IHeartBadCode

Yeah I think that's the frustrating part of this. Either allow elonjet back or get banned for doing this. But having it both ways shows how shit a person Elon Musk is.

If anyone asks, to me, it's THIS aspect of it that's the big problem. Musk is literally doing the thing that he hated about elonjet.

Pretty much. Russia isn't the only one doing it, but boy are they a well oiled machine.

In all fairness, I do like hotdogs.

That's not a power the President has. The President cannot postpone them and they aren't included as an emergency power. So he can't call an emergency and suspend elections. And yes, we've got precedent from the Civil War that elections can't be suspended when we're at war with ourselves.

States can remove themselves, but that just means fewer folks arrive in Congress. Unless the President forcefully dissolves Congress, which would require a lot of the military being okay with murdering elected officials, only Congress can have a say on the law.

The President can indicate that they're rigged and what have you. But he only gets away with it, if Congress or the Courts or both goes along with it. That's the only means that doesn't require murdering people. All the other methods will require force. Including the "it's all rigged". California can have their midterm election, certify it, and send their members of Congress to DC. If Trump stops them, they can sue to be rightfully seated. That requires the Courts to go along with it. If the Courts allow them in, but the Speaker won't acknowledge them or grant them a vote, that's Congress going along with it.

The only way the Executive alone prevents a member of Congress from taking their duly elected seat is shooting them in the head. That's it, that's the only means. All the other methods require some other ⅓ of our Government being cool with the heist.

Well until Congress appeals 2 USC § 7, the law indicates that they are indeed on the schedule. But Article II leaves elections in the hands of Congress and the States to deal with. The President is very much excluded from the process.

But I mean, SCOTUS apparently can do whatever they want. So it's literally could be anything at this point. So who knows? But till 2 USC § 7 is removed, that's what puts it on everyone's calendar. And so far, most of the Courts seem to not hold that particular law in question.

I mean it's their loss no matter who they try to blame. The transition team already isn't expecting midterms to go well for Trump, so they're trying to set as much up they can on day one. One of the things Trump wants to bring back is schedule F so that he can start firing people.

There's a problem with tat though. It's statutory language indicates that departments will require a determination for reclassification. Absent that, everyone fired would have an opportunity to file suit and if it's enough of any given State opens the State to file Federal suit to block the executive order.

One of the things they can do to speed things up would be to have those rosters right now to review. But that they're getting blocked because of failure to work with legally required ethics, means they'll be behind the ball on day one. As much as Trump wants to, all those employees have legally binding contracts that require careful consideration to undo them without massive challenge.

With the President-elect's team not looking positive for midterms, they've got a lot of things to get done on their to-do list and not exactly a lot of time to do them in. Trump's agenda is already starting to suffer too much water for too narrow a drain. Every minute he's delayed is putting those to-do items from "getting done" to "must prioritize this list".

But all of this is Trump's scales to balance. He can skip out of the ethics filings but that comes with the cost of having a bit over 70 day delay to get some of the more basic things done. And right now, he's got time on hand. Confirmation hearings aren't going on, which even Republicans in the Senate are going to be asking for favors for their State in order to stomach some of the people Trump is passing over. This is one of the reasons Trump wants to skip all of this and have recessed appointments. Trump isn't interested in playing the favors game, but every single person in Congress has their career to think about long after Trump is gone. They want wins they can go home with.

So waiting to day one means he'll need teams reviewing the employment roster for his schedule F idea and he'll need teams in Congress helping to convince members to get his agenda enacted. He's going to have a lot of stretched thin groups which means getting things done are going to take longer to get done. Time that Trump doesn't have.

So he can blame Biden all he wants, his followers can believe whatever they want to believe. At the end of the day, Trump's agenda either gets implemented or it doesn't. It's a pretty binary outcome. Trump is going to whine about Biden or Democrats when his policy ideas fall apart, that's just how Trump operates. He has no ability to see the issues within himself and learn from them to get better. So there's no stopping Trump from blaming everyone but himself, that's just never going to happen.

So Trump will absolutely say that, the more important thing is his policy not getting any feet.

Republicans are going to cry the whole way for the next four years. That's just who they are. We have to look past that dumb shit and see if things are getting green-lit or waiting on incompetence to clear out. Did Trump get it enacted or not? That's the only thing that matters, all the other shit is just the usual bullshit Republicans cry about. We've long left the whole "meet in the middle" thing, the only thing that should matter is if Trump gets any of his policy enacted or not. The EO stuff, everything he throws is just giving more ideas on which avenues to close off when Democrats take the trifecta next.

Fuck em. They kept giving Trump the limelight he sought so that they could cash in on views. Never holding Trump accountable. Fuck em all. They wanted a juicy story, now they've got one for four more years.

He won't buy it with his money. He'll buy with our money. DOGE not being an official department and mostly being a independent contractor means they don't have to have the same level of accountability for funds that the Government has (or in the Pentagon's case should have, but nobody in Congress seems to have a spine about stopping the flow of funds until a successful audit happens).

When they talk about shrinking the Government, they aren't talking about getting rid of services, they're talking about privatizing the services. Everyone who keeps thinking "Oh shits going crash if they do that" is forgetting, they'll just turn those services over to private companies that receive tax dollars for providing that service to the public.

For those wishing to know more. Section 4 applies the standard that is found in 18 USC § 2339B

Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. To violate this paragraph, a person must have knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization (as defined in subsection (g)(6)), that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorist activity (as defined in section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act), or that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorism (as defined in section 140(d)(2) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989).

Who that applies to I leave to the reader, but that's the standard that would be argued in Court over any determination that the President gave to any entity.

I'm pretty Liberal but:

Republicans lack a clear mandate

Is utter bullshit. Republicans were handed very clear victories. Narrow, but clear. All western democracies sent a clear message, the current state of affairs is not good. Every western NATO country that had elections unseated the incumbent government.

Trump’s plans for deportations, ending birthright citizenship, political retribution, and tariffs

This is Trump's fluff that the powers that be will entertain until they hold up more pressing priorities for the Republican party. My take on each one is:

• Deportations — That's going to happen. They've played the blame game too long on it. But it's likely that the admin will find it's Elian Gonzalez moment, wave that as victory and then put the whole thing in the rear view. As "the worse case" has serious economic effects that won't fly high among the others in the party without some Congressional stomach for expanded H-2A, which detracts from more pressing concerns for them.
• Ending birthright citizenship — That's not happening. It is stupid that we're even talking about this. Denaturalization, maybe, but nixing the 14th Amendment? No. The momentum isn't there, people have bigger fish to fry.
• Political Retribution — The people he's targeting aren't idiots and have access to a wide variety of legal counsel. Trump's under the impression that it'll cause them the same amount of headache he had in 2021 to 2024, but the reality is Trump picks shitty lawyers because only shitty lawyers want to represent Trump. Trump routinely doesn't pay people and that's made his legal issues magnify by 10,000 fold. Everyone else doesn't have nearly the same headaches Trump has with legal affairs and it's mostly because Trump stiffs people. Other people actually pay their lawyers.
• Tariffs — I mean it's likely to happen. It'll be a FAFO moment for Trump for sure. But if it gets out of hand, his party might be able to reach concessions with Democrats to end any declaration of an emergency Trump tries to use to authorize the tariffs without Congress. It's going to suck, and I will absolutely enjoy the schadenfreude that comes from it but not really enjoy the jacked up prices of things, but I mean things suck as is. So if it get twice as bad as it is now, I'll only care about half as much as I do now. We all just refuse to address the crux of the issues with inflation so we'll just keep on, keeping on. All of us are too busy blaming political people for inflation to really solve the issue, so maybe in another ten years or so everyone will finally chill the fuck out and we can work on the actual issues. But I'm not holding out hope.

There’s likely to be backlash as voters realize the gap between what they wanted and what Trump plans to deliver.

That's almost a given. It's one of the reasons Republicans are trying to get their ducks in a row for the 119th Congress. But with the narrow majority in the House, it will only take one or two asshats from the Freedom Caucus to fuck it up. And I absolutely feel that they're going to do their usual asshattery at least once during the session. Mike Johnson isn't some visionary, he does well to plan his lunch for the day. With all the to-dos the GOP has, it's going to run into the too much water going down a narrow drain issue.

It's one of the reasons the transition team is trying to break things out into sole EO, requiring law, and direction. It's also the reason Trump doesn't want to deal with the 300 day window on his appointments. He wants them hitting the road right away. People want to think Trump wants recess to avoid hearings. Trump just wants recess appointments so that they can get to work on day one, avoiding the hearings is a nice bonus. They have a lot of things they want to get through and it only goes so fast and they're pretty much betting on midterms being hard to them.

But all that said, THIS:

Republicans lack a clear mandate

Is utter trash. They swept the fucking floor. Us Democrats need to take the L, look around, and figure a path for midterms to make a wide enough push in both chambers. But it ain't going to happen just running around and yelling "TRUMP BAD! TRUMP BAD!" Democrats need to provide a clear policy agenda that is easy to articulate.

Hey maybe this time he won't get a significant portion of the United States killed and have to suggest sticking an UV light bulb up their asses while drinking bleach.

I'm setting my bar really fucking low these next four years. If he does actually get under it, well people won't be worrying about inflation that's for sure.