Even during the previous term, this administration absolutely decimated scientific progress: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/climate/trump-administrat...

It’s scary to think what they may be able to accomplish with zero guardrails and essentially unlimited power.

I’m an academic scientist part of a really large government funded research grant that employs hundreds of people. Last time, we had to fire half our staff immediately right up front because they said they were cutting our funding. They ended up not cutting our funding at all, but we had already fired everyone so it was lose lose- the Government spent the money but the research couldn’t be done. Just plain bad leadership.

Where did the money go then?

We hired new people with less experience and restarted the projects, but in a lot of cases the projects were set back years with no reduction in the cost.

At the very least, some went to unemployment benefits, I’d expect.

Sounds like bad leadership on the part of your project. To outsiders that don’t understand the details why fire people before the actual budget cuts?

It was the policy of the granting federal agency- it was not our choice, we had to immediately start operating on the president's proposed low budget in case it were to pass, rather than spend money that might never exist.

This happened because Trump's administration essentially copy and pasted Heritage Foundation materials rather than carefully think through a realistic budget.

Here’s another example: would you start building a house today knowing the price of every input material might jump 20% to 200%?

It's even worse than that: it's more like buying unrefundable materials to build a house today on an account/invoice, knowing you will likely be unemployed before the bill comes due, but after the materials are delivered. You're spending money up front that you don't have, and may never have.

If you spend full budget for the first half of the fiscal year, but a final budget gets passed later that cuts your budget in half- you get no remaining money for the year, and then end up firing everyone, instead of half. This is why the federal agencies have the policy of immediately acting on the lowest proposed budget, instead of waiting to see what happens.

I've had two grants in a row get killed for political reasons, and a third is on the chopping block. What really kills me is that we get through the unpleasant, unproductive scaling up part, are about to hit our stride, and then...gone.

Here we go. After 4 years of silence, suddenly everything is the presidents fault. You really think people don't notice?

If the president isn't responsible for the out of the ordinary executive orders he imposes, who is responsible for them?

he signed an EO for an outbreak of TB? you must be an ABC News reporter.

Here's the comment that got downvoted:

> For anyone unaware of us government agency structure. CDC is part of the department of health and human services ( HHS ) which has also frozen everything (see the NIH news as well). > Employees have been instructed to pull publications from review, not communicate with state health departments, and cancel long planned trainings. > These decisions will well and truly kill real people.

These are the executive orders we are talking about.

Are you strong enough of a person to address this? Or must you insult people's intelligence by dishonest accusations?

Also, what does ABC have to do with anything?

Basically what you are saying is that me robbing you, and me making economic policy that might lead to increased unemployment which might lead to greater housing or food insecurity which might lead to increases in crime which might lead to you getting robber are indistinguishable.

Adults can differentiate between direct and indirect causal relationships…it is basically the cognitive development definition of adulthood (c.f. Work by Piaget)

Trump offered tangible things while the opponent offered a much more though out philosophy and platform (even if one i disagree with).

The fact Trump offered to pardon Ross was enough to make me feel incredibly guilty for not voting for him. I was surprised he found a way to get to me like that, but reality and practical negotiation can be quite persuasive over ideology.

I suspect Trump had at least one important thing to enough people that is 100% achievable and physically real-- a part of a wall, a pardon, a $2000 -- that he could beat out someone offering ideas/hopes/dreams.

>The fact Trump offered to pardon Ross was enough to make me feel incredibly guilty for not voting for him

There's not much to it. Trump wanted the libertarian vote, libertarians wanted Ross free.

He was pardoning a bunch of treasonists, he could clip in a little bit of good on the size.

Lots of people here know that one man isn't responsible for everything bad that happens on the planet. Especially after 4 years of silence.

Is Trump responsible for the executive orders he signs? Is he responsible for the consequences of those actions?

Or is does he never make a mistake, never cause problems, never harm the people he says he's ready to mess with?

he's not responsible for an outbreak of a contagious illness. if he had been president 3 weeks ago the LA fire would have been linked to him. thats how it was for 4 years. then one day, nothing was the president's fault anymore. Nobody beleives that.

The scary(?) part about Trump voters this time around is that the narrative up to last year forced most such voters underground. It's why election pollsters all failed across the board.

Source: Me. I voted Trump and proudly so, didn't deliberate in public much because noone was going to listen and nothing was going to change my vote anyway. Make America Great Again.

Submissions like that often get flagged because they are mainstream political news items. As the HN guidelines say: “If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.”

And yet…

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/kdhe-unprecedented-tube...

https://www.kake.com/home/health-officials-facing-unpreceden...

KHSB is the Kansas City NBC affiliate and KAKE is the Wichita ABC affiliate.

"real people" otherwise referred to by Musk et al as "NPCs"