#trump power grab

[tomorrowusa]

One of Trump's unconstitutional gambits may be to try to usurp Congress's authority over the federal budget. Trump just can't resist an opportunity to be grabby.

One sign that he may be going in that direction is that he named the odious Russell Vought to return to his old position as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is one of the architects of Project 2025.

How Trump Plans to Seize the Power of the Purse From Congress

[spotlightstory]

Trump says he will “fire” America’s military generals and replace them with MAGA loyalists, echoing Project 2025

Link to Reddit video Best Comment: "Just going to remind everyone that, after Trump lost the election, General Milley and the Joint Chiefs of Staffs were concerned that Trump was attempting a military coup and took steps to prevent it.

They were joined in this concern by all living former defense Secretaries, Republican and Democrat, who flouted two hundred years of military tradition by posting an open letter announcing that the election was over, and warning military people everywhere not to obey any orders aimed at preventing the peaceful transfer of power.

Just in case people don't realize this -- these are, you know. Pentagon people. THE Pentagon people.  These people know things that we don't know.

So, let's be really clear here. Trump is promising an old-fashioned Praetorian guard COUP here. That's what's happening right in front of our eyes. I don't understand why anyone is talking about anything else."

[usindistress]

Project 2025 is over 900 pages long, but to put it in context, the first 32 pages are just conservative "intellectuals" congratulating each other about how evil they all are.

[sjerzgirl]

More in depth than the Vox article.

[taviokapudding]

*drenched nervous and distressed produced sweat*

I hate leaving voicemails to my own government officials that the government of TN is in the process of committing a coup because the only 3 Democrats were illegally removed from office for echoing their constituents on banning guns in the chamber today (April 3, 2023)

Like wtf do I do? There’s no footage starting around 9pm cst when they kicked all protesters (who are mostly unarmed young adults and children under 18), audience members, & media

It’s just silence & there’s no national coverage because everyone fucking focused on that shitbag Trump

AND OF FUCKING COURSE NOBODY IN DC HAS A 24HRS HOTLINE, I CAN ONLY SEND VOICEMAILS AND AAAH ahahhhh ARE ALL THOSE KIDS IN NASHVILLE OKAY?!? F u c k

[garudabluffs]

LISTEN 35:55

160 Comments

[misfitwashere]

November 24, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 25

Since the night of the November 5, election, Trump and his allies have insisted that he won what Trump called “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” But as the numbers have continued to come in, it’s clear that such a declaration is both an attempt to encourage donations— fundraising emails refer to Trump’s “LANDSLIDE VICTORY”—and an attempt to create the illusion of power to push his agenda. 

The reality is that Trump’s margin over Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will likely end up around 1.5 points. According to James M. Lindsay, writing for the Council of Foreign Relations, it is the fifth smallest since 1900, which covers 32 presidential races. Exit polls showed that Trump’s favorability rating was just 48% and that more voters chose someone other than Trump. And, as Lindsay points out, Trump fell 4 million votes short of President Joe Biden in 2020. 

Political science professor Lynn Vavreck of the University of California, Los Angeles, told Peter Baker of the New York Times: “If the definition of landslide is you win both the popular vote and Electoral College vote, that’s a new definition” On the other hand, she added, ��Nobody gains any kind of influence by going out and saying, ‘I barely won, and now I want to do these big things.’”

Trump’s allies are indeed setting out to do big things, and they are big things that are unpopular. 

Trump ran away from Project 2025 during the campaign because it was so unpopular. He denied he knew anything about it, calling it “ridiculous and abysmal,” and on September 16 the leader of Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick, said there were “Absolutely zero. No connection. Zero” ties between the team and Project 2025. Now, though, Trump has done an about-face and has said he will nominate at least five people associated with Project 2025 to his administration. 

Those nominees include Russell Vought, one of the project's key authors, who calls for dramatically increasing the powers of the president; Tom Homan, who as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversaw the separation of children from their parents; John Ratcliffe, whom the Senate refused in 2019 to confirm as Director of National Intelligence because he had no experience in intelligence; Brendan Carr, whom Trump wants to put at the head of the Federal Communications Commission and who is already trying to silence critics by warning he will punish broadcasters who Trump feels have been unfair to him; and Stephen Miller, the fervently anti-immigrant ideologue.

Project 2025 calls for the creation of an extraordinarily strong president who will gut the civil service and replace its nonpartisan officials with those who are loyal to the president. It calls for filling the military and the Department of Justice with those loyal to the president. And then, the project plans that with his new power, the president will impose Christian nationalism on the United States of America, ending immigration, and curtailing rights for LGBTQ+ individuals as well as women and racial and ethnic minorities.

Project 2025 was unpopular when people learned about it. 

And then there is the threat of dramatic cuts to the U.S. government, suggested by the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, headed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They are calling for cuts of $2 trillion to the items in the national budget that provide a safety net for ordinary Americans at the same time that Trump is promising additional tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Musk, meanwhile, is posturing as if he is the actual president, threatening on Saturday, for example: “Those who break the law will be arrested and that includes mayors.”  

On Meet the Press today, current representative and senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) reacted to the “dictator talk,” with which Trump is threatening his political opponents, pointing out that "[t]he American people…voted on the basis of the economy—they wanted change to the economy—they weren’t voting for dictatorship. So I think he is going to misread his mandate if that’s what he thinks voters chose him for.”

That Trump and his team are trying desperately to portray a marginal victory as a landslide in order to put an extremist unpopular agenda into place suggests another dynamic at work. 

For all Trump’s claims of power, he is a 78-year-old man who is declining mentally and who neither commands a majority of voters nor has shown signs of being able to transfer his voters to a leader in waiting. 

Trump’s team deployed Vice President–elect J.D. Vance to the Senate to drum up votes for the confirmation of Florida representative Matt Gaetz to become the United States attorney general. But Vance has only been in the Senate since 2022 and is not noticeably popular. He—and therefore Trump—was unable to find the votes the wildly unqualified Gaetz needed for confirmation, forcing him to withdraw his name from consideration. 

The next day, Gaetz began to advertise on Cameo, an app that allows patrons to commission a personalized video for fans, asking a minimum of $550.00 for a recording. Gaetz went from United States representative to Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general to making videos for Cameo in a little over a week. 

It is a truism in studying politics that it’s far more important to follow power than it is to follow people. Right now, there is a lot of power sloshing around in Washington, D.C. 

Trump is trying to convince the country that he has scooped up all that power. But in fact, he has won reelection by less than 50% of the vote, and his vice president is not popular. The policies Trump is embracing are so unpopular that he himself ran away from them when he was campaigning. And now he has proposed filling his administration with a number of highly unqualified figures who, knowing the only reason they have been elevated is that they are loyal to Trump, will go along with his worst instincts. With that baggage, it is not clear he will be able to cement enough power to bring his plans to life.

If power remains loose, it could get scooped up by cabinet officials, as it was during a similarly chaotic period in the 1920s. In that era, voters elected to the presidency former newspaperman and Republican backbencher Warren G. Harding of Ohio, who promised to return the country to “normalcy” after eight years of the presidency of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the nation’s engagement in World War I. That election really was a landslide, with Harding and his running mate, Calvin Coolidge, winning more than 60% of the popular vote in 1920.

But Harding was badly out of his depth in the presidency and spent his time with cronies playing bridge and drinking upstairs at the White House—despite Prohibition—while corrupt members of his administration grabbed all they could. 

With such a void in the executive branch, power could have flowed to Congress. But after twenty years of opposing first Theodore Roosevelt, and then William Howard Taft, and then Woodrow Wilson, Congress had become adept at opposing presidents but had split into factions that made it unable to transition to using power, rather than opposing its use.

And so power in that era flowed to members of Harding’s Cabinet, primarily to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who put into place a fervently pro-business government that continued after Harding’s untimely death into the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, who made little effort to recover the power Harding had abandoned. After Hoover became president and their system fell to ruin in the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took their lost power and used it to create a new type of government. 

In this moment, Trump’s people are working hard to convince Americans that they have gathered up all the power in Washington, D.C., but that power is actually still sloshing around. Trump is trying to force through the Senate a number of unqualified and dangerous nominees for high-level positions, threatening Republican senators that if they don’t bow to him, Elon Musk will fund primary challengers, or suggesting he will push them into recess so he can appoint his nominees without their constitutionally-mandated advice and consent. 

But Trump and his people do not, in fact, have a mandate. Trump is old and weak, and power is up for grabs. It is possible that MAGA Republicans will, in the end, force Republican senators into their camp, permitting Trump and his cronies to do whatever they wish. 

It is also possible that Republican senators will themselves take back for Congress the power that has lately concentrated in presidents, check the most dangerous and unpopular of Trump’s plans, and begin the process of restoring the balance of the three branches of government.

—

[spaceasianmillennial]

New York State voters, piss off the conservative transphobes & TERFS by voting #YesOnProp1 (extend anti-discrimination protections to abortion, disability, age, ethnicity, national origins, LGBTQ+). For NYC, vote "No" on Prop 2-6 against Eric Adams Power Grab. #FlipYourBallot

Jews for Racial & Economic Justice also rightfully warns voters that the ballot is so confusingly printed, so watch out for that,

To explain NYS statewide Prop 1 Amendment To Protect Against Unequal Treatment: It will extend anti-discrimination protections to abortion, disability, age, ethnicity, national origins, LGBTQ+. The New York State Constitution does NOT protect those, unless NYS votes "Yes" on Prop 1.

For NYC voters, there are 5 city propositions that was pushed through Eric Adams-selected persons, without much input from the NYC public. So those are understood to be Eric Adams Power Grabs.

VOTE DOWNBALLOT

FLIP YOUR BALLOT

New York State voters, find your poll: https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/

Research downballots:

https://www.vote411.org/

[nivalingreenhow]

Okay, now that it's been a few days, and I've had time to process what's happened, it's time to dig into what to do next

Simply put, vote in your midterms. In 2026 33 senate seats will be up for grabs.

*All* house of representative seats will be up for grabs. All 435 of them. Do you know what Trump can do with a congress that's against him? Not much. In 2026 there will be an opportunity to shut this down and give him as much trouble as the republican congress gave Obama. A blue congress means no confirmation for supreme court appointments. It means possibility of impeachment *and* conviction. It means he can be taken out of office, it means that in two years, if enough people vote, he will be effectively shackled

You know what else happens in 2026? Local and state elections. Are you in a state that's dangerously conservative? You can change that. The fact is people don't turn out for mid term elections. They just don't. So even in red states, if enough liberals, progressives, and independents show up, there is an opportunity to take back your state governments.

But the work starts now. Get involved locally. Vote in city counsel elections. Vote for local judges. Vote for sheriff!! Did you know in most places, that's an elected position? You can choose who runs your law enforcement.

Vote for mayor, vote for governor, vote for state legislators. With this administration, the states will be the ones deciding things. Make sure you're creating a place you want to live in. You do have that power. There are several 'red' states that have a higher number of registered democrats than the number of people who voted for Trump. If those people vote in the midterms, then we have hope

This isn't about Harris or the national democratic party and what they've done wrong. This is about your local chapters, the people in *your* communities. This is about your future and the future of this country. Hope is not lost because there are still so many things we can do, and the midterms are the best shot we have at turning this around

[the-kaedageist]

Americans, we are going to weather this and we are going to still wake up every day and do good. You are not powerless, although I know on today of all days, it feels like it. American democracy is not dismantled yet, even though it feels like that’s a foregone conclusion. Here’s the thing, though: giving into defeat, deciding that everything is so bad that you’re going to avoid doing anything, or posting on the internet about how doomed we all are is just going to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take your time to grieve. You do not have to act today. This fight is for the long haul. But then come back, and we’ll do this again. Our systems are not set in stone: Trump has shone a light on that, but he has also shown the weakness of that. The reigns of power have been grabbed, so we must redefine what it means to have power in our country. If you look at history, we have done this over and over and over again. I’ve learned over the past two and a half years from my dear friends in Ukraine that it is critical to find your sources of joy in these times. You MUST find something that brings light to your life. You must continue living. It is a defiant thing, to capture joy in a time of darkness. Don’t forget the power this has.

Spend time with people you love. Take a moment to indulge in something that makes you happy. Get involved in a movement. Start organizing. The system is broken beyond repair, so how do we take the ruins of that and build something new from it? Everything is wrong, but we have built better from catastrophe before. You can still protect the vulnerable. You can still stand up and fight.

I’m so proud of everyone who fought so hard to stave this off. That’s not over just because of this one election.

We cannot give up. That’s all there is to it.

[wilwheaton]

In her dissent, Kagan underscored the political mechanics underlying the majority opinion in usually bald terms for a justice on a Court so prizing comity and respect. She traced the conservatives’ recent rulings, in which they give themselves enough excuses to toss Chevron since it’s become outmoded anyway. In each, the majority grasped for novel reasons to ignore the precedent. In a one-two punch, Kagan also pointed out that this kind of behavior, reverse engineering a string of cases to get a hall pass to overturn long established precedent, has become habitual. “This Court has ‘avoided deferring under Chevron since 2016’ because it has been preparing to overrule Chevron since around that time,” she wrote. “That kind of self-help on the way to reversing precedent has become almost routine at this Court.”

Supreme Court Executes Massive Power Grab From Executive Branch In New Ruling

“...reverse engineering a string of cases to get a hall pass to overturn long established precedent, has become habitual.“

That’s the entire game.

The stolen SCOTUS majority is throwing out precedent and overturning decades of settled law. It is taking rights and protections away from all Americans, and rightly has its lowest approval rating in history. It is almost finished making itself into an unelected, unaccountable, untouchable Star Chamber. It has become the enforcement arm of the people behind Project 2025. I fully expect them to rule in favor of Trump’s outrageous immunity claim, because they are fully on board with everything he did and intends to do if he seizes power again.

This SCOTUS majority is a direct and existential threat to everything we think of when we hear “the American way of life”, laws and precedent be damned.

As far as I can tell, the only way to do anything about this is to expand the Court to nullify them, and I just don’t see that happening any time soon.

[lorigirltexas]

THIS ❗➡️⚠️

Power grab❓

What's the Bigger Picture ❓

The Congressional Bill to Protect us from the DRONES

Act ~

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6572

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2864

[daloy-politsey]

I’m not a liberal so I’m not as upset at Trump winning as I am about the results of certain ballot initiatives. Florida voted against legal weed and abortion. While the former isn’t as surprising, the latter is. Abortion is actually very popular with Americans so this signals a very right wing turn for Florida. In NYC, most of Mayor Adams’ power grab proposals passed.

[comatosebunny09]

Another late-night thought: Sylus interrupting your potential bone, scaring the guy off you were about to lay by materializing at the foot of your bed.

He follows you to your kitchen where you pour yourself a stiff drink. Throw your hands up in frustration after taking a swig and slamming the glass on your counter, demanding to know what the fuck he wants with you.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you sneaking around with the staff?” he asks with a quirked brow and tense jaw, but he otherwise appears composed. “Very unbecoming of you, sweetheart.”

You step to him, a haughty look on your face and a bitter laugh in your throat. “Didn’t you once say I could have anyone I want? Why do you suddenly give a fuck who I sleep with? I never gave you shit for chasing that hunter around like a lost puppy.”

You move to step around him, but he suddenly grabs your forearm, halting your escape. Surprise fleets across your face before you’re fighting to be set free.

“Let go of me!” you snarl, vainly pushing against him. It’s to no avail. He effortlessly holds fast to you, the tendons in his neck flexing.

He doesn’t let up. Instead pulls you stumbling in front of him, peering at you with a bit of irritation coloring his features.

“Do you love me?” he suddenly asks once you’ve given up thrashing about.

The question catches you off guard. You blink dumbly. “Do I—huh?”

“Are you in love with me,” he repeats as if it isn’t the most earth-shattering thing. “And don’t lie to me, because I can very well see through your ruse.” He angles himself closer, prying into your soul, his right eye glowing a sinister red as he threatens to tap into the power of his aether core.

You avert your gaze to the side. Even without the use of his Evol, he’s read you like a book.

Of course, your feelings for him run deep. You’ve been his ace for the past four years. He’s treated you with nothing but kindness. Built you up to believe you meant more to him than just someone to seduce his competition. More than a mere trump card.

You were foolish to think you could erase the thought of him with cheap lays and one-night stands.

“Let go of me,” you parrot, though there’s no fight left in your voice.

“Answer me first.” The hard edge his tone once held is traded for something softer—more beseeching. “Please.”

You reply with a sardonic chuckle. “Even if I were in love with you, it wouldn’t change anything. I’m nothing more to you than a pawn. A pretty face. A moneymaker. I’m damaged goods. ‘m nothing like her, and I never will be. So, would you—”

You try weakly to free your arm from his grip, your chest swelling with emotion. God, why do you feel like crying? “—would you just piss off?”

Follow-up story here.

[simply-ivanka]

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government

Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decades long executive power grab.

By Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Wall Street Journal

November 20, 2024

Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.

This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.

President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.

We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.

DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.

When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.

A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.

Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.

Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.

The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers.

With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.

[featherandferns]

JJ x feminist reader when Kamala loses

bro don't even I can't fucking believe it. I'm so sorry american pals and gals, my heart actually bleeds for u (if you're a trump supporter respectfully depart from my blog, I hate him <3)

"No."

"What the fuck-"

"No, this can't be happening-"

"What the actual fuck-"

"No!"

It's like your body is possessed. You stand to your feet and stare at the television like you're watching a train wreck happen before your eyes. And you are. Because Kamala lost, and Trump won.

"And the forty-seventh president of the United States-" the stiff faced newsreader relays "-is Donald J. Trump."

"Fuck!" JJ shouts. He grabs for his beer bottle and lurches it towards the television. The glass shatters against the wall. You drop back down onto the sofa as if you're legs have lost all their strength. Your head falls into your hands and your eyes squeeze shut. It's like a nightmare. This can't be happening.

"This is fucking rigged! It's fucking rigged, I swear to God!" JJ is rambling, angry and heartbroken, almost as much as you. His arm flails out to the television as if personally condemning it for giving this news. "He's a fucking criminal! A fucking criminal and he gets voted in again!"

But it scares you. Scares you in a way that JJ doesn't understand, a way that he would never understand. He lost the power once before, let it slip through his fingers, and you have an awful feeling that he's not going to make that mistake again. Roe versus Wade flashes through your head. Every pregnancy scare you've ever shared with JJ now comes with that extra, looming concern that if you are, if it is real, then you don't have any choice. Well, you do - you have the choice to risk an infection or even death whilst taking autonomy over your body and life. But what next? What could Trump possibly know of what it is to be a woman in America? What was he going to take from the people next?

JJ's arms wrap around you and he tugs you into his side. He presses his face into your hair and plants a kiss to your cheek.

"I'm so sorry."

Tears well into your eyes. "I fucking hate him, JJ."

"I know-"

"No," you snap, "you don't know, JJ. You can hate him but not like I do. Not like we do. I mean, the stuff he's said about women. The stuff he's done-"

You lift your head and meet JJ's eyes. There's the anger there, the rage held back by his sympathy. His jaw is tight but his lips are downturned. He nods. Sighing, you rub at your eyes.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't snap at you."

"Nah, I get it. It's scary."

"It's fucking terrifying," you agree quietly.

JJ presses a kiss to your forehead and you let yourself melt into him. The two of you sit like that on the sofa for a long, long moment. The television rambles in the background, reciting which state voted which party, and you want to scream. It was so close that you could almost taste it. A female president. Wouldn't that have been incredible? A female's perspective. A female in power. A female for all the other little girls to look up to, to dream to be.

"Next time," JJ reassures, as if reading your thoughts like a teleprompter. "I promise it'll happen soon."