Matthew

How utterly embarrassing for the US.

AKA direct proof that your characterization of the issue--that it was challenged once and failed--is false. AKA a coordinated and well-organized effort by 23 states to effectively use existing law and the courts to moderately keep a rouge president in check. 7 cases right now have active appeals. There have even the two preliminary rulings by the Supreme Court. In Dellinger v. Bessent the Court has so far sided with the guy who was fired, and AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. Department of State they did get the SCOTUS to remove a payment deadline but not dismiss the actual case or lower court's rationale aagainst the Trump admin. The appeals courts and Supreme Court are certainly not rushing to strike down these state complaints that have been appealed.

One attempt to request a blanket restraining order against Musk was rejected on Feb 12th, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Ezell. But a more recent case succeeded, New York v. Trump, resulting in a Feb 21 injunction against DOGE accessing Treasury data. There are many other DOGE cases sailing along: Project On Government Oversight, Inc. v. Trump New Mexico v. Musk Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent American Federation of State v. Social Security Administartion Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics In Washington v. U.S. Doge Service Center For Taxpayer Rights v. Internal Revenue Service Does v. Musk Gribbon v. Musk Nemeth-Greenleaf v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management American Federation of Teachers v. Bessent Electronic Privacy Information Center v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management National Treasury Employees Union v. Vought University of California Student Association v. Carter American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations v. Department of Labor Doe v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management Burns v. Trump Public Citizen v. Trump American Public Health Association v. Office of Management and Budget Lentini v. DOGE And this is just one area. There are perhaps hundreds of cases filed so far night and day. As of yesterday, 34 cases so far have resulted in current rulings and injunctions against Trump.

When an agency, program, and appropriated funding are created by statute, there is no legal way for the Presidency to eliminate it without doing so through Congress. When you mass fire people without following reduction in force procedures, you're violating the law. Trump 1.0 was sloppy too. They are literally using the same effective arguments in court to quash the same sloppy illegal actions. Resting on the idea that using the courts to call out legal violations is automatically "lAwFaRe" is just a right wing concession that they aren't able to do their dumb stuff within the bounds of the law nor effectively make new laws of the sort they would want.

Absolutely using existing law and the courts has worked. Because trump is trying to operate outside of the law. Within hours of trumps birthright citizenship EO, these AGs had filed cases. Notice how birthright citizenship still exists? Within hours of Trumps Jan 27th spending freeze memo these AGs had filed a case against. Which is why most of it wasn't implemented. A lot of this DOGE stuff is a clear violation of labor laws. There of course is a legal way to do a mass reduction of workforce but trump people are sloppy and don't know how to follow the law.

It's been extremely effective so far by stopping some of the most id1otic things from taking effect. 23 AGs have been working together closrly for over a year to coordinate legal reactions against Trump's illegal and unconditional actions.

I'm in the red state of iowa which is one of the biggest meat packing states in the country. Its republicans here that bend over for anything the ag industry wants and its Democrats fight against it. For example: - Last year when it was found that migrant children were working night shifts to clean the meat packing equipment, republicans relaxed the child labor laws to allow it. - A few weeks ago, Republicans passed a Cancer Gag Act making it impossible to sue the Ag corporations for any cancer they cause. Pesticides in particular are a major toxic hazard for farm workers and iowa has one of the highest cancer rates in the country.

It would be great if Guideline 1 were followed. I think the problem is that forum organization does not lend itself to the differing tiers of political discussion. The bottom tier, which makes up 99% of the content here, is low-quality, low-information, and poorly sourced opinion. It's everyday quick reactions. Nothing wrong with that--its largely what people come here for. But higher quality policy discussion quickly gets swallowed up and hijacked by the low-quality off-topic nonsense. It's discouraging to those with thoughtful topic ideas, knowing that if they bother to post it, it will just be immediately taken over by nincompoops. It's telling that the forum called "Federal Policies in the United States" almost never has an active thread about any actual federal policy. My proposal would be to make a Political Opinions forum for casual chat, and a Policy Discussion forum for moderated debate, in which replies must be on-topic and meet some minimal objective threshold of quality. Although this would require a whole team of at least a half- dozen liberal and conservative moderators. Frankly I don't think this forum's right wing has a deep enough bench of accountable/responsible people to facilitate this.

It doesn't matter what his job title is, it matters that he has significant decision-making powers in the executive branch. Especially as someone with tens of billions in government contracts and obvious self- interest in weakening the laws that regulate his industries. Its an obvious recipe for rampant corruption.

On Feb 13th, 14 states led by the NY AG have sued, and there are a bunch of others. Musk is the leader of this agency and issues public pronouncements to the entire executive branch in his capacity as leader of this agency, making him not just a public official as per Article II section 2, but currently the de facto highest appointed official in the government.

Not true. In this case Musk has been marketed as the head of a major agency. The Constitution specifies that appointment of executive branch officials must be confirmed by the Senate unless the Congress specifically provides for the president to appoint certain inferior officers.

It is. Being poltically, economically, or militarily dependent on a more powerful state. And yes the US is a global hegemon with many many client states, and yes the US has worked to "make it that way" since WWII. For someone as interested in politics as you are it's hard to believe you've never learned about the basic post war international order. Are you trying to be austistic? When we start the negotiations by saying Russia will get to keep what they conquered AND that NATO membership is off the table. That's not just absolute appeasement but also absolute victory and vindication for Putin.

Of course it is. They are militarily dependent on the US. One of the main reasons for invading Ukraine was to stop it from further slipping out of their control and into US tutelage. Yes it does. Your Trump diplomats and VP have signaled that this Russian conquest will be appeased (by conceding up front all of Russias demands) and have signaled to Europeans that their security vs Russia does not currently matter to the US (by attending their Munich security conference and diverting attention away from Russia and toward alleged internal enemies etc).

Ok. So in your opinion, the richest guy in the world making major decisions on the shape of our Executive Branch without any consent of Congress is just a normal thing.

When the US defends a client state and then suddenly reverses course, treats them like an enemy, and sides with their invader--obviously other allies and client states will then feel less secure. In this case the client state was literally invaded by Russia attempting to expand their empire. It's the whole point of NATO originally to be a bulwark against Russian imperialism. So our nation's sudden disinterest in doing that is seen as a portent of things to come. With Russias military industry picking up and trump team saying the US will now have a backseat role in NATO, they now have every incentive to strike elsewhere sooner rather than later.

Lol what?

NATO is already much weaker right now than it was a month ago. US diplomatic actions in the last month have greatly improved the prospects of Russia and China at the expense of US trust and prestige.

I've read all 68 of these so far. They are overwhwhelmingly theatrical. With a few noteworthy exceptions, they are very light in actual policy impact.

Trump not even hiding that he's ceding major executive branch decisions to a literal unelected, unconfirmed, billionaire twitter troll. Republicans threw a fit in the 90s over a first lady in a healthcare policy initiative because she was neither elected nor confirmed by the senate.

Immigration has been making the US stronger for hundreds of years. It's always been disliked by bigots but the alleged dangers of it have always been and continue to be mostly imaginary.

Not a mystery. Putin had been openly talking about it. They even had a televised meeting 3 days before, where Russian ministers had to stand and publicly declare their approval for the invasion. False. A Russian commando unit led by Igor Girkin invaded the Donbas region on April 12th 2014 and seized the city of Sloviansk. Ukraine began retaliating at that time, which continued until Russia escallated to a full iinvasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Ok, so nothing is your answer. Nothing is being done right now by the House to check the president. Looks like you have nothing useful, interesting, or relevant to say about this topic (as usual).

Claiming that Ukraine started the war in which Russia invaded their country.

This is the dumbest, most opposite-of-reality comment I've ever read.

There have been a lot of fascist parties in America especially by the 1920s-40s. And multiple Republican senators back then were in the pocket of the German nazi party and were using their franking privilege to distribute german fascist propaganda to voters. There were even organized German nazi training camps in the US.