Tragically, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s budget is proposing absolutely massive cuts to health care research and oversight across the board. It’s almost beyond belief, and the damage will linger for decades because once research programs are stopped and researchers are reassigned or fired, they are very hard to restart again.
Trump begins mass layoffs at FDA, CDC, other US health agencies | Reuters
Also, because Harvard was mean to him, no more federal research grants to Harvard – none!
Coupled with the above-cited major cuts to medical research, we should be prepared to be heading into the Dark Ages once again.
I find it boggling that these sort of things are at the President’s discretion. Don’t you have some sort of professional committees that are responsible for issuing grants? Is everything political in the U.S.?
The details of the actual grants go to a committee to decice. A committee of academics and nonacademics, leaders in their field. So a professor at Iowa State and one at Harvard are competing equally, normally. Now the command from Trump takes out all the professors from Harvard. The grants go to those univeristies Trump has not yet banned. The same process applied to all federal money. Trump could have done the same to school grants to states. Many states need the money, like Mississippi, to run schools at all. Local taxes are not enough there. But Trump played no favorites, all funds are cut to all states. Because K-12 education is too woke.
I don’t understand how that’s legal. How can these committees be professional and objective if the executive branch can simply override their decisions?
I think there are two things going on here, which have been discussed before. One is that US presidents really do have a tremendous amount of authority, which is why great care is supposed to be taken in their selection. Previous presidents have mostly used this power responsibly and with discretion. But the only thing preventing a lunatic from using those powers with reckless abandon is traditional norms.
The other thing is that a great deal of what Trump is doing is blatantly illegal. For example, there’s clearly no national emergency that justifies usurping the authority of Congress to set tariffs, and he’s ignoring court orders ruling against his illegal deportations, and it’s extremely questionable that the Alien Enemies Act has any applicability here at all. He’s not only ignoring all the norms of the office of the president, he’s ignoring all the laws, too. Nobody is doing anything about it. The system of checks and balances has utterly failed.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, given how Trump hates research and education. I suspect given how corrupt this administration is, that money is going straight into Trump’s own pocket via his crypto scheme, or into the Trump organization, or to fund more deportations.
I think that if the United States survives this period, you guys really have to reconsider your system of government.
Unfortunately one of its many flaws is that it’s nigh-impossible to fix.
This is well worth a read. Corruption in the Trump administration, corruption in Congress, corruption in health care and pharmaceuticals, and Trump’s continuing efforts to dismantle the federal agencies that regulate them. Want to establish profiteering health care monopolies with an inherent conflict of interest? Want to hike the price of cancer drugs by 4000%? No problem – this is America! 
Yes.
Trump overrode those.
Under the presidential system, the executive branch is tempted to exceed its authority. It is easy to find news stories about cases where courts stopped it in past administrations, as here. Trump is exceeding his authority more frequently and brazenly than normal
Everything is a big word.
There are some states (not mine) where local judges are chosen in a non-partisan manner. And the great majority of government employees, even at the lower policy-making level, are hired through a non-partisan processes. However, too much is political, and Trump is pushing to make even more political.
There is a fraying norm where judges rule based on legal precedent rather than party affiliation. Given that Trump is frequently exceeding his authority, and that Supreme Court judges who can potentially stop it are mostly Republicans, the “everything is political” hypothesis is being tested.
No contitutional convention can take place. It would just break up the US.
The change that would be needed is “parliament” taking over the guidance of the ministries, funding and hiring the ministries and looking over all the federal jobs. That would be the prime minister. We do not have one.
Last night I proofread for a federal court reporter the transcript of a hearing (the second one in this case) about ICE’s efforts to deport a student after his visas were revoked because of events at a pro/anti Gaza war demonstration.
I won’t go into identifying details, but the student’s actions occurred a year and a half ago, he’s worked out a plea deal in state court on the charges brought against him, and has a ticket already bought to fly to his home country as soon as he enters his plea.
So, no problem, right? He finishes what he has to do and “self-deports”, no cost to the government, no effort by them, right?
WRONG.
ICE is insisting he has to be taken into custody by them, various paperwork and proceedings must happen, and THEN he’ll be deported – after weeks if not months in their custody, at the taxpayers’ expense.
The judge hearing this case is clearly frustrated at the stupidity of it all but federal law surrounding all this is a hot mess, downright Kafkaesque. It seems clear from what the student’s and the government’s attorneys have been arguing that ICE is (a) insisting that their bureaucratic power is more important than any practical solution, and (b) that they want to punish the student for being pro-Palestinian (he’s from a different country).
Oh, and I forgot to mention that despite his being in this country for a year and a half after the incident, and has gone back home and returned twice in that interval, no ICE action was being taken against him until a right-wing group doxxed him online and yelled about why hasn’t he been kicked out – and the very next day ICE shows up at his door.
P.S. This was not a sealed hearing; any member of the public would have been entitled to attend it.
Behold.
I know you’re not European, but I’ve had to explain to a few of them just how many elected officials we have and how many are appointed and serve at some executive’s pleasure. We might have a committee that appoints, but very often the executive can make the decisions if they want.
Voice of America will carry One America News programming
Above is from WaPo, which is still a good newspaper.
Contrast with VOAnews.com, where this headline is currently on the home page:
I mean, that’s technically true. His condition (dead) is stable; he is certainly not going to die a second time.
The US government has instructed the city government of Stockholm, Sweden to abandon DEI policies.
I came to post news about this, too. From NPR:
Kari Lake says OAN’s far-right coverage will fuel Voice of America
Kari Lake says Voice of America to rely on pro-Trump OAN : NPR
…
“Kari Lake providing One America News Network to our global audiences makes a mockery of the agency’s history of independent non-partisan journalism,” former U.S. Agency for Global Media Chief Financial Officer Grant Turner tells NPR.Since World War II, the Voice of America has provided news coverage and cultural programming to lands across the globe without access to a free press, serving an audience that has grown to more than 360 million people weekly. Its charge - established by Congress - is to incorporate criticism of the government’s official line to convey the news in its complexity but also to model what a pluralistic democracy looks like.
Since March, however, the Voice of America has been stilled, on the order of Trump and Lake. Her announcement called the parent agency “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer.”
Lake put nearly the entire workforce on indefinite leave.
…
She and trump are the rot.
Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast with Atlantic columnist, David Frum, interviewing journalist, historian, and fellow Atlantic columnist, Anne Applebaum. The main topic was the corruption of Trump in both 1.0 and 2.0 (45th and 47th Presidencies).
What I found both interesting and useful is how Frum broke down the Trump horrors into six main categories:
I think this is both Frum’s approach to, and a useful framework for, maintaining both clarity and focus midst the mind-blowing “flood the zone” approach of the Trump administration.
Frum’s been an oracle on Trump’s ‘administrations’ while Applebaum is a noted authority on modern era authoritarianism and autocratic regimes. I put both of them alongside Heather Cox Richardson as invaluable resources for clarity, insight, wisdom, analysis, and informed guidance these days.
Wow - that really is an impressive and concise way to delineate the various categories of offensive and troublesome efforts.