I mean you could impeach him again. But that's doesn't really do anything other than wave a finger at him and says "Naughty naughty".
Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected office again after being impeached a few times during his previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his impeachment to force him out of office and that requires a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress defending his actions that he would still be president. I mean he's already a convicted criminal.
That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he already proved that nothing can stop him.
Our elected officials don't have any direct power over government agencies (ministerstyre), they create laws that the agencies need to follow. Then we have independent bodies that can investigate and remove bureaucrats that don't follow the law.
Now are there any cracks in this system? Probably. But we dont have a president with unlimited power than can only be checked by congress at this point.
Eh, they've already seen that with the balkans and eastern bloc countries in the 80-90s. You're gonna get a bunch of Orbàn-like small time dictators on every state that once on a while have to bow to the requests of a central-government more interested in its own political intrigues than governing anything.
US Doomers are expecting something similar to the Civil War movie in the next few years, the reality will be more similar to "The Lives Of Others".
And I say that as a fellow US citizen that has born witness to the abuses of the current bureaucracy.
Good luck with that.
By flagrantly violating the laws and constitution they are doing more than dismantle the bureaucracy. They are removing the very protections that exist to protect you from the petty bureaucrats that you disdain. A government as large as ours cannot function without a bureaucracy, and there is no guarantee the current one's replacement will be as free from corruption, sycophancy, and pettiness as our current one (despite its flaws).
In fact there is ample evidence the new bureaucracy they are creating has just one goal - to do whatever their dear leader asks of them. Try to criticize Nazi rhetoric on X and see how long you last. Now imagine the apparatus of government with the same bent. Only when governments "ban" you they have ways of making you disappear.
You think yourself safe. But everyone is guilty of something. And under a government unrestrained by the rule of law there is nothing to protect you should someone in power take offense. And someone will take offense eventually. Maybe you cut some official's ex-wife's former roommate's cousin in traffic. Or maybe you just say something one day that contradicts what the dear leader says the next.
What does a mixed-truth Snopes article about a dumb law proposed in Tennessee have to do with anything? The law sounds dumb and I would be wary of anyone proposing or voting for such a law, but I’m not a citizen of Tennessee so ???
I likely disagree with a lot of your political opinions, but I want nothing bad to happen to you. If you were my coworker or we encountered each other in public, I would treat you with respect unless you disrespected me.
I see lots of changes to the extent that we will no longer “celebrate” or subsidize LGTBQ+ or DEI issues with public funds. That seems fair to me, I don’t expect public funds to be used to celebrate my lifestyle and sexual preferences. I think that flying an LGTBQ flag over an US Embassy in another country where the citizens overwhelmingly oppose such ideas, does not further any American interest. It just makes working with such countries more difficult.
I also don’t believe in equity in the sense of discriminating against people now for wrongs of the past. I believe strongly in equality and in merit based opportunity that is not in any way tied to immutable characteristics.
I do not see any action that the government has taken as endangering anyone. I would vocally oppose any policy that I thought would harm someone (except I don’t think ending a benefit is a harm in this context).
> I do not see any action that the government has taken as endangering anyone
I’m curious how you view the executive order that moves transgender women into men’s prisons. To me those prisoners are now in a danger they were not previously.
But female prisoners are now at less risk, because they're no longer being forcibly incarcerated with male prisoners, thanks to this executive order. In federal prisons at least.
The process of hosting a transgender woman with a violent prisoner is called v-coding, and it's done in order both to punish the transgender woman and reward the violent prisoner. This has been an unofficial policy on many levels of corrections for decades, and is not new. Firing a few wardens won't fix it, and often complaints are ignored and/or swept under the rug.
If this is something you didn't know, Google it. Don't take my word for it.
I don't doubt this is true. We see many law enforcement abuses of this sort[1] and I want any such abuses investigated and the perpetrators severely punished.
But you are implying that because that might happen, the transgender woman should be left in the women's prison. But that carries its own risks[2] which ALWAYS get left out of these discussions. I do not automatically believe in the sincerity of men, especially those with a history of violence against women, when they arrive at prison and only afterwards declare that they are trans.
The solution to the problem is separate. The executive order could have included language about protecting prisoners from violence but it does not. Can you agree that the executive order increases the danger that person is in?
The executive order could have included all sorts of "remember to do your job" directives to prisons.
I don't agree with the framing of the question. Men's prisons are typically more violent than women's prisons. So from that perspective, statistically the person is in more danger. However if we only look at that, we would transfer everyone to women's prisons.
You are implying but not stating that there is some extraordinary targeting of trans women by prisoners in men's prisons. I don't know if that is true or not but it seems plausible. My argument is that since prisoners are intentionally kept in a defenseless state, that it is the job and moral duty of prison staff to keep prisoners safe from each other, regardless of who the prisoner is. If a specific prisoner is at unusual risk of violence (like a convicted police officer, for example), then I expect that prisons have processes in place for that.
You’re still talking around the issue. You said that you’d object to anything that puts people in danger. You admit this order puts people in danger but immediately pivot to talk about where the responsibility ought to lie for mitigating that danger rather than follow through with your original pledge to OP.
It just makes your original statement look dishonest. You do not object to the order that places people in danger. You and I both know that prisons are terrible for protecting vulnerable populations. “They should, though” is both correct and meaningless to the person being transferred.
I am not talking around the issue; I am just not accepting your framing that moving these people into men's prisons puts them in any danger over and above the danger of being in a prison.
I agree that there are dangers in prisons. But I don't think that prevents us from routine transfers of people between prisons.
I do think that prison officials are responsible for the safety of their prisoners and want them held accountable when they fail to do that, or worse, when they intentionally endanger prisoners.
I can't be more clear than that. I reject your framing.
> I don’t expect public funds to be used to celebrate my lifestyle and sexual preferences
End the child tax credit and extra tax exemptions for being (straight) married then or shut the fuck up because the amount of money going to subsidizing that is much, much, MUCH more than what is spent on LGBTQ+/"woke"/DEI stuff. If you care about the deficit, go for those first.
It's a terrible opinion and free speech means people can call out harmful beliefs and behavior. Society is all about establishing social norms, so it's almost an obligation. You are free to be wrong and ostracized.
Most immediately, all the people and services directly impacted. Then second order effects like the continued collapse of rule of law and related operational aspects like the systematic stripping of cybersecurity layers. Magnified by all this happening in one of the largest countries in the world + with most other countries and their process/people. Ex: Halt of congressionally-approved funding of hospitals, schools, and cyber defense teams, and mass layoffs around the same.
It might be amusing when you are personally comfortable and do not consider the people and processes involved, but basic digging reveals this stuff. I happen to work with people like doctors, first-responders, cyber teams, military, scientists, etc whose communities are in a tailspin. It's quite vivid, and I am confused how this is even a question. The ability of people to get life-saving care is literally being removed as perishable supplies are running out and staff are working pro-bono.
A top misinformation tactic is asymmetric trolling: Ask a simple question to force the responder to spend all their time. It's hard to tell if your question is from naivete, privilege, apathy, a broken media diet, trolling, or what.
Thank you for taking time to write a response in good faith.
I was not trolling; I sincerely believe what I wrote.
I do not believe that anything the federal government does that is time sensitive (social security payments, etc) is being affected.
I believe that termination of programs will require Congressional action.
However I believe that there is a lot that the President is Constitutionally authorized to do, that will limit what agencies do and control how they do it, and that the courts will not be shy to step in if the administration even has the appearance of acting unconstitutionally.
I do not think that we are in any way at risk of dictatorship; I think we are quickly moving away from that since Biden left office.
I respect your opinion, but I disagree in good faith, and my disagreement is neither trolling nor uninformed parroting of social media; it’s informed by my understanding of the Constitution and the structure of government it created.
I hope I am right in my predictions and you are wrong, because I don’t want the outcome that you fear may happen.
You are already wrong - hospital care is impacted, schools are/were shutdown, etc. I think you should ask yourself why you are so wrong and unaware on such basic things, and why you do not value them as much as the people reliant on them.
Please name a school that was shut down as a direct result of any Trump administration executive order. I see lots of hyperbolic news articles speculating about such shutdowns, but I do not see any actual closure.
Also, you’re going to have to be more specific about what hospital care was affected and how it was affected.
If a hospital happens to have a research wing and processing a grant proposal for researchers associated with the hospital takes a little longer than usual, I hardly consider that a crisis.
If you've ever been involved in operating small businesses or NGOs, or even harder, making one, you understand how fragile things are for someone to abruptly rugpull on even a small number of pay periods:
The Head Start schools are pretty hard to miss as having been on blast in the media around notifying layoff notices, closures, etc being only paused last minute due to court orders
A lot of basic domestic + intl'l social programs & safety nets run on state + federal grants, and ironically, that is especially true of the Republican/MAGA preferences of non-gov religious, community chartered, etc independent charities & non-profits. A lot are on shoestring budgets - stressing these further is a terrible idea.
RE:Telework, core operational areas like cybersecurity, especially with the COVID flip 4 years ago, is now telework, and those contracts are canceled. Likewise, more qualified positions are often by special renewing appointments, so those are now failing to renew too. Most American families cannot handle multiple missing payperiods, and thus cannot afford to play chicken with the rich or apathetic on this: they're told they're fired, so even if they haven't resigned, they have to interview. With the purse strings coming into the control of those who the courts are disagreeing with, rent wins: that's part of the point. It's already hard to staff these positions given they're underpaid to beginwith, especially when regional, so this is another self-inflicted wound.
This stuff is not hard to search. Systems are more fragile then they may seem from a comfortable techie background in affluent and otherwise self-sufficient regions. I think it's a fair position to want the US to have little power in the international stage, not use its wealth to save lives, etc, and that's something to vote etc on. But rugpulling essential services in illegal ways and unilaterally breaking society is a different thing, and again, not seeing that is pretty terrible and worth calling out.
My 'deja vu' here is when COVID broke out, and while my extended network was working long hours in labs trying to sequence the virus... others were encouraging people to go to restaurants. I'm actually disinterested in the politics. I just want society to avoid breaking from stupid unforced errors. Pulling the cord on people and processes en masse sounds fun if you do not understand operations and sociopathic if you do.
Do you consider all taxes to be theft? Then yes, your money is being stolen from you. Maybe you should move to a country with no taxes.
On the other hand, most people accept that taxes are necessary in order for the government to provide services. The disagreement is fundamentally over which services are necessary. In considering this, know that keeping other Americans able to work, live, get health care, life in safety, etc, is beneficial for everyone, even you.
I should only move to another country in the same capacity as you for being upset about the size of the government being reduced right now. We all have our political opinions and “you should just move” is a lazy and stupid non-argument to make.
> . We all have our political opinions and “you should just move” is a lazy and stupid non-argument to make.
No, these are not the same, because your position is untenable. I disagree with decisions being made right now; my preferred policy solutions can be accomplished with moderate taxes and legislative solutions.
On the other hand, your preferred solution involves no taxes at all, because you believe that tax is theft, so you want to eliminate all taxes, and that's not how countries work. My response to your unrealistic preferences is an unrealistic proposal; that seems entirely fair to me.
It is, instead, your naive ideas about how to run the government that are lazy and stupid; it's like you haven't studied history or government at all and are clinging to some 13 year old Ayn Rand fan's ideas of libertarian utopia.
Oh, sorry. When I asked "do you think all taxes are theft" and theb you said "yes", I foolishly assumed that you consider taxes to be theft. How irrational of me!
But sure, enjoy your performative intellectual superiority. I'm sure lots of people are impressed.
Ok so now it is getting explicit. So some things you dislike are getting cut, and because that is without due process and at illegal levels, causing excess harm that is serious & irreparable, eg, even deadly in some cases. You approve.
Next: People don't know what they are destroying and what other damage that will cause. Operations are fragile even without mass rug pulling. So that is another level of sociopathy to accept.
These come back to either being unaware or apathetic, which get back to social norms and ostracism.
Just remember how they "ostracized" you for being "wrong" now, keep silent when in enemy territory, and smile when you vote against them next election.
But I will not ostracize you for having a different opinion than me, nor will I downvote you, nor will I attempt to dox you, nor will I demand your posts be censored as “misinformation”, no matter how much I disagree.
I might screenshot something you say and make a meme out of it though :-) And you are free to do the same.
It's worse to be a US citizen? Then why are so many people coming in the US and why are so many people upset about removing the ones that come here illegally? It seems like people should be happy the federal government is giving them free rides away from here if it is so bad ...
Giving up the power to do the one thing you are constitutionally permitted to do, just because it doesn’t work for one particularly teflon-coated individual, is incredibly short-sighted.
Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up on impeachment would cede even more power to the executive branch.
He'll wear an impeachment as a badge of honor. The rule of law is a mostly self-supporting system. When nearly the entire edifice of government stops being concerned with it, the system breaks irreparably. We're looking at nothing less than the fall of the Roman empire in speed run, in my opinion.
I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.
As the economy crashes, proletariat sentiments will change. If trump is unable to get a war going, or it doesn't develop how he expects, the economy will be the obvious narrative. And if they get trump out before midterms, his endorsement isn't the same thing.
> I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.
You're assuming that the founders were actually correct about a power rivalry between the branches producing a system of checks and balances between them.
As it turns out, when the whole team is rowing in the same direction, congress doesn't actually care that they've abdicated power or all responsibility to check the executive. Their personal comfort is not threatened by it, and this particular congress doesn't care about governing well.
Sure, the republic will be destroyed, but in the meantime, they'll extract a lot of value for their paymasters.
Congressmen that had a spine, and refused to do that all got primaried out.
Which is why the less Trumpy republicans should have supported the anti gerrymandering acts at the start of Bidens term. The primary problem only exists because of gerrymandering.
The Senate didn't find guilt last time. If they do find guilt, the office is stripped. I don't think it's happening anytime soon, but the failed impeachment doesn't really speak to the consequences of a successful one.
That's not true, most just relied on him being a former president at the time of impeachment.
McConnell:
> “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty…There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day… There is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict and disqualify former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen. ...The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.”
They'll 25th him before they consider impeachment. Right now Trump is just a useful idiot being puppeteered by the Silicon Valley elite. They got "Just Dance" Vance as VP, so they have a good backup.
All they would really need to do is take the existing Trump "speeches" and present them as the.word salad they are too prove him incapable of serving. That story would viewership so the media would be all over it 24-7. That's one reason Trump is rubber-stamping everything Elon says or does - he knows they have him by the balls.
Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected office again after being impeached a few times during his previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his impeachment to force him out of office and that requires a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress defending his actions that he would still be president. I mean he's already a convicted criminal.
That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he already proved that nothing can stop him.