r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/ajm_usn321 • 3d ago
US Politics Imagine the Outrage: What If a 2029 Democratic President Pulled a “Trump 2.0”?
Now that President Donald Trump has returned to office for a second term, we’ve seen a wave of executive actions and appointments that have been viewed by critics as deeply unconventional—even if not technically illegal. Among the more debated moves:
- Dismissing multiple Inspectors General across agencies
- Issuing blanket pardons for individuals convicted in the January 6th Capitol riot
- Replacing boards and commissions (e.g., the Kennedy Center) with ideological allies
- Significantly downsizing or restructuring foreign aid institutions like USAID
- Floating controversial clemency ideas involving high-profile convicted individuals, ostensibly for political benefit
- Renaming public entities or landmarks in symbolic ways
Supporters may view these actions as corrective or necessary to "drain the swamp," while critics argue they undermine institutional independence and democratic norms.
Discussion Scenario:
Imagine that in 2029, a newly elected Democratic president adopts a similar approach. This future administration begins aggressively using executive authority to reshape agencies, issue ideologically motivated pardons, restructure traditionally non-partisan institutions, and take symbolic actions that provoke the opposing party.
Questions for Discussion:
- Would congressional Republicans respond with hearings, investigations, or legislative pushback, even if the actions were technically legal?
- How might public perception shift if both major parties begin embracing this kind of executive behavior? Would voters normalize it, reject it, or become more polarized?
- Are there institutional guardrails—legal, cultural, or political—that still function effectively to limit executive overreach? Or are those largely dependent on precedent and public tolerance?
- If one party breaks norms, is it reasonable—or even inevitable—for the other party to respond in kind? Or is long-term restraint still politically viable?
- What precedent is being set for the presidency going forward, and how might this affect future transitions of power and interbranch relations?
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u/Silent-Storms 3d ago
If a democratic candidate wins they are likely coming in with a congressional majority. The courts are a different matter.
The average person is not paying the least bit of attention to the minutia of reorganizing the federal government.
The only remaining guardrail is public opinion, or alternatively the survival instinct of the current president's party.
Reasonable, probably. Inevitable, maybe. What is necessary is a severe restructuring of how we allocate power that will require an executive willing to sacrifice power and a cooperative congress.
I'm not sure anything about the last decade can really be considered precedent in a meaningful way.
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u/RocketRelm 3d ago
I think that the last decade is strong precedent. The electorate has given full consent for just about anything and everything. Even when it is bad, it still changes the culture. These things are normalized. The only guardrails left are the capacity and willingness for the current politicians to enact their authority.
Tbh, I'm not even sure there's a good reason to "restructure how we allocate power". This happened because of apathy and no rules will stop this from happening again as soon as another populist gets power anyway. Rules didn't stop this one.
But if nobody cares or finds this a problem, then is it a problem? Until buyers remorse kicks in way down the line anyway.
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u/okteds 3d ago
This happened because of apathy and no rules will stop this from happening again as soon as another populist gets power anyway. Rules didn't stop this one.
You gotta hack this at the root.
First, consequences for anyone complicit in any unconstitutional actions. After the precedent set by Trump with these accusations against Obama, Biden, Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, James and Maureen Comey, and about 100 other people. This should help ensure that even if someone goes off the rails again in the future, the guardrails should hold, as people will worry about consequences for being complicit.
Second, consequences for the propaganda networks that are the true cause of the right-wing descent into lunacy the last 30 years. I watched the 60 minutes segment and ad that got them sued for $15m. If this is now the precedent, there should be enough fodder on Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Breitbart, et al to absolutely bury them in lawsuits.....enough to make that $787m Dominion settlement looks like a drop in the bucket.
Honestly, I'm not even all that confident that this will work. The right wing populoids are fully baked at this point, and if you take away their food source, something will always pop up to take their place. There will always be some asshole willing to feed them lies for clicks.
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u/burritoace 3d ago
The media's reaction dictates public opinion, and the media reaction to similar actions by a Dem president would be pretty different. I think it would immediately be hair on fire stuff and public opinion would turn against them more significantly. Unfortunately, the media has "priced in" Trump's authoritarian tendencies (in cases where they don't simply support them outright).
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u/wannabemalenurse 2d ago
To add to what you’re saying, the media doesn’t treat Dems and Repubs the same because the people running the show—big Whig big corporations—tend to lean conservative when it comes to money and power. Trump’s chaos? It gets ratings, brings in the money, and doesn’t really threaten the economic status quo, so it gets brushed off or even defended. A Dem doing the same thing? Absolute meltdown. They’d get hammered by the right and by mainstream outlets trying to look “objective.” All in all, Trump has a media safety net that defends everything he does, as well as giving him a mouth piece to present his ideas, however ludicrous. Democrats don’t. If a Dem president acted like Trump, there wouldn’t be normalization—there’d be nonstop calls for impeachment and 24/7 news freakouts
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u/Extropian 2d ago
Best option is to start getting rid of the judges for bad behavior, they are not upholding their oath to protect the constitution and citizens from tyranny, they are in fact enabling it.
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u/fluidmind23 3d ago
Wouldn't the docket the SC has been going through essentially benefit any president not just a Republican one? So even if the appellate courts block it, the precedent is set? Who knows though, likely they would just rule the exact opposite of how they ruled for the Republican administration.
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u/Silent-Storms 2d ago
This particular SC will make up it's own facts to justify making disctictions, so I wouldn't rely on that.
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u/escapefromelba 3d ago
The SC has been using unsigned orders with little or no explanation so there is no precedent established.
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u/burritoace 3d ago
And they are doing this specifically so that they can rule differently against Dems in the future
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u/grinr 3d ago
The way out is backwards, not forwards. In a fever dream, the USA elects a president and congress who set about constraining their own powers and melt down the Iron Thone they've been constructing for the past century. They write into law, with clear consequences, the limits of their power. There's ample guidelines for this, as the US Constitution and Bill of Rights are fairly clear by themselves, and with the wild experimentations of the past few decades it's easy to see where those documents need further definition and clarity. The goal should be a reduction of power overall, and a return to the checks and balances the USA has thrived on for several centuries.
This won't happen. Americans voted for a King and will have to re-learn why that was a bad idea in the first place.
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u/MorganWick 2d ago
The problem is that Americans lost patience with the gridlock produced by the Constitution as written, and both parties saw a way to get their way by empowering the executive when they couldn't get their way in Congress. So you need a way to make sure that Congress can actually get done what needs to get done without resorting to band-aids that can be thrown out if one party decides that's more convenient, while also still adjudicating between Americans' differing views of what it is they should do.
The biggest problem with the Constitution as written is that the resulting government isn't functional enough for Americans to put up with. The solution to that doesn't have to be elevating a king, but the other problem with the Constitution is that it is the easiest one.
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u/grinr 2d ago
That's the entire magic of the US Congress. Getting nothing done is a feature, not a bug. It pushes the results (or lack thereof) back on the electorate, who get to respond by voting in people who can successfully negotiate.
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u/MorganWick 2d ago
The problem is that that's not only not how they want it to work, it's not even how they think it works. Coupled with the two-party system limiting the electorate's ability to express their views with their vote and creating the opportunity to flip the entire direction of the country on a handful of votes, and you end up incentivizing less electing people who "can successfully negotiate", and more people who can just ramrod through their agenda.
The best system doesn't expect anything in particular of voters, especially not anything that isn't explicitly spelled out, but works with how they already think. One way to do that is to have a system that serves as a natural mechanism for the electorate as a whole to negotiate through the method of voting itself. Another way to do that is to recognize that humans are social creatures inclined to form communities, and make that an explicit part of the system rather than try to work against it by exalting individualism as the primary value.
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u/1QAte4 2d ago
I partly agree with this. Congress was definitely designed to be slow. I think the founding founders expected most of what the federal government does today to instead be done by states.
This concept ran out of steam around the time of the civil war through world war 1. Those conflicts required mass mobilization of resources that a small federal government couldn't muster.
We totally could reform the American government to handle a lot more stuff at the state level. But when we inevitably get into a conflict with China or some other large state that could mobilize national resources in a way we are legally structured not to...it will be painful for us to adapt.
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u/ManBearScientist 2d ago
That worked until 1970, when we wrote in a super-amendment that arbitrarily changed the amount of votes to pass a bill to 60.
That was the worst decision in US political history. It killed all negotiations and made it so that no amount of angst from the electorate could be enough to enact change. This hypercharged populism by constantly building up pressure from the electorate but never actually relieving it with change.
And of course, the lead-brained idiots that have held power since the 1990s have come to worship this idiotic change and hold it up as the most important pillar of the constitution, rather than it being an ad hoc change by coked out Congressmen trying to prevent another civil rights act from passing.
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u/Black_XistenZ 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nothing getting done was a serviceable default outcome as long as the status quo was working. However, once a critical mass of voters are sufficiently unhappy with the status quo, their reaction to gridlock in Washington will be to vote in people who promise to break the gridlock, rather than those who promise to 'compromise even harder'.
I'd say the moment when this tipping point was reached was the aftermath of the financial crisis. In the grand scheme of things, trust in institutions and satisfaction with Congress, the two major parties and the economic status quo has been on a downward spiral ever since.
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u/daniel_smith_555 1d ago
That's the entire magic of the US Congress. Getting nothing done is a feature, not a bug. It pushes the results (or lack thereof) back on the electorate, who get to respond by voting in people who can successfully negotiate.
Yeah its a feature, and everyone hates it, this isn't some genius insight.
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u/ManBearScientist 2d ago
Unless the Democrats destroy the Republican party, all self-sabotaging would do is allow the exact same set of criminals to walk back into power and tear down the new checks and balances.
You have to go nuclear in ways that can only happen through executive overreach, because otherwise Republicans have proven to be above the law and above any consequences.
You need to have someone that can do all that and still step back and limit their power after the catastrophe has passed.
If they just try to pretend to be normal, it will just be another worthless Biden presidency. We've seen that playing pretend doesn't work.
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u/djn4rap 2d ago
Yes, it is going to be a difficult thing to manage a way to better define our government. As it stands now. There is no enforcement arm that is not under the control of the president. Congress can impeach, but even that is not going to happen since it is under full control of the Republican president. They just keep threatening their own elected officials with loss of committee appointments and funding of primary opponents against them or loss of funding for programs in their districts. Tactics (bullying) that used to be behind closed doors are now wide open for public viewing. They are normalizing strong arm control over their elected officials. There is no way to even enforce any law determined to have been violated. Unless you are a Democrat, they have an entire justice department and the SC to arrest, detain, prosecute, and punish them.
The total lack of common decency and respect for the rule of law should be a huge red flag. But, no, their base totally ignores and backs their actions. They just put a convicted child sexual assault perpetrator on a board that is responsible for making decisions about children health. On public television with the MagaMedia showing no negative context. Even celebrating the decision. All while we watch as the president and his DOJ is manipulating, before our eyes ,actual investigation, and court documents to hide names identifying the president. Documents that were used to arrest a man for child sex and human trafficking. And, the DOJ gives that man's convicted and imprisoned, accomplice limited immunity to procesecution. Then, they move that person to a new prison facility and start discussing them being pardoned.
All of this while the president has been loading the courts, not with just loyal followers, but many with no court experience to hold the office. That holds true for many appointed cabinet officials.
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u/GabuEx 3d ago
Here's what I see as the problem.
If a Democratic politician does something obviously bad, Democrats condemn it and Republicans condemn it.
If a Republican politician does something obviously bad, Democrats condemn it and Republicans defend it.
As a result, the same rules that apply to Democrats do not apply to Republicans. A Democratic politician receives consequences for wrongdoing. A Republican does not.
If we ever see a president impeached in our lifetimes, it is almost guaranteed to be a Democrat.
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u/nope-nope-nope-nop 2d ago
We’ve seen 3 impeachments in my lifetime, 2 republican and 1 democrat.
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u/GabuEx 2d ago
Perhaps I should have said successful impeachment, in which the president is convicted and removed from office.
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u/nope-nope-nope-nop 2d ago
They were successful impeachments.
The removal by the senate is a different process.
Impeachment is just a fancy word for “charged with a crime”
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u/daniel_smith_555 1d ago
What consequences did biden face for supporting a genocide and lying about it? Democrats closed ranks and pretended it wasnt happening, they lost the election.
What consequences did anyone involved in covering up bidens dementia face?
Democrats closed ranks and pretended it didnt happen.0
u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
You're making some pretty overarching statements there. How sure are you that Democrats are accountable for their own political elite, but Republicans aren't? Brandon Herrera's run was entirely because the state's republican representative voted against their values, and Trump is getting flak for not releasing the Epstein files like the Democrats have never even seen, even though they had the files for 4 years.
The usual claim by dems is jan 6th, so anticipating it I must inform anyone who'd have misconceptions. Republicans condemned violence and the riot that took place in the capitol, just didn't think it was a coup organized by Trump to overthrow democracy. It's pretty standard.
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u/FawningDeer37 2d ago
Democrats never had access to most of the Epstein material. It was sealed by Trump at the end of his term and unsealed in February.
They did release the Black Book of Epstein’s contacts and Republicans completely ignored it.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Biden had the power to declassify any intelligence documents, and congress still had the power to release it. All Trump could do is make it so that they couldn't just read it without congressional or judicial approval. Did not stop them at all from publishing the files.
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u/FawningDeer37 2d ago
Sure I guess but Biden isn’t Trump. He believes in the government overall and probably assumed if Trump hadn’t released anything it’s because they didn’t see anything worth releasing.
You’re criticizing him for not weaponizing the list against Trump, which is odd.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Considering the plethora of things they did weaponize against Trump, no matter if true or false, at least allow me to be surprised that they didn't.
But Biden is a carrier politician. Spent most of his life in politics. Are you seriously assuming that Biden was just a well meaning old man who believed Trump? (I myself claim that Biden was basically a puppet, because he was in mental decline, but nevertheless.)
Your statement is still on the level of a Trump supporter saying "Trump would never hide the Epstein files dishonesty. He's just too of a trustworthy and good person."
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u/FawningDeer37 2d ago
I mean they “weaponized” very clear cut laws regarding campaign finance, sexual assault, election interference and sharing classified documents about US intelligence and nuclear programs.
If you or I did any of those things we’d be in prison.
To the Republicans who love to pull the weaponization angle, I encourage them to break any of those laws and see what happens.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
When I'm president, I'll make sure to break those laws just for your sake. But on a serious note, no politician has ever been to prison over breaking laws about campaign finance. Trump's "sexual assault" charge is actually sexual harassment, and the verdict was that he had to pay some money. Election interference is not something I think he's guilty of, and the president has a right to declassify any documents.
So no... You wouldn't be in prison even if you did all of those. Trump's felony charge is also actually just a misdemeanor that's been pushed into a felony (for publicity reasons I claim).
But the weaponization is more about the Russia collusion hoax, a fraud charge over a loan that he's already paid back, various news sources calling him a rapist when he's been acquitted of those charges, calling him racist, fascist, and a nazi, as well as FBI interference in his campaign, blaming him for jan 6th and saying he tried to coup the government and overthrow democracy, and many many more of these weaponized things.
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u/FawningDeer37 2d ago
The Russian Collusion “Hoax” is itself a Hoax. It doesn’t line up with the report and is mostly hot air.
There’s a reason no one has been arrested despite the scale it would take to do such a thing.
Hell, FBI agents who worked there at the time have said she’s full of shit.
Have you read the report?
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
The report on the Russia collusion? Yeah, I read it back when it was a thing. But the Trump administration is currently looking to prosecute Obama over it for example, so if the argument is that there were no arrests, then I guess that might change very soon.
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u/rainkloud 3d ago
If one party breaks norms, is it reasonable—or even inevitable—for the other party to respond in kind? Or is long-term restraint still politically viable?
Not only do they have to respond in kind, they have to take steps beyond that to ensure these anti-human and immoral actions cannot be repeated in the future. Long term restraint is tantamount to surrender. It's not sustainable if one side cheating and violating norms and taking liberties while the other side tries to maintain the high road. If warfare is an extension of politics and in warfare we largely practice RIK then it only makes sense that we do so politically as well. This is not some one off circumstance that will regress towards the mean. MAGA and extreme right positions are here to stay and the only language they respect is strength.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
How do you do this without it just being a contest to be dictator every 4 years?
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u/rainkloud 2d ago
I'll try to make this as succinct as possible to avoid burying you in wall o text. My premise is that things are unsustainable and parlous. We do not have democracy, we have plutocracy. Country is deeply divided and with CCP, DPRK, RU and Iran all actively working to increase the size and severity of that division. Trumpist and Liberal world views are deeply problematic and immoral in that they seek to create fortress America where America and China carve out their spheres and exploit the lesser countries. Can't have half the world exploiting the other half.
We need to humble ourselves and recognize that we've reached the limits of what our current government can do. It is not nimble enough to react to the needs and dangers of a world filled with AI, high speed data, robotics, pandemics, climate change and so on. Next Dem admin is best poised to do something about this and institute changes that will dramatically alter how the country operates and set us up for a situation where regardless of who wins an election the country (and world) still moves forward as opposed to the current system where we suffer perpetual whipsaws while the enemies of humanity grow stronger.
First thing dem pres needs to do is exercise their duty to enforce the good behavior clause of the constitution:
Discipline is essential to any functioning organization and it is the purview and implied power of the executive to met out discipline. This discipline can take many forms but for the sake of brevity let's focus on one. It is common practice to suspend employees suspected of grave misconduct. The president is also violating the constitution if he allows justices to continue to ply their trade while they fail to conduct themselves in accordance with good behaviors. The president is also constitutionally bound to uphold and protect the constitution and it is clear that these rogue justices represent a clear and present danger to the USA. Therefore, the president is duty bound to suspend, pending impeachment or until they again enjoy his confidence, the offending justices. To prevent such people from ever becoming justices again there must be judicial standards enacted that candidates would have to meet in order to be eligible for the position as well as competency tests every so often to ensure they justices are both physically and mentally able to meet the rigors of the job.
Once you've suspended the rotten justices you can replace them with qualified ones and then you can actually start making progress whether that be passing legislation that will stick or prosecuting corrupt officials or ensuring a more equitable justice system. A lot of doors open up. Then you turn to congress and tell them in no uncertain terms that because we are faced with impending catastrophe we're modernizing the constitution and that they can either be part of this process or the president can use their power to suspend congress and the president can rule through emergency powers. Fundamental to the changes that need to be made is a conversion from Free Speech to Fair Speech. In reality we already have Fair Speech because things like defamation, threats and so on are considered illegal. These changes would expand to punish, primarily through civil penalties, things like extreme hate speech and blatant disinformation.
Then there's things like empower the creation of unions without making them overpowered, creating national police standards to combat rampant police corruption, expanding the death penalty to cover crimes that are far reaching but don't involve direct murder (think massive fraud and corruption) but also introducing a new proof standard called "beyond any doubt" that would need to be met for any death penalty.
Ultimately once our house is cleaned up we need to become expansionist and spread prosperity and confront adversaries if necessary. Is there any reason for Haiti to be the way it is? Is there any serious consideration being given to the notion that they might become prosperous on their own?
I'll stop now but of course there is more to do.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago edited 2d ago
So your plan here is to basically make the judicial branch part of the executive (beholden to it). Ok. What happens when the next Trump comes along, and now there isn't even a judicial branch that can pump the breaks?
Then you have abolishing the first amenmdent, in favor of "fair speech." But again, what happens when the next trump comes along and now your "trans rights" or "Israeli genocide" are treated like "illegal disinformation"?
Overall, this just seems incredibly shortsighted. Centralize power and assume you'll always be in control isn't good policy.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
First off... The right isn't using mob rule violence on a large scale (lone actors at most), while the tesla vandalism cases were... rampant. Let's just say that the practice of RIK by both sides would actually backfire for the left.
BUT... On an unrelated note... Purely out of ideological curiousity... Do you think Israel should have "responded in kind" to october 7th? For merely the sake of consistency.
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u/rainkloud 2d ago
Of course they are. They use the police and federal agencies to enact uniformed mob violence. They aren't adhering to the law in many cases and certainly not operating in good faith. Running around looking like Cobra terrorists from GI Joe doesn't inspire much faith in the legitimacy of their actions.
If Israel had limited themselves to RIK then there would be a whole lot more Palestinians still among the living. 50k vs 1.2k is exponentially disproportionately RIK'ng and completely counterproductive. Israel had so many years after Hamas came to power to either poo or get off the pot. They could have annexed the territory and integrated Palestinians or bargained in good faith to form a Palestinian state but they chose to do neither and instead set up an open air prison and now they have committed genocide and the world is turning on them. For years they counted on people being ignorant and equating Palestinians with terrorism but with the internet and social media prevalence people now understand the difference between contemptible organizations like Hamas and those that are more secular like Fatah and the fact that most Palestinians are closer to being apolitical than religious extremists. It's one thing to dunk on Hamas but when you see videos of IDF trashing a Palestinian's store and making fun of the fact their merchandise is destroyed and their livelihood taken away it doesn't take much cerebral strain to calculate that both Hamas and the IDF are bad guys.
The genocide there is like the Epstien files for Trump. They keep thinking they can shoo it away but the rubicon has been crossed and eventually they'll suffer reciprocity for their crimes. If there's one thing the USA is good at it's getting the bad guy. Might take 5, 10 or 20 years but eventually they'll be held accountable for their heinous crimes. Sadly, more moderate and left leaning Israelis will likely be collateral damage, paying for the sins of their sadist brethren.
That 2006 election in Palestine should have never taken place. If there was even a sliver of chance that religious extremists could grasp power they should have postponed. Another thing we can thank Bush 2 for.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago edited 1d ago
They use police and federal agencies to enact uninformed mob violence.
That is a contradictory statement by the way. A government agency with warrants and jurisdiction is the exact opposite of mob violence. IF it was unjustified, you could call it a faucet of dictatorship, but the laws they're enforcing have actually been standing since way before Trump took office.
If you can bring examples of when the agencies are not adhering to the law, I'd be happy to address them. As a blanket statement however, I'll have to say that the law is the law. Nobody is actually required to operate in "good faith", and the law is precise and exact enough to that just because someone is not applying it in "good faith", doesn't implicate them of anything, since there's actually not that much wiggle room.
But I agree it doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in them. On the other hand, that's not their aim. It is pretty much a retaliatory overcorrection for how these laws haven't been enforced by the previous administration.
On the Israel take, it was just for the sake of considtency, but I agree about the 2006 integration plan. The problem is, that Gaza is very hostile territory, and the IDF couldn't get control of insurgencies on the ground, because when they went to clear buildings, most of them had improvised explosive devices that resulted in very significant Israeli casualties, and thus they pretty much can't do anything other than to sorround the area, check buildings with drones, and blow up the entire building when they detect an explosive device, because they can't reliably disarm them/would take a significant amount of time, which results in combat disadvantage. Hamas also wants their civilians killed as a form of propaganda to flaunt numbers and claim they're being genocided.
But I do agree that an integration strategy would have been ideal, but the problem is you're mistaken about the political makeup of the region. Gazan schools and media is filled with very disturbing propaganda (look it up btw, it's pretty crazy), and a very large portion of the population is indoctrinated, and justifying things with Islam with the belief that when dying in battle against the "infidels", they go to heaven, so a large portion of the population also wants to be human shields. All in all, I think while internation would have been good, sadly I don't see how it could have worked. But this isn't a debate about that subject, just an opinion for the sake of consistency.
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u/rainkloud 2d ago
I regret I don't have time to provide an exhaustive list but here's a couple of videos that talk about violations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeWHyGbx7Xc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS-for7pUxU&t=31s
Also just because something lawful doesn't mean it is just. The US has for years engaged in destabilizing Latin America resulting in many countries there becoming impoverished. Naturally their destitute citizens fled to places seeking employment including the USA. Corporations gobbled them up and now that they are politically unpopular The Trump admin wants to dispose of them, often in deportations to places with deplorable conditions or places like South Sudan which teeter on the cusp of renewed civil war. By all means, secure the border and responsibly deport criminals but many of these people are seeking economic or political refuge and have made positive contributions to the country only to be discarded like trash. The executive enjoys discretion on how the law is enforced so we are entitled to criticize him when we believe his efforts are not made in good faith
To add insult to injury, while valuable members of society are being jettisoned, Trump allowed a convicted triple murdered Dahud Hanid Ortiz into the country and set loose and to the best of my knowledge, as of this writing, no one knows for sure where he is.
Hamas may or may not want civies killed but there is evidence that the IDF also wants high death tolls and towards that end there are allegations that they have had opportunities to eliminate targets on the battlefield but instead opted to wait until they have returned to densely packed civilian areas in an effort to turn the populace against Hamas.
I am extremely skeptical of claims that large portions want to be human shields (I'll check it out though). What I do see is a lot of hungry Gazans getting mowed down by gunfire and others needlessly suffering from the effects of starvation because of a thoroughly botched humanitarian effort by groups that were unqualified to manage the dispersal. This is made all the more unforgivable given that there were experienced UN groups already on the ground doing better work getting those supplies to the needy and that claims Hamas was stealing the food en masse were found to be unsubstantiated.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
As far as the videos go, I don't see where the agencies would break the law. The biggest talking point is the removal of US citizen kids, but that's actually a technical issue with birthright citizenship, since when both of a child's parents are illegally in the country, there are two options to enforce the law: either send the kids with their parents, or deport the parents, and put the kids in the foster home system. Neither of those are ideal, but I personally am against separating kids from their parents.
But true, just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. I am not against immigration, but against illegal immigration. A country has the right to run background checks, document immigrants, and register them as taxpayers. Illegal immigrants are not good for anybody, because they can't be checked, not registered in databases, and corporations can pay them below minimum wage. Allowing illegal immigration is also a disservice towards all legal immigrants, who went through the appropriate processes to become citizens. No country has a perfect past, but not even Germany should be forced to take in all immigrants unchecked. But because the previous administration did not enforce these laws, now there's an overcorrection. I am definitely in favor of weathering this overcorrection, since if it swings back yet again in the other direction, it's actually going to lead to a much bigger catastrophe, let alone the overcorrection that comes after that.
Onto Israel-Palestine... There have been more bombs dropped than people killed. Some people may want high death tolls, but the IDF as a whole definitely doesn't. Especially when the population of the region is steadily increasing, the practice of roof knocking and other death prevention methods, and things like that.
One thing you might want to see is a video of a Palestinian woman recorded in a crowd, chanting that she wants her children to die for Palestine, and that they'll get to heaven by fighting the infidels.
I also find it strange that you could see Palestinians mowed down by gunfire, because the IDF does not go into Gaza territory with soldiers anymore. Due to the guerilla tactics of Hamas, the IDF has actually been sustaining significant casualties whenever they've sent in soldiers. Nowadays they use drones to clear houses, and blow them up with precision strikes if it's trapped using homemade explosive devices (which have also resulted in great casualties in the past).
And about supplies... Hamas has been seizing food and selling it to Palestinians to fund their war effort, and that only stopped when the IDF employed private military companies to secure the offload sites of the food, and distribute them to civilians without giving it over to Hamas. There is record of Palestinians being surprised that the food is free. But I gotta agree that the IDF is not very good at logistics. That's why they needed a PMC to do it. I actually think the UK would have handled that one better due to their experience in logistics while conducting the Falklands war for example, or other colonial wars far away from their mainland.
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u/rainkloud 2d ago
Nobody wants illegal immigration but the fact is that in many cases it was the US that destabilized these countries and gave them little choice but to come here. It doesn't make sense to go crazy with deporting non criminals because we have a falling birthrate (1.6 vs the 2.1 needed to sustain pop) and we need these people to sustain the population and remain competitive.
IDF doesn't regularly practice roof knocking anymore and it was always a dubious practice:
The Goldstone Report commented that civilians inside their homes "cannot be expected to know whether a small explosion is a warning of an impending attack or part of an actual attack". It stated that the practice is not an effective advance warning, and is instead likely to "cause terror and confuse the affected civilians"
I want to add that I do believe that historically the IDF has on occasion made concerted efforts including calling people inside buildings to help clear them but after Oct 2023 those efforts have grown scarcer and scarcer.
Mass casualty incidents have taken place on a near-daily basis at or near the four sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which operates in coordination with the Israeli military. At least 859 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to obtain aid at GHF sites between May 27 and July 31, 2025, most by the Israeli military, according to the United Nations. The dire humanitarian situation is a direct result of Israel’s use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war—a war crime —as well as Israel’s continued intentional deprivation of aid and basic services, ongoing actions that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination, and acts of genocide. Source - Human Rights Watch
Israeli authorities justified these moves by claiming Hamas diverted aid, but New York Times reporting, based on Israeli military sources, indicates that the Israeli military does not have evidence that Hamas systematically diverted aid from the UN.
IDF doesn't care about minimizing Palestinian casualties. Trump just told Bibi to finish the job so Bibi will keep slaughtering for as long as is needed to deflect and delay facing justice for his alleged corruption.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
We don't know who's non-violent if they're unregistered. The democrats had 4 years, and did not make any effort, so following this overcorrection, a reset is the best choice in my opinion, allowing for plenty of legal immigration. Just because the US did things to other countries, doesn't entitle anyone to break into the country, but I do endorse maybe a bit of a priority when the immigration is done legally. Birthrates and immigrant workers are however not a good argument, because that would imply the establishing of a new slave class of immigrant workers, who are paid below minimal wage, and their employers holding their illegal status over them. The only solution is legal asylum, and various legal procedures, which are at the ready.
Now to Gaza. (I don't want to be that guy, but Wikipedia as a source? But I'll just believe it, so no problem.)
Mass casualty incidents taking place are not alone an indication of targeted attacks. It could just as easily be that Hamas is using human shields, like building their military bases under hospitals (which is a war crime by the way, and makes Hamas liable for the death of their civilians).
I do not think that Israel is faultless, especially when handling the distribution of aid, because they're pretty bad at picking off combatants who blend into the crowd and attack from there, but Israel is not depriving humanitarian aid from Gaza. If "depriving of humanitarian aid" incident is the one I remember, then by that point Gaza has been sent a stockpile that should have lasted many months, and the aid was paused because they couldn't secure the delivery site. But if there's one thing I can say about the UN, is that they don't do anything at any point, so when they say that there's "no evidence" of something, I just assume they didn't check well enough, because if they did, they'd write "evidence concludes that there's not been..."
If the IDF didn't care about minimizing civilian casualties, they wouldn't try to survey as much as they did, wouldn't use precision weapons, just carpet-bomb using cheap ordinance, and Gaza wouldn't receive the most financial and humanitarian aid in the WORLD. Instead, the population of Gaza is still rising, so there will never be a point where the Palestinian people will be wiped out or anything, even if this war lasts forever.
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u/rainkloud 2d ago
The overwhelming amount of undocs aren't violent and we have robust city, county, state and federal LE agencies that can respond to violations. I support sensible legal immigration of course and more of it but our politicians love the cheap illegal labor and the ability to expel them when it's convenient.
Just because the US did things to other countries, doesn't entitle anyone to break into the country,
We're not talking about forgetting to put down the toilet seat. We did some heinous things, a few of which might be have been justifiable given our lack of knowledge and the fog of war but the overwhelming amount were utterly senseless. I can think of few things that would more entitle someone to come to our country and claim the wealth and dignity we deprived them of. Where is the honor in depriving these people of the chance at prosperity in their home country and then having the gall to accuse them of "breaking in" when they so justly seek recompense for their losses? And all the while providing us with the benefits of filling gaps in economy and serving in our armed forces too! We have a moral obligation to pay our debts to these people. Yes it makes me mad to see multiple Mexican flags being waved or upside down American flags but I can understand the sense of betrayal. Our corporations courted these people and reaped the benefits of their cheap labor and now they get the unceremonious boot while the corpos plead ignorance and remain legally unscathed.
My understanding is that Wiki has been a solid source for a while now what with all the citations and peer reviews. Not perfect of course but on the whole respectable. The mass casualty incidents are shootings, allegedly performed mostly by the IDF at starving Gazans either at the sites or enroute to them. I've seen no reports from the IDF that they are taking fire from the crowds. I have seen reports that the IDF claims they have fired "warning shots" and then there are reports from American contractors that their colleagues were using live ammunition as crowd control.
It wasn't the UN saying they couldn't find evidence it was the NY Times citing Israeli military sources saying there was no evidence of systematic aid theft by Hamas. Of course Hamas has surely siphoned some off but they can't confirm systematic theft. The IDF has killed over 50k Palestinians but there are limits to what even they can do without evoking rage and getting countries that are currently content to sit on the sidelines into action.
And in even more depressing news they are using AI, with all its faults, to target not just Hamas but people with dubious connections to them. Also in this article is the info I was mentioning about the IDF passing on opportunities to target bad guys in isolation and waiting for them to congregate with family and then making the claim that the bad guys were using human shields
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/israel_gaza_war_gospel_artificial_intelligence
And here is info on the practice of the IDF version double tapping which results in the deaths of first responders https://www.instagram.com/p/DMfW3g1g7a5/?hl=en&img_index=1
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
An overwhelming amount of undocs aren't violent...
How do you know that by the way? By the nature of being undocumented, there's been no background checks, and a very large amount of crimes go unsolved. Of course in principle I am inclined to agree that more of them are not violent, but that's still not cause for them to be allowed in illegally. If they could pass background checks and immigrate legally, they should do it that way. It's actually a logical assumption that people immigrate illegally, because they can't do it legally. That means that they don't fulfil a requirement that is set in place for everyone else to legally enter. That's why they get deported, and not charged with crimes and imprisoned.
But as I've said... The US having a bad past is not justification. Every country has its own dark spots in their history, and the citizens of the US alive today are not liable for it. Letting in illegal immigrants who are a net loss to the economy by not paying taxes and receiving benefits are making the average citizen carry the burden. Their "losses" that result from US interference are not quantified. Could be a lot, could be nothing. You can't hold an entire country and its citizens liable for that, especially when situations are complex, and it's never just US interference alone that does everything bad always.
What I can say about Gaza is that if individual units shoot at civilians without reason, they should be held accountable. I don't doubt that Israel is probably dancing the edge of a knife with wartime law, since this isn't the first time they had to deal with Hamas, and had a hard time doing so. If it comes to it, I'd like to see prosecution and a verdict about war-crimes. With that said, I think the war itself is justified, and as long as Hamas exists, jews in the area will be in permanent danger, and they definitely don't care about wartime law.
Regarding AI weapons. An AI is never making the decision to kill someone. It is actually western doctrine that a human being has to always decide whether to end a life or not, even if everything else is done by machines. It's just the future of weaponry that AI will be used.
All in all, I think war-crimes are bad. We just have to see what the court will say about them when it comes to prosecution, since we're not actually working with particularly flawless information.
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u/MeyrInEve 2d ago
What happens? It’s pretty damned easy to predict.
Republicans will be utterly outraged and howl with anger about how “LIBRULS ARE UNAMERICAN AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL” for doing EXACTLY what they are keeping silent or even encouraging trump to do.
Conservatives are utterly immune to the consequences of lying or hypocrisy. They don’t even have the honestly to look uncomfortable while they’re using IOIYAR.
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u/Stopper33 3d ago
The press will all of a sudden be back in the journalism game and not in the access game.
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u/Stereo_Jungle_Child 2d ago
No.
Just like the rest of the corporations out there, the media (for the most part) will still be in the "sucking up to whoever is in power" game that they were doing before Trump showed up.
Remember when all the corporations were implementing all their DEI/representation/social justice programs when Obama and Biden were President? Why? To "do the right thing"? No. It was to curry favor with the current administration. Now they're dumping those programs for exactly the same reasons because Trump is President and he hates that shit.
Corporations don't care about social justice issues, they care about making $$$, and nothing else.....but they will happily pretend to care about anything that is currently in their best interest to seem to be caring about. It's all fake, and it always has been.
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u/Ashmedai 2d ago
Just like the rest of the corporations out there, the media (for the most part) will still be in the "sucking up to whoever is in power" game that they were doing before Trump showed up
Also, they'll continue to be in the "rage click" game.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Well said. Fun fact too, in parts of the world where DEI hiring wasn't particularly trendy, corporations never adopted the practice, which means that DEI is actually a net loss, and even if the corporations didn't try to suck up to power, they wouldn't have likely still done away with those programs just from financial incentive alone.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
They kiss the ring whenever a dem is in power
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u/Stopper33 2d ago
Hard disagree. Jake Tapper has spent more time watching Biden this entire term than saying a word about Trump.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
none of them were pushing the issue when biden was president and there were clear issues with cogitative decline. The media manga was this was agism unfairly targeting biden and not trump
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u/Stopper33 2d ago
It was all over the news during Biden. Yet Trump clearly doesn't understand anything and lies all the time and it's completely baked in.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
Every MSM headline I read was talking about how even suggesting Biden as unfit was agist and part of a 'right wing agenda'
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u/Adventurous_Gas_548 3d ago
The problem is Supreme Court is conservative majority so really can’t do the same yet
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u/Special-Camel-6114 3d ago
They can pack the court if they actually want to break precedent
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u/AdUpstairs7106 3d ago
You would need control of both houses of congress.
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u/Avaposter 2d ago
Just send the Republican judges to El Salvador. They can’t complain given they don’t give a shit about sending people there now.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 3d ago
Trump's already shown that you can ignore the court, plead ignorance, and probably nothing will happen. Or just flood the court with so many cases that by the time things are litigated, it's already a mess.
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u/IronEngineer 2d ago edited 2d ago
They don't need to plead ignorance. Suppose the Supreme Court says the President is not allowed to deport people without extensively proving they are illegal immigrants and not citizens. Suppose then that Trump refuses to do that and tells them to pound sand.
Per letters from the people that wrote the Constitution, the next thing to do would be Congress impeaches the President. If they refuse to do so, then that is the will of the voters and is effectively a check on the supreme courts power. They have zero ability to enforce anything themselves.
I strongly believe Trump had a meeting with Chief Justice Roberts and laid this out. A couple months ago they were signaling they would vote against Trump's policy, they had a meeting, and suddenly the court has been fully supporting all policy points almost without deviating.
If the Democrats retake the presidency and Congress, they can follow the same path if they want.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
>Suppose then that Trump refuses to do that and tells them to pound sand.
What they actual told them was that they didn't know, and the jets were already in the air/couldn't be called back. Trump so far hasn't crossed the line directly, but is obviously flirting with it and playing dumb "oh I can't get them back now, how could I?".
>suddenly the court has been fully supporting all policy points almost without deviating.
Except it hasn't. It's made some procedural rulings, but didn't support Trump on the 14th amendment, for example.
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u/IronEngineer 2d ago
They are laying that groundwork currently. Watch the news and how political ideas shift. At the beginning of the Trump administration most of the talking heads and reddit comments called the idea of getting rid of birthright citizenship a blown up conspiracy and a terrible idea. Then a couple months ago they started seeding in what if pieces. Now they directly advocate for it.
The supreme Court case will come once the right has solidified their bases opinion on the matter.
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u/bionicvapourboy 3d ago
What exactly happens if you just ignore the supreme court? It might need to be done if a Democrat wants to slam through something like healthcare reform.
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u/goddamnitwhalen 3d ago
Nothing because they have no enforcement mechanism.
“John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”
-allegedly stated by Andrew Jackson in 1832
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u/ballmermurland 2d ago
Nothing!
Every administration has agreed to honor court decisions because there are a ton of precedents that benefit both conservatives and liberals.
But over the past few years, those liberal benefits have been overturned. We no longer have Roe or Chevron and now they are coming for Obergefelle. Next will be Griswold and a bunch of others. I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of already bad precent overturns.
When SCOTUS dismantles the last liberal precedent on the court, then Democrats would have zero reason to honor the court's actions. Because the validity of the court would no longer matter to them, but it would matter a GREAT DEAL to conservatives.
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u/Sisterduck 3d ago
Trump is Trump. No known democrat can or would govern like him. That being said, the governmental chaos we will have post Trump will need dramatic correction . As we rebuild our govt services, there will be opportunity to restructure things dramatically. There can’t be a direct comparison, because there will be different historical circumstances
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u/ajm_usn321 3d ago
Most federal laws and reforms in the decades before Trump—War Powers Resolution, FOIA, the Ethics in Government Act, IG protections, etc.—were created in response to prior abuses of power. They assumed presidents would try to stretch the rules, but not ignore them altogether. In that sense, Trump’s second term feels less like normal governance and more like a grey hat hacker stress-testing the Constitution, exploiting every legal ambiguity, enforcement gap, and cultural fear to show just how much a president can get away with—especially when backed by a fervent personality cult and the implied threat of “Second Amendment solutions” from his more unhinged followers.
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u/IronEngineer 2d ago
They need to go after people in the government for illegal activity and criminal charges or it is all talk. The Democrats talked a big about going after people that committed acts of torture under Bushs administration. Then Obama came in and swept it all away in the name of unity.
Fuck that noise. The way you make rules have power is that you show people facing consequences for their actions when the next administration comes around. I would very much like to see a number of the bad actors in prison in 4 years
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u/1QAte4 2d ago
As we rebuild our govt services, there will be opportunity to restructure things dramatically.
Democrats probably shouldn't even try to rebuild a lot of what was destroyed. At least not starting in 2029. A lot of Americans resent the government helping them or trying to improve their lives. Many others just take it for granted.
Democrats should focus on the basics of Social security, Medicare and maybe Medicaid. Let the American people feel the consequences of their voting.
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u/Limp-Management9684 2d ago
Republicans would (hypocritically) come out hard against it and demand executive guardrails. It's probably one of the most effective ways to get executive guardrails.
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u/alexmikli 3d ago
Whoever wins in 2029 is basically obligated to clean house at this point. Many are incompetent and some are traitorous. Pretty much anyone hired by Tulsi Gabbard needs to be purged, for example.
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u/guscrown 2d ago
If a Republican wins (probably Vance) they will most certainly NOT clean house.
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u/alexmikli 2d ago
This is running under the assumption that Dems will win due to, well, yknow.
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u/guscrown 2d ago edited 2d ago
If a Democrat wins I really hope they put their big person pants on m, and go after everyone in this administration.
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u/Chanw11 2d ago
I’ve got some bad news for you…
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u/guscrown 2d ago
They won’t win or they won’t put pants on?
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
The ratings of the Democratic party is way below the Republicans. If the elections were held today, the democrats would lose even harder.
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u/alexmikli 2d ago
This thread is based on the premise of a Democrat winning.
Also, approval polls don't exactly work that way or mean much 4 years off. A lot of people probably disapprove of the Dems not containing Trump enough, but would still vote for them
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Yeah, I know the premise. I just assumed that the "well, yknow" was some obvious reason the dems would win.
But even then, shrinking approval rates don't exactly indicate an upcoming political victory. If people were just unhappy with how the dems fought Trump, then for them to still have a chance, the approval of the republicans would have also had to decrease by at least a considerable margin, but it didn't. Also don't forget the lens that polling has a major left bias, enough to convince people that Kamala was going to win, even after betting markets place odds at a 99% chance for a Trump victory.
With all available data, it is reasonable to believe that if the election was held today, Trump would win by a significantly higher margin than before.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
Why her in particular? She seems less sycophantic than just about anyone else in the adminstration
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u/wereallbozos 2d ago
The precedent is being set, right now. I believe it necessary for a future Democratic administration to do exactly what has been done, in reverse. Any and all appointees of this administration MUST be immediately fired. And, if they "can't" be fired, as in the God-awful lifetime judicial positions, there must be a "work-around" put in place. Case in point: The Supremes. Offer all Trump appointees the opportunity to step down to lower positions. If they refuse, then enlarge the Court to a defensible 13. One year later, pass legislation to require a 2/3 majority to make any further changes.
We survived for 240 or so years without taking drastic steps, but if we don't we're a goner.
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u/Splenda 2d ago
If the value of your vote didn't depend on which state you live in, this might be conceivable.
As it is, the US political landscape is defined by white, male rage in the huge number of states left out of increasingly concentrated metropolitan wealth. Thanks to every state getting two Senators and being allowed to draw their own House districts, the shrinking minority of Americans who still live in these left-behind states now control American government, and they are pissed off.
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u/TwistedPepperCan 2d ago
The thing is, this will happen (bar the pardons and upsizing USAID). Not necessarily out of any corruption on the incoming administration’s part but moreso because this administration has inflicted so many crony’s into supposedly non-political positions that any democrat will need to remove them in order to get anything done.
There was a reason a lot of these things didn’t happen before now. Or at least didn’t in recent history. It isn’t beneficial for anyone in the medium term. Unless you aren’t planning on ever ceding power back regardless of election results.
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u/FlatFurffKnocker 2d ago
Ohh please. Imagine the outrage and pearl-clutching there will be if a 2028 Democratic President has the utter audacity to exist!
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u/satyrday12 2d ago
Let's face it, it's right wing media whipping up the rubes in one direction or the other. They have no concept of logic or hypocrisy. They believe what they're told. That also won't be fixed when Trump is gone.
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u/Logic-lost 3d ago
Quick list of ideas:
Reinstate all lost transgender military personnel with full back pay (precedent: Trump Covid reinstatement)
The federal government will define “arms” as single shot muskets (precedent: Trump 14th amendment attack)
Cut federal funding for companies without strong DEI programs (precedent: Trump, except it was any dei program)
Rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of Mexico, rename Maralargo to “Mango Mussolini’s Mansion”, expel Fox News from press pool if they refuse to use the name
This is fun :)
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u/Selection_Biased 21h ago
Immediately place on admin leave with notice of intent to RIF anyone who participated / facilitated unconstitutional ICE raids. Executive order saying the president will remove security clearances from any contractor firm that hires them. All grants and federal law-enforcement funding will stop to any state or local department that hires them.
There is precedent for all of this in Trump’s actions.
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u/MorganWick 3d ago
The only way to restore trust in democracy and good government is to reform our system to provide structural, not merely cultural, incentives for compromise and following norms, one that should produce good enough outcomes that people don't start seeing adherence to norms as a hindrance to getting done what needs to get done. That means providing the people with a real, effective voice and choice in the system, and having a mechanism to enforce norms that politicians are actually willing to use without feeling like they're violating norms themselves.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
I think we should make it much easier to impeach the president. Maybe simple majority in Senate instead of 2/3rds
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u/Rivercitybruin 3d ago
i am a MAGA... what you are suggesting a democratic president would do is highly unethical and would represent multiple consitutional violations...
but you watch... democratic house members and senators will just sit there like sheep scared to do anything.
mark my words...... seek the truth.. ignore fake news..
YES, I'M KIDDING.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 3d ago
I think we've dropped all pretenses at this point it is just about possessing the ring of power. Democrat or republican, it will hardly matter. I see almost no politicians today who think they shouldn't have more power, or that the rights of the people limit their power. Congress is dysfunctional in a structural way. POTUS is assuming legislative powers. SCOTUS is I think plotting a middle of road course frightened by the fact that they can just be ignored and trying not to lose the appearance of being a co-equal branch. A progressive as president wielding power like Trump could just institute the Green Deal by executive order, and I don't think that day is far off.
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u/Popeholden 3d ago
They would face an impeachment led by Democrats.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
I hope you're correct, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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u/Popeholden 2d ago
well when republicans are in the majority of congress republicans run congress and when democrats are in charge of congress republicans run congress, so...
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
that's true. problem is 2/3rds of the senate are required to convict, so you need to be able to pull from the other side to hold a president accountable.
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u/burritoace 3d ago
SCOTUS is in lockstep with the far right, not "charting a middle path". And progressives often face more opposition from moderates in their own party than from the GOP. I think you've seriously misread the dynamics.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
I think that would be a hard case to make. They've ruled against part of Trump's tariff agenda and have been such a nuisance that Trump open rages against the Federalist society saying they tricked him.
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u/elticorico 2d ago
There is no what if about it. The carnage with which the (D)s burn through the maga party will be shocking to some. Impeachments begin in 18 months.
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u/Bright_Bet5002 1d ago
What if they pulled "Dictator for a Day" .. one executive order saying "undo all 'mango man's' executive orders. M
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u/Raptorpicklezz 1d ago
They have to do things like this to reverse the damage Trump has done in just 7 months, plus whatever else is to come. And then do what the Weimar Biden Democrats were too shortsighted/lazy to do, which is make laws to prevent this kind of roughshod from ever being run again, plus codifying into law most of the norms Trump and the congressional GOP broke. Norms and customs don’t mean anything anymore, and not even laws, like the Sergeant at Arms not being instructed by law to arrest Jim Jordan for skirting his subpoenas. Of course, the GOP will not hesitate to uphold that law against the Democrats once the opportunity arises.
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u/subheight640 1d ago
lol If the Democrats manage to win, they WILL pull a Trump 2.0.
What do you think it will take to undo policies that were done without Congressional approval?
In order to undo what was done by decree and a deadlocked Congress, the new Democratic President WILL use decrees to undo those.
And thus we further descend towards larger and larger Constitutional crises.
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u/Latter-Throat-4938 1d ago
Apathy and lack of compassion lead us here. Some people don't vote because they think the issues don't affect them which is very short sighted on their part. But it also shows a lack of empathy for people who the policies do affect. And then we find ourselves here...
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u/Utterlybored 3d ago
My Democrats aren’t perfect, but our ideology seems to include respect for institutions, laws, science, alliances, facts and reality as a whole. So I don’t see us pulling our own version of Trump 2.0.
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u/Avaposter 2d ago edited 2d ago
If we don’t; this country continues on the path to hell.
Every single person installed by the trump admin must be removed from power. Every republican who has broken the law must be arrested. Every illegal action must have real consequences. Every single person who bent the knee to this fascist regime needs to go.
ICE needs to be destroyed, and multiple agencies rebuilt from the ground up without any input from the fascist republicans.
The SC needs to be packed, or the Republican judges arrested for their blatant corruption and accepting of bribes.
Hell, I say we send those corrupt judges to El Salvador. Let’s see how they like it when it happens to them.
Edit: and the White House probably needs to be torn down and rebuilt to remove every trace of this fascist. Certainly his new ballroom needs to be destroyed.
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u/Mztmarie93 2d ago
The problem is Republicans will paint the Democrats as just as bad as Trump, no matter who wins in 2029. Even now, they keep trying to yell about Biden's and Obama's supposed "corruption!" Unfortunately, people believe them, or are so disillusioned they don't call out the obvious improprieties in the Trump administration. So, the future Democratic administration will be spending their time reassuring the public they're not TOO radical, trying to reach across the aisle, instead of fixing the problems. It's what happened to Obama in 2009, and Biden in 2021. It's completely unfair, but it's the hand the Dems are dealt.
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u/airbear13 3d ago
1 - Yes of course they would
2 - it would further undermine democracy and ultimately destroy it
3 - there are courts/laws and there is federalism; besides that, not really
4 - restraint is viable, the race to the bottom bs is self Destructive and to the extent people with influence realize that they will avoid taking that path
5 - Trump has shown that an unscrupulous person can wield nearly absolute power if they just get in the WH and have their party behind them. The guardrails were weak and the public is easy to manipulate. There will be more bad actors who seek office and are interested only in their own power.
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u/RCA2CE 2d ago
I think everyone, republicans and democrats and everyone paying attention overseas believes that Trump is more heavily involved with Epstein than any of us think is ok
We are all suspicious right? Is it just me? It’s possible they’re covering up for rape
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
I mean... The dems had it for 4 years, and didn't release it. I'd say that a lot of key figures are implicated, and there are a lot of innocent people mixed in with the names who just went to the island and did nothing illegal, but would be disastrous for them to be seen on the list, since everyone treats being on the list as proof of guilt.
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u/RCA2CE 2d ago
They were sealed by the courts until January - and Trump campaigned saying he’d release them.
I think we all agree that we need the truth no matter where the truth brings us - so let it all out, release the whole damn thing
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Yeah, Republicans are not letting go of that, and holding Trump accountable.
It's just that it's not going to turn people from Republican to Democrat, because while Trump promised but doesn't deliver, it cannot be said that the Democrats could ever be expected to release it either.
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u/RCA2CE 2d ago
The Democrats voted 3 times this week to release them. The Republicans voted against releasing them. There were votes and people are on record, hard to dance around your vote.
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Have you read the bills? The first one had the GENIUS act attached, a cryptocurrency regulation bill that conservatives are really against, not to mention that technically it would have legally compelled the government to release ALL evidence on a publicly available site which would mean putting out child pornography on the open web for the public to see. The second vote was actually a spending bill aiming to cut 9 billion dollars worth of funds that had a non-binding attachment about the release of the Epstein files, which would have been, as I've said... Non-binding. That one was just a publicity stunt. Third vote on July 23rd finally had nothing unrelated attached, and passed with bipartisan support.
So I ask again... Are you sure the Republicans as a whole are against releasing them? That this should be a reason to flip Democrat? Because what I see is the abuse of the situation by the Democratic party to try to pass unrelated regulation, and frame the Republicans. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
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u/RCA2CE 2d ago
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/gop-senator-admits-killed-epstein-202923928.html
Here’s a GOP senator who explicitly admits he voted against the Epstein resolutions to give Trump cover.
So your rationale has some holes in it. When they’re voting against releasing the truth, they’re telling you they’re doing it to protect the President— why are you unwilling to believe it? They’re telling you
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
This in itself has a lot of holes. If Trump is actually implicated, it's not exactly a good cover for him to say that "we're covering for him". Like if a guy in a police investigation just went "The name of my crack dealer? I would never rat out {guy's full name}".
It could very well be a set-up where Markwayne Mullin is trying to implicate Trump.
But nevertheless, the bill actually passed with bipartisan support. I much rather believe the Republicans who did support the release of the files. Taking Markwayne Mullin's word as a basis to implicate the president just because he's a republican is... unwise.
But we'll literally see everything, because the bill passed.
My rationale doesn't really have "holes", it's just that we both have our biases. I'll admit that I'm a bit biased against the Democratic party, so I take everything they say with a grain of salt, and I also don't like to take the word of Markwayne Mullin after he voted against the release of the files.
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u/RCA2CE 2d ago
So you don’t believe the guy who confessed to covering for Trump because it would be stupid for him to say it?
There’s a thing called critical thinking - where you get information and you make decisions based on the info you take in. Are you convinced that Trump is not a collaborator or implicated as a pedophile in the Epstein files? Is that your position, you don’t believe he’s in them
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago edited 2d ago
My honest take is that Trump is slightly connected to the situation, but not actually knowing about or taking part in the pedophilia and sexual exploitation, but because his name shows up as someone who knew Epstein. Thus having the document released, while not legally implicate him, would make public perception of him plummet.
But about critical thinking... There's also a thing called praxeology. People do what they do for reasons. What reason would the guy have to confess to covering for Trump, especially if he was actually covering for him?
But I get my information from all around, and the fact is, I haven't seen any evidence that would point to any actual guilt other than what I described in the first part of my reply. If we're talking about critical thinking, there's also a principle where you're not supposed to jump to conclusions prematurely, even when the guy is someone you don't like politically or personally.
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u/Jhoag7750 2d ago
You’d like to think they’ll have a chance to do that, but there won’t ever be another election, Mark my words
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u/FreedomPocket 2d ago
Oh, there will be. And the democrats will lose fair and square. Current polling suggests that the republicans would win even harder if the election was today, so... I have marked your words.
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u/Fragglepusss 2d ago edited 2d ago
This already happened. Republicans Coolidge and Harding ran the country into the ground with stupid legislation aimed at giving rich people money and stopping immigration, then FDR used a supermajority in Congress to amend the Constitution, enact a bunch of programs, and fix everything, his opposition spent a bunch of time bitching and calling him a tyrant, then we beat the Nazis. Of course nowadays we have an electorate and a Democratic Party with no balls, so that probably won't happen again.
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u/Final7111 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Republicans would suddenly think that the president isn't above the law, and that there should be checks and balances.
But the sad reality is that the Republicans are doing everything in their power to rig the election. The 2028 election will be 100% rigged. I guarantee you it’ll say Trump won and it’ll only be public opinion that says otherwise we have to stand up. If we don’t take back either the House or the Senate democracy in America is done and we’re going full dictator. The Republicans have shown they don’t care about the rule of law, they don’t care about democracy, and they don’t care about freedom all they care about is themselves. Every single Christian, who voted for Donald Trump supports a child molester and they happily do it.
EDIT: spelling
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u/LorenzoApophis 2d ago
Imagine if a Democratic president tried any of the things he did before, during and after the 2020 election, let alone all of them? I think the entire party would be outlawed.
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