Donald Trump is directing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay military personnel despite the federal government shutdown.
The president said on Saturday that Hegseth must make sure troops do not miss out on their regular paycheque, scheduled for Wednesday. The directive comes as other government employees have already had some pay withheld and others are being laid off.
“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
IDK why I’ve only just realised this, but does the US not have any concept of a formal “opposition” in government?
Here each of 150 or so regions elects a representative. Whichever of those can get 76 others to line up behind them gets to be Prime Minister and forms the government. All the others form the formal “opposition”.
Whenever the government does something, the opposition explains to everyone how stupid it is. Often times the opposition gets more air time than the actual government.
The PM couldn’t just, you know, make up lies… because the opposition would skewer him.
Do the dems form any kind of cohesive opposition? Does the media just ignore them? Why don’t they have any apparatus with which to reset the narrative?
There are several reasons why the US has no concept of a formal opposition. One reason is that there is no concept of ever needing to “form a government” in the parliamentary sense. Each elected branch is a separate entity, with its own electoral rules. Particularly in the legislative branch, the majority can do whatever they want (except for the complicated filibuster rules in the Senate.) And the Executive is an entirely separate election. The government is structured directly by the election, and we gave all the levers of government to Republicans last time around. Sometimes the election will result in handing majorities to different parties, and only then will the oppositionhave any real power.
Another reason is that, believe it or not, we have no formal concept of parties in our founding documents. The founders disdained European-style parties, and did not want to replicate them here. They envisioned a country where individuals ran for office, and then all came to Congress representing their individual districts. They did not forsee how easy communication would get in the future, making the local District perspective less important.(also recall that at the founding, both the Senate and Presidential Electors were appointed by State legislatures, so really all elections were local).
And of course, by instituting first-past-the-post elections in these districts, they guaranteed that as communications got easier and national campaigns could emerge, elections would eventually coalesce unto one of two options anyway. The founders’ disdain for parties led directly to an even worse two-party system.
The first US party was formed in 1789, that’s only 13 years after the US declared independence and only 6 years after the end of the Revolutionary War. Pretty much all of the founders were alive when the Federalist Party was formed, communications didn’t get much better than in 1776. By 1794-1795 both the Federalist Party and the newly formed opposition Democratic-Republican Party had state networks working on a local level in pretty much all the states.
I always love how Americans treat their current 2 party system as a new thing that arose due to modern communications but instead it was there since basically the beginning of their country.
The founders debated long after the constitution was ratified too.
Outlawing parties would be in direct violation of their first amendment. Humans are social by nature* - coalitions, parties, groups will form just because we exist.
*Yes I’m counting my AuADHD ass because even though I hate socializing with a passion I want to be able to.
In America the president has nearly god status and can seemingly do whatever he/she pleases. Not much the opposition can do against.
In the US we are supposed to have “checks and balances” where Congress-Courts-Executive powers are balanced. President can veto, Congress can override with a majority, courts can claim legislation unconstitutional. Etc etc.
Over time, these checks have been eroded from the executive branch through Congress and the court’s own doing. For example, the current Supreme Court is using the shadow docket and ignoring legal precedent to give Trump whatever he wants. Only this week did the senate finally vote to close the Iraq war powers act. Etc etc.
Part of this is due to having one party control all three branches. Part of it is due to the opposing party being ineffectual dumbasses most of the time.
Sort of. The Founders gave specific powers to the President, and specific other powers to Congress and the Courts. They envisioned that ambitious people would aim to keep their powers, and not give them up willingly.
The wide-ranging powers of the Presidency are meant to be held in check by the other branches. The Founders did not anticipate a Congress and Supreme Court that would let the President break laws with impunity, just because that President aimed to hurt people they all hated
That’s such a load of bullshit. Your Founders barely bothered to outline what the Supreme Court is and what it can do. It was in 1789 that Congress actually determined the details of that and most of the powers of the Supreme Court were determined during John Marshall’s tenure as Chief Justice.
This is also doubly funny because it has happened before when President Andrew Jackson refused to respect the Supreme Court Decision in Worcester v. Georgia and the Supreme Court did nothing because the State of Georgia and the President aimed to hurt people they all hated (Native Americans) and it eventually led to the Trail of Tears.
I swear Americans don’t know their own history.
Because the SCOTUS has no enforcement mechanism for what you described. Even just for Worcester v. Georgia, what is the USMS supposed to do against the state of Georgia without support from the Executive? Jackson literally wrote in 1832: “the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.” Jackson did eventually threaten enforcement as part of what became known as the nullification crisis.
But either way, Worcester v. Georgia wasn’t directly about the 1830 Indian Removal Act or 1835’s Treaty of New Echota; it was about the freeing of Worcester etc., which did eventually go through. The Treaty of New Echota should’ve been illegal on the basis of Worcester v. Georgia, but again, the SCOTUS doesn’t just go around enforcing cases it didn’t rule on unless it gets back to their court to rule on that separate case; that’s the Executive’s job.
“The Supreme Court did nothing because they hate Indian Americans” is such unfounded bullshit that you just made up because it sounded right. You can correctly argue all you want that this shows separation of powers is just an illusion because one single person has to agree to enforce laws and can only be removed (theoretically) with a supermajority of Congress if they fail to do so.
Actually, this illustrates my point entirely. Article III (which describes the Judiciary) explicitly defines a single Supreme Court but leaves the structure of the rest of the Judiciary to the Congress. So this interplay between Congress and the Court is exactly what they were looking for. The Courts have wide latitude to judge cases, but it has to be within the structure that Congress creates.
They didn’t get into specifics, on purpose, because they felt that in a well-functioning government, ambitious people would keep each other in check.