Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 16,962]

48 minutes ago, Vesper said:

He has the potential, the real potential, to unhinge the planet. IF he regains the Presidency, Russia, China (invasion of Taiwan), and other authoritarian states will likely run riot. He will likely pull out of or massively defend NATO, leaving the UK and many nations in Europe (Ukraine may well be fucked, plus Poland, the 3 Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Moldava, Georgia, etc) dangling over a knife's edge.

This is true, very true. However I think the real power in the US realise the damage with having that idiot as President is not only harm to the US but to global Brand US as well. North Korea and Russia might like Trump as Idiot in Chief, but the World saw how the EU and most countries gaped and said 'How the fuck did you elect that ?'

The real power is the billionaires and the suburbs, Far more people live in the suburbs than rural and urban areas combined. These aspirational middle classes dont want their livelihoods jeopardised by someone whose sole appeal is the lowest common denominator in people -hatred, conspiracy, finding groups to blame for their own misfortune etc. They saw it last time, so the chances of him being re elected have to be slim at best.

[robsblubot 3,554]

2 hours ago, YorkshireBlue said:

I can't lie Donald trump makes me fucking chuckle.

That's the natural reaction to someone like Donald Trump. Someone who is so unapologetically ignorant about most things; it is known that the most ignorant is the one who does not know how much he does not know. We are talking about a guy who literally ignored his own medical advisers during a pandemic and recommended people to drink bleach. You just can't make that shit up.

That was funny until he managed to get elected president tho, to @Vespers point. Now he's just one of the most dangerous individuals in the world. He has the potential to disrupt in ways not yet seen, even considering the amount of disruption he was able to accomplish during first and only term as president.

I personally think Biden has a good chance to beat him again. All Trump's legal issues matter very little, but images from jan 6, and Trump himself on ads will be tough on independent, and moderate republicans. Of course now we are at the mercy of a 80yo guy, his health, and specially his "marbles."

Edited August 2, 2023 by robsblubot

[Vesper 29,139]

People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment

National Review Is Lying, For Instance. There Will Be More. Keep An Eye Out.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/people-are-lying-to-you-about-the

 

In peace there's nothing so becomes an opinion writer as charity and humility. But this isn’t peacetime. It’s a time of political, cultural, and legal war. Candor is all. So, in that spirit: the editors of National Review are absolutely lying to you about the most recent indictment of former President Donald Trump, and they are merely the vanguard of a host of lies. Brace yourself.

The Indictment

Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump yesterday. The indictment is here and all over the internet. Josh Barro and I, and our exceptional producer Sara Fay, put out an emergent episode of Serious Trouble last night discussing it. I’m proud of the episode and I submit it’s worth a listen.

https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/trump-is-indicted-for-trying-to-steal#details

 

The world is awash with analysis of the indictment. In brief, the indictment charges Trump as follows:

• Count One, conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 371. Section 371 has two parts. It’s most commonly used to charge a conspiracy to violate some specified federal crime: for instance, conspiracy to violate money laundering statutes. But it has another clause for conspiracies “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”

• Count Two, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1512(k).

• Count Three, obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. section 1512(c) — which applies to someone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” That’s the substantive offense underlying Count Two. In other words, Count Three is the crime itself, Count Two is the conspiracy to commit the crime, which are separate offenses and very commonly charged separately in federal law.

• Count Four is a conspiracy to interfere with the exercise of constitutional or statutory rights under 18 USC section 241.

The Special Counsel’s theory of the case is broad: he asserts that Donald Trump and co-conspirators (unnamed, per Department of Justice policy, but including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell) engaged in wide-ranging conspiracies to present knowingly false claims and fabricated elector slates to the U.S. Senate when it tabulated and certified votes on January 6, 2021. The conspiracy extended to using false statements to pressure state and federal officials to interfere with the vote count. Jack Smith’s theory is that this course of conduct amounted to defrauding the United States, obstructing and conspiring to obstruct the official Senate proceeding, and using fraud to interfere with the votes of others by attempting to have them fraudulently discarded.

This Is Complicated, Which Is Not the Same As Unprecedented

 

Nobody’s ever been charged with this set of facts because nobody’s ever attempted to overthrow the government by fraud like this before. In that sense, this is “unprecedented.” But in other senses, that term is misleading. Each of these federal criminal laws — which are broad and flexible by design — has been used to charge a wide variety of fraud and misconduct.

Federal courts have upheld convictions under Section 371 for a very broad range of conduct designed to interfere with or obstruct government functions. More than a hundred years ago the Supreme Court said:

The statute is broad enough in its terms to include any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government. Assuming, as we have, for it has not been challenged, that this statistical side of the Department of Agriculture is the exercise of a function within the purview of the Constitution, it must follow that any conspiracy which is calculated to obstruct or impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operations and reports as fair, impartial, and reasonably accurate would be to defraud the United States by depriving it of its lawful right and duty of promulgating or diffusing the information so officially acquired in the way and at the time required by law or departmental regulation.

A conspiracy to generate lies to submit to the Senate to derail vote tabulation and certification is plausibly within that definition.

Similarly, obstructing an official proceeding under Section 1512(c) has been construed broadly to encompass a wide variety of acts:

Furthermore, our peer circuits have applied the statute to reach a wide range of obstructive acts, not just those limited to tampering with documents or objects. Those courts have found “otherwise” obstructive conduct under subsection (c)(2) to include: (1) lying in written responses to civil interrogatory questions, Burge, 711 F.3d at 808–09; (2) soliciting information about a grand jury investigation to evade surveillance, Volpendesto, 746 F.3d at 286; (3) seeking a false alibi witness, Petruk, 781 F.3d at 444, 447; (4) tipping off the targets of criminal investigations, United States v. Ahrensfield, 698 F.3d 1310, 1324–25 (10th Cir. 2012); (5) asking third parties *338 to create fraudulent physical evidence, United States v. Desposito, 704 F.3d 221, 230–33 (2d Cir. 2013); (6) giving misleading testimony in a preliminary injunction hearing, United States v. Jefferson, 751 F.3d 314, 321 (5th Cir. 2014); (7) attempting to orchestrate a grand jury witness's testimony, United States v. Mintmire, 507 F.3d 1273, 1290 (11th Cir. 2007); (8) making false statements to a grand jury, United States v. Carson, 560 F.3d 566, 584 (6th Cir. 2009); and (9) burning an apartment to conceal the bodies of two murder victims, United States v. Cervantes, No. 16-10508, 2021 WL 2666684, at *6 (9th Cir. June 29, 2021).

United States v. Fischer, 64 F.4th 329, 337–38 (D.C. Cir. 2023)

That, too, is plausibly broad enough to encompass Trump and his co-conspirators’ conduct.

Finally, Section 241 has long been used to charge officials with fraud in connection with elections on the theory that the fraud has the effect of disenfranchising voters and interfering with their rights. That has specifically included creating false votes and slates of votes. Once again, Trump’s conduct plausibly meets this standard.

That doesn’t mean that it will be easy for the Special Counsel to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump had the requisite mental state to violate the law. It means that his actions plausibly violate the law.

This also doesn’t mean that the state of the law, as described above, is inarguable. The federal courts’ interpretation of the law changes over time. Some trial judges have found that the Department of Justice’s interpretation of Section 1512 is too broad, though a Court of Appeals disagreed. Moreover, Trump and his co-conspirators were engaging in speech closely linked with politics, and political speech is the most jealously protected speech under the First Amendment. Speech is not inherently or automatically outside of First Amendment protection merely because it is false. On the other hand, fraud and speech inherent in a crime are acknowledged First Amendment exceptions. This is why the Special Counsel was very careful in the indictment to specify false statements that were specific and falsifiable (for instance, that 10,000 dead people voted) rather than statements that were rhetoric or political opinion (like “mail-in ballots are unreliable”).

Here’s the point: there are legal and factual defenses to this indictment, but anyone telling you that it obviously, inarguably violates the law is lying to you.

Passionate Partisans Are Lying To You And Will Keep Lying To You

 

There’s a very broad range of plausible arguments about how to read American law. Saying “my interpretation is that this violates the First Amendment” or “I think the better reading is that obstruction of an official proceeding requires violence or perjury” are not lies, even if they are bad arguments.

But some people are absolutely lying to you about the law and how it applies to the indictment of Donald Trump — or, at the most charitable, Cliff Clavening it by speaking confidently from a place of deliberate ignorance.

Let’s take the editors of National Review. I’m singling them out from many people lying about the law, because they are prominent, we can expect better, and they deserve it. Fair disclosure: I have written for them.

The editors of the National Review have published an editorial arguing that impeachment was the proper vehicle to address Trump’s attempt to steal the election and that it’s improper and an abuse of the Department of Justice to use the criminal justice system to try to redress it. That’s not a lie; it’s an opinion. I disagree with it, but it’s not “right” or “wrong” factually, it’s a dispute over policy and what the rule of law should mean.

Unfortunately the editors aren’t satisfied with making a policy argument; they stoop to misleading and lying about the law. First, the misleading. They say:

Finally, Smith is charging Trump with a civil-rights violation, on the theory that he sought to counteract the votes of Americans in contested states and based on a post–Civil War statute designed to punish violent intimidation and forcible attacks against blacks attempting to exercise their right to vote. What Trump did, though reprehensible, bears no relation to what the statute covers.

This is a plausible originalist argument about Section 241, which is a Civil War statute and was originally intended to stop the sort of anti-civil-rights violence that the National Review eventually agreed was unlawful. However, I submit that the statement is materially and intentionally misleading because it does not reveal to the National Review’s readers that the United States Department of Justice has prosecuted election fraud as a violation of Section 241 for generations and has been repeatedly upheld by the courts in doing so. The National Review describes the charge as “remarkable.” Without adding that the charge is based on a widely accepted interpretation of Section 241 upheld by the courts, this argument is deceitful.

The National Review also flat-out lies. It says:

Here, it is not even clear that Smith has alleged anything that the law forbids. The indictment relates in detail Trump’s deceptions, but that doesn’t mean they constitute criminal fraud. As the Supreme Court reaffirmed just a few weeks ago, fraud in federal criminal law is a scheme to swindle victims out of money or tangible property. Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable — and, again, impeachable — but it’s not criminal fraud, although that is what Smith has charged.

But National Review is lying to you about the Supreme Court and about what’s charged here. The Special Counsel charged Trump with defrauding the United States under Section 371. The Supreme Court and lower courts have repeatedly and specifically ruled that Section 371 doesn’t require a scheme to take money or property. National Review is referring to the latest in a line of cases interpreting a completely different statute, the wire fraud statute, that includes a “money or property” requirement in its text:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice . . . .

Justice Thomas, in the 2023 case to which National Review alludes, expressly relies on that language to find that the wire fraud statute requires a scheme to take money or (as traditionally defined) property. He does not even mention Section 371, which does not include the “money or property” language and which has a long history of Supreme Court and lower court cases holding that the object of the fraud need not be money or property, but can be interfering with government function.

That’s not just misleading; it’s a flat-out lie about the law.

Lies Are Not Opinions

As the criminal cases about Donald Trump progress, you’re going to see a lot of forceful, vivid opinions about whether the prosecutions are fair, just, good policy, or good governance. Good. That’s how things are supposed to work. Opinions about policy may be dumb, but they’re not lies.

But you’re also going to see a lot of false statements about what’s been charged, how federal criminal procedure works, and what the law is. Sometimes these will be misstatements out of carelessness (I’m occasionally guilty on that) or ignorance. But often they will be flat-out partisan lies, like National Review’s editorial. Just as Donald Trump was willing to call upon a host of overt lies in an attempt to steal an election, his defenders are willing to muster lies to defend him from any legal consequence. Donald Trump’s critics, too, will lie to deny that any argument made in his favor can possibly be colorable.

Don’t tolerate it. Call it out. Rebuke, and shun, the liars.

How can you tell the truth from a lie or mistake, when federal criminal law is complex? It’s not easy. Here are a few guidelines:

• Rely, when possible, on people offering primary documents and links to citations and support.

• Be skeptical of absolute certainty not backed up with proof. Be skeptical of pronouncements that there’s only one way a court will ever possibly interpret something.

• Be more trusting of nuance, concessions of ambiguity and possible different interpretations, and exploration of opposing legal arguments. (Check out this post by Walter Olson as an example.)

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel strongly about this case. I do. I’m furious. This indictment describes a course of conduct that should live in infamy for centuries, with Trump and his co-conspirators assuming their place in a pantheon of criminals, traitors, and anti-American miscreants for as long as the country endures. But Trump’s wrongdoing is fundamentally about not caring about truth, and only caring about power. Be better than Donald Trump. Care about the truth.

Josh, Sara and I will continue to cover developments in the Trump cases over at Serious Trouble. I invited you to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast app, or follow the links at our Substack to do so.

Edited to add: Not all National Review writers are the same. To his credit, Noah Rothman Noah Rothman has written a dissent from the editorial making the same point about how it's wrong about the law.

On the other hand, some National Review writers are the same. When Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who knows and understands the law, repeats the same legal deceit, he is absolutely and unequivocally lying to you.

So he fakes it. Trump is charged with defrauding the United States, even though it was just a few weeks ago — in throwing out convictions of two cronies of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo — that the Supreme Court reaffirmed that, in federal law, “fraud” means a swindle to bilk victims out of money or tangible property. It is not a vehicle by which prosecutors may impose their vision of good government. 

Trump is charged with corruptly obstructing Congress, even though “corruption” for these purposes must comprise clearly unlawful acts such as evidence manipulation or witness intimidation, not speech that is constitutionally protected even if deceptive. He is, finally and absurdly, charged with a civil rights violation — a scheme to have votes discounted — based on a Civil War-era statute designed to address the Ku Klux Klan’s forcible attacks on and intimidation of Black voters.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Vesper

[YorkshireBlue 3,126]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

He has the potential, the real potential, to unhinge the planet. IF he regains the Presidency, Russia, China (invasion of Taiwan), and other authoritarian states will likely run riot. He will likely pull out of or massively defend NATO, leaving the UK and many nations in Europe (Ukraine may well be fucked, plus Poland, the 3 Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Moldava, Georgia, etc) dangling over a knife's edge.

In the US itself:

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html

 

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

I take nothing he does or says seriously, the man just makes me chuckle 

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

We are talking about a guy who literally ignored his own medical advisers during a pandemic and recommended people to drink bleach. You just can't make that shit up.

Fucking brilliant 🤣🤣🤣

[manpe 10,861]

I find it mind-boggling that Trump can even legally run for office again, let alone win it, despite everything he's done.

[YorkshireBlue 3,126]

30 minutes ago, manpe said:

I find it mind-boggling that Trump can even legally run for office again, let alone win it, despite everything he's done.

You say that, but let's be honest if trump wins, that speaks volumes about the Americans. I find this bloke funny as fuck, but I wouldn't let him run me a bath, never mind a country.

Edited August 2, 2023 by YorkshireBlue

[Vesper 29,139]

25 minutes ago, manpe said:

I find it mind-boggling that Trump can even legally run for office again, let alone win it, despite everything he's done.

It is simple (and a massive Constitutional flaw)

all a person needs to run and serve as POTUS is:

that is it

nothing else can block a person

unless the Constitution is amended (2/3rds of Congress and 3/4ers of the States have to approve an amendment), which will likely never happen, especially now

the long-wave (some 200+ years in the making) Constructional flaws the Framers made (for example the very nature of the US Senate (soon only 30% of the US population will control 70% of the 100 seats, and that 30% is far more RW, white, racist, sexist, homophobic, far less educated, less wealthy, far more rural and insular, and far more fundie RW religious than the 70% of the population who will only have 30 or so US Senate seats), the Electoral College, the uncountability of the Federal Judiciary, especially the SCOTUS, the ambiguous wording of the 2nd amendment (guns) etc etc etc) are coming back to help aid in a fairly likely breakup of the Union of the States within the next 10 to 15 years, if not sooner

Edited August 2, 2023 by Vesper

[Vesper 29,139]

1 hour ago, YorkshireBlue said:

I take nothing he does or says seriously, the man just makes me chuckle 

then you are simply not paying enough attention IMHO

he is a massive real time threat to the US system of Constitutional democratic governance

he and the Republicans have already done tremendous damage and are all in for a massive christofascistic makeover of the entire system

the threat to global order (flawed as it is, the dystopian vision I and hundreds of millions can see coming down the road is far worse) is also clear and present (as I have already partially laid out above)

[YorkshireBlue 3,126]

12 minutes ago, Vesper said:

then you are simply not paying enough attention IMHO

he is a massive real time threat to the US system of Constitutional democratic governance

he and the Republicans have already done tremendous damage and are all in for a massive christofascistic makeover of the entire system

the threat to global order (flawed as it is, the dystopian vision I and hundreds of millions can see coming down the road is far worse) is also clear and present (as I have already partially laid out above)

I don't pay attention and I also couldn't give a fuck about us politics. I have better things to do with my time than sit and think about a fat old woman groper.

Edited August 2, 2023 by YorkshireBlue

[Vesper 29,139]

18 minutes ago, YorkshireBlue said:

I don't pay attention and I also couldn't give a fuck about us politics. I have better things to do with my time than sit and think about a fat old woman groper.

except that when America sneezes, the rest of the planet catches a cold

and you seem to care, as you are engaged in a conversation about US politics

[robsblubot 3,554]

Which means that if he's (re?) elected president, he could a) pardon himself (iffy) or b) get his DOJ to dismiss the case. Latter might be a lot easier.

US presidents have way too much power. Trump found that out soon after elected.

Some suggest that a deal could be made, like he goes away from politics as a settlement. I think Georgia would be a problem for such a deal, but we can only hope.

Personally, I don't give a fuck whether he goes to prison or not. He will make sure to bring politics any time he can, and so will Fox News and friends. Trump has been breaking the laws for decades, which only shows how some people are untouchable. The most important part is for the US, as well as the world, to get rid of him.

[manpe 10,861]

8 hours ago, YorkshireBlue said:

You say that, but let's be honest if trump wins, that speaks volumes about the Americans. I find this bloke funny as fuck, but I wouldn't let him run me a bath, never mind a country.

Yeah have to admit he is entertaining and funny to listen to because he's a clown, a typical exaggerated South Park character in real life... but that also makes him scary. I don't want him to become the leader of my country's most important ally in a time of war at our doorstep. His first term started as a comedy, but ended a tragedy. In the meanwhile nothing has happened to suggest that his second term wouldn't end even worse.

 

8 hours ago, Vesper said:

It is simple (and a massive Constitutional flaw)

all a person needs to run and serve as POTUS is:

that is it

nothing else can block a person

unless the Constitution is amended (2/3rds of Congress and 3/4ers of the States have to approve an amendment), which will likely never happen, especially now

the long-wave (some 200+ years in the making) Constructional flaws the Framers made (for example the very nature of the US Senate (soon only 30% of the US population will control 70% of the 100 seats, and that 30% is far more RW, white, racist, sexist, homophobic, far less educated, less wealthy, far more rural and insular, and far more fundie RW religious than the 70% of the population who will only have 30 or so US Senate seats), the Electoral College, the uncountability of the Federal Judiciary, especially the SCOTUS, the ambiguous wording of the 2nd amendment (guns) etc etc etc) are coming back to help aid in a fairly likely breakup of the Union of the States within the next 10 to 15 years, if not sooner

Wow, US constitution just gets worse the more I learn about it.

[Fulham Broadway 16,962]

 Trump’s third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant is expected at 4pm Eastern time

 It is around 6am in Washington DC, where today we expect to see the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, in court.

The former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. 

His final charge, the most serious is believing that someone who is wealthy means they are intelligent. 

[Vesper 29,139]

Saudi Arabia’s Catastrophic “Everything” Problem

 

[Vesper 29,139]

lol, just saw this

 

[cosmicway 1,333]

Trump is crazy.
If Barry was alive he would kick him down the stairs of the white house.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

3 hours ago, cosmicway said:

Trump is crazy.
If Barry was alive he would kick him down the stairs of the white house.

Barry?

[Vesper 29,139]

7 hours ago, cosmicway said:

Trump is crazy.
If Barry was alive he would kick him down the stairs of the white house.

Goldwater?