- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, abruptly disabling the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration at a moment when Trump has sought to reshape federal voting rules.
The two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were notified by email. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email said. It was signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.
The third commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign, according to three sources within the agency. McCormick declined to comment when reached by phone. The agency’s fourth commissioner, Republican Donald Palmer, voluntarily departed the agency earlier this year to join the Heritage Foundation.
They should still show up to work and do their jobs. I highly doubt they answer directly to the executive branch, or that the president even has the power to terminate them.
How were they selected in the first place? Are they elected, appointed, or hired? By whom? These are the questions that matter.
If they report to Congress, then I’m guessing at a minimum that it would take an act of congress to fire them. Not that republicans wouldn’t do it if trump asks, but there’s a narrow enough majority that a few spoiler votes could block it.
We need to stop letting trump get away with usurping the powers of the other branches of government.
JFC, you are so behind the times. The fact that you are getting upvotes is scary. Obviously, many people don’t know that American life as they know it, was effectively destroyed a week ago.
Remember the other day, when there was all that talk about Birthright Citizenship being BARELY upheld by SCOTUS? A case that was so obvious that it NEVER should have been brought, to say nothing making it all the way to the SCOTUS, where it inexplicably had 4 votes against it?
That vote was a red herring, a distraction. The important case, the one that got 10% of the coverage of Birthright Citizenship, was the one that struck down the independence of nearly EVERY independent agency (over 2 dozen) that regulates EVERYTHING in our country. Now the president can fire anybody, in any agency, for any reason. ALL government regulation is now in the hands of Donald Trump.
That means pharmaceuticals, food, air, water, transportation safety, roads, buildings, mail, workplace safety, etc. literally EVERYTHING in this country that requires regulations to remain safe, are up to Donald Trump. So if the meat industry wants to pay off Donald Trump to loosen safety standards, he’ll take the bribe, and let them write their own rules, and we’ll be eating horsemeat and dogmeat labelled as beef, and it will be perfectly legal, so don’t bother to sue.
BTW, the ONLY agency that SCOTUS protected was the Federal Reserve, which was the one agency Trump really wanted to get his hands on. But the Sociopathic Oligarchs who make these decisions were smart enough to keep the MONEY out of Trump’s hands. They WANT him to fuck up everything else, and make our lives miserable, but they aren’t going to let him fuck up THEIR money.
No shit things are bad, but that doesn’t mean we should just fold.
Feel free to smugly insult me though, that’s not going to do anything to stop fascism.
I agree that insulting you was cruel, unnecessary, and detracts from the intended message.
I can respect the self-awareness
I wasn’t the person who insulted you - I just agree that they were needlessly cruel and out of touch.
Oh you’re right, your profile pictures were a similar color and I didn’t check the usernames. My bad!
Don’t take it personally it’s better that information get out, it’s shocking how nobody is really talking about how bad this is.
Yeah, it’s bad, but I wouldn’t say no one is talking about it. There are certainly media bubbles where no one talks about it, but that doesn’t seem to be here.
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Yeah, everyone was treating birthright citizenship as a win, when that’s just the law and status quo. The independence of agencies was a clear and painful loss.
Ahh, so you are actually a dictatorship now
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Civil disobedience is probably one of the best tools of resistance at this point. If he’s doing blatantly antidemocratic stuff, his orders no longer carry democratic legitimacy and should not be followed. They only have weight if people obey. Sure, he might send someone to remove them from office forcibly, but it would contribute to cracks in his image of power.
Yeah, we only show him that he has the powers he imagines he does when we go along with what he decrees. He’s a despot who derives his power from people’s unwillingness to stand up to him.
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Nothing substantial is going to happen until Inauguration Day 2029. If on that day, Donald Trump is still in office, and the government doesn’t do anything to remove him, then the United States of America has officially ended, and it’s ON!
Don’t wait for that to happen. Don’t let him spend another two years strengthening the state apparatus in preparation for just that. You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) jump right to violence, but neither should you counsel inaction, endorse defeatism or trust everyone to somehow erupt into spontaneous revolution at some point.
Revolutions need planning and support. If you believe that’s the only way, protesting now is the way to recruit supporters for then.
We have to spend the next two years knocking their legs out from under them over and over. We have to force them to spend significant amounts of personal time and money on defense lawyers, instead of plotting their next scam. They need to be playing PERSONAL defense, trying to keep their own asses out of prison, so they don’t have time to defend MAGA.
And keeping them tied up in legal trouble will shut them up, too. Their lawyers will be telling them to not make comments to the press, which will reduce their ability to spew propaganda, and maybe even suppress their campaign speech. You can’t make wild allegations if you know you may have to defend them in court, under oath.
We can’t do anything about Donald Trump being in office over the next 2 years, but we can make that time miserable for him, and everybody around him.
I saw you insult someone else in this thread for no reason - “You and your comment are stupid because I know what’s really important to comment about.” It’s clear that you’re angry and impotent, and spreading the former paradoxically makes you feel a little less of the latter. You’re not helping anyone or anything, including yourself. And giving yourself an arbitrary 2.5 year deadline to pretend that you’ll ever do more than insult and complain and regurgitate the same articles we’re all reading in this same bubble like you’re the one who really gets it is sad. You complain and insult online today, and that’s what you’ll do every day up to, including, and after Inauguration Day 2029. It’s as ON as it’s ever going to be for you.
You’re one of those weak minded people who can’t argue the merits of an issue, so you INVENT a quote that I never said, and try to force me to defend it. Not gonna happen.
You don’t know me at all. I have vulnerable people in my life that depend on me, and if MAGA were to do anything to them, I would have nothing to lose, and I would become very dangerous. I am not alone in this. Maybe YOU can’t envision a potential future America that isn’t a Nazi America, but I can see it very clearly, and I don’t intend to be a bystander, like you.
I really hope that’s a lie or a massive exaggeration.
“Hey Barney Piccolo! I’m vulnerable and I depend on you and I need help!”
“You’re going to need to wait until I’m done making a huge difference by telling people how wrong they are and how smart and capable I am in anonymous comment sections! I just told someone that they’re weak minded and it made me feel strong!”
Please tell me more about how you’re not angry and impotent, Barney.
Didn’t the supreme court just give him power to fire certain people he couldn’t before?
Then someone needs to call the legitimacy of the supreme court into question because at this point they’re ruling against the constitution and there need to be impeachments.
And do what? They are completely illegitimate already. We’re finding out the hard way that it’s far too difficult to oust people at this level of government.
Maybe divert all power to the midterm thrusters so we can get people in office that will actually impeach corrupt officials who betray the constitution in order to advance their personal power?
Yep, that would be the senate, and would probably require a super majority. There’s so much that needs to be revamped… expanding the courts, term limits, etc. Which this court keeps showing an absolute needs for!
Or we could just challenge them to a dance-off. Make things so much simpler.
Jk, I couldn’t resist when I saw your username.
But yeah there’s some serious work to be done in the Capitol, so hopefully we elect some people who are actually gonna do it.
Americans really aren’t paying attention. They (Supreme Court) just ruled the pedophile in chief can fire anybody now. Irregardless if it’s supposed to be an independent branch. You are all cooked
And the left continues to cannibalize itself instead of mounting any meaningful resistance to fascism…
Translation?
Wait, are you politically illiterate‽
No, but I’m not sure how literacy would help me understand a sentence that uses a noun as a verb.
Also, what does a superpac have to do with demagoguery? Superpacs are kind of the elite that demagogues tend to rile the masses against, no? How does a demagogue fit with the superpac? (Other than the obvious part where the demagogue lies to the masses while taking money from superpacs)?
Not sure why you’re comparing this to political illiteracy since the meme was quite incomprehensible to begin with…
The meme is that the majority of <img src=“https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6dedb145-206a-4b35-ab5e-c9e41e1130c7.png” alt=“Amerikkka” width=“32” height=“auto”> do NOT know what “leftist politics” even are, as you keep demonstrating. The DNC’s AIPAC is nowhere leftist, so Democrat cannibalizing antifascist action is extremely oxymoronic, as they play the same capitalist demagoguery: lobbying lobbying lobbying. Counter rhetorics is all they ever do, since their interests lie in extraction of wealth. The punch is that “left” is the past tense verb of “leave,” and “political” describes people that are, as in “political [people already] left?”
So long as your country fiats capitalism, it will always descent to fascism. The funny part of <img src=“https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6dedb145-206a-4b35-ab5e-c9e41e1130c7.png” alt=“Amerikkka” width=“32” height=“auto”> fascism, is that bigotry & racism is baked in, meaning their fascism is even more stupefying than basic economic fascism.
Oh, I get it now. The adjective was a noun and the preposition was a verb. And I’m supposedly illiterate for not getting that?
Also, when did I say anything about AIPAC being leftist? Sounds like an assumption you’re making.
Lol let me guess, you think people like Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Clinton are “left”?
I never said that and you’re making assumptions. But have fun bickering over the bullshit you made up in your head, I’m sure that’s not precisely the kind of thing I was referring to
Oh then do enlighten me. Tell me what you meant when you said:
Because I guarantee somewhere in your explanation it will amount to “Those fucking leftists need to learn to respect their centerist elders.”
Dude. You’re doing it now.
I never said anything about “centrist elders.” You’re making that shit up so you can feel leftier-than-thou.
Go ahead. Prove me wrong.
Prove you wrong about what? You made baseless assertions. This isn’t worth bickering over, because unlike you I’m not intent on cannibalizing the left.
Unfortunately, appointed by the president so firing them may be legit. Another power grab and the foundation for a fixed election but legit
Assuming Congress was willing to use their authority, the check against this is they must be approved by the senate.
There needs to be a quorum of 4 to do anything, so they already couldn’t legally
There’s no mechanism for temporary or acting commissioners, but that has been a common Drump strategy to circumvent Congress. Just declare an acting one, then when the confirmation period expires, declare a new acting one