Law be damned, Trump asserts unilateral control over executive branch, federal service (6 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

 

[Sendai]

This is apparently happening, https://faa.gov/ is down now.

https://www.faa.gov

The www. Helps

 

[Eeyore]

Modern day book burning.

 

[MT15]

There’s an entire list online of government sites that have been taken down. Lots of data sites have just disappeared. Data that the public paid for, hidden from us.

 

[MT15]

From The Atlantic :

“Last night, scientists began to hear cryptic and foreboding warnings from colleagues: Go to the CDC website, and download your data now. They were all telling one another the same thing: Data on the website were about to disappear, or be altered, to comply with the Trump administration’s ongoing attempt to scrub federal agencies of any mention of gender, DEI, and accessibility. “I was up until 2 a.m.,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan who relies on the CDC’s data to track viral outbreaks, told me. She archived whatever she could.

What they feared quickly came to pass. Already, content from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which includes data from a national survey, has disappeared; so have parts of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Social Vulnerability Index and the Environmental Justice Index. The CDC’s landing page for HIV data has also vanished. And the agency’s AtlasPlus tool, which contains nearly 20 years of CDC surveillance data on HIV, hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis, is down. Several scientists I talked with told me they had heard directly from contacts at the CDC that the agency has directed employees to scrub any mention of “gender” from its site and the data that it shares there, replacing it with “sex.”“

https://apple.news/AtvacpovxQVayccJYqZAe1g

 

[superchuck500]

What the hell is going on

 

[DaveXA]

I think his point is that they can’t be held to that letter, can they? It’s anonymous, vaguely worded and may not be on the up and up. Musk was known to renege famously on severances offered to Twitter employees. And yeah, they are suing him, and it’s dragging into the second year of litigation. Meanwhile nobody got their money.

It's not an anonymous letter though. It was sent through an official OPM account and is considered official communication from a federal agency. OPM is on the hook for whatever happens as a result of the letter unless the agency rescinds or makes it clear the letter is not official.

I'm well aware of the Musk "Fork in the road" letter sent to Twitter employees.

The federal government is an entirely different animal though. If they think they can stiff federal employees, they'll be in a world of hurt.

 

[fooferdoggie]

The stupidity of that is amazing.