Law be damned, Trump asserts unilateral control over executive branch, federal service (5 Viewers)

[superchuck500]

Following the Project 2025 playbook, in the last week, Trump and his newly installed loyalists have moved to (1) dismiss federal officials deemed unreliable to do his bidding (including 17 inspectors general) - many of which have protections from arbitrary dismissal, (2) freeze all science and public health activity until he can wrest full control, (3) freeze all federal assistance and grant activity deemed inconsistent with Trump's agenda, and (4) moved to terminate all federal employee telework and DEI programs.

The problem is much of this is controlled by federal law and not subject to sudden and complete change by the president through executive order. Most notably is the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 that simply codifies what is the constitutional allocation of resources where Congress appropriates money to the executive branch for a specific purpose, the executive branch must carry out that statutory purpose. This is indeed a constitutional crisis and even if Congress abdicates to Trump by acquiescing, the courts must still apply the law - or rule it unconstitutional.

And meanwhile the architect of much of this unlawful action is Russell Vought, Trump’s OMB nominee who the Senate appears ready to confirm.

120. The Impoundment Crisis of 2025

The Trump administration's Monday spending freeze is likely to provoke a crisis over the constitutionality of "impoundment"—one that the justices could well have to resolve *very* soon.

www.stevevladeck.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

That's evil villain type crap right there.

Love that clip

 

[fooferdoggie]

There are a host of subcontractors, individuals, companies and municipalities that have met same fate. Promised payment. Never paid.

Don't know how this comes as surprise to anyone at this point.

thats trumps MO.

 

[FullMonte]

There are a host of subcontractors, individuals, companies and municipalities that have met same fate. Promised payment. Never paid.

Don't know how this comes as surprise to anyone at this point.

And, there is language in the agreement saying that accepting this offer gives up your right to take any legal action against the government, and that it gives them the right to rescind the offer at any time without compensation.

 

[Optimus Prime]

My told me something her close friend told her (both work for government):

“You know things are bad when straight white men are scared shirtless”

 

[MT15]

Reading a serious discussion online about the Tweet above. First: not a real Napoleon quote, although it is often attributed to him. Second: speculation that Trump didn’t write that Tweet. It doesn’t sound like him, it rather sounds like Musk. It was on Twitter, and not Truth Social, which sort of backs up the thought that Musk might be posting from Trump’s account on Twitter.

Just thought it was an interesting discussion.

And someone dug up that Musk admires Napoleon. A lot.

 

[DaveXA]

Now that's definitely actionable in terms of a legal response. They can't just fire civilian federal employees without cause. If the courts fail on this, this would open the floodgates to firing damn near anyone they want.

Just because they mentioned they can in the "agreement" doesn't necessarily mean they can do whatever they want.

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[superchuck500]

It’s my understanding that relates to probationary employees (less than two years of service). Something about eligibility.

 

[MT15]

What about if the offer says it can be rescinded at any time, like we read they have rescinded it for some FAA employees who originally accepted it? And I read that it also contains language that says if you accept you are giving up certain rights you would normally have.

I wouldn’t trust these people at all. Even if they eventually have to honor it, if you have to go through litigation to claim your rights, most people won’t have the resources to do that. That’s Trump’s way he deals with smaller contractors. He just breaks contracts and dares them to sue.

 

[Optimus Prime]

As a presidential candidate last fall, Donald Trumprepeatedly promised to battle for US workers, but ever since he returned to the White House, he has taken a surprisingly large number of anti-worker actions, labor experts say.

Some of those moves, among them hobbling the National Labor Relations Board, will help Trump’s billionaire business friends, most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

In his first few weeks back in office, Trump fired the acting chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the US’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to enforce laws that protect workers’ right to unionize.

Trump has designated Musk, a vehemently anti-union billionaire, to launch an all-out war against the federal bureaucracy and workforce, and Trump and Musk have essentially treated the country’s 2 million-plus federal employees as if they were disposable.

Not stopping there, Trump fired two members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), leaving it without a quorum to carry out its mission of fighting against discrimination.

In his crusade to downsize the government and demolish the “deep state”, Trump and his administration have fired thousands of federal employees – moves that union officials say have violated laws and rules that require due process and a finding of poor performance before workers can be dismissed.

“Donald Trump is showing that his promises to be a champion of workers are hollow,” said Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group.

“He surrounds himself with people who are anti-worker. He has a history of being anti-worker, but he tries to put a nice face on it. He says he’s a champion of workers. He’s just not.”

In a move that many federal workers found distasteful, Trump asked them to snitch on each other, to inform on co-workers engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion activities.

The Trump administration further angered federal employees, as well as the labor movement, by announcing that it would nullify contracts reached with federal employee unions in the final weeks of the Biden administration.

Last month, just hours after an American Airlines jet collided with an army helicopter over Washington DC, killing 67 people, Trump dissed and angered Federal Aviation Administration employees, when he denounced diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies as fostering incompetence and suggesting that many FAA employees were unqualified.

In another move upsetting worker advocates, Trump named Russell Vought, one of the architects of the controversial rightwing blueprint Project 2025, to run the White House budget office. Project 2025 is brimming with anti-worker recommendations, among them abolishing all government employee unions across the US.

“Trump has already shown that he’s not a friend of working people,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s main union federation, said in an interview.

“Project 2025 is playing out exactly as we feared, and America’s workers are right at the heart of those attacks.”

One Trump move that particularly upset labor leaders was his order to fire Gwynne Wilcox, the NLRB’s acting chair and a Democrat, even though her term ran until 2026 and even though the labor board is an independent agency.

That left the five-member board with just two positions filled and thus without a quorum to make decisions (although its regional offices can still operate).……

Trump vowed to champion US workers - the reality has been a relentless assault

President has begun slashing federal workforce while hobbling labor watchdogs NLRB and EEOC

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Bigger than the Super Bowl, claimed Donald Trump, sitting in a big leather chair beside a big map. Then came an announcement over the public address system.

“Air Force One is currently in international waters,” declared the flight crew of the US presidential jet, “for the first time in history flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America.”

As his aides clapped and whooped, Trump gloated: “Isn’t that nice? We’re about ‘Make America Great Again’, right? That’s what we care about.”

He proceeded to sign a proclamation declaring 9 February “Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water previously known as the Gulf of Mexico.

It was classic Trumpian showmanship from the highest perch in the world. It was also the latest salvo by the 47th president and his allies to control language, influence media narratives and reshape cultural institutions in ways that some compare with the Soviet Union or other authoritarian regimes from history.


Long a master of branding, Trump is making propaganda a core element of his strongman presidency. This comes as little surprise to critics who regard it as an extension of last year’s election campaign in which he sold himself as a champion of the forgotten people and victim of a weaponised justice department.

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump’s re-election is the greatest, most successful propaganda op in history. Propaganda is why Donald Trump is president again and they know this, which is why they undermined the press, expertise and science.”

Since taking office, Trump has outpaced his predecessors by signing 64 executive orders and 27 memos and proclamations in less than a month. His blitz on immigration, trade and the federal bureaucracy was expected.

But the president’s aggressive approach to reshaping national identity through symbolism and language has taken opponents by surprise.

When Trump used his inaugural address to assert his vision of US dominance by promising to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton burst out laughing. But the switch came with a sinister edge.

This week, the White House banned the Associated Press, one of the world’s biggest news outlets, because it has not changed its stylebook entry for Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America (the AP serves numerous countries that do not recognise the new name).

The punitive measure prompted CNN to invoke “newspeak” from George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which language is a tool of control and can be narrowed to limit thought.…….

‘The greatest propaganda op in history’: Trump’s reshaping of US culture evokes past antidemocratic regimes

The president’s full-court press to dominate media and control cultural institutions is straight out of the authoritarian playbook

www.theguardian.com

 

[superchuck500]

There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing

How regime change happens in America

www.theatlantic.com

 

[MT15]

A former air traffic controller’s letter to his Senator. The big takeaway for me was that the firings of “probationary” employees is also affecting anyone recently promoted - recent promotions are also given a probationary period in case the new position doesn’t work out and they wish to return to their previous level. Musk’s team either didn’t know this or didn’t care. Recently promoted individuals would comprise the top employees in a department, presumably.

Getting rid of them wholesale is idiotic.

 

[Lapaz]

Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings

Brian Driscoll, the acting FBI director and head of the bureau's Newark field office, pushed back so aggressively that some feared he would be dismissed.

www.nbcnews.com

It’s bad enough that the Supreme Court has given Trump immunity from practically anything he does, and he has fired Comptroller Generals that monitor corruption, and he can pardon anyone who violates Federal laws to essentially give them equal immunity, but he’s also putting a stake in the rule of law by eliminating all fear of FBI investigations during his tenure. Trump is making himself and most of his followers untouchable. I don’t think the majority of his voters wanted this, but it was obvious he was going to do this. Trump will surely also pardon himself, IF he leaves office, so all Federal corruption and crimes going back to his first term will go unpunished. Trump has almost finished the job of converting the U.S. to a much more powerful facsimile of Russia. All that is left is the question of whether he will remain in office. With the firings, who will be left to force him to leave office? Even if congress impeached him, who would enforce that?

 

[Optimus Prime]

CNN) — As the Trump administration fires thousands of employees across the government, federal workers have another reason to be on edge: the widespread access that Elon Musk’s “government efficiency” team has gained to agency computer systems.

The sudden appearance of DOGE representatives at agencies across Washington and the Trump administration’s search for federal employees it deems disloyal to the president have created a wave of anxiety among feds that their emails, texts or conversations could be monitored.

Some government employees are now turning off their phones at home. Others are opting for in-person chats at work rather than over Microsoft Teams. Some have even gone so far as to buy special Faraday bags, designed to block electromagnetic signals, in order to thwart any potential snooping.

A few are printing out their employee records, including performance reviews, just in case they are deleted or altered in the federal system

Their concern is that, with a president who talks openly of retribution against his opponents, even the most mundane of comments might be taken out of context to paint someone as anti-Trump.

“I used to carry my work phone around with me everywhere, after hours, on the weekend, in case anything was needed. Now I won’t take it out of my office space,” said one employee at the General Services Administration (GSA), the government procurement agency……..

Paranoia seeps into a federal workforce worried about getting fired and being watched | CNN Politics

As the Trump administration fires thousands of employees across the government, federal workers have another reason to be on edge: the widespread access that Elon Musk’s “government efficiency” team has gained to agency computer systems.

www.cnn.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

The US federal tax collection agency is reportedly preparing to give a team member of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which has already gutted several federal agencies and sparked multiple lawsuits, access to personal taxpayer data.

The New York Times and the Washington Postboth reported early on Monday that the Internal Revenue Service had received a request for access to a classified system that contains sensitive personal financial records.

The request, which is reportedly under review, would give Doge officials “broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets, including tax returns”.


One of these, the integrated data retrieval system (IDRS), gives tax agency employees the ability to see IRS accounts and bank information, the Washington Post reported.……

IRS reportedly preparing to give Musk’s Doge agency access to taxpayer data

US tax agency has received request for access to classified system containing personal financial records of US taxpayers

www.theguardian.com

 

[faceman]

It’s bad enough that the Supreme Court has given Trump immunity from practically anything he does, and he has fired Comptroller Generals that monitor corruption, and he can pardon anyone who violates Federal laws to essentially give them equal immunity, but he’s also putting a stake in the rule of law by eliminating all fear of FBI investigations during his tenure. Trump is making himself and most of his followers untouchable. I don’t think the majority of his voters wanted this, but it was obvious he was going to do this. Trump will surely also pardon himself, IF he leaves office, so all Federal corruption and crimes going back to his first term will go unpunished. Trump has almost finished the job of converting the U.S. to a much more powerful facsimile of Russia. All that is left is the question of whether he will remain in office. With the firings, who will be left to force him to leave office? Even if congress impeached him, who would enforce that?

Trump can't pardon himself for the NY crimes. Only the governor can and that's not going to happen. He'll remain a felon
until his death.

 

[Huntn]

As a presidential candidate last fall, Donald Trumprepeatedly promised to battle for US workers, but ever since he returned to the White House, he has taken a surprisingly large number of anti-worker actions, labor experts say.

Some of those moves, among them hobbling the National Labor Relations Board, will help Trump’s billionaire business friends, most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

In his first few weeks back in office, Trump fired the acting chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the US’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to enforce laws that protect workers’ right to unionize.

Trump has designated Musk, a vehemently anti-union billionaire, to launch an all-out war against the federal bureaucracy and workforce, and Trump and Musk have essentially treated the country’s 2 million-plus federal employees as if they were disposable.

Not stopping there, Trump fired two members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), leaving it without a quorum to carry out its mission of fighting against discrimination.

In his crusade to downsize the government and demolish the “deep state”, Trump and his administration have fired thousands of federal employees – moves that union officials say have violated laws and rules that require due process and a finding of poor performance before workers can be dismissed.

“Donald Trump is showing that his promises to be a champion of workers are hollow,” said Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group.

“He surrounds himself with people who are anti-worker. He has a history of being anti-worker, but he tries to put a nice face on it. He says he’s a champion of workers. He’s just not.”

In a move that many federal workers found distasteful, Trump asked them to snitch on each other, to inform on co-workers engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion activities.

The Trump administration further angered federal employees, as well as the labor movement, by announcing that it would nullify contracts reached with federal employee unions in the final weeks of the Biden administration.

Last month, just hours after an American Airlines jet collided with an army helicopter over Washington DC, killing 67 people, Trump dissed and angered Federal Aviation Administration employees, when he denounced diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies as fostering incompetence and suggesting that many FAA employees were unqualified.

In another move upsetting worker advocates, Trump named Russell Vought, one of the architects of the controversial rightwing blueprint Project 2025, to run the White House budget office. Project 2025 is brimming with anti-worker recommendations, among them abolishing all government employee unions across the US.

“Trump has already shown that he’s not a friend of working people,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s main union federation, said in an interview.

“Project 2025 is playing out exactly as we feared, and America’s workers are right at the heart of those attacks.”

One Trump move that particularly upset labor leaders was his order to fire Gwynne Wilcox, the NLRB’s acting chair and a Democrat, even though her term ran until 2026 and even though the labor board is an independent agency.

That left the five-member board with just two positions filled and thus without a quorum to make decisions (although its regional offices can still operate).……

Trump vowed to champion US workers - the reality has been a relentless assault

President has begun slashing federal workforce while hobbling labor watchdogs NLRB and EEOC

www.theguardian.com

Trump is where he is because of the self destructive nature of Capitalism, racism, and xenophobia. The mother of all storms. Post WWII the US developed and had the largest, wealthiest, middle class in the world. That’s because this was the land of plenty, Europe was in shambles, times were good. I acknowledge they weren’t wonderful for African-Americans but I’m focused on why Trump was able to get 70 million votes.

Ever since then, the middle class has chipped away by capitalism. The first company that moved its manufacturing east signaled the beginning of the end. To stay competitive the rest of them had to to follow suit, and it’s been downhill ever since for workers.

The goal is profits, in the 80s it became max profits, and there was zero concern from corporate America about the overall health and stability of our society. And because this pressure was applied to the middle class because of capitalism, immigrants became targets in the competition for jobs. Throw in some racism, xenophobia, religious fervor, and intolerance, and we find ourselves where we are today.

And don’t you know the goal of capitalism is to get rid of workers via automation and now AI? Workers are a pain in the arse, they have expectations, they want time off and to be happy. Machines and soon AI workers will be there 24 seven no complaints. The heads of corporations either don’t think about it, or they feel trapped by it. Gotta have profits. What can we monetize? Everything.

If you look at Trump supporters, they’re mostly white and they feel like they’ve lost something, something has been stolen from them, their’re struggling. Why it’s gotta be immigrant stealing my job. Wrong it’s capitalism robbing you blind and you’re just too stupid to see the forest for the trees. Their perception is giving stuff to minorities takes away from me. NO, it’s capitalism taking away from you. And frankly, it’s unbelievable that such a large group of people would support a known mentally ill criminal, because he’s white and I don’t like all the shirt they’re pushing on me about being tolerant, because the bottom line is it hurts, my wallet

If they live in reality, they know he’s a crook. If they live in their fantasy, he really cares about them. In any case the “system” is not working for them, and they choose to vest themselves in a con artist who’s either lying to them or he’s going to tear the system down, and they hope when the dust settles they’ll be in a better place than they are now. Somehow their calculation does not include things becoming God awful as lawfulness is extinguished replaced by chaos, warlords, and/or oppression.

White privilege plays a part.. Somehow they think by virtue of Trump and themselves being white, they’ll end up being a L3 peon instead of a L-1 peon, in other words in the new order they’ll be favorite status, the King’s favorite color.

The saddest aspect of this scenario is that 20% of the country voted for a positive agenda, 20% of the country voted to tear down the federal government and turn it into some kind of chaos or a monarchy, whether they were smart enough to know that or not remains to be seen. And the rest, those old enough to vote, sat out the election, based on some excuse, I don’t care, to much of an inconvenience,I’m mad about Gaza, my vote doesn’t count anyway, whatever. The fact is democracy is fragile and if enough don’t participate, it’s gonna fail, which it’s doing and things are gonna get pretty shirtty around here.