The Republican plan for the federal government for decades has been to try to kneecap various agencies and departments so fully that they can't function well, go "look how poorly they operate! Time to close it down and let private sector handle it!"
That wouldn't be the goal though, just the means to their end. The goal would have to be shrinking the government, for example, or to move authority out to the private sector.
The entire party is psychos wanting to kneecap departments just to watch them bleed.
Their stated goals are lower taxes, less regulation, less government presence. What they want bigger is private riches through industry and church. They all believe this, voter and representative.
What part do you think gets built back? Maybe the FBI, when they’re sure it can be weaponized against their enemies.
> Their stated goals are lower taxes, less regulation, less government presence.
And if you believe Project 2025, which I do, however the Trump campaign tried to halfheartedly distance itself from them, lower education:
Project 2025 talks of how children finishing school should be looking more to "buying a house and starting a family" than college. Of course, how the average 18 year old with a high school education and single income (because homeschooling is also a very big goal of Project 2025) is meant to buy this house is left as an exercise for the (uneducated) reader. The important thing is less education and more future "Warriors for Christ" (as someone I know on my FB feed calls their children).
I haven't read 2025 so I'm going only off what you have here.
I think a strong argument could be made that an 18 year old with a strong work ethic should be able to get a job that allows them to afford a house in a reasonable timeline.
I don't have any expectation that's actually what 2025 argues, but it would be a good ideal. Why shouldn't a kid out of high school willing to work hard be able to save up for a house and a family in a reasonable amount of time? Should we gate keep that behind college degrees or similar?
I would agree. Just as I believe minimum wage isn't "only applicable to teenagers working part time after school".
But yes, P2025's goal has nothing to do with the wellbeing of said school leaver. They specifically want people to be less educated (easier to manipulate and persuade), and are all about raising as many Christian children as possible to "stack the vote".
I wouldn't even begin to guess. This has all moved so quickly that I've yet to find what seems to be a reliable source on what is actually changing.
My point, though, was only that we've so far seen moves to reduce headcount and pause programs. That could be the first step to closing down departments entirely, but it could also be the first step to rebuilding their own version of that department.
Interesting, that hasn't been my experience of the Republican party over the last few decades.
I grew up over that time in a very red part of the country.
In the 90s I always heard of the republican party as the party of small government and individual freedoms.
Starting at least with Bush/Cheney that didn't line up. The party seemed to want a larger military budget, increased federal powers, and a stronger executive branch.
Republican voters I knew largely followed that pattern. They didn't want to see departments closed or authority removed from the government. They just wanted their views written into law. Abortion is a great example, the republican party strongly pushed for regulating what individuals could or could not do, very few were arguing that abortion rights were outside the federal government's authority.
Yes but these aren’t “spend more money on the department of X” laws or ideas. Other than military and law enforcement, which I already mentioned. Bush consolidating power under DHS and expanding wiretaps is of course Republican party values.
Bush cut funding for education and pushed it to private schools. He cut antipoverty initiatives and pushed funding to church groups. Cut funding for stem cell research. And of course cut taxes for the rich.
The antiabortion response is to cut funds to anything touching abortion (not, say, provide more support to mothers.) And make way for expanded power over reproductive rights at the state level.
A ban on abortions, in this example, would be codifying the government's legal authority to make such a decision.
That's first order building, there is no need for rebuilding in that scenario.
With regards to the broader DOGE topic, they aren't banning anything yet that I've seen outside of the authority that we already granted the executive branch. I don't necessarily agree with what they're doing, but from the bits and pieces I can pull out of largely political reporting it does seem like they're staying within the bounds of what the executive branch is technically allowed to do.
There will be a legal debate whether there are within the rules to not spend money budgeted by congress. That will come down to an opinion whether the argument that departments are not acting in good faith or reasonably executing their mandate is found by the courts to be reasonable.
Personal freedom, except for things they don't like and except for people they don't like. It was always like that.
That being said, right now there was enough written over years by hard core conservatives and specifically by heritage foundation and in project 2025 to know what they want.
The same people were not to remove abortion protection either, I still remember how everyone and his brother framed that worry as paranoid ... two years before the exact same people did it.
To be fair, we never really had abortion protections. A supreme court ruling isn't law, its precedent. Precedent can be challenged much easier and can be superseded by legislation.
For sure, when they say they want to close down departments, I'm sure they don't mean it. I see the insanity of their actions and, I too, find comfort in pretending that there is going to be something stable left afterwards /s/
It is not to have a larger/smaller government. The plan is to privatize as much as possible. I mentioned this in another comment: 'Elon has already tweeted "The safety of air travel is a non-partisan matter. SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer"'
I believe the number of air incidents has been 2 a week in the last month.
Any time now the government just will be ready to declare FAA as a disaster of the previous regimes and that Tech industries will be better at running the admin for the aviation sector.
That's the Heritage Foundation christo-fascist plan. Unfortunately they've teamed up with the mad Libertarian wing of the Republicans who turn up in places like HN and complain that all taxation is theft and are ready to burn the country to the ground because they've been so well programmed by propaganda that originally just wanted to build support for a tax cut for the already rich but metastasized into a superpower destroying cult of insanity.
I think most libertarians would agree with the idea that a government should be kept as small as possible while still being able to protect property rights. They're generally capitalists as well, and the primary drivers there are individual choice and property rights.
For one, I never said I myself am libertarian or anarchist.
Your logic here seems circular, but maybe I just misunderstood. It seems reasonable to me that someone who is libertarian and accepts the need for a state but wants it limited to only, or primarily, protecting property rights would admit that its fine to have a government enforce things they like.
If someone takes issue with having a government at all they're left with anarchism as the only choice. That's all well and good, people can have the opinion that a state is never justified. That doesn't mean libertarians can't believe in a form of government with whatever limitations they deem reasonable or worth the risk, though.
'If I break the law the government enforces the law' implies 'I should be able to break the law with no consequence' implies 'libertarianism is anarchist'.
Sure, but where are you getting these quotes and what is the context you plucked them out of?
A libertarian would not argue that laws can be broken without consequence. They would argue what laws should exist and where the governments authority begins and ends, but that is a very different conversation.
An anarchist would argue that laws and governments shouldn't exist, period. They therefore wouldn't argue that laws can be broken without consequence, they would take issue with the presumption that laws should exist in the first place.
Choose not to pay your mortgage. What happens? They take your house. Does that make mortgages theft? No, it doesn't.
What makes something "theft" is that it's an illegitimate taking. The only way you can say that about taxation is to have already defined government as being illegitimate. Then (and only then) taxes are theft.
But if someone hasn't already made "all governments are illegitimate", then arguing that they'll take things from you if you don't pay taxes isn't the convincing argument you seem to think it is.
> Choose not to pay your mortgage. What happens? They take your house. Does that make mortgages theft? No, it doesn't.
You opt-in to having a mortgage and agree to terms.
I'm not aware of such an option for taxes or citizenship. If you are born in on US soil you are made a citizen, including all the legal rights and benefits as well as the tax liability.
Well, if I understand correctly, there was the option of becoming an outlaw - literally someone outside the law, which meant that the protection of the law didn't apply to you. Anyone you met was free to kill you. But you didn't have to pay taxes.
But if you want the protection of what taxes pay for - the rule of law - then you need to pay the taxes.
Yes many of them won’t be replaced. Many institutions won’t. Some existing will remain but need to replace the previous regimes loyalists. And create new admins so your current regime maintains after next elections. This is how you establish lasting power.
This isn’t renovating an old house, it’s pouring kerosene around, torching it to collect the insurance money, and saying you might rebuild whatever you miss. They’ve squandered billions of dollars in past investments, incurred massive liabilities, and are making all future work more expensive.
Say you do need the government to actually do something: how much more money are qualified people going to expect when they can’t count on decent working conditions or job security? How much more will every government contract cost when past history of failure to pay has to be priced in? Every federal job supports multiple private sector jobs, and federal spending provided a consistent economic baseline in many parts of the country, too, so that’ll all be happening within a hard recession.
This is the recipe for corruption that was eliminated back in the progressive era of the early 20th century. It's what gave us Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed.
Repopulating organizations with loyal stooges is not constructive.
DEI is merit: the entire point is NOT passing over qualified applicants because they don’t fit a given image. If you look at the people axing DEI programs, note how they’re almost all sons of affluence who aren’t exceptionally qualified.
That's a very gracious description of any DEI program I've had personal experience with.
DEI programs and similar work by focusing more effort on underrepresented groups. By design that puts less focus on overrepresented groups, and splits that focus away from merit all together.
Arguing that everyone should have equal opportunity to succeed is admirable and a great goal to have. I've never seen a DEI program that implements that or stops at that goal though, they need more immediate results and focus instead on helping to select under represented groups into positions to better balance the statistics.
The ones I’ve worked with uniformly focused on making sure that hiring didn’t inadvertently rule people out. This often benefited white people, too: if you’re a vet with a thick southern accent and without a degree, getting the chance to interview is important for being able to demonstrate that you’ve acquired the required skills by other means.
So fire the most competent people (people are placed on probation for 2 years when promoted in the Feds,people being promoted are normally ones you want to keep, and Trump/Elon are blanket firing everyone on probation) because DEI exists?
That's not my argument at all. Firing probationary employees is really the only immediate lever they had, my understanding I'd that other employees are better protected.
Is it the right approach? Definitely not, but that doesn't mean it can't be a step in a better direction. That all depends on your goals and what you want to happen, I couldn't answer that question no matter what.
Probationary employees can more easily be fired for cause. Thousands of employees, including some of the best who had recently been promoted, were given the reason 'poor performance'.
So you are OK with firing the best because 'otherwise it's hard'.
You are OK with breaking the law because 'otherwise it's hard'.
You are OK with lying to people why they are fired because 'otherwise it's hard'.
You just want action and don't care if it's smart action, legal, or fair. That is item 3 on the checklist of fascism.
"The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation."
I can't recall when government was so enthusiastic about rooting out fraud. I kind of like this, and I want the government to actively pursue fraud and mismanagement. Feels like it always gets buried in some bureaucratic report.
There have been plenty of claims of specific waster and fraud found. The problem is knowing what is actually true and accurate right now. Things have been moving quickly and its become such a political firestorm that it's extremely difficult to find unbiased reporting.
I'd tweak that slightly. I think they should be considered unproven or unsubstantiated, that doesn't make them false.
Assuming they're false because they haven't been nearly immediately proven publicly makes it too easy for those concerns and allegations to be written off and ignored.
A potential fact coming from an untrustworthy person isn't immediately false. An untrustworthy person can be right and a trustworthy can be wrong.
The point is that we can't consider a claim true or false. We need evidence to prove it is true, and we can never really prove its false unless we can see all information that could possibly be related to the question.
I don't personally see the government release all information that could possibly be related to any question of fraud or abuse, so we're left either proving it true or considering it unsubstantiated or unproven.
> A potential fact coming from an untrustworthy person isn't immediately false. An untrustworthy person can be right and a trustworthy can be wrong.
An untrustworthy person is trying to convince you of something, and has access and control of all the information to substantiate everything he's saying. Why is anything left unproven? Because he's relying on information asymmetry to confound you. It's the same thing he did with the so-called "Twitter Files", where he selectively leaked one-sided information to spin a narrative. He's doing the same thing with Doge and people are falling for it. Probably the same ones who fell for the "Twitter files".
Proven liars rely on credulous people like yourself to continue operating once their lies are widely known. That's why when such a liar has power, the only rational stance is extreme skepticism until, like I said, an independent verification can be obtained. Otherwise you open yourself to be taken advantage of.
> I don't personally see the government release all information that could possibly be related to any question of fraud or abuse
We're not asking for that kind of a standard. I would be satisfied with releasing the necessary information that would be sufficient in proving specific questions of fraud raised by Musk to the public. Trusted third parties with appropriate clearances can handle sensitive information, and it can be appropriately redacted for public consumption.
> An untrustworthy person is trying to convince you of something, and has access and control of all the information to substantiate everything he's saying. Why is anything left unproven?
Not totally relevant here, but I find it interesting that this description is literally how our legal system works. The prosecutor is trying to convince the jury of something and the prosecutor holds all their potential evidence, deciding for themselves what to deem relevant or exculpatory.
> We're not asking for that kind of a standard. I would be satisfied with releasing the necessary information that would be sufficient in proving specific questions of fraud raised by Musk to the public.
Agreed, that was actually what I meant in the other option I gave - they can prove the claim true by making public limited facts. I only raised that all related information would have to be released if the goal is to prove the claim false, which it sounds like you don't want or expect.
I would fully expect them to eventually release proof of fraud claims, until then I consider them claims of fraud that are so far unproven.
Doesn't that apply to all, or nearly all, politicians at the federal level?
Even the names they give major bills are technically a lie, any legislator that supports or votes for it is lying. Campaign speeches and promises are riddled with lies and omissions. Presidents lie while in office.
I don't mean to play whataboutism here. I'm all for calling out lying politicians here, but I'd extend that to everyone that fits the bill.
Unless there's a detailed report about the specific fraud being stopped, there's nothing. So far it seems people are happy to stop "fraud" as in "things they don't like and won't justify". Tweets don't count.
It seems like a reasonable opinion for a voter to agree with things they don't like to be stopped though.
Maybe the voter doesn't actually care about fraud, but why shouldn't they appreciate having fewer of their tax dollars being spent on things they don't even agree with?
It's a short term strategy though. If you go with "doesn't matter if it's true if it benefits me", the next "fraud" to be removed may be yours/you. And someone else will like it too.
I agree that's a bad approach in almost every situation, but it is par for the course. That isn't to say its okay, but there are worse examples of short term strategies to take issue with if that's the concern.
Of course. Democracy does mean we make our bed and then have to sleep in it though.
Assuming we do have a democracy today (I'd argue that's questionable for many reasons), a majority of voters and electoral college representatives voted for Trump.
Trump so far is doing many of the things he said he would do. For better or worse our democracy picked this. If it goes poorly we can only blame ourselves.
> Assuming we do have a democracy today (I'd argue that's questionable for many reasons), a majority of voters and electoral college representatives voted for Trump.
It's not a winner take all system. If a bunch of racists get elected to office, they can't just claim a "mandate" and declare the Civil Right Act null and void by refusing to enforce it. The President enforces all the laws, even the ones his voters don't support. If he wants to change them, he can sign a bill into law, he can veto a bill, but he can't pick and choose to enforce just Republican passed laws.
If a bunch of racists run on such ideas and say that's what they will do, and they win an election what are we supposed to do?
We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system as we don't really believe in the principles of democracy.
If that's true why have a constitution and laws limiting the power of the government? Using your logic, every decision made by the government is fine.
If the majority runs on cancelling democracy itself (e.g. that if they're elected there will be no more elections and they will stay in power), and they gain a small majority, is it fine for them to now cancel all elections in the future?
If a party runs on (say) taking the homes of those that voted for the opposition, do you think that it's fine if they do it if they get in power? Maybe put them in jails or camps?
Democracy is not just about majority rule. It's about protection of minorities, different rights like free speech or property rights, free trial and other things. There's a reason why there's are constitutions, courts, legislative branches etc.
> If that's true why have a constitution and laws limiting the power of the government? Using your logic, every decision made by the government is fine.
For sure, laws limiting power are extremely important. My point is simply that if a person or members of a party get elected in numbers to change that, and were clear of their intentions with voters, its totally within Democratic principles for the laws to be changed.
Abe Lincoln changed the laws with regards to slavery. He was elected by popular vote but that meant he went against a sizeable minority of voters and fundamentally changed laws limiting powers and rights. I don't see any problem with that. To be clear, I'm not drawing any comparison directly between Lincoln and any other politician today.
> Democracy is not just about majority rule. It's about protection of minorities, different rights like free speech or property rights, free trial and other things. There's a reason why there's are constitutions, courts, legislative branches etc.
Democracy is a political model for how to elect those in charge. The ideals built into the US bill of rights are in addition to democracy, not part of it directly. You can democratically elect a bigot for example, but the election was still democratically held.
> My point is simply that if a person or members of a party get elected in numbers to change that, and were clear of their intentions with voters, its totally within Democratic principles for the laws to be changed.
Not, it's not. If members of a party get elected to remove the ability of their opposition or some of their opposition to vote or cancel the next democratic elections that's in fact undemocratic. Especially in a system like in the US where even without an actual majority of votes you can get the presidency or a majority in the legislative branch.
If a party runs on the platform of ending democracy, and they win a fair election, I don't know of any safety mechanisms in democracy itself that prevent that.
There are existing laws that limit powers, but with enough support and legislative seats that can all be changed.
Ignoring whether we should choose to defend democracy in that scenario (I would), what do you see as the mechanism built into democracy that stops it?
> If a party runs on the platform of ending democracy, and they win a fair election, I don't know of any safety mechanisms in democracy itself that prevent that.
Yes there are, laws requiring super majority, for example, to change, or counter. You even state so yourself:
> There are existing laws that limit powers, but with enough support and legislative seats that can all be changed.
These changes need "enough support", because there is protection built in the system - so a majority is not enough. Other examples of protection are the Judicial branch having the power to cancel illegal legislation, EOs and other government decisions, the President having the power to veto bills. All of these supposedly provide a checks and balances system, although it is of course imperfect, especially with gerrymandering or the way that the Supreme Court is built (in my opinion life tenure is a bad idea, the court itself needs more members, and the way the members are selected is too politically oriented).
> We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system as we don't really believe in the principles of democracy.
If you have a super-majority that supports extremes that's a whole different ball game. You originally talked about "majority", and how that's the be all end all of democracy. For example, in the US, to change the constitution you'd super majority on the Federal level, as well as (IIRC) majority in 75% of the states.
Nonetheless, everything I've stated is of course based on police/army that will listen to the law and act accordingly. If the people with guns/tanks/advanced weapons act in an illegal way and against the system, of course the law is worthless.
Sure, I was a bit loose in my use of the term "majority" earlier though we hadn't come to this level of detail.
My point remains, though. There is a point at which democracy has no guardrails to prevent a democratic overthrow of the system. Call it a majority, super majority, 60% vote, or whatever the system in place decides. With enough support a democratic system can be thrown out in an entirely democratic election.
Democracy does not mean majority does whatever they want. The Constitution says the majority has to follow the law, even if the law was passed by the people currently in the minority. If they want to change the law they have that power, but they can't just break the law.
Of course, existing laws do limit what that group would do. If they won in sufficient numbers though, laws on the books would allow them to change the laws restricting them.
I'm not saying its a good thing, just how it works. True democracy is a leap of faith, you need to trust that most people are generally good and are generally well intended.
> We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system
We did not, in fact, pick unlimited democracy, largely because never in the history of the country has there been a trust that giving unlimited power to an unchecked, potentially transitory, majority was a good idea. It's why we have Constitutional limits on government. Its why we have dual sovereignty. It's why we have separation of powers in the federal government. It's why we have staggered elections to the Senate. It's why we tend to add additional Constitutional limits on government over time, not fewer.
The history of American involves a fairly intense, often quite violent, debate about these issues. There is no simple settled comprehensive position on what should be within the scope of majoritarian control and what needs to be kept outside of it (and which method should be used to do that.)
Pretending that there is a simple consensus around unchecked majoritarianism, or that the choice is between unchecked majoritarianism and something radically different from the Constitutionally-limited representative democracy the US has had, misguided if not actually dishonest.
Constitutional limits and our system of checks and balances have nothing directly to do with democracy.
Democracy is a process of how leaders are elected, that's it. How our government is structured, our three branches, etc is not part of democracy - those are details of how we implemented a government of democratically elected officials (well, as democratically as it can be considered in a democratic republic with our electoral college system).
> Constitutional limits and our system of checks and balances have nothing directly to do with democracy.
They have to do with the actual system of government we've chosen in the United States, which is not naive majoritarianism; either that system is a form of democracy (which it would be by the definitions usually used in modern discussions of real political systems), in which case it disproves the premise "We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules", or it is not, and it makes the full argument, "We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system" irrelevant because, in that case, we have already chosen a different system, and wouldn't need to go back to the drawing board simply because we had a problem with naive majoritarianism -- since rejection of that was baked in from the start.
It sounds like we're making the same argument at this point. We aren't really a democracy and we don't want one, in part because from the beginning those in charge have worried about "the mob" and didn't want to actually allow us to vote and have the majority opinion win unchecked.
I would printout that they spent a lot of effort to deny they are racists. Even now as they are enacting long term plans their supporters claim it is something else.
Trump did not run on "I will anex canada, make inflation higher, order damm release and slash department of education".
Some parts he run at - he promised to harm trans and he is delivering.
I could have sworn he, or those very closely circled around him, talked specifically about education and the need to reform DoE. I don't remember for sure now, honestly the campaigns feels like years ago already.
He didn't run on annexing Canada, he almost certainly doesn't want to though. Trump is a bully and just likes to play cheap games when negotiating. He raised the idea of making Canada a state while also pushing hard on border issues and tariffs. He was just fainting there to try to gain the upper hand.
Inflation is a joke with him. He's completely contradictory there, though that is pretty common. I don't think Trump understands or cares about inflation, it just polls well. He did run on tariffs though, and any voter didn't understand that leads to inflation can only blame themselves.
There isn’t anything like the amount of it being promised, and gutting the auditing and staffing for programs is the last thing you’d do if that’s your concern.
For example, Musk lied about social security but the records he mentioned were reported by the SSA IG years before. They concluded there wasn’t much fraud because over 98% of the old records weren’t receiving money (and hadn’t made contributions in over 50 years) and it was noted that cleaning them up would cost significantly more than it could possibly save.
Oh, I’m certain there’s fraud. Now, is there a higher percentage of fraud in what he is cutting—or in what he is leaving behind? That is an open question.
I don't like trump and have never voted for him, but I would take someone convicted of financial or business ethics crimes over Andrew Jackson (not a felon, but damn he was a bad person).
The "convicted" piece carries a lot of weight here too. Plenty of presidents have done terrible things but were never convicted.
I also would be in favor of rooting out fraud and even closing many of the departments we have today (along with getting rid of the legal authority that allowed them).
When a strongman figure is in charge yelling one thing, though, I do always look in the other direction. Its like a magic show, look where they want to distract you from rather than what they're pointing at.
I'll be very interested to see where this ends up, and a little surprised if its an honest attempt to find fraud and shrink the government or balance the budget.
We may not end up with a smaller government, just a different one.