All Things Trump: the story continues...

[Tero]

Nobody is reading any of my Blue Sky posts.
https://bsky.app/profile/esa88jarvi.bsk ... bc7oo23c2d

[Sean Hayden]

It’s just bizarre. Not your post, the wealthy guy trying to connect with poor people over expensive apples.

[Tero]

Are we having cats or dogs for Christmas?
Jojo
https://www.threads.net/@jojo.fromjerz/ ... D93fum6qSg

[Tero]

[Brian Peacock]

Seems to me the Dems and the Reps are basically offering the same product in the same market. Both are in direct competition for the same consumers - corporations - but the Reps' product appears cheaper, has more features, and is easier to operate and maintain. The Dems need to diversify and develop new products that work and appeal to different markets, but the board are locked into the old mindset that focuses exclusively on servicing the saturated luxury market.

[Tero]

First it's Nixon and China, now Trump and China?

And yet there’s one big exception, which is the threat posed to the U.S. by the People’s Republic of China. China has the capacity to defeat the U.S. in any extended conventional war, thanks to its domination of global manufacturing; soon, it may have the capacity to defeat the U.S. and all of its allies combined. At that point, what China does to the U.S. will be limited only by what China feels like doing to the U.S.

And I think it’s clear that what China’s current leaders want is to reduce the U.S. to a second-rate power, so that there’s no chance it will threaten their hegemony or their freedom of action in the future. This is what some people argue the U.S. did to Russia after the Cold War. And communist China is not nearly as nice a country as the U.S. was in the 1990s.

The big question is whether Trump will continue the effort to (partially) catch up to China in manufacturing, or whether he will scrap it. This might seem like a stupid question, since Trump talks quite a lot about how his tariffs on China are going to restore American manufacturing. But you shouldn’t believe this story, for several reasons.

The first is that Trump’s tariff threats, like his promise to bring down grocery prices, may be mostly bluster.

But the biggest danger of Trump’s tariffs, I think, is that they could give Trump political and rhetorical cover to basically abandon the effort to resist Chinese power. Tariffs, along with aggressive rhetoric, give Trump the appearance and reputation of a China hawk.

Next, during his campaign, Trump denounced the bipartisan CHIPS Act — the most important and (so far) successful single policy that America has done to shore up its industrial base in over half a century.

On top of that, it’s likely that some of Trump’s advisors favor an accommodative approach toward Chinese power. Although Trump has appointed some hawks like Marco Rubio to his administration, his most important advisor and confidant — at least, for now — is Elon Musk. A recent story in the Financial Times detailed Musk’s deep business connections with China — connections that he would be loath to lose in a conflict:

The world’s richest man has deep connections to top Chinese Communist party leaders, and is in the middle of lobbying Beijing over important decisions for his $1tn electric vehicle business, Tesla…Tesla has received billions of dollars in cheap loans, subsidies and tax breaks from the Chinese government.

But there’s one big important thing Trump could do to sabotage America’s effort to stand up to Chinese power. He could cancel the export controls that the Biden administration placed on the Chinese semiconductor industry. Removing export controls wouldn’t require executive action — Trump could just do it whenever he wanted. And because the policy is not really in the limelight, there probably wouldn’t be a popular backlash to its cancellation. So export controls are pretty much a pure test of Trump’s China policy — if he keeps them, it’s because he wants to stand up to China, and if he cancels them, it means he doesn’t.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-well- ... s-going-to

[Tero]

Court to ban birthright citizenship
The 14th Amendment states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." It expressly prohibits states from passing or enforcing laws that "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," forbids any state's effort to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

According to Politico, conservative immigration activists say the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could be subject to further litigation, arguing that the Court could provide additional clarity to the meaning of the phrase. The 1898 case Spakovsky referenced — United States v. Wonk Kim Ark — involved a San Francisco man born to legal Chinese immigrants. While the Court ruled in his favor that he was indeed a U.S. citizen, conservatives argue that citizenship should only be granted with permission from the U.S. government.

“It’ll be good to get it back in front of the Supreme Court, have it relitigated,” Michael Hough, who is the director of federal relations at anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, told Politico. “The intention wasn’t for the system we have now, and the urgency to is that, whatever number you accept — 10 million, 15 million illegal immigrants come across — well, all the children that they’re having are going to become citizens of the United States.”

https://www.alternet.org/trump-supreme-court-majority/

[Tero]

full diaper at Notre Dame.
Vance will be taking over by a year from now
https://www.threads.net/@robertburnier/ ... UfIsWky1ZQ

[Sean Hayden]

Yue Minju, Great Joy, 1992



Zhao Zhao, Again, 2014

[Tero]

Who knew? The idol of the MAGA masses likes to hang out with real billionaires.

[Tero]

It's a bit too late for voters to meddle. They voted, they have to learn something from that.

Overall, the survey finds that 54% of the public are “comfortable and prepared to support” Trump as president. That’s down two points from when he took office in 2016. Some 41% are not comfortable, up five points from 2016. So, despite having won the popular vote in this election compared to 2016, Trump takes office for the second time with somewhat less net support in the poll.
graph


The survey finds 60% say deploying the military to the border to stop illegal drugs and human trafficking should be a 2025 priority for the new administration with an additional 13% saying it should still be done but later in the term. The proposal is only opposed outright by 24%, including 51% of Democrats, 12% of independents and 3% of Republicans.

Where the potential agenda gets more contentious is most obviously in President-elect Trump’s plans to pardon those convicted of crimes from the Jan. 6 protest. Just 43% support the move, with 50% opposing it, including 87% of Democrats, 46% of independents and 18% of Republicans.

President Biden, meanwhile, leaves office with Americans fairly downbeat on the economy. Just 25% believe the economy is excellent or good and 73% say it’s fair or poor.
(In january Trump will say we have recovered)

Forty percent of the public say now is a good time to invest in stocks, with 27% saying it’s a bad time, the most positive Americans have been on stocks since 2019. It was a massive swing from last quarter and the past 3 1/2 years when Americans have been neutral to deeply negative on stocks. It was driven by a complete about face by Republicans on the stock market in the wake of the election. They are now 56 points more positive on whether this is a good time to invest in stocks.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/15/majorit ... icies.html

[Tero]

Trump still insists the alcoholic can run Pentagon and that Patel will dismantle the FBI
https://www.threads.net/@esa55jarvi/pos ... Yd7lkrtARQ

[Tero]

[Tero]

chaos

A chaotic start By David Leonhardt
Donald Trump has named most of the advisers and cabinet officials whom he wants to surround him in a second term. To make sense of the team, I asked for help from three of my colleagues who cover Trump: Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan. Our exchange follows.

David: I’ve talked with you three in the past about the likelihood that Trump’s second term would be more consequential than his first because his team would have more experience and more detailed plans. But does his list of cabinet selections make you wonder whether the second term may end up being almost as chaotic as the first? Pete Hegseth (the Fox News host Trump wants to run the Pentagon) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (the pick for Health and Human Services) don’t have much experience operating a bureaucracy.

Maggie: There are some people with minimal government experience running large organizations in positions of power, so there will be a basic question about their preparation to oversee complex departments. But cabinet secretaries aren’t the only people who matter.

The team that Trump is putting in place, as deputies or chiefs of staff or senior advisers at agencies, are people who’ve proved some form of loyalty to him in other situations. All administrations do that to some degree. This version is much more sweeping.

Charlie: For all the chaos of Trump’s first term, he was occasionally constrained — by traditional Republicans in Congress and inside his own administration, by a federal judiciary he had not yet transformed and by career officials. All those constraints will be weaker this time.

An important thing is that Trump is planning to reinstate a change from the end of the first administration, one that the Biden administration rolled back. This change, known as Schedule F, would make it easier for cabinet officials to fire career civil servants and replace them with loyalists. So there is reason to believe that the second Trump administration will be more chaotic — but also that it will implement more of his agenda.

David: Some corporate executives have taken the selection of Scott Bessent, a prominent investor, as Treasury secretary to mean that Trump won’t enact policies that Wall Street dislikes, like tariffs and mass deportations. Is it?

Jonathan: I think economic policy will be influenced less by Bessent and more by how the markets respond to tariffs and mass deportations. The stock market is one of the few guardrails that might hold back Trump.

In his first term, Trump viewed the stock market almost like a poll, and he was anxious to avoid doing anything that would cause the S&P 500 to fall. Trump’s corporate-friendly advisers used this knowledge to manipulate him, telling him that if he went with maximalist tariffs, then markets would tank. C.E.O.s would use the same tactics to steer him away from some hard-line immigration policies.

Not too much has changed. Bessent is someone who has bought into much of the MAGA nationalist vision but who is also reassuring to Wall Street.

Donald Trump stands at a lectern with Scott Bessent behind him waving.
Scott Bessent and Donald Trump. Doug Mills/The New York Times
David: People often describe Trump as an isolationist, but he has named several hawkish people to his cabinet, like Marco Rubio at State and John Ratcliffe at the C.I.A. Should we expect the administration to engage more with the world than the word “isolationist” would suggest?

Jonathan: The Marco Rubio of 2024 is very different from the neoconservative version of Rubio that people remember from the pre-Trump era. He has gone a long way toward adopting Trump’s “America First” view. Ratcliffe is more hawkish than some others — in particular Trump’s dovish pick to be director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard — but he, too, bought into Trump’s worldview.

It’s also important to remember that Trump did not govern strictly as an isolationist in his first term. Yes, he withdrew the United States from some multilateral agreements and attacked a variety of global institutions. But he also presided over the Abraham Accords, the deal between Israel and Arab countries. He authorized missile strikes in Syria and ordered the assassination of Iran’s top general.

When he wanted to assert American power, Trump sometimes authorized a level of force that went beyond even what some military advisers thought was wise.

David: Cabinet selections often receive more attention, but White House aides can have more influence. What should we know about the White House team Trump has chosen?

Maggie: Trump likes having a lot of different competing subcenters of power, and he reminds them that he is the person whose view matters most. But he also likes watching people around him fight among each other, almost as if it’s a show.

[Tero]

https://www.propublica.org/article/dona ... king-class

When Donald Trump was president, he repeatedly tried to raise the rent on at least 4 million of the poorest people in this country, many of them elderly or disabled. He proposed to cut the federal disability benefits of a quarter-million low-income children, on the grounds that someone else in their family was already receiving benefits. He attempted to put in place a requirement that poor parents cooperate with child support enforcement, including by having single mothers disclose their sexual histories, before they and their children could receive food assistance.

We found that while Trump was in the White House, he advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut health care, food and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans.

“Trump proposed significantly deeper cuts to programs for low- and modest-income people than any other president ever has, including Reagan, by far,” said Robert Greenstein, a longtime federal poverty policy expert who recently published a paper for the Brookings Institution on Trump’s first-term budgets.

We found that while Trump was in the White House, he advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut health care, food and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans.

“Trump proposed significantly deeper cuts to programs for low- and modest-income people than any other president ever has, including Reagan, by far,” said Robert Greenstein, a longtime federal poverty policy expert who recently published a paper for the Brookings Institution on Trump’s first-term budgets.