All Things Trump: The Return Of The King

[Tero]

Elsewhere:

theprestige said:
USAID isn't the only source of funding for such things. And Tero's argument was specifically about cancer researchers needing jobs. He could have made an argument about how USAID funding was a vital element in global cancer reserch, but he didn't. He made an argument about how cancer researchers need to pay the bills.

my response

The Musk tweet was about NIH funding research. The Trump team attacked NIH before Musk was on board. Probably due to Trump's deep fear/hate of science/Fauci. RFK Jr will take it from there and cut most funding that NIH is funding. NIH funds public and private universities to a large degree, for research. NSF is the non-medical part of funding. That too will be cut. I was funded by federal aid some 7 years in collgege. I did the research. Teaching assistant funding is largely via the University, however they do it. Research is directly funded by science departments. Private and federal funds.

[Tero]

Part of what’s especially terrifying here is that Trump is taking unilateral action to do things that Republican members of Congress would happily help him with. The CFPB is an agency so loathed by the GOP that every Republican state attorney general joined a lawsuit alleging its funding scheme was unconstitutional. With Congress holding the power of the purse, it would be free to defund the CFPB. With Congress holding the authority to create and abolish agencies, it would be free to close the agency entirely or to radically limit its pro-consumer mission. But Trump has shown no inclination to approach lawmakers on this, and congressional Republicans don’t seem to care either.

It can’t be stressed enough that there is no meaningful legal support for Trump’s actions. Yes, Republicans for a few decades now have flirted with the unitary executive theory — the idea that the president’s authority over the executive branch is absolute, particularly in national security contexts and when it comes to hiring and firing. (Well, to be perfectly correct, Republicans flirt with the unitary executive theory only when Republicans hold the presidency. When Democrats do, the constant drumbeat from the GOP is that the president should have very little authority.) But even the unitary executive theory hasn’t gone so far as to say that the president can do things like unilaterally close government agencies. Even when Project 2025 called for radical changes to USAID, for example, they didn’t argue it could just be closed.

The only way Trump’s actions can be justified is if you start from the principle that simply by electing him president, the country gave him complete authority to do anything he’d like. But that justification renders Congress entirely superfluous. Why go through the charade of making policy and negotiating budgets if the president can just ignore laws when he wants to? This view makes Congress nothing more than an advisory body.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-art ... ator-logic

[Tero]

Trump to get rid of pennies. Like Canada! Canada should make us a province.

Here in Canada we use penny rounding:
Amounts ending in 1 cent and 2 cents are rounded down to the nearest 10 cents;
Amounts ending in 3 cents and 4 cents are rounded up to the nearest 5 cents;
Amounts ending in 6 cents and 7 cents are rounded down to the nearest 5 cents;
Amounts ending in 8 cents and 9 cents are rounded up to the nearest 10 cents;
Amounts ending in 0 cent and 5 cents remain unchanged.

[Tero]

It's Musk, it's Trump, it's Trump-Musk. Neither can be stopped.

[Tero]

https://bsky.app/profile/esa88jarvi.bsk ... u3vd5efc2z

[Tero]

BAIER: “Do you see J.D. Vance as your successor?”
TRUMP: “NO.”
That's a relief, maybe.

Trump won't last 4 years. A defective leader.

[Joe]

Maybe, maybe not.

[Tero]

This is pretty bad. We have no way out of this.

In two years an election. Democrats get house. Then Trump ignores it and takes revenge on all of us 2 years.

[Tero]

Things Trump. Elsewhere

As of the close of the day on February 10, my positive/negative score on the Trump administration stands at -102.

10 February 2025
+1: Trump orders the Treasury to stop minting pennies (minimal savings)
0: Executive Order: Eliminating the Federal Executive Institute (impact unknown)
0: Elon Musk claims, without evidence, that FEMA sent $59M to luxury hotels to house illegal migrants. [22]
0: Trump on Ukraine: "We're gonna have all this money in there, and I say I want it back."
-1: Trump fires the Board of Visitors at all 4 US military academies (see note)
-1: Trump fires the director of the Office of Government Ethics (see note)
-1: Executive Order to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported into the United States
-1: Trump repeats his desire to own the Gaza Strip
-1: Trump wants to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip and deny the Palestinians right of return [23]
-1: Trump threatens to cut off aid to Jordan and Israel if they don't resettle Palestinians from Gaza
-1: Trump claims that without the US, Canada is not a viable country [24]
-1: Asked about the CPFB, Trump instead insults Elizabeth Warren [25]

I added a -1 line to February 9:
-1: Executive Order: Gulf of America Day, 2025 (-1 for "silly")
Footnotes:

22. Musk: "The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants. Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order. That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds."

23. BAIER: Would the Palestinians have the right to return to Gaza?
TRUMP: No, they wouldn't.

24. Trump: "We’re making our country larger, we’re making our country stronger. And in the case of Canada—if this should happen—I don’t know how they can do it without us. Because without the U.S., Canada really doesn't have a country. They do almost all of their business with us, and if we say we want our cars to be made in Detroit, with a stroke of a pen, I can make that happen. And other things, in addition to that, would not allow Canada to be a viable country. "

25. Asked about the CFPB, Trump rampages on Liz Warren: "Pocahontas. The fake. The faker … she's a fake. Just like she said she's an Indian … she's a nasty woman. She's a really nasty woman."

[Brian Peacock]

Well done for using the quote tags, but pop a link in as well next time eh?

[Tero]

Well done for using the quote tags, but pop a link in as well next time eh?

I was on that forum with Gawdzilla at first back maybe 5 years ago. They used to block you if not logged in. new forum software may let you see it.
The poster is this guy.
https://internationalskeptics.com/forum ... tain.5385/

Register, then click that to see his growing list.

[Tero]

Donald Trump’s cronies are threatening to defy the authority of the federal courts. If they follow through, the nation’s rapid descent into dictatorship will be complete, and the risk of the first challenge to the legitimacy of the federal government since the Civil War could soon be upon us.

Over the past several weeks, Trump and consigliere Elon Musk have embarked on an unprecedented barrage of illegality, including an attempt to destroy whole government agencies and misappropriate (and likely misuse) government and personal data on a massive scale. In the face of compliant Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the only brakes on the MAGA crime spree have come from a handful of federal judges who have issued injunctive decrees prohibiting some portions of the criminal scheme.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-def ... rt-rulings

[Tero]

I'm usually on the phone if the quotes are missing. But the link on LINE 1 already tells you its source.

dakotawillink
16m
Does Trump not realize that ignoring court rulings can go both ways? Let’s assume these cases go to the Supreme Court.
SCOTUS upholds lower court rulings and says, “Donald Trump cannot do all these things.”
It’s safe to assume that Trump will say, “I do what I want.”
With that new precedent, State AGs can then ignore the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling, opening Trump up to warrants and arrest if he steps foot in any state seeking to criminally prosecute.
New York, I’m looking at you.

https://www.threads.net/@dakotawillink/ ... zCYQsqSJlw

[Tero]

Is there an end to this?

It is as simple as a group of billionaires sitting down with him and giving him the choice of retiring with a full pardon and the money he has grifted so far, or get destroyed in Public Opinion with constant dirty laundry aired in the biggest media outlets and endless legal suits.

https://internationalskeptics.com/forums

[Tero]

Billionaires...

If the billionaires do suffer financially and start complaining, they may suddenly find that they have as much power and influence as the oligarchs in Russia - none at all.

internationalskeptics