The current political situation in the US

[Admin]

A lot of people have been worried about Donald Trump but people should pay more attention to all the people around Trump now.

During his last term Trump had a lot of people around him who wasn't onboard with his agenda which put a break on many of his more radical ideas.

Now instead people around Trump are often more radical than he is and there is no shortage of people willing to help him implement radical changes.

Obviously Trump isn't reading the hundreds of executive orders he is signing. Instead he have people around him who he trusts and a lot of those people were involved with project 2025.

It does seem like Trump is trying to keep his promises which is not exactly what we hoped for but we also shouldn't be surprised when someone does something bad after promising they are going to do that bad thing after getting elected.

I do not get the impression that Trump is in a strong position. Sure he does have a lot of authority but that whole thing comes off as shaky.

While Trump has been good at getting people to vote for him he is not actually good when it comes to governance. Things will keep failing as he is governing (like they did last time) and he will simply blame others for those failures.

One issue the republicans have is that JD vance does not really have the same ability to make people vote for him as Trump does. We can however expect republicans to put effort into rigging the future elections so they will win anyway even if their candidate isn't very popular.

Trump is also pretty old so he will not be able to remain in power for much more than 4 years anyway (even if he becomes a dictator and start serving a third term).

Trumps talks about territorial expansionism should be taken seriously. Trump seems to think similar to me in that regard and so it's very likely he is going to annex new territory by force. You living outside the US does not mean you are safe if he goes full authoritarian.

 

[Admin]

Trans rights
Now in addition to all the anti-trans legislation red states pass we will also see anti-trans measures on a federal level.

It's definitely a good idea to leave united states now if you can if you belong to a minority Trump and his gang are likely to target.

There are simply to many ways in which authorities can target trans people so it comes down to them lacking in motivation. I wouldn't risk if with elon musk having such prominent position in the administration (in addition to all the christian fundamentalists).

For now trans people should be mostly safe in blue states but it's unclear if that is going to remain the case.

Note that Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Panama are all unsafe due to the invasion risk.

 

[Admin]

Keeping your head down might be the best strategy
Being a prominent opponent to an authoritarian leader for your country tends to be bad for your health and it also makes things easier for them.

Sure people can try to protest but at best that will do nothing and at worst it will be used to justify invoking the insurrection act which will give them even more power.

The more authoritarian Trump and his associates become the more dangerous it will be to openly oppose therm and the more it will make sense to pretend being on their side (at least for now). You don't want to make it easy for them to figure out who their opponents are.

 

[Admin]

Why courts and federal employees cannot stop trump
Trump will simply get rid of people in the executive branch who tries to go against him. He actually did that his last term culminating with "schedule F" classifying 50000 federal workers as political appointees.

Trump cannot replace members of federal courts as easily but there is a small problem. He can simply ignore the courts since they are not the ones in control of the potential violence, it's up to the executive branch to enforce court rulings and why should Trump enforce a ruling that went against him?

Currently the supreme court has 6 conservative judges (3 appointed by Trump) and 3 liberal judges so even winning there in the first place is an uphill battle unless you are pushing for some conservative policy.

Trump can also change the composition of the supreme court by expanding it (requires congress) or having supreme court justices who opposed him fall out of windows.

 

[Admin]

JD vance and elong musk are both ready to ignore the courts
So far the administration is largely following court orders but how long will they put up with that?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ak8hLat0_-Q

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/02/judge-told-trump-and-musk-to-follow-the-law-for-a-week-theyre-calling-it-tyranny/

Update: Trump has now said "I always abide by the courts and then I’ll have to appeal it".

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5139380-trump-agenda-court-orders/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAgVYfvAYRc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7s0Kl8VvmU

 

[Admin]

They are not following the project 2025 plan
Project 2025 is not some master-plan for ending democracy. Project 2025 actually aims to give power back to congress to regulate directly and streamline the executive branch. I have not seen anything in project 2025 about ignoring courts.

Trump himself didn't seem to care much about project 2025 and not all people in his administration are on board with that either, at least not as it was written. It's of course very possible that there were anti-democratic plans they were hiding but so far there is not much indication for them following some master-plan, that doesn't mean democracy is going to survive though.

Interestingly there was actually a plan to end democracy out there that didn't get much attention. JD vance in particular seem to like Curtis Yarvin who is a far right wing blogger, software developer, and political strategist who has become incredibly influential with major figures in the Republican Party and Trump administration including Trump himself, JD Vance, Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, etc.

Yarvin has developed a 7-step strategy for the complete autocratic takeover of the United States government which he calls The Butterfly Revolution. Step number 3 of this Butterfly Revolution Strategy is to ‘Ignore the Courts’. The Trump administration has been thus far following the blueprint for this strategy in its first 3 weeks to a t.

The cliff notes version of this 7 step strategy are as follows:

Step 1: Campaign on autocracy Framing the Trump political campaign around destroying an inefficient and unworkably broken system.

Step 2: Purge the bureaucracy… or ‘R.A.G.E.’ Retire All Government Employees. Reissuing Schedule F.

Step 3: Ignore The Courts… Continuously flood the zone with executive actions and federal initiatives while gutting governmental institutions.

Step 4: Co-Opt Congress. Handpick candidates for every seat. Buying the congressional seats and their loyalty will, according to Yarvin ‘only cost a few billion dollars’.

Step 5: Centralize Police & Government Powers… Declare state of emergency, federalize national guard, create nationalized, centralized police state that absorbs local authorities. Declaring national states of emergency will create loopholes whereby the administration can neuter Posse Comitatus act protections.

Step 6: Shut Down ‘Elite Media’ & Academic Institutions… ‘The Cathedral’. De-legitimize and neuter legacy media.

Step 7: Turn-Out Your People. Mobilize and empower your core supporter base, providing radical elements among your base with immunity and unchecked authority to act on behalf of your interests, allowing them to further clamp down on protest and dissent. (Pardoning J6 insurrectionists could likely be considered an early aspect of this step).

 

[Admin]

What's even the end-game here?
Trump is a blatant narcissist who mainly cares about his own ego at this point.

Trump doesn't really seem to have a plan and people around him have different ideologies/visions for what to do.

They might end up turning against each other.

Having one figure head but then have other people do the actual heavy lifting for governance tend to not lead to a particularly stable system. Trump is similar to commodus in how he overly relies on people around him due to being too lazy/uninterested to actually figure out what the best path forward is, he is too easily influenced/manipulated which is a source of instability.

Trump might not even have that much to gain from ending democracy to make JD vance dictator and he himself is too old to sit much longer than 4 years to begin with. Trump is not going to defy courts only to help advance some political ideology, he mainly cares about himself.

 

[Admin]

My prediction from 2023
I predicted based on the increased polarization and game-theory that the two sides would increasingly turn against each other to the point where one seed would see it necessary to crush the other side before the other side does that to them.

https://youtu.be/BrAb22L0fQc?si=4Iy3ULxBhtaMc-t2&t=1919

I even mentioned a potential invasion of canada after a republican president becomes dictator.

To end democracy in the US you only need the following 3

0. The presidency.
1. 34+ senators who are not going to remove the president from office in the senate impeachment trial.
2. enough loyalists in the military

Trump has 0 and 1 and should be able to get 2 if he isn't there already.

The lincoln project predicted that Trump was going to expand the supreme court to 12 seats but i did not think he was going to do that since he could simply ignore the courts altogether. They might not even have the votes for expanding the court in congress.

Another weakness in the US system is that supreme court vacancies are filled by the president and senate so the 3 remaining liberal justices are definitely at risk (especially now after Trump let the Jan 6 insurrectionists loose).

 

[Creamer]

1st week in office and he does operation warp speed 2
while burning 500m$ on lobotomized woke closed source censored AI.

 

[Admin]

1st week in office and he does operation warp speed 2

That started under biden.

https://www.1daysooner.org/ows2/

Notice how they continue most policies of their predecessors for the most part.

They even had state officials do their own approval process to pretend doing independent from Trump when unsafe covid vaccines were rushed by Trump but then they all approved it of course. Didn't trump attack them for that stunt? (he didn't want state officials to questioned the vaccines he rushed forward but of course they never questioned it for real).

while burning 500m$ on lobotomized woke closed source censored AI.

Wasn't it 500 billion $ ?

 

[Admin]

Why conservatives dominating the supreme court may be to their detriment
Short-term you have more to gain from defying the supreme court if they are going to rule against you more.

With the supreme court having 6 conservative justices (3 appointed by Trump) the trump administration may conclude that defying courts isn't worhtwhile when they can simply appeal it and win a lot of the time when the supreme court takes it up.

The most dangerous scenario is where Trump feels pushed into a corner. The best strategy is to keep him relatively happy so he doesn't resort to extreme measures out of desperation.

Note that Trump becoming a dictator isn't necessarily bad but you don't want to become one of his targets if that happens.

Trump might not even be that interested in rigging the next election if he isn't even on the ticket. He might end up kinda screwing the republicans over which would be glorious.

People opposed to conservatism instead have a lot more to gain from defying the courts since the courts are filled with feminists and cuckservatives.