[Gollapalli]

> at the pleasure of the president

The point poster above is making is that the president should be able to fire them, and should be able to audit whether or not they have been doing their jobs correctly, which is essentially what is occurring.

[pas]

The arbitrariness is the problem.

"""

the order for [FBI] employees to compile lists of all current and former personnel who worked on investigations related to January 6, 2021, and a Hamas-related case.

"""

Also, if I understand correctly, agents are civil servants (not political appointees) and they cannot be simply fired at will.

[derbOac]

There's a process in law for this, and he can't simply remove programs wholesale that have congressionally allocated funds.

This is all in law, which is why people are calling this a coup.

The coup isn't so much about the firing it's about freezing programs, or cutting them entirely without going through the process of congressional approval.

[hackyhacky]

No. What is happening is shutting down of departments without congressional approval, which is unconstitutional. This is being done by an uncleared individual with no government or domain expertise, which is merely a bad idea.

[AnimalMuppet]

Specific actions "by an uncleared individual" may in fact be illegal, not merely a bad idea.