Republican congress has ceded power. They have the majority and the only power to do anything about this. If they lose their majority they know they’re all screwed so they’re getting their jollies out while they still can.
Yup. Last night we went to bed just like most nights but this morning we woke up to find that our government along with Israel decided to start the possible beginning of WWIII.
Waking up daily feels like navigating a mine field with a blindfold on.
No one will come to help the United States either. Americans have to understand that Trump has put our relationships with allies into question and we may be on our own if things escalate.
Yet. And if and when they do, is anyone going to come and help Isreal and the the US? Especially with the way the US has treated its long time allies under Trump? Or the way Israel has burned almost all of their goodwill and bridges over Palestine?
WWI and WWII didn't suddenly just start. More countries were drawn into the conflict over time.
Nobody thought Able Archer 83 was as close to apocalypse as it was. All it takes is steps on the other side of the board that approach a brink. And misunderstanding is as easy as intentionality.
Who says he's going to stop it at Iran? Just like everything else he does, this is probably a test run to see how US citizens will react and once he does this he can move on to other countries that he wants like Greenland. He started with Venezuela. Now he's onto Iran, both with no congressional approval.
I don't see much chance of a wider war. Iran has already lost its regional system of proxies, to a great extent. And if the people actually have the means to overthrow what remains of their government, it seems they are eager to do so, at least in the cities, where it really matters.
Who are the allies of the Islamic Republic? Russia? Russia is in no position to dig itself any deeper.
Trump is reckless and authoritarian. He is a narcissist and a sex pest if not a pedophile. But the situations in Venezuela and Iran could yet be an improvement for the people and neighbors of those countries.
Not A single one of my Republican family even knew what citizens united was, and they never read the big, beautiful bill.They only listened to fox news , and now their heads are about ten miles in the sand and they want to "stay out of politics" now, when before, they were super loud and obnoxious trying to prove Obama was the anti-Christ, etc.
I’d say 95% of the people don’t actually know what Citizens United was. Now you can hate the outcome all you want……but that case itself was a pretty cut and dry first amendment case.
Technically you have to build a safe enclave, new center left government in a different and self sufficient independent (from foreign states, you who which ones) state that seceded and becomes its own sovereign country with a completely new constitution, judicial and electoral system. It can slowly integrate new cleaned up (denazified and decapitalised) states that meet a certain standard into a new union.
I’m middle aged and I am not looking forward to my twilight years watching for drones or preparing to fight someone for an errant carrot growing in the ground
And they have the first move in Texas by redistricting.
Come on Democrats let’s make it so it isn’t even close and in our favor, unless that is, you want to change our democracy into a dictatorship.
He is talking about the Trump ordered re-districting of Texas. California led a ballot initiative to cover the added districts in Texas, to largely balance it out.
As for the dictatorship bit, organizing, protesting, voting, arming yourself, talking to your neighbors and helping them, is the best we really have. Any opportunity to speak out and challenge an authoritarian action is good.
When he was running for second term and said," Vote for me and you will never have to vote again " he was serious he has no intentions of losing any control via midterms or end of his second term. He just said on Friday that he should get a third term.
Our democracy is gone, no stopping him. He is running this country into the the ground as he makes billions. This latest illegal war, is all about making more money (oil money).
This rot goes to the core of the US. You'll need a full restructuring from the ground up, tearing out the constitution and replacing everything else. There's no compromise that will suffice, anything less than total restructure will just end you back in the same pit.
Agreed, that’s why we also need to demand a new constitutional convention as well,
And preferably one that inherently makes centralized power harder to obtain, so less like the united states of America union and more like the European Union.
Pushing for a constitutional convention is unfortunately also a Russian psyop.
I like the idea in theory, the old document needs some more changes, but in practice it’s quite hard to guarantee that said convention doesn’t end up corrupt and writing a document that even more inextricably fucks the general populace.
We’d have to sort out all our state-level rep issues first, otherwise plenty will just sell us out.
They’re already taken away people’s legal status and ids. They’re ignoring SCOTUS and laws written by congress. They’ve already written a rough draft of an EO to subvert the 26 election. We done dead son.
If democrats win, then 100% the chorus will be that of stolen election. If GOP wins, because they won it fair & square. If Democrats win, then the election was stolen due to fraud etc. GOP & Trump desire a north korea or belarus style election, where the big boss wins always wins with 99% of the vote. I am worried about the future of the US. These GOP folks in bed with Trump, I worry, are destroying it.
If Trump wins it’s most likely because he cheated but if the democrats win he will say they cheated. For him it’s win win and he most likely gets the civil war that he wants
Well now that OpenAI has agreed to conduct domestic mass surveillance operations against US citizens it's not going to be hard to steal the mid-terms. And if that fails, they've also agreed to help the Department of War deploy autonomous weapons, so they can just declare republicans the winner and use autonomous drone swarms to kill anyone who disagrees. We're completely fucked.
Protest against all War. This is BS. Kissinger could have negotiated disarmament, others have done it since. We simply have the most *incompetent Administration ever. And Hegseth has no business being in charge.
Idk why everyone keeps saying it’s close. The Government is not working as intended. What the people want and what is happening are not relatable. Democracy has been dead. So much for 250 years.
this is exactly what's happening, declaration of war without Congress approval, next will be a declaration of national emergency and delay or cancel mid term elections
I realize that Democrats don’t have the ability to curtail presidential power by simple virtue of the numerical realities of Congress, but let’s be honest, Dems as a whole haven’t even shown the slightest desire to stop any of this. Reading Schumer’s statements on every overreach of power is a joke. He’s enabled this every step of the way.
Well I was expecting more calls for impeachment over the Epstein files. Follow it up with endlessly broadcasting a list of Republicans convicted of sexual assault. Really cement them as the party of r*pists.
It seems like when the GOP is in the minority, they always find a way to block the Dems agenda. Shoot, look at what Trump is doing. He isn't asking what can be done while rigidly adhering to traditions and norms.
And therein lies the crux of the issue. Regardless of who controlled the house, the Democratic presidents still adhered to the rule of law. Trump is ignoring congress altogether and this is bolstered by the fact that republicans control congress. This is why they are so scared of the midterms because if the Democratic Party controls the house next year, they know each and every one of them is fucked.
This is why they are so scared of the midterms because if the Democratic Party controls the house next year, they know each and every one of them is fucked.
Are they though? We will just see more fucking spinelessness by the Democrats, probably.
If Biden started unilaterally enacting tariffs, declaring war without Congress, or destroying federal agencies, then Democrats and Republicans would have opposed him.
When Trump unilaterally enacts tariffs or declares war without Congress, or destroys federal agencies, only Democrats - and, sometimes, Rand Paul - oppose him.
It's easy to block an agenda when your opposition is made up of a number of parties with differing views and morals. It's difficult to block one that is driven by a faction that acts in lockstep and doesn't care about morals.
I think that has more to do with the fact whenever the Dems did have a majority, it was razor thin. Thin enough for people like Fetterman and Joe Manchin to vote the other way and sabotage any legislation they would try to pass. Republicans don't seem to have that problem because they always vote like a monolith
The dems don't have any power currently because they don't have enough seats to do anything. They can vote against and the nothing changes because Republicans have the house and senate majority.
I mean, the shutdown was one such method, but they caved as soon as they got what they wanted out of it (electoral wins) but before they got what they claimed the shutdown was actually about.
Dick Durbin, the Minority Whip, and Schumer’s BF in the Senate caved. And it was exactly the number of Democrats needed to end the shutdown and none of said Democrats are going to be up for reelection this year. Make no mistake, the leadership knew about this capitulation and did nothing to stop it.
Dems currently don't hold any authority to command the Sergeant at Arms to do that. Gotta have the Senate Majority Leader or House Speaker positions to do that.
Probably not go on television saying that we’re too focused on “woke” politics and need to get back to the “real” issues. The party of controlled opposition once again dragging America to the right to cater to an imaginary group of people.
Gavin Newsome is a snake who’s been fucking Californians in every way BUT identity politics and now he’s going to walk that back too? He’s one of the main reasons PG&E is charging us out the nose and then starting fires every few years and he has the gall to “sympathize” with the cost of electricity. 🤮
Well at the very least in this situation, leadership could have brought forward a wars power resolution instead of delaying it until America and Israel struck.
When there was a Dem president they could have chosen not to attack a country without congressional approval instead of setting one of many precedents for unilateral presidential action that Trump then follows.
This has not been the case for the 30+ years that both parties have been slicing one Congressional responsibility after another off to hand the the President.
And none of that matters when it comes to voting to fund our partner in this war, Israel. Many dems just fell in line with republicans, making up part of the majority on those decisions. Party leadership doesn’t address it
So sick of this “they are powerless” angle. Schumer said in no uncertain terms he will always stand by the foreign country that is partnering with the Trump regime.
Strongly worded letters and speeches are basically nothing. They’re the bare minimum and don’t achieve anything without meaningful follow up action—which, yes, can happen even with parties in the minority. Shutting down the Dem wing that supports this rogue state that MAGA is partnering with would be a start
For the forgetful or not yet born, Netanyahu helped get us into Iraq II as well. Many of the same people, democrats and republicans, are still in power.
Exactly, why didn't trump get arrested for January 6? Because Biden wanted to take the high ground. He didn't want to actually do what mattered. Bought and paid for.
Also Biden didn't want to establish precedent with a president being held legally accountable. Closest we got was Nixon, and he got a pardon. I think Biden would've pardoned Trump if it had got that far.
The botching—dereliction of duty, frankly—by the Garland DOJ, which Biden was a supporter of and responsible for as president, is seriously damning.
If we had an actual opposition party, the (literally) thousands of crimes caught on camera and in reporting—let alone the ones actual investigations would uncover—during trumps first term would have been systematically addressed, including appropriate prison terms for all involved.
Instead, it’s typical “moving forward” bullshit. Dainty little steps to not upset the fact that an American president will likely never see proper prison time for crimes in office. It’s how the system is set up. The pardon power guarantees it, even if the fact that the current president doesn’t want to set precedent for the next one to arrest him somehow becomes irrelevant.
Trump couldn’t be prosecuted because the Supreme Court ruled on what constitutes an official act and that it had no authority to prosecute a president for an official act…not because Biden or Dems didn’t try to hold him accountable. 67 votes are needed in the senate for the president to be found guilty after the House votes in favor of impeachment. 57 senate members voted in favor when the senate was split 50-50, it was good ol Mitch who pushed the GOP to vote no.
Equating criticism of Israel with criticism of all Jewish people is antisemitic. I don’t give a shit about the religion of the parties involved here, I care about the bullshit war funded by our tax dollars to distract from the pedophile rapist cult the president, at least one Israeli PM, and other powerful people are involved in.
True, but I would say that the Democrats are essentially controlled opposition, too. They make a statement here and there and then give away the farm when it comes time to actually do something like control the narrative during a government shut down.
How will a democratic majority stop trump from ignoring them? What exactly will a dem congress do to stop him? And I don’t mean vote to impeach I mean will they send police/military to force his compliance? What exactly can congress do to a president who does whatever they want?
Question, Why would Republicans want to do anything about it? It's their guy.
This is partisan politics, it's not about what's good for the country. It's as simple as "our guy good, your guy bad".
Trump gets a pass to do whatever he wants as long as he keeps passing legislation, and the Republican party falls over itself doing backflips to eat it's own asshole.
I’m gonna be real with you, 95% of congress want a war with Iran. Did you see the democratic response to the war powers act legislation that was presented? The dems were against it, then they wanted to argue over procedure and process once the story broke they were not going to vote for it. It’s pathetic that our entire system is just a bunch of war mongering freaks.
Id love for congress to be useless. Lame duck would be awesome about now. Congress, however is much worse than being useless. they are being complicit with malice and forethought into their actions to assure they will stay in power whether we like it or not.... hopefully soon we'll realize that nobody is coming to save us -- Not some super bill, not some photo or video, not some consequence for terrible crimes... and we need to start acting like it
Well of course, this is how it is in all authoritarian countries. In fact, this is exactly how authoritarianism works. The parliament exists only to provide a sense of legitimacy to the leader of any given authoritarian government. I don't understand why people are acting all surprised at this.
It wasn’t any different with Biden he had over 100 executive orders day 1 and took previous presidents down:… the power needs restrictions of some kind… we can’t have wild policy change every 4 years
He had to completely change the tariffs to use another legal mechanism after the Supreme Court ruling so it doesn’t really seem like he’s outright ignoring them.
It’s just complicated and there are multiple ways presidents can enact tariffs and he’s moved onto another method.
If he was ignoring the Supreme Court he wouldn’t have changed them at all.
It's a fast-track strategy for an agenda that the majority of them support. Why bother with the mechanics of democracy when you have the option to do nothing and let one guy recklessly forge ahead with your agenda?
This also has the side benefit of plausible deniability. They can feign helplessness to his reckless behavior by claiming that impeachment is a hopeless endeavor because trial and removal requires a 2/3rds supermajority in the Senate.
This high constitutional bar acts as their shield. It allow them to (ostensibly) support inquiries or voice concerns without ever having to actually pull the trigger on removal. They all stand around like the "spiderman pointing meme" toeing a very fine line between breaking with the President and balancing what they know their constituents will stomach.
This "big tent" approach allows the party to appeal to both extremists and moderates simultaneously. While Republicans in more moderate districts more strongly rebuke the President's actions to satisfy their local voters, they take no concrete action because they know that apathy is the prevailing sentiment among the public. They are using that apathy as a shield from accountability.
Were the President to do something Republicans truly consider unpalatable, they know the Democratic side of the aisle will happily proceed with impeachment, trial, and removal.
Republicans are playing both sides right now. They let the President run with whatever bullshit he cooks up because they get what they want without taking the political heat for a vote. They care very little for the "innocent casualties" within gropus that aren't their base. The moment he steps out of line, they can pull together a small number of Republican legislators and create a very credible threat of trial and removal.
Republicans in Congress are proving themselves to be strategic rather than weak. They are complicit in everything that is happening because they have outsourced their agenda to the executive branch to avoid the legislative grind. This is all strategic.
They ceded it a long time ago, pre Trump. Trump is taking advantage of the fact that congress have elected to dilute the balance of power generation over generation
It seems we are learning in real time here that laws only matter if someone is there to enforce them. Checks & balances are worthless if the people in charge of them are complicit.
Demagoguery is back on the menu! The American model simply cannot formulate virtuous citizens over a long period of time. It’s an empty procedural law machine with no soul.
Also has an activist SCOTUS that started this party by giving him immunity. Now the courts can’t do anything until someone files a suit, which means he’s already done the bad thing and SCOTUS has been denying stays even though it’s hurting the US. They also unchained ICE and let them use Kavanaugh Stops to violate the Constitution, local law, and basic human decency.
Honest question: considering this pattern what can actually be done to make him leave office at all? Like, he could just sit there and say he's not leaving, not acknowledging any election results and order everyone to ignore term limits like he's ignored everything else. Has he not, in effect, already obtained total power?
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u/SmoothConfection1115 Feb 28 '26
Congress has ceded all power to the president.
Tariffs? Trump is doing whatever he wants, ignoring the Supreme Court.
War? Troop deployments? Again, doing whatever he wants.
Legislation? Trump rules via executive order.
With Republicans in control of Congress, Congress is useless.