The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)?
All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive.
The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)). So yes, the US is in big trouble...
Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...
As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...
If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms.
They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
How is this different from any previous president?
Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor?
Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
These organizations consist of political appointees and civil servants. It is customary to replace all of the political appointees. Civil servants however have a lot of job protections and can only be fired for a limited set of reasons. Typically, a new administration would appoint new political appointees to the various departments (many of whom need to be confirmed by the Senate) and those appointees would then exert their influence on the department by shifting priorities around and they could even alter the hiring process to target more "aligned" individuals for the open civil servant roles. But they cannot just do a wholesale house cleaning. The high level purpose and the budget/size of the organization is determined by Congress and the political appointees are constrained by that.
So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
I think it’s unprecedented for every FBI agent to fill up a questionnaire to admit whether they worked on a case where the president himself was an active participant.
It's also unprecedented that a current president's administration would collude to charge the primary opposition of it in a presidential election across multiple jurisdictions, including with an unlawful special counsel appointment, yet here we are.
To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
I think it's the emotional flavor of it. Things in the US government tend to move more slowly and filled with less apparent vitriol and vengeance. This seems like a slash and burn and to hell with people if they don't more outrightly pledge loyalty.
Depends on your perspective. Many people would consider someone like Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert, but Trumps people think he is very political and purge people like that. At the FBI they purge people who are probably quite competent and not particularly partisan but happened to work on Trumps case, which is mostly about sending a message I think not do much about finding the right employees to work at the FBI. This is very un American in my view.
I think this is the person's point. Many people in the past would see Fauci as a prime example of someone who is just a non-partisan career government servant, while others, which it seems you and many people in the current administration, see people like him as overtly partisan and borderline evil.
NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
> NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
Sure, but Fauci should also not have to spend the twilight years of his very accomplished life defending himself from petulant fascists' revenge prosecutions.
Yes, emotionally I'd agree. However, legally, I think it's a very slippery slope. What if Don Jr shoots someone dead and then Trunp premptively pardons him so no one can investigate the shooting?
I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
I think enforcing the law is only important while there is rule of law. What the Republicans are doing now is rule by law. It's not a good-faith reading of laws, it's using raw state power to turn the legal apparatus against the perceived enemies of the state/regime.
We're way past lofty ideals like equal application of the law. It's going to take a reconsideration of our social contract in order to live in a society where we once again protect the innocent and punish the guilty.
He didn't lie to Congress, and he got a preemptive pardon because Trump is vindictive and would 100% have ordered the DOJ to go after Fauci in any way possible.
"Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID), which is part of the NIH, told Congress in May that the NIH "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of
Virology.""
which we know is a blatant lie - see NIH EcoHealth Alliance Wuhan grants (which even had the "Human Subjects Included" checkbox checked. As a bonus read on how they made there the coronavirus which was successfully infecting and killing mice engineered to have human cells).
Fauci's statement was correct: the NIH does not fund gain-of-function research, according to the definition that has been drawn up to regulate such research.
You seem to think that any manipulation of a virus is "gain-of-function." The technical term that regulators use of "gain of function of concern." There's a specific definition of that term that was drawn up in the 2010s, and that's what NIH applies.
yes, that old "i didn't have s-x with that woman". Nobody cares for that specific definition. CRISP-ering human receptor binding protein onto a non-human coronavirus in such a way that the resulting virus starts to infect and kill human cells is a "gain of function", plain and simple. And thus Fauci lied. It was his professional duty to add to his answer that the gain of function they funded in Wuhan that the Congress was asking him about isn't fitting whatever narrow technical definition NIH uses. So, even if to take your position, it would mean that Fauci lied by omission.
"Gain-of-function studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease,"
The last link is exactly that 2014 document based on which the gain of function research was moved from US to in particular Wuhan. And Fauci was instrumental in that move.
Edit: to the commenters below who cares so much about the definition that Fauci uses - please do tell what is that magical definition which doesn't match even the NIH documents (see the links above).
That definition exists because nearly all virology involves modification of viruses. You have to have a definition of what type of research is concerning, or else it's just up to whatever some showboating congressman and his ignorant followers think. There was an entire, highly public, year-long process in the 2010s to define what "gain of function" should mean for the purpose of US-government-funded research. That's the definition Fauci uses.
> It was his professional duty to add to his answer that the gain of function they funded in Wuhan that the Congress was asking him about isn't fitting whatever narrow technical definition NIH uses.
No, it isn't. You would think a Senator in charge of regulating the NIH would ask one of his aides to explain to him before the session what "gain of function" means.
> yes, that old "i didn't have s-x with that woman".
Since you are alluding to Clinton impeachment, I would say people who voted for Trump or defend him lost any benefit of doubt they ever cared about respectability, morality or ethics of that situation. Or lying for that matter.
>Why did the select subcommittee not report that Fauci lied if in fact he did?
it is actually in the report of the subcommittee:
"Members questioned Dr. Fauci about his facilitation and promotion of a singular COVID-19 narrative, his clearly misleading statements before Congress and the public, ..."
and Biden pre-empively pardoned Fauci. So, what else do you need?
>Why did Fauci raise the possibility of a lab leak on Feb 1, 2020
He didn't. He was told in that meeting that it may be a lab leak, and he suppressed it then and after.
>Time and time again we see conspiratorial claims with nothing to back them up.
Interesting, the people arguing against me, like you for example, haven't provided any links/documents so far, where is i provided references and links to the government docs, reports, grants backing up my statements.
All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.