All Things Trump: The Return Of The King

[Tero]

What went wrong
The framers wanted to avoid crowning another king. They believed that no one person could truly represent the whole country. (Consider that Trump won less than half of the vote.) So they dispersed power among the three branches. The president is just one person, Yuval Levin, a conservative analyst, told The Times. In a vast country, representation “has to be done by a plural institution like Congress.”

But polarization has made it harder for Congress to play that role. For much of American history, the two parties were made up of broad coalitions of voters. Seventy years ago, liberals, minority groups and racial segregationists were all part of the Democratic Party. A president could not always rely on members of his party to let him do what he wanted, because they were genuinely divided. When George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, for instance, he wanted to privatize Social Security. His own party helped quash the plan.

Today, the two parties are more homogeneous. The Republican Party has adopted Trump’s views — against foreign interventions, “wokeism” and immigration. And the G.O.P. controls all three branches of government. So the conflict that’s supposed to drive interactions among the branches is muted; Congress, and potentially the courts, are less likely to rein in the president. Now he can impose drastic changes even without a majority’s mandate.

How this ends
This is about the separation of powers, not a specific policy. Maybe you think that TikTok should remain online or that the U.S.A.I.D. shutdown makes sense because the government should spend more on Americans and less on foreign aid. But other government branches’ lack of pushback sets a precedent that Trump can act like a king.

Maybe next time he’d undo the Education Department, vaccine programs or food stamps. Or his administration could repurpose federal funds to imprison unauthorized migrants in detention camps. It could, in a far-fetched scenario, take possession of the Gaza Strip. Normally, these are policies on which Congress must get a say.

Nyhan’s research team has surveyed political scientists at American universities about how worried they are right now. During most of Trump’s first term, the respondents’ opinions about the health of our democracy were largely stable. But their confidence has plunged since Trump’s second inauguration.
graph
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/02 ... -jumbo.png

Nyhan worries about another scenario: What if Trump ignores the courts? Before he was vice president, JD Vance suggested that Trump should do that if the court blocked efforts to remake the federal government. “Stand before the country and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,’” Vance said, referring to an apocryphal Andrew Jackson quote. Perhaps Trump is already flirting with that kind of defiance. Some federal loans and grants remain frozen despite court orders against Trump’s freeze.

“We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.”

NYT

[L'Emmerdeur]

[Tero]

Elsewhere:
-This entire admin is affirmative action for mediocre white dudes who are insecure in their masculinity.

-Untrue. I’ve yet to see any that have risen so high as to achieve mediocrity.

[Sean Hayden]

An interesting short history.

Guantanamo Bay Is the Poisonous Fruit That Tempts All Presidents

Both Democratic and Republican leaders established the precedent for Donald Trump’s plan to send migrants to the notorious prison base.

continues… https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... presidents

[Tero]

"Book burnings will commence as soon as someone reminds Trump of what a book is."

[Tero]

Trump-backing Latino evangelicals now feel 'devastated and abandoned' by him: report
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/tr ... r-AA1yCizt
“We are getting calls from members who say they don’t feel safe in our churches,” he said. ”We are going to respond by giving shelter. We are going to embrace all regardless of their immigration status. Everyone can and should find refuge in our churches.”

And Bishop Ebli De La Rosa tells the AP that "some of my pastors are holding services with doors locked because they are scared that immigration agents will burst through the door at any moment."

[Tero]

They did the NIH cuts before RFK Jr is seated
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-heal ... esearchers

[Svartalf]

"Book burnings will commence as soon as someone reminds Trump of what a book is."

is he even able to get what writing is? I mean, from his recent behavior, the only part of it he gets is the supposed power of signatures.... he doesn't seem to graps the fact that the doodles above have a meaning

[Tero]

[Tero]

If Trump was trying to distract us with Musk, it's working. The old man can show up to sign things with his sharpie and wear his depends.

Now I'm really hoping Space X and all his businesses blow up in 4 years.

[macdoc]

Fordham ...likely too busy grabbing co-ed pussy - tho possible he could just be stupid.

[Tero]

Fordham ...likely too busy grabbing co-ed pussy - tho possible he could just be stupid.

Well, it was up an hour and it's fake.

[Tero]

Exclusive-Zelenskiy says 'Let's do a deal', offering Trump mineral partnership, seeking security

Many of the titanium deposits were marked in northwestern Ukraine, far from the fighting.

Ukraine has rapidly retuned its foreign policy approach to align with the transactional world view set out by the new occupant of the White House, Ukraine's most important ally.

But Zelenskiy emphasised that Kyiv was not proposing "giving away" its resources, but offering a mutually beneficial partnership to develop them jointly.

https://news.yahoo.com/news/finance/new ... 12020.html

[Tero]

Musk unahppy at judge bussing Musk and Trump:

LAWFARE: In an egregious and unconstitutional assault on executive authority, Judge Paul Engelmayer has unilaterally forbidden all of Trump's political appointees—including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—from accessing Treasury Department data. This ruling, concocted without legal precedent or constitutional justification, is nothing short of judicial sabotage. Worse, it was issued ex parte—meaning Trump administration lawyers weren’t given notice, weren’t allowed to argue, and weren’t even in the room. Only Democrat attorneys general were heard, ensuring a predetermined outcome.

Engelmayer’s order is legally indefensible. He cites no statutory basis because none exists. He offers no constitutional rationale because the Constitution directly contradicts him. Instead, he fabricates a fiction: that the duly appointed Treasury Secretary is nothing more than a ceremonial figurehead, akin to a powerless monarch, while unelected bureaucrats—who answer to no voters—control the nation’s finances. This is judicial tyranny masquerading as jurisprudence.
Beyond that, the Supreme Court must intervene and overturn this blatant violation of constitutional governance. Judge Engelmayer should be barred from hearing any future cases related to executive authority, and every Democrat lawyer who enabled this attack on the Constitution should be sanctioned.

This is not a legal dispute—it is a coup by the judiciary against the elected government. And it cannot be allowed to stand.

The contitution does not have much in the category of cabinets, but it has a Treasury.

The US Constitution's Appropriations Clause, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, governs the Treasury, where public money is kept and spent. The clause gives Congress the power to decide how public funds are spent.

[Tyrannical]

"Book burnings will commence as soon as someone reminds Trump of what a book is."

He knows all about books, like that great one about Himself he gave the nice Japanese Prime minister. Oh, and he got a signed photo too!

But most importantly, no tariffs so you know the meeting went well