Right. The Congressional response during Trump’s first 100 days will be crucial.
ROFL 
It’s a foregone conclusion that a constitutional crisis is in the works, otherwise. But then ? Look at the ancient history
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…astounding.
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I’ll contribute to this thread as and when I see fit!
From Occupy Democrats:
Breaking: Donald Trump’s week kicks off with disaster as the former head of the government’s whistleblower protection office hits him with an ironclad lawsuit for illegally firing him.
Trump messed with the wrong guy this time…
Hampton Dellinger, who was appointed by President Joe Biden to lead the Office of the Special Counsel, states in his lawsuit that he was fired by Trump “in a one-sentence email” in violation of his five-year term appointment.
The OSC allows whistleblowers to report their concerns of government wrongdoing in a safe and secure environment without fear of reprisals.
Given the rampant corruption of Trump’s administration and his demonstrated penchant for vindictive reprisals, the OSC represents an obvious threat to his administration.
“The recent spate of terminations of protected civil service employees under the new presidential administration has created controversies, both about the lawfulness of these actions and about potential retaliation against whistleblowers,” the lawsuit states. “The OSC is statutorily tasked with receiving such reports, investigating them, and taking appropriate action.”
“The President’s unlawful attempt to remove Special Counsel Dellinger from his office directly violates the modest but vital protections that Congress put in place and renders the OSC and the Special Counsel unable to fulfill their statutory mandate," it adds.
“The OSC’s ability to protect the civil service and investigate alleged misconduct is needed now more than ever,” the suit states.
The legal battle comes amidst Trump and Elon Musk’s ongoing shameless efforts to gut the federal government to further empower the super rich and corporations. They’re working to transition us from a democracy into a full-blown oligarchy.
When the Office of Special Counsel was created, the law clearly stipulated that its leader could only be removed if he or she demonstrated “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Dellinger is guilty of none of these things and has a sterling reputation.
“Over the preceding three weeks, an unprecedented number of federal employees with civil service protections have been terminated without cause,” the lawsuit says.
“Senior career officials have been purged from the Federal Bureau of Investigations,” it continues. “Eighteen Inspectors General from across the federal government have been removed without the justification required by statute. And hundreds of federal employees have been locked out of their computer systems.”
Dellinger’s lawsuit requests a temporary order from the judge to bar his termination. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, will make the decision.”
There’s this principle in the US constitution known as “due process” that federal employees are entitled to that the Trump administration ignored. They know better. I think that exemplifies what Carleas means by “lawlessness.”
From the New York Times today:
The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday accused Kash Patel, President Trump’s nominee for F.B.I. director, of improperly directing a wave of firings at the bureau without having been confirmed as its leader.
In a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general, the senator, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, cited “highly credible information from multiple sources” that suggested Mr. Patel had been personally involved in covertly orchestrating a purge of career officials at the F.B.I.
“This alleged misconduct is beyond the pale and must be investigated immediately,” Mr. Durbin wrote to the independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz. “
This action took place before the Senate approved Patel during the same week he was testifying under oath to the Senate that he had no intention of doing such a thing. It was a flagrant instance of perjury. Will the Republicans confirm his appointment anyway?
This is all perfect agitprop psyop dialectics. You guys are all for it.
Ping pong politics. Back and forth, left and right. Divide and conquer yeah, but what do you think consistently builds no matter which party is in charge?
I grow tired of repeating myself so many times. So if any of you wants to answer the above question, I am all ears. Other than that, meh. Carry on carrying on.
From the New York Times:
King Abdullah II of Jordan on Tuesday rebuffed President Trump’s proposal for his country to absorb Palestinians living in Gaza, saying that he remained opposed to a plan Mr. Trump has laid out to clear the territory so the United States can seize control of it.
During a “constructive” meeting with the U.S. president at the White House, King Abdullah said, he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
“This is the unified Arab position,” he stated in a post on social media after the meeting. “Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.”
Rather than initially push back publicly on Mr. Trump, King Abdullah appeared to try and placate the president by saying Jordan would take in 2,000 Palestinian children suffering cancer and other illnesses. Mr. Trump responded gleefully to the statement, calling it a “beautiful gesture,” even though foreign policy analysts said Jordan had previously signaled it would take in sick children from Gaza.
Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said that King Abdullah’s offer drew from a well-established “playbook” used by Arab leaders when they deal with Mr. Trump.
Arab leaders, he said, “know how to placate Trump — and then work with the serious people on his team who have the job of making sense of his nonsense.”
That makes sense to me. Trump is like the Freudian Id-a chaotic mass of insatiable desire. His team is like the Ego whose job it is to rationally mediate between the Id and the Real World. And the Super-Ego? As with a psychopath, it’s nowhere to be seen.
Pretty sure you haveTrump wrong. The Gaza Strip offer is what folks with no-nonsense parents (who know better than to even budge an inch) grew up with: “If you don’t fix it, you’re not gonna like how I fix it.”
Problem is… Trump doesn’t know how to deal with “face saving” cultures except to over embarrass them, which makes them gang up on him in group oppositional defiance disorder… which… he is fine with. He loves playing chicken.
So. This should be fun to watch.
He’s hungry. He wants to gobble up Canada and Greenland and Panama and now Gaza. But he’s insatiable. He’d still be hungry if he gobbled up the world.
Don’t forget Mexico & China.
Already spoke to this.
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The U.K. version of USAID…
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Funnily enough, the items on the shopping list are very similar and equally outrageous.
While he’s slashing budgets everywhere else, Musk’s companies are getting big new contracts for themselves. SpaceX got a $38m increase in their existing contract with NASA, and Tesla got a $400m line item in the State Department procurement forecast (subsequently changed from “Armored Teslas” to “Armored Electric Vehicles” after backlash).
Supporters use this line that they’re trying to root out fraud and waste, but they’re not really doing anything of the sort. No one denies that fraud and waste happen, there’s literally a line item in the budget acknowledging it. But it doesn’t persist because there’s no will to root it out, it persists because the government is a big complicated machine, funding lots of complicated initiatives involving thousands of people inside and outside of government. Finding the waste and fraud within that system is actually very hard.
To give some perspective on how waste could be overlooked, consider a wasteful program funded by a $35m grant from the US federal government. That sounds like a lot of money. But in the context of a US federal budget in the ballpark of $6.2T, it’s not even a rounding error. This morning, over the course of about 6 hours, the exchange rate between the US Dollar and the Euro fluctuated from .9578 to .9635:
That fluctuation changed the Euro-denominated value of the US federal budget by over $35m:
0.9635 \times 6.2T = 5,973,700,000
0.9578 \times 6.2T = 5,938,360,000
5,973,700,000 - 5,938,360,000 = 35,340,000
I didn’t pick the Euro for any particular reason other that it’s another major world currency whose economy is closely tied to the US economy, and that amount of fluctuation is not uncommon.
The size of these grants is huge by the standard of the typical individual, but in the context of a complex bureaucracy it’s just not that much money. In terms of buying power, the federal budget grows and shrinks by more than our hypothetical wasteful program about every few hours; noticing that program amidst that much noise is not trivial.
The Trump approach has been to let Musk just blow up everything indiscriminately, but most of the programs they are shutting down aren’t wasteful, they produce enormous value for the US and the world. The level of waste and abuse is small, and finding what’s left hard, it takes time and effort that Trump and Musk aren’t interested in putting in.
What they’re doing is performative bullshit by people that don’t care the least bit about corruption (as evidenced by the line items that point to Musk’s own pockets).
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Inflation Rises Unexpectedly, Keeping Fed Rate Cuts at Bay
The Consumer Price Index rose 3.0 percent from a year earlier as food and energy prices picked up.
President Trump pledged to lower costs on “Day 1” as a candidate. His administration now acknowledges it will take more time.
Anybody surprised?
In a sharp critique, the Wall Street Journal editorial board slammed US president Donald Trump for his approach to the economy, questioning whether he truly grasps how money works, as per a report.
Pete Hegseth Says Return to Ukraine’s Pre-War Borders Is ‘Unrealistic’
The U.S. defense secretary told Ukrainian and NATO officials that durable peace could only come “with a realistic assessment of the battlefield,” adding that President Trump does not support Ukraine’s membership in NATO as part of a peace plan.
This is music to Putin’s ears. To Europe? Not so much. Where will Russia strike next?
The conflict of interest between Musk’s government contracts and the budgetary role Trump has assigned should be obvious to everyone. You have graphically illustrated it. The question is whether with the Republican majorities in both houses of congress he can be stopped.
So let’s find someone who has zero business connections and zero government connections so they have absolutely no idea how to run the government as a business.
The last thing we want is for our country to prosper.
NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, and five high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday after she refused an orderto drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — a stunning escalation in a dayslong standoff over the Trump administration prioritizing political aims over criminal culpability.
Sassoon, a Republican who was interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, accused the department of acceding to a “quid pro quo” — dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda — and said she was “confident” the Democratic mayor committed the crimes spelled out in his indictment, and even more. Before the showdown, Sassoon said, prosecutors had been preparing to charge Adams with destroying evidence and instructing others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.
Danielle Sassoon is a hero in my book for standing for justice in the face of Trump’s strong arm tactics against prosecutors in order to become Mayor Adams’ puppet master.
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It sure would be nice if the laws actually applied evenly to everyone, rather than the current situation where they have loopholes baked in so that they only apply to people who haven’t figured out how to game the system yet.