The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)?
All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive.
The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)). So yes, the US is in big trouble...
Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...
As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...
If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms.
They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
How is this different from any previous president?
Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor?
Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
These organizations consist of political appointees and civil servants. It is customary to replace all of the political appointees. Civil servants however have a lot of job protections and can only be fired for a limited set of reasons. Typically, a new administration would appoint new political appointees to the various departments (many of whom need to be confirmed by the Senate) and those appointees would then exert their influence on the department by shifting priorities around and they could even alter the hiring process to target more "aligned" individuals for the open civil servant roles. But they cannot just do a wholesale house cleaning. The high level purpose and the budget/size of the organization is determined by Congress and the political appointees are constrained by that.
So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
I think it’s unprecedented for every FBI agent to fill up a questionnaire to admit whether they worked on a case where the president himself was an active participant.
It's also unprecedented that a current president's administration would collude to charge the primary opposition of it in a presidential election across multiple jurisdictions, including with an unlawful special counsel appointment, yet here we are.
To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
I think it's the emotional flavor of it. Things in the US government tend to move more slowly and filled with less apparent vitriol and vengeance. This seems like a slash and burn and to hell with people if they don't more outrightly pledge loyalty.
Depends on your perspective. Many people would consider someone like Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert, but Trumps people think he is very political and purge people like that. At the FBI they purge people who are probably quite competent and not particularly partisan but happened to work on Trumps case, which is mostly about sending a message I think not do much about finding the right employees to work at the FBI. This is very un American in my view.
I think this is the person's point. Many people in the past would see Fauci as a prime example of someone who is just a non-partisan career government servant, while others, which it seems you and many people in the current administration, see people like him as overtly partisan and borderline evil.
NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
> NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
Sure, but Fauci should also not have to spend the twilight years of his very accomplished life defending himself from petulant fascists' revenge prosecutions.
Yes, emotionally I'd agree. However, legally, I think it's a very slippery slope. What if Don Jr shoots someone dead and then Trunp premptively pardons him so no one can investigate the shooting?
I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
I think enforcing the law is only important while there is rule of law. What the Republicans are doing now is rule by law. It's not a good-faith reading of laws, it's using raw state power to turn the legal apparatus against the perceived enemies of the state/regime.
We're way past lofty ideals like equal application of the law. It's going to take a reconsideration of our social contract in order to live in a society where we once again protect the innocent and punish the guilty.
He didn't lie to Congress, and he got a preemptive pardon because Trump is vindictive and would 100% have ordered the DOJ to go after Fauci in any way possible.
"Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID), which is part of the NIH, told Congress in May that the NIH "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of
Virology.""
which we know is a blatant lie - see NIH EcoHealth Alliance Wuhan grants (which even had the "Human Subjects Included" checkbox checked. As a bonus read on how they made there the coronavirus which was successfully infecting and killing mice engineered to have human cells).
Fauci's statement was correct: the NIH does not fund gain-of-function research, according to the definition that has been drawn up to regulate such research.
You seem to think that any manipulation of a virus is "gain-of-function." The technical term that regulators use of "gain of function of concern." There's a specific definition of that term that was drawn up in the 2010s, and that's what NIH applies.
yes, that old "i didn't have s-x with that woman". Nobody cares for that specific definition. CRISP-ering human receptor binding protein onto a non-human coronavirus in such a way that the resulting virus starts to infect and kill human cells is a "gain of function", plain and simple. And thus Fauci lied. It was his professional duty to add to his answer that the gain of function they funded in Wuhan that the Congress was asking him about isn't fitting whatever narrow technical definition NIH uses. So, even if to take your position, it would mean that Fauci lied by omission.
"Gain-of-function studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease,"
The last link is exactly that 2014 document based on which the gain of function research was moved from US to in particular Wuhan. And Fauci was instrumental in that move.
Edit: to the commenters below who cares so much about the definition that Fauci uses - please do tell what is that magical definition which doesn't match even the NIH documents (see the links above).
That definition exists because nearly all virology involves modification of viruses. You have to have a definition of what type of research is concerning, or else it's just up to whatever some showboating congressman and his ignorant followers think. There was an entire, highly public, year-long process in the 2010s to define what "gain of function" should mean for the purpose of US-government-funded research. That's the definition Fauci uses.
> It was his professional duty to add to his answer that the gain of function they funded in Wuhan that the Congress was asking him about isn't fitting whatever narrow technical definition NIH uses.
No, it isn't. You would think a Senator in charge of regulating the NIH would ask one of his aides to explain to him before the session what "gain of function" means.
> yes, that old "i didn't have s-x with that woman".
Since you are alluding to Clinton impeachment, I would say people who voted for Trump or defend him lost any benefit of doubt they ever cared about respectability, morality or ethics of that situation. Or lying for that matter.
>Why did the select subcommittee not report that Fauci lied if in fact he did?
it is actually in the report of the subcommittee:
"Members questioned Dr. Fauci about his facilitation and promotion of a singular COVID-19 narrative, his clearly misleading statements before Congress and the public, ..."
and Biden pre-empively pardoned Fauci. So, what else do you need?
>Why did Fauci raise the possibility of a lab leak on Feb 1, 2020
He didn't. He was told in that meeting that it may be a lab leak, and he suppressed it then and after.
>Time and time again we see conspiratorial claims with nothing to back them up.
Interesting, the people arguing against me, like you for example, haven't provided any links/documents so far, where is i provided references and links to the government docs, reports, grants backing up my statements.
You're right, it won't be. This is the only positive thing I can currently see. They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance.
Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.
> They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance.
All the Europeans who have died revolting against totalitarian governments are rolling in their graves.
A leader who is democratically elected, and then violates or exploits loopholes in the law to give themselves powers that they are not supposed to have, is engaging in a self-coup.
The US Constitution grants Congress, not the executive branch, the power to determine how the federal government’s money is spent.
Elon Musk’s team within the Executive Office of the President have reportedly gained full admin access to the payment system of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service at the Department of the Treasury, which is responsible for the majority of the federal government’s payments, and are using that access to prevent certain payments from being made. Among other things, they are also attempting to close down the US Agency for International Development, which was established and funded as an independent agency by an act of Congress.
> The US Constitution grants Congress, not the executive branch, the power to determine how the federal government’s money is spent.
With regards to the constitution specifically the power of the purse seems a little vague. In 1974 the Impoundment Control Act was passed as a response to, and to prevent, presidents from unilaterally impounding.
It’s a way of saying “following the letter of a poorly drafted law while being aware of, and not following, its intended spirit”. Just because the law accidentally technically allows you to do something doesn’t mean you should, or that it should be considered morally acceptable to do so.
In my mind democratically elected and coup are antonyms. If you are against trumps style of cleanup then I would probably stick to illegal, although that is TBD, radical or destructive.
I would encourage you to check your priors wrt definitions. Ergodan was democratically elected, then staged an auto-coup and now Turkiye is a weakened democracy. Who knows if Erdogan will stand down if he loses election. Many dictators start with elections then seize powers they are not granted through election.
I understand that a self-coup could happen but to describe it as already happening seems premature... there are some things that will go to the courts sure but even democrats agree the courts are likely to find in Trump's favour.
Does that mean that the real coup happened when Trump picked the supreme court justices? Perhaps, but again it was very legal, and not particularly out of step from previous norms.
If you compare that to germany in the 1930s, a common example of a self-coup, you'll see some similarities but also large differences...
> The Reichstag building... caught fire... Hitler immediately accused the Communists of being the perpetrators... Using this justification, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to enact the Reichstag Fire Decree. The decree abolished most civil liberties, including the right to speak, assemble, protest, and due process... the Nazis declared a state of emergency and began a violent crackdown against their political enemies... Hitler submitted a proposal to the Reichstag that if passed would immediately grant all legislative powers to the cabinet... allow Hitler's government to act without regard to the constitution.
Hungary, Turkey. Both have democratically elected leaders that aren't going anywhere soon. They did it softer than Hitler, but once they control the media, they're set. Of course Trump isn't there yet. But he isn't not trying it either.
The pardoning of the J6 rioters that broke into the capitol, and now trying to fire all law enforcement that were involved in their prosecution feels like the end of the rule of law. Law will now be whatever Trump says. It's a coup.
I would encourage you to learn more about that day. Most people that were charged did not go into the building. And the few that did were literally waved in by police, including many being escorted around inside by police.
If you are elected on a platform of a coup (illegal reform), it doesn't make what you do any more legal. Some of what Trump is doing is not illegal, but some of it appears to be illegal.
> During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden experienced a sustained series of defeats at the U.S. Supreme Court... "I think it is the toughest series of defeats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s had many New Deal programs declared unconstitutional," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School
I'm not particularly trying to argue if it's good or bad, just that presidents often stretch the law to apply their agenda. I would tend to side more on the bad side, but it seems necessary due to senate dysfunction.
I guess it depends on what you mean by normal. The point I am trying to make is it is common for Presidents to do things which are later deemed illegal.
My bad for using an ambiguous term but please note that "usual" is the first listed definition for normal in many dictionaries. Using norms to mean rules seems to be more archaic.
What makes it a coup is that Trump is acting completely illegally. He was elected president, not dictator. He does not have the legal authority to create a new government department, DOGE, to appoint Musk as its head without Senate advice and consent, and to give it full power over all other agencies.
That doesn't make it a coup. "Coup" has a definition, which is to unseat a government through illegal means, or to stay in power through illegal means. For example, January 6th could be considered an attempted coup. But just acting illegally a coup does not make.
One or two illegal measures would not be a coup, but if the president arrogates himself dictatorial powers, that is a coup. Trump is taking wide-ranging, illegal measures to fundamentally alter the nature of the American government. Constitutional rule very well could be coming to an end in the US.
But clickety click, Barba Trick: it's not formally a department, so there is now law stopping the president from creating this informal advisory thing. It's not clear exactly what it is. But they just put the word "department" in the name and ran with it.
What may be illegal is when this advisory "thing" starts getting access to various important cogs of the government and intimidate federal workers by leveraging the fact that the president apparently can just fire federal employees who are in 'policy-influencing' positions.
That's again one of those cases where the law may not be ready to counteract blatant abuse because historically so much has been up to democratic norms, and here we have a clique that is using norm violation as their battle cry
