Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left? The courts are themselves slow and ultimately roll up to allies of the despot.
People say that the midterms are crucial, but the midterms are only likely to be won if Democrats truly unify and apply winning strategies. Sadly the only winning strategies now seem to involve telling stories, not necessarily the truth.
And all of that essentially admits that the next two years are forfeit anyway.
Many actions the administration has taken are illegal. Not sure if those related to NIH are, but if they’ve been firing people, odds are good, since they’ve been doing that wrong most of the time it seems like. Congress could change the laws, but they haven’t. Lots of this junk is simply against the law. The courts are moving relatively fast, as such things go, but it takes time.
Congress is supposed to control spending and taxation. The administration is claiming a ton of powers related, especially, to spending. Various actions they’ve taken certainly violate the constitution and laws that exist to ensure Congress’ budget isn’t simply ignored by a president. This is another matter for the courts… unless the Supreme Court decides to rule that the radical and unprecedented far-right “unitary executive” interpretation is correct, in which case we’ve just entered a new and far worse era of American government, and it’s all “legal”. I give it 50/50 they do that.
Do they even need to, though? If the president cannot be prosecuted for any official acts, and has the power to pardon any subordinate for ignoring the law, and to fire (and then prosecute) anyone who insists on following the law, what does the law matter?
The mechanism seems to rest on the principle of separation of powers - Congress is empowered both to write the laws, and to remove presidents. That means that there can't be a major misalignment between Congress and the executive, because if Congress thinks the president is really out of line they can boot him.
It is quite a sophisticated set-up, really. You'd think in principle that the courts would decide when the presidency isn't following the law, but the actual power to punish the president lives in the legislature and it makes much more sense when examined in terms of what incentives exist.
The problem is that, through the pardon power combined with immunity from prosecution, the president can shield the entire executive branch from any obligation to execute on the laws that congress writes. It effectively neuters congress and prevents it from making any permanently effective law. Enforcement is instead left to the whims of the current congress and president at any time (who could be highly partisan Democrats, Republicans, or anyone else). That is clearly not how the constitution is intended to work.
The constitutional remedy for abuse of pardon power is impeachment. In the model where any two branches can check the 3rd if two are of the same mind then there's nothing to do.
South Korea’s President tried to do that a few months ago and the military had to arrest them.
If the President violates the law, and Congress impeaches and convicts them, and they don’t peacefully step down, and the military/police does not remove them from office/sides with the President, we effectively have a coup and the United States as outlined in the Constitution ceases to exist.
> the United States as outlined in the Constitution ceases to exist.
As the risk of deflating your apparently boundless optimism, that ship has sailed. The idea you have of a country operating under the rule of law is not congruent with reality.
They wouldn't have to - the VP would become the President and therefore the CIC. He would instruct to military to remove the former president. If the VP does not oblige, he can be impeached as well and the Speaker of the House would become POTUS.
At that point, being the ones with all the guns, it would fall to the military to decide who they are loyal to: the Constitution, ex-POTUS, or themselves, and they will act accordingly.
Maybe you should have been mad about preemptive pardons with the last guy?
I swear I can not prepare myself anymore for the sheer hypocrisy that is about to happen in four years! You know it’s going to happen, but my issue is the theatre of it all.
Those were a smart move on his part - they knew trump was going to actually engage in the sort of lawfare they had been crowing about for the last 4 years.
Senate could impeach Trump or other members of the administration, but that requires a two third majority so good luck with that. Note that impeachment is specifically excluded from the presidential pardon.
But other than that, yeah, the strategy seems to be "who is going to stop us?" It remains to be seen how far he can push things before a critical majority of Republican senators will balk. For all their talk about "muh constitution" over the last few decades, they sure seem quick to abandon some constitutional basics when it's convenient. And even if he gets impeached by some unlikely set of circumstances, it remains to be seen if he actually steps down.
For one thing, the Supreme Court are the ones that ruled that the president has some form of immunity in the first place, and it wouldn't be that unprecedented for them to rein that in a bit if it comes to them again; see the follow-up to Bruen in Rahimi where basically all of them other than Thomas seemed to want to walk back their previous ruling a bit. Although it's hard for me to imagine how they could have been surprised at all about the aftermath of their ruling in Bruen, it does sometimes seem to me like some of the more "moderate" conservative justices forget that they're playing with live ammo (if you'll pardon the pun) and not just debating abstract principles. I don't pretend to have any sort of confidence in what they'd actually do if presented with another case against Trump, but I don't think it would be _that_ surprising if they decided to try to find some technicality where they can claim he still has immunity for most things but for some reason it wouldn't apply to the current issue under question. I'm also not going to claim with any sort of confidence that ruling against him would be effective at reining him in, since there already seems to be a large contingent of his supporters eager for him to just flat out ignore court rulings that have much less personal stakes for him.
The other remedy that still technically merits a mention even if it's somewhat implausible to happen any time soon is that Congress does still have the power to impeach and remove the president. I don't see it as super likely that Republicans would turn against him at this point, since pretty much all of the internal opposition has been driven out of the party over the past decade, but I'm guessing that it also would have been almost unthinkable for Nixon to go from winning every state other than Massachusetts in 1972 to losing so much support in 1974 that his own party told him that he might as well resign rather than have more than half of his own party's senators vote with the Democrats to remove him from office[0]. Even though I think the people who voted for Trump tend to be much more passionate in their support for him, and the norms for what behavior is considered "acceptable" as a politician have expanded dramatically (not in small part from Trump himself), I think there's still an argument to be made that Trump isn't as popular as Nixon was at this point in second term, and it's at least theoretically possible to imagine a scenario where his support eroded to the point that he lost enough support to continue with what he's doing. Even if his supporters aren't ever going to turn against him, there aren't nearly as many of them that there were for Nixon, so maybe the most likely of the unlikely scenarios for this would be a large enough Democrat majority getting elected during the midterms that they (possibly along with some of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate) could remove him. (This would of course still leave Vance as president, assuming he didn't also get impeached and convicted, so he could pardon Trump, but that still removes him from power for at least couple of years, and Vance being a relatively recent convert to Trumpism doesn't seem like he'd be able to command nearly as much loyalty as Trump himself has).
As for what could actually cause something like this to take place, I have to wonder if the most likely scenario would literally be another pandemic. Not only does the previous one have a reasonable claim to being what caused him to lose in 2020, a lot of the policies he's currently enacting seem like they'd backfire spectacularly in the face of another pandemic (e.g. cutting vaccine mandates in schools, appointing Kennedy as HHS secretary when him being antivax is probably the most well known thing about him, and the recent flirting with cutting Medicaid in order to pay for the tax cuts...)
> During the late afternoon of August 7, Senators Goldwater and Scott and Congressman Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office and told him his support in Congress had all but disappeared. Scott told reporters afterward that they did not pressure Nixon to resign, but simply told the president that "the situation is very gloomy on Capitol Hill." Rhodes told the president he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House. By Majority Leader O'Neill's estimate, no more than 75 representatives were willing to vote against the obstruction-of-justice article. Goldwater and Scott told the president that not only were there enough votes in the Senate to convict him, but that no more than 15 or so senators were willing to vote for acquittal. Goldwater later wrote that as a result of the meeting, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished." That night, Nixon finalized his decision to leave office.
There is also the possibility, however unlikely, that some secret service member would decide their oath to the Constitution outweighs their oath to protect the president and unilaterally solves the problem. I expect that's a low probability outcome currently, but that might change depending on circumstances.
How about a complete economic collapse and great depression? They are FAFO on many critical pillars of our system, including biopharmaceuticals and research, heavy tariffs with major trading partners (you cannot instantly undo the last 50 years of globalization without a complete collapse, because the ecosystems simply do not exist anymore), the Federal Reserve (you cannot wish inflation away, you can only apply a brake that takes 18 months to have an impact), and oh so many other things. We are seeing a monkey pull the tablecloth out from under a fully set table of china and silver for 24. Apparently the majority were so deluded by propaganda that they wanted them to burn it all down. Buckle up everybody, get a go bag ready and find a safe place to keep your money.
That's a demented way of looking at the world, and it's disproven by the historical success of America as a republic, compared with countries in which "survival of the fittest" is the only rule, like Russia, or pick any dictatorship.
Survival of the fittest leads to dictatorship; dictatorships stagnate, because they spend all their energy only on maintaining power. They are efficient in one sense, at maintaining order. But they are centralized and limited in throughput and therefore are never dynamic systems capable of growth and innovation.
We're well past the point where something being illegal or not matters whatsoever. I'm surprised federal court rulings are being listened to at all, really. I'm not sure why they are.
The military getting involved is an absolute last resort type thing. And comes with risks of its own: military coups/juntas that started out as a legitimate dethroning of a dictator are not unheard of.
alabastervlog says "Many actions the administration has taken are illegal. "
Not to pick on albastervlog specifically but HN is filling with posts like the one above, stating "this is illegal, that is illegal", posted by non-lawyers who have no idea whatsoever what is, and what is not, truly illegal.
Why state something is illegal when the statement is false or ambiguous at best? What does it contribute?
Why not instead state the simpler truth: "I don't like that!" or "I disagree with that!" and then get on with the rest of an argument?
When there are things like laws that say "Inspectors general can only be fired after 30 days notice to Congress, and for-cause, which reason must be provided to Congress" it's not exactly a leap to say it's illegal when a president summarily fires a whole bunch of them effective immediately for vague reasons with no notice to Congress. For example.
[EDIT] Bluntly, if you think that was some kind of slanted or out-there take, you aren't paying nearly enough attention.
You do realize that many of these actions have been deemed illegal by the courts, right?
> forgotten about manners
Why are you complaining about manners? Why not just say "I like that!" or "I agree with that!" and then get on with the rest of an argument? See where this is going?
To be clear, the article headline is deceptive clickbait.
NIH budgets aren't being cut. The NIH is simply requiring that at least 85% of the grant value goes to the actual grant recipients, rather than being siphoned off by the university for administration expenses.
At most universities this change has no impact, since they weren't taking more than 15% to begin with. This change mainly impacts Harvard and similar, as they were previously taking extortionate cuts. Harvard was taking 69%!
> The NIH is simply requiring that at least 85% of the grant value goes to the actual grant recipients, rather than being siphoned off by the university for administration expenses.
That's not how any of this work. All of that money was already going to necessary expenditures, and "administrative expenses" is a crucial part of that.
What happened in these places to arrive at numbers like 69%, was a very thorough audit. The purpose of the audit is to allow the government to determine they are supposed to fund, and it's being bundled into an overhead number because its allows universities to take advantage of economies of scale, freeing researchers to do actual grant research.
But because our current leaders can't understand that, what's going to happen is all of the overhead costs (which again, are efficient) are going to be replaced with direct billing, which is highly inefficient. All of the money we save through sharing resources will now be siloed and duplicated needlessly. Instead of doing grant research, grant recipients will spend more time just doing compliance work instead of actual research.
Look at it this way:
A Harvard researcher asks the government for $100. They allocate an additional $69 on top of that for the university to spend on rent, utilities, legal, publishing, lab facilities, lab personnel, library services, tech support, etc. So the total grant is $169.
If the indirect rate is 0.15, the researcher isn't going to ask for $100 anymore, they're going to ask for at least $154, putting to total grant back to $169. But they're going to ask for more than this because they've lost the economy of scale of the old system. So now they have to pay for direct costs they never had to before - a 20% bump is not unreasonable.
So what just happened? The researcher only needed $100 to do their research. But now because government introduced inefficiencies into the system, the total grant goes up, and the real overhead rate is 100% instead of 69%.
By trying to save money you've actually cost everyone to have to spend more money, meaning total research is going to go down because total research spend isn't going to go up. Such efficient.
The fact that the budget is being reduced after it has been negotiated means a cut. And you obviously have no facts to back up your claim that this money was used for "adminstration expenses"
As do I. I was going to post the same thanks. Hacker News has become Reddit with these stupid political posts. It's crazy how far this site has fallen in such a short time.
I truly appreciate your viewpoint, but we are in strange times and we need a place to have a rational discussion about them. There are very few places on the Internet where this can occur that aren't completely polarized already. Since this current political situation impacts so many Hacker News topics, including science, research funding, employment, job postings, economy, startup culture, in my view it is worthy of a few posts.
Perhaps. A lot of it is also the flip side of an executive order conjuring more government into existence.
The escalation of executive order from administration to administration, and the reliance on courts to make law results in what we have going on today.
Everyone was perfectly fine with the President doing whatever he wanted a couple months ago. Everyone was fine with the vague executive orders being treated as law.
At some point one party needs reign in the presidency while they have it. Democrats chose not to, then ran a losing campaign with a candidate voters did not nominate.
Neither party is principled on a national level. There are some individual exceptions, but they are few and far between.
> Everyone was perfectly fine with the President doing whatever he wanted a couple months ago.
Everyone was fine with the president doing whatever he wanted a couple of months ago because he didn't abuse his power like the new guy is. When you have someone with self control and the best interests of the country in mind, you don't actually need to reign in presidential power like you suggest, and we just haven't had a Trump in the presidency enough to call a constitutional convention.
> At some point one party needs reign in the presidency while they have it. Democrats chose not to, then ran a losing campaign with a candidate voters did not nominate.
This is impossible given the threshold for a constitutional convention. 2/3rd for proposal and 3/4th for ratification, we are just way too divided for that unless Trump messes up really really bad and we actually survive as the same country to pick up the pieces. The supreme court is the only other body that could interpret the law to restrict executive power, but it is stacked with Trump appointees who have new interpretations of unrestricted executive power, so we shouldn't expect much from them.
> This is impossible given the threshold for a constitutional convention.
Well, it's also just not true that Democrats didn't reign in the power of the presidency when they had control.
They passed a bill and Biden signed it which makes it even more explicitly illegal for President to impound money like Trump tried last term, and is again doing now. That's why we can emphatically say what he's doing is illegal, because he's breaking a law that was passed to curb exactly what he's doing.
Moreover, when Trump argued in court he had broad presidential immunity, Biden argued against that position, thus arguing to limit his own power.
It's hard to claim both sides abuse power when one side claiming total presidential immunity to use the military to kill his political opponents, and the other side says no. The difference couldn't be more stark.
We are deeply undemocratic right now. I can consent to differences of opinion on tax policy or government subsidies, but I can't consent to open betrayal of allies. I can't consent to the deliberate traumatiztion of the people who run the government so that unaccountable authority can be wielded without any checks or balances. I can't submit to literal deaths of people who are dependent on public healthcare and their children being robbed of their mother prematurely. I can't submit to a regulatory environment that puts rich Americans above the law. I can't consent to extreme changes in foreign policy or economic intervention that makes it so that our businesses don't have a predictable environment to operate in and foreign countries have no reason to believe our words.
Our own declaration of independence lists our founding principles and tells us what we already know is the answer:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The only answer we have left is to withdrawal consent.
> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left?
As the article states, these actions are illegal and violate the US constitution.
If "the people who decided to vote" expressed this decision, that decision would be implemented by an act of Congress to alter or eliminate these rules. Congress up until now passed no such law. Thus these changes bear no democratic or institutional support.
If however you frame these series of events as an overthrow of the regime and the start of something entirely different then that's a different debate.
I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak.
Caesar was elected consul. Hitler was elected chancellor. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Hamas in Gaza, came to power democratically on a platform of 'one election - which will be the last election'. Since the beginning of democracy, democracies have regularly voted themselves out of existence. It's a buggy feature. But democracy isn't the norm at all in history, and the likelihood here seems greater that America is regressing toward the mean than that it has something in its fiber capable of withstanding a hostìle takeover that no previous republic has had.
> I read the parent as saying that a plurality of voters voted to circumvent the constitution and dismantle the republic, and therefore, a resulting despotism would just be democracy in action, so to speak.
From an outsider's point of view, that was not the people voted for.
When repeatedly pressed on Project 2025, Trump distanced from it and reassured the American people those were just vicious rumors to denigrate him. The campaign was centered on how Biden was old and senile and responsible for every problem ranging from egg prices to Trump's retreat from Afghanistan. Trump's promises were that inflation would be eliminated, jobs would be created, and minority rights would cease to be a part of the US government agenda.
What the Trump administration is implementing bears no resemblance to his program, and looks like a complete dismantlement of the United States of America, including a complete rejection of it's core values.
It is, unfortunately, not illegal to lie endlessly to get elected. Anybody who did vote for him and expected different is a fucking idiot who wasn't paying attention and was too entitled/arrogant to listen to the people who were paying attention.
If I could be certain we can vote again in 2 and 4 years to undismantle the government, undo all the damage that these folks have done, I would be fine with that. For those of us who are educated and read history, we know these acts are stupid and will fail badly, leading to a recession, and pandemic, WWIII, perhaps all three at once. I will hold all of you personally responsible for your deluded vote if and when those things occur.
It’s not clear what good the midterms can do. It appears likely that the Supreme Court will hold that the president has the power to make these cuts regardless of any laws passed by congress. And even if he didn’t have that power already, he cannot be prosecuted for any official act, and he can pardon his subordinates at will. Beyond that, any action taken by congress is going to be reliant on individuals in the executive branch to execute, and the president can fire them at will until he finds someone who declines to follow the law.
The only thing Congress could do is impeach the president and remove him from office, but that seems unlikely when roughly half the country is ecstatic about what he is doing.
> roughly half the country is ecstatic about what he is doing
A number of his actions are wildly unpopular. The Jan 6th Pardons, and his pro-Putin agenda. His polling is historically poor for a month into a president's term, and there are large protests around the country. In another month, his polling will be completely underwater.
"Only" 58% oppose the pardons according to [1]. I mean, it's a majority, but it's not what I'd call "wildly unpopular". It was always going to be opposed by a vast majority of Democrat voters, so relatively few Republican voters oppose it. I find it rather concerning.
Back in the day much was said about Bush's "historically low" approval ratings too. It was somewhat satisfying to see, but in the end it didn't really seem to matter much. He still got re-elected.
If you ask those same Republicans if they would pardon a violent offender who committed crimes in an attempt to defend Trump's claims of victory on January 6, you would get a very different answer.
> Back in the day much was said about Bush's "historically low" approval ratings too.
George W. Bush's initial approval ratings were technically historically low, but were 57% gross approval, and +32% net; the lowest (from Eisenhower forward) prior was his immediate predecessor at 58% gross and +38% net.
But that's nothing like Trump's "historically low" initial ratings this term, at 48% gross, -1% net, which also dropped by mid-February to 45% gross, -6% net (with a majority -- 51% -- registering disapproval.)
> > His polling is historically poor for a month into a president's term
> You can hate the guy all you like, but this is 100% false.
It's absolutely true.
His second term started with the second lowest initial gross approval rating (47%) of a Presidential term back to 1953; the worst was his first term (at 45%). But his initial rating was also the worst net approval of any President (with 48% disapproval, for a net -1%, breaking the prior record set by his own first term with 45% disapproval for a net 0%, and having the unprecedented condition of not merely net disapproval but majority disapproval this early in a term.)
AT mid-February, his gross approval had dropped to 45% (and remained the second worst since 1953, again the only worse being his own first term), and his net approval had dropped to -6% on 51% disapproval. As well as having less approval than any term other than his first, Trump is faced with the historically-unusual fact that the not-approving numbers early on aren't mostly neutral, but disapproving.
But the people who did vote for him explicitly voted for all the stuff he's doing right now. Nothing that he's currently doing is surprising, except maybe for the fact that a politician actually followed through on so many campaign promises.
I don’t recall “we’re gonna kill science research, cancer research, we’re gonna make a million poor children die of AIDS and tuberculosis” in any campaign ads.
His actions were outlined in Project 2025 throughout his candidacy. Surprised all it took was a simple statement of ignorance for people to completely dismiss what was plainly written what was going to happen (and currently is).
"I love the poorly-educated!" was not empty rhetoric. Only a country that gives slow-witted people the same political power as those on the right side of the IQ bell curve could elect a Trump democratically.
Both parties actually target a bimodal IQ distribution. The D distribution covers most of the left tail and the upper-mid, and the R distribution covers the lower-mid and most of the right tail. You generally expect interleaved affiliation like this; it's just a question of how many bands there are. R avg is actually slightly higher, although that doesn't tell the full story. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
I don't think it's a partisan question, although it'd be interesting to repeat the survey today given how the makeup of the Republican party has changed since 2014. Keep in mind Trump could not have won re-election with the support of Republican constituencies alone.
You had to be genuinely gullible to vote for Trump this time, but that wasn't the case in 2016. I'm thinking of the blue-collar union members who voted for the Trump '24 ticket, for example, bitching to everybody who would listen about the price of eggs under Biden. In 2014 they would have been dragging down the Democrats' collective IQ, and now they've switched sides. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are still registered Democrats.
> You had to be genuinely gullible to vote for Trump this time
It seems like he's mostly doing what his coalition was hoping he would do? Certainly to a greater degree than in 2016. I have not seen any credible indications of post-election regret from his coalition.
I have not seen any credible indications of post-election regret from his coalition.
They believed that things were bad and that Trump would make them better rather than worse. If that's not gullibility, I don't know what is.
His voters will ultimately be among his greatest victims... but he'll blame Biden for whatever goes wrong, and they'll lap it up like a dog with a dish of antifreeze, just like they always do.
So would you would take the vote away from " those on the right side of the IQ bell curve"? (That has been done before, you know. You might be somewhat uncomfortable sitting with those who once did it, however).
I remember warnings of all this bullshit going around the socials. Kinda funny how it's playing out *exactly the fuck like those warnings portrayed*.
For those who voted for him I understand the people who are happy about what's happening. Those who claim they didn't "vote for this": they don't deserve to have a vote. The writing was on the wall in clear script.
He repeatedly stated he knew nothing about Project 2025. So arguably he's not following through on his campaign promises. Some of his voters I'm sure saw through his bullshit, but many were conned.
It's a far stretch to say that this is what the majority of his voters wanted. Certainly many Republican voters have seemed very upset about this stupid blitzkrieg dismantling of core services.
People love being conned. And he has been conning people a long time, and is very good at it. I expect most of the money he and Melania made on their meme coins were from his followers.
I disagree. In particular, the complete disrespect with which he and Elon are going about "cutting costs" and the way he's handling Ukraine would likely have lost him the election were they known beforehand.
IMHO it's kind of meaningless to count the popular vote as it's not a popular election, which influences the results. Why vote in Texas or California? You already know who will win. Will that balance each other out? Unclear.
That said, I do agree with the broader point that a narrow victory shouldn't give full control of the complete (federal) government, especially considering how they're going about things. But fixing that requires serious changes to the democratic system and good luck with that.
For example because it’s not only president on the ballot.
While I don’t think these results are perfectly representative of the support/opposition (for the reasons you describe) they are still representative.
I'm not responding to a lazy condescending Wikipedia link dump where I have to guess what you could perhaps mean with it. If you have something to say, then say it. Otherwise don't post.
I couldn’t get half of my liberal friends to even vote. And, it wasn’t because they didn’t like Kamala - I sensed that they were just tired of globalism.
> I sensed that they were just tired of globalism.
With what, a compass? This is an absurd statement, I bet they weren't wearing clothes manufactured in America, or using a phone that was built domestically.
The easiest way to fatigue a nation of nationalists is to let the world move on. The Axis forces might have been tired of globalism, but the globalists sure as hell weren't.
Out of curiosity, how many weeks/months of late vote counting did that take? At the time the election was called, and for at least a couple weeks after iirc, he was ahead.
No, what the previous poster said is that more people voted for other candidates than for Trump, and that's always been pretty clear. 49.8% of the votes went to Trump. That means 50.2% went to other candidates (Harris, Jill Stein, Chase Oliver, etc.)
In fact, he had less margin than any election since 2000. Even Hillary in 2016 had a larger popular vote margin of victory than Trump 2024 despite having lost the electoral college.
Indeed. And yet with certain previous presidents we've been told that because the margin of victory is so slim, they're already a lame duck. But here, it's a mandate.
So, Trump in 2016, not 2024, was actually the lowest (negative, in fact) margin for a winning candidate since 2000 (and was actually lower—more negative—than 2000’s also-negative margin.)
In all odds I think by the midterms we'll have seen:
* A massive recession as a result of tariffs, job losses, pullback in federal spending (e.g,. on infrastructure), and general economic uncertainty.
* A significant public health crisis (see measles in Texas for example)
* Russia continuing to wage war on Ukraine, and possibly further conflicts around the world as the US withdraws from international peacekeeping.
Do I think anyone not drinking the koolade could see this coming? Sure. But that wasn’t the question, the question is what could be done. There are exactly two things, only one of which is legal, which is impeachment.
Why are so many liberals pretending to be offended Trump supporters online? It’s obviously fake.
My company is majority conservative, not one single person I’ve even heard of is mad at Trump - except that he isn’t going far enough fast enough for them.
I think you're right. I've seen so many conservatives online relish in hatred as illegal immigrants are shipped to Guantamo, as trans people are purged from government and the military and stripped of HRT, as Trump called Zelensky a dictator and threatens to seize Greenland and annex Canada, as agencies are gutted, and puts out AI slop of Gaza turned into a billionaire's resort with golden statues of Trump and Bibi, as Bannon and Musk sieg hieled.. it's all wildly popular.
I have no empathy for such people. If they run the country into the ground, I just hope they suffer too.
What, I'm an extremist for not wanting the US to conquer our allies? For opposing indefinite detainment of immigrants in concentration camps? For opposing the purge of trans people?
He might be a well known liar, and people might’ve been stupid to believe him when he disavowed Project 2025, but his campaign did not promise to enact these policies.
So he specifically did the opposite of campaign on it then. Most voters weren't going to go and read through his proposed budgets and everyone knows that.
It feels like we're bending over backwards to minimize a liar lying here. He did not campaign on enacting Project 2025. He literally stood on the stage at rallies and disavowed it. Yeah, he was lying and a lot of us knew it but that doesn't change what he campaigned on.
If a politician tells a bold faced lie we shouldn't minimize it by saying "oh but everyone knew what he really meant". He lied to voters.
Not obvious to all. I have relatives who get all their “news” from a Facebook feed that’s heavily filtered to confirm their priors. They told me time and time again that Trump had disavowed Project 2025. The obviousness of his lies were not apparent to them. Yes, they should be better informed (believe me, I know) but they’re far from alone.
So that’s why it bugs me when I see someone say “he’s doing exactly what he said he’d do!” and the story quickly pivots to “well yes of course he specifically said he wasn’t going to do that but it was obvious he was lying”. A lot of people are living in vastly different information ecosystems, which is why the words coming out of a candidate’s mouth matter.
Remember when it came out that Project 2025 was going to be the playbook? And Trump disavowed it but all evidence pointed to the contrary? And our priors pointed to him not being inclined to tell the truth?
Yes, those of us paying attention knew that when he disavowed Project 2025 he was talking nonsense. But OP said Trump "campaigned on doing exactly these things". He didn't. He campaigned on literally disavowing these things.
"we knew this would happen" !== "he campaigned on doing exactly these things"
I’d suggest your viewpoint is a pretty sheltered one. Many people (relatives of mine included, sadly) marinate in a stew of social media algorithms showing them things that confirm their priors and they aren’t exposed to any oppositional media.
Perhaps they don’t deserve a vote. But if they don’t then a lot of voters don’t deserve a vote. And maybe we ought to be asking ourselves “what systems have we set up that have led to such wildly underinformed voters? Are there things we can do to rectify that?” rather than just give up on a significant section of the population. Much easier to write it off as a person’s individual failure than consider it as a societal issue.
(not to mention, “they don’t deserve a vote” doesn’t say a whole lot. They still have a vote even if we decide they’re undeserving. We’re all in it together, like it or not)
I went through this 2016-2020. This time I'm all in on the "leopards ate my face" stance. Instead of feeling bad, I now laugh at people who voted for this and are getting hurt.
I can't help that people are this stupid. And if they hurt themselves in the process, good. It'll be a cleansing.
I don’t see the value in your contribution here. There is an objective truth I think everyone participating in the discussion agrees on: Trump lied in campaign speeches and the reality was clear to those in possession of all the facts. Events post election have indeed confirmed that he was lying.
So what is “my propaganda” you’re referring to? There’s just a truth that some people weren’t made aware of.
I see lying as institutional laziness on the decade scale.
The propaganda is pervasive enough to not realize its there at all. You shouldn't accuse others of being in their own informational bubble without realizing you're in your own. The desire to disenfranchise is also an extreme authoritarian impulse.
I ask again: in the context of this discussion, what is my propaganda? What am I saying that is untrue? You’re using a lot of vague lofty statements. Be specific.
> The desire to disenfranchise is also an extreme authoritarian impulse.
> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left?
If its just that, the other branches of government. Of course, Congress is not a remedy at the moment, though its conceivable they might move in response to popular pressure more easily than the White House.
Failing that, history is full of examples of ad hoc remedies where a leader unmistakeably exercised authority in a way which upset people without any formal systemic remedy, some of which took the shape of legal process despite the absence of preexisting formal law, and some of which did not.
I don't even know if I believe there's any chance of this myself but it's worth pointing out that Republicans currently have a House majority of... 2. It's unlikely but not inconceivable that a few house members could be persuaded to vote with Democrats to push back, simply because they're in a swing state and we keep seeing videos of very mad voters confronting their representatives. Anyone in a swing district interested in securing re-election should be considering it.
> Anyone in a swing district interested in securing re-election should be considering it.
Trump alone could easily tank almost any R congressman's reelection chances, and with big money backing him now, they can afford to bankroll the competitor's primary campaign.
What scares me is that even if a slim Pro-Sanity coalition exists in both houses, Trump can simply continue to violate the Constitution willy-nilly if a core of Republicans remain complicit and block removal from office.
After all, we're not just talking about an illegal retroactive on-demand line-item veto here, but plenty of other data-points, like a President that has blanket-pardoned criminals who already violently attacked congress in his name.
What's the plan for when the USPS suddenly has "breakdowns" or "misplaces" mail-in-ballots collected from certain districts? Or when IRS tax records from candidates are leaked to opposing conservative campaigns? Citizenships being "revoked" just enough to stop people from voting?
Hah, is your Ministry of Truth so strong that you have already forgotten his past and contemporary crimes, so that the lack of new ones in the future renders him retroactively innocent?
The man could keel over quite morally-blamelessly from a coronary tomorrow, and the record of words and deeds left behind would still be that of a crook, a corrupt politician, and a wannabe dictator.
Mere inaction in a 78-year-old is not reform. If it were, A Christmas Carol would have been a much shorter story.
Strictly, sevearal things.
First, plurality. Second, they voted for Congress, as well. Where are they? Third, they trust in the entire system, even if their trust has been manipulated by some agents. That is why we are supposed to have checks and balances.
Let's not forget that the house is artificially capped [1]. It should have a much larger membership. The senate already biases towards land over people. And more and more the house does as well.
The senate was always set up to artificially prop up smaller (by population) states. The House was not. But we've artificially capped the House. Now they both favor lower population states.
The system is setup to balance out two competing interests - the large cities (with large, concentrated populations) and the states (most of which are not so heavily populated, but have most of the land and resources).
It’s a compromise. And necessary for the Union to be balanced - unless Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, etc. should now just become (defacto) vassals to Los Angeles. Which they definitely didn’t sign up for.
The states had governed themselves for 150 years before the revolution (same age as USA in 1930s), they weren't going to give that up. Also overlooked is that the states had different religions and spoke different languages. We assume they were destined to unite only in retrospect and forget how improbable it actually was.
Again: why do you seem to think I don't understand how the senate works.
The senate works the way it does. The house is intended to be the chamber of the populace. Roughly 100 years ago we artificially limited the house of the commons. The senate never changed.
I said why. Because if the house hadn’t of been capped, it would have thrown the entire system out of balance, and all but a handful of mega cities would control everything else.
That was never the deal. In fact, that was clearly not the deal.
And since those cities depend on the resources of those surrounding areas too, it can either be a symbiosis or a war.
I can't imagine why 2026 should be any different than 2024. He's doing exactly what he promised. Those who voted for him will still be in favor, at least compared to the alternative. Voters who stayed home will still see no difference between the parties.
As a wise man once said "it's the economy stupid." If their actions tank the economy, which seems a distinct possibility, things could change drastically.
The President tends to get the praise or blame, no matter who actually did things. The Federal Reserve controls the money supply, and probably has more to do with inflation than anybody else.
Sure, but the whole idea of representative democracy (a Republic[1]) is supposed to be that Congress and other elected members of government are supposed to be immune from the trappings of mob rule.
In other words, the excuse you are making is that people voted for the government to start doing borderline illegal or at the very least highly misguided and self-destrctive things that are against the interest of their constituents, and that because the people want those dumbass destructive things the government should comply with those wishes.
That logic only goes so far when we consider the context of the very same government that also denies the people things that are far more popular.
For example, 62% of Americans are in favor of universal healthcare, but we aren't getting that.
82% of Americans are in favor of paid maternity leave.
And yet, our lawmakers have not delivered to the American people those demands.
But here we all are implying that 51% of the country deciding they want to dismantle the US executive branch is enough public support to just go ahead and do so with impunity.
The 2024 Trump presidency is, believe it or not, already a historically unpopular administration by the objective polling numbers. Why should they get to dismantle the government with such a weak mandate?
Frankly, it's bullshit.
[1] This is coincidentally the excuse that every Republican I've ever met including my Fox News Dad makes for the electoral college and gerrymandered congressional districts amplifying rural MAGA votes so that states with majority Democrat constituents are ruled by Republican statehouses and so that Trump and Bush got to win presidential elections without winning the popular vote.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” - H.L. Mencken
Elections matter.
Don’t think I’m a Trump
Fan. I’ve been warning about this exact thing since before the first election. But people had to go and stick the butter knife in the wall socket anyway, and they clearly need to learn the hard way what happens.
What do you expect? A coup? I’m sure you know as well as anyone how that would go right now. Too few people are willing to believe what is actually happening right in front of them. And frankly, wouldn’t that just be being the enemy?
Or, reform your Presidency to be a constitutional role only, with executive power devolved to the party or parties of your elected representatives that is able to show the head of state that they have the numbers to govern.
E.g. like the President of Ireland, or the King of England (via the Governor General proxy) in countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Also, the Electoral College is an archaic anachronism, and may I recommend a system of proportional representation?
Devolution to "states rights" is exactly that, a devolution.
Britain ran a global empire using this model, why wouldn't it work for the US?
Maybe read up on how it works before rejecting it out of hand?
Britain has a bicameral parliament, with the leader of the majority of the lower house forming the executive, but the head of state retains the constitutional ability to dissolve parliament and order new elections if the current government is unable to function.
Having an apolitical head of state might be worth looking into.
> Britain ran a global empire using this model, why wouldn't it work for the US?
The “global empire” was systematically disenfranchised under that model, which is a big reason why it broke up, and that was specifically called out by the US when it left.
I mean, there are arguably good examples of parliamentary democracy working at significant scale in a state, but the UK’s government at home while the empire was managed through a bunch of other systems is very much not one of them.
> What works for a country the size of a New York neighbourhood doesn't work for a country the size of a continent.
While I personally think the problem with the US system is much more in lack of proportionality in the electoral system used for the legislature , but, even so, I can recognize thet parliamentary government doesn't only work at small scales.
Alternatively: we need to rein in the powers of the presidency. Right now we've got a dynamic of "the president says what to do and the legislature obeys" (or, recently, "the president does stuff on his own"); we might be better off with "Congress decides what to do and the president makes it happen".
How long will California maintain GDP dominance when major parts of business are in the pocket of Trump? Won't they just pack up and leave, tanking Californias economy with it?
It's not terribly interesting. There have always been two strains of thought for the Democrats in the US. Once has been that we must move the whole country in the right direction kicking and screaming - this has been the ideology that has been in ascendency since Kennedy. The other that we must be allowed to be as progressive as possible without interference from the Federal government. That's not been in vouge since the end of the new deal.
I'm completely in the second camp and would move back to the US if it were possible to get it adopted at the national level.
To Republicans' credit, they have not flipped on states' rights even when they dominate DC. Maybe this is a good time for everyone to (pretend to) be aligned on states' rights and ram through some measures to that end.
There are inklings of a change there. You can see it in things like proposing to prevent women from traveling to another state to get an abortion, or forcing states to assist the federal government with immigration enforcement. I expect we will see more of that if it helps them get to their desired policy goals.
Absolutely. "Conspiracy to commit abortion" is being proposed if not partly a thing in many states, and runs the gamut of anything from looking up info online, to traveling, to financially supporting or even giving a place to stay for someone doing this.
A) The answer is impeachment -- regardless of partisan policy discussions on what we should do with these agencies, there is a strong legal argument that overruling congress via impoundment and/or the actions discussed here violate the constitutions most basic precepts. Our founders, for better or worse, including one escape valve for such a situation: congress reasserting its power via impeachment.
I know recent history makes it hard to imagine a successful impeachment+conviction when both chambers are controlled by the president's party, but that doesn't change anything; there is literally no other legal path to reigning in an authoritative executive, especially with the 2024 presidential immunity ruling. Party bonds are strong, but at a certain point, even the most loyal congressperson will start to resent being made into a rubber-stamp like the legislatures of Russia & Hungary have been.
B) I really don't think the global scene backs up the idea that truth isn't effective -- there's lots of complex things going on, and some amount of emotional propaganda is always necessary, but we should never abandon the truth. Regardless of how effective it is in the short term, basing a political project on lies means it has no core, and can end up corrupted/way off track in short order.
> there is a strong legal argument that overruling congress via impoundment and/or the actions discussed here violate the constitutions most basic precepts
No there isn't. The text of the Constitution says the opposite: it makes appropriation a necessary condition for expenditures, but omits any clause making it a sufficient one. And the only case law on this issue is Train v. New York, which assiduously avoids ruling on the separation of powers issue. So there is neither any basis in the Constitution itself nor any basis in case law for your contention.
What is the role of congress, if its enumerated powers do not imply that any of those things should actually happen...? Honest question. Are you honestly saying that there's an implied 100% veto available to the executive for anything done by congress?
Congress has many enumerated powers. Spending money is not one of them.
The Founders had just fought a war over unjust taxation to support the head of state's pet projects. Thus they required all funds to be appropriated by Congress. But it is still the head of state that actually spends them. The Treasury has always been part of the Executive branch, ever since Alexander Hamilton led the Treasury under George Washington.
Our country is built on checks and balances. The Executive controls the Treasury and spends money out of it, but is checked by the Congress, because the Executive cannot spend money without it first being appropriated.
the Take Care clause of Article II would like to have a word with you. The President has a positive duty to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress. if Congress passes a law funding something, the President must faithfully make it so.
encourage all the laid off federal employees to move to the three special election counties, flip the house next month, use the house majority to push back on the most absurd/draconian moves, push harder at the midterms and try again two years later.
long term, figure out a better politically independent structure (perhaps similar to the fed) for important institutions.
Courts can't just step in when Congress decides not to do its job.
Someone needs to sue to bring a matter before the courts. And in a lot of these cases, there just isn't a party who has standing to do so outside of the narrow scope of say, employment law.
elections do not and should not mean that winner gets to ignore existing laws. They should nor mean the winner must operate unopposed without checks and balances.
Tight victory means even less in terms of the mandate.
> when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies
No candidate got a majority of votes. A majority means more than 50% of the votes. In this case, the leading candidate only received 49.5%, which is a plurality, not a majority.
What is really happening is that Billionaires are taking advantage of less educated voters by convincing them to vote against their self-interests. They do so by shifting focus to the "values and cultural issues" of the moment. In the past, it was gay marriage and abortion; today, it's trans kids and DEI. Once these issues dominate the conversation, little attention is paid to the real priorities and actions of these Billionaires: cutting funds to Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare programs, cuts to health insurance subsidies, cuts to education, cuts to medical research funding, cuts to development assistance to the poorest in the world and so on, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
What is the solution? Democrats should shift towards the center on the "values and cultural issues" in order to neutralize the conservative advantage, then they will be able to do things that the middleclass (and lower) cares about, such as healthcare and health research, education, consumer protections and so on, and make the Billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.
The debate can't be on "values and cultural issues", whatever they are, because that plays into Republican strengths.
I can't see the Democrats "shifting to the center" on trans kids when that will lead to more suicides when kids can't get their gender affirming care. That seems bad in every way.
You have to be smart about it. Don't make it the debate topic. You know how Trump disclaimed any knowledge of Project 2025 and after he became president, started executing on its vision? That's how you downplay a topic even though it is important to you.
Frankly, I am not at all convinced any further elections in the US will be free or fair given who is currently in power and what they've openly said about elections and what they want to do to them.
The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance, which I see as unlikely to occur (and which I am not necessarily advocating for here on HN).
Barring that, the reality is that scientific progress will move away from the US and towards our enemies, and we will just have to live with the consequences of the choices we made.
I appreciate the perspective, and I know it's trite, but it's important: how would you feel about a resident of 1933 Germany writing your comment? Some good people fled, true, but staying and complying because mass protest seems "unlikely" is almost definitely something posterity will frown upon -- not to mention the rest of the world. I think that's something that should give one pause.
Remember, mass protest to (push congress to) oust an authoritarian executive has never happened before in the USA -- but we've also never had an authoritative executive to anywhere near this extent before.
FDR's order regarding gold was part of a broader effort to combat the Great Depression by stopping gold hoarding, allowing the government to inflate the money supply and stimulate the economy. It wasn’t a total seizure — people were compensated at the then-official rate of $20.67 per ounce.
Name me 5 executive orders by Trump which, combined, disrupt normal economic affairs by as much as that single one.
As for the broader efforts, the New Deal required various things like reinterpreting the Commerce Clause. Look up "the switch in time which saved nine" for why the Supreme Court went along with it.
Not to mention things like the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW 2.
No, FDR was the closest thing we've had to a king. There is a reason why the 22nd amendment was passed so quickly after he died.
Lincoln started the war? Lincoln’s actions didn’t result in the eventual freeing of the slaves? Lincoln was unpopular in the South and so they wanted to take their ball and go home; the South started the war - the North ended it and has the graciousness not to take absolute vengeance on the remains. Lincoln was imperfect and could have done more so you think Trump would have done anything? Except make a “deal” swapping citizens for money?
Its a good thing you are gracious not to take absolute vengeance on your neighbors when they annoy you. I feel bad for them to have to live near someone so violently unhinged. Politics is the art of compromise.
Lincoln held the Union together and led to a USA that saved Europe and beyond. He also advocated letting the defeated South “up easy” in an effort to rebuild some sort of national unity after the greatest loss of life we have ever experienced in this nation. Could you imagine Trump doing the same? Lincoln guided us through a national disaster as best as possible for a person to do, I don’t recall him enriching himself either.
Guided us through a national disaster by starting a war? You don't get credit for guidance if you were the cause of the disaster. The history of America was one of political compromise, that he threw out in favor of war. A lot of people got fabulously rich off the war and then the carpet bagging. And for those that believe it was about slavery then why did the emancipation proclamation free 0 slaves? He exempted the slave counties the union controlled because the goal wasn't an end to slavery. He could have freed the slaves but chose not to.
>Name me 5 executive orders by Trump which, combined, disrupt normal economic affairs by as much as that single one.
By the end of this year, I think you're going to look back on this comment and wonder how you ever typed it. FDR's policies are responsible for literally saving the economy and pulling the US out of the Great Depression.
My comment was about the degree of executive power exercised, and not about the wisdom of his actions. Trump has yet to match FDR.
That said, many historians believe that FDR's actions made the Great Depression longer and more severe. Given that most other countries recovered more quickly than the USA, they may have a point. But that is a complex debate. Far simpler is how much executive power FDR wielded.
> The only real functional way forward at this point is some form of mass protest or resistance,
Maybe, just maybe, the opposition party could quit offering these shit sandwich candidates as an alternative?
I can't believe there's no Democrat politicians out there who could've beat Trump handily. But the DNC seems totally disfunctional in picking candidates.
I think it's parliamentary syndrome. In Canada MPs aren't allowed to tweet anything at all until it's approved by the leaders office. Instead of unique individual persons representing constituents there's effectively 1 dictator with a hundred faces. Same issue for the democrats where everyone has to be sanded down to fit the mold.
Americans don't actually understand how the government works either. We pretend there's an election but in reality it's already happened. The majority of districts are 'safe' so whoever wins the primary in a safe district automatically wins the election. The person who wins the primary is almost always the person the party endorses. In practice the party endorsement is the election. The endorsement process is controlled by party insiders so the net effect is that they pick the government, not the voters.
Dean Phillips could have been their easy ticket to a victory, but they decided to make the worst possible choices. This is simply a result of hubris and incompetence.
Seriously, I agree with you, but I don't know how to solve that problem either. The DNC is just completely bereft of good ideas and at this point seems about as useless as the Mitt Romney-era Republican party was.
> Frankly, I am not at all convinced any further elections in the US will be free or fair given who is currently in power and what they've openly said about elections and what they want to do to them.
The only legal answer I'm aware of is the states setting up a Constitutional Convention. (Well, either that, or having the cabinet declare the president incapacitated.) Good luck getting the majority of the states or cabinet on board.
True that. But I don't recall Trump campaigning on this policy.
In fact he's putting into play Project 2025, the thing that he explicitly disclaimed knowledge of prior to the elections.
It's a sad sign of the state of US politics that this, which would cause outrage in the past, barely merits a mention amidst all the other rage bait things he's doing.
His barmy executive orders, DOGE, that disgraceful display with Zelenskyy reminds me of the Wizard of Oz trying to distract people from the man behind the curtain.
> Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left?
Support candidates that appeal to the electorate. Find common ground. Resist demonizing the opposition. Moderates shouldn’t have to choose between polarized extremes. If you are intellectually honest you may see the ripple effect created by unfairly shutting Bernie Sanders out of the democratic nomination in 2016 set the stage for this outcome .
While I agree about Bernie Sanders I really can't see the justification in describing Harris's candidacy as a "polarized extreme". Sanders is clearly more extreme than her. (I don't think he's extreme at all, just that he's further to the left)
I wouldn’t call Kamala extreme per se. The extreme position is the doubling down on positions that don’t resonate with the electorate and labeling the opposition racist or traitorous instead of working to find common ground. One example of an extreme position dichotomy would be the choice between an unnecessarily porous border without transparency and mass deportation when the people would likely all agree on a steady stream of legal citizenship applications coming through the front door. Another instance might be that Americans would likely be largely in favor of trans rights if they weren’t bundled with allowing professional male combat athletes to unfairly dominate female participants. I think Americans crave common sense and it is nowhere to be found.
What I'd really be interested in is something larger than an anecdote: Do trans women dominate cis women in the sports they compete in? It would take a larger study, as a one-off doesn't really mean much.
Also note that Fox has not won all of her fights, which indicates that trans women are not as dominant as the one fight you mentioned would suggest.
The question is perhaps better reframed in two parts:
1. Do male athletes dominate female athletes in competition? We know the answer to that is yes, in almost all sports. It's why we have a separate female category, and there is a wealth of evidence to support this - from biological studies by sports scientists to comparisons of world records.
2. Are there any interventions that male athletes can take upon their bodies to entirely eliminate the male physical advantage in sports? From the evidence we have so far, the answer is no. They can be weakened through testosterone suppression, but in general they still retain a significant advantage over female athletes.
There is also the question of whether an impaired male athlete should be considered equivalent to a female athlete for the purposes of eligibility in the female category. This is more of a philosophical question and leans heavily on whether one believes that "trans women" are women or not. Is it fair to impose this belief on others who do not share this belief - particularly female athletes who may fundamentally object to being compelled to compete against men?
It really amazes me how much this has become an issue and how few people question why or how. The number of trans athletes we're talking about, nationwide, is no higher than in the dozens. The idea that when asked about a presidential election someone would cite trans issues as a priority staggers me. A true testament to the power of conservative media.
Another angle on this is: If trans athletes are such a concern, wouldn't giving trans kids gender affirming care resolve this issue? The standard care is puberty blockers starting at about 10, then hormone therapy in their teens, then surgery if they wish after they become adults.
It's almost like what they say they are concerned about isn't what they are really concerned about.
Conservatives leapt upon this as a wedge issue in recent years, but originally the pushback against the imposition of males upon the female category in sports (and female spaces in general) came from feminist activism.
At this point it's hundreds of male athletes competing in women's and girls' sport: https://shewon.org/males
So now we have people inspecting women's genitals to see if they are really female, women being called out because they don't look feminine enough, and all the worst misogynistic instincts on full display.
The thing is, the best athletes frequently have genetic privilege that others don't have, whether it be extra long or extra short limbs, being extra tall, having higher than average testosterone levels, etc. There is no level playing field.
I don't know what the best answer is, but what we are seeing now is pretty ugly.
Screening for sex can be done with a cheek swab. It's much, much less invasive than the anti-doping tests that require blood to be extracted and a direct visual on the athlete passing urine. And it only needs to be done once in an athlete's career.
In most cases though it's very obvious when a male is in a women's event. For example, no-one is going to mistake this male, who competes in women's cycling, for female: https://i.ibb.co/N6ZBzh4K/F4-Svyxt-XYAAMpc-M.jpg
The best athletes often do have some sort of genetic privilege, that is true. But look at the world records of pretty much any sport and compare the most elite male athletes with the most elite female athletes: the difference is massive. Even having advantages in limb length, lung capacity, and so on doesn't overcome the physical advantage of male development.
My sentiments exactly. The level of despair I’m feeling is palpable. Especially when I think that to counter Trump it will take a unified Democratic Party with consistent messaging … (unlikely)
Yeah there isn't much to do -- the midterms are the next best option. Nobody voted for this.. Trump won with a narrow plurality, not even a majority of the votes and denied all knowledge of the Project 2025 plan that's been in full effect since Jan 20th.
Congress has completely abdicated their Constitutional mandate to control the purse and the executive branch is illegally impounding billions of dollars. It really is a constitutional crisis. The 'right' way to do this would be to draw up a budget (not a CR) that closes NIH and USAID and whatever else they're so desperate to destroy - but that would take 60 votes in the Senate and would subject them to months of terrible press while they negotiated it, so instead they're just ceding all authority to the President and Elon and letting them take a sledgehammer to our collective government. Sheer embarrassment.
Bullshit. They are pathologizing the democratic result of the last election as well as promoting extremist rhetoric that ignores the fact people can vote if they don't agree, but it is not acceptable to claim a president and his administration can't operate within Constitutional rights to run the executive branch else "violence" is necessary and justified.
No, the 2nd amendment does not codify terrorism because your side lost a vote that will be run again in four years.
This government doesn't represent any sane informed person with a rudimentary understanding of even just the last 50 years of geopolitics. The system is clearly broken. First past the post voting is mathematically stupid. When the system no longer serves the people, violence has been the solution for the entire history of humanity. You know who doesn't like violence and prefers sign holding? The people with the boot on your throat. In 4 years, we will be given another "choice" handed to us by the business class that serves their interests, if we're lucky.
We are going down a very dangerous road, and it's not one that can be fixed by drafting a nice bill or focusing on local politics.
No I'm happy with this result, you're not. You want to put a boot on my throat. You're unhappy with the sudden change of a slight, probably temporary shift of America being run by popular will rather than elite consensus, unless elite consensus changes to align with the popular will (hopefully).
Liberal nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan was not sane. Continued escalation of Ukraine war was not sane. Mass immigration from 3rd world and open borders, mixed with subsidization of these groups with welfare and social spending while they commit more crimes and work less is not sane.
This anti democratic talk ("I don't like the outcome so the system has failed and must be burned down and my political opponents deserve violence against them") is the kind of thing that deserves a call to the FBI or Secret Service to be honest. No one likes violence against them, not just CEO's but even regular people voting for their interests like more than half of the country you're calling for violence against.
How is an unelected billionaire a representative of the people?
Maybe he's a symptom of the "burn it all down" mindset that seems to find outlet through Trump, a mindset I have sympathy for, but in the end, he's just another elite who is trying to subvert the government for his own ends.
It's the obvious answer in everyone's minds, sensible thing to say or not. Frankly, as someone outside US, I'd think twice before even visiting a US embassy right now.
There are plenty of examples of people who wanted to vote conservative but "didn't have time to do the research" and now they're about to be caught up in the billionaire looting of the government. Low information voters, people busy with their jobs, lots of ads and propaganda.. and voila.
That said, both the Dems and the GOP are there doing the bidding of lobbyists and the wealthy... if we had an actual populist party in the US we wouldn't have ended up here. At least, not so quickly.
i hear you but people are going to vote anyway as surely as they drink and drive. many voters vote on “vibes”.
we need an actual populist party that gives people more to vote for. As it is, both parties support the “elites” and that leads to a disillusionment with democracy and a slide towards fascism.
> I mean, if you re-elect the guy that tried to forcibly stay in power last time, I'm not sure what else to say...
You're arguing what you think would happen if Trump was elected.
OP is saying something different. He's saying the among the people who voted for Trump, some believed something else would happen and they might feel defrauded.
We've seen a lot more corporate supplication to the admin this go around. Some are saying the moderation and media coverage is a little too sparse on criticism like we see in these town halls and protests.
People say that the midterms are crucial, but the midterms are only likely to be won if Democrats truly unify and apply winning strategies. Sadly the only winning strategies now seem to involve telling stories, not necessarily the truth.
And all of that essentially admits that the next two years are forfeit anyway.