If they hadn't already obviously ceded that title before 2025, they certainly did when over a thousand duly convicted violent partisan offenders were pardoned.
These weren't just random people, they were accomplices of the person who pardoned them.
We're in an autocratic United States now, where no crime, no matter how violent, committed by members of the regime will be prosecuted.
This is especially true if the courts roll over and reverse the Impoundment Act, which is exactly what the Project 2025 author and OMB nominee is pushing for. The president would be able to bankrupt any State, any entity that relies on federal funding, regardless of the wishes of Congress.
And arguably they could just do it: ignore any court judgment, and watch Congress do nothing. We know he won't ever be impeached and removed, so it's sort of a foregone conclusion that impoundment power can be seized at any time.
He is in a D+3 district that usually votes Democratic. That would usually moderate him. But see above about he would have to first survive a primary.
There's a word for achieving political ends via violence or the threat of violence. We should've been using that word heavily then, and we should be using it heavily now.
Our only hope is that the Cheeseburgers and high cholesterol gets the best of Trump.
And that Democrats grow a spine.
Cholesterol getting the best of Trump isn't going to derail this, since Vance is more than happy to continue the amassing of unchecked executive power.
"You won't have to vote again."
You see how quickly MAGA voters went from “America first. No foreign entanglements” to “let’s send troops to the Middle East to clear out Gaza” as soon as Trump said we should do so?
Anytime that Trump hasn’t been on the ballot since 2018, Trump voters stayed home.
Presidents have always been about personality and not policy. Biden and Bush I being the exception in my lifetime - or at least since Reagan.
This is why there's an effort to centralize power in the executive at a blistering pace, so the opposition can be permanently defeated even without Trump.
Watch for three things: ignoring the courts, snuffing out the influence of non-party sources of authority (the press, academic institutions), and centralization of police power. I don't think they're going to wait past April before they do all three.
I’m not saying another Republican will never win. But they will be your bland mostly inoffensive Republicans like Haley (2024), McCain, Romney, Bush I and II and Dole.
You might disagree with them on policy around the edges. But they won’t bring the destruction of Trump.
Desantis tries his best to be Trump and he flamed out marvelously on the stage. Even in Florida (where I live), he is losing his grip on the legislature.
I worry if it goes back to business as usual, it's just ripe for the next generation of con artists to show up and we'll go through this all over again.
I just emailed my representative (Mike Lawler) and I suggest everyone who's concerned about this activity and capable of offering compelling insights into why this activity (active data breach) is so concerning do the same. Perhaps they're somehow blissfully unaware of the security implications of these folks accessing data (it's only read-only access, though, so don't worry! /s), copying it to ... wherever?, running it through ChatGPT or tinkering in production on critical Cobol systems is and we can enlighten them.