US Politics Thread

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ChicagoBlue said:
Watched it and, it might surprise you, am a big fan of Brooks, as one of the great minds of 21st century conservatism.

However, I feel like they skipped over the main point, and my main point, in that LEGISLATION is the way forward. Thereafter, we can have constitutional arguments, if necessary, and they help not only make our democratic republic stronger, but help create a stronger, more vibrant legal system.

We might not like the vagaries of the process, but it’s the process that has stood the test of time, albeit only 249 years!

There’s nothing new with venue shopping, but ironically it has become even more craven under Republicans, as they seek to CREATE ISSUES, just so they can get to the issue to “their” right wing SCOTUS and reshape the Republic in their own image! We have seen it time and again in recent years, not the least of which led to the overturn of Roe…something newly minted Supremes said was “settled law” during their questioning for nomination!! SCOTUS Justices as liars to get on the bench…this is where we are with this group…and that’s before Kennedy taking a dive, Thomas’s total corruption, Alito’s side hustles, or Scalia’s hunting trips, etc, etc, etc… Conversely, the worst accusation ever thrown at Breyer was his “beigeness” and RBG’s big fault was she outstayed her ability to be replaced by a Democratic President (kinda!!!) and turned the Court over to the Federalist Society’s far right candidates.

Again, Congress should create the laws, and SCOTUS should ensure they’re legal, based on the tenets of the Constitution, as the Executive Branch carries out the management of the country laws while respecting those laws. THAT is the system!

None of that precludes a President from setting an agenda, or using the bully pulpit to move the country towards wanting that agenda, but then it’s up to the PEOPLE’S REPRESENTATIVES to pass the laws that help put that agenda into practice…if they can!

My biggest (legal) problem right now is that Trump is trying to reset legal precedents with Executive Orders, because he’s in such a rush to radically change the country for the ideologues behind the scenes, and then daring Democrats to make SCOTUS decide the issue…with no laws being written by anyone to change anything!

We are on the precipice of Authoritarian Power, if we are not there already. In just the first 100 days of his second term, Trump signed 142 executive orders, surpassing historical records for that period, including Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 99 executive orders in his first 100 days, during which he changed the entire landscape of the U.S….for the better, but most people’s belief.

Trump is not only writing these EOs, but he is making them about hugely consequential issues, and in the absence of any Congressional action and a right wing stranglehold on power in this country, THE ONLY POSSIBLE CHECK ON THAT POWER is through Federal Judges.

While I agree that a single Federal Judge might not hold a view held by the vast majority of the country, neither might a President! Therefore, we have a process where power is checked, both for the Judiciary (one co-equal branch) and the Presidency (one co-equal branch). That means SCOTUS makes a decision…and if the people or the parties don’t like the SCOTUS decision, CONGRESS WRITES NEW LAWS!!!

For me, I think it is VITALLY IMPORTANT that we have given Federal Judges the ability to put a simple stay on an EO or legal challenge to a law. It is an integral step on the oath to ensure unchecked power does not exist versus the slight inconvenience that a proposed action be reviewed, upto and including SCOTUS, to ensure such unchecked power does not irreparably change the Republic.

I’ll take minor inconvenience over accepting a monarchical approach to the balance of powers…under Republican or Democratic Administrations…especially given the breakneck speed of change and literal “shock and awe” tactics being used to try to fundamentally change the underpinnings of American life.

P.S. Scott Galloway and David Brooks recently appeared together on Scott Galloway’s podcast, “The Prof G Pod,” in an episode titled “What Happened to American Conservatism?” released on May 1, 2025. In this episode, they discussed topics including the decline of true conservatism, failures of elite institutions, moral decay in American politics, and the crisis facing men and boys.

It is worth your time, if you haven’t seen/heard it.

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Without delving too deeply into this very big subject, as an outsider I would venture to suggest that the US passes too much legislation.
After all the American legal system is a common law system and it is not really necessary to codify everything. You have to rely on fair judges to follow precedent or overturn it where it’s jurisprudentially justified. Currently, however, the highest court in the land is not a fair interpreter of the law. So, for example, Dobbs ignored a long line of precedents for political reasons. Thereby hangs a tale: the US system of judicial appointments is too dependent on political leanings. For example, congressional hearings may have candidates who testify mendaciously and everybody knows this, but the voting still just follows party lines.
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
Meh.

From what I've read, the Supreme Court's decision has dealt a major blow to jurisdiction shopping.

Object to exercise of executive power? - file a motion in a jurisdiction favorable to your opinion - that will block it.

Both Republicans and Democrats have both objected to and used this means to thwart executive orders not to their liking.

FWIW - jurisdiction shopping is ridiculous - some other avenue must prevail if the will of the people is to be heard.

The Supreme Court left open the possibility that class action suits could stop unfavorable exercise of executive power - I'm not sure that this is the right path to challenge executive power - but I'm 100% certain that filing an objection in a district lead by a judge favorable to your opinion - leads only to outcomes against the will of the majority of Americans.
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TLDR - this ruling makes sense.
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Were as the SC's decision not to rule directly on the issue of Birth Right Citizenship - is in fact alarming.
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The hearing was not about the substantive issue. Birthright Citizenship is still to be briefed.
 
KS55 said:
Without delving too deeply into this very big subject, as an outsider I would venture to suggest that the US passes too much legislation.
After all the American legal system is a common law system and it is not really necessary to codify everything. You have to rely on fair judges to follow precedent or overturn it where it’s jurisprudentially justified. Currently, however, the highest court in the land is not a fair interpreter of the law. So, for example, Dobbs ignored a long line of precedents for political reasons. Thereby hangs a tale: the US system of judicial appointments is too dependent on political leanings. For example, congressional hearings may have candidates who testify mendaciously and everybody knows this, but the voting still just follows party lines.
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It’s the old nugget, believed to have been first uttered by Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.” Those partisan hacks we elect are the problem, and they’re partisan hacks because they need the money the party possesses to get re-elected!

That suggests two significant reforms are required to return the country to the people:

1) Get money out of politics
2) Term limits on Congress

Sadly, both are currently deemed unconstitutional, so they’re both non-players!

Money is now considered a form of extrapolation of freedom of speech, and Congressional Terms are laid out in Article 1 of the Constitution, with no limits imposed.

Originally, Presidents had no term limits, either. Presidential term limits were imposed by the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, primarily in response to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unprecedented election to four terms (1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944). Before Roosevelt, presidents voluntarily followed George Washington’s two-term precedent!

As we have seen, “precedents” are no barrier to Stephen Miller, who is trying to knock them all down in support of dramatically increasing Executive (Unitary) Power for Trump.
 
ChicagoBlue said:
It’s the old nugget, believed to have been first uttered by Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.” Those partisan hacks we elect are the problem, and they’re partisan hacks because they need the money the party possesses to get re-elected!

That suggests two significant reforms are required to return the country to the people:

1) Get money out of politics
2) Term limits on Congress

Sadly, both are currently deemed unconstitutional, so they’re both non-players!

Money is now considered a form of extrapolation of freedom of speech, and Congressional Terms are laid out in Article 1 of the Constitution, with no limits imposed.

Originally, Presidents had no term limits, either. Presidential term limits were imposed by the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, primarily in response to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unprecedented election to four terms (1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944). Before Roosevelt, presidents voluntarily followed George Washington’s two-term precedent!

As we have seen, “precedents” are no barrier to Stephen Miller, who is trying to knock them all down in support of dramatically increasing Executive (Unitary) Power for Trump.
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Add another reform and adopt a system of judicial appointments similar to that in the UK: The judicial appointments commission: (Google it). We changed our system a few years ago as it just produced judges that were carbon copies of those already there. It has been a huge success in creating a more diverse bench. Still some way to go. Crucially, our system now cuts out politicians from the process.
 
Username Required said:
I'm an avid reader of Jacobin. I've been watching them get all giddy about this for weeks. Talk about failing to read the room whilst simultaneously publishing article after article about how you understand how to break-up Trump's coalition and change electoral dynamics and save America from the late-stage predatory capitalist oligarchy.

Democrats are in trouble. Every day confirms it. They are still fighting amongst themselves. The chaos in the DNC is off the chart. Can't be arsed posting about it anymore..."but but but Trump."

They are deaf. Once Americans find out about what this guy really stands for...

Cuomo or this.

In 2014, Jacobin's founder and then-editor Bhaskar Sunkara, a DSA member, praised DSA founder Michael Harrington, calling him "very underrated as a popularizer of Marxist thought".

Democratic Socialists of America. Bullet points,

The abolition of capitalism.
Abolishing the police.
Abolishing prisons.
Abolition of misdemeanors.
Reparations.
Single-payer healthcare.
Abolition of the Senate.
Abolition of the Electoral College.
Abolition of the filibuster.
Establishment of a parliamentary system.
Withdrawal from NATO.
Termination of USAID.
Termination of US Dollar as Reserve Currency.
Normalization of relations with China, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.
Israel & the U.S. are settler, genocidal, colonial states.
Independence for Hawaii, Puerto Rico and native Americans.
Second Constitutional Convention to establish a Democratic Socialist republic.
Decolonization.
Abolition of immigration controls.



Much of progressive, independent political action will continue to occur in Democratic Party primaries in support of candidates who represent a broad progressive coalition. In such instances, democratic socialists will support coalitional campaigns based on labor, women, people of color and other potentially anti-corporate elements.Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.

Actually the end is the termination of the Constitution. So fuck these Trojan Horse traitors.


en.wikipedia.org

Democratic Socialists of America - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Sounds like what the USA needs.
 
Has the Fetterman journey been a breakdown documented in real time? I mean reading and voting on a bill that will adversely impact so many citizens of his country and he is sad he missed a family beach outing?

 
bluethrunthru said:
stop listening to experts - we've heard that before this side of the pond and look how well that went

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He’s right. It was a massive mistake to trust expert medical researcher Jonas Salk when he developed polio vaccine. We would be much better off with more millions killed by the disease.
 
And I came across it via one of the images...



Here's the text with it: (I've not tried to "verify" it all, e.g. I don't know if/how J D Vance supposedly mocked the Minnesota victims.)

Meet the parents of the Idaho mass shooter, who lit a forest fire so he could shoot firefighters as they bravely ran into danger.
The most striking aspect of living in America is how atrocities have become a daily occurrence. One day it's a car bomb outside a fertility clinic, the next day it's a man shooting a Black church or Jewish temple; another day it's a man shooting a Latino grocery store; the next day a group firebombing the Pennsylvania governor; or trying to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
School shootings alone have become near daily tragedies in the US, whereas they are so rare in other countries that some countries with millions of residents that have existed for hundreds of years have never suffered a school shooting. Australia infamously had one tragic school shooting and within weeks passed the most comprehensive gun safety bill in the Western world.
One would be forgiven for thinking perhaps the spirits of the 80 million indigenous and First Nations people who we robbed for this land are paying us back for the historic crimes we committed against them.
500 years after landing on this continent, 250 some odd years after the nation's founding, and we have not yet learned to co-exist without targeting one group or another for extermination.
Have you heard the story of the fish who can't recognize the existence of water? The allegory, as told by author David Foster Wallace among others, highlights how easily we overlook the most fundamental and ever-present aspects of our reality.
The most ever-present reality of living in the United States are the daily acts of right-wing terrorism committed against innocent civilians.
This week it's Idaho, last week it was Minnesota. And before that, Charleston. Charlottesville. Columbine. Oklahoma City. El Paso. Buffalo. Pittsburgh.
A gun. A bomb. A car.
The places change. The weapons change. The victims also range from middle class to working poor, immigrants, Black people going to church, Black people shopping for groceries, Jewish people at synagogue, kids in school. But the perpetrators are always the same. According to the FBI, 100% of extremist acts in 2022 were committed by right-wing operatives. In any given year, the figure fluctuates between 95% and 100%.
There is a war going on outside no one is safe from. And it's being waged simultaneously by one of the two major parties, the White House and Congressional Republicans—as well as their most ardent supporters. Foreign governments correctly identify the Proud Boys as a terrorist group while the White House gives them pardons, a bank robber mask, and an ICE vest. MAGA supporters are so violent and unstable one even shot at their Dear Leader last summer.
The most infuriating part is that acts of right-wing terror have become so commonplace that a man with a latex mask can kill a lawmaker and her family, and nearly kill another lawmaker and their family, and the media passes over the story in two days. No follow up. Nothing more to see. No problems left unsolved.
Make no mistake, these are acts of terror. And if they were committed by any other group, it would be front page news 24-7 until justice was done. If this was any other identifiable organization, they would be labeled terrorist operations. The corporate media and every politician in DC would stop everything they are doing until they put an end to the group, immediately and permanently.
But because of the color of the perpetrators, because of the color of their hats, because they come from ostensibly nice families, because they don't 'fit the description', because a century ago and today many are rewarded for their violence, not only are these atrocities never stopped, they are never reported as part of a vast, criminal network of terror cells.
We have to say it out loud and clearly because the media absolutely refuses: MAGA is a domestic terrorist group.
This is a group with specific ideologies and worldviews, specific language, clothing, grievances, who use violence to accomplish their objectives, whether that's the anti-abortion bombers, school shooters, or forest arsonists. The current right-wing members of the Supreme Court were funded, groomed, and selected by the same right-wing groups who murdered abortion doctors. The same people who fund Heritage Foundation also funded the January 6 insurrectionists.
It's not a random coincidence that the same groups the White House is targeting are the same people these domestic terrorists are targeting. It's not a random coincidence that these shooters come from hardcore MAGA families who have groomed their kids to become violent, hateful, mass murderers.
This is the water around us. And our enemies are nurses. They are doctors. They are veterans. They are obviously cops. They have guns, hate communism, and gorge themselves on a diet of grievance, bigotry, and ignorance. Instead of therapy, they seek guns. Lots of guns.
Columbine happened when I was in high school and it was the first school shooting that really shook the nation. At the time, all of us were told it was because these kids were bullied as 'trench coat mafia' or because they listened to Marilyn Manson. Even if we knew some of these stories were absurd, the official line was that these boys were kind of victims in their own right. The grim reality that both these boys were minors from right-wing families who idolized the Third Reich and were able to easily obtain guns. This reality was censored from us.
Thirty years later, and not one single corporate media program has connected the dots.
They can't see the water through the water.
It's not accurate to say the United States is entering a new civil war; the new civil war began more than 30 years ago in Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, and Waco. At the time, these child abusers, pedophiles, and armed right-wing lunatics were portrayed as victims, Janet Reno had to step down, and the government was forever painted as the 'bad guy'.
That was their first of many right-wing victories. But the major cognitive battle was won long ago. The right-wing has a political party that singularly controls the US government, and they have a mass movement of people many of whom are willing to mass murder innocents on a daily basis and pay no consequences. In fact, Republicans Mike Lee, JD Vance, and others celebrated the Minnesota shooter and mocked his victims.
Imagine trying to convince someone you live in a functioning democracy where the sitting Vice President celebrates acts of terrorism against lawmakers...and not a single major media group thinks that's worth covering for a few days.
Not a single lawmaker in DC has stated unequivocally that stopping these acts of terror should be a national priority above all else.
Trump's political movement has captured the energy of the most unhinged and violent people among us, and sadly there are tens of millions of them. Not every Trump voter is a MAGA terrorist, but near every damn MAGA terrorist is a Trumpster. Those are facts, you can take it up with the FBI if you have a problem with that data.
And yet, the corporate media has spent the last week in agony over the threat—not from right-wing terrorists—but from a NYC Mayoral candidate named Zohran Mamdani who wants to have affordable rent, free buses, and cheaper groceries. This is the threat the corporate media *will actually spend a week or two obsessing about*.
You don't live in a democracy. You live in a militarized oligarchy where the 40 richest people, who could fit on a bus, have more wealth than the bottom 60%. The government no longer has the consent or legitimacy of the people. It is now held together by masked thugs, some who work for the federal government, while others are free agents. Both are committed to the centuries old cause of expulsion, extermination, and extinction.
The 'inside team' is building concentration camps while the 'outside team' targets the same people but does the job faster without courts, rules, or delay.
 
Elections in Miami Florida have been cancelled by the electoral commissioners, who are Maga.
Legal action will follow and fail before state court, adjudicated by Maga judges. Ultimately it will go to Maga SCOTUS. Every chance that cancelling elections will be sanctioned by US law.
What was it Trump said? Oh yes: “You won’t have to vote anymore.”
floridapolitics.com

Miami approves delay of election to 2026, setting up legal battle with state

Attorney General James Uthmeier has warned that his Office would ‘consider taking all available actions’ to stop the change from taking effect.
floridapolitics.com floridapolitics.com
 
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