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binarymax 3 hours ago [-]
Whether or not you agree or disagree with the merits of USAID is beside the point. A single unelected and unqualified person must not be given the authority to dismantle a massive US government program.
rayiner 2 hours ago [-]
Rubio dismantled the program, as the Senate confirmed political appointee of the duly elected head of the executive branch.
You can debate whether the President has the power to dismantle USAID under the relevant statutes. Those lawsuits are winding their way through the courts. But if he does have the power, then it would be perverse if he couldn’t exercise the power due to HR rules. You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
nullocator 2 hours ago [-]
Are you calling congress "HR"? Congress created USAID, and did not approve it being destroyed.
rayiner 1 hours ago [-]
No, I’m talking about the article, which is focused on literal HR rules. USAID still exists on paper but Congress reallocated its budget to the State Department.
hvb2 32 minutes ago [-]
> But if he does have the power, then it would be perverse if he couldn’t exercise the power due to HR rules.
It's not even established that he has the power. The fact that they do something doesn't mean they have that power.
And given that, it doesn't mean that you get to ignore all other rules.
> You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
When you're firing thousands of people, some due diligence is in order, no?
rayiner 21 minutes ago [-]
> It's not even established that he has the power.
Sure, I agree with that. But the President doesn’t need a court ruling giving permission before he exercises his powers. The President is the chief executive in charge of government operations, not the courts. If he’s acting outside his authority, you can sue him and then the courts can figure it out.
> When you're firing thousands of people, some due diligence is in order, no
Not when those people work for the government. This is one of the few things I agree with FDR on: the nature of democracy means that government employees must have less employment protections than private sector workers, not more. Even if you have an expansive view of what the constitution allows in terms of Congress providing for independent executive branch agencies, at most that means the President can’t ignore Congress’s intent in funding certain programs. But that still doesn’t allow the bureaucracy invoking HR rules to protect itself against the actions of the elected branches. That effectively gives a small class of people more say over the operation of the government than the electorate as a whole.
insane_dreamer 2 hours ago [-]
Only Congress had the power. But Congress didn’t call the Executive branch on it, so … here we are.
USAID still exists on paper. But under the current appropriations bills, the funding is allocated to the State Department.
insane_dreamer 6 minutes ago [-]
That was only passed a year _after_ DOGE had already gutted USAID entirely, so the Executive branch was acting outside the authority of Congress (or in contravention with Congress) when it gutted USAID in early 2025.
But he was elected, which qualifies him. The voters voted for this sort of thing. Not in the exact details, but that's why it's a representative democracy instead of a direct one.
lesuorac 1 hours ago [-]
Trumps not 28.
But also the voters voted for Trump to execute the laws passed by Congress. Which law said get rid of USAID?
USAID still exists on paper, but Congress hasn’t appropriated any funding for it.
esalman 56 minutes ago [-]
I'll also add, which law said create DOGE?
cowlevel 58 minutes ago [-]
They voted for Trump specifically because he would not just follow common practice and would actually shake things up.
aaronblohowiak 3 hours ago [-]
elections have consequences. We have a representative democracy and administrative employees serve at the pleasure of the head of the administration. "shoulds" and "musts" only go as far as the political will to enforce them. The overwhelming majority of the electorate seems to care about how expensive their personal lifestyle is with various takes on individual liberty vs enforced morality used as wedge issues (neither party is consistently on one side or the other of this balance, fwiw.)
as an institutionalist myself, I agree with you that this is terrible governance.
fabian2k 3 hours ago [-]
They could have passed a law to shut down USAID, that would have been the proper, legal way to do this. They didn't. The executive legally can't do whatever they want, but the Republicans in the legislative simply stood by and cheered while the administration trampled over their legislative responsibilities and powers.
rayiner 2 hours ago [-]
It’s more complicated than that. You have to read the specific statutes in question to see what they require or don’t require.
The USAID-related litigation has largely been unsuccessful because the appropriations bills don’t necessarily require USAID to do particular programs. Most of the appropriations bills appropriate money for the State department.
cowlevel 1 hours ago [-]
As I understand it, under the "unitary executive theory" the executive can legally do whatever it wants.
rayiner 55 minutes ago [-]
No, the executive can’t do whatever it wants. But if the executive can do it, then the President must be able to do it. In principle you can have a unitary executive that’s also very weak.
The first line of Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The first three articles all start with a similar line. For the legislature and Supreme Court, everyone understands that the powers of those branches can only be exercised by the constitutionally designated actors. Congress can’t create a law that creates bodies within the judiciary staffed by employees that exercises power independently of Article III judges. Similarly, Congress can’t create independent agencies within the executive that can exercise executive power independently of the President.
2 hours ago [-]
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
And to be clear, they couldn't have passed that law because doing so would be extremely unpopular. I.e. they would not have been able to gain the required support for their actions.
3 hours ago [-]
jeremyjh 3 hours ago [-]
When it comes to government spending programs, according to our constitution the elections that have consequences are those for seats in Congress. The executive doesn’t have the authority to cancel USAIDs funding, nor the funding of specific programs within it.
On top of that, the executive has a responsibility to plan its work ahead of time and make such plans known before enacting them.
There are many cases currently in litigation regarding these failures.
rayiner 2 hours ago [-]
> The executive doesn’t have the authority to cancel USAIDs funding, nor the funding of specific programs within it
But funding is provided in annual appropriations bills, and Congress has since enacted appropriations bills that allocate funds directly to the state department.
That’s why the USAID litigation has not been very successful. The best legal argument is that the executive can’t cancel funding Congress has specifically allocated to an agency. But Congress eliminated that argument.
toast0 2 hours ago [-]
Elections certainly have consequences, and I wish acting outside constitutional scope had consequences, too. (maybe this specific issue is within scope or there is a reasonable question about it, but so many other issues seem unreasonably out of scope, IMHO)
jauntywundrkind 3 hours ago [-]
i for one am pretty exhausted by "elections have consequences" being codeword for all previous rules systems norms obligations and institutions are totally ok to be thrown in the hopper. it's an exhausting and ridiculous shrug of the shoulder that in no way meets the moment, that is just the laziest "what can you do" nothing.
you'd hope that an internal insurrection against the United States would not be so ragingly popular. and part of the reason it's let slide, is so poorly seen as what it is is because of "elections have consequences". it's bad.
cowlevel 1 hours ago [-]
If you vote to throw the rules in the hopper the rules will be thrown in the hopper. That's just how it works.
madaxe_again 3 hours ago [-]
The US is hardly alone in this. The UK voted to shoot themselves in the face, because brown people are scary.
Elections (and referenda) do indeed have consequences.
It is however perfectly reasonable to look further up the causal chain and say "propaganda influences elections".
correlatequint 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
croes 2 hours ago [-]
He was hired based on the result of an election. That’s the same just with more steps
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
Huh? How are you imagining the hiring process for that working, if not derivative of an elected person's mandate from the public?
rayiner 2 hours ago [-]
Some people think that professions and bureaucracies are an independent source of authority within a four-branch government.
woah 3 hours ago [-]
Did his actions exceed the authority granted to the executive branch which employed him?
seanhunter 3 hours ago [-]
Spending is supposed to be decided by congress not the executive branch so quite obviously yes.
broken-kebab 3 hours ago [-]
Budget allocation, and managing authority are different things, though.
eppp 3 hours ago [-]
So that means congress exercised their authority to check and balance the executive and everything turned out ok?
helterskelter2 3 hours ago [-]
If there's no record, was the executive really employing him?
2 hours ago [-]
zzrrt 3 hours ago [-]
When things get allegedly autopenned under Biden's administration: THE PRESIDENT'S AUTHORITY IS BEING HIJACKED!
When undocumented temporary-employee friends of Trump allies do whatever they want: This is fine.
labrador 3 hours ago [-]
Are we going to prosecute these people or what?
jwineinger 41 minutes ago [-]
I suspect only if the election goes drastically against the current administration.
red-iron-pine 3 hours ago [-]
they are, at best, woefully corrupt and abusive.
they are, in all likelihood, foreign agents or acting on behalf of them.
rasz 26 minutes ago [-]
Democrats are to timid to deliver any form of justice, that is of course assuming elections will happen at all.
eaisshutting 42 minutes ago [-]
Laws mean nothing if there’s no will to enforce them. Remember Biden opened the border and let millions of illegals in without passing a single law.
zzrrt 20 minutes ago [-]
If border control let them in, they're not "illegals." (Nor did they illegally overstay a visa, since they were given legal status to stay.)
tombert 3 hours ago [-]
Seems unlikely to me. We even gave up on Trump's tax returns, and gave up the emoluments clause given that he is the CEO of a publicly traded company and has multiple cryptocurrency scams. This administration has plot armor. Feel free to fill in the reason as to "why"; my opinions would likely get me banned.
khriss 3 hours ago [-]
One can hope. The tide seems to be turning with Trump becoming toxic to a majority of voters.
If the GOP loses big in the midterms, we might finally see MAGA and the GOP turn on each other in an internecine frenzy.
sys_64738 1 hours ago [-]
I'd like to see them all rounded up and put in prison indefinitely. Denied bail and left there while their crimes are documented. Everybody connected to DOGE should be in prison, all the way up to Elon.
ZeroGravitas 2 hours ago [-]
There's something about the trick of abusing a process set up to hire temporary staff quickly for overseas disasters and pandemics to take over and destroy a government department you don't like that feels LLM-like to me.
I wonder if Musk's team is using AI to find loopholes in laws he can abuse.
podgorniy 3 hours ago [-]
That will become a point in a court...
stefap2 2 hours ago [-]
DOGE was such a missed opportunity. If only they could use their smarts to actually improve government efficiency. Also focusing on where majority of spending occurs where we could get biggest bang for the improved efficiency. After this good luck selling someone on another round of efficiency improvements.
insane_dreamer 14 minutes ago [-]
> DOGE was such a missed opportunity. If only they could use their smarts to actually improve government efficiency.
I used to think that, but given how things unfolded I'm pretty convinced it was never intended to be anything more than a slash-and-burn purge of "DEI" and "disloyal" gov employees combined with a taxpayer-data-heist.
esalman 52 minutes ago [-]
DOGE was created to kill brown babies.
I know it sounds extreme, but this is my takeaway.
Tech billionaires have a twisted view of the world. They openly talk about how US and Europe is lagging behind in birth rate compared to developing nations. They openly encourage people to create more babies. Conversely, while they don't openly vouch for it, DOGE and the gutting of USAID has directly resulted in higher child mortality in developing nations.
gulfofamerica 11 minutes ago [-]
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imzadi 4 hours ago [-]
Interesting to see how USAID in the title is like the bat signal for scumbags
iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago [-]
Huh? Can you elaborate?
Catloafdev 3 hours ago [-]
Certain political topics bring out bots and narrative-pushing. It's very obvious with certain topics.
insane_dreamer 2 hours ago [-]
It will be interesting to see whether in the next Admin/Congress , if Democrat, will investigate and declare these actions unlawful (done without Congressional approval) and whether a new DOJ will investigate the individuals like this DOGE dude as having broken the law for operating outside their authority because the proper procedures weren’t followed. It’s going to be interesting to see whether/who winds up in jail.
vrganj 2 hours ago [-]
That 28 year old is responsible for around the same number of deaths as the Rwandan genocide. [0] [1]
Just the deaths of hundreds of thousands, nothing to see here.
stefap2 2 hours ago [-]
To save 0.3% of the budget.
alsetmusic 4 hours ago [-]
We’ll be reading about the crimes of dodge for years, similar to secrets of the CIA coming out in the 1970s. Wish politicians in US weren’t so spineless about going after them.
DaSHacka 2 hours ago [-]
> We’ll be reading about the crimes of dodge for years
I know their tendancy to have wiring faults could certainly stand to be improved but jeez, that's a bit harsh
Arwill 3 hours ago [-]
Its the curse of the two-party system. Politicians are not risking splitting from their party, because that would mean the end of their political career.
analognoise 3 hours ago [-]
Hopefully the midterms results in massive investigations of Trump and everyone in his orbit, but if we get “we all need to come together” faux-centrism I wouldn’t be surprised.
We need to fully destroy the notion the DOJ isn’t independent, and make a number of changes that bring us back to having a modern country.
seany 4 hours ago [-]
This type of strategy is almost the only way to get rid of these kinds of agencies. You'd end up with a million raodblocks being tossed up if you tried it any other way.
malfist 3 hours ago [-]
Right, because there shouldn't be any roadblocks when you're taking an action that has a high probability of resulting in hundreds of thousands of people dying.
eppp 3 hours ago [-]
Congress can and should pass a law to dismantle an agency they created. There is no real roadblock once that is done.
paul7986 4 hours ago [-]
omg have the political bots been directed at Hacker News. WTH?
red-iron-pine 3 hours ago [-]
this has been going on for ages, mate.
HN doesn't have the kind of filters that the big social media platforms do, either.
cowlevel 1 hours ago [-]
HN has plenty of filters, just not those ones. Detected LLM writing is automatically flagged, and they do something with IP address too.
paul7986 31 minutes ago [-]
Love to see HN political bot comment graph like if and when there was a surge of them over time (US elections or other countries elections). Like did the Ukraine blowing up Yandex's data center(s) have any effect?
cowlevel 4 hours ago [-]
Have been for years.
mnmnmn 3 hours ago [-]
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josefritzishere 4 hours ago [-]
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prajaybasu 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kccoder 3 hours ago [-]
Breaking things is easy. Morality is difficult.
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
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whoanoway 4 hours ago [-]
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apercu 4 hours ago [-]
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goodluckchuck 4 hours ago [-]
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t1234s 3 hours ago [-]
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gadders 4 hours ago [-]
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asadm 4 hours ago [-]
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orwin 4 hours ago [-]
USAID was a vehicle for US intelligence. That said, it also helped a lot where it operated. Especially helped logistics and local administration tasks for NGOs which could be extremely bad at those two tasks.
Also USAID existing prevented NGOs to have too much local political power and the corruption that goes with it.
My opinion is that overall, USAID was a net positive, although in some specific cases it wasn't.
blltprfmnk 4 hours ago [-]
USAID was absolutely a net positive and if nothing else its elimination has completely ceded almost all soft power to China and Russia, something that will have repercussions for decades to come.
throw0101c 3 hours ago [-]
And Iran:
> A rise in instability abroad also creates a national-security risk for the U.S., Wright adds. Yemen—once a major USAID recipient, with $768 million worth of aid flowing into the country in 2024—is also home to the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of the country’s north and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. As USAID funding disappears, support for the rebels is only likely to grow, he says. “Iran can continue to finance rebellions like the Houthis,” says Wright. “These second- and third-order effects might be even more consequential to the U.S. than the direct effects.”
If you stop giving us boatloads of cash with zero accountability we'll support terrorists.
throw0101c 3 hours ago [-]
> If you stop giving us boatloads of cash with zero accountability we'll support terrorists.
Or: Iran was supporting them already, but more people joined up because they were more desperate because the alternative (aid) had gone away.
The quality/quantity of support from Iran may not even have changed, but rather people's willingness to accept it.
Nzen 3 hours ago [-]
I would be interested in reading some reporting about USAID's role in support of the CIA (or DoD intelligence?). Please recommend some that helped form your opinion.
I have, luckily, read a personal account of the logistical assistance that a USAID contractor had [0]. Doug Muir wrote about improving customs practices in Rwanda and training locals to take over for him. Improving, in this case, means standardizing inspections of trade goods to decrease holding time.
> USAID was a vehicle for US intelligence. That said, it also helped a lot where it operated.
This reminds me of the standard USA tech startup model, where you do something useful to get the users, while secretly exploiting them.
scottLobster 4 hours ago [-]
And DOGE decided to deal with that cancer by blasting it with a shotgun and leaving the patient to bleed out
superxpro12 4 hours ago [-]
the russian servers must be back online
ck2 4 hours ago [-]
just a reminder that tons and tons of food and medication that was ALREADY PAID FOR
was purposely left to rot in warehouses instead of being distributed
six months ago the NY Times documented half a million deaths attributable to the destruction of USAID
by now it's easily a million, slow-motion murdered
may you never suffer to death like those million that could have been spared
WillPostForFood 4 hours ago [-]
NY Times has done no reporting substantiating the claim the hundreds of thousands have died. They have published an OpEd piece and have reported a memo by a USAID employee how was upset about being fired. It is all models and unsubstantiated claims.
throw0101c 4 hours ago [-]
> NY Times has done no reporting substantiating the claim the hundreds of thousands have died.
NYT has no such reporting because it was reporting from ProPublica. In a series of (Pulitzer-prize finalist) articles they estimated about 700,000:
this seems to have a lot of pretty concrete data. Which do you disagree with in particular?
tbojanin 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
margalabargala 4 hours ago [-]
If you judge everything by the worst thing it ever did, you will come to the conclusion that most things do not deserve to exist. Yourself included.
If you judge things based on whether they have had a net positive effect on the world, you'll find that both yourself and USAID are in the same category.
peaseagee 4 hours ago [-]
What exactly is wasteful about gender-affirming care?
WillPostForFood 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
AlotOfReading 3 hours ago [-]
USAID was a soft power tool of the US to further foreign policy goals with international development programs. How do you accomplish that without sending money abroad?
indy 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jeffbee 4 hours ago [-]
99% of the dipshits in the executive branch are on male hormones, which is gender-affirming care.
You can debate whether the President has the power to dismantle USAID under the relevant statutes. Those lawsuits are winding their way through the courts. But if he does have the power, then it would be perverse if he couldn’t exercise the power due to HR rules. You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
It's not even established that he has the power. The fact that they do something doesn't mean they have that power.
And given that, it doesn't mean that you get to ignore all other rules.
> You cannot put HR in the way of the duly elected President exercising his powers.
When you're firing thousands of people, some due diligence is in order, no?
Sure, I agree with that. But the President doesn’t need a court ruling giving permission before he exercises his powers. The President is the chief executive in charge of government operations, not the courts. If he’s acting outside his authority, you can sue him and then the courts can figure it out.
> When you're firing thousands of people, some due diligence is in order, no
Not when those people work for the government. This is one of the few things I agree with FDR on: the nature of democracy means that government employees must have less employment protections than private sector workers, not more. Even if you have an expansive view of what the constitution allows in terms of Congress providing for independent executive branch agencies, at most that means the President can’t ignore Congress’s intent in funding certain programs. But that still doesn’t allow the bureaucracy invoking HR rules to protect itself against the actions of the elected branches. That effectively gives a small class of people more say over the operation of the government than the electorate as a whole.
USAID still exists on paper. But under the current appropriations bills, the funding is allocated to the State Department.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4779...
But also the voters voted for Trump to execute the laws passed by Congress. Which law said get rid of USAID?
USAID still exists on paper, but Congress hasn’t appropriated any funding for it.
as an institutionalist myself, I agree with you that this is terrible governance.
The USAID-related litigation has largely been unsuccessful because the appropriations bills don’t necessarily require USAID to do particular programs. Most of the appropriations bills appropriate money for the State department.
The first line of Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The first three articles all start with a similar line. For the legislature and Supreme Court, everyone understands that the powers of those branches can only be exercised by the constitutionally designated actors. Congress can’t create a law that creates bodies within the judiciary staffed by employees that exercises power independently of Article III judges. Similarly, Congress can’t create independent agencies within the executive that can exercise executive power independently of the President.
On top of that, the executive has a responsibility to plan its work ahead of time and make such plans known before enacting them.
There are many cases currently in litigation regarding these failures.
But funding is provided in annual appropriations bills, and Congress has since enacted appropriations bills that allocate funds directly to the state department.
That’s why the USAID litigation has not been very successful. The best legal argument is that the executive can’t cancel funding Congress has specifically allocated to an agency. But Congress eliminated that argument.
you'd hope that an internal insurrection against the United States would not be so ragingly popular. and part of the reason it's let slide, is so poorly seen as what it is is because of "elections have consequences". it's bad.
Elections (and referenda) do indeed have consequences.
It is however perfectly reasonable to look further up the causal chain and say "propaganda influences elections".
When undocumented temporary-employee friends of Trump allies do whatever they want: This is fine.
they are, in all likelihood, foreign agents or acting on behalf of them.
If the GOP loses big in the midterms, we might finally see MAGA and the GOP turn on each other in an internecine frenzy.
I wonder if Musk's team is using AI to find loopholes in laws he can abuse.
I used to think that, but given how things unfolded I'm pretty convinced it was never intended to be anything more than a slash-and-burn purge of "DEI" and "disloyal" gov employees combined with a taxpayer-data-heist.
I know it sounds extreme, but this is my takeaway.
Tech billionaires have a twisted view of the world. They openly talk about how US and Europe is lagging behind in birth rate compared to developing nations. They openly encourage people to create more babies. Conversely, while they don't openly vouch for it, DOGE and the gutting of USAID has directly resulted in higher child mortality in developing nations.
[0] https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=proj...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
I know their tendancy to have wiring faults could certainly stand to be improved but jeez, that's a bit harsh
We need to fully destroy the notion the DOJ isn’t independent, and make a number of changes that bring us back to having a modern country.
HN doesn't have the kind of filters that the big social media platforms do, either.
Also USAID existing prevented NGOs to have too much local political power and the corruption that goes with it.
My opinion is that overall, USAID was a net positive, although in some specific cases it wasn't.
> A rise in instability abroad also creates a national-security risk for the U.S., Wright adds. Yemen—once a major USAID recipient, with $768 million worth of aid flowing into the country in 2024—is also home to the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of the country’s north and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. As USAID funding disappears, support for the rebels is only likely to grow, he says. “Iran can continue to finance rebellions like the Houthis,” says Wright. “These second- and third-order effects might be even more consequential to the U.S. than the direct effects.”
* https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...
* Analysis: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeh7122
Or: Iran was supporting them already, but more people joined up because they were more desperate because the alternative (aid) had gone away.
The quality/quantity of support from Iran may not even have changed, but rather people's willingness to accept it.
I have, luckily, read a personal account of the logistical assistance that a USAID contractor had [0]. Doug Muir wrote about improving customs practices in Rwanda and training locals to take over for him. Improving, in this case, means standardizing inspections of trade goods to decrease holding time.
[0] https://crookedtimber.org/2025/03/08/usaid-my-next-to-last-p...
This reminds me of the standard USA tech startup model, where you do something useful to get the users, while secretly exploiting them.
was purposely left to rot in warehouses instead of being distributed
six months ago the NY Times documented half a million deaths attributable to the destruction of USAID
by now it's easily a million, slow-motion murdered
may you never suffer to death like those million that could have been spared
NYT has no such reporting because it was reporting from ProPublica. In a series of (Pulitzer-prize finalist) articles they estimated about 700,000:
* https://www.propublica.org/series/the-end-of-aid
* https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/brett-murphy-and-anna-mar...
An analysis in The Lancet estimates that by 2030 as many as 14 million people could die, including 4.5 million children under age 5:
* https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
A recent article in Science found that after aid was shutdown there was an increase in violence in various regions where it was previously present:
* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeh7122
https://programme.aids2026.org/Abstract/Abstract/?abstractid...
I guess someone should look into that
this seems to have a lot of pretty concrete data. Which do you disagree with in particular?
If you judge things based on whether they have had a net positive effect on the world, you'll find that both yourself and USAID are in the same category.