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Trump administration 2024-2028

You’re fired!

We can certainly expect a bunch of insubordination and blowhard resignations stemming from #47’s win.

I’m going to get as riled up about this as you did over the last administration’s lawfare.
 
Is this 2025 or 1984???

The White House bans the AP indefinitely over the use of ‘Gulf of Mexico’​

CNN —
The Trump White House said Friday that The Associated Press is banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely.

The AP, one of the world’s biggest news outlets, was singled out by the White House earlier this week over three words: “Gulf of Mexico.”

President Donald Trump said last month that the US government would rename the body of water the “Gulf of America.” The change has taken effect at government agencies. But other countries do not recognize the new name, and the AP has customers around the world, so it still refers to the Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging Trump’s decree.
Other global news outlets have made similar decisions.

But this week the White House singled out the AP and barred its reporters from presidential events.

Photographers for the AP were still allowed to attend.

Shortly before Trump departed the White House for Mar-a-Lago on Friday, the administration confirmed that the AP would not be allowed on Air Force One for the trip, either.

In a statement on X, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich pointed to the Gulf dispute, saying the AP’s decision “is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.”

“While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” Budowich wrote. “Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration.”

He said AP journalists would retain credentials to the White House grounds.

But blocking the AP from what are known as “pooled” events, such as Air Force One flights, interferes with the news outlet’s ability to do its job.
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Cloud Cover said:
And the response after that ….

Take this job and shove it …
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At least seven resignations from that office over this now.

The investigation and prosecution of Mayor Adams is lawful and based on evidence. The administration is looking for a moral midget to close the loop on their quid pro quo with him. Even Trump’s own very recently appointed district attorney resigned over this.

That letter though… Goddamn. With a decorated U.S. Army Special Forces career and a degree from Harvard Law, this guy knows he’s not beholden to someone else’s slimy politics for gainful employment.
 
brihard said:
At least seven resignations from that office over this now.

The investigation and prosecution of Mayor Adams is lawful and based on evidence. The administration is looking for a moral midget to close the loop on their quid pro quo with him. Even Trump’s own very recently appointed district attorney resigned over this.

That letter though… Goddamn. With a decorated U.S. Army Special Forces career and a degree from Harvard Law, this guy knows he’s not beholden to someone else’s slimy politics for gainful employment.
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No no no. He's morally and ethically wrong for not working in the best interests of the administration (vice the law) as this is all fair game after all the lawfare conducted by the Dems, right @QV?
 
Lumber said:
No no no. He's morally and ethically wrong for not working in the best interests of the administration (vice the law) as this is all fair game after all the lawfare conducted by the Dems, right @QV?
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No, the precedent has been set though. And I’m not going to get worked up over “orange man bad” that’s so 2017.
 
QV said:
No, the precedent has been set though. And I’m not going to get worked up over “orange man bad” that’s so 2017.
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You're correct; the precedent has been set. Democrats will go after those who have committed crimes, and they will do so with publicly available indictments that demonstrate the validity of their case.

Republicans (Trump) will, I dunno, pardon criminals, including those who assaulted police officers on video.

These are not the same.
 
Lumber said:
You're correct; the precedent has been set. Democrats will go after those who have committed crimes, and they will do so with publicly available indictments that demonstrate the validity of their case.
Republicans (Trump) will, I dunno, pardon criminals, including those who assaulted police officers on video.

These are not the same.
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Probably shouldn't forget to include Biden pardoned and commuted the sentences of over 8000 criminals including a judge who sent children to jail in exchange for money, rapists, cop killers and child killers. Quite the record.
 
Jarnhamar said:
Probably shouldn't forget to include Biden pardoned and commuted the sentences of over 8000 criminals including a judge who sent children to jail in exchange for money, rapists, cop killers and child killers. Quite the record.
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All pardons set criminals free. That's essentially the nature of the beast. It's been done for generations by people of all political stripes.

This, however, was the mass pardoning of a mob of people who attacked democracy itself and did it at the instigation of and on behalf of the guy who is now issuing the pardons.

🍻
 
Jarnhamar said:
Probably shouldn't forget to include Biden pardoned and commuted the sentences of over 8000 criminals including a judge who sent children to jail in exchange for money, rapists, cop killers and child killers. Quite the record.
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Ok, referencing Trump's pardons was a bad comparison, as it's apple the pears. I'm talking about the application of the Justice system, from the initiating of investigations to the laying of charges, to trial, etc, and I don't see presidential pardons as a core part of that system.

However, even these two examples (Trump's pardons and Biden's) are exactly synonymous. Trump fully pardoned many January 6th rioters, while the case of the judge you mentioned was a commutation of his sentence. Further, Trump appeared to pardon those people for no good reason other than "they're his supporters". In the case of the judge that you mentioned, his sentence was commuted based on an actual legal justification (in this case the reason was that had he been convicted more recently, his sentence would have been shorter given recent changes in the law). While I do not agree that this piece of shit judge should have had his sentence commuted, at least Biden was using a legal justification for it as opposed to just cronyism.
 
Biden doesnt always use a legal justification though. One of 37 prisoners on death row Biden commuted raped a 19 year old. 2 days before she was set to testify against him, he tied a cinder block to her and dumped her overboard in a lake while she was still alive. He is also suspected of murdering her 11-month-old daughter. Big appeal to emotion there, but still a piece of shit that doesn't deserve to live.

Biden didn't really give a reason for any of the 37 commuted sentences other than he doesn't want Trump to execute them (and I guess he's against the death penalty, which is fine but he should have worked to change the law not found a loop hole).

Looking beyond a tit for tat of who let worse criminals go/live, they're both really shitty leaders. People race to condemn basically everything Trump does, some (in general, not you) seem quite happy to ignore Bidens behaviors when comparing the two.
 
Two conservatives have a thing or two to say about the circus in new administration. One is an ardent anti-communist and anti-authoritarian and one has criticized the Dems for being held hostage by “woke ideology”.

anneapplebaum.substack.com

Regime Change

let's call it what it is
anneapplebaum.substack.com anneapplebaum.substack.com

But in essence, this is the same thing that we have seen in other countries, over and over again. Hugo Chávez fired 19,000 employees of the state oil company in his bid to consolidate power. Viktor Orbán dismantled labor protectionsfor the civil service to make it easier to fire people who were too fond of the rule of law.

The goal, in Hungary, Venezuela and now the U.S., is the reconstruction of patronage, the spoils system that American reformers, among them Theodore Roosevelt, got rid of in the late nineteenth century
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Some will seem silly—are you willing to say “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico”?—and some will be deadly serious. Already, the Post reports, candidates for national-security posts in the new administration are being asked whether they accept Trump’s false claim to have won the 2020 election. At least two candidates for higher positions at the FBI were also asked to state who the “real patriots” were on January 6, 2021. This particular purity test is significant because it measures not just loyalty to Trump, but also whether federal employees are willing to repeat outright falsehoods—whether they are willing, in other words, to break the old civil-service ethos, which required people to make decisions based on objective realities, not myths or fictions.
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andrewsullivan.substack.com

Trump's "Shock And Awe" Month

Look through the smoke and chaos and drama. He's blundering and flailing.
andrewsullivan.substack.com andrewsullivan.substack.com

Take DOGE. First off: is this what Trump really ran on? Slashing government spending is a Ryan/Romney type of Republicanism, not Trumpism. Trump, like Karl Rove, has never cared about deficits. “I’m the King of Debt,” he once bragged in a rare lapse into honesty. In his first term, Trump ran up the deficit with glee; and in the first 30 days of this term, his spending per day is $4 billion higher than Biden’s was a year ago. Go read Riedl for how Trump is set to bankrupt the US still further.

Speaking of which: next up are massive tax cuts for the wealthy — paid for by huge cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Just what Trump’s new multiracial working-class coalition wants! In a Fox News poll, only 1 percent of Americans favored “tax reform” as a Trump priority. I doubt “tax cuts” would get even that.

More to the point, Musk is doing nothing serious to actually cut the deficit. Of course he isn’t: 90 percent of government spending is outside his remit. And where does this guy cut? A program, PEPFAR, that is a rare example of a hugely successful, cost-efficient program; and an entity, the CFPB, which was the only thing that empowered the little guy against big financial corporations after 2008. Populism reborn! Please.

Worse, Musk has cut and fired first, often illegally, and asked questions after — which leaves everything vulnerable to being reversed as soon as the courts weigh in. Has he uncovered rampant fraud, as he and Trump insist? None they’ve shown us. Is the goal to get a case to SCOTUS to affirm the executive’s control of the purse? Maybe. But meantime, many of the EOs are simply and easily being reversed by the courts.
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Imagine what they might have done. Trump could have announced that Musk and his minions were going in to audit the federal government. Within a few months, they’d bring a report, outlining every insane piece of waste or DEI excess or fraud they could find. Trump would then urge Congress to vote on these reforms. Win, win, win. It’s a great idea to shake up the joint with an outsider! But nah. They are busy ensuring that any cuts they make are brutal, dumb, and destined to expire.

Immigration? As of now, we’ve seen no major change since Biden’s executive order restoring control. The border is extremely quiet. Deportations? The pace of arrests is up but still only around a third of the levels Trump promised. Give him time, of course, but so far: underwhelming. Foreign policy? A man who pledged to keep the US from getting into quagmires abroad now wants the US to take over — checks notes — Gaza, ethnically cleanse its inhabitants, and give it all to Jared and his friends to make money. He also wants to invade and occupy ... Greenland! In talking to Russia, he has begun by blessing Putin’s conquered territories in Eastern Ukraine in advance — for nothing in return. What a negotiator!
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And remember the other issue that won him major support: inflation. It ticked up this month, with the average wholesale price of eggs reaching an all-time high of $8 a dozen. It will get worse: Trump is pursuing lower interest rates from the Fed and higher tariffs everywhere: a recipe for super-charging inflation. “The layers of intellectual confusion here are hard to parse,” notes the Wall Street Journal, with uncharacteristic understatement. What happens to Trump’s support when inflation takes off again?

Trump is on firmer ground with his efforts to leverage the federal government’s ubiquitous funding to curtail DEI’s race and sex discrimination. But even here, he is larding up the public record with comments that absolutely reflect his own animus and bigotry — especially against trans people — which will give opponents some chance to fight back in the courts. He didn’t have to do this. There are good, non-transphobic arguments for fairness in sports and ethical medicine for children. But a bigot’s gotta bigot, even if it boomerangs on him, as it should.
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Trump is on firmer ground with his efforts to leverage the federal government’s ubiquitous funding to curtail DEI’s race and sex discrimination. But even here, he is larding up the public record with comments that absolutely reflect his own animus and bigotry — especially against trans people — which will give opponents some chance to fight back in the courts. He didn’t have to do this. There are good, non-transphobic arguments for fairness in sports and ethical medicine for children. But a bigot’s gotta bigot, even if it boomerangs on him, as it should.
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Trump is also making exactly the same mistake as Biden did. Biden refused to have any enemies to his left, enabling crazies and extremists and fanatics to run riot in his administration. Trump has a no-enemies-to-the-right approach — which means, for example, he is more than happy to rehire a grown man who just a few months ago tweeted “Normalize Indian hate,” “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” If expressing neo-Nazi views does not disqualify you from the Trump team, nothing does.
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Then there’s the equivalent of Caligula’s legendary (and probably exaggerated) nomination of his horse for a consulship. That’s RFK Jr, a man who doesn’t believe in vaccines in charge of vaccines; or Tulsi Gabbard, a steward of US intelligence who prefers the KGB to the CIA. Or the insane idea that the president of the United States can just declare that the Gulf of Mexico is now called something else — and then take your press credentials away if you don’t agree.
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Last edited:
RangerRay said:
Two conservatives have a thing or two to say about the circus in new administration. One is an ardent anti-communist and anti-authoritarian and one has criticized the Dems for being held hostage by “woke ideology”.

anneapplebaum.substack.com

Regime Change

let's call it what it is
anneapplebaum.substack.com anneapplebaum.substack.com



andrewsullivan.substack.com

Trump's "Shock And Awe" Month

Look through the smoke and chaos and drama. He's blundering and flailing.
andrewsullivan.substack.com andrewsullivan.substack.com
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They’re speed running democratic decline. There’s authoritarian creep happening that in other countries in history would take years to entrench.

We’re probably a few short months away from irreconcilable showdowns with the courts at upper appellate levels over key planks of Trump & Co’s agenda. Administration compliance with the courts will be a key bellwether.

Let’s not forget that for all of our focus on the tariffs and the threats to our sovereignty, US/Canada issues barely register in the consciousness or the news cycle down there. There’s a barely-checked demolition of government programs and services underway, much of it fantastically stupid in its short-sightedness. America is taking a lot of damage already, and so far he’s barely into pulling the trigger on what will be some of the most economically damaging measures…
 
brihard said:
They’re speed running democratic decline. There’s authoritarian creep happening that in other countries in history would take years to entrench.

We’re probably a few short months away from irreconcilable showdowns with the courts at upper appellate levels over key planks of Trump & Co’s agenda. Administration compliance with the courts will be a key bellwether.

Let’s not forget that for all of our focus on the tariffs and the threats to our sovereignty, US/Canada issues barely register in the consciousness or the news cycle down there. There’s a barely-checked demolition of government programs and services underway, much of it fantastically stupid in its short-sightedness. America is taking a lot of damage already, and so far he’s barely into pulling the trigger on what will be some of the most economically damaging measures…
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For example.... last hired, first fired, on a massive scale...


Trump administration begins sweeping layoffs with probationary workers, warns of larger cuts to come​


The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce, the nation’s largest employer, by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection — potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.

In addition, workers at some agencies were warned that large workplace cuts would be coming.

The decision on probationary workers, who generally have less than a year on the job, came from the Office of Personnel Management, which serves as a human resources department for the federal government. The notification was confirmed by a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Even workers in the personnel office itself were not immune: Dozens of probationary employees at OPM were told on a Thursday afternoon group call that they were being dismissed and then instructed to leave the building within a half-hour, according to another person who likewise spoke on condition of anonymity.

apnews.com

Trump administration begins sweeping layoffs with probationary workers, warns of larger cuts to come

The Trump administration is intensifying its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce by ordering agencies to lay off all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
A presidential administration is four years long. This is only the fourth week. Buckle up and settle down.

Much of the criticism is foundering on the rocks of "whataboutism", which is what critics deserve when they decline to acknowledge the past behaviour of the alternatives they favour or lump things together and try to talk about them all as if they are represented by the most extreme egregious member of the set.

For example, some of us could wish that the people with weapons, the anti-state plotters, and the physically violent J6 protesters were not pardoned. Some of us could wish that people whose crime amounted to trespassing were not held for months awaiting trial and were either never tried or were offered light misdemeanour deals in the first place.

Regardless which examples (of political disputes) are selected, there is no value talking about an issue without considering only the real (often single) alternatives rather than some idealized moral-ethical-social-policy-etc position.

I see a lot of people dug in hard on both sides. The side holding the presidency tends to hold the initiative. For the rest, to attempt to defend everything is to risk the old saw about defending nothing, especially when they are on the wrong side of an "80-20" public opinion.
 
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