6
   

Here are some key reasons I fear the Republican party:

 
 
bulmabriefs144
 
  -3  
Reply Thu 14 Jul, 2022 10:31 pm
@Real Music,
I see. Not answering my question.
0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Fri 15 Jul, 2022 11:05 pm
Idaho (Republicans) poised to reject 2020 election results.


Published July 14, 2022


Quote:
BOISE, Idaho -- The Idaho Republican Party will consider 31 resolutions at its three-day convention starting Thursday, including one already adopted by Texas Republicans that President Joe Biden isn’t the legitimate leader of the country.

The Idaho resolution in the deeply conservative state that Donald Trump won with 64% of the vote in 2020 is nearly identical to the Texas resolution that was passed last month, stating: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election; and we hold that acting president Joseph Robinette Biden was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

Both the Idaho and Texas resolutions contend that secretaries of state circumvented their state legislatures, even though both states have Republican secretaries of state.

Jim Jones, a former chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court as well as a former Republican state attorney general, called the resolution rejecting the 2020 presidential election results “asinine,” noting multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected attempts to overturn the election.

“(The Idaho Republican Party) has gotten so caught up in conspiracy theories, meaningless culture war issues, that they have quit being able to function as a meaningful political party,” he said. “We have got to get away from this authoritarian streak that has infected the Idaho Republican Party, as well as a good part of the nation, because it’s absolutely tearing our country apart.”

Idaho's resolution goes further than the Texas resolution in that it falsely states that audits found the vote count for the 2020 election to be fraudulent in Wisconsin and Arizona.

In Wisconsin, election fraud claims have been dismissed by courts or rejected by the state's (bipartisan) election commission.

In Arizona, where Republicans submitted a slate of fake electors, Trump supporters hired inexperienced consultants to run “a forensic audit” that was discredited. FBI agents looking into events surrounding Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss recently subpoenaed the Republican Arizona Senate president, who orchestrated a discredited review of the election.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally, even accused Idaho of allowing election fraud. But the Idaho secretary of state said a partial recount of ballots validated the accuracy of the 2020 results.

Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist, said revisiting the 2020 election by different state or local Republican party officials “seems to be an issue that is commanding a lot of attention still in the Republican party. It may continue to cast doubt on our elections and increase fears of voters that their votes are not being counted.”

Among the other proposed Idaho Republican Party resolutions this week is one calling for not recognizing “imaginary identities,” a resolution aimed at transgender people.

Multiple resolutions involve voting, several focusing on people not deemed sufficiently Republican voting in Republican primaries.

One resolution, titled “A Resolution to Protect Rural Representation,” calls for changing Idaho’s system for statewide elections into a national-style electoral college, a process that sometimes leads to candidates winning without receiving the most votes.

Trump, for example, in 2016 defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by winning more electoral college votes despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes. The proposed system for Idaho would tally electoral votes from counties. Such a change in Idaho would require changing the state’s constitution.

Another proposed resolution calls for privatizing Idaho Public Television, a long-time target of far-right Republicans.

The Idaho Republican Party will also elect officers during the gathering. First-term incumbent Chair Tom Luna, who served two terms as the state's schools chief, is being challenged by Republican Rep. Dorothy Moon. Moon ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in May for secretary of state, contending the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and Biden wasn't president.

Mainstream Idaho Republicans, who would be considered far-right in many states, have dominated the state for three decades. But they have become targets of far-right members of their own party and labeled as RINOs — Republican in name only.

The May primary was a mixed bag for the two groups, and the power struggle will likely continue at the convention.

In the primary, first-term incumbent Gov. Brad Little crushed Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, and most other statewide races went to more mainstream Idaho Republicans. But Raul Labrador, a favorite of the Tea Party during his eight years in the U.S. House, defeated five-term Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, well known for a strategy of simply calling balls and strikes that oftentimes irked his Republican colleagues when he gave them legal advice they didn't want to hear.

Several far-right lawmakers in the House lost their seats, but the Senate turned decidedly more conservative with mainstream losses that included the co-chairman of the legislature's powerful budget-setting committee.


https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/idaho-republicans-poised-reject-2020-election-results-86827255
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Jul, 2022 06:47 am
@bulmabriefs144,
bulmabriefs144 wrote:

Interesting word here. Fear.

I was watching a movie that summed up tyrannical regimes in one word. Fear.

The dictators are afraid of losing power. The commoners are initially driven into fear by a crisis (COVID as an example, but as another one, before WWII, Germany had crazy inflation and Hitler took advantage), but eventually become afraid either of their government, or of some imaginary enemy used as a scapegoat. The thugs of the regime (e.g. brownshirts or storm troopers) in turn use fear.

Meanwhile, why the hell are you afraid of Republicans? I know you live in a bubble where you never meet any Republicans, but they are obviously different from you imagine. Or you're projecting.

This is mostly what Republicans do.



You missed the most important picture of what Republicans do:

https://i.imgflip.com/1y2bp9.jpg
bulmabriefs144
 
  -3  
Reply Sat 16 Jul, 2022 07:44 am
@Frank Apisa,
Liberals are motivated by shame and fear. They despise Trump because he isn't afraid, and isn't ashamed.

I would proudly put that on a bumper stick right next to Trump 2024.
And proudly put that next to a trans friendly sticker. I'm trans, I'm a former Trump voter (I stopped voting when two elections in a row went crooked), and I don't ******* care about "mean tweets". The wokeleft tries to convince us they're important, because to them image is everything. That's why it's more important to them to have laws passed that sound virtuous on paper than ones that, oh I dunno, work?

https://i.imgflip.com/1y2bp9.jpg

Gonna get that printed on some bumper sticker site. With another that says **** Ukraine, I ❤ Russia.

And this one.
https://rlv.zcache.com/im_not_ashamed_are_you_bumper_sticker-rba083393ed9c4b3cb3d85e8d34dda151_v9wht_8byvr_630.jpg
0 Replies
 
revelette1
 
  2  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2022 09:30 am
Quote:
Rejecting Christian Nationalism Is What Jesus Would Do
Rev. Nathan Empsal

Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene who wrap themselves in T-shirts proclaiming to be “proud Christian Nationalists” are really wolves in sheep’s clothing.

In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan found revival at Stone Mountain in Georgia in a ceremony that included a U.S. flag and a Holy Bible placed on an altar before a burning cross.

More than a century later, today’s generation of white supremacists are following in their political ancestors’ footsteps, explicitly and proudly embracing the label of “Christian nationalist.” Some are even going so far as to sell merch, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) hawking “exclusive” shirts emblazoned with “Proud Christian Nationalist.”

Even before she began advertising the shirts on Instagram with the call to stand against the “Godless Left,” Greene told an interviewer that the Republican Party needs “ to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

It’s not the first time she has embraced the label. And it’s a dangerous turn of events that requires active, loud opposition from all of us, especially from American Christians, for whom Greene and her allies claim to speak.

As a pastor, if there’s one thing I understand, it’s that Christian nationalism is unchristian and unpatriotic. Academic researchers define the authoritarian ideology as a political worldview—not a religion—that unconstitutionally and unbiblically merges Christian and American identities, declaring that democracy does not matter because America is a “Christian nation” where only conservative Christians count as true Americans.

If there’s any doubt that this is the heart of Christian nationalism, consider these two examples. First, last fall former Trump aide Michael Flynn stood in a Texas megachurch known for its antisemitic pastor and told a crowd chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” that America should have only “one religion.” Then only last month, America First Legal—whose board includes top Trump allies Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows—issued a statement asking the Supreme Court to let the 50 states create official state churches and “establish religion within their borders,” claiming that the First Amendment only applies to the federal government.

The clear goal of Christian nationalism is to seize power only for its mostly white evangelical and conservative Catholic followers, no matter who else gets hurt or how many elections have to be overturned. This is the unholy force that incited the failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, brought us the recent spate of theocratic Supreme Court opinions, and has inspired multiple wave upon wave of dangerous misinformation about elections, climate change, and COVID-19—all in direct contrast to Jesus’ teachings of love, truth, and the common good.

Whether they speak from the halls of power or the front of a sanctuary, Rep. Greene and her ilk know exactly what they are doing when they so proudly embrace the label of Christian nationalist. Each explicit declaration of Christian nationalism is a blatant attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes and make the anti-democracy extremist ideology seem safe and more palatable, distracting us from the right’s project of seizing power to remake America into a theocracy in their image—a nation where the LGBTQ community, people of color, and non-Christians all lose rights while evangelicals and conservative Catholics are put permanently in charge.

They are America’s false prophets. And Jesus warned us about them.

Wrapping their hateful heresy in a T-shirt, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They try to appear righteous, carrying a cross and wrapping themselves in the flag, but instead are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. They cross the land to convert Americans to their hate-filled ideology with the promise of salvation but instead lead their converts astray, dividing families and undermining our democracy at every turn.

Greene would have you believe that all of her critics “hate America [and] hate God,” but this ignores the fact that most Christians are appalled at the way she hijacks the Gospel to justify attending white nationalist rallies and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. Yet she’s not alone: evangelical businessman and QAnon believer Clay Clark tells his right-wing political rallies that they’re “Team Jesus” battling the Catholic Joe Biden and the Jewish Anthony Fauci on “Team Satan.”

For all their cries of a “Godless left,” conservative, white evangelicals are only a fraction of American Christianity and an even smaller fraction of America. According to the nonpartisan PRRI, white evangelical Protestants only make up 14.6 percent of the population, but are among the most likely to believe that the election was stolen from Trump and other QAnon lies, and that “American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

They don’t speak for American Christians. And it's up to us to finally deflate their claims of a monopoly and thus their hold on power, reclaim our religion and its prophetic voice for the Gospel’s true values of love, dignity, equality, and social justice.

Across the country, Christians—clergy and lay folk alike—are speaking out. The Christian organization I lead, Faithful America, has amassed more than 112,000 signatures in the past year alone on actions condemning Greene’s unabashed Christian nationalism and calling for consequences when she and her allies, including political candidates like Doug Mastriano and incumbent Reps. Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn, spread violent and hateful Christian nationalist lies. We’re also taking a Christian stand against the ministers and religious leaders who sell out their churches for a taste of power like Franklin Graham, Proud Boy allies Sean Feucht and Greg Locke, and Bishop Joseph Strickland.

I’m particularly inspired by clergy from California to Ohio who have spoken out in opposition to Christian nationalism as the ReAwaken America Tour has rolled into their communities, bringing Greene, Clark, disgraced General Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and dozens of others connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection, QAnon, and the spread of COVID-19 misinformation to local megachurches. Never underestimate the power of speaking out together: When local faith and community leaders petitioned government officials and mobilized against the tour stop in Rochester, New York, they successfully pressured the venue to cancel the event and forced tour organizers to scramble to find a new venue.

Everything Green and her ilk says is a bastardization of the Christian faith, and it is harmful not just to the church but to all Americans. Christians will not ignore this hateful hijacking of Jesus’s name. And we will stand against America’s false prophets in this fall’s midterm season and beyond.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/reverend-nathan-empsall-says-rejecting-christian-nationalism-is-what-jesus-would-do?ref=scroll

I don't go so far as to say what Jesus would or would not do, however, I agree with much of its sentiment.
0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Mon 5 Sep, 2022 02:36 am
Published Aug 29, 2022


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 10 Oct, 2022 09:47 pm
Published Sep 27, 2022


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 10 Oct, 2022 09:51 pm
Oct 7, 2022


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 10 Oct, 2022 10:12 pm
Social Security Under Attack Again.

The (Republican Party) is trying to privatize social security again, this time is the dishonestly titled (Trust Act).
Alex Lawson explains why this is just another attempt to privatize Social Security.


Published Sep 10, 2022


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 10 Oct, 2022 10:44 pm
Rep. Katie Porter on (Direct Contracting Entities).


During the spring of 2021, Rep. Katie Porter sounded the alarm about (Direct Contracting Entities),
a Trump-era pilot program that represents the latest insidious attempt to privatize Traditional Medicare.


Rep. Porter, who co-authored a letter to HHS Sec. Xavier Becerra in the spring of 2021 demanding
an end to DCEs, spoke about the dangers of the program during a Sept. 23, 2021 webinar co-hosted
by PNHP and National Single Payer.


Published Nov 22, 2021


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 10 Oct, 2022 11:12 pm
Medicare saves lives. But unscrupulous private industry con artists are using Medicare in their name,
could making it illegal for private industry to steal the Medicare name and brand save people
from being ripped off?


Published Oct 7, 2022


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Mon 23 Jan, 2023 09:53 pm
House (Republicans) immediately pass bill to let rich people cheat
on their taxes.

(Republicans) in the House have voted to block additional funding for the IRS.


Published January 10, 2023


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Mon 23 Jan, 2023 09:58 pm
(Republican) ADMITS They're Trying To Cut YOUR Social Security.

(Republican) Rep. Rick Allen told a reporter that people have told him they want to work longer
than they already do.


Published January 17, 2023


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Wed 25 Jan, 2023 08:26 am
Elizabeth Warren: (Republicans) are running a con game on the debt ceiling.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the national debt conversation: “What we say as Democrats is,
‘Look, we’re not going to talk about spending cuts so long as you guys are out here just
talking about how to protect the billionaires and the giant corporations."


Published January 24, 2023


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Wed 25 Jan, 2023 05:19 pm
Iowa (Republicans) trying to BAN Food Stamp users
from buying real food.

Published January 23, 2023


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 01:57 am
South Carolina bill may EXECUTE women for getting Abortions.


Published March 3, 2023


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  3  
Reply Sat 20 May, 2023 08:23 pm
'Let's Pull Back The Curtain': Jeff Merkley Rips Republicans On Debt Limit.


Published May 20, 2023


0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 17 Jul, 2023 12:48 pm
(Republican) Senator Ron Johnson: Social Security Is UNFAIR To The Rich!


Published July 13, 2023


0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Mon 17 Jul, 2023 01:41 pm
This from the people who label Joe Biden a "dictator":

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Quote:
Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

nyt
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Mon 17 Jul, 2023 08:56 pm
@hightor,

That should scare the crap out of every American, regardless of party affiliation.
0 Replies
 
 

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