basically depends how wedded Trump is to his performative cruelty PR stunt of using military planes for no reason
its not PR it’s all part of how the Trump TV show operates,it gets good viewing figures and that’s all that counts can’t beat anything as photogenic as a military plane being loaded with people in chains being returned, it’s not like he’s picking up the bill.
One of his decrees is something along the lines of "no government agency can perform any action that restrict the free speech of an American citizen" I think we all know what that really means.
Can see USA becoming very insular under Trump v2.0 and the next president having a huge amount of burnt bridges on the international front needing to be built again from the ground up.
Or... Can see USA becoming very insular under Trump v2.0, the world's on fire but things are looking good (at least on the surface) for the US itself - control over Greenland, Panama Canal, all the immigrants kicked out, domestic manufacturing is up and the rest of the world is grovelling to avoid tariffs & sanctions. The next president might hate this personally (or not) but has a country full of people hyped up on MAGA rhetoric and recent 'success' and has no real choice but to continue along this path. 10 years down the line the apocalypse comes and we're all living in a world straight out of some dystopian novel.
The horrifying thing is, the way the world is going, this doesn't actually seem so far-fetched.
Been catching up on TRIP US episodes on the Jan 6th attacks
Apparently a US general had to effectively go rogue and use a back channel to a counterpart in China to assure them they wouldn't let Trump launch a nuclear attack at them, such was their concern about how unhinged he was behaving
I fear those checks and balances are long gone now
Going for the prosecutors/investigators of the those great Patriots who were trying to stop the steal of the election now 🙁
And paused all federal grant payments.
This is absolutely wild. He's shooting America in the foot, the face and the back.
Theres lots of little shenanigans going on. Amongst all the big brush annoucements that may or may not actually happen - executive orders are really just a public statement of intent - it make him look like a king but unless he actually does the work to follow these things up then nothing (in some cases absolutely nothing) actual happens. Theres a lot of the 'flooding the field with shit' and it's going to be interesting to see just how long they can keep pumping the handle. There must be a theoretical limit on the number of sharpies if he throws each one to crowd after he signs something
But theres some devil in details. All the noise about DEI masks that the Equal Opportunity act is gone. The Civil Rights Act hasn't been discussed, threatened or altered, but all the mechanisms resources that ensure the ciivil rights act actually functions have been removed.
Theres also plenty of lack of attention to detail. In the spat over returning migrants to Colombia (the country) an emergency 25% tariff has been issued against Columbia - the female personification of the United States
I'm doom-spiraling about this now. With them clearly implementing Project 2025, which is basically a fascist playbook designed to create a Christian Nationalist dictatorship in the US, the question is how can it be prevented? One the one hand surely there's enough decent sensible people in the US to push back, on the other hand he got elected in the first place, he's busy dismantling government machinery he can't directly control, he has social media on his side and well Nazi Germany happened as a lesson from history.
As I've said before, as long as the US economy stays strong he/they will likely get away with everything they want, including finding a means to extend his presidency or interfering with fair elections (the Republicans are already masters of gerrymandering). And with other countries bending to his will and a growing supply of slave labour from immigrant interment camps (it won't be long before there's an executive order for that if the price of food starts rising when they remove illegal immigrants from farms), why wouldn't it remain strong?
I think we are at the start of a tipping point, if such a thing is remotely metaphorically possible.
Yes, he's sending out hundreds of orders that may or may not come to fruition, there will be legal challenges and simple logistical inertia before many can begin to be implemented. But throw enough shit at a wall and some of it will stick. To implement a lot of it some serious human rights will need to be thrown out the window, and with the Project 2025/Nazification of the agenda and the press there will be enough MAGA nutters who won't care and plenty of rational Americans who will.
"Sane" governments need to get their ducks in a row to decide at what point they will decide Trumps government has gone "rogue" and start to isolate the US. We can't keep sucking up to avoid tariffs or avoid human rights abuses. He has a couple of years at least before the American economy risks declining enough to impact his supporters, realistically he's probably got his full term. As far as I'm aware, there is no redneck type Democrat militia movement to offer a physical threat to his policies, it will all be challenged by the courts, which is a two year(?) process before the Supreme Court will finally have to decide between their political and legal obligations, which I think is when things will come to head with public protests and the Trump state response to them.
That has ended up being a bit of a brain-shart rather than a useful addition to the discussion
It isn't just about resisting project25 in the US, the musks, bezos and other industrialists want the same in europe as well. This isn't one nations problem, it is all of our problems, what we are seeing in the US is coming here soon.
I was amused by seeing trump complaining that europe sells loads of cars to the us but buys few of theirs. Simple reason. US cars are not as good as European ones: are unlikely to meets our safety standards and are unsuitable for European roads.
There was a lot of work done around the TTIP negotiations to figure out what should be rules and what should be more like guidelines. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't really make sense on a modern car but is still a requirement.
e.g. indicators. Those tiny little 50p sized repeaters on the wings date back to the 70's when indicators were a separate lens on the front and rear of a very boxy shaped car and couldn't be seen from the sides. These days cars are far more rounded and the indicators warp around the corners. So is it really necessary to have them rather than accept that cars that meet the US rules that just say the indicators have to be visible from the side are just as good?
Going the other way, auto diming LED headlights weren't legal in the US so exported EU cars had to have different headlights.
Plenty of stuff wouldn't get through either way but there was a lot of stuff that was really just fairly pointless red tape.
As I’ve said before, as long as the US economy stays strong he/they will likely get away with everything they want,
Theres a chance that could actually be his undoing. The American economy that he as inherited is strong - the dialogue he has been promoting is that it isn't. The actions he wants to take to 'fix' an economy that isn't actually broken are a medicine for a misdiagnosis. Any medicine can be poison if you use it in the wrong circumstances.
To sell this diagnosis the GOP has had to point to things they think voters can feel like eggs costing more than they used to. We're talking about something that boomed in price to an eye watering 25c each. Less obvious is that Americans have been so worried about making ends meet that they've bought more boats than ever before. I think boats are pretty far down most peoples list of necessary expenditures if they are having to make tough choices. So whatever people have been saying about the economy their actions - how much and on what people are spending money on - reveals a different truth.
But if the measure for success or failure is the price of box of eggs. Then a 25% punitive tariff of Colombia is going to be felt in much the same way on a cup of coffee. Terrorising migrant labour to the extent that 75% of some food producers labour have stayed home for fear of arrest is going to see all sorts of groceries rocket in price as produce rots in the fields.
The actions he wants to take to ‘fix’ an economy that isn’t actually broken are a medicine for a misdiagnosis
True but the people pulling his strings (I don't for a moment believe he's anything but a useful idiot with weird charisma for smarter people with an agenda) are already walking back on mass tariffs etc. All they need is countries and companies to individually decide they have to acquiesce to at least some of his demands (to address any trade imbalance, to on-shore manufacturing etc.) and I can't see the US economy doing anything but growing. If it were just Trump planning and executing this strategy I'd be confident he'd screw it up enough to get impeached
Less obvious is that Americans have been so worried about making ends meet that they’ve bought more boats than ever before
My sister in law lives in the states and is by no means a trump supporter of any shade (quite the opposite) and, as a clinical psychologist, has a reasonable job, she said that the increase in prices for food and basics has been very noticeable over the last few years. This isn't a pop by her at Biden's economic policies just that price rises have been noticeable and if you're not on a decent wage people are being squeezed - regardless of boat sale levels.
I think that (having spoken to family a lot and done plenty of food shopping there) food prices are more volatile in the US than they are here, perhaps there are many reasons for that. They get a lot of their produce for example from within the country, which represents one producer area so a bad harvest in California or a badly timed hurricane in Florida can have a large impact. Also fuel is more volatile because a greater portion of the price is the actual fuel price and less is tax - and most of the food comes by road. They also have more smaller local supermarket chains which can't benefit from the scale that our 'big four' can. These are just my assumptions.
she said that the increase in prices for food and basics has been very noticeable over the last few years. This isn’t a pop by her at Biden’s economic policies just that price rises have been noticeable and if you’re not on a decent wage people are being squeezed – regardless of boat sale levels.
THe thing is - everyone seems to be speaking for other people when they talk about price rises and being squeezed becuase they think their own circumstances are exceptional.
There has been inflation - everywhere - becuase of wars, sanctions and interrupted supply lines. In the US there has been marked inflation that everyone notices and acknowledge impact everyone, people see a grocery item or a gas pump price and know that those things cost more than they did weeks/months/years ago. And there has been marked wage rises. People don't feel that their pay increase is the same thing. The see eggs go up in price and thing 'eggs cost more' and they see their wage packet increase and think 'I'm worth more'. Seeing a price increase 'feels' like a shared burden, getting a pay increase feels like a personal congratulation.
Wage increases have in general outpaced inflation in the US but whether you're personally benefited from a wage increase you can't see everyone else's wage increases. So the price increases are a much easier narrative to articulate and you can get both sides of the political divide to amplify it. Selfishly driven republicans can complain that they shouldn't have to pay more for something and social concerned democrats can voice a concern that people might not be able to afford price increases. And they can both genuinely feel those things to be true even though the economy is flourishing, because at the economy's highest highs and lowest lows there will always people people who are struggling to get by. But the way money is flowing in the US economy reveals that many people are acting in contradiction to the sentiments they are expressing.
So it turns out that Columbia did not capitulate in its spat with Donald Trump, it seems to have been "fake news" put out by the Whitehouse.
Instead of Colombians being transported in United States military cargo planes in shackles and treated like criminals, which I believe was the issue, the US government has now agreed to allow the Colombian government to transport them with dignity in passenger airliners
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgly1we7gx4o
TBH dropping in someone else’s country in a military plane with a load of that countries people in shackles like something out of the slaving ages probably isn’t the greatest way to make friends 🙂
And paused all federal grant payments.
un****ingbelievable. All states have now lost access to Medicaid which provides healthcare to around 80 million Americans, nearly half of which are children.
The (general federal) freeze is intended to prevent "use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies," according to Matthew Vaeth, director of Office of Management and Budget.
but things are looking good (at least on the surface) for the US itself
I don’t have a crystal ball but it doesn’t look like things are likely to go well, economically, for the US, at least if previous times when countries have tried the high tariff approach is anything to go by. I’ve made the assumption that he’s going to tank the economy, Liz Truss style
I don’t have a crystal ball but it doesn’t look like things are likely to go well, economically, for the US, at least if previous times when countries have tried the high tariff approach is anything to go by. I’ve made the assumption that he’s going to tank the economy, Liz Truss style
He will just blame someone else if that happens (the radical left no doubt) and his followers will believe every word he says
There must be a theoretical limit on the number of sharpies if he throws each one to crowd after he signs something
Are the sharpies made in the USA or is some country suddenly going to find itself subject to increased tariffs on the export of writing implements?
Trump did place quite extensive tariffs in his first adminstration under the "America First" policy. Up until covid the US economy did do reasonably well although that doesn't mean that the tariffs/trade war were successful.
Quite an interesting article here :
For two generations, most mainstream economists saw tariffs, which are taxes that Americans pay on imported goods, as economically inefficient. But the decades-long consensus in favor of global economic integration, which was battered during Trump’s first term, eroded further under the Biden administration.
Even some of the most global American CEOs are accommodating the turn toward economic nationalism. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who criticized Trump’s first-term tariffs, struck a different tone last week when asked about new import levies.
“If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Businesses that vigorously fought tariff proposals during Trump’s first term have largely accepted the fact that more are coming. Their hope now is less to persuade the president to abandon his plans than to be smart about implementing them.
Yup. See also the California fires. Trump repeatedly claimed that Newsom had caused water shortages by not turning "the valve" which he literalyl described as being like a 1000-times bigger sink tap. There is no valve of course.
And then he issued an executive order, demanding that the valve which doesn't exist be opened.
And now on Truth Social he posted “The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!”"
Of course the military hasn't gone anywhere and there still isn't a valve to turn on. But it doens't matter in the slightest.
Alongside this, a federally owned and operated pumping station had to be shut down for a couple of days for maintenance- DOGE sent a team there timed to coincide with the station coming back on line and claimed credit for "working with them to get it working again" despite doing literally nothing, and then the white house press secretary said that it was only coming back online because of Trump's visit and blamed "state and local officials there who clearly lack all common sense", when the state has zero involvement with any of it.
And on and on.
Oh, alongside all of that, Colombia sent their own airliners to carry the repatriated nationals that were onboard the US military flights that they rejected, a neat reminder that the problem was with the stunt of using military cargo planes and the poor treatment of those on board, but apparently getting exactly what you demanded is "capitulation". Trump claimed they were "murderers, drug lords, gang members, just the toughest people you’ve ever met or seen.”, here they are:
Most were deported for purely immigration offences, at least some were student visa overstayers, who are of course the toughest illegal immigrants of all. Some of them had been in the US for less than 2 weeks before being apprehended which doesn't seem a long time to become a drug lord. Colombia has reported that none on board had any non-immigration criminal record which, I dunno, might actually be true, certainly truer than Trump's nonsense.
Colombia accepted 475 repatriation flights in the last 5 years with never a problem, it's always been straightforward and routine til Trump decided to turn it into a circus.
Let’s hope trump takes the quick way out with a loaded Luger in his whitehouse bunker,
un****ingbelievable. All states have now lost access to Medicaid which provides healthcare to around 80 million Americans, nearly half of which are children.
Children don’t have a vote and the others are low income (who don’t necessarily vote)
Well it only took them a week to remove healthcare from the poor.
Wonder what’s going to happen in the next episode.
Let’s hope trump takes the quick way out with a loaded Luger in his whitehouse bunker,
Why ,he’s winning, back in power but this time more clued up how and prepared to cause the most damage to get his own way and has all the tech bros on board to flood social media with his lies unchecked.
He’s already rewriting history over how his last election was stolen from him and is joking of standing for another term.
He’s already initiated a hunt against the people who prosecuted his faithful Patriots.
I expect there will be way more shits and giggles coming on this seasons show and he will just fire off more and more ridiculous executive orders and use all sort of stunts to delay any legal challenges, he’ll flood the system and intimidate anyone who attempts to stop him.
The biggest problem is they are way more organised than last time.
Re Greenland - American has been trying to get its hands on it since the 19th century. But the really interesting detail is Britain has first refusal if it’s sold! (Yes I know Greenland has its own rights etc)
Into the Muskiverse we go..
Just wow.....
Is the plan to create a national state of emergency, martial law will then quickly follow.
The BBC headline is very misleading and in fact the back up detail does not tell the real story.
People are being asked to resign in 8 months time. They will be expected to work up until that point and then resign with no benefits.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/?rdt=33955
The BBC headline is very misleading and in fact the back up detail does not tell the real story.
You appear to be correct - that's pretty piss poor. The actual memo sent is here with the salient bit being:
If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program. This program begins effective January 28 and is available to all federal employees until February 6. If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason). The details of this separation plan can be found below.
Children don’t have a vote and the others are low income (who don’t necessarily vote)
But a lot are semi-literate trailer trash in red hats who actually voted for this scenario.
Get rid of immigrants! Get rid of Obamacare! Cut govt spending!
Hang on, where are my neighbours? My social security? My insulin?
Best thing I ever did was turn down a move to Dallas in the early 2000's.
Let’s hope trump takes the quick way out with a loaded Luger in his whitehouse bunker,
Pedantry I know, but it was a Walther PPK 😉
So the recent holocaust programmes were, quite rightly, loaded with reminders that Hitler didn't start off with gas chambers, that he built up over time and everyone has to recognise that and not allow it to happen again. It was clear that everyone had one eye on Trump when talking about this.
My question is, how do we stop him? A majority of Americans voted him in, he has majority in both houses and he has loaded the Supreme Court. He now house big tech and social media support. He is following the fascist playbook by the letter.
So how is he stopped from turning into Hitler?
I don't think we can do much about the US, it would be nice if our own politicians were calling it out for what it is, instead of sucking up to fascism under the pretence of "the real world" .
I think our first priority should be to prevent it happening here as well, some proper rules on political financing and lobbying would be the obvious step, and of course doing something about social media and traditional media barons.
Longer term we need to actually run the economy for the benefit of all instead of the few, return to the European post war consensus, otherwise the breeding ground for far right populism will always exist in numbers.
If our lifestyles suffer from standing up to fascism, so be it, but to continue current economic slide of the masses, to suck up to fascism while the oligarchs continue to enrich themselves is pathetic.
Is the plan to create a national state of emergency, martial law will then quickly follow.
I've been semi serious when I've suggested it, but **** me, I bet MrsBinners has stuck a tenner on it. The Dems will fight stuff in the courts and follow procedure, but at some point, there will be protests that will be twisted in the media.
I agree about political funding and media reform to starve it of some oxygen, but as ever, those lessons of history haven't been learnt by too many. They think Fascism is the death camps, they don't understand that that was the end game.
So how is he stopped from turning into Hitler?
Having someone more capable than the 40+ individuals who attempted to assassinate Hitler?
A majority of Americans voted him in
Hitler never even manage to get a majority of Germans to vote for him...... Americans voters are worse than Germans voters were in the 1930s!!
So how is he stopped from turning into Hitler?
Well he tried that 4 years ago and failed.
Or do you consider that was merely his Beer Hall Putsch and that he might be shortly announcing his "Enabling Act"?
I bet MrsBinners has stuck a tenner on it
It was mentioned earlier in the thread, but I'd be tempted to wager a tenner on a third term for the tinged beachball.
