NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-director-resign-amid-grant-terminations-job-cuts-and-controversy

by detaro • 1 year ago

295 234 1 year ago

jmclnx2• 1 year ago

Another knowledgeable person leaving due to DOGE, what a surprise. The US is loosing its smartest people due to Trump. Soon we will be a backwater country with lots of weapons, nothing else.

jfengel2• 1 year ago

Yes, but we'll have stuck it to the woke, and that's what counts.

danudey3• 1 year ago

Isolating the US from the rest of the world economically and politically and plunging the country into an unforced recession while giving trillions of dollars to billionaires and texting state secrets to journalists and relatives to own the libs.

ttoinou2• 1 year ago

“stick it to all the too-tolerent people who let the woke movement gain power” would be a good steel manning of your argument

CoastalCoder• 1 year ago

Soon we will be a backwater country with lots of weapons, nothing else.

Making advanced, superior weapons systems requires a workforce with strong science, engineering, and manufacturing skills.

I struggle to understand how the current administration's policies help.

dullcrisp• 1 year ago

You can always hope your old stockpile of weapons works while bullying smaller countries with it.

vjvjvjvjghv2• 1 year ago

Authoritarians often allow for strong science and engineering skills within an approved range. The Nazis had excellent engineering and so did the Soviet Union in some areas.

danudey3• 1 year ago

We're going to bring manufacturing back! But we're not bringing back the crappy manufacturing jobs that pay absolute peanuts. No, we're going to automate those! With robots that we don't make here in the US, of course. Those robots don't exist, because if they did then China would be using them, but we'll buy some robots from China at 150% tariffs so that we can set up some degree of manufacturing here in the US!

We'll create jobs! But good-paying jobs, for well-educated people! The kind that we won't be making anymore once we gut the department of education and saddle everyone with crushing student loan debt that we've just announced we're going to be chasing after again! Because the government isn't willing to let people get away without paying their debts! Unless it's a big bank, or a billionaire. Or the US government itself, for that matter! But the US government is in massive debt, and we can't let student loan payments go unpaid! But we can give a $4.5 trillion tax cut to billionaires who don't need it, that's important.

The administration is in this weird limbo of "doesn't know what they're doing" and "is desperately trying to accomplish goals that will clearly and irreparably tank the entire country".

hengheng• 1 year ago

If the benefits don't outweigh those minor inconveniences, you're just not rich enough.

sathackr7• 1 year ago

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles.

If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can.

So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of just accelerating the demise of the organization they claim to love so much.

1970-01-012• 1 year ago

It's resign or follow my orders. There's not much wiggle room in-between, and the lawsuits will probably cost you everything anyway.

beeforpork• 1 year ago

OK, but isn't getting fired better than resigning? Why resign?

sathackr7• 1 year ago

There's tons of people that don't follow the boss's orders to a T and don't resign and don't get fired. And they would be much less effective at enacting their boss's agenda than someone who "just followed orders"

voidfunc• 1 year ago

Fighting a meat grinder or a lawnmower is usually a bad strategy especially with an openly corrupt and abusive government with no checks on any of its power.

People have families and livelihoods to protect, nobody in these positions signed up for this shit.

sathackr7• 1 year ago

Protecting your family is why you should fight.

AdrianB12• 1 year ago

There are some hills not worth die on. There are moments when a retreat is better than a worthless fight, saving people in the process.

I did the same mistake working for a company that went from morally sound to "almost-Enron". I thought it is a fight worth taking. The company went its way, I made no difference in the end, I just stressed myself for years for nothing. Life is too short for that.

sathackr7• 1 year ago

If more people at the company had followed your example...would it have turned out differently? Seems like you had the right idea just nobody else cared enough to join you

patrickdavey• 1 year ago

Mental health perhaps? If the administration is making the organisations job impossible it could be an incredibly awful time to stay. I don't believe I owe anyone my sanity.

sathackr7• 1 year ago

yea that seems to be a common theme with people. Nothing is bigger than them or more important than their own personal mental health.

I can't take it myself so I'm just going to roll over and not stand for any principle or fight for any cause because that's just too much for me to handle.

And besides you're just one person so what difference is it going to make anyways.

Same thing why people don't vote. It's not like their one vote will make a difference.

Multiply that times 10 million people and you get what we have.

danudey3• 1 year ago

It looks a lot better on the resume to say "I quit in protest" than to say "I was fired because I refused to do my job".

Quitting in protest also makes better headlines than getting fired and it lets the person quitting set the narrative. "I quit because the administration was asking me to do something unethical or against the best interests of the American public" makes for good headlines, compared to "Trump admin fires head of the NSF" and then having to go on damage control justifying why you were fired and why it's a good thing actually.

ziddoap9• 1 year ago

I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can.

Can you give me some examples of how you would fight?

Boss comes in (or whoever more powerful than me, e.g. someone acting on the president's orders), says something with the gist of "Do this, or get fired". What are the next steps that I can take that won't get me fired, but also count as fighting back?

saulpw• 1 year ago

https://specificsuggestions.com/

sathackr7• 1 year ago

Comply but leak the truth to the media.

Comply in a maximally obstructive way.

Comply just enough to not get fired but not as much as someone who may be more inclined to please their boss.

Enlist other opposition and find ways to multiply your obstructive compliance into other departments.

There's tons of "how-to" guides on how to maliciously comply with work demands without getting fired.

AcerbicZero3• 1 year ago

If you're in a hierarchical structure and someone higher up gives you an ultimatum, your choices are: comply, resist and face consequences, or find subversive, incremental ways to undermine it. None of those are cost-free.

"Fighting" isn't about magic moves that keep everything safe. It's about choosing when and how to accept the risks. Expecting a fight with no threat to your position is cowardice disguised as pragmatism.

tobias3• 1 year ago

Don't do it. Perhaps obfuscate and delay as much as possible that you are not actually doing it. Perhaps get fired. Then go to court for wrongful termination (this would depend on the order being unlawful)?

anthomtb• 1 year ago

If you are a Reddit user r/MaliciousCompliance is full of stories* of people follow orders to the most exacting and absurd extent. Most of them are peon-level folks so I am not sure how those actions would map to a person in a position of real power.

*fact vs embellished fact vs straight fiction is always questionable on Reddit.

ojbyrne• 1 year ago

I think 4 year olds know how to do that. Follow the exact letter of what they say, but doing everything else outside the bounds of "do this" the way you want to.

I.e. "It's time for bed" means "I'm going to continue to play, just in my bed."

"Go to sleep" means "Pretend to sleep for 5 minutes, then go back to playing." When confronted, say that you woke up after 5 minutes.

conductr2• 1 year ago

It's certainly going to test your moral fortitude but at some point I think this is a bit like telling a victim of domestic violence to stick it out.

sathackr7• 1 year ago

the victim of domestic violence sticking it out doesn't help anyone else.

Except maybe the children -- which I could see there are some situations where not sticking it out could be worse for everyone.

People look at domestic violence victims and always say "well why didn't they just leave?" as if leaving is the perfect solution -- but it rarely is. There are other factors. Income. Children.

If there were a perfect societal safety net for these people, then maybe "just leave" is always the best solution. But there is not, and "just leave" often doesn't quite work out.

empath75• 1 year ago

You will only be able to remain on the job by compromising and compromising and compromising until there are none of your principles left. You might as well leave immediately and fight from outside.

skeeter20202• 1 year ago

yeah the "use my power to effect positive change" (or "bring them down from the inside") ideal is just a way to convince yourself that complicity is in service to a higher good. Funny enough that's the same argument the other side uses...

vjvjvjvjghv2• 1 year ago

I think there are two problems:

- How can you fight from the inside against people who can get you fired at will? I think it's more effective to fight from the outside.

- Science requires a lot of honesty, trust and assumes people generally act in good faith. So Scientists are not well equipped for political fights against hardcore ideologues. Just look at climate or vaccine denial.

brianmurphy2• 1 year ago

It's funny you say science requires a lot of honesty and trust, then point at what happened in the past 5 years.

Very few people believe "safe and effective" was telling the truth when it neither stopped someone from getting sick or from passing the virus on to other people. Now the lack of trust is spilling over into other v's that have been effective in eradicating past ailments like polio and measles. The "scientists" have no one to blame but themselves.

rahimnathwani2• 1 year ago

The options you have:

A) disagree and commit

B) disagree and wait to be fired

C) appear to commit, but secretly subvert your (elected) boss's plans/intentions

I use the word 'boss' here because the president has the right to hire and fire for this role:

  SEC. 5. 42 U.S.C. 1864 (a) The Director of the Foundation  (referred to in this Act as the ‘‘Director’’) shall be appointed by the  President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Before any person is appointed as Director, the President shall afford the Board an opportunity to make recommendations to him with respect to such appointment. The Director shall receive basic pay at the rate provided for level II of the Executive Schedule under section 5313 of title 5, United States Code, and shall serve for a term of six years unless sooner removed by the President.

etskinner• 1 year ago

Secret other option: Disagree and convince your boss to change their mind

That, of course, probably doesn't apply in this situation since Trump rarely changes his mind. But it does apply in other situations.

ricksunny3• 1 year ago

Fun fact: Exactly the stipulation behind this excerpt, whether the President can hire/fire the head of the NSF, is exactly why Truman had vetoed an earlier version of the NSF bill written under the close influence of Vannevar Bush that actively avoided providing for this extent of executive ‘weighing of the scales’ of science. Source: Bush, V. “Pieces of the Action”, 1970

lesuorac• 1 year ago

Is it disagree and commit?

NSF is an "independent agency" [1] so if the job you were appointed to an confirmed by congress (senate) is at odds with the presidents desires I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a problem for the president not you.

Similar to all those inspector generals who just gave up when they were illegally fired. Literally your job is to prevent the president from corruption, how are you going to do that now?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un...

LiquidSky• 1 year ago

In addition to what others have said, in theory it's also a way to call public attention to the problem. These are coveted positions that people don't just walk away from lightly, so someone in this position stepping down and explaining why can serve as an alarm bell.

That said, I don't know how effective that really is anymore since driving people out is one of the administration's stated goals.

BoxFour• 1 year ago

The perception shift is key. Getting fired for cause and trying to claim the moral high ground afterward often reads as sour grapes; Bitterness and/or incompetence being rationalized. Quitting, on the other hand, suggests principle and lends credibility.

skeeter20202• 1 year ago

I get your reaction but it discounts that all of these people are both human (with limited amounts resolve) and have many alternatives. Look at Trump's first cabinet. I believe it had several people who didn't need or want to be there, but felt they needed to supervise: Tillerson, Kelly, Haley - none of them lasted very long.

barkingcat• 1 year ago

I completely understand resigning on principles. It's a reflection of an internal state where you cannot fight (due to reporting chain of command) and the idea that leaving to fight is a stronger position than staying and fighting within a corrupted/damaged organisation.

There is also the idea: you can order other people to do it, but I'm not going to do it - I resign.

In business/corporate world, it's more like: I can't fight the idiotic director level decisions, so I'm going to quit and either

1) start another company to directly compete

2) quit, join another company to compete or

3) quit, get more experience, and then come back years later at a much higher pay / position to fire the director who was braindead in the first place.

3) in particular plays out way more often than you'd think in silicon valley/tech industry, where by quitting and changing jobs, you can easily get a bunch of promotions and experience outside, so you can come back in to the company at a much higher level.

Think Intel and Pat Gelsinger. As an engineer, Pat couldn't get anywhere so left in 2009 to go lead VMWare. Then he returned to Intel as CEO in 2021. He still didn't get anywhere and got fired, but at least it was for executing his vision. If he stayed at Intel, he would have just been a peon engineer for the rest of his life. At least by quitting he got the CEO job later.

Same story re the current Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, by leaving the board, he was signally his unhappiness with the conditions, and by rejoining as CEO, he gets to make the decisions.

Resisting and fighting from within is usually your weakest play in organisational change.

hammock3• 1 year ago

NSF director is a political appointee, as such serves the will of the President. We don't need those people "fighting," we need to elect the people we want to make the right appointments.

fnordpiglet• 1 year ago

Well, I’ve come to learn the best leaders hire people who do fight them. The key is that they’re transparently open to being fought, take all sides under consideration, give deference when they don’t have to, but expect compliance when they make a decision.

I think we are in a situation where none of the above is happening, so you end up with a globally pessimal decisioning system where you push out the thought leaders and consensus builders and replace them with either people too stupid to have an opinion or just devious enough to appease their master while imposing their will. It’s the most toxic of all work places.

I feel genuine sorrow for all federal employees, contractors, and people who do business with or receive money from this government. I’ve worked in both environments, and what’s happening is going to crush a lot of human souls in what was already a pretty soul crushing environment to begin with.

fundad• 1 year ago

this director was appointed by the 45th president in 2017.

Tireings• 1 year ago

It's possible true but look at the current situation: there are people taking trump as face value.

They believe in him.

They might struggle between 'whats going on here' 'wtf' 'why is no one doing something ' to 'am I wrong? People voted for that clown'.

It's impressive to see how fast society, values and character just degress or becomes mainstream. It has to mean something

throwanem• 1 year ago

I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can.

There have been times in my life when I said the same. Now ask me if those experiences incline me to try saying so ever again.

I understand perfectly the motivation, and the theoretical appeal of the method. It is only that while in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, in practice this method pursued assiduously enough will see you working actively in support of atrocity before you realize that - past a surprisingly early point which large parts of the US government passed several moons ago - the method simply cannot work.

tehjoker2• 1 year ago

Resigning sends a signal to the people under you and outside the organization that fighting back is ok. Staying sends the message that things are ok enough.

pseudalopex2• 1 year ago

Resigning sends a message fighting back is futile. A praising and grateful resignation letter sends a message things are OK. Staying sends different messages depending on words and actions.

mikestew• 1 year ago

If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in…

Seems to me if one held that much “clout and power”, they wouldn’t need to resign on principle. Instead one learns who really holds the clout and power.

MSM• 1 year ago

I think the likely reason is they have signed a non disparagement agreement and have no avenue to publicly criticize. Additionally, quietly criticizing just means quietly getting fired, then likely still being unable to publicly criticize.

The only way to say "hey, I don't think this is right and I don't agree with what's happening here" is to publicly resign and hope that alarm bells start going off in people's heads as to why many of these folks are resigning simultaneously.

mandevil• 1 year ago

US Government employees basically can't sign non-disparagement agreements, the Federal Government doesn't enter into agreements without a fixed time commitment to judge compliance, and there are incredibly strong whistleblower protection laws for Federal employees which would make any non-disparagement agreement very difficult if not impossible to enforce. A Federal judge held that the Trump 2016 campaign's non-disparagement agreements were unenforceable, and there have been no hints of Federal employees being offered anything even like that.

That bit of pedantry aside, I agree with you that the purpose is to draw attention to something bad happening, it is a grander version of leaking to a reporter.

thinkcontext• 1 year ago

I think the likely reason is they have signed a non disparagement agreement and have no avenue to publicly criticize

That was litigated during Trump's first term and held to be not enforceable. That was the case brought by one of his reality show contestants that he appointed to something (the exact details are too trivial to care about).

hodgesrm2• 1 year ago

I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can.

Have you actually done this? It's harder than it sounds.

csours• 1 year ago

Which seems like it's going to have the effect of just accelerating the demise of the organization they claim to love so much.

Sometimes there is not a direct path to 'good'. Sometimes the path to things getting better goes through a rough patch.

It is very dissatisfying that a lot of people are doing very stupid things very publicly right now.

---

Politics is an information game, and you can't play an information game without changing the game; all information games are metagames.

The way the game is being played right now is drastically changing the game.

I won't claim that the game will be better after this (especially in the short term), but it certainly will be different.

insane_dreamer• 1 year ago

I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can.

Those people are being fired as fast as possible.

That's because what's happening is not just changes in policies within these agencies, but essentially a loyalty test / purge.

You can either be loyal and do what the new boss wants without disagreement, you can resign in protest, or you can be fired.

JumpCrisscross• 1 year ago

You’re assuming the battle hasn’t been lost. These people didn’t resign at first fight. They resigned when they realised there isn’t a way to fight a President who wants to dismantle an agency underneath him like this.

AcerbicZero3• 1 year ago

You're getting a lot of pushback, but this resonates with me. I guess I have a hard time understanding the value in a "noble departure" rather than just going down swinging.

If a shark was eating me, I wouldn't say "welp I'm boned, better just resign from life". I'd punch the shark, until that shark had to fire me from life.

Maybe from a PR perspective its somehow better? Idk, I don't see it.

crummy• 1 year ago

Historically, 'this decision is so outrageous that three important people have resigned' has been a powerful brake on outrageous decisions.

That has stopped being the case recently, for whatever reason.

KerrAvon2• 1 year ago

1. The resignation is an important signal to other people that bad things are happening. Not everyone is paying attention; dramatic resignations are events that might help pierce the media veil.

2. At some point, if you can't stop it and they won't fire you, you're a collaborator. There's a point where your noble stance becomes "even though I desperately want not to put people into gas chambers it's better if I'm the concentration camp director because I can reduce the number of people we put into the gas chambers by manipulating spreadsheets behind the scenes." You can justify that to yourself, maybe. I would strongly advise reading some history before going down that road. You and your descendants have to live with that forever.

flkfsjklfdslkj2• 1 year ago

If a shark was eating me, and I have the choice at almost any time to immediately vacate the vicinity of the shark, I'm probably going to just leave. I've had jobs, early in my career, where I figuratively punched the shark instead. The shark won.

wiether• 1 year ago

Except that your example is not reflective of the situation.

The right example should be: you are enjoying surfing, then a shark arrives and constantly try to eat you.

Now you either keep surfing, at the risk of being eaten or simply hurt by the shark, or you just take your board and go back home.

Either way, your surfing session is ruined.

ugh123• 1 year ago

I can think of cases where new employers clearly act without integrity and that may make certain employees uneasy about being asked to do things that may be unethical.

flkfsjklfdslkj2• 1 year ago

Honest question - have you ever worked somewhere where people above you in the food chain have made decisions you consider bad or unacceptable?

If not, it may not be clear that those above you are ultimately going to win any disagreement. If you can't change their mind, there really isn't anything you can do, except limit any damage to your repuation for your next role (ie, leave before the s*it hits the fan).

The other effect, explained so well in the short book "The Power of the Powerless", is that the idea of using your increasing clout and power as you rise through an organisation to make changes for the better is largely a fallacy. Paradoxically, the higher up you go, the less freedom you have to use that clout and power.

dreamcompiler• 1 year ago

Congress could stop all this nonsense if they wanted to. The congressional leadership just doesn't want to.

And in this context it's reins not reigns.

SpicyLemonZest3• 1 year ago

It's just not an option in most leadership positions. When news comes down that the NSF budget is likely to be cut 55%, being the director of the NSF means deciding how that 55% cut is allocated. Your subordinates need advice on how to make funding decisions, and guarantees that you'll preserve funding for X and Y and Z which are particularly important. And once you start offering such advice and guarantees, you're an active participant in the cuts, no matter how much you personally wish they hadn't happened.

yodsanklai2• 1 year ago

Most people just don't make waves and cooperate. The ones who resign at least have principles.

pigeons• 1 year ago

If you stay it then becomes your job to do things you disagree with, even if you are attempting to have some mitigating effect.

standardUser2• 1 year ago

Or, find a new job that pays better and enjoy your life working for somehow you don't acutely hate. Sounds like all upside to me.

refurb6• 1 year ago

Exactly.

I don’t understand the emotional attachment to a specific job or organization. I could see if it’s something you built (but then hopefully you call the shots), but otherwise it’s a agreement between two parties and if it doesn’t work for me, I’ll thank you for the time so far and leave without ever looking back.

People make their lives far more complex than need be. There isn’t one job you can work or do what you want to do. There are many. Go somewhere else.

anigbrowl• 1 year ago

By resigning you take the initiative, control the timing, and can put out a statement of what the problem is. If you don't resign and refuse to play along with unethical/illegal directives, you get fired and unethical people who issued the directives tell a story about how you're a saboteur or something. Whoever gets their story out first is likely to set the tone for subsequent public debate.

You might be overestiamting how much 'clout and power' people in public life have. Few of them are known outside of their specialty field, so they really don't have much clout. And their power is quite limited; you may have noticed that multiple inspector generals (who are legally independent of the executive branch) were fired early in the administration. Several of them went to court and have obtained judgments that their firings were illegal, but the damage is already done.

matheusmoreira• 1 year ago

If you're responsible, things are going to hell and you don't have the means to fix things, your only option is resignation. If you don't, then when things inevitably go to hell, people will blame you for it. By resigning, you're washing your hands of the matter.

dfxm12• 1 year ago

Not everyone has such strong principles, the ability to lead under such different parameters or the wherewithal to deal with the circus that is the current administration.

Reading the tea leaves, this guy has less clout and power then he had assumed and fighting has a different meaning when people are threatened with getting disappeared to El Salvador.

Maybe he might also have something else lined up.

watwut6• 1 year ago

Leaving is better then becomeming co-guilty. They cant stop this process pushed hard from the top and they can barely slow it down. They can stay and become morally and legaly compromises or go.

You wont win this fight from inside Trump administration. You can become colaborant or not.

rsynnott• 1 year ago

I mean, one might take the view, and one might be right, that these organisations are at this point FUBAR. There might be something to be said for taking a few years out and potentially coming back when Musk, Trump et al have been dislodged.

AndyMcConachie• 1 year ago

You can't fight the system from within it.

cozzyd2• 1 year ago

He was already obeying in advance before DOGE got there, but I guess that wasn't enough. I fear very bad news is coming.

strangeloops85• 1 year ago

I have to wonder what DOGE (including the alleged wunderkind Farritor that all the SV VCs were hailing) is planning for NSF. It’s amazing the arrogance of these people, to walk in and just do “hulk smash” on decades of hard work, infrastructure and institutional capacity.

warkdarrior3• 1 year ago

It's fairly straightforward really. Academics will work on whatever grant topics are available, most will do anything for money, so expect lots of grants on topics directly benefiting X.ai, Tesla, Neuralink, or SpaceX.

bananapub• 1 year ago

Pretty distressing at how there’s basically zero pushback from the American elites at the destruction of all strategic American advantages and only ineffective pushback from the public.

There will be entire genres of books written about how America just said “eh” to being gutted by a bunch of rich psychopaths.

jajko• 1 year ago

With Brexit Brits got exactly what was promised, they just didn't realize what that promise actually meant and very few are happy about it these days.

This is next level of "I'll deliver anyway, I know what you wanted" while fucking it up spectacularly. If only all of our pensions wouldn't be now siphoned to those few with advanced government access I would be laughing a bit more.

mike_hearn• 1 year ago

They did not get what was promised. They were promised large reductions in immigration, instead the Johnson government raised immigration levels to never before seen heights. Brexit enabled them to have lowered it to whatever level they wanted, but the Conservatives preferred to self destruct than compromise with the voters on mass immigration.

hedora• 1 year ago

The market’s down what, 10-20%? The dollar’s down 10%. 20-30% of average 401k’s have already been siphoned, and we haven’t even seen the impact of the tariffs or elimination of social security yet.

tonetegeatinst• 1 year ago

Let's be clear, most Americans like paycheck to paycheck and can't afford losing a job or being arrested for saying antigoverment stuff

staunton2• 1 year ago

The starving peasants in <insert any grassroots regime change, peaceful and/or violent> could afford it, right?

jmclnx2• 1 year ago

Lets hope we get to the place were these books will be written. Books are already being banned in the US and some retailers are pulling these books from their selves.

92834092324• 1 year ago

Books will be written but not by the Americans much like the fall of Rome wasn't covered by the Romans.

jacobsenscott• 1 year ago

Well, this is want American Elites want - so they can buy up the pieces at a discount.

AnimalMuppet• 1 year ago

I keep hearing this. But for that to work, the elites have to have a bunch of money available, that didn't lose value when everything fell apart. Well, where are they parking that money right now, that won't lose value when everything else does?

rchaud2• 1 year ago

American elites push back when their tax shelters and uninsured deposits (see Silicon Valley Bank collapse) are at risk. That's their line in the sand.

pyuser583• 1 year ago

The US government has been systematically destroying all the tax shelters.

Switzerland, Cayman Islands, etc now report to the IRS.

jimbokun2• 1 year ago

Two failed impeachment attempts, countless lawsuits, and now the Supreme Court has more or less inoculated Trump from any further prosecution attempts.

The checks and balances have all been exhausted. There are no bullets left in the gun.

square_usual2• 1 year ago

And the one remaining possible check - a literal Supreme Court order - has also been ignored.

mlsu• 1 year ago

Lots of everyday people have a tremendous amount of power. C-suite executives for example.

The concrete example of this is Harvard and some of the big law firms (Jenner & Block and WilmerHale). That is what resistance looks like now.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is an example of an entity that should have resisted, but folded instead.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the C-suite at big US corporations do not quite realize this about their position. They think that it's not their job; either that they keep their head down and the lawyers and politicians will take care of it, or something far worse, that the system has already fallen so may as well try to make concessions and go along to get along.

tootie2• 1 year ago

Checks and balances aside, a plurality of people voted for this. They saw Jan 6 happen. They saw all the lawsuits and criminal charges. They saw the impeachments. And they just want him anyway. It's been debated ad nauseum already and I don't think anyone has given a satisfactory explanation for how he keeps doing this.

ryandrake• 1 year ago

It's been truly amazing how ineffective and half-assed the opposition to this administration has been. I mean, in Trump's recent joint address to Congress, a handful of D's in Congress held up little signs in protest. Little signs! They might as well have shrugged and not done anything. These are the people the other side elected to fight this madness, and they're sitting there on their asses holding up little signs and making frowny faces. If that's all the opposition feels they are capable of doing, they might as well all just resign.

yodsanklai2• 1 year ago

I find it very disappointing that there aren't more public figures speaking on what's happening and calling out Trump's BS and lies. My guess, they are scared of Trump, but also Trump is still popular so they don't want to take a side. The saddest thing is that American people voted for that guy, and that check and balances don't seem to work. So it's not a Trump issue, it's a US problem.

refurb6• 1 year ago

What makes you think the elites aren’t pushing back? Because they aren’t being public about it? “If it’s not on the internet it didn’t happen”?

I know for a fact the CEO of my Fortune 100 company has talked with the administration to share their views on the potential impact. No press release, no public statement. Just a visit to the White House.

If anything, I’d suggest the public silence indicates the lites are either on board or feel their concerns will be addressed.

watwut6• 1 year ago

Trying to get favors for own company or industry is not the same as fighting the administration. That is just dping what Trump loves when you do.

sega_sai• 1 year ago

So he had a chance to say what he thinks of these plans to butcher NSF, but he chose to wash his hands and say "I am deeply grateful to the Presidents for the opportunity to serve our nation. " and so on.

sundarurfriend• 1 year ago

Request to mods: s/NSF/National Science Foundation/ in the title.

wglb• 1 year ago

Requests are more effective if you send email to hn@ycombinator.com as noted in the footer.

92834092324• 1 year ago

And NSF said pending proposals that appeared to violate any of Trump’s executive orders—in particular those banning efforts to increase diversity in the scientific workforce, foster environmental justice, and study the spread of misinformation on social media sites—would be returned for “mitigation.”

Basically don't study how Elon's websites are destroying the fabric of society or how Trump's policies will destroy the environment.

rockemsockem2• 1 year ago

The site formally known as Twitter is destroying the fabric of society, really? Do you hear yourself?

92834092324• 1 year ago

I think social media as a whole is destroying the fabric of society, yes.

bdangubic• 1 year ago

I would question sanity of anyone who questions this… :)

mikeyouse3• 1 year ago

Elon’s one of our most successful and accomplished entrepreneurs and that hellsite broke his brain to the point where he’s posting on there hundreds of times per day and spending hours interacting and vouching for some of the most depraved degenerates online rather than running his world-changing companies. That’s really a bad outcome.

Larrikin• 1 year ago

This is probably a bad faith sarcastic comment, but for others

Pretending social media holds no influence on society was an argument you could have made when it was just kids getting into fights or shooting each other over Internet beef fifteen years ago.

Now it's an essential target in governments all over the world when it comes to spreading propaganda/disinformation. It has a direct link to effecting change in voters and entire governments innumerable times now.

eli_gottlieb3• 1 year ago

Oh, it's a good deal worse than that. The NSF actually has a statutory mandate to ask for those Broader Impact sections; Congress would have to pass a law to stop it. So now the people applying for grants need to include, by law, a section that, by policy, will get the grant application returned for editing and "mitigation", while the Administration is also ordering, again without Congressional authority, that one out of every two dollars spent at the NSF be cut.

The NSF doesn't even cost that much money to run. They're doing this counterproductively and, as far as I can tell, for no good reason at all.

92834092324• 1 year ago

while the Administration is also ordering, again without Congressional authority

Trump is doing a lot of illegal things. Like, A LOT of illegal things, but if you read the article they specifically said that Trump officials said they were only going to ask for Congress for 55% of the current budget in the next years budget cycle so they are actually doing this one correctly.

AcerbicZero3• 1 year ago

I like to save my resignations for the whole "you can't fire me, I quit" part - when the fall is all thats left, it matters a great deal.

pizzafeelsright• 1 year ago

Anonymous. May have. That appear. Knowledgeable source.

Guessing or mind reading passes as journalism and that's frustrating.

What do we know? Budget cut and resignation.

mulmen• 1 year ago

I have no problem with such claims. It comes down to who says they have the sources and how often they have been right in the past. When Rudy Giuliani says “I have evidence but I can’t show it to you” you can be certain he is lying. When Jeffrey Goldberg says he was texted war plans you can believe him. In this case you can click on the author’s name and review reports from the past and see how those played out.

NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

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