The first and most important thing to keep in mind when considering the legality of Trump’s actions is a very straightforward principle of constitutional law: Before the president can take any action, he has to have the legal power to do it. Presidents get their power from one of two places: the Constitution or a law passed by Congress. So that no one has to guess at the legality of a president’s actions, executive orders usually start with citing which specific provision of the Constitution or which specific act of Congress gives the president the power to issue that order.
Basic government civics teaches us that’s just not the way the Constitution works. Congress has the power to make laws and the president has the duty to execute the laws Congress passes. The most basic kinds of laws Congress passes are those directing when and where the government is going to spend money. This power of the purse is the first congressional power listed under Article I of the Constitution. When Trump asserts the power in some of these executive orders to pause or cut off federal spending that Congress has already authorized, he is not acting on executing those laws. He is seizing power the Constitution clearly gave to Congress and Congress alone.
The report further claims that the "two political appointees will be able to make final determinations on 'adverse personnel actions and bar referral matters,' ethics recusals and waivers, nominee financial disclosures, and a variety of other delicate professional responsibility decisions that have historically been handled instead by the department’s highest-ranking career official."
"The political appointees will also have decisionmaking authority regarding referrals from the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employee whistleblower complaints; inspector general requests for access to grand jury material; and disclosures to Congress, including asserting privilege or appearing in response to lawmaker subpoenas, the memo said," it reads. "Delegating such weighty tasks to political aides — both first-time DOJ employees — without a career official’s involvement is a dramatic departure from past practice."
"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Monday, February 17, 2025. Donald Chump and co-president Alien Musk continue their assault on workers as they work to increase the unemployment rate in the US while sending grocery prices through the roof.
Paul Krugman (SUBSTACK) notes this morning:
Last month SpaceX carried out a test launch of its in-development Starship rocket. Liftoff was achieved, but as the company later announced, “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.” In other words, it exploded.
It would be wrong to think of this explosion as a disaster; new products often experience failures during testing. That is, after all, why we test them. Still, the euphemistic language reeks of unwillingness to take responsibility and admit that things didn’t go as planned. But then again, what would you expect from a company owned by Elon Musk?
And here’s the thing: If a rocket blows up, you can build a new rocket and try again. “Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government?
This isn’t a hypothetical question: Musk, with backing from Donald Trump, is blowing up significant parts of the U.S. government as you read this. And we can already see the shape of multiple potential disasters.
The Muskenjugend — the mostly very young people Musk has hired to work at the Department of Government Efficiency, which isn’t actually a government department in any legal sense but which Trump has effectively given huge and probably unconstitutional power to remake federal agencies — generally seem to share three characteristics.
First, they all seem to be extreme right-wing ideologues: whenever journalists investigate the social media trail of one of Musk’s operatives, what they find is horrifying. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had in the recent past advocated racism and eugenics.
Second, they don’t know anything about the government agencies they’re supposedly going to make more efficient. That’s understandable. The federal government has around 2 million workers, many — I would say the vast majority — performing important public services, in a huge variety of fields. You can’t parachute into a government agency and expect to know in a matter of days which if any programs and employees are dispensable.
But the third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut.
Dems in Congress are highlighting some of what Chump is attacking.
Over the weekend, on WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY Alien Musk's attacking federal agencies was noted:
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And it has been a tumultuous week at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. NPR's Laurel Wamsley has been following all the twists and turns at the bureau this week. Laurel, thanks so much for being with us.
LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE: Hey there, Scott.
SIMON: Catch us up. What's been happening with this agency?
WAMSLEY: Well, there's been a lot of layoffs this week. That's part of Trump's plan to massively reduce the federal workforce. At CFPB, some 150 employees lost their jobs. That's about 9% of the staff. Those cuts were largely folks who'd been at the bureau for less than four years. One of the employees who lost her job this week was Johanna Hickman, who was an attorney in the bureau's enforcement division. She received her termination notice at 9 p.m. on Tuesday. And because her work e-mail had already been turned off, it came to her personal e-mail.
JOHANNA HICKMAN: You know, it's heartbreaking. I think we do exceptional work at the bureau, and I have been honored to serve in this role for the last, you know, over a year and a half. I expected to be here for another 15 years. And it's shocking. It's unlawful, for one thing, and extraordinarily disappointing.
WAMSLEY: And right now, essentially, all of CFPB's work has been halted. Employees have been locked out of the building and told they can't do any work. And Elon Musk's team, meanwhile, has been given access to the building and to its systems.
SIMON: And where does that leave events now this weekend?
WAMSLEY: Well, staff are bracing for even further cuts. According to a legal complaint by CFPB's union, they're expecting that perhaps 95% of all employees could be fired. A reporter asked President Trump on Monday whether his goal was to have CFPB totally eliminated, and Trump said yes. But for now, a federal judge ruled yesterday that they can't conduct layoffs at CFPB, at least through March 3, when a hearing is scheduled, and they can't delete any agency data either.
SIMON: And, Laurel, remind us - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in 2008, and why?
WAMSLEY: That's right. That's when millions of Americans lost their homes due to lax lending standards, and it brought the global economy tumbling with it. The Dodd-Frank Act established the bureau to prevent such a disaster from happening again. At a high level, what the bureau supposed to do is that it's been tasked by Congress to regulate consumer financial products and services, like credit cards, mortgages, et cetera. So consumer protection responsibilities are now unified under one agency that's tasked with being on the side of the consumer, against big banks and financial services companies. And it's really done a lot.
I mean, just in recent months, it's made rules capping credit card late fees and overdraft fees. It sued the payment app Zelle and the banks that operate it, saying they didn't protect consumers from fraud. And it sued Capital One for advertising a high-yield checking account that paid close to zero in interest.
The cuts hit staffers at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, several people with knowledge of the firings told POLITICO. The administration also terminated some staff at the office responsible for emergency preparedness and response.
The firings were part of a culling of roughly 3,600 probationary employees across the sprawling department that began earlier this week with terminations primarily at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health.
Donald Chump and Alien Musk continue their attack on the US government. Foreign born Alien prefers to destroy the US system because he misses the apartheid he embraced in South Africa and Donald Chump is just too stupid to know what he's doing.
Chump demonstrated that stupidity repeatedly over the weekend. For example? Doina Chiacu (REUTERS) explains Chump posted to social media today, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." No, that's not true, it's never been true. Chiacu also notes that Chump is claiming that he survived an assassination attempt because God wants him to save the country. Need another? Rebecca Schneid (TIME) reports:
To mark Valentine’s Day, the White House posted a meme across its X, Instagram, and Facebook social media accounts. The post included a new take on the popular “roses are red, violets are blue” refrain. But in lieu of a traditional love poem, the White House instead came up with a rhyme that targeted illegal immigration.
“Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you,” the text of the Valentine’s Day message read. Against a pink backdrop, the poem was accompanied by the faces of President Donald Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan. The caption read “Happy Valentines Day,” with a red heart emoji.
Various organizations have since spoken out to condemn the post.
Voto Latino, an organization that works to engage Latino communities in the voting process, called the post “offensive and divisive.”
“This post was deliberately crafted to provoke and sow division, but the struggles of immigrant families are not a joke,” the organization said. “Using a lighthearted holiday to demean and target communities is not only irresponsible—it is beneath the dignity of the presidency.”
The immigrant harming this country is Alien Musk. Ed Mazza (HUFFINGTON POST) reports:
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) on Sunday sarcastically admitted she was wrong about a key part of President Donald Trump’s MAGA platform.
Trump has frequently claimed that immigrants were taking jobs from Americans, at times insisting that more than 100% of new jobs were going to immigrants.
“There’s an immigrant taking people’s jobs,” Crockett admitted in a post on social media. “His name is Elon Musk.”
Tech billionaire Musk, who was born in South Africa, has been leading Trump’s effort to shrink the government and cut spending, which has led to agencies being gutted.
Crockett pointed out the impact, direct and indirect, that Musk’s cuts are already having around the nation:
“He’s snatching farms, government jobs (even those in which they manage our national security), and definitely those whose jobs are to root out fraud (inspector generals), & those that are keeping us safe (FAA), meals on wheels workers, head start, and the list goes on, so I’ll be the bigger person and admit to MAGA that I was wrong when I said immigrants wouldn’t take our jobs. You were 1000 percent correct.”
Crockett said earlier this month that even some Republicans in Congress weren’t happy with Musk and were secretly rooting for him to fail.
We do realize, right, that he's not only refused to lower the prices of eggs (they are at least double what they were when Joe was president) and other groceries, but that he's destroying the economy while also attempting massive lay offs? We do realize lay offs lead to increased unemployment, right?
Did those fools of you who voted for him actually vote for him to cause a recession?
If not, what you think his tariffs and firings are going to result in?
Josephine Harvey (HUFFINGTON POST) notes:
President Donald Trump seems to expect Americans to take his word for it that his tariffs plan will work out well for them.
Trump on Thursday announced he was imposing reciprocal tariffs on trade partners, a plan that could easily backfire and drive up prices for American consumers.
President Donald Trump seems to expect Americans to take his word for it that his tariffs plan will work out well for them.
Trump on Thursday announced he was imposing reciprocal tariffs on trade partners, a plan that could easily backfire and drive up prices for American consumers.
What magical land is your brain residing in that allows you to escape basic economic and market place realities?
AP's Fatima Hussein notes, "The IRS will lay off thousands of probationary workers in the middle of tax season, according to two sources familiar with the agency's plans, and cuts could happen as soon as next week." MAGA fools, we don't need IRS workers right now? At the height of tax season? Julia Ainsley (NBC NEWS) explains, "The Department of Justice fired multiple immigration judges on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the decision and a statement from one of the judges on LinkedIn. The move threatens to throw sand in the gears of an already strained immigration system as the Trump administration moves to rapidly reshape the federal workforce. " Again, he's stupid, too stupid for the job. Liam Archacki (THE DAILY BEAST) reports on more firings -- re DEI, were in phase two with phase three set to start shortly. You can also refer to Tom Boggioni's report at RAW STORY on the same topic.
Generally, we expect a president to actually create jobs. We don't expect them to knowingly and intentionally increase the unemployment rate.
His attack on free speech is nothing new -- though Glenneth Greenwald and Matt Taibbi try to pretend otherwise. The latest attack on free speech from Chump? Julianne Moore is an actress who's been nominated for every major film and TV acting award. A multi-Academy Award nominees, she's won one for Best Actress, a BAFTA, two Emmys and three Golden Globes. She's also a children's book author. On INSTAGRAM today, she noted the following:
It
is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, Freckleface
Strawberry, has been banned by the Trump Administration from schools run
by the Department of Defense. Freckleface Strawberry is a
semi-autobiographical story about a seven year old girl who dislikes her
freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that
she is different “just like everybody else.” It is a book I wrote for
my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle, but
are united by our humanity and our community.
I am particularly stunned because I am a proud graduate of Frankfurt American High School a #DOD school that once operated in Frankfurt, Germany. I grew up with a father who is a Vietnam veteran and spent his career in the #USArmy.
I could not be prouder of him and his service to our country. It is
galling for me to realize that kids like me, growing up with a parent in
the service and attending a @dodea_edu
school will not have access to a book written by someone whose life
experience is so similar to their own. And I can’t help but wonder what
is so controversial about this picture book that cause it to be banned
by the US Government. I am truly saddened and never thought I would see
this in a country where freedom of speech and expression is a
constitutional right. Thank you to @penamerica for bringing this to my attention. #FAHS #frecklefacestrawberry @uyenloseordraw @thebookgrp
Graig Graziosi (INDEPENDENT) reports:
The federal education system that supports Defense Department schools around the world has ordered schools under its purview to remove books from their libraries that deal with any topic relating to diversity, equity and inclusion, following Donald Trump’s executive order.
The missive from the Department of Defense Education Activity was issued on February 6, forcing schools — like an elementary institution at the U.S. Army’s Fort Campbell in Kentucky — to round up books that don't align with the Trump administration's ideological views.
[. . .]
Schools have already been told they can’t host events recognizing Black History Month and other cultural observances, agency spokesman Will Griffin said last week.
The document bans “monthly cultural observances,” prompting schools to immediately cancel Black History Month events and remove bulletin boards referencing Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, Tennessee’s Clarksville Now reported.
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Black history2 days ago
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