341–350 of 383 posts
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> You're arrested for trespassing By who? and on what grounds? The only people that have authority to fire are the people that are heads of that institution. The president has no connection to this institution. He does not have any power in this context. His power stops at the federal level and even then his power is limited. Nobody has to abide by his orders. Yet, there are plenty of people doing so. Im not understa…
I feel like you didn't really read my comment.
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I'm still not quite sure how anybody is required to follow an order of someone that doesn't have authority to do what they're doing. What happens if you refuse to be let go by someone that doesn't have authority?
Look at the body cam footage of the armed takeover of the Institute of Peace on youtube, or here's a politico article: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/doge-institute-peac... Or Musk "deputizing" his private security guards to be federal agents for his purposes: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... A new department head gets installed, DOGE selects people to fire, has complete acces…
Edit: thanks for the links. You can tell they are operating without authority. I had been totally unaware of this
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I feel like you didn't really read my comment.
People on this site would literally say "actually you can't do this" as they're being taken away to somewhere to never be heard from again.
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well that specific scenario is its own mess of competing authorities. Theoretically, the president is commander in chief, so he controls the armed forces. But congress has the authority to make a declaration of war. But the president as commander in chief can direct troops for national security or other purposes. Military action can happen without a war being declared. It becomes a bit of a game of semantics because…
Oh good God, I can't listen to this intellectual rot a single second longer. This is not a gray area unless you're intentionally pretending to be an idiot to steal power. Congress is the only branch allowed to declare war. Taking targeted military actions against another country repeatedly on their own soil with no provocation is not a "special military action" it's a fucking war. It's not funny or coy or clever to p…
The current setup has gone from "only Congress can declare war, requiring a majority of Congress" to "Congress has to pass a War Powers resolution to stop the president from going to war, with enough of a majority that they can override a presidential veto". That is a massively different standard, and was done without amending the Constitution.
So I agree with you. Just don't try to make this something special to Trump, because it's not.
There’s only one reason to get rid of all the smart people, shenanigans are afoot.
its very transparent what they're doing they're almost certainly going to replace all the board memebers with political loyalists. the board members served six year terms specifically so they'd span multiple administrations and stay independent. firing them all at once lets you stack the entire board with people. it's not about making science better, it's about removing the people who'd say no.
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I feel like you didn't really read my comment.
I read your comment and im not seeing it. Show me the evidence of this happening, because this sounds like wild speculation.
The president does not have the power to declare war. We are at war with Iran.
The president does not have the power to unilaterally dissolve agencies or reproportion or refuse their funds or budgeting. Yet the department of education is being shuttered and numerous agencies are in ongoing lawsuits for DOGE.
It is illegal for the president to use the office for advertisement or personal gain. Yet he openly allows bribes to advertise products from the white House, creates cryptocurrencies, gives high-level positions to family.
The president is not allowed to direct an angry crowd to the capital with the express intent to stop the wheels of democracy and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. And yet.
The DOJ announced they will not prosecute the predators from Epstein's list after explicitly violating a law from Congress repeatedly for months on disclosing related files.
Congress is too afraid of his power to hurt their reelection. 33% of SCOTUS are his picks, with another 33% being aligned with the party, creating a supermajority. We've seen the majority of military leadership replaced this year. We've seen a plurality of agencies institute loyalty tests, most importantly the FBI. ICE has been repurposed to a private military / secret police.
You seem to believe there is some divine mandate that enforces the constitution. That the president must follow the rules.
There is not. He is not. He got away with it and continues to get away with it. We no longer live in a polite, rule-based society.
Because, fundamentally, might makes right. And the president of the United States has consolidated enough power that there is basically nothing to stop them but how far their cronies are willing to go.
So why can he do this? Because he can. And there's nothing you can do about it. And if you fight back there will be repercussions.
There are so many bots/trolls on HN now, it's crazy.
How do you 100% determine a comment is form a bot/troll?
But when you see people confidently stating unreasonable things in short posts, it's a common tip-off for a bot/shill/zealot/troll. When they assume a starting point that is two standard deviations out of most peoples' Overton Window, and they don't defend it, just kind of "Of course X is true", that's someone who is blasting propaganda, not having a reasonable discussion. They just want to say "X is true" enough times that people start to believe it.
As I said, that's not 100%. For any individual instance, you can look at their posting history. But for a comment section, when you start to see such posts taking over more and more of the discussion, you can say that the discussion has been taken over with very close to 100% certainty, even if you can't be certain about any one post.
I’m trying to understand what rationale could be behind this decision. America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community. All the hyperscaler could build up because the engineers felt good in America. This might not kill it, but it risks it. What could be the reason he’s doing it, how does he benefit from it, or thinks he benefits from it?
the honest answer is it's not really about science at all; its about removing independent oversight. the "benefit" from his perspective is the same playbook trump admin has been running across every federal agency, he wants to replace independent experts with loyalists, remove checks on executive power, and redirect spending toward admin priorities. the board members served six year terms specifically to insulate sci…
I’m trying to understand what rationale could be behind this decision. America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community. All the hyperscaler could build up because the engineers felt good in America. This might not kill it, but it risks it. What could be the reason he’s doing it, how does he benefit from it, or thinks he benefits from it?
Seems pretty clear to me. It A) gives business funding that would otherwise have to give up equity to VCS or sell to PE or whatever other forms of private, for-profit funding. And B) takes away money that could go to the military or ICE or other programs that could be used to concentrate Trumps power or aggrandizement. > America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community. Has Trump and his friend b…