The Trump Presidency 2.0

The big stick is clearly hitting dingers.

 
RackMaster said:
EU is caving, is probably the best thing for the Canadian election. Conservatives want to negotiate a new trade deal. Liberal's want to cut away from the US. Also helps that the Liberal's are proven to be Chinese owned.
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Keir Starmer bending the knee has been satisfying to say the least. I think you can draw a pretty straight line from JD Vance giving them a tongue lashing to their face to this.
 
Cookie_ said:
I was being a bit cheeky about how we can play the back and forth all day. The bolded section should have made that clear.



I may or may not agree with a billionaire on a certain issue; that doesn't mean that I think they should get a pass on having an outsized influence on political machinations.

I don't like ANY billionaires doing the shit we see our tech oligarchs+others doing.
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Well, not *all* day, the conservatives would run out of "oligarchs" in short order... ;-)
 
amlove21 said:
Art 1 Sec 4 summarized: States run elections, but Congress can step in and set nationwide standards. Trump's EO on the matter will force Congress to step in and set nationwide standards. How that is "Exective overreach" I am not grasping. To your bolded- it's not the 50th time. It's the 162nd time since Trump took office, and that doesn't count the times we "cried" about lawfare specifically aimed at Trump himself. I am happy to agree with your framing that people complain about lawfare constantly; I reject your premise that it isn't happening and highlighting it when it does happen isn't "crying about it"- that's super close to a pro-statist position, although I am about 99.99% sure that's not your intent.
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Okay, I know I'm super late in replying to this but I owed you a response since you took the time to write out this thoughtful post.

In this 84/16 issue, like all of the other 80/20 issues this administration has addressed- when that fight does happen, it'll do 2 things.

1. It'll force an examination of our voter processes and the interpretation of Art 1 Sec 4 in the courts, hopefully at the Supreme Court. As our favorite dementia-ridden president of all time said, "No amendment is absolute." This applies equally across all of our systems of checks and balances now. As I have said fiftyleven times, the legal challenge is the point. In a durable representative democracy, there should be a healthy tension and push-pull between the three branches. Our government was designed to be cumbersome, slow to change, and representative of the will of the people. In October '24, not even a plurality but an overwhelming majority of American's (84%) support voter ID laws. It's the will of the people- Fiat voluntas populi. The lawsuit by Jeffries is defiant of the people's will, plainly put.
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So I'll grant that the administration does do things to "start the conversation" or "force the issue". However, I also firmly believe that the administration has been taking rapid executive action to take advantage of the fact that the Dems are in disarray after the election loss. Essentially, they're flooding the zone with so many EOs - 159 so far - that even if some are on legally dubious grounds (like this one) they're bound to get through because nobody is leading the Dems right now. By comparison, the first Trump administration issued 55 EOs in all of 2017, which means that they've already issued three times as many EOs in three short months!

That's the essential lens by which I view a lot of this administration's actions through: Trump wants to go fast and break things. It's not that they haven't done the legal and constitutional review of their EOs prior to issuing them, it's that they know they're unconstitutional and are saying "What are you gonna do about it libs?"

Oh, and I don't think it will force Congress to do anything, let alone set nationwide standards. I may be wrong. If congress does end up taking up the issue and passing something codifying this EO, I'll change my sig line to something like "AMLOVE IS ALWAYS RIGHT".

2. It will expose those (individual citizens, elected representatives, and States) who resist this initiative as misunderstanding the founders' clearly stated intent and how far we as a nation have strayed from it. I want the legal challenge. I want a vote on record. I want to know every person who doesn't want voter ID laws and for what reason. I want more discussions like the one we are having, with the output of forcing people (yourself included) to make a clear and full-throated assertion on one side or another, as opposed to chucking spears from the sideline.
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This EO does more than just enforce national voter ID requirements. One of the things it does, weirdly, is end the implementation of one Trump's own EOs from the first administration, EO 14019 "Promoting Access to Voting". That particular EO expanded federal assistance to state voter registration systems, made it easier for US mil to vote overseas, and expand voter education materials for non-English speakers.

The EO will also penalize states that allow "...absentee or mail-in ballots received after Election Day in the final tabulation of votes for the appointment of Presidential electors and the election of members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives". Imagine - if you're voting overseas and the mail system delivers your paper ballot one day after the official voting day, it simply doesn't count. Furthermore, the EO intends to establish a precedent for further-reducing states' use of mail-in voting

I think that's pretty anti-democratic. Moreover, and this is a pretty cynical opinion, but I think that this is political hardball being played by the administration to reduce Democrat votes. It's fairly well-known that Democrats vote by mail more frequently than Republicans, at least in recent elections. All eight of the states that conduct elections solely through mail-in voting are Democrat-run. Establishing an artificial deadline for mail-in ballots to be counted simply doesn't make sense. If you're a citizen and you cast a (legal) vote, it should be counted - period.

In no world did the framers of the Constitution foresee a president advertising and supporting illegal immigration, opening the border to 10-15 million illegal immigrants with a promise of non-citizens not only to drain American tax payers of their money through social support programs they aren't entitled to, let alone that same president flying those illegals to the interior in the dark of night with the (seeming) intent to then allow those folks to vote in any election.
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Totally agree with this but this is kind of beside the point.

All of that aside, technology and process changes, our rights (and the concurrent responsibility of our elected officials to protect those rights) do not. Citizens vote. Non-citizens don't. You show an ID proving your citizenship, the ballots are tallied quickly, and the results are available immediately. That's the intent of our voting process, laid out by the founders. We have drifted away from that intent in many regards (birthright citizenship, Chevron deference, OSHA's vaccine mandate, teachers' union closing schools nationwide, the EPA and their wide-ranging authority). Voting is just the issue at hand. People will argue and resist the method and ignore the intent, which I think is what's happening here.
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The founders also explicitly stated that states have the right to determine how they conduct elections. You can't argue founder's intent when they told us what their intent was:

  • Clause 1 Elections Clause
  • The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
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"Chusing" is the original spelling. Don't blame me!

As to the point of "the ballots are tallied quickly, and the results are available immediately" I don't think that should be the case. We're a very large country with a ton of people. A lot of us like to vote. Sometimes that takes a long time. I think we ought to strive to make sure that every legal vote is counted rather than leaning towards expediency. Does our republic suffer if an election is determined a week after an official election day? Two weeks? Not at all. Inconvenient, sure, but ultimately more small-d democratic. I think that's important.

I'll ask you directly, @Salt USMC - do you support the lawsuit brought by Jeffries et al? Not from an "ackshually, the law is this" standpoint to bemoan the actions of the admin, but do you support the actual intent of the lawsuit? To prevent voter ID, allowing non-citizens vote in elections? Do you think our current electoral system reflects the intent of the framers and their aspirational goal for the experiment of America? Do you support voter ID for elections?
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Okay this is a good question! Do I support the lawsuit on its core issues? Yes, and no. On the topic of voter ID, I've come around from my previous position that voter ID laws are discriminatory and now I have no problem with them. All 50 states require proof of citizenship to even register to vote, so I see it as a moot point.

However, as I said above, I think that this EO is largely a cynical play by the Trump administration (and the GOP writ large) to restrict mail-in voting and, as a result, reduce Democrat votes. I don't hate them for it - that's just politics. They're playing the game just like the Dems do. But like I said earlier, this attempt to go fast and break things should not go unchallenged.

Hope that answers your question.
 
On Voter ID, in Arizon we have voter ID. However, you don't even need a DL unless you're using that as your ID or your voter ID doesn't have your correct address. Most DMV/MVDs are trash. But changing your address in AZ is easy and the MVD system is tied to the voter registration system of the SecState. You will say Grandma in Young AZ ain't unassing herself to get to the DMV or something and to that I say...there are other forms of ID. California used to have an ID requirement when I was a kid...like electricity bill. I think that is actually what you can use in Texas. It's meant to just show you are who you say you are against the registered address. Why is that a big gaslight from Democrats?
 
This is going to add to the thrills...
 
Is FOUO back? Just got a signed memo from the DNI that is UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO (dated from March 2025). I thought that FOUO was replaced by CUI? Perhaps I just need to take my mandatory yearly refresher training again.
 

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