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'I think about this every day': MSNBC's Rachel Maddow warns of ‘scary, dystopian’ DOJ move
(www.rawstory.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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How do all these resignations not just completely help this administration do whatever the hell they want? If everyone that disagrees with them just resigns, the only people left will just be a bunch of ring kissers. Are they just depending on the bad publicity from so many resignations to do the work instead? Is there something I'm missing?
To some degree, it slows them down. The top layer of management that has day to day authority for things like approving accounts for system access, having signing authority for anything, knowing how to find the things they want to kill, etc.
Appointees can often legally do these things as well, but for many things involving money, it takes extra steps that appointees don't usually do to avoid liability.
Liability is the key here.
If someone carries out an illegal order, then they are subject to the consequences. The Nazis didn't have to commit human rights violations - they "followed illegal orders" which was not a valid defense. The consequences may have been forced resignation or execution, but if you carried out the human rights abuse to avoid execution, fat lot of good it did since they ended up executed anyway.
Welcome to a core aspect of the lawsuits so far and under whose legal authority contracts can be canceled.
It's not a liability issue, it's about details of under what legal authority based on job roles things can happen, and who is or isn't around to exercise those authorities.
A contracting officer doesn't spring from the head of Zeus fully grown and convered in the armor of niche personal liability insurance. They are legally required to take specific trainings before they can have signing authority. That's the law... Today at least. And the GOP has struggled with it because thinking and details are hard for them.
They will do whatever they want. Probably just fire all the Contracting Officers. Then invalidate the contracts and refuse payment. Then buy everything under some emergency authority and have the agency head approve everything.
That's not how any of this works. The contracts are with the individual people, listed by name. They assumed they could do what you said, and the law proved them, and you, wrong.
Obviously that's not how it works legally, but they are blatantly telling judges they won't listen to them. So I don't have a lot of faith in past practices and CFR protecting us.