"This morning, Ukraine’s military was forced to withdraw from Avdiivka after Ukrainian soldiers had to ration ammunition due to dwindling supplies as a result of congressional inaction, resulting in Russia’s first notable gains in months," the White House statement said.
    • Lung@lemmy.world
      31·
      9 months ago

      The article math linked lays it out but it’s always the same formula. Someone declares an emergency (like Blinken just did for Israel) and then just goes ahead and appropriates the funds

      But broadly, presidents may issue executive orders for just about anything. The way this works is congress reviews them after the fact, and new presidents tend to review them when they come into office

      Read the wiki page on Executive Orders, history, and constitutionality if you think I’m lying. And yes, Trump even declared an emergency and took privilege to build the wall in recent memory. But there’s been literally wars, desegregation, ordering all mined gold to be given to the treasury… by executive order

      The big picture is that American presidents have extremely broad powers and the only real recourse is impeachment. This is generally a good thing, it makes the government tremendously more efficient

      The other big picture is that the Pentagon refuses to explain where they use 1-2 trillion dollars per year. This is dark money that runs the world, and that’s not a secret. They don’t pass audits, and they barely try. So most of the country’s money is used for military spending, and frankly it’s hard to imagine they can’t find some cash for key nato borders