Despite the agency's human resources department saying he hadn’t even been onboarded, Jeremy Lewin oversaw the destruction of USAID. It’s not clear he had the legal authority to do so.
Jeremy Lewin oversaw the destruction of USAID. It’s not clear he had the legal authority to do so.
Ummm, no. It’s already been determined in court…they did not have authority to shut down any of those projects. That’s either for Congress to decide, or for Congress to appoint someone to decide. They did neither. Not only were they not consulted, at all…everything that DOGE cancelled was already approved by Congress and should not have been touched.
I do really wish with all my heart that dems win, grow some balls and they let the courts throw the book at the culprits of this for the maximum sentence.
Then again, I might wish for a million dollars and a laser unicorn, which is more plausible.
I fully expect Trump to hand out pardons like it’s candy at Halloween if the Democrats take either chamber. I say doxx the lot of them and let the mob do its job.
I think he still cares about his legacy too much. Not that he thinks he’ll be remembered fondly but that he’ll leave such a scar he can’t be forgotten. A sweeping set of pardons would be just one more way to troll the entire nation and leave a shit stain in our history books.
I follow Liz Oyer, who was Biden’s pardon attorney, and she says that pardons in general, and Trump’s pardons specifically, may not be as untouchable as people think. Despite the general belief, there are limits on Presidential Pardons, and those people may not be as safe as they think they are. It will take a strong government and DoJ to challenge those pardons in court, but there may be ways around them.
Sounds good in theory, but Trump could kill all of Chuck Grassley’s great grand children on the Senate floor and the Republicans still wouldn’t vote to convict him.
14A3 disqualification. He already wasn’t legally appointed so the second term pardons aren’t legal anyway. But somebody needs to enforce the disqualification
Are you saying that because he conspired seditiously to overthrow the United States government on J6, 2021, that he was constitutionally ineligible to run for office and should therefore not have been on the ballots in 2024?
Cause I can get behind that, but like, how do we even begin undoing the mess that it’s caused?
Yeah that’s the only way. And that’s what I keep trying to remind people, but a lot of people don’t want to hear it.
Like, I’m not being naïve about the upbill battle that it is, I know we’re the underdogs and success is not guaranteed. But it’s literally the only way.
So people who claim “that never works” are only being defeatist. More accurately, “it hasn’t worked yet.” Nothing does until it does, but that’s no reason not to try.
And it’s intellectually lazy to assume nothing will ever change, because change has always been the only constant running throughout all of human history.
rant:
But some people get really smug about claims like “well the past was always XYZ, so the future will be too!” Yet the facts of history do not support that claim, and it’s honestly a praesen-centric claim, because it applies hindsight bias to the past, survivorship bias to the present, and availability bias to the future. In other words, it’s a claim that our current perspective, from our current vantage point, is the only valid one.
It’s to claim “we are at a unique moment in time that is somehow separate from the very past from which it emerged, and is obviously superior to it in every way; even though it only is what it is because it came to be via the processes that unfolded throughout the past and up until this very moment.”
And so everything “good” or “correct” looks like it’s because we’re in the enlightened present, and everything “bad” or “wrong” looks like it was because of the ignorant past. But the truth is, there’s no separation, and it’s exceptionalist to claim that there is. There’s a continuity which can’t be ignored.
So in a way, it’s really just another extension of ego-centrism, just like ethnocentrism, linguocentrism, natio-centrism, etc.; i.e. of being unable to imagine anything outside one’s own experience or identity.
It merely expands the “in-group” to “now” rather than drawing spatial or cultural boundaries. Perhaps a more enlightened perspective than those other examples, but still trapped within the delusion of separation.
I digress. Key takeaway: do not feel we are doomed just because it seems grim, because that assumes we are omniscient. In truth, the possibilities for the future might defy the limits of our imaginations. So we mustn’t give up; we must keep striving for change.
Unfortunately, the only ones with that power are the elected officials and a lot of conservative dems are just republicans with another name ready to do as they are told.
Executive orders and pardons are the bastardization of checks and balances. Pardons do make some level of sense at least from the fluidity of law. But blanket pardons and whatever the fuck has been going on needs a level of oversight.
I don’t give a single fuck about pardons. Let them rot. If we have to gather a mob and throw them into a literal pit to rot, all the better. If these shit stains think that a pardon will save them or that their money will, they be sorely mistaken. These cretins are directly responsible for millions of deaths. Nothing can save them at this point, in my eyes. Not even the guns of the military.
I agree. Citizens are getting fed up. If the Dems don’t go out to the bleeding edge of Constitutional law to ensure that these traitors are punished harshly enough to discourage such behavior in the future, and MAGA rises AGAIN, it will be time to take it out on the Dems, too. They don’t get a fourth chance.
I say they follow the playbook that donnie has been doing and just arrest them anyway. Maybe give them the treatment ICE has been giving people they arrest. Deport them.
Then let the courts battle it out to have them returned and let out of custody.
We can clearly see that everyone in the DOGE group was criminally ignorant of everything related to that situation as well as being maliciously true believers in their quest, not caring if they were right or Right. There is however the distinct likelihood that someone higher up who, knowing the cause was false and the method was illegal, prescribed it anyway as a test of and attack on Congressional power of the purse and budget laws.
Naw, it wasn’t that complex. It was just a simple heist. Musk just wanted to end all the investigations into his business, and steal as much data as possible. Mission accomplished.
I don’t understand why people just threw up their hands and went “oh well I guess we are out of a job now”
If someone comes in that’s you’ve never seen before tells you to shut down operations why would you listen to them? As evidenced by this article it could just be some random dude off the streets basically. Just take their word for it?
They coopted some armed federal police goons to help, like those times the workers refused building access to DOGE interns and presidential advisors (as they should).
They should have been gunned down in the first lobby they refused to leave. Then DOGE would have ended right there, as we adjudicated a big court case about it.
It was actually more about the funding, than anything else. While the money allocated for USAID programs is determined by Congress, the accounts that contain those funds are under the control of the State Department. The Trump administration basically told the State Department to put “stop payment” orders on all transactions relating to USAID programs that DOGE deemed uneccessary. After that, no one got paid…and if you can’t pay your staff or the bills…your office has to close.
Ummm, no. It’s already been determined in court…they did not have authority to shut down any of those projects. That’s either for Congress to decide, or for Congress to appoint someone to decide. They did neither. Not only were they not consulted, at all…everything that DOGE cancelled was already approved by Congress and should not have been touched.
I do really wish with all my heart that dems win, grow some balls and they let the courts throw the book at the culprits of this for the maximum sentence.
Then again, I might wish for a million dollars and a laser unicorn, which is more plausible.
I fully expect Trump to hand out pardons like it’s candy at Halloween if the Democrats take either chamber. I say doxx the lot of them and let the mob do its job.
Why would he? He’ll be a lame duck and won’t need anything from those shitheels at that point.
Unless, that is, they pay him.
I mean, duh.
I think he still cares about his legacy too much. Not that he thinks he’ll be remembered fondly but that he’ll leave such a scar he can’t be forgotten. A sweeping set of pardons would be just one more way to troll the entire nation and leave a shit stain in our history books.
I follow Liz Oyer, who was Biden’s pardon attorney, and she says that pardons in general, and Trump’s pardons specifically, may not be as untouchable as people think. Despite the general belief, there are limits on Presidential Pardons, and those people may not be as safe as they think they are. It will take a strong government and DoJ to challenge those pardons in court, but there may be ways around them.
There should be a rule where if a president gets impeached and convicted, all the pardons they issued should be voided.
Sounds good in theory, but Trump could kill all of Chuck Grassley’s great grand children on the Senate floor and the Republicans still wouldn’t vote to convict him.
14A3 disqualification. He already wasn’t legally appointed so the second term pardons aren’t legal anyway. But somebody needs to enforce the disqualification
Are you saying that because he conspired seditiously to overthrow the United States government on J6, 2021, that he was constitutionally ineligible to run for office and should therefore not have been on the ballots in 2024?
Cause I can get behind that, but like, how do we even begin undoing the mess that it’s caused?
Yeah basically keep pushing left until a majority is willing to impeach and disqualify
Yeah that’s the only way. And that’s what I keep trying to remind people, but a lot of people don’t want to hear it.
Like, I’m not being naïve about the upbill battle that it is, I know we’re the underdogs and success is not guaranteed. But it’s literally the only way.
So people who claim “that never works” are only being defeatist. More accurately, “it hasn’t worked yet.” Nothing does until it does, but that’s no reason not to try.
And it’s intellectually lazy to assume nothing will ever change, because change has always been the only constant running throughout all of human history.
rant:
But some people get really smug about claims like “well the past was always XYZ, so the future will be too!” Yet the facts of history do not support that claim, and it’s honestly a praesen-centric claim, because it applies hindsight bias to the past, survivorship bias to the present, and availability bias to the future. In other words, it’s a claim that our current perspective, from our current vantage point, is the only valid one.
It’s to claim “we are at a unique moment in time that is somehow separate from the very past from which it emerged, and is obviously superior to it in every way; even though it only is what it is because it came to be via the processes that unfolded throughout the past and up until this very moment.”
And so everything “good” or “correct” looks like it’s because we’re in the enlightened present, and everything “bad” or “wrong” looks like it was because of the ignorant past. But the truth is, there’s no separation, and it’s exceptionalist to claim that there is. There’s a continuity which can’t be ignored.
So in a way, it’s really just another extension of ego-centrism, just like ethnocentrism, linguocentrism, natio-centrism, etc.; i.e. of being unable to imagine anything outside one’s own experience or identity.
It merely expands the “in-group” to “now” rather than drawing spatial or cultural boundaries. Perhaps a more enlightened perspective than those other examples, but still trapped within the delusion of separation.
I digress. Key takeaway: do not feel we are doomed just because it seems grim, because that assumes we are omniscient. In truth, the possibilities for the future might defy the limits of our imaginations. So we mustn’t give up; we must keep striving for change.
You don’t. That’s the catch.
Unfortunately, the only ones with that power are the elected officials and a lot of conservative dems are just republicans with another name ready to do as they are told.
So in other words, we need to vote to break the republican trifecta? And in following electoral cycles, primary any dem who votes with maga?
Great, time to roll our sleeves up then.
Maybe it’s time we ditch the whole concept of pardons.
Executive orders and pardons are the bastardization of checks and balances. Pardons do make some level of sense at least from the fluidity of law. But blanket pardons and whatever the fuck has been going on needs a level of oversight.
I don’t give a single fuck about pardons. Let them rot. If we have to gather a mob and throw them into a literal pit to rot, all the better. If these shit stains think that a pardon will save them or that their money will, they be sorely mistaken. These cretins are directly responsible for millions of deaths. Nothing can save them at this point, in my eyes. Not even the guns of the military.
I agree. Citizens are getting fed up. If the Dems don’t go out to the bleeding edge of Constitutional law to ensure that these traitors are punished harshly enough to discourage such behavior in the future, and MAGA rises AGAIN, it will be time to take it out on the Dems, too. They don’t get a fourth chance.
I say they follow the playbook that donnie has been doing and just arrest them anyway. Maybe give them the treatment ICE has been giving people they arrest. Deport them.
Then let the courts battle it out to have them returned and let out of custody.
The real battle starts after the mid terms when everyone needs to keep pressuring congress for accountability.
If the election changes congress to dem and people don’t stay mad and keep pushing nothing will actually change.
Protests, letters to congress, organizing, these all need to get more aggressive not less after the mid terms.
For Federal crimes, DoJ has to lay charges, so good luck with that.
There’s not a legal way out of this anymore.
Can Congress appoint a Special Counsel?
If not then that’s a huge oversight and should be remedied
Nope. They can authorize DoJ to do so, but then it’s up to DoJ to actually do it.
The only way that happens is if dsa has leverage against establishment after the election. There’s a chance they will.
Don’t give me hope.
And they stole and leaked data.
People need to serve time for this. Including Elon. I doubt that ever happens, but they absolutely should.
Musk should hang.
All traitors should hang.
We can clearly see that everyone in the DOGE group was criminally ignorant of everything related to that situation as well as being maliciously true believers in their quest, not caring if they were right or Right. There is however the distinct likelihood that someone higher up who, knowing the cause was false and the method was illegal, prescribed it anyway as a test of and attack on Congressional power of the purse and budget laws.
Naw, it wasn’t that complex. It was just a simple heist. Musk just wanted to end all the investigations into his business, and steal as much data as possible. Mission accomplished.
You mean the twenty to thirty year olds that were told to usurp the power of congress were scapegoats?
Anyone going to need to sit with that for a minute?
Who cares? Scapegoats can be guilty, too.
Its more important to get the entire treasonous network outed. Now having them so young, the idea of 50-60 years in prison might get them to talk.
They had their goosestepping orders.
I don’t understand why people just threw up their hands and went “oh well I guess we are out of a job now”
If someone comes in that’s you’ve never seen before tells you to shut down operations why would you listen to them? As evidenced by this article it could just be some random dude off the streets basically. Just take their word for it?
They coopted some armed federal police goons to help, like those times the workers refused building access to DOGE interns and presidential advisors (as they should).
They should have been gunned down in the first lobby they refused to leave. Then DOGE would have ended right there, as we adjudicated a big court case about it.
It was actually more about the funding, than anything else. While the money allocated for USAID programs is determined by Congress, the accounts that contain those funds are under the control of the State Department. The Trump administration basically told the State Department to put “stop payment” orders on all transactions relating to USAID programs that DOGE deemed uneccessary. After that, no one got paid…and if you can’t pay your staff or the bills…your office has to close.