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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#771

Post by franktankbank »

intended wrote: post #634
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

> However, if we are pulled between two magnets, and our goal is to not be pulled apart - then the magnets need to be addresed.

Who exactly holds the magnets here? Is it even knowable or is it even necessary to know to address the problem? I agree regarding media but how do you get your information at national scale then? The world seems way more complex than what it once was, the interdependence feels more like grappling moves as we approach a malthusian crunch.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#772

Post by [deleted] »

macinjosh wrote: post #737
dudefeliciano wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.' Call it whatever you want, the fact of the matter is that you have an unelected private person, who happens to be the richest person on earth, taking control of federal agencies. I don't think anyone should consider this silly, as nobody thought it was silly when MAGA tried to actually stage a literal coup by force 4 y…

The only elected members of the executive branch are the President and VP. The president is employing Musk. Your claims of him being unelected is irrelevant. Valerie Jarret was UNELECTED. OMG OMG /s See how dumb it sounds?

[deleted]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#773

Post by benzible »

Gareth321 wrote: post #609
realusername wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you can call a democratically elected president doing what he promised to do a coup.

We don't have a monarchy (yet). The Constitution does not say "anything in here is void at the whim of the President". An electoral win does not allow him to unleash a gang of thugs through all of the agencies, to shut down Congressionally mandated agencies, to violate civil service protections, etc. Presidents swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.

Not to mention, he ran on the opposite of what he's doing. He claimed he was going to end wars and immediately threatened war on multiple allies, with the latest being a threat of mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. And on and on.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#774

Post by davidw »

Spooky23 wrote: post #733
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

JFK wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” - no courageous people are around. The “coup” happened a long time ago. The US has demonstrated that there’s no rule of law at the federal level for some time now. Once the Chief Justice leaned back and tolerated the open sale of the court, that was basically it. We don’t have the same system of governance anymore… we’re like Italy 1936 or Argentina in 1948 now. We’ll inv…

This piece sums it up pretty well:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-federa...

The world as we knew it is gone and we're not going back.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#775

Post by scarab92 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #761
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (taxpayer) grants and contracts. Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts mor…

[flagged]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#776

Post by miltonlost »

Propelloni wrote: post #714
tmountain wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an administrative coup, and it goes like this: 1) Remove all opposition for DOJ (already done) 2) Pass executive orders that should require congressional approval (doing) 3) Illegally seize control of the treasury (doing) 4) Broadly dismantle key government services (doing) 5) Watch politicians say, "you can't do that!" with no recourse (doing) Continually take control more and more broadly until you have absolu…

The Wikipedia-article is pretty explicit about Gleichschaltung (what you describe) as is the definition of coup: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/coup I'm not going to stop you calling it a coup, but your opponents will just smile and say "not true" and they would be right.

Definition 2: a sudden illegal, often violent, taking of government power, often by the army

Musk is committing illegal acts, over a weekend, in taking government power by, at minimum, not being appointed and confirmed. This is a coup by the definition YOU provided.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#777

Post by burnerboy »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #761
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (taxpayer) grants and contracts. Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts mor…

He also has massive business operations in China, a country which clearly wants a weakened US.

WSJ also reported in October about how Musk has been in regular contact with Putin.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#778

Post by rayiner »

waveBidder wrote: post #739
rayiner wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “coup” implies an overthrow of the legal structure of power. Who is being overthrown?

the Congress. the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally shut down entire departments

Precedent holds that Congress has the power to establish executive branch agencies and lay out their jurisdiction and functions. It also holds that, once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated. There’s a constitutional distinction between this power to create/define (legislative) and the power to run (executive).

The article doesn’t seem to be about abolishing the NIH and NSF. Instead it seems to be about NIH and NSF grants to third parties. That seems to fall squarely on the executive side of the line.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#779

Post by Der_Einzige »

lisp2240 wrote: post #658
intended wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

The problem is, in America, both magnets pull to the right. We have a far right republican party and a center right democratic party. There is no leftwing party to provide balance. There’s not a single democrat who would be considered a leftist outside America.

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#780

Post by patagurbon »

nonethewiser wrote: post #753
waveBidder wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Congress. the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally shut down entire departments

I thin you want to be a little more precise in your definition. A president doing things they dont have the authority for would probably mean every president conducted a coup.

This is the closest to constitutional crisis we have gotten in decades. There are different degrees of presidential overreach
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