> how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations,

Isn’t this ignoring the elephant in power right now ?

Why project this current reality into the future? It’s right here

Systems and laws only exist if people are willing to enforce them. If the majority of the population support someone disregarding it all, laws on paper are fairly worthless.

You don't really. I think that's the big worry.

The way to fix it is to change the constitution (for example [1], although bigger changes are probably needed, IMHO anyway, but this is a good start) but the constitution is so hard to change that this is not really feasible in the short to medium term. And making it easier to change the constitution is a catch-22.

And while the Democratic party is obviously tons better than the Republican party, that's only because the Republican party is so awful. The Dems seem to have only tepid interest to fix this at best.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/opinion/trump-constitutio...

> One open question I have is: how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations, democratic or republican, from exercising unilateral power at such scale?

Well, it’s quite simple. If a Democratic president does happen to get elected again (hard to imagine happening in my lifetime), SCOTUS will clam up and reverse most of these little executive power loopholes. Recall how Biden didn’t have the authority to order the Department of Education to forgive student loans? But now Posse Comitatus is just, like, a suggestion.

How you keep a politician or political party afraid in any arbitrary democratic country? You threaten them with possibility of not being re-elected. That is practically the only non-violent way.

Now the question applied to USA would be - can citizens of USA elect an alternative politician or party? They can't, due to medieval first past the post system. And this is really your answer - until you keep the election system as is, you will get the same politicians or worse. Because they are not afraid anymore.

Consider, when has a Democrat politician done this at any level or has talked about doing it? A democratic congress had gotten in Biden's way on really arcane technicalities.

Trump is more or less doing what he campaigned on and has a history of doing. At a minimum, don't vote for anyone involved worth supporting his admin. Don't vote for anyone with the same major donors (you can look up donors on open secrets), or the same project 2025/federalist background. Pay attention to your primary elections.

The simplest way to keep subsequent admins from doing this is to not vote R.

> One open question I have is: how do we keep the temptation at bay for subsequent administrations, democratic or republican, from exercising unilateral power at such scale

You can’t lol. This type of shit is the will of the people, Half of whom, remind you, have below average IQ.

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This seems to grant institutions permission to share PII for purpose of an audit, not compel them to do so.

No, plenty of political posts don't get flagged. However on Hacker News posts critical of the current US administration are very often flagged. In fact, there's two examples right now on the Active threads page; https://news.ycombinator.com/active

If the situation looks bad for the Trump admin then the comments will deservedly lambast his actions. But that's incendiary politics so flagged, not for this website etc.

If the situation looks ambiguous for the Trump admin then we're allowed to discuss it because then the discussion is nice and calm and centrist and technocratic.

That's the vibe I'm getting these days.

Seeing now multiple television personalities ran off air does give a certain "Hollywood Blacklist" vibe

It still is. The 'enemy' died, the (manufactured) fear didn't.

You’re getting downvoted but it’s true. If you don’t mourn who the state deems you to mourn your suspicious and thousands of people will attempt to get you fired.

If you criticize the current government, you’re an agitator.

If you think something that is in opposition to the current administration, your a socialist commie

During the Cold War the Russians were quite happy to fund protests everywhere especially on college campuses which are easy targets. But that was a super power influencing things.

This time around its this weird micro nation with 300K people that has got it into its head, it can exert global influence by throwing oil money around. But this is not the football world cup. Historically there are really no examples of such small countries exerting so much influence before it is all shut down by larger powers.

Expect ofcourse with the Vatican. But that is centralized religion with "citizenship" across borders. Qatar meanwhile barely has enough people to defend a town, and already experienced a backlash in 2017 with a blockade. This is the second round. Watch them retreat back to sports by the end of the decade.

Small countries and Geopolitical Power are not compatible.

Or McCarthy's America.

Both of those people engaged in summarily executing hundreds of thousands of people for their political views. We aren't there yet.

It is hard because they might be teaching global warming, or biology realities like intersex people exiting, or slavery was bad and it happened in the US, is seen as political by the some who are arguing to keep politics out of the classroom.

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> 150 out of 45,000+ is just over 0.3%.... not a big number.

It's a big deal when it's targeted. It basically means that "you may be in the next 0.3%":

> One campus graduate student, who received the message and was provided anonymity due to fears of retaliation, claimed the release targeted Muslim and Arab individuals who had previously expressed support for Palestine.

Harvard and Columbia are both learning that giving in to the current administration's demands doesn't actually get them off your back, it actually emboldens them to demand even more.

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