Trump's firing of the U.S. government archivist is far worse than it might seem
114 comments
·February 13, 2025anonzzzies
gregates
It's very bad. The constitutional rule of law has been suspended, and the state has been captured by hostile interests. The complete abdication of responsibility of the part of Republicans in Congress has made this possible.
The judicial branch is still active and is issuing ruling after ruling that what Trump & Musk are doing is illegal, but it remains to be seen what force that has.
At some point this has to come down to the people. When does it become clear that the looting of the state needs to be stopped at all costs? The fear is Americans are overall too wealthy and comfortable, and too compromised by propaganda, to risk anything to stop it.
It may be the best we can hope for that a Democratic wave election is still possible in 2026, at which point we can begin to undo the damage and try to prevent a reoccurrence. That's an optimistic outlook.
zapkyeskrill
There was an opportunity after his first term and nothing came of it. His actions were indicative enough and yet he's back again. People are asleep at the wheel and won't wake up until they crash, at which point it's usually too late. And if by some miracle they survive without being severely handicapped for the rest of their life they don't learn and repeat the mistake a few years down the line!
pas
The slow system was not able to do shit in 4 years.
Not to mention that democracy (control by the people) itself is merely an empty label, like "control of the means of production", because people are also controlled (influenced to a great degree) by many things.
In this case, it seems, the neoreactionary movement convinced a critical mass of people.
Even though Trump's approval rating is the lowest of all presidents, and will likely continue to drop, but will that be enough to get an anti-Trump supermajority after the midterms? (Unlikely.)
ifyoubuildit
"...and the state has been captured by hostile interests."
I'm not going to claim what he's doing is all good (though I find it hard to be upset by an attempt to make the federal government smaller). There's certainly a chance this all goes poorly.
But when you say hostile, to whom do you mean? A majority approve of what he's doing according to this recent poll:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/09/cbs-...
QuantumGood
A majority of those who say "more please" when receiving propaganda "agree" with it. The interests of those receiving cover for their actions via that propaganda are not related to the interests of those being deceived.
darkhorse222
Trump and Elon are purposefully deconstructing the government offices that would regulate their business. Via whatever false promises and claims they made to the public, the net effect is that private corporate owners are dictating the law. If that's not regulatory capture I don't know what is.
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taurknaut
The centrists are definitely the most scared right now. If they can't trust their institutions what remains of the ideology? Their entire worldview is crumbling right now. Actually having to rummage around for values and some instinct of what power-building even looks like beyond "vote right" is going to involve a lot of the scary soul-searching and mirror-gazing that we normally chronically avoid as it's uncomfortable and unprofitable and we could be all at BRUNCH right now letting the technocrats bomb somewhere while we sip mimosas.
Or maybe we'll just continue to ignore all the contradictions in our society and hope and plan for the best. Who knows. I'm optimistic this could snap us out of the fever dream thats caused complete political deadlock for decades. We are very addicted to a comfortable life and any actual muscle to fight back will have to grow from nothing.
jfengel
For those "centrists" who voted for this... I have nothing positive to say to them. Nor to those "centrists" who didn't vote at all because "both sides are bad".
I've got zero reason to think that this is going to snap anybody out of anything. I strongly suspect that they're busy coming up with rationalizations that this is OK and they should do the same thing next time.
timeon
I do not see many examples in history where accelerationism delivered.
freehorse
That's irrelevant, also "accelerationism" is a vague concept.
Ideologically driven politics are dead when the basis of what made that ideology real rather than just sth inside people's heads is missing. The current centrist ideology that fueled past administration is based on something that existed up to the 90s at most, and disappearing since then. The reason Trump has so much power right now is because the main political opposition (meaning the majority of the democratic party) had/has no touch with reality.
taurknaut
Sorry? What does my post have to do with accelerationism? I am not arguing any of this is good. But what country has ever voted its way out of fascism? I'm sure there's a good example somewhere. Pinochet maybe? Typically the route goes liberal democracy votes in far-right power, far-right power doesn't let "moderates" regain control, far-right state can't find stability and people get fed up with a state that prioritises the needs of thew few over the many, state must be scrapped and rebuilt to restore any semblance of democratic rule. People who think you can moderate between the far-right, liberals, and all the long list of terms to the left of that—basically the entire political spectrum—are typically really bad at fighting the far-right because they take them in good faith. Which is dumb: you can't win an argument with an anti-semite (or other similar movements today) because it was never a rational belief but an enjoyable activity for the people to take out their miserable personal problems with hate and paranoia, and messing with good-faith liberals is funny and enjoyable and easy for miserable people. And who knows what the politicians actually believe when they'll say anything to get elected.
But, I will personally enjoy watching americans discover what america has always been on some level. Institutions are not going to fight for us. Institutions haven't wanted to give us most or the rights we take for granted today. We need to do more than vote if we want democracy to mean more than voting. We need to (gasp) be honest with our neighbors, not avoid uncomfortable topics, and critical of the people we vote for. For a country that prides itself on being a democracy we aren't very good at the fundamentals.
kiwih
Not always one for pithy remarks, but the quote from George Orwell seems prescient here: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
I'm not American, but FTA it sounds like having a politically biased NARA director could have some interesting consequences for the formal parts of all y'all future electoral matters.
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muddi900
I don't think these posts are being flagged in good faith.
jimswhims
I agree, just posted to the same effect before I scrolled down and saw your post ;-)
JohnTHaller
They aren't
alecco
I'm foreign so I don't care much about american politics. I hope HN doesn't become reddit. So I flagged.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hacker News Guidelines
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.addandsubtract
From the article:
> If the U.S. Constitution is the core operating system of the U.S. government, the Archivist of the United States and NARA are the maintainers of the system’s foundational codebase of legal and historical documents.
I would argue the article is very much hacker related. Even as a foreigner, the US deleting government records should worry you, as it affects more than just their egg prices.
csomar
> Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
The potential collapse of American democracy is not interesting?
cebert
[flagged]
insane_dreamer
This about the preservation of government records, definitely not "off-topic".
If you're not interested, just move on to the next article. I skip over 90% of HN articles.
Also, like it or not, American politics have a wide impact worldwide, more so than any other country (by far).
muddi900
Given the upvotes this topic got, it clearly sparks some intellectual curiosity.
But you can see other comments in this thread about how pro-Trump posts, while being rare, are not flagged.
jimswhims
What I'd like to know is: who's flagging legitimate articles like this, and why..?
xtiansimon
This undermines governmental transparency. Whatever else happens, this is a turning point.
bananapub
it really is fascinating to see how many people actually don't believe in the rule of law or functional democracy and were just pretending in the past to get to this moment. this includes apparently all congressional republicans and most of the management of Valley VC companies.
I'm not sure why dang in particular is allowing this to happen to this site.
gitaarik
> it really is fascinating to see how many people actually don't believe in the rule of law or functional democracy and were just pretending in the past to get to this moment.
Well, if it turns out there is major corruption in the government, isn't it understandable that people don't?
Apreche
It’s only fascinating if you weren’t paying attention. Many of us knew this all along.
nabla9
This will be soon [Flagged][Dead] because reasons.
jrflowers
It is interesting that this site uses “avoiding drama” as an excuse to enforce a very strict and ideological political position of cheerleading whoever exercises the most political juice on any given day.
It is also funny that when pressed on it dang insists that this practice of explicit unconditional endorsement of the current administration is both unavoidable and emergent, not something intentionally and methodically foisted upon the users here. The censorship is good and necessary, there are some things that folks that come to HN just should not read about or discuss.
This line of excuses falls completely apart, immediately, when you consider how trivial it would be for this site —made for and by software engineers— to simply have a subforum where this sort of “flagged” political content gets moved to rather than removed. The choice to memory hole anything that remotely stands the chance of being an interesting discussion that doesn’t cheerlead the current administration is very much intentional.
khazhoux
> when you consider how trivial it would be for this site —made for and by software engineers— to simply have a subforum...
That would be quite a cause for celebration. The first-ever subforum here in 17 years!
But regardless, we also didn't have random Biden (pro- or anti-) posts the last 4 years, nor Trump before that, nor Obama.
FAQ:
> What to Submit
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
addandsubtract
HN has several "subforums" already; Show, Ask, Jobs.
SSLy
hckrnews luckily ignores the flaggers and shows this and all related posts
seaal
Is there a reliable way to see all the previous topics that have been flagged? If I remember the title there's always algolia but it would be nice to have the all in one location.
walterbell
Enable "showdead" in your profile.
hn_acker
What annoys me is that posts that are flagged before they get a certain number of upvotes don't show up in Algolia even if you know the title and URL, and have showdead on. There needs to be a show flagged, not just a show dead.
mdhb
And Dang will be here to say that the system is working exactly as expected and there’s zero reason at all to change any controls. It’s perfectly good and normal to have a system where a tiny handful of people can control what others see with zero reasoning or transparency, we should just assume that everyone is acting in good faith all the time.
pesus
And it's already disappeared off the front page. Efficient!
wickedsight
Aaaaand it's gone.
nikanj
[flagged]
computerthings
> If the U.S. Constitution is the core operating system of the U.S. government, the Archivist of the United States and NARA are the maintainers of the system’s foundational codebase of legal and historical documents.
to dismiss anything as "trump bad" is projection of your own argumentation style
nikanj
I’m sorry your country is fucked, but I don’t live there and I come to HN for tech news, not news about US politics
khazhoux
[flagged]
Molitor5901
There is an argument to be made. Hckrnews readers skew left in general, IMO, and it is a forum for news that this technology minded group would find interesting. Those on the left in technology loathe Trump so in a way, it's catering to their wants.
csomar
> If there's gonna be Trump posts on HN, they should at least have some relevance to the usual HN topics.
Or you know, maybe just allow people to vote on it? Oh wait...
jameslk
[flagged]
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insane_dreamer
One of the most dangerous aspects of actions like this is not only the present impact but the future impact, as future presidents from either party might now decide to fill non-political positions (like record keeping) with political "loyalists".
This is extremely detrimental to a democracy.
smy20011
Looks like the beginning of the downfall of America.
wickedsight
We're a long way past that point.
caspper69
Had a talk with a pretty dyed in the wool MAGA supporter about the birthright citizenship situation.
I was like you can’t just knock down a constitutional amendment with an executive order, even if you do agree with it.
He was incredulous. The president has that authority and the courts can’t stop him.
I was like ok, by that logic, a Dem president could sign away free speech and the second amendment the same way.
Still don’t think he could reconcile my point.
vishnugupta
> ..dyed in the wool..
Is consistent with
> .. don’t think he could reconcile my point.
I mean why would expect someone like that to consider a counter argument?
caspper69
Well, he’s an associate and we’ve always been on good terms, diverging politics notwithstanding (I lean more dead center with a healthy distaste for authority and as I said, he’s MAGA), and he knows exactly why I don’t like DJT (I see right through him, because I’ve watched people exactly like him my whole life). Having grown up adjacent to, but not part of, the elite, his type is not uncommon. The ones that had family money, but never actually put any effort in to learn anything or do anything on their own. Or worse, pretending that they were doing big things by talking loudly and showing off, but actually failing at everything they did try. It’s not uncommon. Plus having worked in gaming, I would be downright ashamed if I went bankrupt not just once, but twice running a casino. That’s like an easy-mode business. I mean, come on.
Anyway, I know deep down he got it. But it’s always that moment of realization that I find satisfying.
I did it to eff with his head. It’s that moment when the cognitive dissonance pulls apart and the lucid thought makes a connection, but before the dissonance sets back in. It’s like watching someone melt for a split second.
Yes, I’m an ass.
vishnugupta
I think I somewhat understand what you mean. I used to either debate or argue with such folks. But over the years I’ve realized it’s not a useful exercise. Funnily some of them toned down their hard stance and began to see for themselves how the system works and what’s going on.
yosito
At what point does someone step in to stop Trump from dismantling the US government completely? Or is it already too late?
basementcat
This is the will of the electorate. Even many of the people here on HN (probably more thoughtful than a typical cross section of the population) believe the administration is on the right track.
The best time to stop this was back in November.
jrflowers
> (probably more thoughtful than a typical cross section of the population)
What makes you think that?
basementcat
> What makes you think that?
Perhaps I'm too optimistic.
zimpenfish
Normally when people say things like that, the reasoning is "...because they agree with me."
HDThoreaun
text based social media requires more thought than video based
computerthings
Yes, there are advocates for technocracy on here, and they think they can gain from this. Being "thoughtful" doesn't make any of their specific arguments for it more or less valid. When you have to move away from the thing in question to supposed qualities of the supposed "many" people who are for it, that shows you the thing in question might not be defensible.
rjbwork
It's too late for anyone but congressional Republicans to step up and impeach him and remove him from office.
I wouldn't hold my breath. Buckle up.
mdhb
I would politely suggest that history is absolutely filled with examples of others taking action outside of government in situations like this to prevent a descent into authoritarianism and that people might want to learn from them rather than relying on magical thinking.
rjbwork
My point is that there's no legitimate solution outside of what I've stated. Either guardrails like courts and some level of bureaucracy will hold and they'll spend 4 years thrashing against those guardrails, still doing a ton of damage in the mean time, or they'll simply enact their will a la Jackson's challenge to the courts and we'll have a very different government and country at the end of those 4 years.
Nothing I said relies on magical thinking. I personally don't think there's any help coming. This administration has a will to power and are going to exercise it. They want to dismantle the government and so they're going to do it. Obviously someone can always take illegal or unprecedented action to deal with the situation, but not mentioning that fact doesn't mean someone is engaging in magical thinking.
wickedsight
My gut says that won't do much. Through (media) manipulation, this has buried itself into American culture. Trump is just the face of something that runs much, much deeper into all levels of US politics and society and can't be stopped by 'simple' acts of civil disobedience.
Since big companies like FAANG/OpenAI/Twitter etc. can control the information that 99% of people see (and seem to support the current leadership), it's almost impossible to get objective information if they don't want it out there.
pesus
Not just that, it's the foundation of the entire US.
null
xnx
Fox News could stop this tomorrow. The sway they have over their viewers is near absolute.
HDThoreaun
Fox news was late to board the trump train. They tried to get him to lose the primaries twice. Trump isnt beholden to fox
4ndrewl
From the outside it looks like he's operating as a late-medieval King, theatrically issuing decrees whilst his courtiers are just going around picking fights.
I don't really understand what the point of the houses are now, a fig leaf I guess? I suppose that in 5 years time he'll just pass an executive order saying there's a clear and present danger to democracy by having elections and that will be that.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
"Christians, get out and vote. Just this time! You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians!" July 27, 2024.
fastasucan
At what point? During the election.
jltsiren
Everyone with the power and legitimacy to act is already involved in whatever the administration is doing. Apart from a violent coup or a revolution (which could easily lead to a civil war), nothing can really stop this before the next elections. This is what Americans voted for in elections that were generally fair and legitimate.
And eventually, when the dust settles, it might be a good idea to rewrite the Constitution. To have more effective checks and balances and a less centralized executive branch.
cbg0
It's a little naive to think this is just Trump doing it, the people around him are all on board with what's going on, they're not "just doing their jobs".
federiconafria
When something like this comes up I remember CGP Grey's video "Rules for Rulers".
nine_zeros
Too late. There will be devastation in ways we haven't imagined.
In the delusion of GDP and wealth, Americans have completely forgotten their own capacity of destruction. This is the same country that used humans as legal property, went through many booms/busts, caused people and businesses to fail, destroyed wild ecosystems, destroyed industrial production, destroyed housing
and lastly, were completely ok with electing a convicted despicable human as their president.
America is 100% self deserving of an implosion. And Trump + spineless Congress + Republican supreme Court is enough to cause significant damage. It is too late.
gitaarik
[flagged]
rsynnott
> Well isn't this what most people voted on?
... No? The US still has a constitution, unexcited though the courts seem about enforcing it. If people wanted to get rid of that, they'd vote in state governments who said they wanted to get rid of the constitution, and do a constitutional convention. Barring that, no, most people in the US probably didn't vote for a sort of wonky dictatorship.
defrost
> Well isn't this what most people voted on?
Strictly speaking, no.
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president.
Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters didn't vote for Trump.
Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or otherwise disenfranchised.
Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that all of them voted to fire the chief government records keeper; like Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
anon7000
Yep. I mean Trump lied throughout his campaign, saying Project 2025 had nothing to do with him or his eventual policy. What if you were on the fence, and decided to vote for him after he distanced himself from that crazy religious establishment playbook? That person didn’t vote for this to be happen (even though the con was fucking obvious in the moment.)
Do his voters really want to loose Obamacare, Medicaid, social security, food stamps, whatever? No, of course not. Next to no one is interested in cutting a program that personally benefits them.
Though, we can’t forget the troll voters who are in it to own the libs because they’re upset over identity politics and cancel culture, and Elon seems cool to them. I guess they’re happy now, owning the libs, thinking they voted for this, but they’re really just owning themselves after a company or bank fucks them over when consumer protection is abolished. The incentives are just too strong for companies to absolutely screw everyone they can, so it will happen without question.
ifyoubuildit
Wouldn't it be assumed that "what most people voted on" would have eligible voters _who actually voted_ as the denominator?
Also, to this:
> many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
How many folks do you think ever have any real idea what they're voting for?
benmmurphy
It’s weird the archivist has no idea why she might have been fired. From Trump’s POV it looked like the NARA conspired with parts of the last executive to create the documents case against him. This might be false but even if it’s false she must be aware that this would be Trump’s reasoning. Ah. I misread she said she was provided with no cause instead of she not knowing the cause.
Everything that guy does is far worse than it might seem; wonder why no-one seems to care/do something as it's clear (and always was BECAUSE HE SAID SO before and during the elections) that normal procedures are not going to work. You would think if this was reversed, the right would be 'slightly more vocal' (and not only vocal). Or maybe it's just 'coloured' news (I am not in the US), but these things are happening and people are still thinking it's a good thing 'nice and forceful' or whatnot.
Anyway, scary when seen from across the pond, but I really don't know what's real and what's not. In my defence; I have US friends who tell me it's every bit as real and scary as the news tells it. They are, of course, not trump voters nor extremist left/right.