All Things Trump: The Return Of The King

[Svartalf]

I doubt an actual invasion will occur - too big a step.

in France, we have a saying, which is actually a movie quote : Fools will dare anything, that's how you know them.

[Brian Peacock]

In China they have the saying: "Don't follow the elephant when you're trying to collect feathers."

[Brian Peacock]

Oh no he didn't!? Oh yes he did!

[Tero]

Waffling president tries to keep the threat real: China.

I'll just have to buy Vietnamese underwear and shoes.

The little people were yippy: Asked why he had ordered the pause, the US president told reporters: “People were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy.”

Musk: seniors are parasites.

[Tero]

jefftiedrich
6h
do I have this right? Donald Trump is just going to crash the world economy every three months — and then pretend to save it, over and over, while his cronies rake in untold billions on his shameless market manipulation, is that it? fucking hell

[Tero]

https://www.threads.net/@thejuniormende ... Z_l_NaC6uQ

Dear MAGAs,

No, the stock market is not having one of its best days since 2009.

The stock market bounced back up to how it was before Trump took office.

We are back to square one.

To put it simpler for you to understand, it's like you broke your arm on purpose, the put a cast on it, then removed the cast and your arm is okay again.

Hope this helps

[Tero]

China acts

https://www.threads.net/@erikveland/pos ... 9xdojHoFGw
2/ Selling Treasuries is a pressure tactic. It doesn’t nuke the dollar—but it:

• Lowers bond prices
• Raises U.S. interest rates
• Signals to the world: “You want instability? We can do that too.”

It’s the diplomatic equivalent of cracking your knuckles in a dark room.

[Tero]

3/ So what’s China’s next move?

Let’s break it down:

MOVE #1: Sell more Treasuries
China still holds over $750B in U.S. debt.
Even a slow drip hurts. It raises U.S. borrowing costs and feeds uncertainty—right as Trump plays stock market god.

[Tero]

"Of all the lawless acts by the Trump administration in its first two and a half months, none are more frightening than its dumping of human beings who have not had their day in court into an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador — and then contending that no federal court has the authority to right these brazen wrongs."

"The Supreme Court must immediately and emphatically reject this unwarranted claim of unlimited power to deprive people of their liberty without due process."

"Why hasn’t the Trump administration acted to secure Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release? After all, he is there because of a government screw-up."

"The answer can only be that it is using this case to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop the Trump administration from imprisoning any people it wants anywhere else in the world."

"If the government can disappear any people it wishes, dump them in a Salvadoran dungeon and prevent any court in this country from providing relief, we all should be very, very afraid."

NYT
Mr. Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Tribe is an emeritus university professor of constitutional law at Harvard."

[Tero]

Nobody knows geography like Trump
aaron.rupar
16h
Trump on the Great Lakes: "I assume the lakes are all interconnected."
(Note that Gretchen Whitmer is in the Oval Office with him )

[Tero]

Going back to 2020. Trump talks about death. Expert puts him in his place.
https://www.threads.net/@grapeylyle/pos ... T5ahTUKXDA

[L'Emmerdeur]

Republicans (especially under Trump) have demonstrated repeatedly that their devotion to states' rights is entirely a ruse to justify things they like. States' rights are summarily ditched when they're an impediment to the Republican agenda. The 10th Amendment is either inscribed in stone or it's toilet paper, depending on their convenience. Latest example:

'Why Trump’s executive order targeting state climate laws is probably illegal'

President Donald Trump continued dismantling U.S. climate policy this week when he directed the Justice Department to challenge state laws aimed at addressing the crisis — a campaign legal scholars called unconstitutional and climate activists said is sure to fail.

The president, who has called climate change a “hoax,” issued an executive order restricting state laws that he claimed have burdened fossil fuel companies and “threatened American energy dominance.” His directive signed Tuesday night, is the latest in a series of moves that have included undermining federal climate and environmental justice programs, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and promising to expand oil and gas leases.

It specifically mentions California, Vermont, and New York, three states that have been particularly assertive in pursuing climate action. The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and report state laws that focus on climate change or promote environmental social governance, and to halt any that “the attorney general determines to be illegal.”

That directive almost certainly includes the climate superfund laws that New York and Vermont recently passed. The statutes require fossil fuel companies to pay damages for their emissions, a move the executive order deems “extortion.” The president’s order also gives Bondi 60 days to prepare a report outlining state programs like carbon taxes and fees, along with those mentioning terms like “environmental justice” and “greenhouse gas emissions.”

“These state laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” the executive order reads. “They should not stand.”

Legal scholars, environmental advocates, and at least one governor have said Trump’s effort to roll back state legislation is unconstitutional, and court challenges are sure to follow. “The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement on behalf of the United States Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 states working toward emissions reductions.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Historical and legal analysis of one aspect of Trump's ongoing attempt to assume dictatorial power.

'No, the President Cannot Issue Bills of Attainder'

Starting in late February, President Donald Trump began signing a series of unprecedented executive orders that imposed significant sanctions on prominent American law firms and lawyers: including Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Paul Weiss, Covington & Burling, and Jenner & Block. The moves were in retaliation for the firms’ or lawyers’ prior legal work that the president characterized as personally harmful to him. The sweeping sanctions include suspension of security clearances, termination of government contracts, and restrictions preventing firm employees from accessing federal buildings. Notably, the executive orders specifically identify individual attorneys on the president’s so-called “enemies list.” These extraordinary actions against private lawyers conducting lawful legal representation have sparked significant constitutional concerns, and have been rightfully challenged in court as violations of the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.

In an amicus brief filed on Apr. 8, 2025 in Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice, 27 former senior government officials of both political parties, who served in the last seven presidential administrations, confirmed that they “have never before seen or condoned an ad hominem punitive, and retaliatory order of this kind, attacking and intimidating lawyers and a law firm on the basis of their lawful activities.” The authors of this piece helped author the brief. It expresses the shared view of amici and counsel that the president’s executive orders against Perkins Coie and other law firms were illegal not just because they violate constitutional rights, but because they offend the Constitution’s structure: the orders are “ultra vires, because they were based on no valid national security concern, issued without any colorable legal authority, and unconstitutionally interfere with the separation of powers.”

At the initial temporary restraining order (TRO) hearing for the Perkins Coie case, Judge Beryl Howell seized on this separation of powers challenge by asking whether “executive orders that . . . stand in for law . . . could be subject to a bill of attainder constitutional bar.” Executive orders are signed, written, and published presidential directives with the force of law that manage the operation of the executive branch. A bill of attainder is a law that imposes a punishment on a specific person or group of people without first going through a trial, something the Constitution explicitly forbids not once, but twice. Judge Howell’s simple question was: Are President Trump’s executive orders targeting specific law firms forbidden because they are essentially bills of attainder? The Trump administration’s lawyer responded that, “as a pure constitutional matter, . . . the bill of attainder restriction is only on Article I and not on Article II [of the Constitution], and so it doesn’t apply to the president.”

To be sure, Article I sets out the structures and powers of Congress, while Article II announces the powers of the president. But the government’s suggestion that the constitutional prohibition on attainder only applies to Article I represents a dangerous formalism that ignores separation of powers principles and contradicts clear historical practice. The original constitutional meaning of the Bill of Attainder clauses—as revealed by text, structure, and history—all show that the president cannot issue bills of attainder. Apart from their other constitutional defects, the unprecedented Trump orders targeting individuals and organizations plainly function as bills of attainder. On their face, they are prohibited by the Constitution and repugnant to its separation of powers.

The Constitution’s prohibition on bills of attainder is rooted in British legal tradition. Several of the Constitution’s Framers, having been the targets of parliamentary attainders themselves, were determined to prevent this retaliatory tool from taking root in their new Republic. The Framers drew on a historical record to establish an important constitutional boundary: throughout British history Parliament and the king invariably acted in concert when issuing attainders. Even under the most tyrannical monarchs, the king never asserted unilateral authority to issue bills of attainder—a power the president now asserts for himself.

[Detailed historical analysis.]

The Trump administration’s claim that the president alone can issue what would be forbidden bills of attainder if enacted by legislation represents a dangerous misreading of the Constitution’s history. The very Framers who suffered under bills of attainder never intended to grant their new president a unilateral power to punish perceived enemies that even three centuries of English kings did not possess. As amici say in closing their brief:

When [we] served in the United States government, executive orders of this nature would have been viewed as unthinkable violations of [our] constitutional oath. Yet the repeated issuance in recent weeks of punitive executive orders against specific lawyers and law firms, with perhaps more to come, makes clear that this Administration will continue to levy such sanctions unless enjoined by the courts.

For a court to accept that claim would disregard centuries of Anglo-American legal tradition and undermine one of our most fundamental safeguards against arbitrary power. Using formalism to validate the president’s retaliatory orders would distort the original historical meaning of the Constitution and undermine one of its most fundamental purposes: to “establish Justice, . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty.”

[Tero]

From social media:
The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

[Tero]

I was feeling some prejudice before. But it's OK now. Even natural born citizens can be disappeared.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-ho ... dl64sq-YUA