So, the Supremes have decided, without even bothering to write an opinion, that the Department of Education can be massively reduced without Congressional approval:The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration may fire more than half of the Department of Education’s workforce — mass terminations that, in Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s words, are “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” of the entire department.
The Court’s decision in McMahon v. New York, was handed down on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other expedited matters that the justices often decide without full briefing or oral argument. As is often the case in shadow docket decisions, none of the Republican justices explained their decision.
This is, in my opinion, and in line with most lawyers, 100% unconstitutional.
The McMahon decision is particularly unnerving because it suggests that President Donald Trump is allowed to “impound” federal spending — unilaterally refusing to spend money or to continue federal programs that are mandated by an act of Congress. While McMahon does not explicitly authorize impoundment, it allows the Trump administration to fire so many federal workers, in so many key roles, that the practical effect is to cancel entire federal programs.
Most of the creep of imperial presidency has been Congress giving its powers away: war acts which make it so the president can go to war without Congress, for example, or giving the President tariff authority (which Trump has misused, pretending everything is “national security”) and so on. Some have been unilateral grabs, such as using “signing statements” to change the clear intend of laws.
But this is a Presidential grab that the Supremes are waving thru. Even if they later rule that some stub of the Education department must remain, it’s clearly allowing the President to over-ride spending that Congress has mandated. I am unaware of any reasonable reading of the Constitution that allows this: the President is to execute Congress’s directives and does not have the authority to say “nah, we’re just not going to do that any more.”
Especially of interest here is that the Republicans didn’t bother to explain the ruling and didn’t give it a full trial. They know it’s completely indefensible on legal grounds, and they aren’t even going to try.
Ever since Citizen’s United I have told Americans to get out if they can and if not to prepare for horrific times. Children, we are now at the start of the collapse. Before this it was mostly gradual, but this is the real thing.
I mention Citizen’s United (which allowed unlimited cash into US elections under the proposition that money is speech) because, of course, smashing the Department of Education while it’s something that Christofacists want, so they can ban books and write fantasy textbooks and fire teachers and Professors for saying things like “gay sex might not be bad,” or “American slavery was terrible” and so on, it’s also about privatizing as much of the education system as possible.
Remember that Trump’s main act, amidst all the Kabuki, was his budget, which slashed four trillion in taxes from rich people while cutting health care for poor people to partially pay for it. Trump’s #1 priority, as per his actions, is to make the rich, richer. (His tariffs, while real, have been TACO: Trump chickens out when rich people start screaming.)
Make the public education shit for poor people, let the middle class have vouchers for some shit “charter” school and the upper class, as always, will send their kids to elite private schools.
A Republic, If You Can Keep It – Benjamin Franklin
Kept it for almost 250 years, but if this stands, if Congress loses its last real power, it’s over. A Republic is something rather specific, a divided form of government. And if one of the three branches has no effective power left, it’s not a Republic, especially since the Supremes, in other orders, are gutting the Judiciary’s power. The end of nationwide injunctions is particularly instructive. And let’s not forget the President’s Gestapo force, ICE, arresting Judges who try to interfere with immigration snatches.
Nothing is over till it’s over. But no one with sense would offer good odds that the US is going to come out of this era as the sort of place anyone with sense would want to live. Say what you will about China, but it’s light authoritarianism and actually delivers prosperity. At this point everyone not in the top 1% is seeing declines in wealth in America, plus you’re losing your civil liberties (citizenship revocation is very likely), plus you’re losing your Republic.
I consider it my duty to try and give a clear picture of the world to my readers so they can make good decisions. Other than the necessity of eating and not dying of exposure, it’s why I write. So… If you can get out. Get out. If you can’t, make preparations for Hell.
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Jan Wiklund
I have always maintained that the Supreme Court is US’s equivalent to Iran’s Assembly of Experts. A body that can annul any legislation and apparently invent new ones at will.
bruce wilder
why worry?
Hakeem Jeffries will save us! I am sure of it.
david lamy
I think the slippery slope to the demise of our republic started in my childhood. Our congress no longer declared war but would in some cases authorize use of military force. Presidents successfully extended the scope of these authorizations to kill foreigners very much not like us at whim.
So here we are, the Supreme Court finally granting post hoc, Reagan’s dream of dreams: the line item veto — on steroids.
Eric Anderson
Death by a thousand uninformed vote for the elite little cuts.
Daniel A Lynch
There is nothing preventing Congress from re-asserting its authority — regarding the Department of Education, war powers, or whatever. But Congress works for the rich, and the rich do not believe in democracy. Therein lies the root problem.
Certainly Trump is a bad guy, and it is fair to call him out, but if not Trump, it would be some other tool of the rich.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis.
StewartM
The ability to impound funds for programs a President doesn’t like was one of Nixon’s claims. So you see, the movement conservative playbook has always been about setting up a pro-capitalist dictatorship.
Why should this be any surprise, when its very founders were those who trusted capitalism and distrusted democracy (as Tony Wikret has pointed out many times).
bruce wilder
Congress maybe could reassert itself, if there were any Congress critters left who knew how to bind the Executive legally and procedurally, but there are no such creatures left. The once tightly-controlled, fine-grained processes of budgeting, authorization and appropriation, backed up by accounting and auditing — these have been eroding steadily under myriad assaults since Nixon and impoundment. The continuing resolution farce has a regular feature of the fiscal cycle since Bush the Younger, just to highlight one point of leverage and erosion. Every time executive discretion to reallocate has to be broadened because Congress cannot function well enough to properly budget and oversee mandated programs. The Office of Management and Budget under the President arrogates authority that Congress used to formally give to Department Secretaries, Agency heads and Commissions. The procedural assault, like the ideological assault has been underway for a long time.
Feral Finster
“This is, in my opinion, and in line with most lawyers, 100% unconstitutional.”
Law is meaningless. Enforcement is the only thing that matters.
Hiero
I would guess the contagion from USA going to “hell” presents a high risk of downgrading a lot of places in the world significantly, at least in the short term and in numerous ways (look what’s happening now in Mexico), such that any resourceful person with an ounce of fortitude (ie not the typical Westerner) might consider staying and attempting to prepare their local community (a thing everyone should be working at all the time anyway) to be at least parity with ejecting. And then there’s that climate thing lurking – I might consider that a stronger factor in making the choice to go refugee and where to try to land since that type of impact can overwhelm the best preparations.
I’ll have to re-watch Casablanca to get the juices flowing on this again.
ibaien
the whole “i’ve been telling people to get out for a decade!” thing is tiresome. where are generally unskilled, lower or middle income yanquis supposed to go, exactly? CDMX is having massive ‘gringo go home’ protests (and rightfully so); most of the welcoming-ish LATAM nations are one half-step away from despotism. china doesn’t need or want more marginal workers who don’t even speak mandarin; russia could definitely use the manpower and (having been bled pretty badly by the ukies) literal men, but seems like a political non-starter. considering how many americans live paycheck to paycheck, a golden visa somewhere else may as well be a unicorn. folks are gonna have to stay and fight, like it or not.
NR
Get out and go where, Ian? That might be worth a post in itself, because it doesn’t seem like there are a lot of great places to go anymore. Europe used to look attractive, not so much anymore. Even New Zealand, which used to be a pretty well-run country, is having a lot of problems these days. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t want Americans (understandably). So… go where?
Joan
Thanks, Ian. I’m on a two-year emigration timeline. I’m aggressively applying for overseas jobs.
China is light authoritarianism as long as you don’t read or write LGBT fiction: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056nle2drno
Ian Welsh
Some people are not going to be able to get out, yup. If you’re low skilled and low money, you’re probably screwed.
But do some research before giving up. For example, if you have a grandparent of Irish extraction, you can get Irish citizenship. There are plenty of weird little niches.
Europe’s not so great, but most of it will keep more of a social net for longer than the US.
If you can somehow go to China, go (though that’s damn hard.) Don’t go to India.
Of course China is worse in some ways than the West. If you must write gay fiction, China’s not for you. But overall, it puts a Hell of a lot less people in prison than the US.
Purple Library Guy
@Hiero . . . Uh, what’s happening in Mexico? Everything I’ve heard about Mexico’s direction lately has been pretty positive. Sure, it was starting from a bad place, but the current government is pretty solid social democratic, creating perhaps the first real welfare state Mexico has ever seen, and last I heard was intending to respond to Trump’s tariffs with industrial policy. Has there been a change?
ibaien
this is the crux of why i sometimes find this site so philosophically incoherent: an ostensibly liberal host who reflexively cheerleads for the honestly and unapologetically authoritarian, illiberal CCP (let alone putin and his oligarchs). are we supposed to believe that surrendering virtually all freedoms because they “did covid better” is a morally correct choice? i like china, i’ve been there a bunch and it’s very modern and clever, but it’s a police state that would make our tinpot fascists red with envy. why is that the solution? seems like a cop-out at best. said it before, say it again, it’s “sinnerman” all the way down now.
Ian Welsh
1) I’m not a liberal (in the modern sense.)
2) China has a LOT less people in prison than the US does.
3) I would judge that in most of the country now, China provides a better standard of living than the US, and it’s definitely the future.
4) I’ve repeatedly noted that it is an authoritarian state. So is the US. If you’re going to live in an authoritarian state, might as well live in one that is competent and MUCH less likely to lock you up.
5) I’ve repeatedly called Putin evil (and gotten lots of flack for it.) That said, I think he’s less evil than most American Presidents.
6) Russia is much less of an oligarchy than America.
I don’t have a tribal identification with Russia, China or America so I assess them relatively objectively. Of the three, China is the best run, with the lowest incarceration rate. It isn’t even close. More than that, every indicator is that both the CPC and Putin have far higher approval ratings than any American president in my life, and no, I don’t think that’s fake, because both countries have vastly improved living standards of the past few decades while the US’s have declined (whatever the official numbers say, we all know that for most people things are worse in America every decade.)
A lot of Americans think the US is the land of the free or some such nonsense. If it was ever true, it hasn’t been true since about 1980 and it gets less true every day.
different clue
Here is an article about a looming population implosion crisis in Russia which might make Russia a possible destination for Americans seeking a new start elsewhere.
” Russia’s population crisis is so dire, it’s staring down a labor shortage of 11 million people by 2030, a minister told Putin ” ( ” behind soft paywall” ) . . .
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1m0bl6k/russias_population_crisis_is_so_dire_its_staring/
DMC
I and mine are headed out to Ecuador, specifically to Vilcabamba, a little town in the Southeast of the country. Its a “blue zone” where people routinely live to 100, where you can grow coffee and chocolate in your back yard, where the healthcare is CHEAP and GOOD, costs about $85 a month. Cost of living is also cheap, a 2 bedroom apartment is about $500, all the food is local and organic and costs pennies on the dollar. While it is a literal banana republic, with the current president as the richest guy in the country, who has a controlling interest in all aspects of the banana trade (including what gets shipped along with the bananas), if you don’t get in their way, you’re fine. They use USD as their currency, so no exchange fees. They really like expats who bring first world income(even if its only SSI) to the country which supports a lot of the local economy. There are 100’s of YouTube video from expats who made the move and are happy to go into minute detail about the pros and cons. If you have even $1500 a month you can live very comfortably. Real Estate is similarly cheap(watch the realtor videos). Downsides are no post office(you can DHL everything but it costs) no highway department(Locals will eventually clear mudslides) and some tropical diseases(inoculation against Yellow fever is mandatory). You don’t want to live in Quito or Guayaquil(cartel related crime) but Cuenca is fine and considered the cultural capital. Vilcabamba is noted for its expat community, and the climate is basically Spring year round.