DOGE gets its authority through the president. The president definitely has the authority to audit and/or stop illegal, fraudulent or just wasteful transactions.

The exact shape or form of USAID is also up to the president. It was created through an executive order, and can of course also be transformed through one.

I have seen this regurgitated several times on this site now. This is blatantly false, congress passed a law in 1998 to establish USAID. The EO was made with authority that had been granted by another law. That law does not allow the President to abolish it:

> Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5.

- 22 U.S.C. §6563

All it takes is a simple google search.

The actual law is a high dimensional interaction of all active legislation. Predicting what the legal system will do is hard and often cannot be achieved with high reliability with a google search.

This is why lawyers exist. Presumably doge and trump have access to good lawyers. I’m not asserting that they are right, just that a shallow legal analysis is error prone and looking at a single law likely does not yield useful prediction making capability.

Also malicious compliance is an option. Maybe they could name a single person the official administrator, given them an office in a basement and officially comply, while effectively shutting everything down. The extent to which fulfilling the intent of legislation vs relying on the discretion of the executive to interpret it within, and as a matter of precedent deferring to executive discretion by default in court cases, probably enables many more abuses than have been contemplated prior to this presidency.

Unless they are paying that person in the basement the full funding of what Congress has budgetted for USAID that's Impoundment. If they are then it's still Impoundment because it's been redirected from it's original purpose.

The OP asserted that USAID was created by EO and that the president is free to do what he wants with it. That statement is blatantly false. How does court decide is not relevant to this discussion, because as you said it is speculative.

>> It ... can of course also be transformed through one.

> The OP asserted that ... the president is free to do what he wants with it.

What's blatantly false is your restatement of what OP said. Transformed != do what he wants.

Well my luck, turns out he can't do transformations either.

> Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated ... may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by ... the United States Agency for International Development ... without prior consultation ... with the appropriate congressional committees.

> (b) ... a reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to

> (1) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize covered departments, agencies ...

> (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas ...

> (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024.

It's remarkable how much effort some people put into portraying this as a 'highly complex' legal issue. In reality, laws like this one typically include standard boilerplate provisions precisely to prevent situations like the current one, regardless of the administration. A simple Google search is actually enough to establish what one _should do_ here according to the law.

Claiming that this is complex isn't just a matter of disagreement; it's a deliberate distortion of language and intent. This approach dismisses a clear legal bright line in favor of framing the issue through power dynamics and a 'what can I get away with' mindset. Without independent or ethical agents of enforcement or a process that's interested in keeping up, what we can get away with ends up being a lot and will likely be substantially impactful.

It was consolidated into the Department of State as part of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 as an agency with an administrator and responsibility for administrating the distribution of aid under certain preexisting laws. So it is straightforwardly outside of the authority of the president to disband the agency, as Congress has provided that it shall exist. And it is likewise outside of the authority of the president to reduce it to an inactive status, as it has certain Congressionally-established responsibilities that it must perform.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title22/cha...

I didn't say the president could disband it. I said the president could transform it.

The comment you replied to was discussing the president’s authority to shut down agencies. (And lack thereof.)

> The president definitely has the authority to audit and/or stop illegal, fraudulent or just wasteful transactions.

This is not true. Obviously.

That would give the President carte blanche authority over the budget by merely declaring "illegal/fraudulent/wasteful."

Go re-read the Constitution before posting this bullshit.

They aren't. They are informing the President and the President does it either by EO or asking congress.

The president can't decide to stop spending money Congress has passed by EO.

That sounds weird. I can understand that you cannot take money that was promised for thing X and spend in thing Y but if you can reduce the X spending I don't think there is any issue.

Now I do not know if Congress has explicitly required X to provide certain thing. If they did then there might be some issue if X fails to provide it. It's probably easy to say someone is accountable for it if it's something objective (let's say building for Congress) but if it's subjective it could get tricky.

No, the executive is not allowed either to redirect or to stop or slow the Congressionally apportioned funds.

This is called impoundment and it's unequivocally illegal.

No wonder everyone always tries to figure out how to spend money if they still have some left before end of the fiscal year. Some individual "I saved us $1 million by shutting down servers we don't use!" Manager "Fuck, now need to quickly figure out some way to spend $1 million..."

That's a much more mundane bureaucratic imperative that exists at every level in every budgeted system. But yeah, that more mundane imperative definitely doesn't help to control costs in the next budget cycle, for sure.

Most of the US Government spending is on things that are fairly fixed and fairly known. There isn't a lot of elastic spending like this, or at least not in a way that really turns a dial.

Correct. But Congress doesn't and didn't ever say "spend $250k on transgender operas." Congress' laws are ambiguous and rely on the administrative state to dish out money to a specific cause. The law probably said something like "promote health policy in the Europe".

The Trump administration will repurpose those funds to things more aligned with GOP preferences.

President doesn't have authority to shut them down by EO either. Congress does, yes.

(It's one of those "power of the purse" things. If Congress has created an organization and funded it, the executive is required to spend that money on it.)

> President doesn't have authority to shut them down by EO either

I'm not sure they are being shut down. USAID is being restructured for instance and folded into the State Department.

I imagine the legality of that depends on the exact details of the law that created the organization. If it specifies that it be an independent organization, then that's probably not allowed either. If it's just "these things must be done" then State could probably handle it.

(Either way, the exact approach they've taken so far with the total freeze and shutdown, then later saying they'll totally start doing the job again somewhere else later on, seems sketchy.)

The state dept issued an evacuation order for all USAID staff overseas. How will they accomplish their mission? This includes medical care and distribution of HIV medication to up to 20 million people.

Why are American taxpayers paying for medical care and HIV medication for 20 million people?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those people foreign nationals as well?

You can certainly disagree with whether we should be doing it, but the fact remains that Congress made a law saying that we are doing it. The vehicle for changing that is to change the law, not for the President to decide to break the law.

On a separate note, assuming that "it's good to help people if you can" doesn't move you, the cynical reason for USAID's existence is marketing and soft power projection. For a tiny fraction of the US budget, we get to look good for how nice we're being to people, and get other countries to want us to come in and get our hands all over their infrastructure until it'd be painful for them to oppose us and lose that aid.

(Also, HIV specifically? That's something where lowering the levels of it in foreign countries will directly help the US, because it makes it less likely that US citizens will get exposed to it when people travel.)

Because we elected representative who then funded these soft power initiatives. That’s how democracy works.

Unrelated: The hakenkreuz (swastika) was used by German nationalists and "Aryan" supremacists as early as the late 1800s, and was quite popular, even used by the Wandervogel. The swastika officially became the emblem for the Nazi Party on August, 7, 1920, so your quilt is almost certainly an Aryan quilt, and possibly an official Nazi one.

Heh - I can’t find the original comment here, but I remember it.

My grandparents have passed away, so I’ll need to track down exactly who has that quilt now. I know it came over to the US with their parents (my great-grandparents) when they immigrated, and that it was pre-Nazi-party for sure.

It may very well be associated with the false mythology that was adopted by the Nazis. I don’t think so, but it’s been a long time since it was new. No one who was there when it was made is still alive, nor is anyone who knew them well. I’ve not seen anything about that side of my family that would lead me to believe that they were ever sympathetic to that cause, but it’s entirely possible that it was hidden, not shared with the next generation, or otherwise just lost to time.

… but now I’m curious, and will have to figure it out :)

Yeah, that why I said both. It depends on what they are doing. USAID probably needs congress, but other things might just need an EO. The point is DOGE isn't doing this, the President is. Elon doesn't have authority that Democratics are saying he does. He simply informs the President, "Hey, USAID is spending taxpayers money to fund xyz in xyz you might want to shut it down". The President then goes "Yeah, I think we should shut it down let's freeze it and we'll abolish it". Then they go down the path of abolishing it and with the USAID they will probably get congress to do it. Until then they can freeze it because he appoint Marco Rubio has the acting admin.

> He simply informs the President,

That man is way too friendly. Just before the election he gave $300.000.000,00 to Trump. And he is so special, eh! He can read air-gaped, highly sensitive data that no one should see from government systems, just using his mind/indoctrinated minions. I hate it when people speculate this might have to do, amongst things, with dark money to be made in intelligence/elite level international crime.

Neither him nor Trump ever hid what Elon was going to do if Trump was elected. Unlike other donators of both parties, we always knew what Elon's goal was. He literally spent the last year on Twitter tweeting about it.

Many people, especially libertarians, voted for Trump for this exact reason.

Yeah, you might think he shouldn't have access to these system but it's the President, who the majority of the people voted for, that has the authority to grant him access, or ask for access from the appoint leaders of these departments.

Everyday when he posts list of things the US government is spending money on the more people are backing Elon in this endeavor.

Go here https://x.com/DOGE and read some of the things we are paying for and you tell me that we should be spending money on it.

Yeah, you might think he up to something bad but you would have always thought that because you don't like him.

Are you sure he's not just an American who cares about the US and doesn't want it too head into a death spiral from massive amount of debt with no one brave enough to stop it because it might cause them to lose an election?

I think you are really young, so I am going to give you advice instead: do not open X, it fuels you adrenaline, but it is a trap for the gullible.

If you have honest policies, there is no need to ddos the democratic system, and it certainly does not require a bunch of insanely spoiled Accelerationist billionaires and the killing of science.

The amount of tax money that goes to the rich in tax cuts, loopholes, and subsidies makes cutting humanitarian aid, school lunches, and your grandmas Medicaid for “efficiency” purely evil nonsense.

We already have departments for improving and reforming spending. Elon and MAGA are inundating you with bad faith justifications for what is ultimately a goal to fund their next round of tax breaks before they expire this year using the working and middle classes as livestock.

> DOGE is private citizens giving their opinions about how the government should work to a politician who happens to be listening to them

No, DOGE was formalized as a division of the US Digital Service. Employees of DOGE are federal government employees. Some of them, like Elon are "Special Government Employees" which is a short-term category and avoids certain disclosures.

Creating DOGE and enabling them to have access to certain IT systems is legal ... but what data, how much control they have, what they can demand of other departments is subject to all sorts of laws and controls which may or may not be being followed at the moment.

Okay, so these citizens are federal employees. Guess what, the First Ammendment still gives them the right to tell politicians what they should be doing.

No one said they didn’t have a 1st amendment right.

This is easily the most willfully uninformed take on this topic I have seen yet

Citizens voicing their opinion don't usually have unlimited access to government databases.

Then, the president is acting illegally, and not doge ?

neither have happened and virtually all employees of USAID have been put on leave at the orders of the acting deputy administrator.

(via CNN) - It is not legal for the president to unilaterally “abolish, move, or consolidate USAID”. He needs to have congressional authorization to do so.

The current acting deputy administrator is Marco Rubio who the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State works directly for the President.

The President hasn't shut down the USAID yet. They just froze it with the intent to abolish it.

DOGE didn’t shut down USAID. Musk talked Trump and Rubio into doing it and they did.

Musk is essentially a presidential advisor, and legally an advisor can advise the President to do pretty much anything. Even if the thing they are advising the President to do is illegal, the President is the one who bears the legal responsibility for the action, not the advisor.

In really extreme cases, like if Musk were advising Trump to commit genocide, or carry out a military coup, or transfer a billion dollars out of US Treasury into someone’s personal bank account, and Trump followed the advice, Musk might be held legally liable for having given it. But shutting down a government agency isn’t anything like that. The legality of shutting it down is debatable, but even if ultimately held to be illegal, it isn’t the genocide or military coup or blatant corruption kind of illegal.

> Musk talked Trump and Rubio into doing and they did.

which is illegal. USAID can only be "shut down" by an act of Congress

> Trump and Rubio [...] did.

Might be illegal.

> Musk talked Trump and Rubio

Obviously isn't, no matter how many salutes he does or how many emeralds he owns.

It is debatable.

Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?

There is a lack of recent SCOTUS precedents on the topic, and you can’t assume the current SCOTUS majority will answer “Yes”. If they answer “No”, then the USAID shutdown is likely legal.

> There is a lack of recent SCOTUS precedents on the topic

How recent do you need? Nixon already tested this one and lost at the SC.

Train vs City of New York is almost as old as Roe v Wade. I wouldn’t assume a 50+ year old precedent would be upheld by today’s majority.

Plus, Train v City of New York didn’t actually consider the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act. It was about an impoundment decision made prior to that Act, under the rules in force before it. And although SCOTUS held the EPA’s impoundment action (directed by Nixon) to be illegal in this specific case, they didn’t rule on the validity of impoundments in general. In part, the case turned on the wording of the specific appropriation being impounded, and so it might not apply to another appropriation worded differently. Also, upholding congressional limits on presidential impoundment power in the context of one specific appropriation doesn’t mean they’d necessarily uphold the much broader limits on that power imposed by the Impoundment Control Act.

Another factor is this case was about direct grants to the states. It is plausible that SCOTUS might decide that (following Train), the states have the right to direct grants appropriated to them by Congress, yet still hold the President has some constitutional impoundment right in distinguishable cases

It is not debateable at all, the President has to ask Congress to rescind appropriated funds if the President doesn’t want to spend the money allocated by Congress. If Congress chooses not to rescind the allocated funds, then the president must spend the money.

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 is explicitly clear about this, there is absolutely no room for debate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Imp...

> Title X of the Act, also known as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation. Congress is not required to vote on the request and has ignored most presidential requests.

> The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 is explicitly clear about this, there is absolutely no room for debate.

Yes, but is that Act constitutional? Has SCOTUS upheld its constitutionality? That’s where there absolutely is room for debate.

Has the government's right to mow down civilians with helicopter-mounted machine guns been tested in the Supreme Court lately?

That's where there absolutely is room for debate.

This argument can apply to literally anything.

It is different though.

There are law journal articles debating whether the Impoundment Control Act is constitutional. And that isn’t a new thing, here’s one from 1990: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/...

There’s a big difference between a law for which there have been longstanding serious scholarly objections to its constitutionality, and a law whose constitutionality has never been questioned in any serious forum

Really? Because SCOTUS actually ruled the President very well might be immune from any criminal repercussions from mowing down civilians from a helicopter-mounted machine gun.

Seems like there’s at least “a debate” to be had.

It hasn’t been tested at the Supreme Court level, no.

However, other presidential administrations have worked within the framework of the law and requested that Congress rescind funding instead of running roughshod over the law and unilaterally attempting to defund programs and canceling spending that was authorized by Congress.

We’ll likely get a Supreme Court case testing the CBIA of 1974, we’ll soon find out what these 9 justices think about it.

>It is not debateable at all, the President has to ask Congress to rescind appropriated funds if the President doesn’t want to spend the money allocated by Congress. If Congress chooses not to rescind the allocated funds, then the president must spend the money.

What people don't understand is that the President is essentially an Administrator (Executer of the laws passed by Congress), not a Decider.

The problem now is that Congress will not impeach or convict him for breaking the law.

> Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?

Congress holds the power of the purse, so they aren't "forcing" the President, the President has no say in the matter

Almost every President until Nixon claimed the constitutional right to impound appropriations, and actually did it. And Congress often objected, but what could they do? Until Nixon did it so much, that Congress passed a law against it. And Nixon decided to sign the law, because he wanted to put the controversy over his own impoundments behind him. And from then until now, even if some Presidents questioned the constitutionality of that law, they decided to abide by it. Until finally, now in the second Trump administration, Trump has listened to conservative legal scholars arguing that the law is unconstitutional, and decided to adopt their argument and ignore it. And likely SCOTUS will decide its constitutionality as a result. But you make a decades-old debate sound like something that has a completely obvious answer. If the answer is as simple and obvious as you think it is, how did almost every President up to and including Nixon get it wrong?

From first principles, congress is given power of the purse. If the president can just ignore congress' direction and refuse to use the money they allocated, do you believe that congress still has power of the purse?

From first principles, the American Founding Fathers were largely copying the design of the British system (as they understood it), but with an elected President replacing the King. In the British system, Parliament could stop the King from spending money – but the power was about stopping the King from spending as he liked, not forcing him to spend when he didn't wish to. The English Civil War was fought over the principle that the King couldn't spend money without Parliament's authorisation; the issue of Parliament trying to force the King to spend money when he didn't want to spend it simply never came up.

Hence, look at the Appropriations Clause of the US Constitution (Article I Section 9 Clause 7): "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law..." That's a negative clause, a prohibition on the Executive spending money without legal authorisation; nowhere does it explicitly say that Congress can force the President to spend money when he doesn't want to spend it.

For most of the term's history, "the power of the purse" was understood as the ability of the legislature to limit government spending; the idea that it also entails the ability of the legislature to compel the executive to spend money which it doesn't wish to spend is much newer.