On Friday, president Donald Trump had signed an Executive Order, Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, directing severe cuts to IMLS, which provides resources to museums and libraries in all 50 states and territories, calling for it to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” within seven days. Staff had already been reduced, said the employee, due to steps like the termination of probationary employees.
Word quickly got out Thursday morning on a whistleblowers’ channel on Reddit. “The Institute of Museum and Library Services is being raided by DOGE and the new Acting Director (also somehow DepSec of Labor) Keith Sonderling with the express intent to shut it down,” wrote one anonymous poster. “Sonderling was sworn-in in the lobby of the office building and they are proceeding with quickly and quietly dismantling the agency. There are Department of Homeland Security personnel present—to bully a bunch of civil servants who administer grants to museums and libraries.”
so, not at all, then? because this shit has to get through congress first?
The way they’re gutting these agencies they aren’t able to fufill their congressional appointed duties, so they’re already breaking the law, but the courts are slow and seem non-plussed and congress has been coopted.
It’s CYA boilerplate for breaking the law. Never have I sent a work email that needed to say “as long as it is consistent with the law” because that is already assumed.