Senate The US Politics 2.0 Discussion Thread

At a certain point, it has to be accepted that there’s no conventionally fixing this. The Democrats could run a better platform (presuming free and fair elections are still a thing going forward, a thing that I am thoroughly unconvinced of), or a third party could emerge as viable (which is incredibly unlikely), and it wouldn’t make a shred of difference. About a third of eligible Americans didn't care enough to even mail in a ballot, and half of everyone who bothered to vote chose this with clear eyes, having seen what he did last time, having witnessed the nearly avoided televised deaths of elected officials during an insurrection, having heard all the vile, awful things he promised to do, and they said: "yes, please."

That’s going to get harder to overcome, not easier, because an emboldened and more experienced Trump administration that lacks the guardrails or “adults in the room” that were present last time will leave no stone unturned. Democratic norms? Toss 'em. The Constitution? Burn it. None of it matters anymore. And for anyone who's going to pull the "well, he can't run again"... says who? Like, really, says who? The 22nd Amendment? They have full control of the House, the Senate, the Courts, and the Oval Office, do we really think they're going to respect the basic rules of procedure? As far as Trump and his supporters are concerned, that constitutional violation has already happened anyway; they genuinely believe he was just legitimately elected for a third time. Legalizing it would merely formalize their reality.

And that's the key term: their reality. There is no consensus reality in the United States anymore, and so there is no political solution short of the country dividing itself up. It needs to cease to exist in its present form. It’s too big and too divided and too effing lazy and too in love with hating half of itself to continue functioning, and there's no imaginable "come to Jesus" moment that undoes that deeply rooted damage.

 

Correlative data is generally considered poor-quality evidence (you can show a link between just about anything, but proving causation takes a well-designed, adequately-powered, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial). So yes, more research is needed, but junk trials that generate sensationalist-headlines that attention-grabbing morons like RFK, Jr use to attack "the establishment" making getting to the truth that much harder.

To more directly answer your question, it's probably a dose-response curve; ie, some fluoride is likely necessary, but there is definitely a point of diminishing returns and eventually, harm. Where that point is remains open to debate.

 

Europe uses it, no indication of a problem over here.

In the end it's down to a bad education system & the power of misinformation, that's what is harming the IQ of kids. They don't have the attention span anymore because of smartphones & social media and they don't consume enough good quality media to counterbalance that.
All intentional of course, easy to control people if you ensure that they lack the critical thinking to question what they're told.

 

still the most bizarre juxtaposition is Trump's theme song being YMCA.

 

I hate to be dramatic but it seems to me that there is only one Entity left that is still loyal to the constitution (I guess???) And it's the military. Everyone in it swore an oath to uphold the constitution.
So...Incoming Military coup against Orange Adolf happening soon?

Yeah, I doubt it will happen, but it seems like anything is possible now.

And yes I am aware that Trump have been busy trying to replace the leadership with loyalists probably because he knows that if anyone is going to stop him it's going to be the military.

 

I don't think you were wrong. It is worth noting that every incumbent party lost elections last year. I firmly believe there was nothing that could be done to win, because people's minds were already made up that they only wanted to punish the party in power.

 

Not in Mexico

 

Okay fine, one country. Certainly not the rule.

 

Mexico's ruling party organized the working class and provided them with significant benefits. That is the major difference between them and most other incumbent parties. As long as wealth inequality continues to accelerate in the US (five trillionaires in a decade!) and as long as both parties continue to prioritize capital over the interests of 90+% of the population, we're going to continue with this increasingly chaotic lurching. The Democrats can't be the party of 1995 if they want to hold power for more than one term. I'm not optimistic about the party changing direction, at least two major opportunities having been squandered since 2016 at the behest of capital; "changing from within" is also something that has been tried for at least that long, and they come up against tsunamis of billionaire cash. We all knew what a disastrous president Biden would be, though I underestimated the extent, and he was there as the Not Bernie candidate. It seems likely that the Dems will get a boost in 2026 and 2028 from the Trump administration being characteristically stupid and cruel, but I don't see anything fundamentally changing for the party. The future is very bleak for the country and the planet without mass working class organizing.

 

Thanks for the reply. I’ve expect RFK to utterly gut the health apparatus in government which will make any potential pandemic worse.

 

This is going viral and for good reason:

 

Unfortunately, this country has a tradition of ignoring things that are viral

 

Ouch

 

Trump admin to announce the “Stargate” project, in collaboration with businesses like OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to start a new race similar to the space race but for Artificial Intelligence.

$100 Billion immediate investment, and $500 Billion for Artificial Intelligence collaborative projects with these (and similar) businesses over the next 4 years.

That’s, like, similar in size to all the past Obama/Trump/Biden stimulus projects, right?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-n...estment-backed-oracle-openai-softb-rcna188595

What Trump’s arguing is that it only applied to all those who were born on U.S. soil at the time of the amendment passing.
There’s the possibility SCOTUS will do a weird compromise where birthright citizenship applies to everyone before their decision, but going forward, it doesn’t, unless a future admin changes that Executive Order to restore it.

 

The birth right thing is his usual typical racist posturing which I think has a twofold "benefit" for him.

If it fails, it fails and he can then continue his culture war, rile up his base and then push for an amendment. Hard one to pass and likely to fail but this isn't his main goal. He's after the legal pushback and the run up to the Supreme Court. As he's packed the court, his aim here is that the Court will find a suitable loophole that can be used to pass his EO. If they pass this, it proves to him that they'll probably go along with other madness he pushes forwards, like changing rules on how long you can stay in office for or something similar.

This all links into Project 2025




//total conspiracy theory land here BTW

 

I think there are many things Kamala could have done to win. But it would have tainted her legacy as vice president. Mainly doing a hard split with Biden. Perhaps even resigning as VP. But basically pointing out all the ways she disagreed with Biden. Even if they were lies would have made her odds better

 

So the J6ers that killed that cop with bear spray get to walk free? WTF?

 

Maybe they’re part of the 14 commuted, not the 1500 pardoned… but are you really surprised? We shouldn’t be. We even knew this was coming, it was part of his campaign even.



EDIT:


The Spanish version of the White House website is deleted, and now has a 404 error page saying "Go to Home Page." Earlier, it said simply "GO HOME."

Trump says the Death Penalty is an "essential tool" and expands its use:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...er-calls-capital-punishment-an-essential-tool

The first female head of the Coast Guard is fired
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...ant-fired-after-trump-returns-to-white-house/

Other military leaders and members who they fear may not be loyal to Trump are expected to be fired soon too

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Lee Fagan was abruptly fired Monday by the new acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, precipitating a leadership shakeup for the force.

The dismissal of Fagan, 61, was part of a flurry of leadership personnel moves by the new administration just hours after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Overnight, Trump also announced on social media he was dismissing several individuals appointed to federal panels, including removing former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council.

Trump promised “many more” firings in the near future.

In a message to the Coast Guard workforce Monday night, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman — who was appointed to the temporary post about five hours after Trump took office — said he relieved Fagan from the top Coast Guard post and appointed Adm. Kevin Lunday to serve as acting commandant. No reason was given for the move.

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The main Climate Change policy changes so far... and I know it's long, but it's worth listing it all, due to the global effects on humanity:

1. Withdrawing From The Paris Agreement

Just as he did in 2017, Trump signed an executive order halting implementation of the U.S. climate target pledged under the Paris Agreement, putting America in league with Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the first truly global carbon-cutting pact. The deal, brokered 10 years ago when France hosted the United Nations’ annual worldwide climate talks, aimed to keep global temperatures from climbing beyond 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial averages. The Paris accords established a reach goal of containing warming below 1.5 degrees, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Thanks to the La Niña weather patterns last year, 2024 marked the first time the world eclipsed that number.

Last time Trump quit the agreement, the U.N. withdrawal process took three years, giving former President Joe Biden the ability to swiftly rejoin after winning the 2020 election. This time, the process will take only one year.

The executive order does not, however, pull the U.S. out of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the broader diplomatic effort through which the Paris accords were negotiated.

2. Halting All Climate Aid To Foreign Countries
As a party to the Paris Agreement, the U.S. made pledges to cut its emissions by a certain percentage — part of a negotiating tactic to encourage other countries who haven’t yet had the chance to grow rich off burning fossil fuels to follow a cleaner pathway to development. In its most recent pledge, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution, the U.S. promised to cut its emissions by up to 66% below 2005 levels by 2025.

Trump’s executive order withdrawing from the Paris accords eliminates that goal, and goes further to halt all payments on foreign aid the U.S. promised to help poorer countries transition to clean energy. For much of the past decade, rich countries, including the U.S., have come up short on the $100 billion target for donations to the U.N.-administered Green Climate Fund, designed to assist poorer countries. For that reason, critics of the Paris Agreement have encouraged poor countries to follow Trump’s lead and abandon a process that has so far failed to deliver.

3. Challenging The Landmark U.S. ‘Endangerment Finding’
In a landmark 2007 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority and responsibility to regulate six long-lasting, planet-heating gases under the Clean Air Act. Two years later, the EPA finalized what’s known as the “endangerment finding.” It isn’t a regulation. Instead, it’s a legal finding that obligates the agency to continue regulating greenhouse gas emissions, as ordered by the high court. While the Trump administration tried to challenge the finding during the president’s first term, legal experts dismissed the attempts as rhetorical posturing and said eliminating the requirement to regulate climate-changing pollution would require disproving the reality of climate science in court.

Still, in a broad executive order aimed at “unleashing American energy,” Trump directed his EPA administrator to work with other agencies to “submit joint recommendations” within 30 days to the White House Office of Management and Budget “on the legality and continuing applicability” of the finding.

It may amount to little. Even with the conservative supermajority Trump helped install in his first term, the Supreme Court in December 2023 rejected a case challenging the endangerment finding.

4. Halting All Spending From America’s First Major Climate-Infrastructure Law
The Inflation Reduction Act earmarked nearly $400 billion in tax credits and subsidies for everything from new nuclear reactors and carbon-capture equipment to heat pumps and solar factories. In the closing days of the Biden administration, the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office raced to finalize as many deals as possible to get the money out the door to projects and companies that were disproportionately located in Republican districts.

In his order on “unleashing American energy,” Trump directed all agency heads to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through” the IRA. That doesn’t mean the spending will go away. Instead, Trump instructed his agency chiefs to submit reviews of all spending to the White House’s National Economic Council and Office of Management and Budget to make sure the disbursements align with the new administration’s vision of the energy future.

5. Declaring America’s First National Energy Emergency
During the energy crisis of the 1970s, when oil-producing nations in the Middle East put an embargo on the U.S. in retaliation for its support of Israel, then-President Jimmy Carter gave governors the power to take emergency actions to conserve energy resources on a regional level. Never before has the U.S. declared a national energy emergency.

Now, despite record U.S. production of oil and gas that exceeds even the peak under Trump’s first term, the president has signed a sweeping executive order giving the federal government broad powers to skip the usual steps in the federal permitting and approval process in the name of boosting energy sources. The order largely excludes renewables like wind and solar, which are among the cheapest and fastest-growing sources of electricity.

Climate activists had long argued on similar legal grounds for Biden to declare a national climate emergency that would have granted his administration extraordinary powers to cut emissions. But critics warned that doing so might have created too little accountability over how those powers were used.

6. Tipping The Scales Toward Dirtier Energy Sources
In his “unleashing American energy” order, Trump orders agency heads to review any burdensome barriers to “domestic energy resources — with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.”

In his order declaring a national energy emergency, Trump defines applicable “energy resources” as oil, natural gas, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, hydropower and critical minerals such as lithium and rare earths.

Nuclear energy and hydropower are among the most efficient sources of zero-carbon electricity, and geothermal heat shows major potential for generating clean power even in places where the technology hasn’t traditionally been available. Biofuels can include a range of different technologies, some of which are truly clean, while others, such as corn-based ethanol, tend to increase planet-heating pollution. Critical minerals are considered vital for battery storage, and uranium is the key fuel for nuclear reactors.

But the orders notably exclude a whole range of clean-energy resources, including some of the fastest-growing: hydrogen, solar, wind, battery storage and nuclear fusion.

7. Lifting The (Inactive) Ban On LNG exports
Last January, the Biden administration temporarily paused all new permitting on facilities to export liquefied natural gas, a version of the fuel that’s superchilled to liquid form for easier transportation to overseas buyers via tankers. The pause only affected new applicants, so all the projects already in the pipeline — enough to double U.S. export capacity by 2028 — could proceed as usual while the Department of Energy carried out a study into the environmental and economic impacts of the LNG export boom.

By April, the U.S. took the top spot as the world’s No. 1 exporter of LNG, surpassing Qatar and Australia. In July, a federal judge blocked the pause. By September, the Biden administration was approving new permits yet again.

In his “unleashing American energy” memo, Trump ordered the Energy Department to wipe the Biden-era pause off the books. A separate Alaska-focused executive order calls for prioritizing the development and export of Alaskan LNG.

8. Banning Wind Energy — At Least, For Now
Long before Trump entered politics, he waged war on offshore wind turbines the government of Scotland sought to build within eyeshot of his golf course in the country. Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has for at least two decades sought to block construction of windmills off the coast of his dynastic Massachusetts family’s Cape Cod compound.

More recently, the political right has coalesced around unfounded claims that offshore wind development is causing whales to die in large numbers.

Now he’s signed an executive order temporarily terminating all leases to offshore wind companies in areas of the country’s outer continental shelf, and directing agency chiefs to review the federal permitting process for wind projects.

As part of the memo, Trump also directed agencies to pause all loans and approvals for onshore wind projects, too. He even ordered the Department of the Interior to block all construction on the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a 400-turbine plant in Idaho that would have been one of the largest wind-energy projects in the U.S.

The order appeared to crib its language and approach from the Biden administration’s order halting all permitting on new natural gas export terminals, putting everything on pause until a comprehensive assessment can determine the industry’s environmental and economic impacts.

9. Eliminating Special Considerations For Poor, Polluted Communities
The Kennedy clan may have the wealth to wage war on energy projects that they feel obstruct their water views. But much of the country’s facilities for churning petrochemicals, drilling oil and gas, and mining and processing metals are located in poorer, often nonwhite communities that don’t have the money to fight back against companies whose pollution obstructs not just their views but their airways.

The Biden administration enacted special programs and considerations for these communities in the name of “environmental justice.” Now any funding or federal job associated with those two words is on the chopping block.

In an executive order aimed at “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs,” Trump directed federal agencies to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by the law” all offices and positions linked to “environmental justice,” including grants and contracts. The order also requires a review of all federal grantees who received such funding, and reports on the economic and social costs environmental justice programs had on agency activities.

10. Advocating For Appliances That Waste More Water And Energy
Trump has long railed against toilets that he claimed need multiple flushes and showerheads that he says offer insufficient pressure to get clean. In the closing days of his last term, he sought to finalize rules that exempted many home appliances from efficiency rules. Biden reversed those carve-outs.

Product reviews and consumer watchdogs overwhelmingly lauded the newer, more efficient shower heads, stoves and dishwashers as some of the best-quality options on the market.

In his “unleashing American energy” order, Trump listed as a top policy priority for the country the need “to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads, and to promote market competition and innovation within the manufacturing and appliance industries.”

In a separate order aimed at “delivering emergency price relief,” Trump directed his agencies to “eliminate counterproductive requirements that raise the costs of home appliances.”

11. Declaring War On Electric Vehicles
Throughout the campaign, Republicans attacked what they called the “EV mandate.” Yet the Biden administration never had a policy that forced drivers to buy electric vehicles. Instead, as part of a routine rule-making process, the Biden-era EPA raised the fuel-economy standards for new passenger cars sold after 2027, requiring that automakers produce vehicles that emit less pollution via tailpipes. The rule has no effect on used cars.

Car companies could satisfy the rule by ensuring that electric vehicles — which run on batteries instead of internal combustion engines and therefore don’t even need tailpipes — account for 56% of all vehicle sales by 2032, when the latest rules would expire. Plug-in hybrids would need to meet another 13% of sales.

Last year, electric vehicles struggled to crack more than 10% of sales in the U.S.

Those tailpipe standards came from a formal rulemaking process, not an executive order. So Trump’s stated goal “to eliminate the ‘electric vehicle (EV) mandate’ and promote true consumer choice” is just that — doing little more than laying out his administration’s intentions.

Another approach Trump outlined in his “unleashing American energy” order to boost gas-powered cars relies on revoking California’s long-held right to set tailpipe standards stricter than the national level. But any such effort will face fierce legal blowback, and, in a case brought forward by fossil fuel interests last month, the Supreme Court declined to consider the broader question of whether the Golden State has the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to impose the nation’s strongest air pollution rules.

The final policy cudgel Trump said he would wield against electric vehicles is “considering the elimination” of the $7,500 tax credit for new purchases of battery-powered cars, which he described as “unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase.”

12. Turning The Federal Government’s Approach To Alaskan Wilderness On Its Head
Trump has his sights set on boosting extraction across Alaska, signing an executive order Monday that calls for “unleashing” the state’s “abundant and largely untapped supply of natural resources including, among others, energy, mineral, timber, and seafood.”

In a call with reporters on Monday, a Trump White House official accused the Biden administration of having “limited Alaska’s production and its ability to produce wealth for American citizens.”

Whereas Biden argued Alaskan landscapes “demand our protection,” Trump’s order makes clear that the new administration sees them solely as an exploitative economic opportunity.

13. Drilling In Alaska’s Arctic Refuge
Trump remains obsessed with opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, also known as the 1002 Area, to oil drilling — despite little interest from industry.

The tax bill that Republicans passed early in Trump’s first term included a provision, introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), that required the secretary of the Interior Department to approve at least two lease sales for drilling in the refuge, each covering no less than 400,000 acres. The first of those sales garnered little interest and the Biden administration later canceled the leases. The second sale, held earlier this month, drew not a single bid.

Trump’s executive order would restore leases that the Biden administration voided and all but force oil companies to drill in the remote and culturally significant area, which is often described as “America’s Serengeti.” Trump previously acknowledged that he “didn’t care about” oil drilling in the refuge until a friend “in that business” told him Republicans had been trying to gain access to the area for decades.

When presented with his Alaska executive order to sign on Monday, Trump only had one question: “And what about ANWR?” When a White House staffer told him refuge drilling was included in the directive, Trump noted that he was “opening up ANWR.”

14. Opening America’s Largest National Forest To Logging
Like many other ecologically rich landscapes, the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska has become a political football, repeatedly gaining and losing protections as presidential administrations change hands.

In 2001, President Bill Clinton signed into law the so-called “roadless rule,” which barred timber harvest and road building across 58.5 million acres of national forest lands, including more than 9 million acres of the Tongass. During his first term, Trump obliterated those protections in the Tongass, lifting logging restrictions across 9.3 million acres. Biden subsequently reversed Trump’s rule, restoring safeguards for the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest.

Trump’s Alaska-focused executive order mandates reinstating the Forest Service rule from his first term, once again putting millions of acres of carbon-rich forest at risk of future logging.

15. Greenlighting A Controversial Mining Road
The Ambler Road Project is a proposed 211-mile mining road that would cut through a portion of Alaska’s remote and picturesque Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in order to access billions of dollars’ worth of copper, cobalt and other minerals.

Trump advanced the project during his first term, only to have the Biden administration block its construction. Trump’s directive breathes new life into the controversial project by calling for the previous administration’s decision to be overturned.

16. ‘Putting People Over Fish’
Trump has a long history of politicizing natural disasters, particularly extreme wildfires in California.

Back in 2018, Trump and his team worked to tie California fires to a longstanding battle between farmers and environmentalists over water resources. That included a directive from then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that prioritized water for fighting wildland fires over protecting endangered species.

One of Trump’s many executive orders on Monday — titled “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California — effectively revives that 2018 order. It condemns the state of California for allowing water resources to flow “wastefully into the Pacific Ocean” and directs federal agencies “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.”

17. Terminating The American Climate Corps
In 2023, Biden used his executive authority to establish the American Climate Corps — a New Deal-style program to put young adults to work combating climate change and protecting and restoring public lands. While the program was expected to create 20,000 jobs, the Biden administration began shuttering it ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

Trump’s executive order on “unleashing American energy” delivers a final blow to the program, ordering the secretary of the Interior to “terminate” all program activities within 24 hours.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-climate-orders_n_678fe9f7e4b0a822b63dcee1
​

 

I was thinking this morning about how much worse 2025 is than 2017. Elon Musk is doing fashy salutes on live TV, Richard Spencer did his in a private event that leaked and he was clocked in the face by an anti- fascist in black bloc on live TV in '17.

Far right paramilitaries have been pardoned by their president and effectively empowered to be his own private army. When they march, will there be an anti-fascist resistance to March against them? As far as I can tell, Antifa has been pretty quiet in the wake of their warnings going unheeded by and large, or at least until it was too late.

It feels like society has mostly capitulated, or accepted that this is what's happening.

I hope folks don't think pink hats are going to be an effective resistance this time around. At the same time, I hope people are taking time to regroup and figure out what's going to be the most effective ways to resist.

It's not likely to look like Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, but it's probably going to get increasingly ugly...

 

I can see every MAGA idiot doubling down and start doing the Nazi salute and then we normalize Nazi salutes and whatever comes behind that. It is all possible in the Trump Reich

 

It was a waste of energy last time to march against him in general, or to react to everything once it became a 4-year information overload avalanche. Everything you mentioned was really predicted/expected. And this time, the US knew basically what we would get with another Trump presidency, and he got even more votes than his first victory and after comparing his administration to a Democratic party administration. The fearmongering against Trump was an election loser. I don't think it's capitulation, it's reserving for the big fights. A pause and then regrouping. Some have already challenged some EOs in court, the ones they might actually have a chance for, like the EO on birthright citizenship and for not implementing Congress-designated funds for the IRA and Infrastructure acts.

 

They have played FOX News at military bases for years. The military will do whatever Trump says. There is no one to save us unless we do it ourselves.

I think the birthright citizenship case, if the SC actually follows precedent and the constitution, is the last barrier.