Oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday over the president’s power to remove the commissioners of independent agencies left little doubt that its Republican-appointed justices are about to fundamentally reorder our system of government. They appear ready to eliminate most pockets of expertise and nonpartisanship that we rely on as stewards of important economic, political, scientific, and regulatory power.
They will do this, if this morning’s arguments are any indication, without grappling with the predictable and disastrous fallout, with the endpoint of their own logic, or the historical record to the contrary. Instead, the six Republican appointees appear ready to race headlong into a Trumpian future in which no agency or decision is beyond the reach of the precedent’s political cronies.
“You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed Monday, “and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”
Americans have always been free to remove the president from office. Or his head from his shoulders.
I wish this article also pointed out that all the agency heads that Trump has fired have been women.
Follow along at https://project2025.observer/
If you think this sucks, just wait until SCOTUS kicks dreamers out this summer and abolishes the federal reserve (pages 732 and 736)
There’s not that many semi independent agencies left that aren’t under control of Trump or one of his cronies I think, the most notable being the fed. If Trump manages to take control of the fed, then trust in the dollar will take a major hit and it’s going to send the markets into a bit of a panic. But that small panic will be nothing compared to the fallout of when Trump actually starts mismanaging the Fed.
This is 100% about the Fed though, that’s why they brought the case. He wants to fire jpow and eplace him with a crypto bro.
Not just the fed I think. For example, this would also allow republicans to fully take over the fec (currently inoperative because of lack of quorum) and then use it as a weapon against their opponents, in order to win the 2026 elections. All these agencies were independent for a reason, there’s bound to be many more opportunities for abuse of power.
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There isn’t. The problem is systemic and Trump is a symptom. The solution to the disease is reversing the drastic wealth inequality that gave unprecedented power to the owner class over the system, whose primary rep is currently Trump.
People always say this yet trump is uniquely evil and shows it daily.
Most of his base is evil.
I mean, he’s not not uniquely evil, but have you looked at the people around him? Your Spehen Millers, Tom Homans, and so on. There’s evil alternatives.
It’s not a coincidence that Stephen Miller and all these other evil fucks associate with one another. If Trump is just another bad politician we probably wouldn’t notice that literally everything he does is evil and everything evil is connected to him also. Tell me, if he’s just a symptom, which of the other US politicians is Putin friendly with? Certainly no Democrat I’ve heard of, at minimum.
You can play that same game with any dictator from around the world. They all love trump and you’d be hard pressed to find other US politicians they would publicly swoon over.
Look into Peter Thiel’s background. He’s a HUGE component of how we got to where we are now. Yes, Stephen Miller is a completely racist shitgoblin, but he’s “traditionally” heinous instead of Thiel’s “I’m going to forcefully restructure human society by using it against itself” heinous. Thiel honestly makes most of the rest of the appalling people involved in this regime look comparatively tame.
Thiel is a very weird freak. Not only does he associate with that weird little troll Curtis Yarvin, but he wrote the forward to a new edition (in 2020) of The Sovereign Individual.
These people are fucking weird. Democrats should really take up that mantra when talking about the enemies of the people. Walz started down that path and it was resonating, then someone reeled him in.
The reason the cons all try to make everything about trans is to try to paint their opposition as weird, when the reality is that the Republicans and conservatives are the real freaks here and they are just projecting again.
It was crazy - it was working, and then I guess the consultant class was like “oh wait, we don’t want to offend the fascists”. Like… what the actual fuck…?
I’ll give you a non-US example - Mutti Merkel and Putin were pretty close. But I think the reverse is more informative - that these kinds of conditions tend to prop up ugly figures around the world. E.g. Nigel Farage in the UK. Geert Wilders in The Netherlands. Pierre Poilievre* in Canada. Etc. This isn’t random. The typical policies that arise as a solution to wealth inequality that don’t tackle inequality tend to be about finding scape goats and turning society against them. Now what kind of person does it take to either honestly believe that some part of society should be repressed, or doesn’t but works to convice people to hate for a living? It tends to not be the empathetic, nice kind.
* Oh god Pierre is a truly disgusting human being.
Merkel famously hated Putin. They worked together, for better or for worse, but she did not personally like him. She has a phobia of dogs and he’s a dog lover, which she would have obviously been fine, but he brought a large dog to one of their meetings after her office had requested otherwise, which she felt was an attempt to intimidate her.
As are all of his nominees, most of his lawyers, most GOP governors, at least half of SCOTUS, most Fox News anchors, and every right wing influencer.
Every movement needs a starting point
The starting point here is probably Reagan. But sure Trump is def a bright orange mid point. 😄 He would likely not be the final point, given his age and where the socioeconomic system is headed.
Ronnie Raygun’s admin started the ball rolling on so many awful things.
However, some of what really motivated the extremist right wing predates that - the Watergate stuff infuriated the same sort of people that make up today’s base, and not because Nixon committed crimes, but that Nixon eventually was forced out of office because those crimes were uncovered and reported on. They vowed to construct their own parallel Orwellian mediaverse to counter factual reporting - they actively set out to create fake news, and now they have the gall to call anyone else “fake news”.
And, always, ever since the first red scare (1917) at least, you’ve always had very fringe individuals and groups and plots, from the fascist plot to have corporations seize the white house (Business Plot - 1933) and Father Coughlin and The John Birch Society, we have always had conservatives trying to ruin this country.
But yeah, a whole lot of stupid conservative schemes wormed their way into our institutions under Ronnie Raygun. Until Donvict, anyway, he was probably the very worst president in history. Certainly he had the most criminal administration in history, objectively.
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lol, this aint stopping with trump man. arguably trump is holding this shit back at this point, when he croaks is when it kicks off for real.
this whole thing has been a decades-long plan by the same group…same people who got nixon/reagan elected wrote project 2025.
Your comment is beyond naive. This is just elder abuse and isn’t going away with diaper don
https://project2025.observer/ if you care to catch up to what this actually is.
Let me be as clear as I can be.
Trump, a figure visibly and egregiously unfit for the role of leading the nation, was elected by Americans, twice, fair and square by the rules we’ve set for ourselves. But he’s just a figurehead.
Press “freedom” has been hacked by monied interests to capture the minds of a vast margin of the American voting public and brainwash them into distrusting any media but their own, which has taught them to believe lies, parrot talking points and armed them with thought-collapsing rhetoric to disrupt anyone who might help unfuck their poisoned brains. All this has been going on for decades, but the internet really just helped tie it all together, providing the perfect echo chamber that no one ever has to leave.
The net result is a captured government focused on destroying their greatest weakness: agents and sources of truth. Massive media consolidation destroys the national news-gathering apparatus and controls the entertainment diet to restrict subversive content, and the implosion of the department of education ensures more and more future adults will grow up never having had the benefit of a robust education.
So are we fucked? Maybe. But bumping off politicians isn’t the answer.
yet
I wouldn’t call it fair and square with the amount of election tampering and voter suppression that went on.
Trump bragged, on air, multiple times, that they rigged the 2024 election.
Eh. It’s part of the answer tho.
Political leaders need to know they have accountability, otherwise they don’t work for the people. Death is the ultimate accountability. Like most significant and irreversible options, it should be used as a last resort.
And still don’t. Every day. Millions doing nothing. Until Americans take responsibility for their nation, they are powerless to stop anything.
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The orange skidmark does not need any more power, FFS.
When does it become treason to the constitution and civil war is required? Where is the line, because waiting for it to feel like it and acting them, isn’t going to be effective. Where is the redline where the people decide, ‘If they do this, it’s (some form of) war.’?
When they mess with too many of the elites. I don’t think common everyday people are going to do much resisting. I mean some might, but not a large enough group to make much of a difference. So if the Trump admin really fucks up corporate America like in a way that can’t be just paid off then we’d see some actual opposition.
I guess maybe the people could vote the GOP out in 2026, but the masses are so thoroughly divided the chances of that happening are slim. Or if Trump and his regime end up blundering so badly that lots of people actually start starving also super slim chance.
To be honest that line is probably when ICE/brownshirts/whoever start mass killing people during protests. Historically, that’s what it has taken for the citizens to begin to actually fight back against authoritarian regimes. However, every individual can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Also the line is when issues with food/water/security are directly affecting enough “common” people.
MAGA is hoping to avoid that obviously, so they’ll go right to that line (captained by Miller, Vought, Lutnick, Vance/Thiel) but not go past it.
i’v halfway considered taking down the murdoch empire…don’t think it’d take much. his daughters want to sell the empire out for scraps, only his prodigal son wants to continue the family business of spreading hate to the world.
only thing really stopping me is my mum. i’m no martyr, i don’t think would feel bad enough afterwards to turn myself in or anything, but if i got caught I would feel bad for her potentially getting caught up in the inevitable media circus that’d follow
soon as she croaks though…
that’s a crazy thing to say here… maybe seek some legal means to go after his son first, like lawsuits, etc.?
say what?
Fucking with social security is a big one
Not so sure about that. You underestimate people’s ability to be misinformed.
All the legal power in the world won’t turn the mush that is his brain back into something serviceable.
Entropy will take you soon, and neither power nor money can do fuck all to stop it.
Please, can I suck you dick harder daddy Donald?
-SCOTUS
The majority of voters are getting what they want: King Trump.
Inb4 “It’s not a majority, it’s a plurality. Most of us don’t want this”
Plus the whole rigging the election thing.
