#the unitary executive theory is fascism

[thepoliticalvulcan]

So that happened.

I should have gone to bed but I needed to see for myself. So that I could know if I thought the headlines I anticipated in the morning were fair or not.

It was worse than I imagined.

Having to stay inside his time and not fight with the moderators, or get his mic cut made Trump.....not Presidential, no not Presidential, but almost sanewashed him. IF you are informed, the lies were really obvious. If.

The idea that 50,000 to 100,000 low motivation voters in 3-4 states might decide this based on whether they are more concerned about abortion access and democratic norms or immigration and inflation, and might just be doing this on vibes. That's going to keep me up.

But man, was that ever a contest between a man who cannot be Presidential and a man who radicalized me into thinking the Presidency itself was a mistake and a loaded gun pointed at the heads of the American people.

We're all still committed to voting self interest rather than whether the President can keep a consistent line of thought instead of spite or some handwavey theory that "it must get worse before it can better", right? Right?

Right?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eric Cortellessa at Time:

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice. We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not? As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”  Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.” Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

[...] The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor. [...] In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.

Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.

[...] Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”

[...] As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.

Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”

Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices. [...]

Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.

[...] Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.” America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense. 

[...] Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.

[...] Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”

TIME Magazine interviewed 2024 GOP Republican nominee Donald Trump twice over the span of just over two weeks, and in those interviews, Trump told Time's Eric Cortellessa his plans for what his 2nd term would be.

His plans would include a full-scale fascist takeover of the United States should he get elected to a 2nd term are as follows:

He would enact draconian anti-immigration policies such as deporting 11M+ undocumented immigrants and build concentration camps for not just undocumented immigrants but those opposed to his agenda.

He would also aid and abet in cruel anti-abortion policies that invade the privacy of a pregnant person and criminalize those who obtain abortions.

He would destroy the nonpartisan civil service system by enacting Schedule F to give jobs to his MAGA cronies.

He would pardon every domestic terrorist who participated in the J6 Capitol Insurrection that he incited.

He would endanger national security by refusing to come to the aid of our allies if attacked, effectively doing China and Russia's bidding.

He would summon the National Guard and the military to put down protests against him and his anti-American regime.

He would turn the DOJ into his partisan political tool to go after his critics.

The Project 2025 agenda would be used to guide Trump into making decisions that would end America as a beacon of freedom and democracy.

These interviews he gave to Time should be a remind that America does not vote to put the tyrant back in office and that re-electing Joe Biden is essential to keeping America free.

See Also:

Time: Full transcript of Time's two interviews with Trump.

Read the full article at Time Magazine.

[milimartel]

Project 2025 Fascism.

Project 2025 plans to see that the entire executive branch is under the direct control of the president under the unitary executive theory.. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees, in order to replace them with people loyal to the president. A fascist Dictatorship. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. 🤣

[blackandredblog]

Speaker of the House is a Trump Shill

Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the house, is just another in a line of followers direct from the Project 2025 playbook.

For those unfamiliar, Project 2025 is a conservative manifesto designed to consolidate direct Presidential control of all assets in the Executive branch of the US government, using Unitary Executive theory. This "logic" is based on the vesting clause of Article 2 of the US Constitution. It will eliminate all checks and balances on the office of the president.

This playbook includes replacing all personnel with pro-Trump supporters, banning gender-affirming care and language (even the term gender affirming), gay marriage, abortions, and anything not white, Christian, or conservative.

It would turn the US into a Christian theocracy. A place where AFAB women are breeding stock, and homosexuality becomes a criminal offense again. It would turn the office of the President into a dictatorship.

Johnson has voted against Gay Marriage, against certifying the 2020 election, and is a threat to what's left of this so-called country. His election as speaker of the house is a direct attack on freedom.

We can no longer bury our heads in the sand. We can no longer stand idly by and watch as fascism returns to power. This looks more like the Weimar Republic in 1923 than the United States in 2023.

For any who doubts that this playbook exists, or views this as some Right Wing conspiracy, I invite you to read this document for yourself. This is real. This is a threat. This is not a test.

[nitewrighter]

Ok this is starting to worry me but could Tr*mp actually steal the election? Even now that he has lost?

I’m not a hundred percent sure. But it’s 2020, so hey, what else is new.

 On the one hand, McConnell and other republicans seem to be enabling him while at the same time trying to keep their filthy mitts off of the situation so that people don’t call them out for literally supporting fascism (Soldiers overseas vote by mail and Republican legislators who need that base don’t to want be caught calling their votes phony--but they’re also dependent on the Tr*mp cult for voter turnout) . There’s a lot of “He has the right to investigate the results of the election” floating around while keeping themselves well away from any statements actually legitimizing Trump’s bullshit claims. And technically the concession of the losing candidate isn’t necessarily a legally required action in the transition between presidents--the concession is largely about securing a peaceful transition of power and thus “Preserving the union.” So like... maybe we’re all just watching a sick, flailing, cornered animal scratch and claw at anyone who comes near it.

 The two people who scare me the most in this situation are McConnell and Barr. McConnell because he sucks in general, and Barr because he also sucks in general, but also believes in the “Unitary Executive theory” interpretation of the constitution which grants, frankly, bullshit amounts of power to the office of the president. Barr believes that the power of the president’s office was severely ground down following Watergate (Insert “Uh yeah. I sure hope it does” picture here). As of this morning, Barr has handed prosecutors the authority to investigate claims of election fraud, essentially overstepping the Election Crimes branch of the department of justice--so Barr is already putting up a middle finger to the separation of powers, but we don’t actually know how much it will do because (and this is the more relieving part) Biden is millions of votes ahead. The lawsuits tr*mp keeps pushing forward keep getting dismissed out of courts for lack of evidence. And Tr*mp’s current legal adviser helping push this (Who doesn’t have a law or even bachelor’s degree but still managed to help push campaign law to allow unlimited corporate spending in elections so fuck him) just got diagnosed with covid so like... We are watching a shambling beast lashing out at people as it collapses under its own weight. Doesn’t mean it isn’t still dangerous, but Tr*mp also thrives on attention and confusion, and he’s still turned much of the republican party into a fucked up cult of personality. So basically, keep an eye on the situation, because as I have said repeatedly before, Tr*mp and anyone sucked into his cult of personality is stupid and dangerous, but also stay calm, because shit is collapsing underneath him. 

Also, as I’ve said before, please support Stacey Abrams’ efforts to flip the Georgia senate and deal a swift kick in the nuts to McConnell.

[political-fluffle]

https://twitter.com/blakesmustache/status/1178296311222870018

Thread: Barr must be viewed for what he is: a criminal. Barr is leaking stories casting himself as having awoken in bed with Trump and discovered Trump is a criminal. This is a false narrative. Barr knew full well Trump was a criminal and willingly joined him as an accomplice.

Let’s start with Barr’s “Trump origin story.” Barr sent an unsolicited memo to DOJ on 6/8/18, asserting that Mueller should not investigate Trump for obstruction of justice due to Barr’s view that Trump can do what he pleases within the Executive Branch.

Barr’s theory that POTUS has unfettered control over the Executive Branch is the “Unitary Executive Theory.” The weaker variation of UTE has some support in precedent and from some legal scholars. Barr, however, endorses a stronger, unsupported version. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory …

In Barr’s version of the UTE, POTUS has unchecked power to do whatever he wants within the Executive Branch and not even the Legislative/Judicial Branches pose any check or balance on this power. This is the literal equivalent of fascism and has no support in legal precedent.

Not only does Barr’s version of the UTE lack legal support, it runs directly contrary to SCOTUS precedent from US v. Nixon. Lawyers are free to challenge legal precedent in court, but CANNOT instruct clients to act in defiance of legal precedent and then challenge it later.

A lawyer who instructs a client to violate the law without a good faith basis for believing his advice to be lawful runs several risks. First, he’s violating professional ethics rules as a lawyer and can face penalties up to and including loss of his bar license.

Instructing a client to violate a lawful act of Congress or court order may also draw criminal or civil contempt. Truly egregious cases of instructing a client to violate the law could even constitute aiding and abetting, though this would be reserved for rare, egregious cases.

Among other examples, we know Barr has advised Trump he and others they defy Congressional subpoenas, fail to comply with whistleblower reporting laws, and even hide evidence of crimes such as Trump’s transcripts of conversations with foreign leaders where crimes are committed.

But Barr’s bad acts don’t stop at advising others to commit crimes. Barr himself has been the primary actor in numerous crimes, including multiple instances of obstruction of justice. These crimes are far more worrying for Barr than the unlawful legal advice he’s given others.

If you’ve spent as much time with the Mueller Report as I have, you probably have the three elements of obstruction of justice memorized: 1. Obstructive act; 2. Nexus to an official proceeding; and 3. Corrupt intent to interfere, or attempt to interfere, with that proceeding.

Barr’s obstructive acts are legion, beginning with his handling of the Mueller Report:  1. Misleading summary of the Report in writing and at a press conference. 2. Withholding the Report and, later, certain parts of it, from Congress. 3. Likely over-redactions.

Those obstructive acts had a clear nexus both to the Special Counsel’s investigation itself and to Congress’s own investigations into those investigations. And Barr’s corrupt intent to interfere with both those investigations seems readily apparent and easily provable.

I won’t attempt to catalogue each instance of obstruction Barr has committed in his personal capacity. And I assume his very worst acts aren’t yet known. But each act would be separately punishable, with the cumulative effect being the rest of his life in prison, given his age.

Before moving on to other crimes, I should clarify it’s highly unlikely Barr would face charges while Trump (or Pence) is in office. Any prosecution would be taken up by Barr’s successor. He could, however, face criminal contempt of Congress or a court if he defies their orders.

Barr also faces potential perjury charges based on his testimony to both the House and Senate. Linked article provides details but, as more facts come to light, he’ll face increasing scrutiny. Barr could be held in criminal contempt for this while AG

[thepoliticalvulcan]

For three or even four Presidential election cycles I’ve found myself becoming a bit more Anarchist in my sympathies. I’m still a begrudging major party voter because I don’t think most of the municipalism stuff can work anymore than anyone besides the Immortan Joes of the world would enjoy Anarcho Capitalism. I just happen to share a few points of agreement with libertarians. On the centralization of power, not corporate personhood or the age of consent.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Much in the way that almost everything terrible in the world can eventually be traced back to Europeans doodling on maps, if we look at what is happening right now at this very instant we could tell a story that begins with the invasion of Iraq.

Where did the Houthis, Hamas et al. get weapons and training?

Iran in large part.

Where did Iran get all of its knowledge on guerrilla warfare to pass on to various insurgent groups?

In part by supporting militias fighting the Islamic State but also fighting the US.

How do you wind up with an Islamic State to need fighting?

Well quite a few of them were previously in Saddam Hussein’s military and intelligence services. They found what was functionally a never ending supply of people angry and traumatized by the invasion and occupation or simply possessed of no better path forward in life other than joining a militia. Zealots do mutual aid tragically well in shattered societies.

Oh and guess what Iran did?

Also reached out to and provided succor to people fitting the very same template.

Where did Iran get the resources for this effort?

In part it was it was due to relief afforded to it by removing one of its biggest regional threats: a strong and coherent Iraq.

In part it was the restoration in part of trade and access to financial resources that had been tied up in Western controlled banks for years as punishment for terrorism and such.

Why was Iran given this money back?

As part of a deal to get Iran to idle its nuclear weapons program.

Why was Iran pursuing nuclear weapons?

George W Bush named it as part of an Axis of Evil along with Iraq and North Korea and then invaded Iraq.

There’s a lot of reasons why the US might not have restarted the Korean War but nukes probably helped dissuade it.

Jews, Muslims, American service people, cargo ship crews trying to transit the Red Sea living in fear?

Iran is not not responsible but make sure to thank Bush.

And everyone better think about this as we stare down the barrel of further escalation in the region. It never ends once you begin. There’s no honorable escape, just one damn thing after another after another.

You can’t just knock one domino over. It’s not how it works.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

The freakout over Trump on Cheney that she should be faced with firearms pointing at her is a bizarre sort of quantum rhetoric.

The pro-Trumpers and also just anyone who despises the Cheneys (and I count myself among the latter) are not wrong in that this is 1. a piece of rhetoric that is old as dirt. It is not unheard of or outlandish or out of line to suggest that people who will not personally be likely to experience death or dismemberment on the battlefield ought not to be so quick to volunteer others to do the same.

On the other hand, when Donald Trump, individual for whom there have been more than zero acts of violence undertaken against his political enemies, says something like this, there is probably a case that can be made that this literally incitement to violence.

On the same hand, when Donald Trump, individual who has talked in exquisite detail about his political enemies facing legal consequences or extrajudicidial acts of punishment, says this sort of thing, there is probably a case that can be made that this is a declaration of intent to use the power of the state to commit violence against Cheney. With or without trial. Depends on how secure he feels his hold on power is, how much he feels like testing the credit limit on that blank check the Supreme Court wrote him, and how breads and circuses he's feeling that day.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Trump’s conviction on campaign finance fraud changes less about the nature of power in this country or its politics than I’d like but it does feel good.

To the extent it matters, Trump is our first convicted criminal President. I don’t believe he is our first criminal President. Not by a long shot. Whether it’s corruption or crimes against humanity, definitely not our first criminal president by a long shot.

But at least this precedent has been set and maybe, just maybe in some small way it will help.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Victims can be villains as well and sometimes a villain just isn’t worth it.

No person with a functioning conscience and any information literacy should think Hamas are the good guys in any story. Victims yes. Heroes? No.

Yet everyone with half a heart and half a brain has long recognized that only the Palestinians can ultimately decide they want sewer pipes not missile casings.

The Palestinian people are the ones who were always going to pay the price for trying to “destroy” Hamas because its their own expression of nationalism, rage, and despair and if they are not persuaded Hamas is an unfit tool to express that rage then you won’t beat it out of them. Especially if the one trying to beat it out of them is the one they view as the primary obstacle to peace.

No Israelí national security goal has been satisfied by invading Gaza and turning it to rubble. Two million people who may have responded to surveys in the hypothetical that they loathed Israel and thought terrorism was an acceptable form of resistance now have even more visceral reasons to feel this way if they had any doubts before. It’s very, very rare for people to be dissuaded from violence through violence: they have to have another credible option on the table.

And now it looks an awful lot like Biden has got himself maneuvered into stepping on another rake by a GOP war caucus that will blame him for the war they want him to start.

Iran almost certainly understands itself as the equivalent of France supporting the American colonists in the Revolutionary War. Except it’s not mild reform of the British system they’re supporting, but theocracy. Nonetheless it won’t stop until it is stopped.

Stopping it though is another impossible nightmare where nothing can get better in the attempt but a lot can get worse. Like Hamas in Gaza, there are historical reasons Iran’s geopolitics are the way they are and that history informs the present which also lays out why no one (except Pakistan) has directly attacked Iran. No one has the belly to invade and occupy nor should any rational person desire this, and bombing is largely symbolic.

If a bombing campaign is on a large enough scale to bring Iran to its knees as Israel has brought Gaza to its knees, then you create a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions and irregulars across the region will feel the need to take a side. A weak Iran will have little incentive not to lash out and will be a magnet for foreign fighters and expats seeing an opportunity to try to carve Iran up.

Any bombing campaign below the level of humanitarian disaster is simply mowing the lawn or poking Iran in the eye as retribution. Iran will not be seriously deterred and will likely be incited.

Which means there’s no realistic scenario where we don’t either arrive back at the status quo: a stalemate where much of the region detests Iranian meddling but largely just fences with Iran’s non-state allies (I don’t believe in using the word proxy, I think it’s a bad description of the relationship between Iran and these groups) and avoids tangling with Iran directly because while the status quo is terrible, war would be worse and even a victory over Iran is likely to destabilize the whole region as people whose lives are already precarious vote with their feet by the millions.

And we all know what happens to the political systems of European countries when Muslims and other non-white people show up looking for safety and sustenance.

Buckle up.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

The GOP and Blob liberals are about to goad Biden into a war with Iran and then blame him for starting a war with Iran.

Credit where credit is due, I think he saw that rake as early as 10/8 and was trying not to step on it but the moment he surged forces to the Middle East to deter other actors from taking a swing at Israel, Biden put a target on the backs of those soldiers and sailors. To say nothing of the troops leftover from the last several dozen conflicts 3/4ths of the country probably hasn’t even heard of that have never really been fully wound down.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

It’s never a wrong time to brush up on the history of the Gulf War and occupation of Iraq, but it seems more relevant by the day. If you’re a podcastphile, I highly recommend Slowburn s2 if you like a more documentary tone and s1 of Blowback if you want something a bit more Behind the Bastards or The Dollop but still fundamentally evidence based and pretty open about when facts are disputed.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

I’m not making excuses for killing people, however I have yet to notice any major outlets discussing why the US has troops in Jordan to be attacked in the first place. If we’re going to wind up in a shooting war with Iran, the powers that be ought to explain to a nation that only episodically pays attention to its shadow wars and is only episodically informed about its shadow wars what the compelling interest is in having troops in Jordan and what their mission was before we swear to take a hundred of theirs for every one of ours.

Because make no mistake, we were already dealing with the fourth and fifth order consequences of invading Iraq. We will not under even the most fanciful circumstances be regime changing Iran unless a viable revolution breaks out, so we’re just committing to redoing the 90s all over again with Iran instead of Iraq. Episodically “mowing the lawn” every time it scrapes together some power or the news cycle is bad for POTUS. Eventually some moron forgets why we didn’t occupy Iran in the first place and convinces the nation it’s the only way, and at that point the clock starts on whether this winds up looking more like Iraq or Afghanistan in the end.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Areeba Shah at Salon:

A network of conservative groups is gearing up for the potential reelection of Donald Trump, actively enlisting an "army" of Americans to come to Washington with a mission to disassemble the federal government and substitute it with a vision that aligns more closely with their own beliefs and ideas, according to The Associated Press.  Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the sweeping new initiative called Project 2025, offers a policy agenda, transition plan, a playbook for the first 180 days and a personnel database for the next GOP president to access from the very beginning to take control, reform, and eliminate what Republicans criticize as the "deep state" bureaucracy. Their plan includes the possibility of firing as many as 50,000 federal employees.

Democracy experts view Project 2025 as an authoritarian attempt to seize power by filling the federal government, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, with unwavering Trump supporters, which could potentially erode the country's system of checks and balances. "The irony of course is that in the name of 'draining the swamp', it creates opportunities to make the federal government actually quite corrupt and turn the country into a more authoritarian kind of government," Matt Dallek, a professor at George Washington's Graduate School of Political Management, who studies the American right, told Salon.  One of the most important bulwarks of democracy is the career of federal civil service, he added. Civil servants often have decades of experience inside their agencies and provide knowledge of policy and law in the federal government that enables them to serve the public.  "The country relies on these people to not only enact administration or presidential priorities, but also to enact the laws and fulfill their oath of office," Dallek said. He pointed to one of the dangers of this project, which includes "the purging of federal employees," as he described it, or the project's plans to fire and replace federal workers en masse in an effort to dismantle the "deep state." "In basically one fell swoop – if this plan were to be implemented – we would, as a society, lose many of the people who help [the federal government] function and also the people who are not subjected to the whims of the president," Dallek said. This would make it difficult for agencies like the FBI, the DOJ or the CIA to carry out their nonpartisan missions and to fulfill their oath of office and oath to the Constitution, Dallek explained.  By replacing federal employees with like-minded officials, Trump-era conservatives are planning to remove federal employees whom they perceive as obstacles to the president's agenda early on. This would avoid "the pitfalls of Trump's first years in office," and eliminate the possibility of any resistance a Republican president would encounter, the AP reported.

[...] If Project 2025 is implemented, it would reinstate Schedule F — an executive order from the Trump era aimed at redefining the employment status of tens of thousands of federal employees, effectively making them at-will workers and removing protections for anyone in decision-making positions. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden revoked the executive order. However, Trump, along with other potential presidential candidates, is pledging to reinstate it. Anywhere from 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of federal employees can be impacted by it since Schedule F is "ambiguously written," allowing political appointees to extend its application from top civil servants to those in lower ranks, Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, told Salon.  [...]

Project 2025's nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint, called "Mandate for Leadership," serves as a step-by-step guide for the incoming president, from proposing a comprehensive transformation of the Department of Justice to ending the FBI's efforts to combat the dissemination of misinformation. It even includes plans to intensify the prosecution of individuals involved in providing or distributing abortion pills by mail. "The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors," the document says. "This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity ('SOGI'), diversity, equity, and inclusion Project ('DEI'), gender, gender equality, gender equity … and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."

The fascistic anti-democracy Project 2025 agenda, led by The Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups, would conduct a mass purge of nonpartisan civil servants and replace them with MAGA acolytes should Trump (or another Republican) wins the Presidency in 2024.

This is yet another reason why Joe Biden must be re-elected. #BidenHarris2024 #Project2025

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman at New York Times:

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 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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump and his allies plan to impose fascist authoritarian rule on Americans by expanding executive power by putting independent agencies under the direct aegis of the White House should he be elected back to the White House in the upcoming election.

This is further proof that the 2024 election will be a battle between freedom and fascism, and that electing Biden again will be the best step to halt a fascist takeover of America.

Read the full story at The New York Times.