2d ago

Bernie Sanders blasts Trump for federal loans and grants freeze: ‘He is not a king’

www.theguardian.com Bernie Sanders condemns Trump for federal loans and grants freeze: ‘He is not a king’

Senator denounces order to pause all funding and says it’ll have ‘devastating impact’ on ‘most vulnerable people’ in US

Summary

Senator Bernie Sanders condemned Trump’s order to freeze all federal loans and grants, calling it a “dangerous move towards authoritarianism” and “blatantly unconstitutional.”

The directive, exempting Social Security and Medicare, is expected to impact universities, nonprofits, food assistance programs, health centers, and disabled veterans.

Sanders emphasized that Congress holds the “power of the purse” and urged Americans to oppose the order.

Attorneys general are preparing legal challenges to overturn the freeze.

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2d ago

Bernie Sanders blasts Trump for federal loans and grants freeze: ‘He is not a king’

www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/jan/28/trump-federal-loans-grants-bernie-sanders

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97 comments

Unless someone actually does something, he effectively is a king.

According to the Supreme Court, he is a king. I do not know why everyone hasn’t been absolutely freaking out about that ruling since it came down. According to that court, he is allowed to do literally anything as long as it’s an official act. This is not a rules-based society anymore.
- Weirdly enough, many if not most kings in history were not absolute monarchs and had to follow some rules and expectations or risk losing their power (and possibly life).
- You know what we do to kings?
  
  Nothing
- The ruling is that he can't be prosecuted for official acts. Not that he can do them.
  He can order the moon to reverse its orbit without getting in trouble, but the moon doesn't have to obey.
  The biggest power he has is over the administrative state. Lots of executive agencies create regulations because of power granted to those agencies by Congress. Things like the FAA, EPA, FTC, SEC, ATFE, etc. A President can fuck up all those regulations.
  But what Trump is already running into is the fact that his power doesn't extend to overturning items passed by the legislature. His birthright citizenship order didn't last a day. A judge has already thrown out the freeze because Congress pases budgets, not the executive.
  He couldn't overturn the ACA last time around because it was a law passed by the legislature. Even though he controls the ATF and can control some of their interpretations, he can't declare machine guns and silencers legal because the NFA is a law passed by Congress.
  And even his power over the administrative state is in some danger because over the overturn of Chevron deference last year that allows judges to ignore the opinions of administrative agency holdings.
  
  That ruling removes any kind of criminal check on the president.
  Theoretically there is still a congressional check, via impeachment, but we have learned that is not terribly viable given how difficult it is to convict.
  There is the check provided by the 25th amendment, but again, the hurdle is so large that it may not be viable.
  Of course there is also a political check, via elections and the 22nd amendment, but that takes years to kick in under the best circumstances, and has limited immediate influence on a second term president.
  There is also violence. The president could be checked by an assassin, for example. But that is extremely unlikely.
  Under the rules, the president has a limited scope of action as you’ve described. The problem arises when the president decides to overstep those rules, violate laws, or do things that the constitution assigns to other branches. We are in a situation where the checks on such overreach are vanishingly weak as described above. trump is already attempting such violations, such as with the freeze yesterday. Yes, a court has intervened for now, but there is every reason to believe that will be reversed or overturned. But, even if it isn’t, consider what happens if the president chooses to violate the courts ruling.
  I understand that the president can’t literate do anything. But no king in history has ever actually has unlimited power and we are in the early days of this new imperial presidency. This is a group project between all three branches. Both congress and the court are working diligently to enshrine the president as a king and the populace has shown little willingness to resist any of this. I would argue that we are effectively there already, but I suppose there are a few remaining hypothetical threads holding him back.

Republicans, everyone who voted for him and everyone who decided to not vote or to vote for third parties all decided that he should be king.
- Absolutely. There are also Dems in Congress/Senate that have been voting yea to his bills. It's disgusting.
  
  "Yeah, every single Republican hates us and are openly corrupt, but like 2 Dems (usually caucusing Independents) are also bad."
- 100% this. He's going to operate as a king, and remove anyone in his way that disagrees. He will take every concession afforded to him by the spineless Republican party and some spineless Dems also.
- Many people that voted for Bernie in 2016 voted for Trump in 2024. Many people eople who voted for Trump in 2024 also voted for AOC down ballot.
  The Democratic party has basically made every single mistake they could possibly make in the last 8 years. To lost to fuckin Trump not once but twice is fuckin embarrassing.
  Let's see if they learn anything by 2028. I doubt they will but here's to hoping.
  
  I'm hoping the voters will learn again by 2028 if there are any left.
- I'm pretty sure that people who didn't vote or voted for other candidates didn't decide he should be king, kind of by definition.
  
  Nah they saw the choices and didn't care to participate in any meaningful way so they can't just wash their hands of the choice they made.
  
  To quote rush
  You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice \ if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

I feel bad for Bernie. I never agreed with his politics 100% across the board but I have the utmost respect for the man. He has stuck to his guns basically since he started. It's a real shame the Democrats shot him down to shove Hillary down our throats in 2016.
- That was basically the moment when it became apparent that the Dems chose oligarchy. Had they let Bernie run and win, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Had they chosen to prosecute crime instead of protect wealth, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
  
  Yeah but to prosecute crime would have involved going after many of their own voters and donors.

If they just follow his orders and there's no consequences for laws walked over in the process then it isn't really illegal is it?
I fucking hate this timeline.

So anyway bernie started blasting

I'm sure it's not legal, but I don't think that matters anymore.

I'm pretty sure the constitution outlines this sort of changes in budget and allocation as Congress' sole authority.
I just gave it a quick read-through and it doesn't state anywhere in Article II that he has the power to do this, and further he is required by Article II Section 3 to enforce all laws passed by congress. This is supposedly the section that they used to Impeach Bill Clinton, as his perjury in a civil case was considered breaking the law and therefor failing to enforce it.
Fun fact, the new admin has removed the Constitution from the website, promises to put it back eventually.
- Read the whole thing this morning thanks to Leejay over on Patreon, you can also listen to her read the whole thing as well has highlight and explain parts of it here: https://youtu.be/VoNp_ExiOyI
  I recommend we all read it wherever you like. But read it nonetheless. Unfortunately it's not that long.
  But yeah he doesn't have this power according to our constitution.

He is a king and all that stuff about taxes and representation and kings has been tossed by the people.
This is what they want.

Wasn't Trump f**King a porn star?
- Yes. Not sure why this is relevant here though.
  
  With the definition the GOP uses he is married to a porn star as well, also not relevant here, but if we are on the topic

There is nothing that dumpy is doing that cannot be undone or re-done by a future president.
Relying on a president that changes every 4-8 years to make overwhelming changes is going to cause a lot of issues. If we thought government was dysfunctional before, just wait until it's maliciously dysfunctional.

I may not personally be a fan of Bernie (hes a centrist and im a leftist) but he would be an absolutely incredible compromise candidate (granted ideally we would not need to compromise with capitalists). Sadly even a compromise between labor and capital is "too much" for the ruling class.

I have so many friends in conservation that will be losing their job.

Democrats in awe president uses his powers.

Legality aside, you guys should consider doing a rundown of wasteful spending. There is this growing concern on the taxpayer citizens that many, if not all, of the projects that the federal government funds through grants are ridiculous.
It also seems like a lot of federal grants go to NGOs that are carrying out essentially political activities.
I also wouldn't be surprised if many of the federal departments were still awarding grants and loans that directly went against the executive actions Trump put into place.
Say what you want, but at least is logically consistent to do a broad review of federal grants and loans as long as they eliminate some of the wasteful spending. Now, even though there's not a lot of details about how this is going to be carried out, I'm pretty sure it's not going to fix the budget, but it's a start.
I'm guessing (because why not) that the concern Trump has is that if they just did a spend review on a case by case basis, things would get slow-walked to the point that the reviews never happen.
By stopping everything and making re-starting it conditional on passing a review to ensure it's in line with the new standards it provides a strong motivating force to get the reviews done ASAP. Basically subsidizing on demand.
IMO this is a direct result of all the #resistance undermining of Trump during his first term by administrative staffers.
BTW, all this craziness? It really highlights how much power the executive branch has accumulated over the years.
Remember to never give power to someone you like if you’re not willing for someone you don’t like to have that same power. That’s why failsafes and spreading out the keys to power is important in a democratic republic
The government giveth, the government taketh away
- You might be giving Trump too much credit here with regards to this move being an attempt to review and reduce wasteful government spending. This is just another move to force organizations to kowtow to him or be dissolved.
  Totally agree with you on reducing the concentration of power in the executive branch though.
  
  If the organizations are not that vital but still deemed necessary, they might secure private funding, with all it implies.
  Also reducing the number of organizations on the budget WILL reduce spending, like it or not, wasteful or not.
  About the kowtowing, I am unsure. If you read the text of the official memo:
  "The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”
  They clearly think some of the things the taxpayer money is going are not improving their lives.
  So basically if that's not true, there should be like, maybe protests of people demanding those organizations to be kept, surely.
  Like it or not, People voted for this. You can look up hundreds of polls where the American people view the federal government as wasteful and bloated.
  And how not to think like that? Look at the doc of the programs they look to pause:
  https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25506813/govdoc20250128-263582.pdf
  Just a cursory search gave me 17 hits on programs related to counter terrorism.
  22 related to railroad maintenance and workers safety
  2 duplicate sexual assault programs that apparently differ in that one of those is due minorities and other is not?
  Do you really believe someone will bat an eye if those 17 counter terrorism, or 22 railroad programs are gone and rolled into one? given that, for the common voter, just having one central program for those specific needs would probably look better on an audit, and more streamlined?
  We will see what happens if the status quo for most people changes, for better or worse, after all these cuts are made.
- Bullshit Trump troll trying to muddy the waters

Bernie needs to take his meds. There is no institutional mechanism available in America to stop the president when he also controls congress and was responsible for lifetime nomination of the majority of the supreme court

97 comments