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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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You seem to be giving into unfounded fears. The bureaucratic state isn’t what stops Trump from having all of this power.

No, it's the Constitution, which allocates powers to Congress and the Supreme Court as well, which is what you seem to want Trump to (sorry, can't resist) trump.

Also the president absolutely can stop funding for an agency without congressional action and is probably required to do so. Again let’s say Congress said “50b to USAOD to accomplish Y.” But USAID spent it to accomplish Z. The president would actually be failing his required duty by not stopping USAID from spending on Z. Full stop. And if you determine the people in that agency are lawless then you need to fire them.

Okay. Agreed. But what I have seen so far is a lot of outrage bait and not much evidence that there's been a sober, meticulous audit of what USAID was authorized to spend money on and what it wasn't. Congress almost certainly did not issue a bullet-pointed list of what USAID was supposed to fund, but a more general mission with probably a lot of discretion (quite likely too much discretion). Before you hop up and get het up, I am not, in principal, against curbing USAID. It looks to me like it's overreached and needs a much tighter leash, and I'd be fine with Trump putting the agency under a freeze while they go through things. Instead we have Musk tweeting outrage fodder about trans operas in Brazil and thus shutting down everything. I think it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and you may disagree and think whatever good USAID does is vastly outweighed by Brazilian trans operas, but I don't think the President has the authority to just decide "I don't like what this agency is doing because I'm ideologically opposed to it so I will summarily decide they're breaking the law." Same deal with the FBI; if you want to investigate their prosecution of Jan. 6 because you think it was politically motivated and it made Trump's life difficult, go ahead and investigate. It's good for federal agencies to be put under the spotlight. But unilaterally declaring that everyone who was involved at all (even agents who were assigned to that case - what were they supposed to do, declare "This is an unlawful investigation?" and refuse? Do you think that is actually true?) gets fired (illegally) is not how it's supposed to work.

Re birthright citizenship I think you are probably right but the president’s position is colorable (even Richard Posner seems to think the better view is the constitution doesn’t require birthright citizenship)

I've read pro and con arguments and agree that the case for birthright citizenship is muddy. But given that the current state of things is Constitutional law as enforced today, do you think the President should be able to say "I think the Supreme Court was wrong so I'm overruling them"? If you want to end birthright citizenship you need to either pass a Constitutional amendment or bring it before the Supreme Court with a new argument.

So if we are agreeing that the president could stop unauthorized spending then we are disagreeing on method. I think they found out USAID was doing a lot of bs and have decided freeze spending first and then backfill what is actually needed. That seems like a perfectly reasonable approach and not a constitutional crisis. It is only a crisis if they don’t backfill afterwards. That is, you seem to want business as usual in Washington where they start with last years budget and try to find something that may not fit. They are zero baseline budgeting.

Re birthright citizenship the caselaw here is actually muddy. You could argue that the permanent resident case people cite cannot be squared with Elk and therefore the permanent resident case could be read to apply only to lawful permanent residents and not illegals. That is, you could factually distinguish the two.

Fwiw, I don't think we are facing a "Constitutional crisis" (yet) but I do think Trump is acting capriciously, harmfully, and (probably) unlawfully.

That is, you seem to want business as usual in Washington where they start with last years budget and try to find something that may not fit. They are zero baseline budgeting.

Yes, but they're also terminating federal employees who cannot (under current law) be terminated like this. Maybe you think the law should be changed so the President can summarily fire anyone he wants to, but that's not what the law is right now.

I don’t think those laws are constitutional — especially when the civil servant ignores an EO.

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