Yeah, except with Trump’s famous proficiency at negotiation he’ll probably end up trading away the Olympic Peninsula for Edmonton.
Stranger
Now, he fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Just sayin’.
The Supreme Court says Trump can’t fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel, at least for now.
Brown is probably relieved. The JCS is really just a senior advisory body to the President and Secretary of Defense with no command authority, and Trump has no use from advice from people who aren’t telling him exactly what he wants to hear. His capricious firing of Linda Fagan (Commandant of the US Coast Guard) was more significant in impacting actual policy given the role the USCG has in enforcing borders and policing territorial waters and inland waterways.
When he starts dismissing chiefs and commandants of the Armed Services (probably sometime next week the way things are going) is the time to really start freaking out. I’m guessing Adm Franchetti (Chief of Naval Operations) will be the first to get cut because she is a woman and the US Navy has had so many public issues in the last few years with readiness and accidents.
Stranger
Already happened
Well, fuck…that was quick. Start the freak out, I guess.
Stranger
Apparently the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is openly a MAGA Trumpist. But they don’t get political, right?
It’s 2025, folks. Not 1975. Catch up.
You seem to be trying to pick an argument over things I didn’t say or words you are trying to ascribe to me such as “The generals will stop any madness”, which isn’t anywhere in any post I have made in this thread or any other. Please stop.
Dan “Razin’” Caine, per the Associated Press article:
…does not meet the position’s prerequisites, such as being a combatant commander or service chief, as laid out in a 1986 law that does allow a president to waive those requirements.
I’m sure Caine will give Trump the guidance that he wants even if it is bad advice that will result in failed outcomes. I’m also sure that Trump is going to pack the heads of each service with loyalists. But I think he is going to struggle mightily to populate the actual operational commands with loyalists who have adequate experience or any real degree of competence, and the result will be a military that can’t accomplish even his most basic orders.
Stranger
I see no evidence for that except:
(a) Trump said it.
(b) Caine accepted the job.
Item (a) above is not really any evidence at all. Anonymous sources are denying Trump’s outrageous claims:
Item (b) above is troubling. Caine maybe should have refused the job on grounds that the President should pick an existing service branch head, as is normal. But compared to Hegseth and Gabbard, Caine sounds OK. I expect he will follow the law and any court order. (And because of that, he may not last long.)
Especially if the subordinates being given the orders decide to carry them out as slowly and ineffectually as they can get away with.
Man, the standards are dropping fast. “At least he’s not as bad as a drunk Nazi and a Russian spy!”
I think this is worth repeating. The states, even the red ones, aren’t going to take kindly to Federal usurpation of their power, especially if it’s a sort of despotic, outside-the-lines kind of thing.
What evidence do you have for this as far as the red states go? Red state governors like Abbott and DeSantis have already shown their willingness to roll over for MAGA.
The blue state Govs will fight this at every turn but not the ones in red states. That seems about as likely as the GOP Congress not going along like they already have.
DeSantis has been on the phone demanding FEMA and federal reconstruction funds every time a hurricane is heading toward the Florida coast. Texas receives over US$105B/yr in federal subsidies and Florida gets almost US$60B/yr. Both states have substantial federal present of federal jobs, with both states hosting major NASA centers (Johnson and Kennedy) as well as a mass contractors that support those centers. Unlike Congresspeople who can kind of divorce themselves by just saying they don’t really have control, governors and statehouse legislatures live and die on the services they provide and infrastructure maintenance they do (or don’t), and losing a metric shitton of good paying jobs is not going to pass unnoticed.
Stranger
Yeah - it will be interesting to see if they grow a spine when their constituents start complaining. In addition to Stranger’s list - a lot of farmers and ranchers in states w/ few citizens yet 2 senators a piece. I believe Alabama has already been yelping about cuts to their university/health research programs.
And, more than anything else, I’m astounded at Congress essentially giving up their power of the purse. Just unprecedented. And I’m not sure for what purpose, other than the narrowest hopes for re-election.
It seems to me that the calculus is:
- Let him run and try to dodge the bullets come election time if things go South and the country turns on him in a blue wave - which will work for a non-zero and likely significant number.
- Get MAGAd out in the primary and not even be in the general.
I was shocked, too. But I think they did it did it for a slightly different reason - because they feared not being re-elected if they didn’t give Trump whatever he wanted.
Which gives me just a tiny glimmer of hope that they will do what’s right when one of two things becomes apparent . They will realize there it has become impossible to tell whether backing Trump or opposing him will do more damage to their re-election prospects because their constituents are starting to oppose Trump’s actions ( not him- I’ve seen videos of people going on and on about how veterans are being hurt without mentioning the names of the people directing things) . Or they will realize that there is no reason to donate to legislators when they have ceded all of their power to the president.
Any bad things that happen will be blamed on someone other than DJT, preferably with a D after their name.
Plus, I expect funding will always be found for any natural disaster or crisis in a red state. Blue states, not so much.
It’s not just reelection that they think about; there’s a career after the House/Senate. They get to be “advisors” and “consultants”, getting paid substantial sums of money for what and who they know. Losing an election is one thing, but if they switch teams, they’re out of that ecosystem. Then they have to find a real job, and they don’t want to.
If FEMA is disestablished, who is going to disperse those funds, and more importantly the immediate supplies and emergency response coordination? As dysfunctional as FEMA is, it still provides services that most states (*cough*Florida*cough*Texas*cough*) are not composed to perform. ‘Red’ state legislatures are probably assuming that Trump will favor them without consideration that every single interaction with Trump is purely transactional. If they have nothing to offer him, no aid will be forthcoming. In a sense, Trump is the embodiment of the supposed hyperbole that the Democrats have been warning that Republicans will do for decades. Unfortunately, he’s also managed to eliminate all meaningful ‘guard rails’ to restrain those impulses through any legal or procedural means.
Stranger