Well, now! 3-2-1 YER OUT!!! A federal judge ruled against the two above in favor of USAID and it’s about time! Yesterday Maryland District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that Elon and DOGe’s efforts to dismantle USAID were likely “unconstitutional “ “in multiple ways”.
In a nearly 70-page filing, he responded to a suit from several employees at USAID, which saw its workforce decimated by a whopping 98% as a part of the tRump’s administration efforts to eliminate the international aid agency. I hope this happened fast enough. His order specifically named Musk-melon and DOGe personally – the first to do so for the shadowy head of the amorphous organization. Chuang wrote that he agreed with the plaintiffs that DOGe had violated the “separation of powers clause” because its actions to shutter USAID “contravene congressional authority relating to the establishment of an agency.” Judge Chuang did not restore everything, though. The order did enjoin Musk and DOGE from ordering additional terminations of employees, contracts, and grants, as well as efforts to destroy records at USAID or its website. But still, ooooof!
So now DOGe and Elon have been told: “hell, NO” in regards to most of the actions they took. The question to follow is whether or not they can get the agency back up and going. We are already losing people in poorer countries overseas due to hunger and disease. Will they be able to get the *money* back they need? Will they be able to get the overseas people back up and running? I don’t know how many of them have come back already and how many chose to stay. I can hope some people stayed, so they’re already waiting to get going again.
Will we be able to block other countries trying to take over? Will USAID be able to *stay* going? I’m afraid for them. It could very well be a back-and-forth in the courts all the way up to the Supreme Court and we *know* they’re likely to choose to close it again. They belong to the Mango Mandarin, after all. We need to do something *now* before it’s too late.
This is near and dear to my heart. I know people who have been missionaries. After the stories I’ve been told, well, we are needed overseas. I’m in no position to be able to go. If this had happened years ago, I might have been able to work with them, but not now. We really do need to get our soft power back. For one thing, if E-yawn and DOGe had bothered to really LOOK at what it does, they might have not been so hasty about closing it. But they never do that, as we well know. They just hack and slice. Shrink the federal government, okay, I can see that, even if I don’t want to see it. But this indiscriminate cutting just sticks in my throat. I have major problems with Muskrat and DOGe but that’s another subject on its own.
USAID was doing *good* things, really good things. I’ve only seen a few listed like the special peanut butter for kids who are so starved they can’t find food. We were helping with another Ebola outbreak, and we need to know that because it could come over here. We were helping with AIDS medications. We were HELPING. Not only did that do well for what I’ve listed, it made the US look good!
This just pisses me off. Will USAID be able to do anything at all? Or do they have to wait through appeals to see if they can actually restart? Who knows. And in the meantime I get more and more annoyed. More people need to be annoyed by this. Grassroots organizing, anyone?
*****And now, please read a very special request from our awesome boss******
Zoomers, if you can hunt through the sofa cushions for spare change, we could use it. We are in month five of depressed traffic while a depressed nation tunes out. I have every belief that the disenchanted will tune back in at some point and return to the fight, but until that happens, the bills keep coming and we need help. Thank you. Ursula
N.B. Decimate means, strictly, to reduce by 10%. I know that the word is often used instead of the word devastate. That is an error.
While you’re strictly correct, virtually no one has used the word in its strictest sense in decades. It’s literally like “literally” (even the Oxford English Dictionary–generally conceded to be THE dictionary of authority–adopted the more common definition of “literally” to its hallowed pages). Words evolve. For instance, did you know the word “bimbo” originally meant a “dumb man?” And it largely derived from the Italian word “bambino,” meaning “baby” or “small child?” That was a little more than a century ago. But within as little as a decade, the word’s meaning shifted to apply to dumb (or, seemingly intellectually-challenged) women? And, by the 1990s, an episode of “Seinfeld” had Jerry describe a MALE character as a “mimbo–a male bimbo” (now, the more commonly applied term is “himbo”).
To use an even more interesting change, how about “nice?” It originally meant “simple” or “foolish” or “ignorant” (the word actually derives from the Latin “nescius” meaning “ignorant” or “not knowing”). That was its meaning from its earliest English usage around the 1300s or so but, by the 1700s, the word had shifted to its more common usage of meaning “pleasant” or “friendly.”
Yes, USAID was doing a lot of good for a lot of people. In Musk’s eyes those people do not matter. To him, the only people that matter are himself, Donald, and perhaps the other oligarchs. If his don’t affect them, it doesn’t matter in his eyes. I just hope and pray like you that there enough judges willing to stop this horror show and that these agencies can be restored to some semblance of normalcy.
thanks Susan,
I feel shock, sadness and shame every time I think of what was done. … on many fronts. Shutting down USAID, they claim religion making a grand display of prayer like the hypocrites Jesus spoke of Mt 6, and make pretenses of external rituals and observances, but nothing that reflects a heart of repentance and a love for what is Godly. Every day, the people of the world blaspheme the Lord’s name because of them. Not to even mention how they have bismerched the name of our Nation.
In John 8:42-47, Jesus was once again confronting the Pharasees about their hypocrisy. He goes on to say they can’t understand him because they follow their father…the devil. He goes on to describe the devil as a “murderer and liar from the beginning, and when he speaks lies, he speaks his native language for there is no truth in him.” Now that certainly describes Trump and his cult. These folks are liars and non believers. They don’t appear to even recognize death is waiting somewhere on the road. Jesus was reported to also ask: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? We are a shallow, greedy, pleasure seeking nation…we are not a true believing nation. The quote: In God We Trust, printed on our money, is just another lie. Since we are a nation of hypocritical liars, I guess it follows we then elect pathological lying hypocrites to power. As Jackson Brown sang long ago…we are running on empty.
I personally know someone who works under that umbrella in the UNC school of Public Health who has had to lay off almost a hundred people. She’s been struggling since none of those deserved to be fired.
Bill Bryson writes funny and informative books. He authored one about the evolution of the english language. I read it some time ago. I think it’s called Mother Tongue. They made a movie of his book, A Walk In The Woods, with Nick Nolte and Robert Redford. It’s a hoot. It’s about he and an old school buddy tackling the Appalachian trail.