I have a vision - Canadians leverage their decades of experience with cross-border shopping for cheaper stuff in the US, to build US-focussed shopping areas close to every border crossing. Focus on particular things Americans seem to really want to be cheap, like eggs, clothes, and cars.
Then, in every parking lot, we have teams of Roving Canadians teaching them how to make it back across the border without paying tariffs or duty.
“No, you can’t use the shopping bags, that’s a dead give-away. Just pile it on the floor in the back on the car. And remember to take the tags off and dump them in the trash over there. And while you’re at it, remember that weed is also legal in Canada now!”
ETA: and cars and trucks! We’ll set up a website, you put in the make and model of your current vehicle, and when you arrive, we swap it out for a new one of the same make, and same color, just switch license plates, and boom! New car! We’ll spread mud on it to make it look old, for an extra charge, of course.
The window sticker on my 1999 Jeep Cherokee had a percentage of the vehicle that was manufactured in Canada. For some reason, 40% sticks in my mind. Might have been 20%. Might have been another percentage. Anyway, the point is that my Jeep has a lot of Canada in it.
Trump seems able to avoid the consequences of his own actions, but the Republicans don’t. They’ve taken heavy election losses in the past as backlash to Trumpism, and I expect that big time in 2026.
I also suspect they expect it too and so they’ll try to get as much done as possible in the next couple of years. I’m not sure how much they can, especially when they keep fighting each other.
I wouldn’t call it an expectation, but I have at least a little hope that a few Republican Senators might have enough concern about a) the Senate’s reputation (and tradition) as the more deliberative body, and/or b) its possible irrelevance if Project 2025 comes to fruition that the incoming malAdministration’s worst excesses might be sidelined.
Or it might stop with Susan Collins being Very Concerned™. To quote Robert Agar in The Great Train Robbery, “I’ll hope, but not too excessive.”
[S]ome in Trump’s party have essentially agreed that the party should do whatever Trump wants, because he won the 2024 election.
“Whatever that is, we need to embrace it,” Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas) said recently. “All of it. Every single word.”
But that’s clearly not what the American people want. And as notably, it doesn’t even appear to be what Republicans want. …
But that doesn’t mean they want Congress or even congressional Republicans to just bow to Trump’s will. …
But the verdict was basically the same, regardless of how the question was asked. While 75 percent disagreed that Trump should be able to unilaterally appoint people when the Constitution was invoked, 76 percent disagreed when it was not. Republican opposition was at 53 percent when the Constitution was invoked and 55 percent when it was not.
The split was similar. Americans said 77 percent to 23 percent that congressional Republicans should push back when they disagree with Trump’s policies, and even Republicans sided with pushing back, 56-44.
I don’t seem to recall the Republicans lining up to hold Trump to account during two richly-deserved Impeachment Proceedings.
In the first, he blackmailed/extorted a US ally, using taxpayer funds, in order that they would fabricate dirt on his likely political opponent.
In the second, he had – quite literally – fomented an attempted self-coup, trying to overthrow the legitimately-elected US government.
[It’s worth frequent and perpetual reminder…]
Maybe the Republicans are waiting for him to do something extra special bad.
ETA: I think it would take the cold, craven, cynical calculation that Trump did something that couldn’t be spun to the Republicans’ political advantage, and that would likely hurt their chances in the next election(s).
I agree. They’ve been consistently spineless when it comes to Trump ever since 2016. They talk big but fold if he so much as glances harshly at them.
Really, it’s one of the things I found most surprising about Trump’s takeover of the Republicans. While I was never foolish enough to consider that any of them might have the slightest moral scruples, I really thought that their pride would have convinced them to stand up to him; but they just fell on their faces and groveled.
It is not that Republicans want a check on Trump-It is that Republicans want someone else to put a check on Trump. Those that have the initiative to do so don’t have the power, and those that have the power to do so don’t have the initiative.
I think/hope that there is a significant difference in the courage required vote to hold back on supporting nominees/legislation that are broadly unpopular and harmful to the country vs voting to actively throw the selected leader of your party from the highest seat in the land.
Please count my hope right along side of your own.
My concern, however, is that Trump’s legendary, infantile, and insatiable sense of grievance, and subsequent obsession with vengeance, is all too binary, and will only have worsened with time, age, additional non-existent transgressions against him, and a big EC win.
I’d love to be wrong. I’d love for there to be a new, Republican pamphlet version of “Profiles in Courage” at this point
ETA:
That’s a really interesting take. I’ll definitely be staying tuned…
I suppose after seeing RFKJR grifting into the upcoming maladministration, I should not be shocked to see this bit of news from AOL.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to lead the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s leading medical research agency.
Trump, in a statement Tuesday evening, said Bhattacharya, a 56-year-old physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, will work in cooperation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, "to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease," he wrote.
Yes. I did choose the correct descriptor for Project2025/T2.
Those numbers are very similar to Republican support for at least some reasonable access to abortion, but that support by voters doesn’t translate into support by the elected officials. Even when some Republican-majority states are voting to add abortion rights to State constitutions, other Republican States are enacting and enforcing very strong bans on abortions.
So I don’t really expect those numbers to translate into any significant opposition to Trump.
