to prevent a potential authoritarian ruler from using public administrations for nefarious things. So it seems quite fitting.
I assume that federal employees are also allowed to disobey "obviously illegal" orders, but I suppose the difference is that they can be retaliated against. Its odd that the president can act out of his authority and make orders that illegal, but still be able to fire the people who won't do those things.
In the case of USAID workers, its entirely possible that the organization will be explicitly NOT under executive authority (my understanding is that they are a legislative branch creation).... but I guess the executive branch can still order them to stop working and return to the US? Its all very murky
> In France public service employees have a very high level of protection (they're very hard to fire), and are legally allowed to disobey "obviously illegal" orders
This would seem to imply that a French public servant who obeys an "obviously illegal" order is both knowingly (it's obvious) and willfully (there's no requirement to obey) breaking the law.
The term used in French isn't quite as strong as "obviously", it's "manifestement illegal". See Wordreference: https://www.wordreference.com/fren/manifestement . Apparently English has "manifestly" but I never heard it so unsure if it's a good translation.
> What are the penalties for that?
I had to look it up, it seems you're considered complicit in whatever the order was about. Basically the "Nuremberg defense" AKA "I just followed orders" is void here.
You can't be serious. The search alone makes it atrocious for anything other than game servers. It's a problem enough people are trying to use Discord where they should have used proper forums.
The only thing better about teams is that it comes 'free' with Microsoft 365. Though you can now take that without it for about 1.50 per month less. But slack costs a lot more.
On paper they can do the same but slack is just so much better in terms of UX. Though i do hate that they dropped the IRC bridge. I have been active in slack communities a lot less as a result. I always have my IRC open but not slack.
> used by journalists and lawyers to hold government accountable.
The journalists from Politico have just been ousted by DOGE has having had received $8 million in annual funding from USAID (another Government-run institution that has been ousted by the same DOGE), so I can understand how come Musk would want to keep DOGE's dealing away from journalists that might see this agency as very antithetic to their (the journalists') material well-being.
The entire US govt did give Politico about $8.2M, presumably in the form of buying their subscription products. Politico really does do deep-dive analysis behind a paywall, and I can see why government people might want access. (I have no idea how justified this is, honestly, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss it.)
Seriously. Headline here really is "Government is buying data from a data provider." Now do Starlink. Or Palantir.
I've yet to hear why this is a corrupt or inappropriate purchase. I might change my mind if I hear evidence on why this was an inappropriate contract, but right now this reeks of dictator-grade fear-targeting of political opponents.
This is why a government is supposed to have an independent judiciary. Or inspector generals who haven't been purged.
> If you assume that USAID was evil from the oustset,
I'm not "assuming", I know that for a fact.
> because you cant trust anyone who counters it.
Do you happen to live in a part of the Globe that has been under direct USAID (and NED) influence? Something tells me you don't, I do (I live in Eastern Europe), so allow me not to receive lessons from people who know nothing, absolutely nothing, about this type of organisations.
BOYCOTT TESLA, TWITTER, SPACEX.
SELL YOUR $TSLA STOCK.
Do it for America. And for the world. The rest of the planet is watching. America, get your shit together!!
For someone who claims to love freedom of speech, Elon is pretty quick to determine who can say what, and how much access to _his_ data people have.
oops. they already have access to data, and there's no unseeing what they've seen.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ty6853&next=42914628...
It is a (ridiculous) pretext for purging the system from people that the new power deems “uncooperative”.
Which was something people here screamed bloody murder about when they accused Biden of doing it, just by asking Twitter to moderate content, but I guess this is all fine now.
[0]https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886840365329608708
It was very interesting how they got around things.
(It's one of those "power of the purse" things. If Congress has created an organization and funded it, the executive is required to spend that money on it.)
I'm not sure they are being shut down. USAID is being restructured for instance and folded into the State Department.
(Either way, the exact way they've approached it so far with the total freeze and shutdown, saying they'll totally start doing the job again somewhere else later on, seems sketchy.)
Citizens voicing their opinions about the government is clear cut First Ammendment activity, of precisely the sort the first ammendment was intended to protect in the first place. People need to get a grip.
No, DOGE was formalized as a division of the US Digital Service. Employees of DOGE are federal government employees. Some of them, like Elon are "Special Government Employees" which is a short-term category and avoids certain disclosures.
Creating DOGE and enabling them to have access to certain IT systems is legal ... but what data, how much control they have, what they can demand of other departments is subject to all sorts of laws and controls which may or may not be being followed at the moment.
Now I do not know if Congress has explicitly required X to provide certain thing. If they did then there might be some issue if X fails to provide it. It's probably easy to say someone is accountable for it if it's something objective (let's say building for Congress) but if it's subjective it could get tricky.
(via CNN) - It is not legal for the president to unilaterally “abolish, move, or consolidate USAID”. He needs to have congressional authorization to do so.
The President hasn't shut down the USAID yet. They just froze it with the intent to abolish it.
The exact shape or form of USAID is also up to the president. It was created through an executive order, and can of course also be transformed through one.
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title22/cha...
> 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.
- 22 U.S.C. §6563
All it takes is a simple google search.
This is why lawyers exist. Presumably doge and trump have access to good lawyers. I’m not asserting that they are right, just that a shallow legal analysis is error prone and looking at a single law likely does not yield useful prediction making capability.
> The OP asserted that ... the president is free to do what he wants with it.
What's blatantly false is your restatement of what OP said. Transformed != do what he wants.
> Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated ... may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by ... the United States Agency for International Development ... without prior consultation ... with the appropriate congressional committees.
> (b) ... a reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to
> (1) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize covered departments, agencies ...
> (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas ...
> (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024.
Musk is essentially a presidential advisor, and legally an advisor can advise the President to do pretty much anything. Even if the thing they are advising the President to do is illegal, the President is the one who bears the legal responsibility for the action, not the advisor.
In really extreme cases, like if Musk were advising Trump to commit genocide, or carry out a military coup, or transfer a billion dollars out of US Treasury into someone’s personal bank account, and Trump followed the advice, Musk might be held legally liable for having given it. But shutting down a government agency isn’t anything like that. The legality of shutting it down is debatable, but even if ultimately held to be illegal, it isn’t the genocide or military coup or blatant corruption kind of illegal.
which is illegal. USAID can only be "shut down" by an act of Congress
Might be illegal.
> Musk talked Trump and Rubio
Obviously isn't, no matter how many salutes he does or how many emeralds he owns.
Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?
There is a lack of recent SCOTUS precedents on the topic, and you can’t assume the current SCOTUS majority will answer “Yes”. If they answer “No”, then the USAID shutdown is likely legal.
The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 is explicitly clear about this, there is absolutely no room for debate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Imp...
> Title X of the Act, also known as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation. Congress is not required to vote on the request and has ignored most presidential requests.
Voting for someone doesn't imply they aren't bound by existing rules.
Edit: There's also more to be said here about restrictions on American democracy (e.g. gerrymandering, first past the post, disenfranchisement, financial barriers to entry for candidates, lack of choice for political parties, etc) that make the US not some bastion for democratic governance. I'm not an expert but the current chaos is at least partially enabled by the flaws in American democracy (rigid 2 party control is a good example of a generally undemocratic force, many Americans would prefer more parties but aren't being represented, that is enabling executive overreach).
I'll get rage-y about this one when someone explains what a Politico premium subscription provides and why it was a corrupt purchase. Maybe it's a valid information data service that provides key information to whatever agency purchased it, purchased using an appropriate bidding contract. Or maybe it wasn't.
But the point is show me why that was an inappropriate purchase while Starlink and Bloomberg feeds aren't.
Unfortunately doing that takes investigation and due-process, and it doesn't score the same propaganda points as just yelling "See?! My political opponent had the government as a customer!!"
>The cost per job saved for one year was $169,000 to $258,000, which was much higher than the average amount—$58,200—paid in wages and benefits to small-business employees in 2020. [1]
[1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/2...
Which is not very easy right now as Trump illegally fired many of them across 17 different offices.
The illegality and unconsitutionalism of the actions being taken to dismantle agencies and placement private citizens without background checks or proper auditing / security procedures inside of highly critical and often classified systems are the issue, not whether or not USAID should be audited or abolished. There are proper channels for that. they are being bypassed (even though fully available to the President with all three branches of government in Republican control).
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.
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.
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.
Trump is threatening to turn that knob to -1 or lower, for good or ill.
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.
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.
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.
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?
This is not in line with first-past-the-post voting system. If you want to have "people work together" you need coalitions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He does a good job of explaining the facts of the legalities etc.
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.
†: They actually couldn't, without stripping the filibuster from the Senate.
There's a thing called a vote for cloture, meaning a vote you take about whether to stop debate and vote on the issue. In the US Senate, a cloture vote requires 60 votes (out of 100) to pass. So there's a "procedural filibuster", whereby one side will announce that they're not going to vote for cloture, but the other side won't force them to actually keep talking so the chamber can move on and do other things.
This used to be quite uncommon, and things would regularly become law with a bare 50%+1 majority, but nowadays there's a de-facto "nothing that can't get 60% support in the Senate can become law" rule in effect. (With a specific carve-out for a few things that're not allowed to be filibustered, mostly around passing a budget, that are just barely keeping the government functioning.)
Personally, I intensely dislike this system.
Though you do have a point of even if it's illegal who will enforce it? The courts have started to some but are necessarily reactive and slow.
personally I think this was Gödel's Loophole
No idea why the markets aren't in freefall at this point.
It all is quite unsettling. Then the fact it is Trump doing this is just something else all together too.
I am a bit worried how the country is going to deal with this level of change. We aren't even 3 weeks in.
You might not like it (why?!?)
But there’s nothing illegal about it.
DOGE has zero power, it exists for a limited time to shine a light into dark places of government spending and advise the executive branch about it. Who can choose to completely ignore that advice.
The questionable activity sees to be things like the physical and IT system access being given to DOGE employees.
Is anyone aware of direct action by DOGE employees that constitutes orders (vs just being routed to the whitehouse to ship out orders via the EO/OMB)?
> to shine a light into dark places of government spending
yes, I'm aware that this is the Official Position of the State. but quite obviously that is not what it is actually doing
What laws does it break?
I like to watch those "Auditors" on Youtube who film in public places. Every cop assures them that filming a police officer / police station / inside a public library is illegal. About 25% of the time they detain them, and about 10% of the time they arrest them.
When they ask what law they've broken, they never get a straight answer.
Whether musk is operating as such seems dubious but possible.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/federal-unions-s...
https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-workers-unions-challenge...
- For routine uses within a U.S. government agency
- For law enforcement purposes
Why can't software come in a box, like it used to - then it can run on a machine that I control, and only talk to machines that I control too.
Then it's not a matter of belief and blind trust and hoping against hope that nobody's spying on me - it's the matter of basic common sense and due diligence.
I don't think anyone from the new DOGE would actually be helpful in responses anyway.
> This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now.
It's how soon you can make a request.
> "Just changing the name alone under the Executive Order doesn't affect DOGE's recordkeeping status,” Jason R. Baron, professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration told 404 Media in a phone call. “The administration apparently has made a determination that DOGE will be a presidential component subject to the Presidential Records Act. However, that will surely be challenged in the courts in connection with FOIA lawsuits. Under FOIA, it will be for the courts to decide whether under existing DOGE is acting more like a federal oversight agency or as a presidential component that solely advises the President.”
Congress needs to do their job here.
Now, USCSB makes some incredible YouTube videos, I somehow doubt Doge will do the same
That may be a distinction without a difference. The reason to have advisors around is so you can rely on them to make a proposal you can sign off on, because they understand your overall vision. If they're not proposing cuts he agrees with, he'll replace DOGE leadership until he finds people who do.
> The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,
> This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now.
Regardless of where you stand on the topic of cutting federal budgets, the lack of transparency should be alarming to everyone.
Broad actions like this should have the utmost transparency, not a team of lawyers doing their best legal maneuvering to keep it out of the public's reach.
So who watches the Watchmen?
Do you remember all his promises about full self driving Teslas? He's one of the most honest and truthful people in the world, and has been for years.
In present times, you can look at cartels providing government services of better quality than the government itself in some parts of the world.
As far as we know the first governments predated written history, so I'm not sure how you'd ever be able to demonstrate this.
Then they also they send you a nice itemized printed tax bill versus the the mafia which would send their henchmen to knock at your door for the protection money. All in all in the west humanity has progressed! /s
And why did you go straight to whataboutism? Just because one person does bad things it doesn't excuse other people from doing the same bad things. You don't see serial killers lawyers arguing, "I know my client killed 17 people, but what about that Jeffrey Dahmer, eh?"
In France public service employees have a very high level of protection (they're very hard to fire), and are legally allowed to disobey "obviously illegal" orders, I suppose this case would qualify?
All of this was implemented immediately after WW2 as a way to prevent a potential authoritarian ruler from using public administrations for nefarious things. So it seems quite fitting.
In the case of USAID workers, its entirely possible that the organization will be explicitly NOT under executive authority (my understanding is that they are a legislative branch creation).... but I guess the executive branch can still order them to stop working and return to the US? Its all very murky
This would seem to imply that a French public servant who obeys an "obviously illegal" order is both knowingly (it's obvious) and willfully (there's no requirement to obey) breaking the law.
What are the penalties for that?
The term used in French isn't quite as strong as "obviously", it's "manifestement illegal". See Wordreference: https://www.wordreference.com/fren/manifestement . Apparently English has "manifestly" but I never heard it so unsure if it's a good translation.
> What are the penalties for that?
I had to look it up, it seems you're considered complicit in whatever the order was about. Basically the "Nuremberg defense" AKA "I just followed orders" is void here.
If they choose to follow orders they know are illegal they can be personally liable.
Why are you protecting Slack business?
Even at my company I was in charge to replace Slack because is damn expensive in comparison to other options like Teams or Rocket Chat.
why would you compare Slack to half baked products that have only some of Slack's features?
Discord seems to be way better
Teams are good enough
The only thing better about teams is that it comes 'free' with Microsoft 365. Though you can now take that without it for about 1.50 per month less. But slack costs a lot more.
On paper they can do the same but slack is just so much better in terms of UX. Though i do hate that they dropped the IRC bridge. I have been active in slack communities a lot less as a result. I always have my IRC open but not slack.
The journalists from Politico have just been ousted by DOGE has having had received $8 million in annual funding from USAID (another Government-run institution that has been ousted by the same DOGE), so I can understand how come Musk would want to keep DOGE's dealing away from journalists that might see this agency as very antithetic to their (the journalists') material well-being.
The entire US govt did give Politico about $8.2M, presumably in the form of buying their subscription products. Politico really does do deep-dive analysis behind a paywall, and I can see why government people might want access. (I have no idea how justified this is, honestly, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss it.)
This seems like a fair enough summary: https://www.axios.com/2025/02/05/politico-trump-musk-governm...
Or dig through https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c... yourself if you want, I guess. That site is super-overloaded at the moment, unfortunately.
I've yet to hear why this is a corrupt or inappropriate purchase. I might change my mind if I hear evidence on why this was an inappropriate contract, but right now this reeks of dictator-grade fear-targeting of political opponents.
This is why a government is supposed to have an independent judiciary. Or inspector generals who haven't been purged.
USAID spent $24k on those subscriptions.
Musk is full of shit. I have yet to see an example of such a claim that didn't end up being massively exaggerated or outright false.
But, the sad part is, that this also means its an idea which is impossible to challenge, because you cant trust anyone who counters it.
I'm not "assuming", I know that for a fact.
> because you cant trust anyone who counters it.
Do you happen to live in a part of the Globe that has been under direct USAID (and NED) influence? Something tells me you don't, I do (I live in Eastern Europe), so allow me not to receive lessons from people who know nothing, absolutely nothing, about this type of organisations.
Also, where I'm from was historically on America's shit list. Still benefited from it.
and worry not, anyone owning tesla stock is getting their punishment eventually :)