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.

It’s fascinating to watch, from a distance. If I was a US resident, or worse: US citizen, I’d be terrified.

Fiveeyes resident here, and not quite "terrified", but at least "deeply concerned".

"The rest of the world" will not carry on unscathed if the worse end of the range of possible outcomes for the US happen.

(I'm deeply curious about how fiveeyes intelligence operations with Canada are going right now.)

Your politicians are watching from a distance too, and taking note of what works.

We have a functioning political system, and not nearly as much power concentrated into the hands of a single person.

For now.

Three branches of government, two houses, mix of federal and state powers, checks and balances, an impeachment system, all that stuff?

I think key is not having an executive branch that consists of a single person and/or party.

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.

yes, I've noticed a huge uptick in the right wing party using almost exactly the same language and bullshit moves.

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".

We are

Good luck with that.

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.

So I say to you,

Good luck with that.

> I am now WAY less terrified that the bureaucracy will be weaponized against people whose only crime was to disagree with the party in power.

As a bisexual queer lefty computer programmer I wish I shared that confidence, as does ever queer or trans person I know.

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.

It is the job of prisons to protect prisoners from violence by other prisoners. I strongly support firing wardens that do a poor job of that.

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.

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_ride_(police_brutality)

[2] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/man-posing-as-tran...

> when they arrive at prison and only afterwards declare that they are trans

How often do you think that occurs?

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.

Fuck off transphobe

Responding with insults doesn't help your argument.

I'm not arguing with transphobes lmfao

You don't have an argument, so you resort to insults instead.

> 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.

> End the child tax credit and extra tax exemptions for being (straight) married

Agreed.

...except for that funny little bill making it illegal to vote against Trump's whims: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-tennessee-voting-fel...

This is a direct escalation and weaponization against "people whose only crime was to disagree with the party in power," is it not?

Or have you been so "abused" by the pronoun mafia you can no longer see straight?

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 ???

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.

What exactly is terrible about it other than that you disagree?

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.

You just described the last 4 years for me.

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.

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:

RE:Hospitals, https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-state-department-us...

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.

You’re using so many words to say “these people need your money to live and it’s immoral to take it away from them.”

Let there be no mistake about this — if my hard earned money is being stolen from me and distributed to others, I want that to stop. I don’t care what happens to the people who they are being given to.

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.

Yes. There’s no way around it.

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.

I didn’t mention my preferred solution in any manner.

All the best to you, a person who tries to maintain a facade of rationality and objectivity in HN political discussions. That facade crumbled easily.

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.

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.

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.

> The Senate didn't find guilt last time.

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.”

More quotes with sources:

https://www.justsecurity.org/74725/in-their-own-words-the-43...

It's true in the meaningful, procedural sense, which is obviously what someone would mean with "find guilt".

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.

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.

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.

Trump has already been impeached a couple of times. That definitely isn't happening with a conservative majority in both houses of congress.

Dems should bring up articles of impeachment yet again. It will fail in the house and if it doesn't the senate won't convict. But that's really not the point right now. The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal" and make the republicans defend the behavior.

Waste of time and really achieves nothing other than theatrics. I don't doubt they'll do it though. Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.

> Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.

They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't get legislation to the floor; they can't call investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers. All they can do is make a case against the ruling party. And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them not to be theatrical.

All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for the destruction they are bringing to the country and the world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other levers they can pull.

Why? To what end? How will any of that have any effect in the next two years, at least? Nobody elected Elon or any of the DOGE people.

Yeah. Frankly driving a wedge between Trump and Elon would be the more effective political strategy, since it wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of them to spectacularly fall out, and Trump couldn't care less if DOGE exists or not as long as he's getting praise from the right quarters

It's inevitable that the two will break up, but it'll be after trump has used him to do all the deeply unpopular hacking apart of social safety nets that he wants to do. He's a useful idiot. A very rich useful idiot.

Once Elon has all the passwords, it won't matter what Trump says about him.. He's in forever.

What a convenient scapegoat to have when we eventually feel the ruinous effects of these decisions. "I trusted ELLEN and he couldn't get the job done, THATS why I FIRED him"

Dollars to donuts this goes the other way. Trump isn't known for playing the long game, and Elon (for all his craziness) is incredibly Machiavellian.

E.g. 'Trump was coopted by the deep state, and that's why I couldn't get it done.'

Also convenient once Trump is (a) term limited and more importantly (b) too old to be politically useful anymore.

Also a very valid theory!

Elon is clearly bankrolling Trump, hes his boss. Trump is CEO and the techno oligarchs are his board.

> Nobody elected Elon or any of the DOGE people

Nobody ever votes for the President's cabinet or anyone else they bring in.

The Senate actually does vote on a chunk of the President's cabinet.

The voters on election day don't, which is obviously what the comment was referring to.

I'm not convinced that the democrats (most of them anyway) are actually apposed to what is happening. Both parties seem to have largely the same goals just preferring to use different tactics in order to achieve them.

I love how "both sides are the same" continues to persist, even though Biden did absolutely none of what Trump has done these last two weeks, either in terms of method or outcome. They truly could not be more different and yet people like you are like theyrethesamepicture.jpg.

You really are deluded if you think these moves are for draining the swamp and to make the nation great again... that's the thinly veiled bullshit they're feeding you, and geez, people like you think they're clever and have got it figured out?!?

It's to consolidate power for the foreseeable future for a bunch of elites, so they can even more freely exploit people like you and make tons more money.

But hey, seems like people like to bend over and get MAGAed harder...

I’m speaking for what others think. This isn’t how you drain the swamp.

> If it costs lives, well so be it.

Remember you said this if/when it's your life on the line.

I have a feeling that, when that time comes, a lot of people will be changing their tune. "I always knew he'd fuck people over, I just didn't think I'd be one of them!"

In case it wasn’t clear, this is me explaining what voters think. Not what I think.

In case anyone needed even more reasons to despise "people in SV".

Nah, heh, nobody needed any additional reasons.

How exactly are Democrats going to do that considering they don't control the House or the Senate? All that's required to block impeachment is a simple majority to kill the resolution. The Republicans control a House majority and can schedule those kill votes whenever they want. They don't need to defend anything, they can just vote to kill the measure.

Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the midterms.

Elections have consequences.

Too simplistic.

Democrats can’t force an impeachment, but they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day, every day.

Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just how authoritarian the US has become.

America is a democracy, and the Trump won the election, and the Republicans won the majority of elections in the House and the Senate, and by virtue of those elections they also control the Judiciary Committee by a wide margin which can block attempts at impeachment. Trump is not going to be impeached less than a month into his term for doing exactly the kind of things he said he was going to do during his campaign. The best bet for Democrats is to focus on winning the midterms. Impeachment is not a serious option.

A lot of politics is purely performative. I’d wager over 50% of presidential candidates in any given election know full well they have no chance of securing the nomination but run anyway to build up their profile for a cabinet position or a future run.

Making a noise today about impeachment would be similar. It would play into a strategy for winning the midterms. It’d generate more headlines about the blatant illegality occurring under our noses, it’d be a stick to beat rivals with come election season. No, there would be no hope of it actually resulting in an impeachment, but that would be beside the point.

Not the point. The point is to signal (to stand against, to protest) that what the current wankers in charge are doing, shredding up what little decency was left in Washington, is not normal, is wrong, and moving the needle one more small notch towards fascism.

From afar, it's grotesque seeing what's happening over there. Perhaps you're too close to see it.

He's following the Project 2025 playbook and during his campaign he specifically claimed he would not be implementing Project 2025.

Democrats were warning that he was lying about his intentions, and that he would in fact implement Project 2025, but that is not equivalent to him campaigning on Project 2025. I think this is an important distinction.

Project 2025 didn't call for closing down USAID, so I don't think that's a relevant concern for this issue.

> they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law

there simply are none

>The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal"

They have been doing that. The issue is that people just look at it all and think "its all political theater"

The only way anything will change is if the ~200m americans who didn't vote actually start to realize that voting matters. Texas could turn blue if all the people in the liberal areas actually voted, which would basically win the election for Democrats.

Okay, another nitpick, but it's not because the majority is _conservative_, is it? If they truly voted from conservative principles, _some_ possible actions of the administration could offend them enough to impeach. It's probably more correct to say that it definitely isn't happening with a loyalist (MAGA) majority?

In the US, "conservative" is synonymous with "Republican" and "Republican" is (so far, at least) synonymous with "MAGA loyalist", so it's really splitting hairs to call out the alleged difference.

I thought one of those synonyms was going to be "spineless". It's amazing how many lines on the sand the fascist has crossed, but despite some Republican noise, in they end they vote to protect their job and its perks (like info about stock movements before they become public, amongst the many other forms of corruption) rather than to defend their principles. But then again, the Vichy Democrats are quiet too, they're too chickenshit to escalate and call out this enemy of the constitution.

I grew up in a "democracy" with rigged elections and decades of one president. From TV we thought "Oh, America is such a better place, the politicians are clean, the cops are honest and can't be bought...". Hah, fucking Hollywood fairytales.

Yep, you're right. When I was a kid during the Obama years, I was even proud of our country. Now I realize that it and the conservatives in it are basically no different to Putin and his followers in Russia, and the liberal opposition party is spineless and feckless at best, complicit at worst. We may well have an autocoup soon, if we haven't already. I hope to be able to leave this country before that point, but until then I can only attend protests, even though they seem ineffective at effecting change. I hate everything.

Republicanism used to mean something. Now it means whatever Trump wants.

Martin Bormann's son: "What is National Socialism?"

Bormann: National Socialism is whatever the Fuhrer says it is.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archi...

Republicans in the US have made being culturally regressive and staying on top as a demographic (white straight christian men) a cornerstone of their politics since the civil rights era. That’s what it has meant to be a Republican for generations.

"Capture" is the basic theme of current US government. MAGA capture of the Republican party, for instance. Regulatory capture by by various industrial sectors.

No true Scotsman?

I don’t think so. The Republican Party had some pretty consistent positions for the better part of the last century, until those got in the way during the Obama era. It’s not like it was perfect before but when it came to questions like “is the President above the law?” or “is Canada an ally?” you could predict how most of the party would side. Stuff like granting unappointed people control over multiple agencies, running roughshod over the national security process, trying to impound huge chunks of the budget, etc. wouldn’t have flown even in Trump’s first term before they finished purging non-loyalists from the party.

This is what US Conservatism looks like. You get with Trump's program or you get primaried out. Simple as that.

Good luck with that. He is in for the next four years and will finish his term.

Impeachment and removing him from office means the dems will need to control congress. Which can’t happen until 2027. Then, those dems will need convince at least a double digit count of GOP senators to vote to remove him and not care about facing the wrath of the MAGA base…just to get him out a couple of years before term limits do?

> term limits

I kinda imagine the next 4 years will work hard towards the singular goal of eliminating those. Or he might just ignore them with a whole lot more preparation than the badly organized insurrection of last time.

He wanted the national guard there. What you’re saying isn’t any better than someone parroting some Newsmax theory about depopulation. There’s no real substance behind your claim, just mischaracterizations and innuendo repeated ad nauseam so people view it as fact.

He did. But I think Republicans in general (and Trump in particular) are being incredibly disingenuous about the National Guard thing and trying to blame {not even calling it a riot anymore} Jan 6 on Pelosi.

Why wouldn't Pelosi want the National Guard there?

Kent State. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Putting a bunch of moderately trained military in a chaotic situation with angry civilians is a recipe for disaster.

And if they'd opened fire on the crowd? Do you really think Trump and the Republicans would have backed that use for force?

After how they treated the United States Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt for climbing through a broken window into the Speaker's lobby, after ignoring multiple orders to stop?

It takes much longer than 4 years to amend or unamend (which would be required in this case).

He’s out in January 2029 without a doubt.

The executive branch is currently ignoring the law. Why would they start following it in 2029?

He's already floating the idea of a third term, and the house is considering a constitutional amendment that would allow it.

Of course, that'll be a moot point if he continues to just ignore the constitution as he has been so far this entire term, and the other two branches continue to just let him.

Source?

Do you understand how long and what it takes to ratify an amendment? There a reason why we haven’t done one in 33 years and that one took 202 years. The process is designed to be difficult, it’s much more than a simple majority and bang of a gavel.

We are still working on approving the equal rights amendment. That’s one that started 102 years ago, and we have been trying to get the 3/4 state’s agreement for it for only 53 years.

So no, I seriously doubt with a 50/50 divided electorate in this country that we will repeal the 22nd amendment in the less than 4 years that the US would have to do it before Trump could run again.

The executive branch from 2021 through 2024 ignored some laws too. That’s what executive branches do…”selective enforcement”.

The democrats will have to convince enough voters that what they really want is to turn the entire country into California. I'm not sure that will be a winning strategy. Judging by the most recent DNC shenanigans, I don't think they learned very much from the last election.