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US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

(www.bbc.com)
763 points tartoran | 3 comments | 23 Oct 25 14:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mikeyouse ◴[23 Oct 25 14:35 UTC] No.45682307[source]▶
> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law".

We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive branch departments, and the President can fire them all without consequence or oversight, then it turns out there is no law.

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skizm ◴[23 Oct 25 14:52 UTC] No.45682511[source]▶
> it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch

There are plenty of laws being ignored. Tariffs being the most obvious.

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selectodude ◴[23 Oct 25 15:16 UTC] No.45682818[source]▶
Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
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cheema33 ◴[23 Oct 25 15:21 UTC] No.45682889[source]▶
> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!

I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

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lotsofpulp ◴[23 Oct 25 15:28 UTC] No.45682981{3}[source]▶
How do you mitigate when 2/3rd of voters support, at least tacitly, the lawlessness?
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1. bilekas ◴[23 Oct 25 15:48 UTC] No.45683244{4}[source]▶
I don't know exactly which support level you mean but https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker would paint a different picture. That said, who knows how valid even these numbers are.
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2. parineum ◴[23 Oct 25 16:09 UTC] No.45683540[source]▶
The actual support that matters is people's approval of the people they can vote for, ie, their own senators and congresspeople, which people (unsurprisingly, since they were elected) have a positive approval rating of.

> By more than two-to-one (56% to 26%), Americans say their local elected officials are doing a good job.[0]

Executive power is unchecked because people approve of their representatives not checking executive power (when it's their executive in power).

You can certainly argue that it's a matter of scale and "this time it's different" but it's always different and executive overreach is ever increasing. Trump is setting expectations for the next president, no matter which party they come from.

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/how-american...

3. deathanatos ◴[23 Oct 25 16:22 UTC] No.45683726[source]▶
They're likely referencing that 2/3rds of voters either explicitly voted for Trump (≈31.9%), or implicitly support the result of the election by having not voted at all (≈35.9%). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...)