It was unclear, however, whether Alsup’s ruling would do much to stem the Trump administration’s sweeping purge of the federal workforce, as it was limited to agencies directly involved in the case. It was also not clear that the ruling would result in fired probationary employees getting their jobs back.
According toBloomberg Law, “the judge listed the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Science Foundation among the agencies that are barred from engaging in layoffs ordered by OPM.”
Politiconoted that “Alsup stopped short of ordering the agencies to reinstate the fired workers or to halt looming firing,” saying he “doesn’t currently have the authority to do that.”
That just establishes precedent so the next batch can push it even further. It’s why the Executive Branch has so much power, the Executive keeps pushing and we’re all “surprised pikachu” when the other party abuses that new power in ways we don’t like.
That’s why we have norms and the rule of law. The ends don’t justify the means. Do the hard thing and pass a law, don’t reward copping out by relying on judges and executives to “push the limits” in a way you like, because the next group will use it in ways you don’t.
The only reason Trump has power to break the law is because we’ve given the Executive Branch that privilege over years of “but this time is different.”
Then how do you propose we go about solving this little problem of ours, because sitting on our collective asses is decidedly a fucking horrible idea
I’m not sure, but the best option I can think of is ending the two party system. Both parties are broken, and this should at least force each to do better. Ideally, we end up in a situation where neither party controls Congress, because there are enough independents and third parties to force coalitions.
But I’m not sure how to get there. So the natural approach is to do nothing.
I agree that the two parties definitely need to go, actually I think the entire idea of a party system at all is stupid and dangerous as it inevitably leads to one party gaining power over the others. If there is no banner for a candidate to hide behind then they are forced to get elected on their own merits alone. Hopefully this will be one of the good things to come out of all this bullshit.
Also, this time really is different (but, not really, lol). This time doing nothing means people die or have their lives utterly annihilated.
Yeah, I agree with the Founding Fathers that parties are bad, but people like organizing under labels, so it’s inevitable. Parties are a necessary evil IMO, so we should acknowledge that and design our system to support competition between many parties, not just two.