What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

No, it’s not “quite clear” as the link provided described.

Any impoundment authority and how it has been curtailed is purely a political solution, not a constitutional one.

If the Democrats think they are right they can go to the Supreme Court to force him to spend money with no say in the matter.

And while the President is mandated to execute the law you’re forgetting how much of the government is not described in law. USAID “to further the mission of the US in foreign countries” would give the President a lot of latitude in how that money is spent. A lot.

Then layer on the immense agency structure written all through “interpretation” of the law that the agencies no longer can rely on Chevron to defend and things get really interesting.

And while the Supreme Court did rule on Empoundment law curtailing Nixon, it did not rule specifically on the constitutionality of it and a lot has changed on the Supreme Court since Nixon.

So please don’t respond with “doesnt have the constitutional authority” when that is most definitely not the case.

Yes let's call a spade a spade, it's a coup.

Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.

No that's not how elections work, there's supposed to be a separation of power. In theory, he only has the executive branch.

Democracy isn't electing kings.

That's true in theory, but it's not what's happened in the recent past. A lot of the problems Trump faces are due to "rules" established by the civil service itself - often directly and unashamedly just to spite him, and stop him implementing the policies he campaigned and won on. There's no theory of government in which this is supposed to play a part.

For example, the civil service passed new rules in the dying days of the Biden administration intended to stop Trump implementing Schedule F. This didn't come from Congress or the courts. They just passed it themselves. Trump is the boss so can undo that rule with a new rule, but they passed it within a framework of yet more rules they made themselves to slow that down so - if followed - it will take months. This is purely self serving protectionism and has nothing to do with democracy or the Constitution.

There's an interesting document here [1] that goes into all the ways the civil service betrayed Trump in the first term. Betrayal is a correct and moderate term to use. They were doing things like forging documents, lying to appointees about non-existent laws, refusing to prosecute legally clear cut cases in order to propagate woke ideology (e.g. discrimination against Asian Americans), deliberately keeping their bosses in the dark, refusing direct orders to do work if it would run contra to woke ideology and many more things.

From the Trump team's perspective the rules are largely fake: when they align with what the left want they're followed to the letter, when they don't they're ignored or subverted without consequence. He played that game in his first term, and is apparently no longer willing to do so. It's hard to know what Congress will do but presumably they're aware of the fact that their own laws have created this situation to some extent (even if not the full extent). It wouldn't be surprising to see civil service reform bills appear soon.

[1] https://americafirstpolicy.com/assets/uploads/files/Tales_fr...

Once you get past a few million, you quickly get into "can't possibly spend this money in several lifetimes" territory. And wealth divides like that come at the cost of massive societal wealth divides.

The US sustains that high number of people who strike $100 million+ through having a social safety net that barely exists, which results in far more people being seen as completely disposable. It also comes at the cost of worsening public education, worsening public health, crime rates beyond most first world countries, companies that constantly invent new evils like making all formerly paid-and-done services into monthly subscriptions. Few if any that hit 100 million are doing it ethically. They're doing it by milking the residents dry.

Some countries have national pride and resent the idea of stepping on their fellow countrymen. Some would kill half of them if they were promised a few % off their yearly taxes.