The Tremendous Trump Thread - Etterspill (Les førstepost)

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[JK22]

AtterEnBruker skrev (7 timer siden):

Her er nyeste om Biden-administrasjonens sletting av student-gjeld.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2024/06/03/private-student-loan-forgiveness-application-is-now-available-but-few-know-about-it/

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/05/26/student-loan-forgiveness-updates/73841582007/

Vet ikke hvor mye det prates om der borte. Vet ikke om det vil ha noe å si for valget. Men verdt å nevne...

Uansett er det nødvendig å redusere de finansielle byrder for studentene i USA fordi det er oppsto manko på faglærte og ferdigutdannede arbeidsfolk som mange amerikanske firmaer etterspør. Nå er det slikt at immigranter aktuelt har bedre kvalitet enn de innfødte, spesielt hvis de kom fra latinamerikanske land. I 1960-tallet var statlig studentstøtte naturlig, det var før "den falske konservatismen" annullert dette fordi "niggers" og "gooks" som de fargede og asiatamerikanerne den gang kalles, fikk adgang til collegene. Det har hatt katastrofale følger i de siste tjue år. Og dette støttes av de rike og velstående som ikke klarte å fatte at et generelt kvalitetstap er til stor tap for dem, og at de risikere større usikkerhet enn tidlig. 

Meget mange amerikanerne vet ikke hva man hadde i mange tiår fra 1900 til 1965, nemlig man hadde gratis utdanning, gratis helsepleie, et skikkelig politivesen, lav kriminell våpenbruk og offentlige tjenester som velfredordninger for fattige, syke og sårbare selv om dette var i et dypt rasesegregert samfunn den gang. Det var før minoritetsfolk fikk lov til å ta del i dette, og da var da rasister begynte å sabotere sitt egne land. Denne sabotasjepolitikken har fått sitt egne liv, og er hovedårsaken bak den store krisen som har avlivet "den amerikanske drømmen", skapt makroøkonomisk ustabilitet, stor sosial ustabilitet og en voksende fare for borgerkrig. 

Det var ikke en statsmistillit mellom innbyggerne og statsstyre i 1789-1980, som i virkeligheten kalles statsskepsis selv om dette avfødte problematiske forhold som valg på sheriff/politisjef, dommer, ja nærmest alt med lederansvar - og det hadde vært perioder hvor avgrunnen hadde blitt meget farefullt stor, som under "den forgylte tiden" 1865-1900 som i slutten ført det sosiale limet mot bristepunktet. Da var altfor mange blitt fattig, undertrykt og ignorert til fordel for et minskende fåtall av rike. Da "den progressive tiden" startet, var det i grevens tid, da integritetsfulle folk kom til makten. Hadde dette ikke hendt, ville USA ha kollapset som kapitalistenes svar mot Tsar-Russland. 

Det var "den progressive tiden" som skapt fram USA de fleste kjente som et forbilde. 

[JK22]

'In-your-face corrupt': Columnist scorches Supreme Court for going to bat for Trump (msn.com)

The Supreme Court is "in-your-face corrupt" — and working to help former President Donald Trump get re-elected however it can, Andrew Perez wrote in a blistering analysis for Rolling Stone published on Monday.

The court is getting ready to decide a pair of cases that could heavily impact whether Trump can be tried for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election — and as Justice Samuel Alito is refusing to step aside from participating in them, despite recent reporting that he has flown symbols associated with MAGA conspiracy theories at his house.

"The deck is stacked," he wrote. "Right-wing extremists can impose their ideological and religious views on the rest of us — at will. The justices have their lifetime appointments, and a lucrative reward system: Benefactors provide them with private jet rides and superyacht trips, buy their homes, supply them with teaching side hustles, and occasionally even steer consulting payments to their spouses. The notion of accountability is a foreign one; the justices can fly flags at their homes associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Christian nationalism. Their spouses can try to overturn elections. Americans are losing faith in the Supreme Court, but it doesn’t matter. The justices have hard power — no one is going to stop them."

The Supreme Court is even debating whether to "legalize gratuities" for politicians, Perez noted: "The case involves an Indiana mayor who steered two government contracts to a garbage truck company, which then paid him $13,000. At oral arguments, justices debated whether the $13,000 thank-you payment is too similar to taking a teacher to the Cheesecake Factory to constitute bribery."

"And then there’s the court’s shameless advocacy for Donald Trump, who assembled this monstrosity," he wrote. "In the first case, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot keep Trump off their ballots under the 14th Amendment, which prohibits insurrectionists from serving in office. The court’s decision to hear the second Trump case — over his facially ridiculous, dangerous claim to having expansive immunity in perpetuity for acts he committed as president — delayed his federal criminal trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and had his team 'literally popping champagne,' as a lawyer close to Donald Trump told Rolling Stone at the time."

Trump's allies know that he could make even more Supreme Court appointments with a second term, Perez concluded.

"The potential for destruction would be immense," he wrote. "The justices and their dark-money allies are ready to seize their opportunity and take full advantage of it."

Den føderale høyesteretten er korrupt og dessverre har dette vært kommende i lang tid; meget mange vet ikke at det var de "konservative" høyesterettsdommerne som sørget for ukontrollert finansiell støtte til politikerne som valgstøtte - det var aktuelt meget strengt begrenset i forrige århundre - og deretter for uvettig pengeforbruk for valgkamp ved å stenge ut enhver form for statlig assistanse som i Norge og andre demokratiske stater. Thomas er korrupt, og han er så frekt at han åpent sier ut at dette er naturlig. 

Opinion | Why the Supreme Court Is Blind to Its Own Corruption - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas has further eroded the already record-low public confidence in the Supreme Court. If Chief Justice John Roberts wonders how such a thing could have happened, he might start looking for answers within the cloistered walls of his own courtroom.

Over more than two decades, the Supreme Court has gutted laws aimed at fighting corruption and at limiting the ability of the powerful to enrich public officials in a position to advance their interests. As a result, today wealthy individuals and corporations may buy political access and influence with little fear of legal consequences, either for them or for the beneficiaries of their largess.

No wonder Justice Thomas apparently thought his behavior was no big deal.

He has been under fire for secretly accepting, from the Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, luxury vacations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a real estate deal (involving the home where his mother was living) and the payment of private school tuition for a grandnephew the justice was raising. Meanwhile, over the years, conservative groups with which Mr. Crow was affiliated filed amicus briefs in several matters before the Supreme Court.

That sounds like the very definition of corruption. But over the years, many justices — and not just conservatives — have championed a different definition.

The landmark case is the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. A five-justice majority — including Justice Thomas — struck down decades-old restrictions on independent campaign expenditures by corporations, holding that they violated the companies’ free speech rights. It rejected the argument that such laws were necessary to prevent the damage to democracy that results from unbridled corporate spending and the undue influence it can create.

The government’s legitimate interest in fighting corruption, the court held, is limited to direct quid pro quo deals, in which a public official makes a specific commitment to act in exchange for something of value. The appearance of potentially improper influence or access is not enough.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of adopting a “crabbed view of corruption” that the court itself had rejected in an earlier case. He argued that Congress has a legitimate interest in limiting the effects of corporate money on politics: “Corruption operates along a spectrum, and the majority’s apparent belief that quid pro quo arrangements can be neatly demarcated from other improper influences does not accord with the theory or reality of politics.”

Citizens United opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending on behalf of political candidates and to the influence that spending necessarily provides. But the decision didn’t come out of nowhere: The court has often been unanimous in its zeal for curtailing criminal corruption laws.

In the 1999 case of United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California, the court unanimously held, in effect, that it is not a violation of the federal gratuities statute for an individual or corporation to have a public official on private retainer. The court rejected a theory known as a status gratuity, where a donor showers a public official with gifts over time based on the official’s position (that is in contrast with a more common gratuity, given as a thank-you for a particular act by the official). The quite reasonable rationale behind that theory was that when matters of interest to the donor arose, the past gifts (and hope for future ones) might lead the official to favor his or her benefactor.

That actually sounds a lot like the Crow-Thomas relationship. But the court held that such an arrangement is not unlawful. The gratuities law, the court ruled, requires that a particular gift be linked to a particular official act. Without such a direct link, a series of gifts to a public official over time does not violate the statute, even if the goal is to curry favor with an official who could act to benefit the gift giver.

In the wake of Sun-Diamond, federal prosecutors increasingly turned to a more expansive legal theory known as honest services fraud. But in Skilling v. United States, the court ruled that theory is limited to cases of bribes and kickbacks — once again, direct quid pro quo deals. Three justices, including Justice Thomas, wanted to go even further and declare the statute that prohibits honest services fraud unconstitutional.

The court proceeded to limit its “crabbed view of corruption” even further. In the 2016 case McDonnell v. United States, the court held that selling government access is not unlawful. Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia and his wife, Maureen, accepted about $175,000 in secret gifts from the businessman Jonnie Williams, who wanted Virginia’s public universities to perform research studies on his company’s dietary supplement to assist with its F.D.A. approval. In exchange, Mr. McDonnell asked subordinates to meet with Mr. Williams about such studies and hosted a luncheon at the governor’s mansion to connect him with university health researchers.

A jury convicted the McDonnells on several counts of corruption. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously affirmed the convictions. But the Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that the things Mr. McDonnell did for Mr. Williams did not qualify as “official acts” under federal bribery law. Selling official access may be tawdry, the court held, but it is not a crime.

Those who think Justice Thomas may be guilty of corruption may not realize just how difficult the court itself has made it to prove such a case. Now only the most ham-handed officials, clumsy enough to engage in a direct quid pro quo, risk prosecution.

Viewed in light of this history, the Thomas scandal becomes less surprising. Its own rulings would indicate that the Supreme Court doesn’t believe what he did is corrupt. A powerful conservative with interests before the court regularly providing a justice with vacations worth more than his annual salary is, as the court said in Citizens United, merely the “appearance” of potential corruption. In the court’s view, the public has no reason to be concerned.

But the public clearly is, and should be, concerned over the ability of the rich and powerful to purchase access and influence unavailable to most citizens. Unfortunately, Citizens United is here to stay without a constitutional amendment or an overruling by the court, neither of which is very likely.

But it’s still possible for the rest of the country to move past the court’s naïve and inadequate view of corruption. Congress could amend criminal corruption laws to expand their scope and overturn the results in Sun-Diamond, Skilling and McDonnell. It could increase funding for enforcement of the Ethics in Government Act and increase the penalties for filing a false financial disclosure form (or failing to file one at all). Beefed-up disclosure regulations could make it more difficult for officials to hide financial interests and could make it clear there are no disclosure exceptions for enormous gifts of “personal hospitality,” contrary to what Justice Thomas claims he believed. And Congress could pass legislation like the proposed Disclose Act, to require transparency regarding who is behind political donations and spending.

Congress so far has shown little interest in passing such reforms. But that’s where the remedy lies. It’s time for Congress to act.

DET REPUBLIKANSKE PARTIET I DE FORENTE STATENE AV AMERIKA ER KORRUPT. Det er dette som gjør at Trump hadde kunne "stjele" partiet - og det var de "konservative" høyesterettsdommerne som gjort den demokratiske krisen i dag mulig, da man tillatt ukontrollerte korrupte tilstander og dermed i realiteten åpnet døren for en korrupt og hensynsløs svindler ved navn Donald Trump. 

Det var en meget stor feil å ha politisk nominering av høyesterettsdommere i USA. Det var også en meget stor feil å ha politifisering av lekfolk. I Norge har vi meget strenge anførselsregler - og i andre land som i Brasil er dommerstanden blitt så isolert som mulig fra andre institusjoner at de kunne fungere innenfor et meget strengt selvjusterende system - som helt utebli omkring den føderale høyesteretten som i kontrast til alle andre domstolinstitusjoner IKKE er underlagt etiske anførselsregler. 

In his Citizens United dissent, Justice Stevens observed, “A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.” That’s exactly how it now appears to the public — and that applies to Supreme Court justices as well as to politicians.

USA er i en demokratisk krise pga. en sabotasjepolitikk anført av rasister og rike, og en korrupsjonskultur som endog er verre enn under "den forgylte tiden", selv om det ennå ikke er sett statskupp, massemord, forfølgelser av arbeidere etc. - som bare hadde hendt da rettsvesenet den gang var dårlig utbygd og korrupt. Her er korrupsjonen i toppen. 

Endret 4. juni av JK22

[AtterEnBruker]

Jepp, mannen tar til sikte å ta kontroll over militæret. Hvert eneste tegn på at det republikanske partiet er i ferd med å bli et diktatur går i oppfyllelse. Hvert!!! Eneste!!! Tegn!!!

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-vow-fire-woke-us-generals-matters-rcna155439

Apologister som trollespammer "jammen, Trump har iallefall ikke starta noen kriger"... det at militæret ikke dansa fullstendig etter hans pipe hadde nok noe med at hans første periode ikke ble fullt så krigersk som det kunne ha blitt . Andre periode, derimot.....

Endret 4. juni av AtterEnBruker

[Dragavon]

No veit ikkje eg om det er så mye i sånne kroppsspråkanalyser 🤔
 

 

[JK22]

AtterEnBruker skrev (4 timer siden):

Jepp, mannen tar til sikte å ta kontroll over militæret. Hvert eneste tegn på at det republikanske partiet er i ferd med å bli et diktatur går i oppfyllelse. Hvert!!! Eneste!!! Tegn!!!

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-vow-fire-woke-us-generals-matters-rcna155439

Apologister som trollespammer "jammen, Trump har iallefall ikke starta noen kriger"... det at militæret ikke dansa fullstendig etter hans pipe hadde nok noe med at hans første periode ikke ble fullt så krigersk som det kunne ha blitt . Andre periode, derimot.....

Det har bare vært dårlige nyheter fra USA så langt hvor det er oppstått meget store problemer med et sterkt uvitende folk, et nasjonalparti "gått av sporene" og meget seriøse problemer som truer med å sende USA ut i kaos. 

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that voting is not a fundamental right. What's next for voters? (msn.com)

Fra Kansas måtte det komme en innrømmelse om at det ikke finnes konstitusjonell bestemmelse om stemmerett eller valgrettighet i hoveddokumentet "Bill of Rights" fra 1789 - som i virkeligheten er den egentlige konstitusjonen fordi alle andre som kom i ettertiden er bare grunnlovsprotokoller (det som no.wiki påstår er "grunnlovsendring", STEMMER IKKE fordi disse er tilføyde uten å endre et eneste komma i den konstitusjonelle teksten) av sekundær betydning. Grunnlovsfedrene simpelt brydd seg ikke om stemmerettigheter av tre årsaker; for det første, det var meget forskjellige stemmebestemmelser fra delstat til delstat, for det andre, det var en antidemokratisk føring der man vil forhindre "pøbeldemokrati" - for det tredje, man vil unngå partipolitikk av en meget ubegripelig årsak. Det er med tilleggsprotokoller det først kom inn bestemmelser om stemmerett og valgordning. Dessverre er disse yngre og dermed ikke inkludert i "Bill of Rights" - den første var i 1870 med 14. grunnlovstillegg. Som var i realiteten suspendert i nitti år fram til Earl Warren satt et halt på dette. Alle lover om stemmerettigheter var bare delstatlig, føderal stemmerett eller føderal lov om prinsipiell stemmerett har seriøse mangler. Det er hvorfor USA er det eneste demokratiske landet uten automatisk stemmerett. Meget mange, amerikanerne inkludert, er ikke klart over dette. 

Noen av delstatene har ikke stemmerettigheter for sine borgerne innbygd i sin delstatskonstitusjoner. Kansas er en av disse delstatene. Der har man derimot meget vage antydninger utover adoptering av en føderal bestemmelse i 1859 - slik at lovgiverne i ettertiden "glemt" å inkludere dette i den delstatlige konstitusjonsteksten. Det var det som fulgt til den skandaløse høyesterettsavgjørelsen som nesten fulgt til vold mellom dommerne, da de konservative med Caleb Stegall i spissen tvunget gjennom en avgjørelse i Hodes & Nauser v. Kobach om at stemmerettighetene ikke er beskyttet av den delstatlige loven mot utenforstående inngrep. Og når man tar utgangspunktet i 1789-konstitusjonen, blir det plutselig et stort hull å falle gjennom. 

This Supreme Court Term Was All About Undoing Democracy – Mother Jones

Denne artikkelen er en massiv fordømmelse av den føderale høyesteretten.

 This Supreme Court Term Was All About Undoing Democracy

The justices made racist gerrymandering easier—and that’s just the start.

In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will wrap up a consequential term and issue decisions that are expected to undercut bedrock assumptions about each branch of government and create a new balance of powers—one that tips the scales toward an unassailable executive and an all-powerful judiciary. It began on Thursday, as the court gave states new leeway to discriminate against minority voters. The justices may soon add women’s right to healthcare to the list of privileges that a state may deprive its citizens, another step that would turn the clock back to a time when the Constitution viewed states rights as more sacrosanct than the rights of its people. Though the cases at issue address many different issues, a theme punctuating them all is that the Republican-appointed majority appears willing to do serious damage to American democracy. 

Two years ago, Americans enjoyed a fundamental right to an abortion. With that right since demolished, last month during oral arguments in a case involving an Idaho abortion ban, several justices contemplated whether states can deprive women not just of elective abortions, but ones necessary to spare their uteruses, kidneys, and even their lives. It was a stunning and rapid reversal of fortune for women in this country—and one that cannot be squared with a healthy democracy. 

“There’s an exceptionalism in terms of democracy, women, [and the] law in these reproductive cases,” says Georgetown Law professor Michele Goodwin, who argues the case, along with the 2022 Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, ignores “the constitutional citizenship and personhood of women.”

In the decision he wrote that ended the right to an abortion, Justice Samuel Alito placed the state’s interest in protecting an embryo or fetus over a pregnant person’s bodily autonomy. Now, in Moyle v. United States, Idaho asks the justices to place the same state interest over the federal government’s interest in ensuring that everyone receives emergency medical care. At issue is whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), an almost 40-year-old law mandating hospitals that receive Medicare funding provide stabilizing treatment in emergencies, preempts Idaho’s abortion ban, which forbids abortion except to save the life of the mother. Put simply, does a state’s right to ban abortion override the federal government’s interest in ensuring women’s safety? 

Idaho argued that it should have the final say on its citizens’ health and safety. When Justice Elena Kagan asked the attorney for Idaho, Joshua Turner, whether a state could ban abortion even when “death [for the mother] is around the corner,” Turner said it could. “That understanding is a humble one with respect to the federalism role of states as the primary care providers for their citizens, not the federal government,” Turner responded. To which Kagan replied, “It may be too humble for women’s health, you know?”

It’s a shocking argument. It carves pregnant people out of medical protections guaranteed to everyone else, while more broadly allowing a state to inflict violence—up to and including death—upon its citizens. It assigns more dignity to states than to their citizens. And yet, if oral arguments are any indication, it seemed a majority of the justices were ready to usher in such a future. 

The case also indicates that the conservative justices appear ready to rewrite basic legal principles in order to achieve a certain outcome. Under longstanding constitutional precedent, their decision in the Idaho case should be simple: when federal law conflicts with state law, federal law wins. 

The 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War, transformed the relationship between the federal government and the states—a fact all the justices invoke when it suits them. “The whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to restrict state power, right?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked in February, when the court heard oral arguments in a case over whether the 14th Amendment permitted Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot on the grounds that he is an insurrectionist.

Roberts was right. But its purpose went further. As David Gans, a constitutional law expert at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, wrote in the Atlantic in 2021, the framers of the 14th Amendment contemplated the fact that freedom included the right to marry and create a family according to one’s wishes—a juxtaposition to the culture of rape and family separation that defined slavery in America. 

These rights are an extension of bodily autonomy, which was explicitly discussed when Congress drafted the 14th Amendment. “During the debates, members of Congress insisted that a person’s ‘uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health’ was a bedrock right guaranteed to all,” Gans wrote. “Without bodily integrity, the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of equal citizenship would be illusory.”

EMTALA was not enacted under the authority of the 14th Amendment, but the case implicates its key themes, and the way that the court is shrinking its application while refusing to apply it to women’s and minority rights. In Dobbs, the conservative majority denied that abortion rights had any basis in the Constitution, history, or traditions of the United States. If they let Idaho override federal law, they will be making clear they do not see the federal government’s power to protect its citizens in it either. 

The EMTALA case is shocking both because it again denies this view of liberty to pregnant people, and because it asks the justices to disregard the federal government’s interest in protecting their life, limbs, body, and health.

On the term’s last day of arguments, the court heard Trump’s claim to absolute immunity for official acts he made as president. Just as in the EMTALA case, which was heard the day before, most of the GOP-appointed justices appeared ready to rewrite longstanding rules to achieve their desired outcome.

Limiting the ability to prosecute presidents for wrongdoing in official acts would move the office from a position that operates under the rule of law to one that operates above it. While the GOP-appointed justices are technically correct that the Constitution does not mention abortion, it certainly does not mention presidential immunity. The founders, who had just made a radical break from monarchy through a revolutionary war, expressly rejected the notion.

“Key participants in the ratification debates expressly emphasized that the President would remain subject to criminal prosecution, and that check was important to the ratifiers’ understanding of the constitutional order they were approving,” scholars of the era wrote in an amicus brief in this case. 

But when it came to the immunity question, at oral arguments the court’s originalists became consequentialists. What should the court do, they wondered, to stop prosecutors from going after ex-presidents? “I’m not concerned about this case so much as future ones,” Neil Gorsuch claimed. “I’m very concerned about the future,” Brett Kavanaugh declared, while admitting that immunity is not stated in the Constitution but might be read into it implicitly. “This case will have effects that go far beyond this particular prosecution,” Samuel Alito said when the government’s attorney tried to discuss the facts at hand. 

While exploring what new immunities they might extend presidents, the justices on the courts’ rightmost flank painted a grim picture of American democracy, besieged by vengeful presidents and rogue prosecutors who bring bogus cases to sully their opponents retirements. This vision was completely ahistorical—it’s a feverish fear, not a reality. Yet several of the GOP appointees found the hypothetical scenario to be a credible, imminent threat to the republic.

The only plausible reason to be on such high alert is the assumption that that future has already arrived, to be red-pilled enough to believe that the criminal indictments against Trump are, as Trump claims, a political vendetta, that our democracy has already tipped toward authoritarianism, and that the only way to save it is to remove more guardrails. In that worldview, democracy is not being sacrificed to a lawless president, but preserved by the creation of an immune executive. Justice Samuel Alito even floated the idea that presidents might try to stay in power illegally in order to protect themselves from a vengeful successor—a bizarre hypothetical that makes more sense now that we know that after the 2020 election the Alito residence flew an upside-down flag, a sign of support for Trump’s insurrection.

But a country with a commander-in-chief who is not beholden to the law is not in fact a democracy anymore. It fell to Sonia Sotomayor to make this point. “A stable democratic society needs the good faith of its public officials, correct?” she asked. “And that good faith assumes they follow the law?” 

It’s unlikely that the justices will give Trump the sweeping immunity he seeks. But what might be dubbed a compromise by the press—a ruling that allows some immunity for official acts, for example—would elevate the presidency above the law in certain situations, upsetting the system of checks and balances that undergird our system of government. In order to protect Trump, they are abandoning not just their professed originalism, but adherence to the foundational idea of an accountable executive, despite the embarrassing irony that Trump has promised to use the DOJ to attack his political enemies—the very behavior that the GOP-appointed justices claim to be worried about. When choosing between democracy and Trump, a majority of the justices look to be seriously considering picking Trump. 

Lest that seem extreme, the Democratic-appointed justices have already issued a public warning this term that the majority is looking out for Trump’s interests. When the court ruled that Colorado could not exclude Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban, the minority’s dissent explained how the decision went out of its way to create a process for enforcing the prohibition that protects Trump and his allies.

A vital element of democratic self-preservation is that someone who tried to overturn that democracy not then take charge of it. But, as Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their March dissent, “The majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office” and “goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President.” 

The court’s anti-democratic activity this term will likely include a judicial power grab that will undermine Congress’ authority and the functioning of the federal government. In January, the Supreme Court heard a pair of cases that could hand significant new powers to lower federal courts and—ultimately—to the justices themselves. At issue is so-called Chevron Deference, named for the unanimous 1984 decision Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which stipulates that when a statute is ambiguous, courts defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation. Staffed with experts and civil servants, the principle behind Chevron is that agencies are best situated to make tough calls in thousands of regulatory decisions every year. 

Chevron has been a target of the right for several years because it enables regulations, such as environmental protections under the Clean Air Act, that industry wants to block. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh both broadcasted their opposition to Chevron while auditioning for their Supreme Court seats, and after oral arguments, there’s little doubt that the doctrine will either be overruled or significantly whittled down. While the effects on Americans’ daily lives—from the air they breathe to the parks they play in, the food they eat and the medicine they take—will be significant, losing Chevron will also be a serious blow to American democracy.

A decision handcuffing the administrative state would come on top of another bold judicial power grab already underway: a method of legal interpretation dubbed the “major questions doctrine,” by which the justices have decided they can invalidate agency rules if they deem them too politically significant or expensive to leave up to an agency. When the court’s GOP-appointed majority first officially invoked the novel doctrine in 2022 to overrule an Environmental Protection Agency rule addressing climate change, Kagan called out the political expediency behind the move in her dissent. When the majority’s preferred method of judicial interpretation fails to achieve their goals, she wrote, “special canons like the ‘major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get out-of-text-free cards.” In 2023, the justices relied on the doctrine to put themselves in charge of major policy areas, including by striking down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan as too major for the Department of Education to carry out. 

Without Chevron, executive branch agencies would be hobbled in creating thousands of rules and regulations that protect Americans. Instead of agencies and experts having the final say, it would fall to the courts to decide what the law should be, whether regulating drug safety, Medicare and Medicaid, or nuclear waste. Not only are rules considered too significant now available for judicial veto, so too would any that arise from an ambiguous or broad statute. 

After oral arguments, University of Pennsylvania law professor Kate Shaw worried that the decision in the case “could be just a nightmarishly judicial supremacist opinion” that invests the courts with unprecedented powers. “It’s going to be seismic if they do the maximalist version of this opinion,” she said on the podcast she co-hosts, Strict Scrutiny.

The end of Chevron would not just shift power from agencies (and the presidents who direct them) to the courts, it would also significantly disempower Congress. Congress writes statutes that are purposefully broad and vague because it knows that it cannot predict every application of the law and thus delegates to the agencies the responsibility to carry out the law as new challenges arise. Likewise, Congress knows that scientists, doctors, and other agency experts are better suited than lawmakers to make certain regulatory decisions. Congress is perhaps the most democratically-accountable branch of government; and agencies, while unelected, are led by chiefs who are picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Administrative rule-making includes a comment process that is open to the public. Judges, conversely, enjoy lifetime appointments unless impeached for serious misconduct. A shift in power toward the judiciary is a shift away from democratic accountability.

Further, by removing Chevron, the justices would essentially be forcing Congress to change how they write statutes to court-proof the ways they empower agencies. “We expect Congress to have a fair bit of leeway that allows it to do its job and to legislate in a way that best reflects the will of the people,” says Miriam Becker-Cohen, an attorney at the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal legal organization. “If you have judges, who are not part of the legislative branch, coming in and dictating the way in which Congress has to write statutes, that undermines democratic values.”

But disempowering the elected branches of government is the point. Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but in his four years, Trump was able to reshape much of the federal judiciary. Judges can be a route to minority rule, and ending deference to agencies would allow the conservative movement to wipe out the policies of administrations it doesn’t agree with. Conservatives “are looking to the judiciary vis-a-vis their power, or lack thereof, in the other branches,” says Becker-Cohen. “It’s not just that overruling Chevron would transfer power to judges: it’s that that is specifically the goal.”

Perhaps no issue is as central to democracy as voting. Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has chipped away at the ability to challenge unfair maps and racially-discriminatory voting practices, both under the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. On Thursday, the Republican-appointed majority took another significant step that will limit challenges to racially-discriminatory gerrymanders.

In 2021, the South Carolina state legislature sought to shore up Republicans’ hold on the 1st Congressional District by drawing more than 30,000 Black voters out of it. A three-judge district court panel found that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

In its decision Thursday overturning the district court’s order, the Supreme Court departed from precedent and usual judicial methods, as Kagan wrote in her dissent, by placing “uncommon burdens on gerrymandered plaintiffs.” While the decision confirmed that racial gerrymandering is technically unconstitutional, successfully proving it occurs in court will be nearly impossible. The decision is an invitation to lawmakers around the country to disempower Black and brown voters, an outcome at odds with equal voting rights for all.

In 2019, in one of the court’s landmark rulings weakening voting rights, Chief Justice John Roberts held that partisan gerrymandering was beyond the purview of federal courts. Although Roberts was clear that racial gerrymandering was still justiciable, his opinion threatened to swallow those claims as well because race and political affiliation are often closely correlated. 

On Thursday, that’s exactly what happened. Because partisan gerrymandering is allowed, all South Carolina had to do, according to the conservative supermajority, was to claim that politics motivated its map-drawing. Further, Alito wrote in his 6-3 majority opinion, district courts must view such claims with a “presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.” The Supreme Court’s decision creates a black hole that will now suck in virtually all gerrymandering claims. Though the justices have spent the last several years attempting to end government uses of race—even when the purpose is to increase racial equality—racial gerrymandering is now one area in which the justices invite racial discrimination, and promise that lawmakers will almost always get away with it.

These four cases, taken together, strike at the heart of American democracy. They threaten to institute a topsy-turvy Constitution in which its post-Civil War amendments protect an insurrectionist but allow states to dismantle the rights of women and minorities, while the president grows more king-like and judges snatch critical decisions from the elected branches. It doesn’t resemble what the framers intended—nor is it the basis for a democratic future.

Det er korrekt. Det er ikke hva grunnlovsfedrene ønsker, og ikke i tråd med 1789-konstitusjonens ånd som er basert på borgerlige idealer omkring likemannsprinsippet med et valgbart oligarki oppstilt av likemenn med kongressen som hovedarena for et politisk system i en føderasjon, hvor formålet er at man skulle ha et representasjonssystem med representanter som skulle representere samfunnet som en enhet. Men de samme grunnlovsfedrene hadde gjort alvorlige feil som underminere konstitusjonen nærmest helt fra begynnelsen. De valgt å ignorere politiske ideer fra 1700-tallets Europa som fikk et minimal innflytelse, til fordel for politiske ideer fra 1600-tallet. De valgt dessuten å basere seg på sine ideer om den romerske republikken fordi de vil ha et amerikansk imperium "fra hav til hav" (ja, de hadde slike ambisjoner allerede i 1780-tallet), og det athenske "pøbeldemokratiet" som skulle avverges for å bevare stendersamfunnet. Dessuten hadde de erstattet en konstitusjonell konge med en enmannsregjering som allerede i begynnelsen fikk for mye makt. I Europa er regjeringstradisjonen basert på kongerådgiverinstitusjonen der rådgivere blir ministre - slik at man får en flermannsregjering med en "formann" i lederrollen. Det vist seg å være en meget stor feil.

Og sist, men ikke minst: man hadde delt opp makten i den utøvende, den lovgivende og den dømmende - men uten et hierarki som i Norge, der er den utøvende i toppen, den lovgivende i midten og den dømmende underst. Det kan skyldes merkelig for folk å vite det. Men; dette er maktutøvende hierarki i hverdagslivet, ikke politisk makthierarki - som da snu det dels på hodet; av den lovgivende makten utspringer den utøvende og den dømmende. For å få til dette uten maktakkumulasjon eller uønskede konsekvenser må man ha strukturelle rammer som sørger for en balansegang, og dessverre åpner grunnlovsfedrene for at de tre maktene kunne sabotere hverandre. Det var det som hendt i de siste tjue år, spesielt etter Obama kom til makten i 2009. Det var et stort feilsteg å ha politisk nominering av dommere fordi man risikere partioppdeling og dermed splittet lojalitet - som har gjort dagens høyesteretten mulig i dag. Det var likedan et stort feilsteg å ha for dyp splittelse mellom presidentembetet og nasjonalforsamlingen. 

Konstitusjonen fra 1789 skulle ha blitt erstattet i begynnelsen på 1900-tallet da "den progressive tiden" skapt nye forutsetninger som gjør en ny konstitusjon nødvendig, eller under "den andre rekonstruksjonen" i 1960-tallet da den progressive USA for alvor manifestert seg, men allerede i "den forgylte tiden" var det oppdaget at systemet hadde stivet seg fast i et maktkonservativt system til fordel for samfunnselitene som siden gjort sitt ytterst for å stanse sosialistiske reformer. Dette var dels imøtekommet med sosialliberalismen som Roosevelt og LBJ var sterke forkjemperne for i 1933-1969. Det var sosialliberalismen som åpnet for en amerikansk velferdsordning som i dag er noe amerikanerne flest TRODDE var en skandinavisk særpregenhet. Som har siden blitt revet opp og deretter erstattet med kostbare og ineffektive makkverk. Men anstrengelsene for å stanse sosialismen lykte. 

Og nå ser vi følgene av dette. Det er som hvis grunnlovsfedrenes drøm om å gjenskape den romerske republikken har gått i oppfyllelse. For republikken gikk under som et resultat av sosialrettighetskonflikter. Dette åpnet opp for borgerkrig og tyranni i slutten, med innføring av keiserstyre som resultat. 

Trump vil bli USAs keiser. Og republikanerne kan ikke lenge kalle seg "republikanere". 

 

[JK22]

Jon Stewart Argues Trump Verdict Response Shows 'Media Has Decided That There's Really No Such Thing as Reality' | Video (msn.com)

"News media has decided that there's really no such thing as reality,"

"God, the justice system hunts Republicans while protecting Democrats," an exasperated Stewart said. "Someone should mention that to such unprotected Democrats as Senator Robert Menendez and Congressman Henry Cuellar, both facing corruption charges brought by our Department of Justice, not to mention Hunter Biden was facing jury selection in a federal gun charges trial, f—ing today."

"Perhaps it is time for those on the right to begin to examine what it might be like to investigate Hillary and William Clinton, or perhaps to do it continuously and relentlessly for the last 30 years," Stewart said with heavy sarcasm. "But, to admit their own political gamesmanship, their own attempts at weaponizing justice, their own relentless pursuit of opponents, their own dehumanizing rhetoric towards the left, would be to allow a molecule of reality into the airtight distortion field that has been created to protect MAGAdonian from the harsh glare of actuality."

Speaker Johnson calls Biden ‘the worst president in the history of the country’ (msn.com)

“Look, there’s no question President Biden, I think, is the worst president … I think President Biden’s the worst president in the history of the country, and there may well be impeachable offenses,” he added. “There is an investigation process that’s gone about that has been looked at [by] our committees of jurisdiction, and the process continues, so I’m not making any commitment on that this morning. We have to let the constitutional process and our constitutional responsibility play out.” 

Han er sprøytende gal. 

Trump the totem (msn.com)

The former president, Johnson said, “is not just our nominee, not just an individual running for president. I think now he’s seen as a symbol, a symbol of one who is willing to fight back against that corruption, the deep state and all the rest.”

Enda verre. 

Now the totem is the flag of the clan…. [The participant] does not know that the coming together of a number of men associated in the same life results in disengaging new energies, which transform each of them. All that he knows is that he is raised above himself and that he sees a different life from the one he ordinarily leads. However, he must connect these sensations to some external object as their cause. Now what does he see about him? On every side those things which appeal to his senses and strike his imagination are the numerous images of the totem…. Placed thus in the centre of the scene, it becomes representative.

The sentiments experienced fix themselves upon it, for it is the only concrete object upon which they can fix themselves. It continues to bring them to mind and to evoke them even after the assembly has dissolved, for it survives the assembly, being carved upon the instruments of the cult, upon the sides of rocks, upon bucklers, etc. By it, the emotions experienced are perpetually sustained and revived.

When the leader becomes the totem, no transgression is capable of separating him from his acolytes. A totem can’t lie or be vulgar. A totem doesn’t have marriage vows that can be violated. A totem can’t sexually assault a woman. A totem can’t commit fraud. A totem can’t betray an oath to the Constitution. A totem has no innate human characteristics at all. It is a mirror, reflecting back the collective fears and aspirations of the group, who both generate its image and receive it back reinforced.

Intet demokrati, langt mindre en republikk, kan ha et slik enmannsfenomen uten å ruineres som et resultat. Da er det oppstått en personkult som har ikke noe plass i et demokratisk system - og mest av alt, ikke et republikansk system. Dette er antitese av republikkidealet. 

'Enemy within': Trump rhetoric rings alarm bells (msn.com)

It was at the same rally that Trump caused an outcry by describing his domestic opponents as "vermin" and described immigrants as "poisoning the blood of the country," remarks that Biden has compared to the language of Nazi Germany.

"I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others," Trump said when asked if he would be willing to suspend parts of the US Constitution to deal with opponents.

The question is: who exactly is the enemy within that Trump talks about? 

"It's not just directed at Joe Biden, you see the increase in threats against people in the legal system, judges, prosecutors," said Rebecca Gill, who teaches political science at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

In his rambling speeches, Trump has also frequently lashed out at leftwingers, the media, immigrants, communists and what the tycoon calls political elites.

"It rhymes with some of what we have heard throughout history, in fascist governments and authoritarian governments," Gill said. "It's definitely increasing."

The term "enemies from within" burst onto the US political scene when senator Joseph McCarthy used it while leading his anti-communist crusade in the 1950s.

Leonard Glass, one of 27 psychiatrists who jointly wrote a book called "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" in 2017, says Trump's main goal in echoing the phrase now is to whip up his supporters' anger.

Trump's House allies pressure Mike Johnson on criminal prosecution bill (msn.com)

* Conservatives want a floor vote on a bill that would allow current or former presidents to move any state case brought against them — such as the one in New York that resulted in Trump's conviction — to federal court, according to multiple House Republican sources.

Meanwhile, Johnson told Republicans in a conference meeting Tuesday that the House GOP will target DOJ through attempts at increased oversight, funding cuts and other means, according to a source in the room.

* The big picture: Trump's conviction by a Manhattan jury has spurred Republicans to rush to his defense, but it's still unclear what legislation leadership will put forward.

* House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday floated cutting federal funding for state prosecutors investigating Trump and defunding the federal investigations into the former president.

* Johnson last week called for the U.S. Supreme Court to "step in" to overturn the guilty verdict.

* A group of conservative Republican senators have also signed onto a pledge to seek to block floor action in response to the conviction.

Trump is facing more state-level charges in Georgia, where he and others are charged in a racketeering case based on an alleged scheme to overturn that state's 2020 election results.

* Theoretically, if the bill House conservatives are pushing were signed into law, Trump would be allowed to move the Georgia case from state to federal court. If he was convicted and got elected president again, he could try to pardon himself. Presidents can't pardon state convictions.

* That bill already has cleared the Judiciary Committee, making it an easy option for leadership to bring to the House floor quickly.

Johnson became a co-sponsor of the bill less than a month before he became House speaker last fall.

Yes, but: A House Republican close to Johnson told Axios that a floor vote on the bill is "unlikely at the moment."

* A floor vote on the measure could put moderate Republicans in a jam. They'd be forced to choose between crossing Trump and his allies or taking a position that might be unpopular in their districts.

* Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) told Axios that he is "not a big fan of changing jurisdictions" of cases through federal legislation.

* Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said Congress has to "respect federalism."

* Both represent districts Biden won in 2020.

Reality check: Even if the House were to pass the bill, it doesn't stand a chance of being considered in the Democrat-controlled Senate, let alone signed into law by President Biden.

Dette er i klar konflikt med 1789-konstitusjonen og det amerikanske demokratiet. Den føderale kongressen kan ikke tilsidesette delstatsrettigheter uten juridisk dekning i akkurat den nevnte konstitusjonen. Det er ikke tillatt å sabotere delstatlige rettsprosesser da dette vil være en krenkelse av den amerikanske føderalretten, og det er noe som meget mange amerikanerne ikke vil akseptere. Spesielt disse på den republikanske siden. 

I slutten er det klart at det er oppstått meget alvorlige korrupte tilstander i USA, og at korrupsjonen er meget spesielt sterk i det republikanske partiet, som domfellelsen etter hysjsaken mot Trump har avslørt for hele verden. 

De amerikanske velgerne om de skulle fortsette med å stemme republikansk, vil være dummere enn de dummeste idioter i menneskehetens historie! 

[Red Frostraven]

0laf skrev (På 4.6.2024 den 12:12 AM):

 

Mens Babylon Bee stort sett bare sier hva republikanere faktisk mener, og kaller det humor -- i det de kopierer the Onion -- så er det ekstremt mange konservative amerikanere som går enda lengre enn hva som passerer for satire:

Fra reddit sin største sub for konservative, med 1.1 millioner medlemmer:

[JK22]

Inside the 'irregular warfare' campaign fascists are conducting against America | Opinion (msn.com)

Det er gammelt nytt at Trump anklages for høyforræderi mot USA da han var president, spesielt i forbindelse med Putin. Men det må også sies at da Putin vist svakhetstegn i våren 2020 etter å ha gått på skikkelige blemmer i Syria og Libya, var det sett at Trump, som tidlig var svært ettergivende, regelrett gikk i strupen på russeren med en manisk besettelsestrang. Det er hvorfor Putin ikke kunne stole på hans "venn", en mann som selv for ham er altfor impulsivt og utilregnelig. Ennå vet man at han anså Trump som et nyttig våpen for å ødelegge Vesten fra innsiden. For ham er Trump ikke mindre farlig mot amerikanerne enn mot ham selv... 

Trump lies that the guilty verdict against him — by a jury of his peers that his own attorneys picked — is an illegitimate, politically motivated show trial.

Trying to help Trump destroy Americans’ faith in our democracy and its justice system, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesman today said of Trump’s trial:

“If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination, in effect, of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious.”

Hungary’s dictator Viktor Orbán and Italy’s neofascist Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, both also argued that Trump is the victim of political persecution.

Right wing media commentators and Republicans in Congress have leaped at the opportunity to echo Putin and Orbán.

This sort of propaganda is called “irregular warfare” (IW) — warfare by means outside of troops, bombs, navies, etc. — and the US used to be an expert at it. Typically, irregular warfare involves the use of propaganda, proxies, or people willing to betray their own country.

Irregular warfare is part of how the US and western Europe brought down the Soviet Union (although that system also disintegrated from within under the weight of its own corruption and rot), with propaganda systems like the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Europe.

A keen observer of this process was an irregular warfare leader based in East Germany at the time. Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin supervised spying and propaganda operations within East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he moved to Moscow where, in 1999, he became the head of the Russian government and is now the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin.

Having been on the receiving end of US and western European propaganda efforts, Putin dedicated himself to turning the tables on us, since the democratic example of America (and other western nations) is a thorn in his autocratic side. And he’s had considerable success, including helping get his man Trump into the White House where Donald then handed a western spy over to Putin’s Foreign Minister Lavrov in a secret Oval Office meeting during his first month in office.

Two months later, US intelligence had to pull another spy out of Russia because they had evidence Trump had given his name to Putin as well. Trump may well represent the single most successful irregular warfare program Putin has ever run against America.

On July 31, 2019, as Trump was ramping up his 2020 campaign, he had another of what by that time were more than 16 private, unrecorded conversations with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car.

The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies” across the world) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Fourteen months later, The New York Times ran a story with the headline: “Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted American spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by President Donald Trump himself.

Also in 2019, when the international press verified that Putin was paying the Taliban bounties to kill American service members in Afghanistan (and 4 had already died as a result), Trump refused to demand the practice stop, another possible sign that Putin ran him, not the other way around.

As The New York Times noted at the time:

“Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence... But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.”

Instead of stopping Putin from offering the bounties, Trump shut down every US airbase in Afghanistan except one (there were about a dozen), intentionally crippling incoming President Biden’s ability to extract US assets from that country in an orderly fashion.

Today, Republicans — particularly House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and committee members Cory Mills (R-FL) and Michael Lawler (R-NY) — have used the resulting chaos and associated American and Afghan deaths as a political club to beat up President Biden.

Trump also took an axe to the Voice of America — an institution viscerally hated by Putin for half a century — appointing a rightwing hack and friend of Steve Bannon’s to run the organization, who promptly fired the heads of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia and shifted their coverage away from defense of democracies. According to The Washington Post:

“He ousted the diplomats and media professionals on oversight boards and replaced them with low-level Trumpists from other government agencies. …

“Having driven off the American media professionals at VOA, Pack went after the more than 70 foreign journalists who work for the organization, refusing to support the renewal of their U.S. visas as they came up. He claimed to be acting for security reasons and insinuated, on no evidence, that some of the staff were spies. … Now, they are being forced to repatriate, in some cases at personal risk. A VOA report in late August said 15 were returning home and another 20 had visas that will expire by the end of the year.

“They weren’t Pack’s only targets. He attempted to fire the board and cut off the funding of the Open Technology Fund, an organization that supports Internet freedom initiatives, such as tools to circumvent firewalls. A court blocked the firings, but the fund was forced to suspend 49 of its 60 projects. Among those affected were journalists and activists resisting government crackdowns in Hong Kong and in Belarus.”

The damage to the Voice of America continues to this day as most of Trump’s people are still there; just three months ago, The Hill ran an article titled “Putin’s influencers? Why is taxpayer-funded VOA spreading his propaganda?”

But Putin’s efforts at irregular warfare against the United States have extended far beyond his apparent manipulation of Donald Trump to betray spies and kneecap American anti-fascist propaganda programs.

The Irregular Warfare Center was created within the US Department of Defense in 2021 by Congress; in their January 23, 2024 report “Russian Information Warfare Strategy: New IWC Translation Gives Insights into Vulnerabilities” they show how Putin’s efforts have had considerable success recruiting average Americans within the US. For example, as one of hundreds of Putin’s early efforts to help Donald Trump become president, they note that the year of Trump’s election:

“On 21 May 2016, two protest groups faced off in Houston near an Islamic cultural center to demonstrate competing opinions on Texas’ future. Both groups, one which was protesting the perceived Islamization of Texas, and the other in support of the Islamic community, had been organized on Facebook pages. At first glance, this seemed like a normal and innocuous part of the U.S. political process.

“Unbeknownst to most participants, however, both Facebook pages had been created by Russian actors seeking to exacerbate political discord in the United States. This event was not an isolated case; it was a part of a coordinated effort by Russia to meddle in the U.S. elections, both in the social media space and in the physical domain.”

Another example was the promotion of Putin’s assertion the month before he invaded Ukraine in February, 2022 that the US and Ukraine were running bioweapon labs in that besieged nation. As NBC Newsreported in March, 2022 as the invasion was moving ahead full steam:

“Boosted by far-right influencers on the day of the invasion, an anonymous QAnon Twitter account titled @WarClandestine pushed the “biolabs” theory to new heights…

“Much of the false information [about the alleged biolabs] is flourishing in Russian social media, far-right online spaces and U.S. conservative media, including Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.”

When viewed in context, Putin’s successes at irregular warfare against the United States, designed to tear our society apart, have been quite breathtaking.

During the summer of 2020, as Trump and Biden were squaring off for the election that year, in thesmall Oregon town of Klamath Falls about 200 locals showed up downtown with guns, baseball bats, and whatever other weapons they could find around the house. They were in the streets to fight off the busloads of Black Antifa marauders they believed Jewish billionaire George Soros had paid to put on a bus in Portland and was sending their way.

Of course, George Soros had done no such thing and there were no busloads of Black people. But the warnings were all over the Klamath Falls Facebook group, and, it turns out, similar Facebook groups for small towns all over America, apparently as part of another Russian disinformation effort.

From coast to coast that weekend white residents of small towns showed up in their downtown areas with guns, rifles, hammers, and axes prepared to do battle with busloads of Black people being sent into their small white towns by George Soros.

In the tiny town of Forks, Washington, frightened white people brought out chainsaws and cut down trees to block the road leading to their town. In South Bend, Indiana police were overwhelmed by 911 calls from frightened white people wanting to know when the “Antifa buses” were arriving. And in rural Luzern County, Pennsylvania, the local neighborhood social media group warned people that busloads of Black people were “organizing to riot and loot.”

Similar stories played out that weekend from Danville, California to Jacksonville, Florida, as documented by NBC News. It was both a successful test of using social media to create mass panic among credulous Trump followers and, perhaps, a planning session for the violence ABC News documents Trump is trying to gin up if he loses this fall.

One of Putin’s greatest recent IW successes came last July when Federal District Judge Terry Doughty, a hard-right Trump appointee, blocked federal agencies from informing social media companies about Russian and other efforts to spread disinformation on their platforms. In March of this year four Republicans on the Supreme Court granted cert and the case was heard; we’re awaiting the ruling which could come any day.

The issue may be moot: Russia is now moving their efforts to promote Trump and encourage civil strife in the US away from their own trolls posing as Americans, now using instead Trump-aligned US-citizens and congressional Republican influencers.

These include using rightwing media commentators, average citizens active on social media, and even members of Congress who’ve bought into Russian propaganda from issues around Ukraine to vaccines to the alleged theft of the 2020 election (and “planned theft” of 2024). As the Irregular Warfare Center notes:

“[F]uture Russian foreign-targeted OIEs [Operations in the Information Environment] appear to be shifting toward proxy operations, including semi-independent and strategically-chosen influencers on social media, rather than using a directly-controlled team of professionals, as was the case in 2016 with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “troll factory” that worked to interfere in the U.S. elections.”

This possibility of Trump (and thus Putin) seizing control of US intelligence agencies should he be elected is freaking out former senior U.S. intelligence officials. The headline at Raw Story says it all: “Intel officials 'very concerned' about Trump's intentions for spy agencies.”

The simple reality is that Russia has been using IW techniques in Putin’s war against America — particularly in his efforts to reinstall Trump in the White House — for over a decade and those efforts are now being amplified on a daily basis by Republicans in Congress, rightwing media outlets, and some of our largest social media companies.

With the ability of our government to work with social media and news outlets to combat Putin’s irregular warfare handicapped, and the possibility that Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court will further handcuff the Biden Administration’s efforts, the possibility increases that Russia’s useful idiots could succeed in helping Trump prevail this November.

And the election season is now just beginning. Buckle up: to paraphrase Trump’s invitation to January 6th, this is going to get wild.

Som denne artikkelen - og det som langt har vært sett hos republikanerne siden Trump ble straffedømt - gjør det klart at det amerikanske folket trenger å realisere at det republikanske partiet er i ferd med å begå forræderi på et utenkt skala mot det amerikanske livet, med en mann som hadde demonstrert at han var villig til å begå høyforræderi mot den amerikanske staten og det amerikanske folkets interesser. 

'Apocalyptic' Trump allies want no 'decency or restraint' in going after Democrats: report (msn.com)

Denne artikkelen forklarer at republikanerne er villig til å begå lovbrudd for å innlede politiske forfølgelser.

Men i det minst har det blitt latt merke til at tradisjonelle og patriotiske republikanerne er i ferd med å få nok av vanviddet omkring Trump, mange tar avstand fra det som så langt har hendt i partiet hvor de moderate viser tegn på at de er i ferd med å få nok av den fascistiske utviklingen. Dessverre er det et meget stort spørsmål omkring de selvstendige og de misfornøyde demokratene, samtidig som det er et lite flertall blant republikanerne som støtter Trump. 

These 38 GOP senators just voted against protecting contraception. Here's why. (msn.com)

Og man sliter meget seriøst med å få amerikanerne flest til å innse at demokratiet er i fare. Fra senatet ser man at McConnell nok en gang angripe det amerikanske folket i ryggen, han blokkert en avstemning for beskyttelse av prevensjonsmidler ved å la alle senatorer sier nei og deretter ljuget i Putin-tradisjon rett opp i ansiktet på alle. De har kunne gjøre det fordi de frykter ikke konsekvenser fra et folk som er blitt altfor blind. 

Selv om halvparten av befolkningen i USA vil bli skadelidende om prevensjonsmidlene forbys, det er oppstått snakk om å forby kondom og pornografi i det siste. Vi SER FREMDELES IKKE at amerikanerne flest klarer å fatte dette, det er som hvis disse bare leser på mobiltelefoner og sosiale medier - avisutgivelse er praktisk talt ikke-eksisterende. Det som hendt i 2020 tyder på at altfor mange har rett og slett mistet bakkekontakten fordi de får ikke lenge verifisert informasjon gjennom massemediene. 

U.S. Senator Exposed for Spreading Russian, Iranian Propaganda Against America (msn.com)

Washington Post avslørt at en republikansk senator, Mike Lee, hadde spredt fiendtlig propaganda fra Russland og Iran i kongressen i bevisste forræderihandlinger. Men dette tror jeg amerikanerne flest ikke bryr seg fordi de har ikke råd til TV og kan ikke finne avis, lokalradio formidler ikke nyhetsdekning... 

HVORFOR ER IKKE AMERIKANERNE I STAND TIL Å FATTE AT REPUBLIKANERNE ER DERES FIENDE?!! 

Så hvis demokratiet forsvinne og krig brytes ut - det er nylig lansert en film som kan vise hvordan en borgerkrig skjer i den nære fremtiden - HAR DET AMERIKANSKE FOLKET SEG SELV Å TAKKE. 

 

[Dragavon]

Sitat

 

NEW YORK (Dagbladet): I et kaotisk intervju med den svært Trump-vennlige TV-kanalen Newsmax, foreslår ekspresidenten at hans politiske fiender bør fengsles.

I forrige uke ble Trump selv funnet skyldig på 34 tiltalepunkter i hysjpengesaken.

 

https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/truer-motstandere-episk-maktmisbruk/81506209

[SilverShaded]

Dragavon skrev (2 timer siden):

https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/truer-motstandere-episk-maktmisbruk/81506209

Dette er jo Franco og Hitler om igjen. Hvis han mener han kan fengsle folk etter sitt eget forgodtbefinnende, vil det si at lov og rett må settes ut av spill eller totalt kontrolleres av DT. Mannen er sprøyte gal.

[sofiemyr]

JK22 skrev (12 timer siden):

 

HVORFOR ER IKKE AMERIKANERNE I STAND TIL Å FATTE AT REPUBLIKANERNE ER DERES FIENDE?!! 

Så hvis demokratiet forsvinne og krig brytes ut - det er nylig lansert en film som kan vise hvordan en borgerkrig skjer i den nære fremtiden - HAR DET AMERIKANSKE FOLKET SEG SELV Å TAKKE. 

 

Jeg er ingen Trump fan men her er jeg ikke enig med deg. Det finnes mer en nok republikanere med både hode og hjerte på rett plass - problemet er at de trues til taushet. Så lenge MAGA basen får lov til å trolle slik de har fått lov til så blir det kaos.

Når det er sagt - finnes en bra mengde med tullinger på ytre venstresiden også...

Det USA trenger er at de som sokner mot midten fra både høyre og venstre tar ansvar og stanser galskapen

[JK22]

sofiemyr skrev (6 timer siden):

Jeg er ingen Trump fan men her er jeg ikke enig med deg. Det finnes mer en nok republikanere med både hode og hjerte på rett plass - problemet er at de trues til taushet. Så lenge MAGA basen får lov til å trolle slik de har fått lov til så blir det kaos.

Når det er sagt - finnes en bra mengde med tullinger på ytre venstresiden også...

Det USA trenger er at de som sokner mot midten fra både høyre og venstre tar ansvar og stanser galskapen

Problemet er at MAGA ikke var skapt av Trump, men oppstått i det republikanske partiet hvor det allerede var meget god grobunn for ekstremistiske holdninger. Dagens situasjonen er først og fremst det republikanske partiets ansvar, for det var en kontrarevolusjonær aktivitet hvor man hadde først søkt å reversere "den andre rekonstruksjonen", deretter å drepe den progressive USA - og nå å innføre partifascistisk styre. De tradisjonelle og moderate kom allerede i 1980-årene i fåtall, da hadde den sentrumsorienterte kjernen begynte med å forsvinne. De blir færre og færre, nå utgjør de en minoritet. 

Det republikanske partiet startet sin sabotasje allerede i slutten på 1970-årene. Siden hadde republikanerne bygd ned staten, motarbeidet reformpolitikk, saboterte kongressprosesser, fjernet reguleringer "overalt", og deretter begynte med å skru klokka tilbake, spesielt etter kongressvalget i november 1994 som kan betraktes som startskuddet på den demokratisk-republikanske feidekonflikten. Demokratene har hele tiden vært ettergivende, passiv og sivilisert etter hvert som republikanerne bli mer aggressiv, kranglevoren og barbarisk i sin atferd. Det er helt ufattelig at det amerikanske folket ikke straffet GOP. 

Disse på ytre venstresiden har minimal innflytelse i sammenligning med disse på ekstreme høyresiden som derimot har nå mesteparten av innflytelsen i GOP. 

For at sentrumspolitikken skal gjenopplives, må den republikanske kontrarevolusjonen - BEGGE partier er høyreorientert, Demokratene er i praksis lik det norske Høyrepartiet - stanses og knuses. Hvis dette fortsetter, vil USA brenner opp i et fryktelig blodbad. 

[JK22]

JK22 skrev (På 4.6.2024 den 7:08 AM):

In his Citizens United dissent, Justice Stevens observed, “A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.” That’s exactly how it now appears to the public — and that applies to Supreme Court justices as well as to politicians.

Det er åpen korrupsjonsskandale i den føderale høyesteretten etter det kom ut meget seriøse avsløringer om at Clarence Thomas trolig er en av de verste korrupte høyesterettsdommerne i Washingtons historie. For det kom ut at han hadde mottatt 193 "gaver" med en verdi på 4,042,286 dollar! Og det er 126 andre "angivelige gaver"! Etter norsk valuta mener det at han hadde fått gaver og tjenester verdt nesten 43 millioner kroner i 2004-2024, og det var bare med disse 193 verifiserte gaver! Thomas har en fastslått lønn oppgitt til 174,000 dollar i juni 2000, nå 306,000 dollar eller 3,245 mill. kroner, og allerede for tjuefire år siden klaget han over at lønnen var "for lav" i møte med høyesterettsjef Rehnquist som ikke tok det pent. Da hadde Thomas truet med å slutte hvis lønnen ikke økes, og da hadde det blitt latt merke til at han hadde for dyre vaner med gjeld, ved å leve i luksus. Det vist seg at han lånte mer enn det som tilsvarer årslønnen, 267,000 på en gang. 

'Sold his soul!' Justice Clarence Thomas gets lambasted after report claims he accepted $4M in gifts during his career (msn.com)

"One of these justices is not like the others": Experts say report exposes Clarence Thomas "grift" (yahoo.com)

Rehnquist var brysk og fikk Thomas til å holde seg i ro fordi dommerlønnen er kongressbestemt og egentlig symbolsk, da man ikke skulle leve av dette viktige embetet. Selv den gang var 174,000 dollar ganske mye penger for folk flest - som bar i seg økonomisk fornuft. Det har ikke vært sett omkring Thomas. Det kan skyldes ekteskapet med Ginni som for mange kjente var uforståelig; fordi Thomas i tillegg til hans hudfarge var regjeringsansatt uten andre inntektskilder mens den hvite konen kom fra en velstående familie med advokatsold - hun kom fra en pengerik bakgrunn i kontrast til mannen. Nå er det klart at Thomas har altfor dyre uvaner som gjør at han har blitt meget dypt kontroversielt, og som kan stemples som korrupt utenfra de fleste landenes lovverk, inkludert det norske - ikke minst fordi han brøt reglementet om å oppgi inntekter og gaver, bare 27 var oppgitt! Dette er soleklar bevis på tjenesteforsømmelse og grov regelbrudd. 

"Supreme Court justices should not be accepting gifts, let alone the hundreds of freebies worth millions of dollars they've received over the years," Gabe Roth of Fix the Court made a statement.

"Public servants who make four times the median local salary, and who can make millions writing books on any topic they like, can afford to pay for their vacations, vehicles, hunting excursions and club memberships."

Ingen høyesterettsdommer hadde noensinne mottatt så mange kostbare "gaver" som Thomas, ingen hadde unnlatt å rapportere så mye - og heller ingen hadde mottatt så mye penger som Thomas. De andre kan ikke engangs sammenlignes med Thomas, avdøde Antonin Scalia mottok "bare" 210,164 dollar i 2004-2016 mens Samuel Alito kom på tredjeplass med 170,095 dollar i 2006-2024.

Siden 1991 hadde Thomas kommet i åpen konflikt med fargede lederemner, som republikanske løgnerne av og til tok fram for å "avsløre" hva de mener var hykleri som med en artikkel av Mark Paloetta i 2022, Forty Years of Attacks and Slurs Against Justice Thomas | Opinion - Newsweek - som i dag er blitt litt pinlig for artikkelforfatteren etter Thomas avslørt at alt dette som stemples som hets og fordommer, ikke var uten grunner. 

Clarence Thomas: A Timeline of His Supreme Court Scandals (biography.com)

Denne artikkelen gjort det klart at det er for mange kontroverser og skandaler omkring Thomas. Han hadde i 2003-2007 skjult hans kones inntekter fra Heritage Foundation - som mange i dag anser som en meget sterk antidemokratisk bevegelse - som var på 686,000 dollar. Det eneste rette er å fjerne Thomas fra dommerstanden, men republikanerne hadde i de siste tjue år sluttet med å følge loven, og selv blitt hyppige lovbrytere - slik at de vil ikke få ham fjernet, istedenfor beskytter de den korrupte dommeren som har nå gjort seg meget dypt forhatt av de fargede. 

Det gjør det meget vanskelig å forstå hvorfor altfor mange fortsette med å støtte et så korrupt og destruktivt parti som er 85 % ansvarlig for alle plagene som rammer det amerikanske folket. 

Endret 7. juni av JK22

[Apathy]

En video om undersøkelse om politisk vold i den generelle befolkningen i USA.

Skremmende video, men jeg tror dette er relativt lignende som andre demokratier. Forskjellen er som det nevnes i begynnelsen av video`en hvor mange våpen som er i omløp. I USA er jo den variablen ganske skremmende.

 

[JK22]

En av de farligste mennene i USA, en kristenfascist, omtales her; Russ Vought - Trumps svar mot Himmler. Han er en av de verste fanatikerne i dagens USA. 

Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-constitutional’ vision for second term (msn.com)

Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-constitutional’ vision for second term

A battle-tested D.C. bureaucrat and self-described Christian nationalist is drawing up detailed plans for a sweeping expansion of presidential power in a second Trump administration. Russ Vought, who served as the former president’s budget chief, calls his political strategy for razing long-standing guardrails “radical constitutionalism.”

He has helped craft proposals for Donald Trump to deploy the military to quash civil unrest, seize more control over the Justice Department and assert the power to withhold congressional appropriations — and that’s just on Trump’s first day back in office.

Vought, 48, is poised to steer this agenda from an influential perch in the White House, potentially as Trump’s chief of staff, according to some people involved in discussions about a second term who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Since Trump left office, Vought has led the Center for Renewing America, part of a network of conservative advocacy groups staffed by former and potentially future Trump administration officials. Vought’s rise is a reminder that if Trump is reelected, he has said he will surround himself with loyalists eager to carry out his wishes, even if they violate traditional norms against executive overreach.

“We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted: “Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”

Vought aims to harness what he calls the “woke and weaponized” bureaucracy that stymied the former president by stocking federal agencies with hardcore disciples who would wage culture wars on abortion and immigration. The proposals championed by Vought and other Trump allies to fundamentally reset the balance of power would represent a historic shift — one they see as a needed corrective.

“The president has to be able to drive the bureaucracy instead of being trapped by it,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who led the GOP’s 1994 takeover of Congress.

Vought did not respond to interview requests and a detailed list of questions from The Washington Post. This account of his plans for Trump’s potential first day back in office and the rest of a second term comes from interviews with people involved in the planning, a review of Vought’s public remarks and writings, and Center for Renewing America correspondence obtained by The Post.

The Trump campaign has distanced itself from the extensive planning. Campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement, “Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official.”

But in a sign of Vought’s status as a key adviser, Trump and the Republican National Committee last month named him policy director for the 2024 platform committee — giving him a chance to push a party that did not adopt a platform in 2020 further to the right. Trump personally blessed Vought’s agenda at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for his group and said Vought would “do a great job in continuing our quest to make America great again.”

Some of Vought’s recommendations, such as bucking the Justice Department’s tradition of political independence, have long percolated in the conservative movement. But he is taking a harder line — and seeking to empower a presidential nominee who has openly vowed “retribution,” alarming some fellow conservatives who recall fighting against big government alongside Vought long before Trump’s election.

“I am concerned that he is willing to embrace an ends-justify-the-means mentality,” said Marc Short, formerly chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he won’t endorse Trump. Vought, Short added, is embracing “tactics of growing government and using the levers of power in the federal bureaucracy to fight our political opponents.”

Vought’s long career as a staffer in Congress and at federal agencies has made him an asset to Project 2025, an initiative led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, to lay the groundwork for a second Trump term. Vought wrote the chapter on the executive office of the president in Project 2025’s 920-page blueprint, and he is developing its playbook for the first 180 days, according to the people involved in the effort.

“We’re going to plant the flags now,” Vought told Trump’s former strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, on his far-right podcast. “It becomes a new governing consensus of the Republican Party.”

From fiscal hawk to MAGA warrior

Vought was raised in Trumbull, Conn., the son of an electrician and a teacher and the youngest of seven children. Brought up in what he has characterized as a “very strong, Bible-preaching, Bible-teaching church,” he attended Christian camps every summer. He received a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in Illinois, and headed to Capitol Hill near the end of the Clinton administration.

Vought mastered the federal budget working for fiscal conservatives, including Sen. Phil Gramm and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, both Texas Republicans, while getting his law degree from George Washington University.

Years before the Freedom Caucus enforced right-wing ideology on Capitol Hill, Vought was the bomb-throwing executive director of the conservative House Republican Study Committee. His prime targets: big government and entitlement spending. He worked under Pence, then a congressman, who called him “one of the strongest advocates for the principles that guide us” in 2010.

That year, as the populist tea party movement was surging, Vought joined the Heritage Foundation’s new lobbying arm. From a Capitol Hill townhouse dubbed the “frat house,” Vought and his other brash, young male colleagues tormented Republican leaders by grading their fealty to fiscal conservatism.

“Russ was determined to make our scorecard tougher than others out there,” said Republican strategist Tim Chapman, who worked closely with Vought at Heritage Action. “He wanted to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Joining the Trump transition allowed Vought to put his principles to paper. Later, Pence cast the tiebreaking vote for his confirmation in 2018 as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought ascended to the top post in 2019.

But instead of slashing spending as Vought and other budget officials recommended, Trump resisted significant reductions to domestic programs and backed trillions in emergency pandemic assistance. The national debt ballooned by more than $8 trillion.

Vought blamed Congress. And he stood by Trump throughout his tumultuous presidency, as a procession of other Cabinet officials balked at breaching what they viewed as ethical and legal boundaries. “A bunch of people around him who were constantly sitting on eggs and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s getting me to violate the law,’” was how Vought later described them at a Heritage Foundation event.

By contrast, Vought found workarounds to fulfill the president’s ambitions that tested legal limits and his own record opposing executive overreach and deficit spending.

When Congress blocked additional funding for Trump’s border wall, the budget office in early 2020 redirected billions of dollars from the Pentagon to what became one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in U.S. history. And it was Vought’s office that held up military aid to Ukraine as Trump pressed the government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, prompting the president’s first impeachment. Vought defied a congressional subpoena during the impeachment inquiry, which he mocked as a “#shamprocess.” The Government Accountability Office concluded that his office broke the law, a claim Vought disputed.

Near the end of Trump’s presidency, Vought helped launch his biggest broadside at the “deep state” — an order stripping civil service protections from up to tens of thousands of federal employees. The administration did not have time to fully implement the order.

After the 2020 election, as Trump refused to concede, Biden officials complained that Vought was impeding the transition. Vought rejected that accusation — but wrote that his office would not “dismantle this Administration’s work.” He was already planning ahead; bylaws for what would become the Center for Renewing America were adopted on the day of Biden’s inauguration, records show.

“There’s a marriage of convenience between Russ and Trump,” said Chapman, senior adviser at Pence’s group, Advancing American Freedom. “Russ has been pursuing an ideological agenda for a long time and views Trump’s second term as the best way to achieve it, while Trump needs people in his second term who are loyal and committed and adept at using the tools of the federal government.”

Radical constitutionalism

Since Biden took office, Vought has turned the Center for Renewing America into a hub of Trump loyalists, including Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department lawyer later charged in Georgia with trying to overturn Biden’s victory in 2020. Vought called Clark, who has pleaded not guilty, “a patriot who risked his career to help expose voter fraud.”

“I think the election was stolen,” Vought said in a 2022 interview with Trump activists Diamond and Silk. He is no longer in touch with Pence, his longtime patron, who has said Trump’s efforts to overturn the vote disqualified him from serving as president again, according to people familiar with the relationship who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive topic.

The Center for Renewing America is among several pro-Trump groups incubated by the Conservative Partnership Institute, founded in 2017 by former senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). The center, a tax-exempt group that is not required to publicly disclose its donors, raised $4.75 million in 2023, according to its annual report.

As Vought and other Trump allies work on blueprints for a second term, he is pushing a strategy he calls “radical constitutionalism.” The left has discarded the Constitution, Vought argues, so conservatives need to rise up, wrest power from the federal bureaucracy and centralize authority in the Oval Office.

“Our need is not just to win congressional majorities that blame the other side or fill seats on court benches to meddle at the margins,” he wrote in the 2022 essay. “It is to cast ourselves as dissidents of the current regime and to put on our shoulders the full weight of envisioning, articulating, and defending what a Radical Constitutionalism requires in the late hour that our country finds itself in, and then to do it.”

In practice, that could mean reinterpreting parts of the Constitution to achieve policy goals — such as by defining illegal immigration as an “invasion,” which would allow states to use wartime powers to stop it.

“We showed that millions of illegal aliens coming across, and Mexican cartels holding operational control of the border, constitute an invasion,” Vought wrote. “This is where we need to be radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution.”

Vought also embraces Christian nationalism, a hard-right movement that seeks to infuse Christianity into all aspects of society, including government. He penned a 2021 Newsweek essay that disputed allegations of bias and asked, “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” He argued for “an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.”

Looking at immigration through that lens, Vought has called for “mass deportation” of illegal immigrants and a “Christian immigration ethic” that would strictly limit the types of people allowed entry into the United States. At a 2023 conference organized by Christian and right-wing groups, he questioned whether legal immigration is “healthy” because, in a politically polarized climate, “immigration only increases and exasperates the divisions that we face in the country.”

In a podcast interview last year, Vought said it’s appropriate to question whether immigrants “have any sense of the Judeo-Christian worldview that this country was founded on,” adding, “And that doesn’t mean we don’t give religious liberty, but it does mean — are they wanting to come here and assimilate?”

Vought’s views amount to a kind of Anglo-Protestant cultural supremacism, said Paul D. Miller, a Georgetown University professor who published a book critiquing Christian nationalism.

“The Civil War taught us that America is big and broad and strong enough to include non-Christians and non-Whites,” Miller wrote in an email to The Post. “It also should have taught us that the greatest threat to the American vision are racial and religious supremacists.”

Planning for 2025

Vought’s playbook for Trump’s first 180 days, the final phase of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, has not been publicly released. But a review of his proposals so far suggests that a second Trump term could breach even more political norms than the first.

Vought argues that protocols intended to shield criminal cases from political influence, which were adopted in the wake of the Watergate scandal, have allowed unelected prosecutors to abuse their power. Even as Trump vows to “go after” Biden and his family without providing clear evidence of alleged crimes, Vought wants to gut the FBI and give the president more oversight over the Justice Department.

“Department of Justice is not an independent agency,” he said at a Heritage Foundation event last year. “If anyone brings it up in a policy meeting in the White House, I want them out of the meeting.”

Echoing Trump, Vought supports prosecuting officials who investigated the president and his allies. “It can’t just be hearings,” he told right-wing activist Charlie Kirk on his podcast. “It has to be investigations, an army of investigators that lead to firm convictions.”

Vought favors boosting White House control over other federal agencies that operate somewhat independently, such as the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces consumer protection laws, and the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates television and internet companies. Trump’s never-implemented order from his first term making it easier to fire government employees would allow the White House to excise policymakers who resist the will of the elected chief executive.

“It really concerns me, and I know it concerns Russ, that these agencies have turned on the very people they are supposed to serve,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who led a House panel that Vought pushed for on the alleged “weaponization” of government.

Vought also recommends reviving presidential “impoundment” power to withhold funding appropriated by Congress; the practice was outlawed after President Richard M. Nixon left office, but Vought calls that move “unconstitutional.” And he supports invoking the Insurrection Act, a law last updated in 1871 that allows the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

On abortion policy, Vought calls for Congress to outlaw the drugs used in medical abortions — a hard-line stance at odds with some Republicans, who are sidestepping an issue that has galvanized Democrats in recent elections.

“My personal story has fortified my beliefs,” Vought told antiabortion activists in 2020, describing how his younger daughter, now 10 years old, was born with cystic fibrosis. The chronic illness can cause severe digestive and breathing problems and require intense, daily treatment; patients’ average life span is 37 years, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Vought said in that speech that 87 percent of fetuses diagnosed with the disease are “tragically aborted” — though the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the ACOG and other health organizations told The Post they were not aware of any research of that nature.

Vought proposes in his Project 2025 chapter a new special assistant to the president to ensure “implementation of policies related to the promotion of life and family.” To Vought, that means curbing abortion — and boosting the birthrate. “The families of the West are not having enough babies for their societies to endure,” he wrote in a Center for Renewing America policy paper.

When Trump said this spring that abortion limits should be left to the states and was silent on a national ban, disappointing some antiabortion leaders, Vought urged them not to lose faith. “Trust the man who delivered the end of Roe when all the other pro life politicians could not,” he said.

Even fellow critics of the federal bureaucracy said some of Vought’s proposals would face legal challenges and other hurdles. Michael Glennon, a Tufts University constitutional law professor who wrote a book that Vought cites as a formative critique, said in an interview that the framers were wary of concentrating too much power in the presidency.

“If conservatives trash long-held political norms to move against liberals, what will protect them when liberals retake power?” Glennon asked.

Bannon, the former Trump strategist ordered this week to serve a four-month prison term for contempt of Congress, touted Vought and his colleagues as “madmen” ready to upend the U.S. government at a recent Center for Renewing America event.

“No institution set up within its first two years [has] had the impact of this organization,” Bannon said. “We’re going to rip and shred the federal government apart, and if you don’t like it, you can lump it.”

[JK22]

Det er kommet ut at Trump aktet å bryte den amerikanske 1789-konstitusjonen. Det har blitt understreket at det er kongressen som har det finansielle ansvaret for den føderale staten, som presidenten har begrensede påvirkningsevne på - i Norge er det Stortinget som betinger det Regjeringen ønsker å bruke penger på, som nylig sett omkring jernbaneplaner i Østlandet. Dette er essensielt for maktfordelingssystem, republikansk som demokratisk.

Ett av disse områdene hvor presidenten hadde finansiell makt, var innenfor militæret - som ble kuttet i 1974 da det vist seg at Nixon hadde ført krig i hemmelighet over Kambodsja og ville gjør det med Sør-Vietnam selv etter en fredsslutning. Kongressen grepet inn med en lov, som betyr at presidentens adgang til "pengekrana" nesten helt sperres. Da hadde kongressen og Nixon siden 1969 vært dels i åpen konflikt fordi kongressbestemmelser var ikke tatt til følge. Så da Watergate hendt, var det nærmest null støtte for Nixon i kongressen, selv i hans egne parti. 

Trump plans constitutional showdown with Congress over federal budget - The Washington Post

Donald Trump is vowing to wrest key spending powers from Congress if elected this November, promising to assert more control over the federal budget than any president in U.S. history.

The Constitution gives control over spending to Congress, but Trump and his aides maintain that the president should have much more discretion — including the authority to cease programs altogether, even if lawmakers fund them. Depending on the response from the Supreme Court and Congress, Trump’s plans could upend the balance of power between the three branches of the federal government.

During his first term, Trump was impeached after refusing to spend money for Ukraine approved by Congress, as he pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to provide incriminating evidence about the Biden family. At the time, Trump’s aides defended his actions as legal but largely did not dispute that the president is bound to adhere to budgetary law.

Since then, however, Trump and his advisers have prepared an attack on the limits on presidential spending authority. On his campaign website, Trump has said he will push Congress to repeal parts of the 1974 law that restricts the president’s authority to spend federal dollars without congressional approval. Trump has also said he will unilaterally challenge that law by cutting off funding for certain programs, promising on his first day in office to order every agency to identify “large chunks” of their budgets that would be halted by presidential edict.

“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings,” Trump said in a plan posted last year. “This will be in the form of tax reductions for you. This will help quickly to stop inflation and slash the deficit.”

That pledge could provoke a dramatic constitutional showdown, with vast consequences for how the government operates. If he returns to office, these efforts are likely to turn typically arcane debates over “impoundment” authority — or the president’s right to stop certain spending programs — into a major political flash point, as he seeks to accomplish via edict what he cannot pass through Congress.

“What the Trump team is saying is alarming, unusual and really beyond the pale of anything we’ve seen,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a budget and appropriations law expert at Georgetown Law School.

The Trump campaign defended its proposal, saying Washington must cut spending to reduce the national debt, which has surpassed $30 trillion and is set to keep growing over the next decade. But the Trump campaign has ruled out cuts to the Defense Department, as well as to Social Security and Medicare, programs for the elderly that are the main drivers of the nation’s rising spending. The debt grew by more than $7 trillion during Trump’s administration.

“As many legal and constitutional scholars have argued, executive impoundment authority is an important tool that American presidents used throughout history to rein in unnecessary and wasteful spending,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement. “President Trump agrees with the experts that this power has been wrongly curtailed in recent decades. As he works to curb Joe Biden’s colossal spending binge that triggered uncontrolled inflation, President Trump will seek to reassert impoundment authority to cut waste and restore the proper balance to spending negotiations with Congress.”

Longtime Trump allies have in recent months discussed potential targets to test executive impoundment authority, including green energy subsidies approved by President Biden as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and funding for the World Health Organization, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. Trump officials regard both programs as wasteful.

Trump last week also without explanation told Fox News that he would “end” the Education Department and cut unspecified environmental agencies. These actions would happen “immediately,” he said — although a spokesman said he would not use his impoundment authority to do so.

“This is definitely something a lot of people are currently talking about within Trump circles,” said Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that pushes free markets, and a former adviser to leading GOP policymakers.

A third Trump ally, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay private discussions, said former administration officials have also discussed using new impoundment authority to scrap international aid programs approved by Congress.

“It’s an idea that’s being floated pretty broadly as a tactic to do other things, and particularly to defund some parts of the government,” the ally said.

Legal scholars say Trump’s threats, depending on how they are carried out, could violate the Constitution and usurp congressional authority by consolidating more power in the executive branch. The former president has vowed to massively expand the White House’s power in other ways as well, outlining a vision that also includes mass deportations, purging the federal workforce and deploying the military domestically to fight crime and break up gangs.

“A blanket unconditional impoundment is clearly unconstitutional, and that would obviously create a crisis between the two branches” of government, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), a top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It seems like Donald Trump is actually trying to redo his first administration, except on steroids, even worse, shredding the Constitution even further. I think the American people recognize the dangers and hopefully they’ll recognize that for this election.” (er ikke sikkert på om amerikanerne forstår det.)

Presidents since Thomas Jefferson have halted spending for programs approved by Congress. That typically has not proved controversial, because presidents have traditionally done so for routine managerial reasons or with specific statutory authorization, not to thwart the policy choices Congress made in appropriations laws.

But President Richard M. Nixon faced an uproar after he refused to spend money across a broad array of domestic programs, such as farm assistance and water grants. In 1969, working in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the future Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist wrote a memo arguing that the president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend appropriated funds, while reserving the possibility of limited exceptions for foreign policy and other policy areas. Federal courts struck down Nixon’s impoundments as illegal, and Congress approved strict new limits on the power as part of post-Watergate government reforms in 1974.

During Trump’s first term, his allies grew increasingly frustrated with those limits. On Jan. 19, 2021, just two days before Trump left office, Russell Vought, then Trump’s budget director, slammed the “onerous” 1974 law as promoting “the very opposite of what good government should be” and fostering a culture of “wasteful and inefficient spending.” The letter also said every administration from the era of the Great Depression to Nixon impounded funds.

“Presidents had the ability to impound funds for 200 years until a bad law got passed that we think is unconstitutional under President Nixon,” Vought said on Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast last year. “We want to go back in a different direction.”

If he does win in November, Trump’s ability to impound government funds could depend on who controls Congress, which also will be decided by this fall’s elections.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said letting Trump assert more control over spending could give the GOP more leverage in budget negotiations and characterized impoundment as a “tool in the toolbox.” But Cole added that he hoped Trump would work with legislators to cut spending.

Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial over Ukraine spending, said he could not object until he sees how Trump uses impoundment in practice.

“There are places I’m sure where Congress suggests that money ought to be spent and a president could determine that’s wasteful and inefficient and it would be appropriate not to spend it all,” Romney said.

Other GOP lawmakers balked at the suggestion that Trump could consolidate more spending authority in the executive branch. Republicans have castigated Biden’s efforts to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt as unconstitutional, a possible parallel to Trump’s plans.

“I think all too often already the Biden administration is showing they’re not following the law as we put it down, and they’re taking regulatory fiat and executive orders to a level that is very problematic and increasing the deficit,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “So no, I am not interested in giving them more power. I’m more interested in giving them less power.”

Dette vil bli et så massiv brudd på 1789-konstitusjonen at det kan utløse den første konstitusjonelle krisen i USAs historie noensinne. Den amerikanske borgerkrigen var mellom delstater som hadde kommet ut i konflikt omkring den føderale makten over delstatlige affærer inkludert slaveri. Her er det derimot snakk om å bryte de konstitusjonelle bestemmelser omkring de utøvende, de lovgivende og de dømmende maktene i en føderal stat med direkte medvirkning i delstatene underlagt den føderale autoriteten. Som er i kongressen, ikke det hvite huset. 

Det var innforstått at det er kongressen som inneha ansvaret for statsfinansene og dermed den ultimate makten, ikke presidenten. Presidenten kan kun hindre kongressbevilgninger, ikke overta kontrollen over disse - og heller kan ikke ta ut statsfinanser for egne formål uten kongressens tillatelse. Da Nixon kom til makten i 1969, hadde LBJ etterlatt seg et sosialprogram underlagt kongressens kontroll - blant annet bevilgninger for landbruksassistanse, vanntilgang og som fattigdomstiltak. Til manges overraskelse prøvd Nixon å skru ned sosialprogrammet uten kongressens tillatelse og dette fulgt til sterk fordømmelse, da det var snakk om bevilgninger vedtatt og iverksatt av kongressen, hvor det fantes en majoritet for videre støtte. Dette fulgt til en rekke domstolsavgjørelser om at det var ukonstitusjonelt. Og da det ble avslørt at Nixon hadde "stjålet" penger for å føre en hemmelig krig i Kambodsja med bombefly, som i 1970-1974 opererte i hemmeligheten... gemyttene var på kokepunktet da Watergateskandalen brøt ut. 

Her ønsker Trump å ribbe kongressen for makt. Og det vil være et så grovt brudd at det vil få demokratene og vanlige republikanerne til å eksplodere. Da får vi en president vers kongress-konflikt som i Peru og Honduras i Latin-Amerika. 

[Markiii]

shockorshot skrev (På 3.6.2024 den 1:52 PM):

Jeg tror folk som ikke forstår hvorfor nesten 50% av amerikanere stemmer Trump aldri har hørt de sterkeste steelman argumentene fra folk som stemmer Trump, eller forstår hva et ekkokammer gjør. Misforstå meg rett, men vi i Norge er også et ekkokammer.

Joda, vi har hørt argumentene. Hvilke argumenter mener du holder vann?

Drain the Swamp? Nei, han fylte sumpen med enda verre sumpdyr.

Fredspresident? Nei, han fortsatte krigene, forsøkte å starte nye kriger, og angrep flere andre land. Dessuten har han snakket om å angripe Mexico.

Økonomi? Trump sto for en ekstrem økning i statsunderskuddet. Han brukte penger som en full sjømann, og sendte også hundretusener av industriarbeidsplasser ut av landet.

Forskjellene økte. Arbeidere ble knust.

Så hvilke rasjonelle argumenter finnes det for å stemme på Trump?

For å stemme på Trump nå så må man jo være en så stor tulling at man tror Biden vant på grunn av valgjuks. Men hvorfor jukset ikke Demokratene til seg senatet da, hvis de først var så ivrige etter å grafse til seg makt? Ingen argumenter fra Trump-tilhengere ser ut til å holde vann.

Endret 9. juni av Markiii

[Markiii]

Maabren skrev (På 3.6.2024 den 6:02 PM):

Nja, har meir tru på at utviklinga blant velgere i USA har med korrupsjon av eliten samt korleis store konsern/banker osv behandler vanlige folk. At USA blir vanstyrt politisk nesten uannsett kven som styrer, gjere problemet bare større. Biden, Trump med fleire, utnytter dette for å mehle si eiga kake utan å bry seg med konsekvensane. Hater mange nok av di stemmeberettiget utviklinga i samfunnet vil di gjerne stemme på den som lager mest røre samma kva det medfører. Trump har i så måte vist seg å være ekstra flink å lage røre av det minste og venstresida biter på både søkke og agn + litt til kvar gang. I så måte har eg mest tru på at farlige velgere eksister på begge endane av hesteskoen og at ein borgarkrig kan utløysast di begge uavhengig av valgresultat. Meir spent på om det er kina eller russland som nører mest opp under borgerkrig-bålet...

Du kan ikke legge demokratene og republikanerne i samme sekk her. Demokratene er på ingen måte perfekte, men Biden har fått gjennom mye som hjelper vanlige amerikanere. Problemet er at republikanerne hele tiden jobber alt de kan for å stoppe ting som hjelper vanlige folk.

 

  

Selfuniverse skrev (På 3.6.2024 den 7:22 PM):

Her er en oppsummering og forklaring av forskjellige typer valgfusk som foregår i USA:

En ekstremt lite troverdig kilde. Faktum er vel at de fleste som er tatt for valgfusk har vært på høyresiden...

[Markiii]

0laf skrev (På 4.6.2024 den 12:12 AM):

De har ikke klart å finne noe på Joe Biden. De har prøvd desperat, men har feilet totalt.

0laf skrev (På 3.6.2024 den 6:14 PM):

Bernie Sanders og The Squad er den ekstreme venstresiden

Det morsomme med dette er jo at Bernies politikk var ekstremt populær blant amerikanere, også blant de på høyresiden.

Sitat

Er man bondeknøl i USA, og ikke ønsker flere mexikanere

Men de ønsker jo flere, fordi de er veldig billig arbeidsplass på gårdene deres.