Elephants and Jackasses...

You can find examples of EOs in any administration that accomplish nothing, get picked apart by the courts, and ultimately get overturned. The administration that does it can say they did something, and cast the opponents as “stopping them” when the thing was never done and wouldn’t have been done. The opponents can use the EO to launch legal challenges immediately, and the elected officials can campaign on “fighting for you and against them.”

 

Well that didn’t take fucking long.

 

Thankfully it doesn't have a chance in hell of passing. I guess the cult will have to stage a military coup.

 

It would be a change to the Constitution, which requires 2/3rd majority vote. Not happening.

 

I read it. I hope like hell he's right.

 

Some backbench rep from Tennessee making sure his tongue is planted firmly up Trump’s asshole.

As impossible as that is to pass, I can’t wait for Trump to address it and support it, and hear more reasons why “he’s just trying to rile up the libs” or whatever excuses people make.

 

It won’t pass. It requires 2/3 of the legislature to vote for it.
What it does is give Trump another thing to be in the news about. And again, a junior rep sucking his balls.

 

What's impressive is that it's phrased in such a way as to allow Trump to seek a third term, but only Trump. Even when they're being pathetic and servile, they have to go the extra mile to highlight just how pathetic and servile they're being.

 

Not true. Clone Grover could always try a third time.

 

Remember though, Kamala came across as inauthentic. So this is what we get.

 

Trump pulled Fauci's security detail, despite him possibly receiving more death threats than any other person in America.

Unrelated, but he doubled down on his statement that he wants to get rid of FEMA.

 

Getting rid of FEMA is a thing for a few reasons:
1. There's long been an idea to do disasters via block grants, as some agencies (HUD) currently do. The premise is the state and president agree on a disaster declaration, someone does an assessment (the current process for this is WILDLY erratic, because disaster and because they stop assessing when a threshold is crossed, it's not a full assessment), and a chunk of money goes to the state. This process is how we do some mitigation dollars, so the precedent is there.

This is a terrible idea, because the states disproportionately influence disaster recovery spending. They spend where it is politically beneficial to them, not where it's most dearly needed.

Also, the states that receive the majority of FEMA funding are: California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico. It would fuck over, tremendously, red states in the South and Southwest, which use FEMA money as a 75% off coupon for just about anything they need to do to keep people alive or inject funds into public resources.

2. FEMA is costly, and the prior administration used us for a lot of things, like COVID that Trump finds icky. The main issue is there's no incentive for a state to get better at response/recovery because FEMA overwhelmingly approves all requests, and the states paying less and less cost share.

South Carolina, for example, gets 40% of it's state budget from the federal government, and it's increasing each year. The state's republican leadership gets elected on a tax cut that is financially predicated on making up the shortfall with an influx of federal dollars. They literally legislate themselves into a financial corner where emergency preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery is either federally-funded or nonexistent.

3. FEMA doesn't fit neatly into DHS, and his immigration/border initiatives are costly. If no FEMA, then the DHS money going to FEMA could theoretically go to his border stuff (it can't, and all the hysteria about FEMA dollars going to migrants was his own fabrication that he doesn't seem to understand is not legally feasible).

4. Stafford Act is an entitlement, meaning it can never technically run out of money. Getting rid of any entitlement is something Trump wants to do, because entitlement means exactly what you think: US citizens are entitled to FEMA assistance. If you get rid of it, and do it via block grant, citizens aren't entitled to shit. I'm all about being more efficient and doing what FEMA does cheaper, but removing the entitlement opens this up to grift and fuckery that gets ugly.

So, think of a hurricane hitting any of the aforementioned states. The state would get a chunk of money to conduct response and recovery operations. Without the entitlement, they are under no obligation to be equitable or even bother responding to a given area. Sound hysterical? Ask the state of Texas how it felt about the last hurricane to hit Houston.

5. There is a political opinion that FEMA is antithetical to insurance and should basically not exist so that private insurance can fund disaster risk and recovery. This is promulgated by "disaster capitalists" who swoop into an impacted area, blanket communities with lies about FEMA assistance, insurance fuckery and try to buy homes and properties for pennies on the dollar. Entire neighborhoods of Houston were plagued by this in 2017, and then once flipped, buyers were unaware of the previous damage, risk they were undertaking or the nature of the transactions, and the next set of hurricanes fucked them right up. Florida and California basically cannot cost-control private insurance and the wrong culprit is FEMA. The far end of this spectrum is privatizing disaster response, FFS.

FEMA's existence doesn't stop this, but it would make it easier and faster.

This would require Congress, and hopefully they are not going to fuck themselves over, but I don't see Congress doing shit until the CR ends in March.

The other side of this is disasters are getting WORSE and LESS PREDICTABLE, which makes FEMA a squeaky hinge, especially since the last administration considered a declaration for climate change. The storm of worsening impacts, less state responsibility, less predictability and increased expense puts FEMA at a severe disadvantage, not in a position to be made redundant or privatized.

 

The thing I go back to with Trump is that everything he's doing benefits some billionaire somehow. The project 2025 stuff isn't just Sharia law for the US, it's intentionally making the average American more destitute, less secure, more desperate and less healthy, wealthy and sane. This all benefits the billionaire echelon he has in his cabinet and his circle.
When his supporters realize that all of this is a grift, that his lies are about a class war not a culture war, when the people he hurts show up in their homes, what then?

I stopped almost all social media, and I confess, it's hard to get information about what's going on. I'm limited to some sites, and one of the questions I find myself asking is: "is it a slow news day and this is filler, or is this really important?" Reading the texts of the EO's and proposed legislation is eye opening, and certainly when I woke up one morning to see Musk doing a Goddamned sieg heil at the US presidential inauguration and LIVING TO TELL THE TALE, I realized how distorted my perspective is.

But eventually, the truth seeps out. I have faith that as it does, the people he deluded sour on him and turn this nonsense back to sanity.

They won the culture war, but lost the class battle and I have a suspicion that as it becomes more apparent it's a class war, his base sours on him in the most violent and bitter of ways.

 

Any of you Canucks want to weigh in?

 

I agree with Nett, but we will take some states that want to become provinces.