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Donald Trump vs. the Blob Part 2 : Electric Boogaloo
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been 4 years since our last bout. In one corner, we have the undisputed champ, the greatest of all time, the BADDEST man on planet Earth, the king, the DC blllooob! And in the other corner, the challenger, the next Hitler, the orange man, the Donald himself, Donaaallld Trump.
Let's.. get... ready.. to... rumble!
Holy shit it's been a crazy week for the current members of the Federal bureaucracy. Let's review:
Trump issued an Executive Order that almost all federal workers will have to return to office five days a week
All federal workers also received an offer to resign immediately. If they accept, they will get their current salary and benefits until September (an incredibly generous 8 month severance package). All they have to do is reply with the word "resign".
But also, workers will have to prove that they haven't been working a second or third job (in Reddit parlance, a J2, J3, etc..) It turns out this is actually a crime punishable by prison.
On the other hand side, we have the Reddit hivemind.
There is a Reddit for federal workers called /r/fednews. It's a revealing glimpse into an entitled and mentally ill slice of our federal workforce. Much like every other website, and especially themotte.org, they post almost exclusively during working hours.
These "workers" also may be violating federal law by explicitly campaigning on the behalf of one political party over another. Even posting on Reddit may be illegal.
So who wins?
It's a tough call. On one hand, in theory, Trump controls the executive branch. On the other hand, he doesn't control the judiciary who will ultimately decide the outcome. Already, many lawsuits have been filed on behalf of aggrieved federal employees.
Furthermore, not counting the military, there are 2 million federal employees. This is a massive army of people who, though already 95% anti-Trump, are now galvanized into action to prevent the erasure of their generous pay and benefits.
Has Trump bitten off more than he can chew? Will the champion remain undefeated? Or will the challenger land enough blows to sway the judges. You decide! Respond in the comments below.
What's the lawsuit argument? The federal government can't do layoffs?
There’s a million things. I think someone is trying to argue that the President is not allowed to send federal workers an email. 🤷
Doesn't seem initially crazy to me. Not following established processes was frequently used to prevent Trump policies in term one. If you have a rule that something has to be done a certain way, you need to revoke that rule. If you're too brash to figure out how the system works first, you probably need to slow down and understand what you're trying to do.
And then, 4 years later, the problem is solved by the election of a different President. This logic enshrines the power of the deep state forever.
The power of the bureaucracy to enforce procedural rules would exceed the power of elected officials to run the executive branch.
I think you misunderstood me. The problem is solved by changing the rules to ones you can work with or by using the established procedures to accomplish what you're trying to do. This is basic institutional competence and I would hope that given effectively a do-over, Trump would be hiring people who can navigate these types of obstacles since he himself isn't expected to do so.
I mean this is just a maximally uncharitable reading of the situation. No one doubts Trump's authority to do much of want he wants to do but due process obligation and the administrative procedure act are one of the great limiters of federal overreach. The failing as such falls on whatever staffers aren't capable of reading documentation or consulting with white house legal before trying to do whatever they're trying to do.
I understand that frustrates people who want to punish the other tribe or who want results today and not tomorrow, but it's probably worth considering how much worse things would be for cultural conservatives under Bush/Obama/etc if the president really was able to rule by diktat.
You haven't really given much of an argument for that,
As far as I remember Bush and Obama did both rule by diktat, including by sending letters, if not e-mails.
Explain, please. The bureaucracy simply doesn't have powers that supercede the executive. Claiming otherwise is throwing your hands up and calling it impossible at the first signs of resistance. Consider the example of DACA where SCOTUS decided the Trump admin full and well had the authority to rescind the program but because the announcement was just Sessions loudly pooing (rightfully) on Obama, it didn't meet the relatively low bar required by the APA to show that the action actually had a reasoning behind it rather than failing the "arbitrary and capricious" test. That isn't the bureaucracy being so powerful the president can't do anything, that's the president relying on people who don't know what they're doing to execute his agenda.
Yes, ruling by executive order has been a thing for a long time. My point is that the process requirements are guardrails established by Congress that allow judicial review of some of the most arbitrary ones.
They have the power to pretend they're totally following orders, but drag their feet until the next guy is elected.
These are all just words that bureaucrats said, not an objective fact. What evidence is there that it failed any such test, and that they'd totally allow it if it didn't?
Why did you skip the later part of my sentence, which gives an example of ruling by diktat, that does not involve executive orders?
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