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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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Reuters:

Trump orders sweeping freeze for federal grants and loans

Trump order set to halt supply of HIV, malaria drugs to poor countries, sources say

Apparently based on this memo (pdf).

This seems very... crude. The question is if it's purposefully crude, if there's some structural reason it can't be better implemented, or if the person in charge is incompetent.

Also, impoundment? We'll see?

The irony is that we're getting the worst of both worlds with Trump's brand of isolationism. On one hand, we have Bush lackey Pete Hegseth who thinks Iraq was a great idea. And then we're defunding basic, uncontroversial medical aid and possibly leaving Ukraine defenseless against the mongrels. There's no coherent policy other than doing the opposite of whatever Biden supported.

  • -14

There is nothing uncontroversial about that medical aid. Quite simply, it is not theirs to give.

when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people

It probably doesn't apply in this case, but would Congress have the ability to make treaties with foreign nations and give them medical aid under those enumerated powers? Or could Congress make use of enumerated powers related to raising armies, and provision the military with extra medical personnel and supplies, and then (with permission of affected countries) send military doctors in to provide substantially similar medical aid to that currently being given?

Like, I'm all for the idea of doing things "the right way" within the legal framework we have, but surely Congress just giving medical aid to foreign nations isn't far off from things they could do with enumerated powers under the Constitution?

the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.

It's either enumerated or it isn't. "Not far off" means "not enumerated" means "unconstitutional."

Do you think the Louisiana purchase was a legal act under the Constitution, given that there is no explicit enumerated power for Congress to acquire territory from other countries?

I get wanting to be something like an Originalist, but I think that a lot of people that hold the position do so as a kind of cop out. It is much easier to say, "We can't debate foreign aid, the Constitution doesn't explicitly allow it", than to say, "I am opposed to my tax dollars being spent on foreign aid for reasons X, Y, and Z." But the problem is, sometimes the Constitution does actually seem to allow the thing (and not in a nonsense "Living Constitution" way.)

I think if you're creative, most of the limitations are hardly limitations at all. The Federal government was able to end hotel segregation by using the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate hotels that host people from other states. That seems like a much more justifiable use of the Interstate Commerce clause than that one outrageous case of regulating how much corn a man is allowed to grow on his own property, and which would never cross state lines.

(EDIT: Looking it up, at least one kind of foreign medical aid is done "by the book" in exactly the way I describe. The US Department of Defense will send the military in to foreign disaster areas to set up field hospitals and military medical teams. So, we can ask the object level question - should US tax dollars be spent on such foreign aid? I don't think the "but the Constitution" dodge is really possible here.)

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

by using the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate hotels that host people from other states. That seems like a much more justifiable use of the Interstate Commerce clause than that one outrageous case of regulating how much corn a man is allowed to grow on his own property, and which would never cross state lines.

Wickard v Filburn is a travesty, and every day the Supreme Court goes without reversing it is another day of ignominy and shame.

That still doesn't mean that there's any interstate commerce when someone rents a hotel room. The commerce happens when the man crosses the border with money. The renting of the hotel room only ever occurs within one state.

Looking it up, at least one kind of foreign medical aid is done "by the book" in exactly the way I describe. The US Department of Defense will send the military in to foreign disaster areas to set up field hospitals and military medical teams.

There should be no standing army in the first place, but rather state militias. This is not by the book in any way.

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