It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes.
All dictators/authoritarians have a whole layer of very capable people under them that will implement orders from above without thinking about ethics or morality. But they will do a good job. Hitler had people like Himmler and Speer, Stalin had Beriya and many others (don't know names). The interesting thing is that these people will also do well in democracies. A lot of ex-nazis in Germany turned into good democratic people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Filbinger). You also have these people in companies where for example layoffs are done in the most humiliating way.
The president can't pawn off responsibility to some White House staffer or think tank. An executive order is the president's order.
Is it useful to look at the people who wrote or lobbied for the order? Perhaps if you want to want to understand the context of an order. But none of that context mitigates the president's responsibility for any order. At the end of the day, it is a single person exercising their sole authority to issue executive orders.
Their success in some way is tied to trump right now. Nobody else seems to captivate his base in the same way, and they've made most of this about a man and less about a movement. So it's entirely possible this dies when he does.
The great thing about wannabe dictators is they don't allow the new generation the space to grow and take over, so there's no clear line of succession (Vance doesn't have it yet)
But the democrats seem completely at a loss, and the mid terms are only 18 months away.
I expect it to make the film Death of Stalin look like a depiction of an amiable, staid, and sensible process purely in service of the public good, by comparison.
Needs to be taken up at the root
It's not like Trump is sitting on the toilet writing executive orders or tweets. These are initiatives championed by the elite conservative leadership, they just have a convenient "bad guy" that the rest of the country can focus their hatred on.
Don't think for a second that Vance wouldn't continue digging the same holes if Trump dropped dead.
Exactly this.
Debated at length in the 2016 election cycle and onward since. The Republican establishment didn't (and doesn't) love Trump as a politician, but they love that he puts them in power, and they have been trying to figure out how to reproduce that kind of popularity in a candidate since (and largely failing). He's the best bet of the far-right folks behind the scenes to implement their policy, and he doesn't give a shit about all that stuff as long as he can enrich himself.
The one silver lining is the bit about not being able to reproduce his popularity - which I assume is why they've all been so aggressive in trying to remake the federal government. They've got until the midterms to grab all the power they can. It seems likely they will face a backlash and a lot of seats will swing, so their focus is on removing the teeth from congress, while state level actors try and push through enough new laws that they can prevent loss of seats in the midterms.
I mean, without a constitutional amendment how can that be done?
Then they just have to keep that small number of people in power through whatever means. Even if congress swings enough to have anti-Trump votes, he'll just ignore whatever Congress says, and force it into the courts (which are packed increasingly with Trump friendly judges). That's how it happens.
1. Ignore the laws passed by Congress, and rule by executive decree
2. Experience no consequences, and thereby
3. Establish and institutionalize the idea that Congress is meaningless and decorative.
What documents say the law is doesn't mean anything if it what the people with guns do doesn't reflect what those documents say.
He gets to press the enter key sure, however that doesn't stop his cabinet from passing the executive order over for him to execute.
This time around he was sure to only fill his cabinet with yes men, so no one could keep him reigned in.
This time, however, he's often doing whatever Heritage/Project 2025 tell him to do. Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, John McEntee, etc.
I think Trump has only very vague opinions on most things. He is ok as long as people flatter his ego.
[edit] Downvote all you want, but please tell me why I'm wrong.
The subject is important and the budgets of PBS and NPR pertain to the 'curiosity' guideline that Dang loves so much.
What I'd prefer to see is better moderation from users and admins alike to deal with the offending comments but not the entire thread.
Around 30 of this administration's cabinet members and agency heads are the authors of the parts of P2025 that covered the subject of the cabinet position they now hold or the agency they now head, and their actions are closely following the plan they laid out in P2025.
I'm dismissing poor quality discussion around the subject.
Trump has no idea what he is doing, it has been very clear in interviews.
In the first admin, it was the adults in the room, the thing is, it's not yes men this time...it's the villians in the room. Trump is being handed EOs that he doesn't have a clue about.
For all the talk about P2025 and denial of any relation to it, they have done roughly 50% of the actions in the project already with more on the way. ~2/3rds of all his EOs have been in the plan. Virtually everyone related to the project is now in the admin - the head of the FCC literally wrote the 'FCC' section and boy is it an attack on everything the EFF holds dear.
I think what is notable is that it seems to have gotten more bold - the plan called for reducing USAID, not killing it for example.
And Yes, page 246, killing funding for PBS.
Probably like every president before him.
No president like CEOs can know everything about the organization they head. They are mostly the face and mouthpiece, and depend on chiefs and VPs to tell them what needs to be done according to the agenda that CEO or president has put forth.
Here he is asking the UK prime minister to read out a letter he'd been sent
But what I don't think people remember is that a guy like Hitler didn't just show up and "make a dictatorship". He was an opportunistic guy who showed up when Germany's democratic, constitutional republic was weakened by a poorly-functioning congress, and most of the actual power was concentrated in the executive branch. When the time came, Hitler wasn't the one who passed the Reichstag Fire Decree allowing him to suspend the freedom of the press and jail his political opposition. That law was passed by president Hindenburg.
Hitler didn't create a dictatorship. He was handed one on a silver platter - by an ailing 85 year old man with too much power.
Every American owes it to themselves to familiarize themselves with the project and its aims, because a number of its authors are the ones wielding power right now.
Not a substitute for reading the doc but good for a quick overview.
> Abolish the Federal Reserve and move to a "free banking" system.
Don't let that reveal dint your interest. In the Handmaids Tale such a long list of horrors would have bored the reader, but in the Administrations blueprint for the USA that already has 41% of the items off in just 100 days it's riveting reading.
I can resist pointing out another highlight for me:
> Lessen child labor regulations to allow "teenage workers" to work "inherently dangerous jobs".
In sure Project 2025 is sustained to become a true classic.
Some examples on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505433
> It’s “real” in the same way as Steele Dossier was real.
> As far as I can tell it’s just a smear device along the lines of “when did you stop beating your wife”, or fake “dossier”, or “Russian collusion”
And even if you were dumb enough to think "this is just puffery, he wouldn't do things this terrible", why are you voting for the guy arguing he's going to do terrible things?!
This is just people who want republicans to win and either support the project or who do not care about whatever one way or the other protecting the party.
If anything, I was kinda confused why he called that into question, the job of the president is to decide whose plan is getting executed at any given time, not actually do the planning himself
Our news media are terrible.
https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
Dude can barely string two sentences together— can't tell when a photo has been annotated and has no idea what Signal is. Thinks "groceries" is an old-fashioned word. It's pretty clear at this point that it's others behind the curtain running this show.
Honestly, the fact that he's now surrounded on all sides by Curtis Yarvin acolytes should have us deeply concerned. I fear someone with that ideology who's maliciously competent coming to power.
It doesn't matter who else is running the show in his name in the same way that it didn't matter who else was running the Biden administration. He's more than just culpable by association. Stop trying to infantilize the man. He's old but he's nowhere a stupid as everyone makes him out to be. He is callous and vindictive and expects loyalty in all things. He hates all forms of liberalism including the Republican ideals of liberal democracy and believes himself to be above the law. It's his administration, even if he doesn't seem to know about or even care about all the details.
I think "the guardrails will hold" thinking is flawed when you have someone who is willing to completely side step the system and push the limits.
We're not actually sure what holding someone from this administration in contempt even looks like functionally since U.S. marshals are under the DOJ.
Congress needs to transition the US Marshals to the judiciary or expressly codify that the AG has no authority to direct their actions. Won't happen, but it's what Congress needs to do.
If we have a unitary executive, then the president is over the Supreme Court. I suspect that at least Justices Kavanough, Barrett, and Roberts (along with the liberals) would have a problem with that.
(Some of the liberals might be on board if the president was Harris rather than Trump, but no way are they going to agree with it while Trump is president.)
No, the Supreme Court is not part of the executive even under unitary executive theory.
OTOH, the US Marshals Service is part of the executive, and, under unitary executive theory, Congress attempting to dictate who within the executive branch can direct them must fail, as the President has absolute and unconditionally delegable authority within the executive.
But, man, if the executive is fully on board with ignoring law, what is even the point of trying?
This isn't theory, Alabama's was federalized some time when my dad was a kid. The president never rescinded the order.
Both SCOTUS and a Governor saying that their oath to the Constitution compels (or at least authorizes) a certain course of action would be convincing to some, I'm sure.
It's quite clear that the Constitution expressly gives the President command of state militia when called into federal service, and Congress the power to specify the conditions for that, and that the Congress has specified procedures for that in law which rest solely on a Presidential determination. Each of those is black and white in law and has been demonstrated in practice as well.
That's not to say that that constrains what can actually happen in a Constitutional crisis: that's what makes Constitutional crises possible -- the black and white rules are not self-enforcing and require human decisions to align with them, and humans are always free to decide to do something else.
The loyalties of the individuals, units, officers will choose sides on their own. I'm not holding my breath on the military being willing to enmass defect against an authoritarian though.
Historically, that's an important consideration in military loyalty under contested scenarios.
It was federalized and ordered to stand down after the governor had deployed it to prevent integration of a school under a federal court order. But Eisenhower didn't rely on that order alone, he also deployed the 101st Airborne to enforce the order (both the federalization of the guard and the deployment of the 101st Airborne were based on an invocation of the Insurrection Act.)
While there is a layer of legal theory around it, when it becomes an issue, it is really a question of whether the State -- both its government and the individual members of the guard -- are willing to engage in armed conflict with the federal government for whatever the dispute is at hand, more than any other consideration.
I'm much more worried about the guardrails when people like that get re-elected: suddenly going along with the illegal action is by far the safest thing to do.
The intellectual foundations of Thomas Paine run through the thinking of Henry George and Andrew Yang, among many others. All listed figures are basically footnotes in the dustbin of history - and humanity will pay a dear cost for ignoring their voices.
Emoluments, tax returns, the porn star, lying under oath, J6, "fake news", losers and suckers, bone spurs, snubbing Carter, crowd size bullshit, grab em by the pussy, obvious nepotism, lock her up, separating families at the border, "very fine people on both sides", "stand back and stand by", sparring with Fauci, now jailing judges, deporting people off street corners, letting Musk gut government agencies, etc etc.
And that's just off the top of my head; I'm such others have catalogued many, many more of these that I'm forgetting, but yeah... good luck to anyone who can look at a list of these things and be like "ah yes but that was all in the comfortable past, surely the guardrails that failed on every one of those previous instances will somehow hold now. Hooray!"
It was always burning since the world's been turning?
What other major US politicians in our lifetimes has had even a quarter of this and retained their office through it? Do you think after all this that Trump would go down for spying on political opponents (like Nixon in the 70s) or receiving sexual favours from an intern (like Clinton in the 90s)? It seems pretty clear to most observers that he would not, and that means the goalposts have shifted, perhaps quite considerably.
Therefore, it is a serious matter and worthy of thoughtful consideration about how to deal with in the present and safeguard against the future. Not something to be waved away with "just more burning".
Uh, Clinton factually did not "go down" for that, he was impeached and acquitted for things related to it, and served out his full two terms, and left office as the most popular outgoing President in the period that polling had been conducted up to that point.
One such catalog:
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/lest-we-forget-the-horro...
Not really; aside from the various limitations on it (full immunity only for a few core Constitutional functions, case-by-case immunity for other "official acts" depending on impact to function of the office, no immunity aside from that), criminal prosecution after leaving office is almost never the decisive constraint on Presidential action, and that's all the immunity applies to.
What blew a massive hole in the guardrails is the a faction fully supporting Trump being an authoritarian dictator unbound by law securing full control of the GOP, and the GOP securing a two-house Congressional majority. (It doesn't hurt that they also control a majority of state legislatures and a near majority of states both legislature and executive helps here, too.)
But while technically you're correct, the implications of that ruling was that Trump could not be held accountable for the Jan6 attempted coup, giving him a huge boost to do whatever he wants with impunity. The significance was more psychological than technical. I don't believe we would see such bold power grabs by Trump if the SCOTUS had ruled against him.
Because it's clear the strategy now is 1) break all the rules; 2) let them sue; 3) if it ever makes it to SCOTUS our chances are decent, besides the fact that by the time it makes it through the courts to SCOTUS it will be too difficult to reverse what's been done. And in the meantime, use all the power of the Exec Branch to neutralize anyone who might oppose (legal firms, gov agencies, states, federal judges, etc.).
It read like a consensus opinion that left room for the Supreme Court to put additional limits in place... if it came to that.
You have to read into this line from the article:
> Congress directly authorized and funded CPB
He may not have the authority, but his influence over certain congress people and CPB board members can get the process moving.
Also, I have always wondered why CPB cannot just cut federal ties and become a sponsored non-profit?
During all shows you always hear or see that they are sponsored or have grants from major Fortune 500s, private families, and other institutions.
Also, whenever this defund topic comes up, CPB always says, "we receive very little from the fed, so our funding is not much and can be ignored." Well now is the time to put up and split from the US federal government officially.
https://www.propublica.org/article/big-bird-debate-how-much-...
Ultimately though, despite many many calls not to do so, Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned in tightly and then Congressional power needs to reigned in as well. We need to push for Federalism.
The definition of "conservative" means "not-extreme." It is not just "not-liberal." It means being thoughtful, cautious, sticking with the mainstream, learning from the past, not discarding learned wisdom, etc.
Things like anti-abortion, hate-brown-people, put-women-back-in-the-kitchen-or-the-bedroom etc. stuff is often described as "conservative," because so much old culture had it, but these days, they are no longer "mainstream" principles.
I tend to be somewhat "centrist." Some of my own personal values could be construed as "conservative" (like personal Discipline and Integrity, insisting on writing very good-Quality code, or not spending money that I don't have), but I also have values that lean left (like an expansive worldview, not insisting on taking away the Agency of others, etc.).
The wrecking ball that DOGE is running through our government, right now, is not "conservative," at all.
The "party of small government" seems to want a bigger government than any other party before them
Peoples views of what that party means don't always follow.
That's pretty wild.
From the start it was and remain to this day an ideology for those currently in power to conserve their power.
No, it really doesn't. I mean, yes, that's a definition of "conservative" in common language, but it has never been the definition of "conservative" as a label of political ideology; like many words, "conservative" means different things in different contexts.
Saying, in a discussion of political ideologies, that "conservative" means "not extreme" is like saying in a discussion of programming paradigms that "functional" means "designed to be practical and useful, rather than attractive". That is absolutely a definition of the word, but not the one relevant to the context at hand.
As a political ideology label, "conservative" was defined in reaction and opposition to liberalism and the outward distribution of power away from traditional institutional, hereditary, economic, and religious elites that it represented, and refers to the defense of the privilege and power of such elites and the traditions that sustain and emanate from them within the politico-economic system.
Now, over time since then, as there has been more progress made by liberal and other newer forces against the elites of the time that distinction arose, and even sometimes against the newer elites that arose because of early liberal successes like the bourgeoisie who displaced the feudal aristocracy as the ruling class in the capitalist world, to see their own power somewhat eroded in the transition to mixed economies, there has come to be a distinction sometimes made between plain "conservative" being the a sort of mostly-status-quo-ist defense of current elites that mostly opposes weakening their power and favors very modest steps to shore it up, versus reactionaries that favor more extreme action either to deeply retrench the power of status quo elites or to actually wind back power to past-but-currently-displaced elites -- but even in that terminology reactionaries do not stand in opposition to conservatism but simply stand further out in the same direction. There is a good argumen that the GOP was transitioned over time from plain conservative to outright reactionary, but that's not a change in direction.
Certainly from a political standpoint, republicans (or their equivalent in other nations) have often used these concepts against women, minorities, and the mentally ill as a means of shirking their obligation to help their fellow human. In my observation, they never make much of an attempt to live up to them in their own lives. (e.g. YOU are a welfare queen, but I am an entrepreneur who needed to take a government bailout).
On the other hand, if "conservative" means "old-fashioned" to you, then there is also no reason to believe that the people before us were morally superior to us today. My reading of history leads me to believe quite the opposite.
Hey, if we wanted to go back to real old-fashioned (pre-columbian) American values, then we could have human sacrifice, multi-god-animistic-religion, slavery (the Europeans weren't the only ones to do that), etc.
Other form of slavery were either topologically or chronologically limited. This wasn't the case for European chaptel slavery: your sons and daughter were also property, and changing localtion did not indure you to another lord, but gave him right to pursue you across the world (also, chains were mostly used during triomphs, but chained slave were in practice extremely rare, even in mines)
The word that describes them the best is reactionary. As a political ideology it fell out of favour some time in the late 19th, early 20th century with the fall of the various reactionary regimes (Austria under Metternich, Imperial Russia).
But the GOP, and some other parties looking to them for inspiration, are reactionary. They are opposed to any social progress and want to go back.
I see it as exact opposite.
The "left" parties have long abandoned social progress and are now regressing. Support or racism (affirmative action), terrorism, violence against women, violence against Jews, violence and rioting in general, denial of science, against meritocracy, against freedom of speech.
Technically, while going back to meritocracy, equality, freedom of speech is "reactionary", I'd definitely term it progress.
Personal discipline, thoughtfulness, caution, integrity, wisdom, learning from the past, etc. are not necessarily features of one ideology or another.
Hey, you're not allowed to send those people on the plane! The plane already left even though I told you not to send it? Well, you gotta get them back! You're not sending them back? I'll just keep telling you that you have to do it, that'll really show you!
Oh, pretty please, would you return that man you illegally sent to that torture prison? No? Oh, ok, well would you at least just talk to me about it in daily reports? No? Oh, ok. I guess he'll just die there. Oh well.
Constitutions, laws, democracies are a fragile illusion that disappear the second enough people stop believing that they're real.
The courts have asked for those people to be released from ICE custody, they haven't complied with a lot of those requests. The courts have asked for them to stop abducting people off the streets without cause but they continue doing it.
Its not a misleading perspective when it's the actual facts and reality. You're acting like well he only send a few hundred people to a torture prison so far, no big deal I guess. He's only deporting some US citizens without due process. He's only arguing having court cases for some crimes is too cumbersome so we should ignore due process for those crimes.
When will they end up charging you with a crime that's too cumbersome to prove in court and thus you no longer get due process? When your imprisonment gets publicized for how terrible it is, will you also be happy to have people shrug off that reporting as a "misleading perspective"?
Every one of those things should be klaxons sounding in the streets.
We'll see if there really aren't any more transfers to El Salvador.
It’s true that there’s a big danger of someone building a different system that could change that! Preventing that from happening is the key political challenge of today. But effective prevention requires accurate reasoning about which components of society can do what. One of the best ways to ensure there are more transfers to El Salvador is to spread the narrative that courts are powerless and nobody can stop the administration from doing it.
These people had no due process. If you have no due process, you too could be sent there. You'll argue, I'll just show them I'm a citizen. Who are you showing it to? Who are you proving it to? Who goes to review that? Which court reviewed these people's legal status? Which court reviewed the crimes Abrego Garcia was guilty of? Which court will review your case while you're already on the plane before you can even contact a lawyer?
Many of these people have lawful status in the US. They had their lawful status rescinded without due process and were trafficked out of the country without due process. Thinking "that can't happen to me!" is lemming ideology.
US citizens are already being removed from this country without due process despite having due process rights. And you're suggesting I shouldn't talk about it. That me talking about it ensures the next planes leave somehow.
> One of the best ways to ensure there are more transfers to El Salvador is to spread the narrative that courts are powerless and nobody can stop the administration from doing it
It has already been proven the courts are powerless to prevent it -- its already happened! The court told them to stop, the executive branch went ahead anyways, the court said to bring them back, and yet they're still there. Me pointing this out isn't ensuring those planes continue, Trump and his administration remaining in office ensures those planes continue.
Other than your theoretical arrest and expulsion from the country everything I've stated has already happened and is continuing to happen despite what the courts have said. After the first plane that was told it wasn't allowed to leave left and was doubly and triply clarified these planes aren't supposed to go, another plane left. Despite what the courts said. You really think the court opinions are what's holding up the next plane? Why didn't it stop those other planes?
And why would Trump stop? What, he's going to be impeached? As if that hasn't happened before. Congress isn't going to remove him despite him continually breaking the law.
I can guess the reason: your name is white-sounding. The system's mostly been shipping people who seem Hispanic to El Salvador.
They do until they don't.
The government is imprisoning people indefinitely (forever?) for unproven allegations and misdemeanors. They should be able to file habeas petitions for unlawful imprisonment. The courts are doing fuck all about it because the government is contracting to a foreign country to physically imprison them. That's crazy.
This doesn't sound too dissimilar from the Guantanamo bay situation, which Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden all kept going
That’s the El Salvador “hack.”
Congress passed a bill with overwhelmingly support that prevented it.
This is just a conspiracy theory but it highlights the need for due process. Without it it is very easy for governments to fabricate whatever narrative they want.
Go lookup the absolute horseshit video PragerU made about the battle of New Orleans.
Laws are useful fictions that evaporate when enough people stop believing in them.
It doesn't matter what the courts say if the executive can disregard that. But this is exactly what they are trying to achieve with this whole "unitary executive" BS, and willing abettance from Republicans in Congress.
Sensible people will realize that separation of powers means nothing when the same party holds both powers. R House + R senate + R SCOTUS + R executive => unlimited executive power.
The only brake on this is the SCOTUS, but that only works when you actually have a scotus that is empowered to uphold the constitution.
They could have done a bit better with their voting decisions, though.
I'm assuming you vote mostly Democrat, and your continuing to do so in the face of DNC manipulation of elections and primaries in favor of string of dog shit unpopular candidates is certainly part of the problem. (Not to mention the DNC emails encouraging Trump being a candidate as well...) Take some shame on your head as well, nothing will change with your attitude.
If the Democrats in power had my attitude, they'd have long since done something about the problem.
Don't blame me for having a bad attitude, or trans kids and drag queens for causing the Democrats to lose the election by simply existing.
If you had a leg to stand on, you'd have addressed the rest of the points in my post, and either agreed with my criticisms of conservatives, or been able to counter with evidence, instead of immediately leaping to totally unjustified whataboutism.
The weirdness started in 90s. First it was cultural (TV in 90s, Jerry Springer et al). Then it was electoral (hanging Chads anyone?). Then it was constitutional (Patriot Act). Then it was psychological (all those spooks running various "alt" Q etc.). And now it is lobotomy time. Took almost 3 decades but here we are.
I think this is mostly just an artifact of when you starting paying attention in your life, discounting what happened before, you are likely around 50 years old.
Remember there was the Vietnam war casus belli that was faked, the student protests and shootings, and Nixon spying on his opponents and before that there was the red scare, the Hollywood black list and segregation in the South.
I think weaving together complex set of events like this is too much like the mistake people make in a lot of "evolutionary just so" stories. The degrees of freedom are too large and it is hard to establish true causality in a realm of potentially infinite causal links just by conjecture.
I think it is easier and more productive frankly to see what levers and pressures one had right now on the government and then try to influence those.
I think government is always in tension between opposing forces and you'll align with some and against others depending on your background, disposition, position in society and your particular perspective of kinship.
> Remember there was the Vietnam war casus belli that was faked
That's not weirdness. We did that back in the day in Cuba and the Spanish-American war. Weirdness in this context is a nation changing its character, in a "weird" way.
There was a move to make Business about numbers over People, per my Grandpa's "Back In My Day" speeches he used to give me. He blamed the MBA (no offense to MBAs) for encouraging money-over-people thinking.
This then leads to GOP appearing to value winning political power for itself over building a healthy society, in my view.
He and rest of my family of that era were deeply impacted by racism, ideological weirdness as you put it. Immigrants, refugees.
Makes me sick seeing what the GOP and their racist base are doing today. Wishing I had the balls to join in some legal actions against those turkeys.
America puts too much faith in its courts and constitution.
The people who are out here saying "totalitarianism was the inevitable consequence of federal standards for feces in bologna" are exactly the problem in America today.
Authoritarian governments and terrorist organizations are not the same thing.
For example, they if they were reliable negotiators they could be leveraging power to get historic wins over how Universities are structured. But because they're not reliable negotiators, these universities have to fight like cornered animals.
Similarly, deporting people with the Alien Enemies Act might have snuck by a conservative supreme court. But the administration seems completely unwilling to show that there is room for remediating mistakes. They've annoyed even conservative Supreme Court members who don't seem eager to support the power grab.
If they were smart they'd also be doing things that made the economy strong, not intentionally harming people and creating a fairly universal thing to bitch and moan about - tariffs/high prices.
On the one sense GOP has had a strong negotiating position historically, as they're the party willing to burn it all down. But eventually you get to a point of unreliability as negotiating partner, that there's no appeasement to be had, and you have to go all in on opposing them.
You should not. The courts are doing a reasonable approximation of their job, but have no independent enforcement power against the executive and the executive is not being particularly fastidious about compliance with court orders, and there seems to be no willingness either for lower executive officers to comply regardless of direction from above or for Congress to force accountability.
If it's true then you know you should resist or you're complicit. A lot ot of 20/30/40 something Americans are going to have very difficult conversations with the new generations in 30+ years.
Resist how exactly? Protest? We're already protesting. They're barely being covered in the news. Armed resistance? Yeah that's gonna work out so well against a militarized police state.
Look through history, from the fall of rome to wwII, and those that came out best during those crises had the good sense to flee to somewhere better.
Have difficult conversations with yourself about what you're ready to do. Have the same conversations with your partner. With your family, friends, neighbors who you know are also against this.
My personal line is when the admin starts imprisoning and renditioning people that don't agree with them, and we basically heard a congressional committee make approving comments about that this week. If it starts happening, well, time for me to cash out and move abroad.
I left Russia 20 years ago for very similar reasons. I didn't think I'd be facing the same choice in US, yet here we are.
There's a difference, though. In Russia, liberals are something like 10% of the population - the groupthink is really authoritarian overall, so there was no realistic hope of fighting back in any meaningful, non-symbolic sense. But I don't think that's the case for US. The majority of people here don't want to live in an authoritarian dictatorship. Their problem is that they don't (yet?) understand that the traditional arsenal of legitimate political tools available to citizens of established democracies - things like voting or peaceful protests - becomes ineffective once authoritarians become sufficiently entrenched, and so you have to move on to other means of resistance.
Even today when the impact of tariffs are clear people rattle off everything to cover their bases - It will bring back jobs. It will create negotiation leverage for US. (If it did and China ate some of those tariffs what jobs are coming back to the US). These same people will deny their role in the mess they are creating.
This particular move is part of the broader campaign to destroy the independent media, which as you pointed out, is textbook fascism.
I do hope this experience will lead to people re-evaluating their love of FDR. You can like what he stood for, but he was an equal if not (much) greater abuser of the executive office.
why do you think that, all things considered?
We shall see.
Sure seems like these checks and balances are working out.
Why don't you think that, all things considered?
"Judge scorches Trump admin for stonewalling in Abrego Garcia deportation case" is just one recent headline.
From my outside perspective, your checks and balances do not appear to be working. If they do work, I can't help but wonder what is taking so long.
there are cases where the president has made the lives of individuals miserable in every presidency we’ve lived through. Stating that this is a terrible fact of life and doesn’t justify the harms.
what kind of powers do you envision the judiciary having to rectify these wrongs?
I prefer not to do what aboutism.
>what kind of powers do you envision the judiciary having to rectify these wrongs?
Isn't that supposed to be figured out already? What is "checks and balances" if they can just be ignored? Impeachment for ignoring supreme court orders would be one example.
>american presidents causing untold misery on some people is a tale as old as time
This is continued whataboutism, which I'm simply not interested in participating in a conversation with.
>The point is to create a system that is, on balance, just.
Sure! Why not start now. I'll be eagerly watching, and hoping, that you guys figure it out.
i think i’ve written enough to show that’s that last thing im trying to do.
I mean, that may be your intent, but so far you've brought up Brazil and Obama in a conversation about Trump ignoring the courts orders and said nothing about Trump ignoring the orders.
There are some highly visible examples of direct executive action that I hope everyone today sees as authoritarian (japanese internment being the really big one). But FDR's expansion of the executive is the opposite of what Trump is doing. Trump is acting in opposition to the legislation that directs the executive to have its finger in more pies.
A lot of very important American freedoms were secured against the public opinion by court cases. That makes them brittle.
is that so true? i don't doubt that in probably 10-20% of the cases this is so, but i would bet that in the vast majority of cases the legislation as written is flexible enough that picking an amount of action that is zero is within the bounds of the law.
i am watching trump carefully for the moment when he turns some dark corners (the abrego garcia case being one) but i am unswayed by the argument that the government reducing its own power is somehow more authoritarian in contrast to an administration that convinced congress to create authority for itself out of whole cloth, which quite clearly goes against the 10th amendment.
While that may be true; is that actually within the spirit of their respective laws? Passing legislation that directs the executive to do something, but then letting the executive just slow-walk it until it's moot seems counter productive.
We need to acknowledge other authoritarian or authoritarian-lite practices that have gone under the radar for decades, like funding elite colleges (is that political favoritism?), or political influence through NGOs, or even "doing things for the greater good" through unaccountable NGOs like "broadband equity", where there is no explicit charter for the government to do such things.
It's political favoritism in the same way that giving LMH or BA contracts is political favoritism. There's nothing magically "special" about science. And having been there, its just as corrupt, just as wasteful, and generally not in the public interest. It's mostly in the interest of professors that want to fuck around on their pet topics. look up leo paquette and homme hellinga, if you doubt my insider knowledge on this matter (they are just the tip of the iceberg and easily verified in terms of what I've seen). that's not even getting into more touchy subjects like the maze of conflicts of interest in an actually "politics-al" topic like lab leak investigation. whether or not you believe in the lab leak hypothesis you HAVE to acknowledge that the gatekeepers in the investigation are so entangled that it makes good faith truthseeking basically impossible.
They used Census data to round people up. It doesn't get much worse than that.
We agree here.
But is also undeniable that when liberals praise FDR they are talking about things like new deal legislation which ultimately originated from congress during his presidency, which makes the "well you guys like FDR so why do you hate Trump" argument just miss completely.
No, the US constitution is not right. It has tons of problems with it, and needs a significant update to clarify it and avoid a supreme court legislating by imagining what slaveowners a few centuries ago might have thought about a problem.
I understand that the constitution/founding fathers are very flawed - but to most people they still serve as symbols of the core principles of this country. As you've mentioned, if you scratch the surface the reality is very different. If you have better examples that aren't as flawed, I'd genuinely like to hear them.
Absolute horseshit.
The majority of the New Deal was done through congress, with broad support of a SIGNIFICANT amount of the legislative body, which had just seen massive Democrat wins in the 1932 election specifically to do so. The American people gave his administration this power because Americans were tired of watching people die in ditches, watching their parents suffer through old age with zero support.
1 out of every 5 Americans were unemployed. That's a conservative estimate.
They were tired of this being the case in a country with literal "Robber barons".
There is absolutely no parallel to the current administration, who barely won election, who does not have such a commanding control of the legislative (though they do control it), and who personally appointed a significant quantity of the current supreme court.
There is no vast economic harm that Trump was elected to fix. He is openly defying and ignoring court orders, which FDR did not do.
You are spouting lies. Where did you ever get such an incorrect view of history?
The leader is net split and doesn't care about most of the cluster and the "zookeeper" is happy with the leader.
If the zookeeper doesn't select a new leader the cluster is going to stay in this state.
This is no longer a representative democracy, but an autocracy.
I.e. when militias take up arms by themselves, perhaps a court would “authorize” their actions with something like this.
I don’t think any judge will voluntarily be the spark that ignites a civil war
He's already defying multiple court orders and the Congress is not impeaching him. Oh, some of the politicians are introducing articles of impeachment, but you can see quite clearly that this won't go anywhere.
We must save ourselves.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." [1]
Freedom is not free.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/edmund-burke-did-...
See https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation--formalis...
The court folds and folds when they realize they can't actually impose what they ordered. I am taking note. The executive definitely is taking note -- Marc Rubio on live TV angrily taunted the judge.
That's the point of the separation of powers.
If the whitehouse is using federal agents to force an action that is directly contrary to court judgement, those agents should have refused orders tbh. They need to know what separation of power is, and the citizens need to also be outraged regardless of political affiliation.
The problem is that some citizens _are not outraged_ (at least, not enough), and those federal agents are following orders from the whitehouse directly regardless of consequences. So a judge's words right now is only as good as the paper it's written on.
I'm not quite clear on how your comment responds to mine?
The Supreme Court, but not lower federal courts, has its own police department, but its legal authority is limited to security for the Supreme Court building and grounds and the Supreme Court justices, and to make arrests for violations of federal law as necessary to those two functions. They do not enforce orders of the court unrelated to those functions.
(For lower federal courts, these functions are performed by the US Marshals Service, a DoJ agency, which also does enforce other court orders; but, that's an executive not a judicial-branch agency.)
The vastly provided rationale for all shutdowns is combatting anti-semitism, not any vague "ideological crime." However, the definition of anti-semitism has now expanded so much that even advocating for food for the hungry, DEI, anything, is all somehow anti-semitic
I feel like it has to lead to a standoff of some group with guns saying they're following the courts/defending the constitution against another group with guns saying they're following the orders of the president (just like those Nazis who were "just following orders"). I need to print t-shirts with "Is it a coup d'etat yet?" to sell to the onlookers when this happens (in theory I could start selling these now).
What do the courts control? Where are their guns?
Anything smaller will just be someone which the police can deal with.
But coordinating thousands of people is hard, and any plan would leak easily and be discovered by that alcoholic wife-beating Fox News reporter. We might hear generals being fired or moved in the coming months/years of this regime.
If I had to put money whether I'd see scenes like this in DC: https://youtu.be/pF8gyC-XD-w , I'd have to consider whether American military people are brave or they'd just be "followers of orders".
Alternatively, maybe some governors will direct their national guard to defend against what they've deemed to be illegal action done by a federal organ. Hopefully the military will show restraint if being asked to shoot fellow Americans, but hey, if MAGA has also infected the military, maybe they'll see defenders of blue states as "woke-mind-virus-infected cowards" and gleefully shoot them.
Where's that book/article that says the US is already in the next civil war...
Look at the January 6 mob...
I can imagine there's the willingness to fight for democracy or the return of the rule of law, or just "to see those corrupt scumbags be punished", people had food in 2020 but still went to the streets because of the police murder of George Floyd.
People who think we'll end up in an armed conflict with some authoritarian enemy, watch too many movies and game too much. If there is a war, it will be financial and electronic. Americans call 911 when their internet goes down, they are not going to be led into a war against their fellow Americans let alone the world because of something like DEI or Juan the illegal. Instead, they'll rise up and take these billionaires and the politicians down.
In US in particular, this is further exacerbated by the kind of weaponry that civilians have access to. For example, a .50 BMG anti-materiel rifle is perfectly legal to own in most states. So is HEIAP ammunition for it. This combination can, with some skill, take down (unarmored) helicopters. And yes, there are people who have this kind of stuff.
As far as the military, when discussing these scenarios, keep in mind that their choices, in addition to "support the president" and "oppose the president" include "do nothing". I wouldn't be surprised if that is exactly what's going to happen in the even of a full-fledged constitutional crisis escalating into paramilitary violence.
He just has to say ‘nuh uh’, and as long as people want their jobs, that’s it.
so it comes to this, where people would have to take a stance, and it requires personal sacrifice on the part of those taking a stance. However, that is what it means to serve.
Individuals attempting to counteract systems is a much, much taller order. People are multifaceted, and those that dissent can be replaced nearly instantly with someone who won’t.
I’m not saying it’s pointless, and individuals asked to do horrible things should do nothing, but it’s much much harder to resist on an individual level than to rely on the leverage that counteracting systems can provide.
Unfortunately these checks and balances have been eroded to the point where they are no longer effective.
They are supposed to be 3 selfish pillars fighting each other to what is likely an actually reasonable state, not 1 or 2 pillars of ‘hero’s’ fighting evil. Which notably, presenting the executive as the ‘hero’ here is exactly what Trump is trying to do to squash what limited resistance he is getting.
He and his administration already ignored a Supreme court ruling, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=lin...
Too many judges have the same Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation ideology around expanding federal power. We've also seen the Trump admin drag its feet around complying with or outright ignore court orders.
I don't mean to sound hysterical but I don't share your faith for two main reasons:
- my faith in the Supreme Court diminishes with every year. It is clear a majority are far more motivated by ideology than a straightforward reading of the law
- Trump can just ignore the courts. We're not there yet but all signs show we're going in that direction. The end point of that trajectory is the involvement of the police and/or the military. I really, really hope we don't go there.
At that point, it comes down to whether Congress will impeach and remove. If Congress will not impeach and remove, the Courts are defanged and we functionally have (at least) four years of Executive rule with no legal check on that authority. If Congress will impeach and remove, it comes down to whether the Executive complies.
If the Executive does not comply...
... the point is, a lot in the American system actually hinges on the Executive's consent. And the man in the chair right now has no incentive to consent (he knows the moment the chair is no longer his, the weight of the American legal system will come down on his head and he'll at least spend the rest of his life in court cases if not incarcerated. Multiple states want his ass on a platter for crimes in their jurisdictions outside of his function as President).
It's a very dangerous time for the American Experiment, existentially.
if this were truly the case, then the orange man will fight to remain in power indefinitely. There should and need to be a civil war 2.0 if this happens - lest the bastion of western democracy falls (and it will, if that comes to pass).
Then china is the least of the USA's problems. But perhaps this is the engineered outcome desired by russia, if you would believe the conspiracy theory that trump is a foreign asset.
It is not even necessary he be, formally, a Russian foreign asset; his actions would be beneficial to Russia whether or not they actively supported him. It cannot be overstated: he is a man who believes in will-to-power logic, has consistently operated on the principle of "whatever they let me get away with is good," and has no incentive to ever stop being President.
The 2026 midterms will be essential in checking his power.
https://www.wired.com/story/antifa-social-media-rumor-forks-...
There was immense ratfuckery by those states; purging voter rolls of as many people as they could, trying to kill vote by mail, outright threats of poll workers (which very few people were prosecuted for), illegal politicking at the polls, and a literal phone call to induce a governor to falsify their election results.
170 Republican House reps voted to ignore the election of 2020. We are already past "free and fair" elections.
Donald Trump pardoned all the criminals who were attempting to storm that vote and delay/kill it. That was their intended goal. They tried to have Mike Pence abducted
Christ, the 2000 election was stolen by Republicans! The brook's brother's riot was Roger Stone's baby! Al Gore won the state once the ballots were actually counted.
But it really isn't. It is odd compared to living memory, but across the centuries this sort of things has happened many times. We had similar discussions after 9/11 (deportations/torture/limitations on rights). A little further back there was the red panic of the cold war. All the nixon-watergate-vietnam stuff. Before that, all the nasty things done to various peoples during WWII. Today seems shocking but is actually rather normal historically. The US moves in and out of authoritarianism regularly. And every time, everyone thinks "this time is different" when it really isn't.
Otherwise, it's just a lot of harms being created and not resolving to anyones benefit. This is accelerationist entropy not being stopped but slowed.
It's like saying, we're only going to give you one paper cut per day.
I think when Trump suggested at a rally that his supporters could shoot his opponent if she won, and that didn't immediately end his political career, we were in new and extremely dangerous territory to a degree that most failed to appreciate. Nothing short of fixing the structural problems above will get us out of it. If Trump doesn't manage a fascist takeover, we're just buying time for the next person who tries. Under the current culture and legal circumstances, one can clearly run and govern as a fascist and still see significant support.
that reminds me of the scene from Batman Begins, where falcone says he could shoot someone, and the some off duty cop sitting near him at the restaurant would not have batted an eye: https://youtu.be/4DjGB-wPGkc?t=25
does art imitate life, or life art?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cpac-banner-domestic-terro...
Because those words have been overused to the point of no one caring anymore. For those too young to remember, George W. Bush was _also_ called “literally Hitler”, a fascist, dumbest man alive, you name it. The left’s go-to of labeling every single Republican “Nazi” for decades is partially to blame here.
The courts have no recourse if Trump decides to ignore them, as he already has.
Ummmm, he was elected President in a resounding defeat for Democrats. And if the election were held today the results would be the same or even worse for Democrats:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-11-06/trump-defe...
"Trump trounced Harris in all the “blue wall” and Southern battleground states and maintained leads in Arizona and Nevada, prompting a torrent of anguish among Democrats. "
Today we continue to hear the "torrent of anguish among Democrats", who spout the same solutions they did preelection.
Sad!
You think the US is weird? Wait until you hear about what Lincoln did in his time, ha! Even weirder than that thing about committing high treason to create a kingless country with a sovereign elected by the gentile masses of all people! And all that just for "unjust" taxes for wars made and won in their own territories, tsk. There's a good reason why they call it the American "experiment"; because experiments are weird.
> You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes.
> Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process.
But in all seriousness, I don't see how the end of funding is weirder than the end of it, especially given the history of the the country. I don't see how the status quo is somehow more legitimate. The President is the only elected official of the government. Congress passes laws, and the judiciary can only issue judgements and have no power over the purse nor the sword. The president has the authority to decide where the money goes and how it is attributed and how the laws are executed. The same goes for the non-citizens who reside in the US under the privilege of a visa or other executive permissions; the legal precedents about this are quite clear that the President has broad authority to decide who gets to stay or not. "Due process" defers to the question to which process is due, in the case of illegal aliens there is none except what the executive decide what is due, except for the determination of the illegal alien status in itself.
You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes.
Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process.
Very strange times.
Right now I have some faith the courts in the US will stand up to this and get the US back on track but I worry that dam may not hold forever.
Saving grace is that his is not widely popular, although that is more for his tariff moves than for the others.