For all the fetishization of the constitution popular media has led me to believe Americans engage in, when push comes to shove it doesn’t seem to be worth the paper it’s written on.
It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
It’s unconstitutional because the U.S. has separation of powers: the Congress passes laws and the President executes those laws. USAID was explicitly chartered by the Congress as an independent agency outside of the executive offices:
That means that the President can’t wipe it out as an independent agency unilaterally. He could go to the members of his party in the legislature and ask them to create a bill rechartering the agency but then it would get public debate and they’d have to own what they’re doing, so he took the path of daring anyone to enforce the law. It’s like hot-wiring your buddy’s car because you don’t want to ask if you can borrow it, except that it’s disrupting millions of lives.
I didn't see where the chartering is in that, all the refs I saw assumed the group's existence, and only a few referred to it as an "agency"--but maybe I missed it?
Most of what I saw was that USA was supposed to follow the guidance of the Secretary of State, or work with other departments. That was Rubio's claim, that not only did it not work with the State Department, but it subverted that department's work and that there was no cooperation with Congressional oversight committees.
disrupting millions of people who REALLY need CIA slush fund money to do "good things" with it, they promise. USAID needs to go into the dustbin and fast.
That’s a valid opinion, but it’s still illegal not to have Congress change the law just as it’s illegal for hurricane survivors to help themselves to Walmart’s stock even if they really need food or clothing.
That is totally hyperbolic. I think it is true that birth-right citizenship is part of the 14th amendment and the Trump administration will fail in this challenge. However, there is some debate about it among legal scholars, though, again, I think the weight of the evidence is in favor of birth-right citizenship,
However, disagreeing about the interpretation of the constitution when it is not actually that "plainly" clear, it has been supported by precedent is not the same as ignoring the constitution. In fact, it sets up a challenge for the Court to decide and it will almost certainly find in favor of this kind of citizenship.
Many presidents, including Obama, have put forth orders and supported legislation that was ultimately found to be unconstitutional; it does not mean they were running a monarchy or whatever the left is implying.
That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd. The 14th amendment was added to solve a specific problem, the disenfranchisement of slaves who had truly been born here without their say or that of their parents, for generations, and with the leave of the United States government when that was occurring. Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.
Besides all of that, there is the danger that if Democrats try to play the 14th card against him, Trump will declare the immigrants enemy combatants. At which point they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the United States at all, and he can do more than simply deport them. The left has been out-maneuvered at every step here, it's unlikely that this is the point at which they start winning.
Most of Europe and the world don’t have as wide ranging protections for free speech or bearing arms as we do, either. So using that as an argument is not relevant, regardless of any spiffy smart sounding Latin phrases.
The text of the 14th amendment follows:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
> For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could easily be read to exclude those who are born to people present unlawfully and/or in violation of their visa. I think it's pretty plausible that the Supreme Court might overturn Wong Kim Ark.
> Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
Welcome to how it's always been for anyone who didn't have citizenship. The "enemy combatant" concept is some tinpot dictator bullshit, but at this point it's been well established in the US and supported by both sides of the aisle, the Dems wouldn't have a leg to stand on in campaigning against it. Talking about applying it to "lawful citizens" is purely circular logic - Trump will take the position that they aren't and were never lawful citizens.
The debates on the amendment make it clear that Congress believed the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals.
Indeed, one of the Senators (Cowan) against the amendment feared millions of invaders who settle as trespassers leading to a loss of control over immigration due to the amendment.
It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
> the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals
A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
> It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
What Congress believed at the time is not binding on today's courts if they don't want it to be, as the history of interpretation of many other parts of the constitution shows.
> A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
Deported using......jurisdiction?
You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
No, just deported. When the Navy shoots at Somali pirates they don't worry about jurisdiction. The left has been at pains to point out that illegal entry is not a crime and border patrol is not law enforcement, but that cuts both ways.
> You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
If they do a medium-sized crime the US ignores it and just deports them, that much happens all the time already, no-one wants more people in prison.
If they do a big enough crime then I'm sure the US would find some way to charge them, but that's no different from what they do for full-on foreigners who never come anywhere near the US. E.g. if they kill a US citizen on US soil then the US would claim jurisdiction on that basis, even if the perpetrator stayed on the other side of the border the whole time.
>You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
If you were being reasonable, you might realize that short of those crimes deserving the death penalty, our country is better off just deporting. I don't want to spend $50,000/year (and up) on sequestering someone from our population, when deportation accomplishes that same result. Just make sure the deportation is successful. Send them with a crate of evidence for local prosecutors (who, in theory, should want to prosecute them... unless they really were sending them here to destablize our country with sabotage and rape).
This would remain true for me, even if it had no impact on citizenship of their children.
I'm not saying there's a pressing need to prosecute and imprison, I'm saying the option exists because the US has jurisdiction. The US is not forced to do nothing about the crime.
And I could imagine situations where it makes sense to prosecute and then deport with a suspended sentence, which keeps costs relatively low but also gives them a much bigger incentive to never come back.
I didn't say anything about the parents being imprisoned, tried or even caught.
Indeed, Senator Cowan feared "Gypsies" who "settle as trespassers wherever they go" and whose "cunning is of such a transcendent character that no skill can serve to correct it or punish it." He argued the amendment to make those born here citizens would prevent their removal, as a class.
He went beyond that of course. His diatribe includes floods of "Mongol race", Chinese, Australians and even cannibals.
Really, the arguments against jus soli today almost sound like they're channeling the man.
The debate over the 14th amendment covered children of foreign countries.
> Mr. Cowan: I am really desirous to have a legal definition of “citizenship of the United States.” What does it mean? ... Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen? ... If the mere fact of being born in the country confers that right, then they will have it; and I think it will be mischievous. ...
> Mr. Conness: If my friend from Pennsylvania, who professes to know all about Gypsies and little about Chinese, knew as much of the Chinese and their habits as he professes to do of the Gypsies ... he would not be alarmed in our behalf because of the operation of the [proposed amendment] ... so far as it involves the Chinese and us. The proposition before us ... relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens.
It is very hard to look at the debates and argue it was just done for ex-slaves and has no other effect given they very clearly debate the effect.
> That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd.
But that's not true. Only their offspring gains US citizenship, not them.
> Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.
It is extremely common in the Americas though. I think only Colombia and a few island countries don't have birthright citizenship here. I think it is a good concept for us, the US has historically been a nation of immigrants and our country has a culture that is shaped (and IMO strengthened) by people from all over the world.
The reason why it's common in the Americas has little to do with perceived virtues of immigration, but because they were colonized. Granting citizenship through jus sanguinis is not really possible in this case; granting it via principle of jus soli on the other hand legitimizes the conquest.
The jus soil argument is an interesting solution to a problem that even the Founders recognized, which is the tendency for a democracy/republic to create a second, lower class of "not-quite citizens" (famously, Rome).
It means that even if your citizenship never gets worked out, your descendants will be handled.
Having it so extreme as to be "anyone born on the soil (except diplomat kids)" is a novelty. Not necessarily a bad one, but also not obviously what the 14th was attempting.
> It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If there are no existing laws to prevent this, then it probably is legal. Given the voluminous laws in existence, I would not be surprised if there was one out there which is relevant.
> If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
While this might be a "strict letter of the law" kind of thing (again IANAL), violating the spirit of a law is still illegal. Disbursement schedules are a real thing, with real-world impact when they are not adhered to, and can cause very real problems.
That doesn't mean it's subject to the whims of the president. When Congress creates independent agencies, they lay out exactly how the president has oversight (usually by hiring and firing the director and/or board).
I remember you pushing this idea (that the independence of independent executive agencies are unconstitutional, or unaccountable, or similar) heavily in a thread a couple days ago. Where is it coming from? AFAIK virtually everyone on both sides has agreed that the independence of these agencies was a Really Good Thing for the last hundred years.
I argued that independent agencies are extra-constitutional, not clearly "un"constitutional, but very clearly not enumerated in the Constitution.
Given that, they've operated on a consensus model for so long, it's hard to say that the current admin is doing something illegal by changing (as long as the money is spent by end of fiscal year, due to impoundment laws). This may be a "constitutional crisis" in the parliamentary sense, but hardly in the American sense.
>virtually everyone on both sides has agreed
This is something I've talked about elsewhere, but the electorate that put Trump in office did it specifically in rejection of the Dem & GOP cooperation of the last several decades which led to the same things happening regardless of who was in charge.
From that perspective (and without saying anything about legality or wisdom, etc) Trump is doing exactly what the people who put him in office asked him to do.
I understand you're arguing this, I'm asking where this meme came from. Independent agencies have been around for more than a century and AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new. Whence came this idea? Is it something you personally invented that the rest of the right doesn't subscribe to, or are others advocating it, and if so could you refer me to what arguments they're using to justify it?
I haven't seen arguments that they're constitutionally unsavory, but I've seen arguments, that the President, as chief executive, does have almost CEO-like control over them. FDR did exert such control, in his case using it to expand the federal government, but he ran a fast-moving government.
So it's not like there isn't precedent for this, it's just that the consensus was as you said, the independent (some would say unelected) bureaucracy running things. But that was only ever a convention.
In most cases the law that created the agency spells out exactly what control the president has, and AFAIK presidents still have to follow the law like everyone else. Is there any real justification for this, beyond the general notion that FDR once got away with something similar so maybe Trump should too?
> AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new.
I don't think anyone's claiming that they're "unsavory" - just that they are creatures of the executive that were created by the executive and may be abolished by the executive as well.
And I don't think it's a new position either? The Ron Paul types have been complaining about them for literally decades.
In some constitutional democracies there is a court that sits above the apex court, and they rule on constitutional matters only. I feel this is is an effective check/balance, as it makes the interpretation of the constitution completely unambiguous.
The US Supreme Court is the original constitutional court. It invented the idea that courts can rule on the constitutionality of laws and governmental actions (in Marbury v. Madison, 1803).
Some more recent constitutions have established a separate court that only rules on constitutional issues, but the US doesn't have that.
IANAL, but my understanding is that that effectively is what SCOTUS does most of the time, i.e. very few issues make it to SCOTUS that aren't constitutional questions. In any case, there is not any higher court like you're describing.
you're talking about the US Supreme Court but it has been politicized over the years and leans to one party or the other instead of strictly interpreting the constitution. For example, many people believe it leans heavily to the right side these days.
> The BFF pattern is just "mostly microservices dedicated to a particular client type".
If you’re building dedicated APIs for just one client you’ve come full circle and building a monolith with a bunch of extra step. Why not just build a good old web app at that point?
No, you’re not. You’re building specialised tools for each job.
Also with GQL you can separate by business domain as opposed to consumer for example your customer apps/website could use one gateway, and your back office app could use another.
Also, if you have an old monolith in something like rails, and want to build new functionality in something different whilst migrating parts of it over, it makes sense to have a service oriented architecture. A gateway is a layer that exposes all of the services in a unified and consistent manner.
...how do you think you got your job? You ever see those old movies with rows of people with calculators manually balancing spreadsheets with pen and paper? We are the automators. We replaced thousands of formerly good paying jobs with computers to increase profits, just like replacing horses with cars or blacksmiths with factories.
The reality of AI, if AI succeeds in replacing programmers (and there's reason to be skeptical of that) is that it will simply be a "move up the value chain". Former programmers instead of developing highly technical skills will have new skills - either helping to make models that meet new goals or guiding those models to produce things that meet requirements. It will not mean all programmers are automatically unemployable - but we will need to change.
A few questions popped in my head. Can you retain the knowledge to evaluate model output required to effectively help and guide models to do something if you do not do it yourself anymore? For humans to flourish, does it mean simply “do as little as possible”? Once you automated everything, where would one find meaningful activity that makes one feel needed by other humans? By definition automation is about scaling and the higher up the chain you go the fewer people are needed to manage the bots; what do you do with the rest? (Do you believe the people who run the models for profit and benefit the most would volunteer to redistribute their wealth and enact some sort of post-scarcity commmunist-like equality?)
> Can you retain the knowledge to evaluate model output required to effectively help and guide models to do something if you do not do it yourself anymore?
I mean, education will have to change. In the early years of computer science, the focus was on building entire systems from scratch. Now programming is mainly about developing glue between different libraries to suit are particular use case. This means that we need to understand far less about the theoretical underpinnings of computing (hence all the griping about why programmers don't need to write their own sorting algorithms, so why does every interview ask it).
It's not gone as a skill, it's just different.
>For humans to flourish, does it mean simply “do as little as possible”? Once you automated everything, where would one find meaningful activity that makes one feel needed by other humans?
So I had a eureka moment with AI programming a few weeks ago. In it, I described a basic domain problem in clear english language. It was revealing not just because of all the time it saved, but because it fundamentally changed how programming worked for me. I was, instead of writing code and developing my domain, I was able to focus my mind completely on one single problem. Now my experiences with AI programming have been much worse since then, but I think it highlights how AI has the potential to remove drudgery from our work - tasks that are easy to automate, are almost by definition, rote. I instead get to focus on the more fun parts. The fulfilling parts.
>By definition automation is about scaling and the higher up the chain you go the fewer people are needed to manage the bots; what do you do with the rest? (Do you believe the people who run the models for profit and benefit the most would volunteer to redistribute their wealth and enact some sort of post-scarcity commmunist-like equality?)
I think the best precedent here is the start of the 20th century. In this period, elites were absolutely entrenched against the idea of things like increasing worker pay or granting their workers more rights or raising taxes. However, I believe one of the major turning points in this struggle worldwide was the revolution in Russia. Not because of the communist ideals it epoused, but because of the violence and chaos it caused. People, including economic elites, aren't marxist-style unthinking bots - they could tell that if they didn't do something about the desperation and poverty they had created, they would be next. So due to a combination of self interest, and yes, their own moral compasses, they made compromises with the radicals to improve the standard of living for the poor and common workers, who were mostly happy to accept those compromises.
Now, it's MUCH more complicated than I've laid out here. The shift away from the gilded age had been happening for nearly twenty years at that point. But I think it illustrates that concentrating economic power that doesn't trickle down is dangerous - creating constant social destruction with no reward will destroy themselves. And they will be smart enough to realize this.
> AI has the potential to remove drudgery from our work - tasks that are easy to automate, are almost by definition, rote.
I like to think that the best kind of automation when it comes to writing code is writing less code, but instead writing it with strategic abstractions embodying your best understanding of subject matter and architectural vision.
> Maybe it's a negative for you if you already have marketable skills, but a positive for others who want to get in.
I am not fully clear, to get in on what? The skill that is valued less and less? Or on being an LLM prompter? How much would a rational management be willing to pay a prompt writer (assuming they cannot automate that as well in the first place)?
It was on everyone’s lips for a few years, to the point that it had become the placeholder for the entire meme.
The short version is that there is a shortage of skilled workers that absolutely requires immigrants to fill the gaps. However when you look around there isn’t really a shortage; people just aren’t willing to work for little pay. The English term implies that there is an actual shortage.
It might please you to know just how much English other languages are peppered with.
It's being used in the German political discourse since at least the first term of the Schröder government in the late 1990es, which is about where I started following the news and politics more closely. It has been used cynically as justification for every thinkable cut into the social system ever since, from lobbying against a minimum wage to moving up the retirement age. You won't find many people, except for politicians and lobbyists, that'll still use the term unironically. It seems there are remarkable parallels on the other side of the Atlantic ocean.
Less pay in EU means working to afford only the rent, bills, and groceries. One is better off doing nothing professionally and living off their savings. Well, the 2025 is going to be interesting....
