#loser j trump

[isawthismeme]

[trumpdump]

This is why I became a republican this year after voting against Trump twice.

They’re all full of hate and I’m done supporting them.

Please get help. ✌🏻

….

To clarify for those that don’t understand

I’m tired of liberals being full of hate and stupidity. I didn’t decide on who to vote for from a message I received today. Voting already ended but maybe you didn’t know that…

[stoph8co]

[darkmaga-returns]

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, legacy news networks were already sliding toward 2016 levels of melting down about the increasingly definite prospect of a presidential victory by Donald J. Trump. For them, Harris’ stinging defeat is personal — because it’s just as much a defeat for them as it is for her.

The corporate media industrial complex has spent Donald Trump’s entire political career trying to destroy him. Hand-in-hand with triple-letter government agencies and Democrats, they ran a hoax painting Trump as a Russian stooge based on ridiculous rumors commissioned by his opponent’s campaign in 2016. They continued to spread the lie for the duration of his presidency, awarding each other Pulitzers for it. And they’ve only ramped up their efforts since then.

The problem they’re reckoning with tonight is this: those efforts didn’t work. They’re no longer able to control Americans by controlling their information intake, because their credibility is farther deep-sixed than the Clinton family’s enemies list.

A TV executive anonymously fretted last week that “If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form.”

Even before the election results were in, that was true of the corporate press. Jeff Bezos knew it when he reportedly ordered The Washington Post to withhold an endorsement of Harris. But now, they can’t avoid it.

Since the last presidential election, the media have screeched incessantly about Trump “inciting an insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They made documentaries comparing Trump to the Ku Klux Klan. They portrayed Trump as the ringleader of a terrorist attack and not as a president who gave a speech and urged his supporters to protest peacefully.

Tuesday night’s results are a resounding indication that Americans didn’t buy it.

[patriottruth]

This is a reminder that on March 4th, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered donald j. trump to have 87 Democrats in both houses of Congress remove his insurrectionist disqualification from ever holding any federal office again. He failed to do so prior to November 5, 2024.

Here's a compilation of evidence I'm being asked for that I pulled together from Wikipedia:

On March 4, 2024, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson reversed the Colorado Supreme Court decision, holding that Congress determines eligibility under Section 3 for federal officeholders and states may only bar candidates from state office.

While all nine justices agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment grants this power to the federal government, and not to the individual states, two separate opinions were issued. Justice Amy Coney Barrett concurred in the Court's decision that states cannot enforce Section 3 against federal officials, but wrote that the court should not have addressed "the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced." Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an opinion co-signed by all three Justices, concurred in the judgment, but said that the court went beyond what was needed for the case and should not have declared that Congress has the exclusive power to decide Section 3 eligibility questions, stating that the Court's opinion had decided "novel constitutional questions to insulate this court and petitioner [Trump] from future controversy."

On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 decision, that failed and deposed insurrectionist 2020 election loser and former president donald j. trump had absolute immunity for acts he committed as president within his core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

Berger v. United States, 255 U.S. 22 (1921), is a United States Supreme Court decision overruling a trial court decision by U.S. District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis against Rep. Victor L. Berger, a Congressman for Wisconsin's 5th district and the founder of the Social Democratic Party of America, and several other German-American defendants who were convicted of violating the Espionage Act by publicizing anti-interventionist views during World War I.

The case was argued on December 9, 1920, and decided on January 31, 1921, with an opinion by Justice Joseph McKenna and dissents by Justices William R. Day, James Clark McReynolds, and Mahlon Pitney. The Supreme Court held that Judge Landis was properly disqualified as trial judge based on an affidavit filed by the German defendants asserting that Judge Landis' public anti-German statements should disqualify him from presiding over the trial of the defendants.

The House of Representatives twice denied Berger his seat in the House due to his original conviction for espionage using Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution regarding denying office to those who supported "insurrection or rebellion". The Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1921 in Berger v. U.S., and Berger won three successive terms in the House in the 1920s.

Per the United States Supreme Court's "Berger test" that states that to disqualify ANY judge in the United States of America: 1) a party files an affidavit claiming personal bias or prejudice demonstrating an "objectionable inclination or disposition of the judge" and 2) claim of bias is based on facts antedating the trial.

All 6 criminal MAGA insurrectionist and trump-loyalist U.S. Supreme Court Justices who've repeatedly and illegally ruled in donald j. trump's favor are as disqualified from issuing any rulings pertaining to donald j. trump (a German immigrant) as the United States Supreme Court ruled U.S. District Court Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was when he attempted to deny Victor L. Berger (a German immigrant) from holding office for violating the Espionage Act and supporting or engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States of America.

Again, as the text of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly reads, and ONLY reads:

Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 3 clearly and ONLY gives Congress the power to remove a disability of an insurrectionist to "be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State".

Section 3 clearly DOESN'T give Congress the power to impose or enforce a disability of an insurrectionist to "be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State". That's what Impeachment is for, and donald j. trump was impeached for insurrection and referred to the Department of Justice by a Congressional committee for prosecution for his and his supporters acts of insurrection against the United States of America on January 6, 2021.

Section 3 clearly DOESN'T give the United States Supreme Court the authority to illegally and criminally engage in insurrection against the United States of America by MODIFYING the U.S. Constitution AND LEGISLATING from the bench to relieve their own political party and the former insurrectionist U.S. President who appointed them from needing a two-thirds vote of each House to remove the disability of an insurrectionist to run for President of the United States and hold the office of the President of the United States should they be legally elected in a free and fair election. The insurrectionist MAGA cult that's taken over the former Republican Party of the United States knows that there was no way they were getting a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress to put impeached insurrectionist and convicted felon donald j. trump on the ballot, and so they had their six legally disqualified U.S. Supreme Court criminal MAGA insurrectionist injustices legislate from the bench AND ILLEGALLY and CRIMINALLY modify the U.S. Constitution to put Espionage Act traitor, convicted felon, and impeached insurrectionist donald j. trump on the 2024 U.S. presidential election ballot.

There are two steps in the amendment process of modifying the U.S. Constitution. Proposals to amend the Constitution must be properly adopted and ratified before they change the Constitution. First, there are two procedures for adopting the language of a proposed amendment, either by (a) Congress, by two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or (b) national convention (which shall take place whenever two-thirds of the state legislatures collectively call for one). Second, there are two procedures for ratifying the proposed amendment, which requires three-fourths of the states' (presently 38 of 50) approval: (a) consent of the state legislatures, or (b) consent of state ratifying conventions. The ratification method is chosen by Congress for each amendment. (Wikipedia)

The necessary CONTEXT for the LEGAL UNMODIFIED ORIGINAL text of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution is this: At the time of the drafting of the United States Constitution, the Americans known as "We The People" were fighting and dying to liberate themselves out from under a tyrannical king! Obviously, a President or Vice President who'd engage in insurrection against the United States of America DURING OR IMMEDIATELY AFTER the creation of the United States Constitution would be executed for TREASON; and because it'd be impossible for "a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any officeholder, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State" to BE IN A POSISTION TO IMMEDIATELY PROCLAIM THEMSELVES THE NEW TYRANNICAL DIVINE KING FOR LIFE OVER THE UNITED STATES AMERICA; and because all traitors were being actively and immediately executed for TREASON, it'd have been impossible for an insurrectionist traitor President or Vice President to run for any office again - because they'd be dead; therefore, it was unnecessary to include an executed treasonous President and/or Vice President in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. With full knowledge and understanding of these facts, the criminal insurrectionist MAGA extremist U.S. Supreme Court injustices ILLEGALLY and CRIMINALLY legislated from the bench to modify Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution so that, as far as the 6 MAGA extremist U.S. Supreme Court injustices are concerned, it now reads as such WITHOUT having been LEGALLY amended by a both two-thirds vote of both houses of the U.S. Congress AND the approval of 38 of 50 U.S. states:

Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. As of March 4, 2024, six partisan Justices on the United States Supreme Court bypassed the legal and proper constitutional amendment process, legislated from the bench, and added the following illegal and unenforceable legislation to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution without Congressional or States approval and ratification: "Only Congress determines eligibility of insurrectionist candidates under Section 3 for federal officeholders and states may only bar insurrectionist candidates from state office. Federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced upon insurrectionist candidates for federal office."

How many elected Republicans, Democrats, and Independents in the House of Representatives and the Senate provided the necessary two-thirds vote to amend the U.S. Constitution in this manner? What are the names of all of these so-called elected officials and where are the official voting records? What dates did these voting sessions occur?

Which of the 38 U.S. states ratified this Congressional two-thirds-vote-approved constitutional amendment so that the Espionage Act traitor, convicted felon, and insurrectionist donald j. trump could appear on the 2024 U.S. presidential ballot? This is where the presidential Take Care Clause is automatically activated and the U.S. president enforces the laws of the United States and upholds, protects, and defends the U.S. Constitution, and perpetuates American democracy.

This is where all six MAGA criminal insurrectionist SCOTUS injustices face both immediate and permanent disbarment from ever practicing law anywhere in the United States of America AND Congressional Impeachment and removal from the Supreme Court of the United States of America for giving aid, comfort, and support to criminal defendant donald j. trump's felonies involving moral turpitude, forgery, fraud, a history of dishonesty, consistent lack of attention to the American people, the United States, his oath of office, and the U.S. Constitution, drug abuse, thefts of taxpayer and U.S. government monies, thefts of at least 13,000 classified documents and other U.S. government property, and a pattern of violations of all professional codes of ethics.

Article Two of the United States Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government, which carries out and enforces federal laws. Article Two vests the power of the executive branch in the office of the president of the United States, lays out the procedures for electing and removing the president, and establishes the president's powers and responsibilities.

Clause 5: Caring for the faithful execution of the law The president must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This clause in the Constitution imposes a duty on the president to enforce the laws of the United States and is called the Take Care Clause, also known as the Faithful Execution Clause or Faithfully Executed Clause. This clause is meant to ensure that a law is faithfully executed by the president even if he disagrees with the purpose of that law. The Take Care Clause demands that the president obey the law, the Supreme Court said in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, and repudiates any notion that he may dispense with the law's execution. In Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court explained how the president executes the law: "The Constitution does not leave to speculation who is to administer the laws enacted by Congress; the president, it says, "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," Art. II, §3, personally and through officers whom he appoints (save for such inferior officers as Congress may authorize to be appointed by the "Courts of Law" or by "the Heads of Departments" with other presidential appointees), Art. II, §2." In Mississippi v. Johnson, 71 U.S. 475 (1867), the Supreme Court ruled that the judiciary may not restrain the president in the execution of the laws. In that case the Supreme Court refused to entertain a request for an injunction preventing President Andrew Johnson from executing the Reconstruction Acts, which were claimed to be unconstitutional. The Court found that "[t]he Congress is the legislative department of the government; the president is the executive department. Neither can be restrained in its action by the judicial department; though the acts of both, when performed, are, in proper cases, subject to its cognizance." Thus, the courts cannot bar the passage of a law by Congress, though it may later strike down such a law as unconstitutional. A similar construction applies to the executive branch. (Wikipedia)

The Take Care Clause is the constitutional checks and balances guardrail to counter judicial activism, legislating from the bench, and a rogue U.S. Supreme Court that's supporting and actively engaging in insurrection against the United States of America and We The People of the United States with the purpose of overthrowing the U.S. government, installing a dictator/King for life, ending American democracy, and engaging in tyranny against We The People of the United States of America. Due to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity, President Joe Biden can simply overrule MAGA SCOTUS, remove donald j. trump from the 2024 U.S. presidential ballot, and issue an Executive Order barring all six of the criminal insurrectionist MAGA extremist SCOTUS injustices from taking or ruling on any 2024 U.S. presidential election matters and/or any matters pertaining to donald j. trump, per the Berger Test that legally disqualifies them from doing so. President Biden can then simply issue an Executive Order proclaiming that no sworn election official or law enforcement official anywhere in the U.S. or its territories can attempt to cause even one vote for the Espionage Act traitor, convicted felon, and insurrectionist donald j. trump to be counted for the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

What all of that means is that between now and December 17th, 2024, donald j. trump has no choice but to go to Congress and have 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification, as he was ordered to do by SCOTUS on March 4th, 2024, or he's not legally the President Elect and cannot be inaugurated, sworn in, or hold federal office again on January 20, 2025. The clock is ticking!

Here's why this will work: donald trump's legal tactics are deny, attempt to wiggle out of it on technicalities, and delay, delay, delay. Well, from November 2023 to March 4, 2024, donald trump not only said that he was never an officer of the United States, but that he also never swore an oath to support the United States Constitution. And then he said that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says nothing about running for office, only holding office, and since he's only running for office, nothing can keep him off the ballot. And that's where this has finally caught up to him.

SCOTUS illegally took the case to begin with. SCOTUS was required to kick the case back to Congress immediately to force a two-thirds of both houses vote to remove donald trump's insurrectionist disqualification. But they illegally denied Congress the ability to vote on it at the time, illegally legislated from the bench to keep donald trump on the ballot by illegally amending Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, and dismissed the clear two-thirds vote requirement to replace it with "Congress must pass new legislation and amend Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in order to keep insurrectionists off of the ballot and out of office in the future. All six MAGA SCOTUS injustices can now be immediately and permanently disbarred from ever judging or practicing law anywhere in the United States now and in the future for that illegal legislating from the bench; because the U.S. Constitution clearly says that the Judiciary can never interfere with Congress legislating, or with the President enforcing the laws of the United States.

donald trump and his allies figured that was a win, that SCOTUS couldn't be challenged, that the Democrats could never get legislation passed to keep him off the ballot or from holding office again, and the matter was dropped. But that's where he was wrong; because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment still reads, and only legally reads, that the only way an insurrectionist can hold federal office again is by a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; and that means that now that donald trump can't try and use the technicality of "I'm not even trying to hold office, I'm just running for office," and he's actively trying to hold office with no technicality wiggle room, donald trump's only path to the White House is to have 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification by December 17th, 2017; and his favorite tactic of delay, delay, delay won't work because delaying means he can't be inaugurated, sworn in, and serve as the 47th President of the United States; and that means Kamala Harris would become 47th President of the United States by default.

If anyone is interested in fighting another trump presidency, contact every Democrat representative in the House of Representatives and the Senate and remind them that donald j. trump cannot be inaugurated, sworn in, and be the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025 unless 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification before December 17, 2024. Many of them have online contact forms. You may have to enter an address near their local office in their district for the contact form to go through, but I know they're going to want to be reminded of this by as many people as possible in order to save humanity and American democracy from donald trump. Plus, Kamala Harris can be contacted via the White House Vice President contact form; and as a presidential candidate and the President of the Senate, she and President Biden can do a lot to enforce donald trump having to have his insurrectionist disqualification removed by a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives and the Senate before December 17, 2024.

This is why donald j. trump has no path to the White House without having 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 17 Democrats in the Senate vote to remove his insurrectionist disqualification; and why all 6 MAGA Insurrectionist SCOTUS injustices will be immediately and permanently disbarred for legislating from the bench, denying Congress the opportunity to legislate as the U.S. Constitution requires, and illegally and criminally amending Section 3 of the 14th Amendment so that elected Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate would be denied the opportunity to represent their constituents via the required two-thirds vote to remove donald j. trump's insurrectionist disqualification from ever holding federal office again.

MAGA SCOTUS' Illegal and Criminal Actions in the Anderson vs. trump Case. From www.supremecourt.gov:

The text of Section 3 reinforces these conclusions. Its final sentence empowers Congress to “remove” any Section 3 “disability” by a two-thirds vote of each house. The text imposes no limits on that power, and Congress may exercise it any time, as the respondents concede. In fact, historically, Congress sometimes exercised this amnesty power postelection to ensure that some of the people’s chosen candidates could take office.

…it is Congress that has long given effect to Section 3 with respect to would-be or existing federal officeholders. Shortly after ratification of the Amendment, Congress enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870. That Act authorized federal district attorneys to bring civil actions in federal court to remove anyone holding nonlegislative office—federal or state—in violation of Section 3, and made holding or attempting to hold office in violation of Section 3 a federal crime.

Section 5 limits congressional legislation enforcing Section 3, because Section 5 is strictly “remedial.” To comply with that limitation, Congress “must tailor its legislative scheme to remedying or preventing” the specific conduct the relevant provision prohibits. Section 3, unlike other provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, proscribes conduct of individuals. It bars persons from holding office after taking a qualifying oath and then engaging in insurrection or rebellion—nothing more.

Any congressional legislation enforcing Section 3 must, like the Enforcement Act of 1870 and §2383, reflect “congruence and proportionality” between preventing or remedying that conduct “and the means adopted to that end.” Neither we nor the respondents are aware of any other legislation by Congress to enforce Section 3.

The disruption would be all the more acute—and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result—if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos—arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.

Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson Opinion on the Majority Ruling:

Yet the majority goes further. Even though “[a]ll nine Members of the Court” agree that this independent and sufficient rationale resolves this case, five Justices go on. They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy. Ante, at 13. Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.

Yet the Court continues on to resolve questions not before us. In a case involving no federal action whatsoever, the Court opines on how federal enforcement of Section 3 must proceed. Congress, the majority says, must enact legislation under Section 5 prescribing the procedures to “ ‘ “ascertain[ ] what particular individuals” ’ ” should be disqualified. Ante, at 5 (quoting Griffin’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 7, 26 (No. 5,815) (CC Va. 1869) (Chase, Circuit Justice)). These musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.

To start, nothing in Section 3’s text supports the majority’s view of how federal disqualification efforts must operate. Section 3 states simply that “[n]o person shall” hold certain positions and offices if they are oathbreaking insurrectionists. Amdt. 14. Nothing in that unequivocal bar suggests that implementing legislation enacted under Section 5 is “critical” (or, for that matter, what that word means in this context). Ante, at 5. In fact, the text cuts the opposite way. Section 3 provides that when an oathbreaking insurrectionist is disqualified, “Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation. Even petitioner’s lawyer acknowledged the “tension” in Section 3 that the majority’s view creates. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31.

Similarly, nothing else in the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the majority’s view. Section 5 gives Congress the “power to enforce [the Amendment] by appropriate legislation.” Remedial legislation of any kind, however, is not required. All the Reconstruction Amendments (including the due process and equal protection guarantees and prohibition of slavery) “are self-executing,” meaning that they do not depend on legislation. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 524 (1997); see Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 20 (1883). Similarly, other constitutional rules of disqualification, like the two-term limit on the Presidency, do not require implementing legislation. See, e.g., Art. II, §1, cl. 5 (Presidential Qualifications); Amdt. 22 (Presidential Term Limits). Nor does the majority suggest otherwise. It simply creates a special rule for the insurrection disability in Section 3.

The majority is left with next to no support for its requirement that a Section 3 disqualification can occur only pursuant to legislation enacted for that purpose. It cites Griffin’s Case, but that is a nonprecedential, lower court opinion by a single Justice in his capacity as a circuit judge. See ante, at 5 (quoting 11 F. Cas., at 26). Once again, even petitioner’s lawyer distanced himself from fully embracing this case as probative of Section 3’s meaning. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 35–36. The majority also cites Senator Trumbull’s statements that Section 3 “ ‘provide[d] no means for enforcing’ ” itself. Ante, at 5 (quoting Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 1st Sess., 626 (1869)). The majority, however, neglects to mention the Senator’s view that “[i]t is the [F]ourteenth [A]mendment that prevents a person from holding office,” with the proposed legislation simply “affor[ding] a more efficient and speedy remedy” for effecting the disqualification. Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 1st Sess., at 626–627.

Ultimately, under the guise of providing a more “complete explanation for the judgment,” ante, at 13, the majority resolves many unsettled questions about Section 3. It forecloses judicial enforcement of that provision, such as might occur when a party is prosecuted by an insurrectionist and raises a defense on that score. The majority further holds that any legislation to enforce this provision must prescribe certain procedures “ ‘tailor[ed]’ ” to Section 3, ante, at 10, ruling out enforcement under general federal statutes requiring the government to comply with the law. By resolving these and other questions, the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office.

“What it does today, the Court should have left undone.” Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 158 (2000) (Breyer, J., dissenting). The Court today needed to resolve only a single question: whether an individual State may keep a Presidential candidate found to have engaged in insurrection off its ballot. The majority resolves much more than the case before us. Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate. It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.

Section 3 serves an important, though rarely needed, role in our democracy. The American people have the power to vote for and elect candidates for national office, and that is a great and glorious thing. The men who drafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, however, had witnessed an “insurrection [and] rebellion” to defend slavery. §3. They wanted to ensure that those who had participated in that insurrection, and in possible future insurrections, could not return to prominent roles. Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President. Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision. Because we would decide only the issue before us, we concur only in the judgment.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

I am not usually one to offer diagnoses of people I’ve never met, but it does seem like the pundit class of the American media is suffering from severe memory loss. Because they’re doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race – providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald J Trump. They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: “As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one. According to one journalist’s tally, the New York Times has run 192 stories on the subject since the debate, including 50 editorials and 142 news stories. The Washington Post, which has also gone for saturation coverage, published a resignation speech they wrote for him. Not to be outdone, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief declared that Biden not going away “would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment” and had a staff writer suggest that Democrats should use the never-before-deployed 25th amendment. Since this would have to be led by Vice-President Kamala Harris, it would be a sort of insider coup. And so it goes with what appears to be a journalistic competition to outdo each other in the aggressiveness of the attacks and the unreality of the proposals. It’s a dogpile and a panic, and there is no one more unable to understand their own emotional life, biases and motives than people who are utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity, AKA most of these pundits. Speaking of coups, we’ve had a couple of late, which perhaps merit attention as we consider who is unfit to hold office. This time around, Trump is not just a celebrity with a lot of sexual assault allegations, bankruptcies and loopily malicious statements, as he was in 2016. He’s a convicted criminal who orchestrated a coup attempt to steal an election both through backroom corruption and public lies and through a violent attack on Congress. The extremist US supreme court justices he selected during his last presidential term themselves staged a coup this very Monday, overthrowing the US constitution itself and the principle that no one is above the law to make presidents into kings, just after legalizing bribery of officials, and dismantling the regulatory state by throwing out the Chevron deference. [...] Biden is old. He was one kind of appalling in the 27 June debate, listless and sometimes stumbling and muddling his words. But Trump was another kind of appalling, in that almost everything he said was an outrageous lie and some of it was a threat. I get that writing about the monstrosity that is Trump faces the problem that it’s not news; he’s been a monster spouting lurid nonsense all his life (but his political crimes are recent, and his free-associating public soliloquies on sharks, batteries, toilets, water flow and Hannibal Lector, among other topics, are genuinely demented). He’s a racist, a fascist and a rapist (according to a civil-court verdict). We are deciding whether this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will. But the shocking supreme court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence.

Rebecca Solnit at The Guardian on why the pundit class is calling for Joe Biden to suspend his campaign but not Donald Trump to also do the same (07.06.2024).

Rebecca Solnit's opinion column at The Guardian regarding the pundit class's demands for Joe Biden to end his campaign over a bad debate performance but not for Donald Trump to do the same over his 34 felonies is a masterclass.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump is emo because he's claiming that Google search results make him look bad. Maybe this will encourage him to sell a new official (and overpriced) product: Trump Crying Towels®.

If you act like an asshole, make frequent threats against others, and promise to destroy American democracy, of course the search results for you will be negative. D'oh!

In his typical sore loser mode, Trump is promising to prosecute Google if he's put back in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump threatened on Friday to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, claiming the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris. The complaint – the latest threat on the campaign trail from Trump to wield the power of the presidency in response to enemies real or perceived – came in an abrupt post on Truth Social. “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said in the post.

Trump is trying to influence the refs. More precisely, he's trying to intimidate the refs.

There are already countless trolls (real and bots) and foreign agents of disinformation working on Trump's behalf. He won't be happy until every outlet of information stops reporting the truth about his depravity.

[isawthismeme]

[hale-nathan]

Trump Weird News - Trump: Lucky Loser

"Lucky Loser: "How Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success" Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig Random House, Sep 17, 2024 - Biography & Autobiography - 800 pages. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump's finances, "… an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump's wealth, revealing how one of the country's biggest business failures lied his way into the White House."

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life "has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me." Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.

Drawing on over twenty years' worth of Trump's confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he'll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant - the public image that will carry him to the White House.

A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous, nearly-century spanning narrative, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. At a moment when Trump's tether to success and power is more precarious than ever, here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money - what he had, what he lost, and what he has left - and the final word on the myth of Trump,[as falsely] the self-made billionaire."

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Pensacola Prince Andrew, aka Matt Gaetz, has been defenestrated. 

Good riddance. 

The next weakest targets are the alleged rapist Pete Hegseth and the registered Qatari agent Pam Bondi. 

The Democratic position should be communicated in simple words: an alleged rapist cannot command the American Armed Forces, and a Qatari whore, who cashed the checks of the government that harbored Hamas while they plotted October 7th, cannot be the chief law enforcement officer. 

Hakeem Jeffries should make his members read the Monterey California police report into the congressional record.  He should apply maximum pressure on the weakest Republican members who know their place in the MAGA herd is on its periphery — on the outside. There, they run against the headwind, and feel the full force of the dangers that lurk everywhere. 

There are a few predictable ingredients when it comes to creating political good fortune. 

The first is luck. The second is your opponent’s incompetence and overreach. 

Trump is overextended, and the transition plan has collapsed into a rubble of insanity 60 days before the inauguration. 

He has taken his first step backwards, and will take many more. 

The zebras on the outside of the herd are the ones who are most vulnerable. In this analogy, their names are Hegseth and Bondi. 

The Monterey police report established beyond a reasonable doubt that Hegseth is an epic buffoon. Truly. 

He may also be a rapist. 

He seems to have a problem with women. Big time. 

Something broke somewhere, and this ought to be explored psychiatrically and forensically under public examination before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

According to Reuters, Trump plans to decapitate the senior leadership of the US military in a Stalin-esque  purge. Guilt by association and kangaroo justice await the men and women who have spent their entire lives in preparation for immense responsibilities and leadership. 

The good news is that behind them is another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. 

On Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman issued the following statement:

This report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth's attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated, and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false. Pete Hegseth is a highly-respected Combat Veteran who will honorably serve our country when he is confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense, just like he honorably served our country on the battlefield in uniform.

Pete Hegseth should be brutally questioned about the US Navy and USMC and naval warfare theory, history, strategy and tactics. 

The attitude of the Democratic opposition concerning his service in Iraq should be…wait for it…”We don’t give a f@#k.” 

It doesn’t qualify him to be Secretary of Anything — let alone Secretary of Defense.

He should be derailed, mocked, humiliated, defeated and sent into a splendid exile on the Mar-a-Lago patio.

The whole lion pride should swarm the slowest zebra first — Hegseth — trip him, and then eat him. 

When he’s gone and left behind as proverbial bones to be bleached by the hot sun on the Savanna, it will be time to give chase to Bondi. 

She has fresh legs. Let her stretch them. She will not get far because she is running in Qatari quick sand. 

I have said many times that Donald Trump Jr. is a moron and proof that nepotism is a very bad thing. It does demonstrate that Trump had some insight when he had some reluctance to bequeath his name, lest his progeny be “a loser.” 

Junior has always reminded me of Uday, while Eric throws off more of a Qusay vibe. They are easy to mix up. 

At any rate, they were a big problem for Saddam because, in the end, they were Saddam’s kids, and it was just going to be really hard for them to turn out okay — like Eric and Junior. 

This is the point that really matters, especially if you are going to let Uday and Qusay pick the cabinet after their father buried their mother on the first hole of his golf course — after allegedly raping her years earlier. 

You get the point, right?

This is all madness. 

Make Pete Hegseth defend his depravity, his ethics, his unfitness and keep him pinned down. He is the top target.

Expose his profound and epic lack of knowledge, grasp of strategy, history and culture regarding the US military. 

There is an old USMC saying: it is the 7 Ps.

It stands for “prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance.” This philosophy must be embraced by the Democratic Senate minority, led by the comically inept Schumer.

The US Navy and the US Army are two of the country’s oldest institutions. They are venerable. They are powerful. They will weather Trumpism if for no other reason than the NCO corps is as steeped in the traditions as is the general officers. In fact, from a lived experience perspective, more so. People who live without a North Star or a code do not comprehend those who do. 

Let me tell you a story about the US Navy. 

Think about this, as the alleged rapist and AAA-certified Fox News morning doofus gets ready to sink it:

This is the story of an elegant lady and her master. Her Master is a woman. She commands an American warship, a 44-gun United States Class heavy frigate, personally named by George Washington.

She was designed by an American genius from Philadelphia and built by New Englanders in a Boston shipyard.  Her bow has sliced through all the Earth’s oceans, across four centuries of time.

American merchant ships and their crews were being preyed upon by the British and French Navies and looted by barbary pirates. 

The young Republic was dependent on trade and commerce. The Third Congress appropriated money for the construction of six warships under the Naval Act of 1794 to protect American shipping.

The construction of the ships was spread between six states and cities. Local economies boomed around the building of the most technologically advanced machines ever constructed on the North American continent.

They were the spacecraft of their age, marvels of science, engineering and design.  Though bigger than French and British frigates, they were smaller than the Capital ships of the great European naval powers. They were fast and their speed made them lethal under the command and crews of the born sailors who shaped the young United States and her Navy.

United States Ship is abbreviated as USS and precedes the name of an American Warship. What would be the names of the six ships?

 It is an interesting question to ponder. Surely, the naming of these first American warships would have been imbued with meaning in 1794. We know it was not a trivial decision, and that it was made at the highest levels of government. The Secretary of the Navy submitted a list of ten names for consideration to President George Washington. 

His office was as new as the country.  Since there was no precedent, the founding generation was forced to make it up as they went along. John Adams had proposed a style of adornment and address for the office that would have embarrassed a European aristocrat. Washington rejected the flowery titles in favor of Mr. President.

The naming of the ships was a Presidential decision, and they offer a window into what was viewed as important, significant and meaningful in a young country not yet powerful or secure.

The first ship was named the USS United States. 

One was named the USS Chesapeake, after the great Bay near Washington’s beloved Mount Vernon on the banks of the Potomac River.

Another, the USS Constellation, signified the constellation of stars on the blue corner field of the new red and white striped flag of the United States. 

One was named USS President. There was only one President in the 1790s. He was the only elected Head of State in the world and his name was Washington. 

King George III was curious about what a “President” would become and what Washington would do. He was astounded when he was told that his rival would transfer power voluntarily and return to Mount Vernon. The King said that if that were true then Washington would be the greatest man of his or any age.

There have been 46 American Presidents. Grover Cleveland counts for two. There have been great ones and bad ones. Honest ones and crooked ones. There have been successful ones and incompetent ones. There has only ever been one that has sought to break his promise and hold power against the will of the people. There are many names for such a person. American President has never been one of them.

Another was named USS Congress. The Congress was a co-equal branch of government that stood equally with the Article 2 and Article 3 branches of government created by the Constitution of the United States that imperfectly imagined a new nation with a new system of government into existence. The Congress was comprised of the elected Representatives of the American people. 

It was unique in all the world.

There have been 117 Congresses. They have been filled with American people from our greatest thinkers, leaders, statemen and women to our most sublime fools, imbeciles, crooks, cons, racists, ne’er-do-wells, seditionists and criminals. 

In the end, the United States Congress and the great Capitol Dome under which it meets is an extraordinary living achievement, a symbol of democracy and a raging hot mess.

The sixth ship is the USS Constitution. The USS Constitution endures.  She survives.  She has been fired upon, hit, damaged and fallen into periodic disrepair. She was forgotten, but her contribution remembered by the American people when it was retold in verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1830s. 

Her hull was lined by Paul Revere, and her masts came from long leaf pine from South Carolina. She was set to be scrapped, but was saved by contributions from America’s school children in the 1920s.

Today, she sits in a quiet corner of Boston Harbor. She is the oldest floating ship in the world and the oldest warship in the US Navy. She remains in active service. 

Our divided nation is at edge, in an angry hour where extremism has seized power with a seething contempt for American freedom and the Constitution.

It seems significant and worth remembering that none of those first six ships designed to protect a fragile freedom were named USS Supreme Court. 

A radical court has acted in the name of the Constitution by stripping rights away from a specific category of Americans for the first time in history.  It represents a type of judicial tyranny and societal engineering that is as radical and foolish as it is destabilizing.

The Constitution of 1787 was not perfect. It was far from just. It was, however, an incomparable work of genius that gave each generation of Americans a chance to create a more just society – to perfect the Union.

The American Constitution endures. It makes the United States of America a young nation and the oldest constitutional republic in the world.

Her namesake will fire a 21-gun salute on July 4th, 2026, to the United States of America in celebration of the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States. 

She is undefeated. She is the USS Constitution.

[Steve Schmidt]

[azspot]

The loser of the popular vote has won the electoral vote five times in our history. It didn’t happen for 112 years after Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 90,956 to Grover Cleveland. We all know what happened in 2000 when one of the best qualified candidates in American history, Al Gore, won the popular vote by 543, 985 votes, but lost the electoral college to dipshit nepo baby George W. Bush. History repeated itself in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2,868,518 but lost the electoral to dipshit criminal Donald J. Trump.

Abolish The Electoral College 2.0

[sorrowlikefalling]

not my usual post, but i care enough to speak.

tw: mention of rape.

was never so disappointed in the world ever. the fact that felonies, misogyny, rape, and other things arent deal breakers for the so many of us is insane. you would rather a felon lead you than a woman. a woman who wouldve stuck up for women. a woman who wouldve supported this country. america, you are truly disappointing. the world was in your hands and you let that man win. the only people who dont care are the ones privileged enough not to. women and people of color have to fear for our lives now. what about the girls younger than me?. how are they gonna make it. 2028 is gonna be long from now. day one and im scared for the rest of the world. fuck everyone who is privileged enough to where your vote doesnt affect you. you changed lives. ruined some. youre disgusting. you would much rather a man like him run, because to this world masculinity equals qualified. to the men, what would your mother think? what about your daughter? your sister? your niece? why would you only preach to your benefit. donald j. trump is going to fuck a lot of people over. thats what you want? he gave police immunity. they can shoot and kill if they want. he is taking away rights from minorities. the women. the lgbtq community. your votes are rooted in the patriarchy. he is a violent man. the most important election of our lives. ruined. god bless america right? liberty and justice for all? ive always said it was bullshit. they want you to pledge to idolatry and fuck you over. the united states is under a disgusting rule. were under control. we arent being worked with. we are controlled. congratulations to the people happy. all it means is that youre privileged. enjoy your silver spoon before it rusts. some of us needed kamala as president. this is what so many people fought against. you wouldnt be here without a woman. think of that before you vote. i wish i could change minds. hes going to deport the immigrants who moved here for their kids or future generations to have a better life. you took that from them. you took our choice from us. another shot for america, but throw it to the ground. they can afford for glass to break. we are in debt in unity. not just by finances. i wish we were more of the united nations than the united states. we are united by state but not by nation. good job americana. you won. you conditioned the world to bow to you and now you got your reign. words arent meant to be on a watch list. i wish we could fight more. die for what you believe in people. they wont get it until you do. im a woman of my own. not a woman of america. you guys wont do us right anyway. woke up in fear for myself and the rest of the world. what about the children. you selfish things. your mother would never be proud of you. speak up and speak loud. if you didnt vote, youre the problem. kamala deserved that. you let her run like water through our hands. you lost her. let her slip. now our fate is in cardboard boxes. houses are paper. you know how easy it is to break that? good job. racism, fascism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, idolatry, right wing, white supremacists. men upheld by the social hierarchy. you win. give yourself a pat on the back. i hope you throw up and choke. you can call me a liberal, a snowflake, whatever makes you happy. i know based off of that you run most of society. capitalist fucks. bourgeoisie losers. we fought and you took it away. im gonna keep editing this and i will keep saying every word that comes to mind. do it big and do it loud. fight and scream and dont let them forget. brains on pavement mean nothing to those so high they cant see it. god america you disappoint me. fuck you and your eagles. you and your everything. selfishness. trump hates the rest of the world and the minorities in it. hes the majority. dont let him fool you. thank you.

[vote-democrat-president-congress]

Deploying on U.S. Soil: How Trump Would Use Soldiers Against Riots, Crime and Migrants

NYTimes Aug 17, 2024:

The former president’s vision of using the military to enforce the law domestically would carry profound implications for civil liberties.

During the turbulent summer of 2020, President Donald J. Trump raged at his military and legal advisers, calling them “losers” for objecting to his idea of using federal troops to suppress outbreaks of violence during the nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

It wasn’t the only time Mr. Trump was talked out of using the military for domestic law enforcement — a practice that would carry profound implications for civil liberties and for the traditional constraints on federal power. He repeatedly raised the idea of using troops to secure border states, and even proposed shooting both violent protesters and undocumented migrants in the legs, former aides have said.

In his first term in office, Mr. Trump never realized his expansive vision of using troops to enforce the law on U.S. soil. But as he has sought a return to power, he has made clear that he intends to use the military for a range of domestic law enforcement purposes, including patrolling the border, suppressing protests that he deems to have turned into riots and even fighting crime in big cities run by Democrats.

“In places where there is a true breakdown of the rule of law, such as the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, the next president should use every power at his disposal to restore order — and, if necessary, that includes sending in the National Guard or the troops,” Mr. Trump said at a conservative conference in Dallas in August 2022, shortly before announcing that he was running to be that next president.

During his time out of power, allies of Mr. Trump have worked on policy papers to provide legal justifications for the former president’s intent to use the military to enforce the law domestically. In public, they have talked about this in the context of border states and undocumented immigrants. But an internal email from a group closely aligned with Mr. Trump, obtained by The Times, shows that, privately, the group was also exploring using troops to “stop riots” by protesters.

While governors have latitude to use their states’ National Guards to respond to civil disorder or major disasters, a post-Civil War law called the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it a crime to use regular federal troops for domestic policing purposes.

However, an 1807 law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception to that ban. It grants presidents the emergency power to use federal troops on domestic soil to restore law and order when they believe a situation warrants it. Those federal troops could either be regular active-duty military or state National Guard soldiers the federal government has assumed control over.

The Insurrection Act was last invoked in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush sent troops to help suppress riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of white police officers who had been videotaped beating a Black motorist, Rodney King. In that case, however, the governor of California, Pete Wilson, and the mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, had asked for federal assistance to restore order.

But parts of the Insurrection Act also allow presidents to send in troops without requiring the consent of a governor. Presidents last invoked the act to deploy troops without the consent of state authorities in the late 1950s and early 1960s during the civil rights movement, when some governors in the South resisted court-ordered school desegregation.

Mr. Trump has boasted that, if he returns to the White House, he will dispatch forces without any request for intervention by local authorities. At a campaign rally in Iowa last year, for example, he vowed to unilaterally use federal forces to “get crime out of our cities,” specifically naming New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco as “crime dens” he pointedly noted were run by Democrats.

“You look at what is happening to our country — we cannot let it happen any longer,” Mr. Trump said. “And one of the other things I’ll do — because you are not supposed to be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I am not waiting.”

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that, as part of his group’s contingency planning for how to resist what it sees as potential risks from any second Trump administration, it is drafting lawsuits to challenge invocations of the Insurrection Act against protesters. He said the group sees it as likely that Mr. Trump would be drawn to the authoritarian “theatrics” of sending troops into Democratic cities.

“It’s very likely that you will have the Trump administration trying to shut down mass protests — which I think are inevitable if they were to win — and to specifically pick fights in jurisdictions with blue-state governors and blue-state mayors,” he said. “There’s talk that he would try to rely on the Insurrection Act as a way to shut down lawful protests that get a little messy. But isolated instances of violence or lawlessness are not enough to use federal troops.”

In a statement, a Trump spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said, “As President Trump has always said, you can’t have a country without law and order and without borders. In the event where an American community is being ravaged by violence, President Trump will use all federal law enforcement assets and work with local governments to protect law-abiding Americans.” She added that he was committed to “using every available resource to seal the border and stop the invasion of millions of illegal aliens into our country.”

Mr. Trump has long been attracted to the strongman move of using military force to impose and maintain domestic political control. In a 1990 interview with Playboy, he spoke admiringly about the Chinese Communist Party for displaying the “power of strength” a year earlier when it used troops and tanks to crush the pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Many years later, at a 2016 Republican primary debate, he claimed that his comments in that old interview did not mean he actually endorsed the crackdown. But then, as he continued talking, he described the Tiananmen Square demonstration as a riot: “I said that was a strong, powerful government. They kept down the riot. It was a horrible thing.”

Seeking a Show of Strength

In 2020, the videotaped killing of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, sparked racial justice protests. Peaceful demonstrations sometimes descended into rioting — especially when anarchists hijacked some of the protests as an opportunity to set fires, smash store windows and take other destructive actions. This was especially visible in Portland, Ore., where the Department of Homeland Security flooded the streets with hundreds of federal officers, many not wearing any identifying insignia.

During a stormy protest in Washington, D.C., centered in Lafayette Square outside the White House, protesters knocked over barricades. The Secret Service whisked Mr. Trump away to take shelter in a bunker underneath the White House. Attorney General William P. Barr later wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump was enraged — in part by the violence but “especially the news reports that he was taken to the bunker.” He wanted to make a show of strength as the world watched.

Because D.C. is a federal enclave, not a state, it has no governor, and its National Guard always reports to the Pentagon. The secretary of defense, Mark Esper, sent National Guard forces to support the Park Police and other civilian agencies protecting federal buildings — and, to particular controversy, National Guard helicopters swooped frighteningly low over crowds of people.

But civilians remained in control of the response in the nation’s capital. Mr. Trump wanted to instead put the military directly in charge of suppressing violent protesters — and to use regular, active-duty troops to do it. Members of his legal team drew up an order invoking the Insurrection Act in case it became necessary, according to a person with direct knowledge of what took place. But senior aides opposed such a move, and he never signed it.

Mr. Barr later wrote that he and the acting Homeland Security secretary had thought using regular troops was unnecessary, and that Mr. Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, had “recoiled at the idea, expressing the view that regular military forces should not be used except as a last resort, and that, absent a real insurrection, the military should not be in charge but should provide support to civilian agencies.”

As Mr. Trump nevertheless publicly threatened to put the regular military in the streets across the country, General Milley issued a memo on June 2, 2020, to top military leaders saying that every member of the military swears an oath to uphold the Constitution and its values, including the freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly.

The next day, on June 3, Mr. Esper contradicted Mr. Trump from the Pentagon podium, saying: “The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” Mr. Trump was outraged, seeing this as an act of defiance. He fired Mr. Esper that November.

In a comment for this article before President Biden dropped out of the 2024 campaign, Mr. Esper pointed to his earlier remarks, adding, “I think the same standard applies going forward, whether it is a second term for Biden, Trump or for any other future president.”

Back in 2020, the protests or riots eventually ebbed, without any use of regular troops or Mr. Trump’s federalizing a state’s National Guard. But on the 2024 campaign trail, Mr. Trump has rewritten that history, falsely bragging that he personally sent troops into the streets of Minneapolis, who quelled violence there.

In reality, it was Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota — now the presumptive Democratic nominee for vice president — who ordered his state’s National Guard to briefly deploy in Minneapolis. Mr. Trump did not direct and was not responsible for the operation.

In a 2021 interview, Mr. Walz recalled consulting with General Milley and Mr. Esper about his decision to use the state’s National Guard at a time when they were resisting Mr. Trump’s desire to send in federal troops — a step that Mr. Walz said would have made the situation worse by exacerbating the anger of people protesting a police murder.

“It was critically important that civilian leadership was seen as leading this, and that the face forward needed to look like your state, it needed to be the National Guard, it needed to be those local folk,” he told the authors Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

However, Mr. Walz has faced criticism from some quarters for moving slowly to deploy the guard when some protests in Minneapolis became riots.

Troops at the Border

Mr. Trump has broken with his former subordinates who raised objections to his desire to use federal troops that summer. Those who have stuck with Mr. Trump are working to ensure that a second administration would not contain politically appointed officials or lawyers who would be inclined to see it as their duty to constrain his impulses and desires — one of several reasons a second Trump presidency is likely to shatter even more norms and precedents than the first.

Indeed, even by the standards of various norm-busting plans Mr. Trump and his advisers have developed, the idea of using American troops against Americans on domestic soil stands apart. It has engendered quiet discomfort even among some of his allies on other issues.

Most of the open discussion of it by people other than Mr. Trump has focused on the prospect of using troops in border states — not against American rioters or criminals, but to arrest suspected undocumented migrants and better secure the border against illegal crossings.

In recent years, administrations of both parties — including Mr. Biden’s — have sometimes used the military at the border when surges of migrants have threatened to overwhelm the civilian agents. But the troops have helped by taking over back-office administration and support functions, freeing up more ICE and Border Patrol agents to go into the field.

The idea Mr. Trump and his advisers are playing with is to go beyond that by using regular troops to patrol the border and arrest people.

In an interview with The New York Times last fall, Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top immigration adviser, said Mr. Trump’s plans for an unprecedented crackdown on immigration included invoking the Insurrection Act to use troops as immigration agents.

And, in its 900-page policy book, Project 2025 — a consortium of conservative think-tanks that is working together to develop policy proposals and personnel lists to offer Mr. Trump should he win the election — has a brief line saying regular troops “could” be used at the Southwest border for arrest operations in the context of tackling drug cartels.

But the book has no further analysis or discussion of the idea, and Project 2025 is not substantively engaging with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act in any context, according to multiple people with knowledge of the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

‘Insurrection — Stop Riots ** — Day 1, Easy’

Regular troops are generally trained to operate in combat situations, not as domestic law enforcement, which heightens the risk of serious and, at times, even fatal mistakes — as happened when a Marine on an antidrug surveillance team assisting the Border Patrol shot and killed an American teenager near the border in 1997.

For that reason, the idea of using regular troops to enforce the law on domestic soil — especially away from the border — crosses a line that gives even some in the conservative think-tank world pause. Policy development work on using the Insurrection Act has joined a small number of other policy ideas circulating in Mr. Trump’s orbit, like disengaging with NATO, that are too radioactive to gain a consensus among the conservatives involved in Project 2025.

Instead, legal and policy development work on ideas that are too radical even for Project 2025 are being handled elsewhere, including at a Trump-aligned think tank called the Center for Renewing America that is run by Russell Vought, who was Mr. Trump’s White House budget chief.

An early 2023 email from a member of the center’s staff listed 10 agenda topics for papers that the center planned to write on legal and policy frameworks. An introduction to the email said the goal was to “help us build the case and achieve consensus leading into 2025.” The email went on to circulate more broadly, and The Times reviewed a copy.

The email placed each topic into one of three categories. One set involved Congress. A second involved “broader legal” issues — including “Christian nationalism” and “nullification,” the pre-Civil War idea that states should be able to negate federal laws they don’t like. The third category was “day one” ideas, meaning those whose legal frameworks were already well established, and which could be put into effect by a president unilaterally.

No. 4 on the list: “Insurrection — stop riots ** — Day 1, easy.”

The Center for Renewing America has since published papers about several other agenda items on its list, including arguing that a 1974 law banning presidents from impounding funds — or refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for things the White House dislikes — is unconstitutional (No. 1 on the list) and advocating for the elimination of the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigative independence from the White House (No. 5).

The center has not published any paper on invoking the Insurrection Act to use troops to suppress violent protests. But earlier this year, it published a paper on a closely related topic: invoking that law to use troops in Southwest border states to enforce immigration law. The paper was co-written by Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy Homeland Security secretary in the Trump administration.

While the paper focuses on border security, most of its legal analysis applies to any situation in which a president deems the use of troops necessary to suppress lawlessness. It laid out extensive arguments for why the Insurrection Act provides “enormous” leeway for the president to use regular troops directly to make arrests and enforce the law.

It also cited a sweeping Justice Department memorandum written after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by John Yoo, a Bush administration lawyer with an idiosyncratically broad view of presidential power. Mr. Yoo had argued that the Posse Comitatus Act could not stop a presidential decision to use the armed forces domestically to combat terrorist activities.

In a statement responding to The Times’s reporting, Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for the Center for Renewing America, said, “Thank you for confirming that we have made it a priority to articulate that the president has the legal authority to use the military to secure the border.”

While the center’s statement — like its paper — framed the prospect of using troops on domestic soil in the context of securing the border, not suppressing anti-Trump protests, Mr. Vought was more expansive in a hidden-camera video released last week by a British journalism nonprofit, the Centre for Climate Reporting, which spoke with him while deceptively posing as relatives of a wealthy conservative donor.

“George Floyd obviously was not about race — it was about destabilizing the Trump administration,” he said. “We put out, for instance, a 50-page paper designed for lawyers to know that the president has, you know, the ability both along the border and elsewhere to maintain law and order with the military and that’s something that, you know, that’s going to be important for him to remember and his lawyers to affirm. But we’ve given them the case for that.”

Blurry Lines

Mr. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025 and other outside conservative groups, saying that only policy proposals endorsed by the campaign count. Ms. Leavitt said, “As President Trump and our campaign has repeatedly stated, outside groups do NOT speak for him. The ONLY official second-term policies are those that come directly from President Trump himself.”

Still, as a matter of substance, the lines between Project 2025’s work, the materials being developed separately by the Center for Renewing America and the Trump campaign can be blurry.

For example, Mr. Vought has also been in charge of one of the most important components of Project 2025: drafting executive orders and other unilateral actions Mr. Trump could take over the first six months in office. Mr. Vought also remains personally close to Mr. Trump. And the Republican National Committee, which Mr. Trump controls through allies, including his senior campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, put Mr. Vought in charge of the committee that developed the party’s platform.

That platform calls for “moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to our own southern border” to secure it against migrants.

At the Center for Renewing America, Mr. Vought has also hired Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official in the Trump administration who was indicted in Georgia for working with Mr. Trump to help overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Clark wrote the center’s paper laying out a legal framework for why the president can take direct control of Justice Department investigations and prosecutions, and was also appointed to co-lead Project 2025’s Justice Department policy efforts.

The federal indictment of Mr. Trump, which deems Mr. Clark an unindicted co-conspirator, recounts how a White House lawyer told Mr. Clark that there had not been outcome-changing election fraud — and warned that if Mr. Trump nonetheless remained in office, there would be riots in every major city in the United States.

“Well,” Mr. Clark responded, according to the indictment, “that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy. More about Charlie Savage

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 18, 2024 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s Vision For the Border: Send In Troops. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Donald Trump, American Civil Liberties Union

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:

Donald Trump threatened on Friday to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, claiming the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not his 2024 election opponent, Kamala Harris. The complaint – the latest threat on the campaign trail from Trump to wield the power of the presidency in response to enemies real or perceived – came in an abrupt post on Truth Social.

“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said in the post. “This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections. If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, when I win the Election and become President of the United States.” Trump did not address the possibility that there have been more negative stories about his campaign than Harris’s in recent weeks, and what prompted him to lash out at Google was not immediately clear.

Google has said it does not manipulate search results to benefit a particular party. “Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,” the company said in a statement. Still, conservatives have long complained that Google’s search results unfairly favor Democrats. The rightwing Media Research Center, which bills itself as a media watchdog for conservatives, has previously issued reports claiming Google helped Democrats. The Trump campaign has also bitterly complained about the Harris campaign using the “sponsored” feature on Google search results to promote positive news coverage from outlets, including the Guardian, but with headlines rewritten by the campaign to favor Harris.

Sore loser crybaby Donald Trump’s threat to seek criminal charges against Google for allegedly favoring Kamala Harris in search results is more proof that this fascist man is unfit to return to 1600, as our freedoms depend on keeping him away from the White House.

[tomorrowusa]

Every year during the Illinois State Fair in Springfield there is Governor's Day (for the party in power) and either Democrats Day or Republican Day for the opposition party.

Democrats currently hold all statewide offices in Illinois and on Governor's Day Gov. J. B. Pritzker on Wednesday spoke at the fair and called Donald Trump "a loser". Not exactly news, but J.B. did it in a great way.

Thursday was Republican Day at the fair and the best Illinois Republicans could do was get Trump's former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. Whitaker served in between Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. Some of Whitaker's views may be odious but apparently he's not particularly weird by GOP standards.

So Illinois Republicans know they have a major problem with the public perceptions of their candidates – especially at the top of the ballot.

Regardless of state, we need to remind voters that Trump, Vance, and many GOP candidates for Congress and state offices are way out of the mainstream and have views which are far from the norms of American society. In short, Republicans are weird.

[isawthismeme]