2024 US Election
Well it seems the very checks and balances that made the US political system an efficient force once are being obliterated by corrupted folks who are primarily focused on waging a culture war.
Gurgen Well it seems the very checks and balances that made the US political system an efficient force once are being obliterated by corrupted folks who are primarily focused on waging a culture war.
True, I think sometimes people need to get these shit people in, which then brings about hard times and then they come to their senses and normality returns. As they say it's just a phase!
What both sides of the political spectrum don't get is they are both as bad as each other.
both sides
JazzG i think the democratic party sucks in so many ways, and both parties are captured by corporate elites. that said, democrats arent proposing rounding up every non-citizen and deporting them, dissolving the federal government/the social safety net, and trying women who have an abortion for murder.
That quote will never not crack me up.
mdgoonah41 democrats arent proposing rounding up every non-citizen and deporting them, dissolving the federal government/the social safety net, and trying women who have an abortion for murder.
By non citizen do you mean those who have illegally entered the country? I don't know too much about dissolving federal government but haven't Republicans always been much more about smaller government and giving more rights to people?
The abortion thing is interesting, Trump has clearly positioned himself more in line with Democrats on that point. Said repeatedly there will be no Federal ban on abortions and it is up to the state to decide. Whereas more right/Christian leaning Republicans have their own ideological views. For all of Trumps faults he knows which battles can and can't be won.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/trump-immigration-what-matters/index.html
The topic on which Trump had the most concrete details is his plan to deport many millions of undocumented immigrants.
While he did not employ an Eisenhower-like effort the first time he was president, Trump is bringing the pledge back. Trump told Time he would target between 15 million and 20 million people who he said are undocumented in the US. The exact number of undocumented immigrants is not clear. It is probably smaller than Trump says.
Pew Research Center estimated the number of undocumented migrants in the US was around 10.5 million in 2021. Pew’s estimate acknowledges the population may have grown as more people have tried to enter the US. As of 2021, it estimated about 3% of the US population and about 22% of the foreign-born population were undocumented.
There are clearly more people trying to enter the US. In the 2023 fiscal year, which lasts from October 2022 through September 2023, there were nearly 2.5 million “encounters” at the border. President Joe Biden has completely changed his rhetoric on immigration, in part to discourage migrants from traveling to the US and also as he seeks to work with Republicans on the issue.
Rather than work with Democrats, Trump wants to militarize the issue, but he would start by using local police forces and focusing on any migrants with a criminal record.
“It would,” Trump said, adding, “when we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard.”
He added that he would “have no problem using the military, per se,” although he thinks the National Guard would suffice.
He does not think that laws meant to prevent the use of the military against civilians inside the US without congressional approval would apply to his effort.
“These aren’t civilians,” Trump said of migrants. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
He also repeated the conspiracy theory, for which there is no evidence, that “fighting age” males from China are somehow embedding themselves in the US.
“You have to do what you have to do to stop crime and to stop what’s taking place at the border,” he said.
On abortion
Trump insisted he would leave the issue of abortion rights up to states, even if it meant allowing them to jail women who seek abortions.
“You’ll have to speak to the individual states,” he said.
trump has also hinted at enforcing comstock, which he could do via executive order, which would make it a crime to send birth control or abortion related drugs through the mail, which would be essentially a national abortion ban, since the majority of abortions are still done via drugs and not a surgery/medical procedure. SCOTUS has already hinted they are coming after birth control in the next one to two years
SCOTUS overruling chevron was the first big step toward dissolving the federal government. trump supports imposing schedule F, which would turn thousands of civil service govt jobs currently held by non-poltiical subject matter experts into politically appointed positions for people with no actual expertise.
In October 2020, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that would have stripped protections from civil servants perceived as disloyal to the president and encouraged expressions of allegiance to the president when hiring. This effort is referred to as “Schedule F” because that was the name of the new employment category that the executive order created.
The administration claimed the authority to create Schedule F based on statutory language that exempted certain positions “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” from employment protections. Previous administrations and Congress always understood the language to apply only to a smaller number of positions traditionally filled by political appointees.
Because Trump did not remain in office, it is unknown how many federal employees his administration would have swept into Schedule F, or how many would have been fired and replaced. Experts have put the possible numbers in the tens or hundreds of thousands. The Trump official credited with the idea to create Schedule F estimated that it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers. Some Trump allies told Axios it would not be necessary to fire that many workers because firing fewer would produce the desired “behavior change.”
Other comments and actions by former Trump officials led one professor who studies public administration to conclude that the 50,000 figure “is probably a floor rather than a ceiling.”
Ultimately, the executive order calling for a new Schedule F was not implemented; the Biden Administration rescinded it before it could go into effect. On April 4, 2024, the Biden administration finalized a rule that aims to clarify and strengthen existing protections for civil servants, and to slow any future effort to undermine those protections.
Trump has announced his intention to reissue Schedule F “on day one” of his next administration. During his first term, government employees were frequent targets of public insults, threats, and retaliation. Echoing Trump, other elected officials have advocated “fir[ing] every single mid-level bureaucrat” and made campaign promises to begin “slitting [bureaucrats’] throats on day one.”
Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute have stated, “[Trump] has made it clear in countless ways that, if he were to win the presidency again, he would expect total loyalty — from cabinet secretaries down to the most junior agency employees.”
To assist him, the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative policy organization, has organized a coalition of over 100 conservative organizations under the banner of “Project 2025,” an effort to prepare policy and personnel for “the next conservative president.” The organization’s policy agenda advocates for a revival of Schedule F as part of a larger crackdown on the civil service, and the architects of Project 2025 have plainly said that their aim is “to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.”
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/trumps-schedule-f-plan-explained/
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mdgoonah41 the goal is unpick and roll back anything perceived as an 'overreach of federal power' since the Republic began. depends on what your values are as to what you perceive as 'overreach', but I think it's becoming clearer and clearer what kind of issues the right are targeting.
@JazzG as for republicans being about small government, I think that gimmick has run its course. small government, low tax republicans aren't in charge anymore. the current republican party wants to aggressively expand the power and reach of the executive branch, not diminish it.
the supreme court and the republican party want whats best for the republican party. when republicans control the white house, the executive branch has an almost blank check to do as it pleases. when dems control the executive branch, its a parade of lawsuits and injunctions through the courts to put a stop to any kind of progress. and because dems are too petrified to try and overhaul the district/appelate courts, let alone SCOTUS, nothing will change. obama didnt take the courts seriously in his first term, he ended up with a ton of vacancies, and then mcconnell held up a ton of the appointments so trump could come in and appoint 150+ judges. democrats are allergic to pulling the same levers of power that republicans dont even blink on. when republicans win back the house and senate, assuming trump also wins, i honestly would not be shocked if senate republicans nuke the filibuster. and boy oh boy will you see a lot of angry tweets from democrats when that happens
Dems need Kamala to step up and play a less limp game than what Biden has served up so far.
But she won't. Right now, she's just the civ that made the step up. And Dems don't really have any better option cos it's too close to the election and the campaign funding is locked onto the Biden-Harris ticket.
Sorry mdgoonah41 you lot are fecked and there's nowt much you can do about it.
mdgoonah41 because dems are too petrified
Petrified by greed and self-interest.
mdgoonah41 dems always seeming ineffectual/frozen is because donors only fund spineless corporate lackeys. it's not a bug, its a feature.
Lots of Democrats are turning on him and this won't help his cause! Every mistake is now being highlighted.
He's gone, and Harris is terrible. Can't they get someone else in?
Someone call Hilary!
But seriously they've fucked themselves making Kamala VP. She's a woman and black so the optics of dropping her aren't going to look very good and no doubt there will be those who will bring that up.
Also the new president is sworn in January, raises questions as to who is running the country right now because it doesn't seem like Biden is fully there. Hasn't been there for a long time and those who pointed that out were shamed for doing so but now it has become so obvious even Democrats can't spin it.
This guy is usually quite accurate as well, this is a major cover up and it is a disgrace how long they have been covering for this. If that horror show didn't happen at the debate all these Democrats would be pretending like nothing was wrong.