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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5182 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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I think you may be wrong in certain areas. First, DOGE is part of government (read the EO). Second, the president can give info to whoever he wants. Third, the President can certainly stop payments where the authorizing legislation is broad and open ended (eg 50m to foster goodwill in LATAM is not a command to spend xx dollars on a specific project in LATAM)

First, DOGE is part of government (read the EO)

The DOGE created by the executive order is a beefed-up Government digital service, which sits in the EOP, and is headed by a United States DOGE Service Administrator who is an EOP employee reporting directly to the White House Chief of Staff. The job of this DOGE is to co-ordinate the activity of the DOGE teams set up in individual agencies (consisting of agency employees who formally report to the agency head, but have a dotted line to DOGE), with a particular focus on software interoperability. The executive order explicitly doesn't transfer any of the authority of the Office of Management and Budget to DOGE, so as far as I can see DOGE has no authority to block spending.

Even from my mostly Trump-sceptic point of view, DOGE is a good idea, and making Elon Musk the public face of it and giving him some suitable advisory role will make it more effective, as well as making it easier to pull in someone first-class from a private-sector tech company for the crucial full-time role of DOGE Service Administrator.

Elon Musk is not an employee of the EOP reporting to the White House Chief of Staff (and couldn't be while continuing to hold his private-sector jobs), and if the post of United States DOGE Service Administrator has been filled by someone else, this fact has not been publicised. The media is reporting that the people working with Musk on @DOGE are not government employees either, and are mostly still being paid by Musk-owned companies. So the @DOGE that is shutting down USAID and rooting the Fiscal Service is not the DOGE of the EO.

I can't comment on what @DOGE is doing because they aren't saying, but given that USAID and the Fiscal Service were set up by Congress it is probably illegal and definitely irregular.

DOGE itself isn’t shutting anything down they are giving info to the president who then shuts it down.

You are wrong on #1 and #2: Congressional action is required in order to create new executive branch offices. Presidents cannot do that through executive order per the constitution Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. DOGE was not created by congress and Musk has not been approved by congress. #3 depends, as most funding is earmarked to what organization it goes to.

Specifics matter. If Trump wants to have a new office in the executive branch, he will have to ask congress to create it for him. If he wants Musk to lead it, he will have to get him confirmed, the latter will never happen.

He won't do either one, so it looks like we are headed toward a constitutional crisis.

You mean offices like US AID? That was created by EO. Department level offices cannot be created by EO.

Also BS on the president being restricted on sharing info. Classification and de classification is a power of the president.

Congressional action isn't needed to create roles in the Executive Office of the President that are not "Officers of the United States". Musk could do most of what DOGE is doing legally as a Special Assistant to the President, but he isn't one, he is just a private citizen who Trump has told his top political appointees to share information with.

Well, you still haven't actually read the EO.

DOGE is established as a renaming of the US digital service to US DOGE service, with a temporary suborganization called US DOGE Service Temporary Organization with teams of Special Government Employees.

And USDS's new mandate is a Software Modernization Initiative, not technically a budget directive, so the mission of USDS has not changed.

Finally, the president does have authority to share classified info with anyone at any time. The President and only the President is the ultimate classificarion authority (because classification is justified under constitutional provisions for foreign policy, I guess).

Whether this EO gives Elon the right to dismantle USAID is probably subject to controversy, but on the points you are pushing the Trump Admin has already thought of and dismissed your objections.

What the Trump administration is trying to do with this executive order is unlikely to hold up in court. Wether anything is actually paused at that point is another story.

Lets say your interpretation of the EO is correct. It is still illegal for him to be making financial decisions, firing people and unilaterally canceling spending explicitly earmarked by congress.

Firing is likely not illegal and Humphery’s executor ought to be overturned.

Again specifics matter on the financial spending. We cannot blanket say what is or is not illegal.

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