As I understand the SCOTUS decision, it didn’t strip states wholesale of their right to determine candidate eligibility. It ruled narrowly that states could not declare ineligibility based on section 3 of the 14th Amendment. In other words, states don’t get to decide who is a federal insurrectionist for purposes of federal elections. Other kinds of challenges were not addressed.
As mentioned above, Trump vs Anderson was a narrow decision about the states’ role in making 14th Amendment determinations. But beyond that, Colorado tried to construct a finding of fact to portray Trump as an insurrectionist. That was always a shaky approach, and I would argue that if we wouldn’t trust GA or AL to make fair rulings about Biden’s fitness (which we shouldn’t) then CO can’t have that same latitude.
But this would be irrelevant to a 22nd Amendment challenge because it’s not a matter of opinion or interpretation that Trump was elected twice.
You seem to think that Trump’s actions are self-executing. They are not.
They don’t respect him, they fear him. He has a fanatical base of voters who will always vote for him, and will let him get away with anything. They’re running scared of him turning that mob on them if they’re not sufficiently subservient.
Exactly this. They’ve long since lost control of the party itself to MAGA in general and him in particular and are stuck working in that framework. They can only “lead” if they lead in a direction MAGA and Trump likes.
Yes, and oh SO JOYFULLY, some of those will be the Black male voters who betrayed a sister by not voting or voting forTrump outright. Guess what, guys?! The people he would like to populate all the prisons with are YOU! The people who would literally re-enslave if he could get away with it are YOU! The stupid asses who just committed political suicide by helping this White Supremacist regain the presidency are YOU! A person who won’t give a rat’s ass about you anymore is ME! In fact, I’m hoping you’ll get your just deserts sooner than later.
I’m sure a lot of the “Establishment” Republicans are quietly planning on taking back control once Trump is gone, but the longer it takes for him to shuffle off, the more damage he’ll do to both the country and the Republican Party. And there will be more than one jackal fighting over the remains. Unless Trump self-destructs very quickly and VERY spectacularly, MAGA is going to be emboldened more and more every month, and more and more “establishment” GOPers will withdraw in defeat.
I don’t know what will come out of the end of that process, but I’d be very surprised if it looks anything like the GOP of 15 years ago, no matter what the “normal” Republicans might want.
Oh, yes, and I’ll be getting to them. Their situation isn’t as stark, however, because their White Supremacist racist MAGA husbands don’t hate them with such transparency like they hate Blacks. Well, not as long as they obediently stay in line and meekly knuckle under, they don’t.
I’m in the ‘one list’ camp. I think what’s going on here (particularly with the Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard picks) is that Trump knows that even most GOP Senators don’t want to have “I voted for Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General” on their records----and the one and only way to avoid that without facing the wrath of Trump and his fans, is to declare a recess.
So Trump gets his recess appointments (which the Senators would otherwise have fought against giving him. Recess appointments make them wholly irrelevant, after all).
This development, humiliating to Republican Senators as it is, surely qualifies as a bit of leopard face-mouthing, if not outright face-consumption.
On the topic of Trump getting all he wants via declaring a national emergency/martial law:
It used to be that the public didn’t vote for president (for EC electors actually). Instead the state legislature voted for the electors. The public’s input to the presidency was limited to voting for state legislators.
There’s no real reason a state could not return to that old system. So they alter the law so the public’s vote is “advisory” on the state legislature, but the state legislature will do the actual voting on which EC slate (D or R) to send to Washington to be counted.
So now the state R party gerrymanders the shit out of the state legislative districts, such that the state legislature will be perpetually R-dominated until/unless the D’s muster about the 75% of the statewide popular vote for state legislators and properly distributed to boot. And since that same perpetually R-dominated legislature gets to redistrict every 10 years based on the census, they can keep moving the goalposts in whichever direction frustrates whichever local gains the Ds may have been making since the last crooked redistricting.
Everything I’ve just outlined is 100% legal and 100% constitutional per existing precedent. No future SCOTUS skullduggery or Federal congressional action is required. All it takes is R-dominated statehouses and executives to say “Why not?” and start writing the new law.
This is how authoritarian single party rule gets entrenched in most countries. Don’t overthrow the system. Work your wedges into its weak spots until it’s your system, not the system.
I think you’re absolutely correct about this, and moreover I believe that most of today’s Republicans, outside of the most fervently MAGA-genuinely-worshipful-of-Trump ones, see this as the way to go.
The ‘national emergency/martial law’ scenario I’ve discussed comes from Trump alone (in my opinion). He is the one who can’t tolerate being criticized. He is the one who looks at the level of population control enjoyed by Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong Un and envies it in a way that, I’m guessing, obsesses him. He is the one who would gladly greenlight a false-flag attack that would kill thousands of Americans, as well as a hot war that would kill hundreds of thousands more, in exchange for never again having to hear Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama (or indeed a CNN or MSNBC host) say something negative about him.
And I do believe that both the creation of a “warrior board” to make the military more personally-loyal to him, and his Cabinet picks, signal that he hopes to be able to pull off a quick power grab (via false-flag attack etc.).
Most corporate heads wouldn’t see this as helpful to them. There’s be a lot of uncontrolled face-eating under Trump’s desired plan. The corporate biggies would much prefer the Perpetual GOP Rule plan outlined by @LSLGuy .
I suspect a lot of them have forgotten that, when push comes to shove, the government has actual power behind it, while all they have is money. Money works great right up until it doesn’t.
From The Expanse:
I don’t expect Trump to be that eloquent, but if he ever realizes what he really can do, Musk et al. will regret it.
Yes. Any “power” that even the richest donors had, has ended now that Donald has been elected. He has no need of donations. (Not that he’ll mind taking tributes from them, as @Measure_for_Measure described when discussing how Donald will deal with his tariffs—as threats to extract cash. (See below))
But Donald no longer has to please Bezos or Jamie Dimon or the heads of ExxonMobil, Walmart, or UnitedHealth Group. They helped give him the power, and now he has the power and they are merely oligarchs who serve at his pleasure.
In theory, at least. Trump doesn’t yet have the dictatorial power that would let him force all those corporate heads to literally bow down and kiss his ring. But, in theory, he can get it. And they have no real recourse once he does get it, any more than company heads in China or Russia can tell Xi or Vlad what to do.
Now that Trump has been re-elected, all those rich people’s faces are very much in danger.
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eta: here’s the post I was thinking of in re tariffs and the power over companies they give to Trump:
All he’d really have to do is weaponize the IRS against them. We all know a lot of law enforcement is “discretionary”, and they focus on things that matter the most to those in power. We also know that pretty much every rich person and corporation engages in some kind of tax shenanigans.
So just set the tone. Fire the ethical IRS agents, and make it clear to the others that Company X and Billionaire Y are now targets of interest to Trump. They will find something to nail them with.
During harrowing times some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It’s not a one-way progress. Almost everyone has their moments. But there’s a particular kind of militant doomerism afoot at the moment. Any discussions of next steps in the battle against Trumpism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or strategies, are met with a chorus of, “don’t you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin!!?!” Or “don’t you know rules don’t matter to Donald Trump!?!?!”
In a sense, it’s a dialog genetically related to what I called “competitive hyperbole” two days ago. Strategies for the future or even the assumption that there will be a future get shouted down as a hopeless naiveté. And at least within that stream of conversation — which I’m certainly not saying is dominant, but it is there — it leads to the same escalating declarations of dystopia and totalism.
Is it possible that Donald Trump could push the American Republic into dictatorship or more plausibly the kind of soft autocracy or broken democracy we know today in places like Russia or Hungary or Turkey? Sure. Is it likely? I don’t know any way of putting odds to such a thing. But what I know is that it’s not easy. There’s Congress and the courts and even when they’re compliant the process is still difficult, time-consuming and hard to pull off. There’s also the double-level government of federalism, in which a great deal of the machinery of government remains in other hands. That’s more difficulty and time-consuming obstacles. And it’s the work of an opposition to make it as hard and time-consuming as possible, to make the consequences as visible as possible.
Don’t obey in advance. Don’t jump to the worst case scenario if it stops you from opposing the policy of the day. Think strategically. Prepare for the fight. Volunteer and support other volunteers. You don’t have to do everything: filling in for a co-worker who wants to leave early for a demonstration -or write a letter to their congressional rep- counts.
Deciding this has already happened here is not only pathetic but self-defeating. What we have amounts to a declaration of intent from Donald Trump. Perilously, the American people, albeit in many cases not knowing the consequences, have issued Trump a warrant to try.
Certain people, growing out of trauma and exhaustion which I fully understand, believe there’s some power or badassery or even a species of courage in saying, “yeah, since when does Donald Trump follow the law!?!?” or “Just admit that we have no power!!!” But it’s actually precisely the opposite. That’s the most pernicious form of anticipatory obedience.
A better answer, both more effective and more dignified, is to say, “Okay, let’s see you try.” It’s not easy. There are lots of road blocks. It requires maintaining a lot of public support. It requires patience.
Dignity is the load star. None of us can make or break our 240 year experiment with democracy. What we can do is fight, so that we later say that when the country called, we answered.
Not sure where you post about this, but this seems a good spot (I know they claim they didn’t vote for President-Elect Dumpster Fire). They posted the nonsense below about what federal agencies to reduce and then a couple posts later posted “oh, I didn’t know they did that, I guess they should stay”. This is why the US can’t have nice things. Ignorance runs rampant. I assume Crafter_Man = Rick Perry.
The realization has started to creep in at Mrs. Odesio’s workplace. Many of the Trump supporters are worried he will have a federal agency stop enforcement, which means the agency Mrs. Odesio works for will likely lay them all off. If there’s no enforcement there’s no reason for the agency to keep their employees employed. I can’t take much joy out of this since Mrs. Odesio would be out of a job as well.
