[boc]

I hope all the people working in tech today realize that once you let the executive ignore laws that you dislike, it's a very clear path to them ignoring laws that protect you and your companies. You WILL be a target eventually and nobody is going to protect you.

This is a slow-motion disaster but too many people are complacent because they think it's not going to affect them. No matter your political leanings we cannot allow a constitutional crisis to go unchecked. Things that we take for granted dissolve rapidly if institutions start grabbing power without consequences.

It's insane that Congress isn't stepping-up here.

[asveikau]

This isn't a politics forum, but abolishing USAID without congress was also insane. I don't care if you dislike something USAID does or did, it would require congress to legally abolish it.

And a few other things, that's just a prominent example.

Congress is pretty much ignoring this. Both parties.

[throwing_away]

We're in this position because Congress (very pragmatically) ceded their power to the executive.

I'm afraid everyone has lost the plot at this point though.

[km144]

Congress is also ignoring the principles laid out in the Constitution by acting like presidents have unilateral power when they do not, and were never intended to. Many members of Congress have defended Trump's actions on these issues by implying that voters gave him a mandate, but the voters also voted for Congress, and they are supposed to check the President in some ways. Congress is probably supposed to be the most impactful branch of federal government, not the weakest.

[labster]

Laws are just words on paper if no one decides to enforce them. What is Congress going to do to Trump, impeach him? lol

Okay, so Congress could pass a resolution saying they consider the dissolution of USAID a violation of the law… but the silence speaks for itself. The law is not what is written, the law is what we do and what we tolerate.

[ZeroGravitas]

The billionaire doing the abolishing also called it a nest of Marxist vipers.

Really just the wild stuff that Elon and Trump post to their social media is terrifyingly unhinged. I feel most people get the sane-washed version via the media but it's genuinely mind boggling to read their directly published public comments about stuff.

Direct quote for the record:

> USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America

[wordofx]

Good thing USAID wasn’t abolished.

[personjerry]

Isn't this a slippery slope into authoritarianism? How are people not more worried about this? The whole of checks and balances is this, this is democracy literally eroding away isn't it?

[jazzyjackson]

We’re in the authoritarianism part already, the 3 branches are aligned on this. The democrats whole campaign this election was to worry , but they are too committed to process and impartiality to have any effect (and let’s face it, most of congress is too old and/or too rich to give a damn what happens to our democracy in the first place)

[prododev]

Many of us made peace with this road a couple decades back and have been focused on building communities locally to survive it. Obama, Trump, Biden, GW ... they were all building the road to this moment together.

It's like watching one of those hydraulic press videos - the slow build up of the squeeze has been happening for awhile, we've finally arrived at the point where the pressure is really deforming stuff. But it was predictable for a long time.

[shikon7]

What could Congress do? Make another law that might also be ignored?

[jazzyjackson]

Just for completeness, Congress’ check on the executive and judicial is impeachment, but this check is somewhat defeated by party politics, a weakness President Washington was prescient enough to warn us about in his farewell address

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

[0] https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collect...

[macinjosh]

Obama, Trump and Biden have ignored federal cannabis laws for years. Laws and even the Constitution are ignored routinely Snowden showed us that.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

While this is true (to some degree anyway), it seems qualitatively different from Congress (and then backed up by SCOTUS) explicitly banning a specific company (and explicitly banning other companies from doing specific things related to that company) and then being completely ignored by an incoming president who just says "wut? no worries, carry on tiktok".

this is not a debate about just what the intelligence community can and cannot do, or what level of enforcement and in what communities is appropriate for a given law. it is a point blank statement "i am the president, and you (tiktok) and you (google, apple) can ignore the law", made in public, without any possible national security justification (whatever level of BS that might normally come with).

[kannanvijayan]

That's a very good point. There are certainly more examples of laws that go un-enforced to reinforce your point. For example jaywalking laws are routinely flouted with little enforcement. Likewise buggery laws are routinely ignored by law enforcement.

Along that axis, you are certainly right that it is basically the same as the president unilaterally choosing to exempt a specific multibillion dollar company controlled by a powerful foreign adversary from laws passed by congress with the intent of shoring up national security.

This insight is well received by me and I'm sure others.

[sudosysgen]

The executive branch is explicitly granted the power to choose which drugs are or aren't scheduled. The law already having provisions to allow the executive to choose which drugs to ban or not makes the choice not to enforce very different qualitatively.

[foogazi]

Yeah, *whatabout* the other guys - they did this too!