Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Rasulis]

The public focus has been on the price of eggs. But it's not a good metric on inflation, since there are unique factors impacting egg prices right now. If a farm gets 1 chicken with bird flu in the US, every chicken at the farm is culled. So supply and demand, that's lead to higher egg prices. The concern shouldn't be $11 eggs (because it's not due to normal inflation), it should be *why* eggs are $11, as in what happens if that jumps to humans especially with the CDC, etc. gutted. I'd be cautious about getting distracted by the lesser concern on eggs. So unless RFK Jr.'s homeopathic remedies can cure bird flu in chickens, eggs aren't going to get cheaper in the US anytime soon.

The price of eggs is a small piece of the puzzle. Department of Labor most recent report gave us a larger view, and the view is pretty ugly.

Inflation went up 0.5% in January. The largest increase since August 2023. Core prices up 0.4%. The most since March 2024. Grocery up 0.5%. Eggs up 15.2% in January.

Car insurance up 2%. Hotel prices 1.4%. Gasoline 1.8%.

Good prices, excluding energy and food, up 0.3%. US wholesale prices (Producer Price Index) up 0.4%. These indexes have been flat or falling after the pandemic supply chain was fixed. Yet now they ticked up even before the implementation of any tariffs.

There is nothing good in the report.

[Kaleredar]

The price of eggs is a small piece of the puzzle. Department of Labor most recent report gave us a larger view, and the view is pretty ugly.

Inflation went up 0.5% in January. The largest increase since August 2023. Core prices up 0.4%. The most since March 2024. Grocery up 0.5%. Eggs up 15.2% in January.

Car insurance up 2%. Hotel prices 1.4%. Gasoline 1.8%.

Good prices, excluding energy and food, up 0.3%. US wholesale prices (Producer Price Index) up 0.4%. These indexes have been flat or falling after the pandemic supply chain was fixed. Yet now they ticked up even before the implementation of any tariffs.

There is nothing good in the report.

Are you perhaps saying that...

Things were cheaper under Biden?

[Polgara]

Are you perhaps saying that...

Things were cheaper under Biden?

How were people to know it was going to get worse? It's not like Trump already served an abysmal term anyone had access to learning about...

[Breccia]

So I think Canada is going to be a very serious contender to be our 51st state

-Trump, today

Trump is not joking. He actually means it. Therefore, so do Trump supporters who have not said otherwise, and I feel justified in quoting them as such.

[Kaleredar]

How were people to know it was going to get worse? It's not like Trump already served an abysmal term anyone had access to learning about...

But trump first time price lower than Biden price! Must mean Trump good at economy! Me pay less for egg under first Trump than Biden!

But now... me pay... MORE for egg under Trump than Biden?!

Must all be part of 5-Dimensional economic chess. No way Trump take advantage of stupids to line own pockets while lying about prices. Sure, he done nothing but line pockets since taking office, and prices not go any lower, but...

but...

[Breccia]

but...

With Trump signing all those Executive Orders, they're desperate for something, anything, they can point to as a win for themselves. They'll keep claiming they're okay with paying higher prices for Trump's agenda, and conveniently not mentioning they voted for Trump for lower prices. They haven't forgotten, but they would rather die than admit they made a mistake. And considering what's happening to everything from the CFPB to Medicaid to SS, they'll be able to demonstrate that.

[PACOX]

-Trump, today

Trump is not joking. He actually means it. Therefore, so do Trump supporters who have not said otherwise, and I feel justified in quoting them as such.

I want just one journalist, just one, to ask Trump how a state gets added to the Union. I don't need Trump to answer the question, I just want to goofy ass face he would make as he struggles between not knowing the answer and anger towards the journalist.

[Moralgy]

canada becomes the 51s state, gets another california level EC votes. ya know, i support this now, it would save america but destroy canada xdd /s

[Endus]

-Trump, today

Trump is not joking. He actually means it. Therefore, so do Trump supporters who have not said otherwise, and I feel justified in quoting them as such.

He means it, but it's never gonna happen. Canadians are rallying across political divides against this bullshit, Trump would have to use military force, and the moment he rolls a single tank over the border, the rest of NATO is going to stomp his balls in.

Not to mention the likely internal civil war it'd provoke in the USA and no country being willing to trade with the USA any more, leading to complete ecoomic collapse.

It's not that I don't think Trump's that stupid. It's that I think it's so stupid an idea it will inevitably fail terribly even if he does try to pull it off.

[Tech614]

canada becomes the 51s state, gets another california level EC votes. ya know, i support this now, it would save america but destroy canada xdd /s

Yea the only people that benefit from Canada as a 51st state are

1) Dem party who would get a free ride to control at all levels of government while doing nothing and continuing to be neo liberal fuckwits.

2) Donald Trump gets written in history books as the president who added the 51st state

That's it, that's the list. Canadians see a massive decrease in their healthcare and consumer protections, Americans get no real benefit out of the deal. So is Trump secretly in cahoots with Chuck and Nancy on this idea? Def not, but it would be the only explanation that makes sense rofl.

[alach]

In honour of America's newest head of the Health Services, I present this...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AYdrU6H0qu4

Its crazy how far these once sensible people have fallen. I knew he was a Dem, but preaching about the very things he is now a part of. What does trump command over these folks? Its not blackmail, they have proudly admitted to some shameful acts. Its not money, most of these fellows are already more wealthy than most of us. Its not that they suddenly woke up one morning and admitting to liking trumps policies, or heard he is a really loving and kind man.

I sure hope one day in the future we find out that what made people like RFJ Jr, JD Vance, and all those others flipflop into loving trump and give up not their souls, but their very idealogies and principles.

ps. Why aren't videos embedding?

[Tech614]

I sure hope one day in the future we find out that what made people like RFJ Jr, JD Vance, and all those others flipflop into loving trump and give up not their souls, but their very idealogies and principles.

They had nothing going for them to get popular on their own merits so the grifted to the easiest source of popularity if you kiss Trump's ring. MAGATs will like anyone Trump tells them to like.

[gondrin]

With Trump signing all those Executive Orders, they're desperate for something, anything, they can point to as a win for themselves. They'll keep claiming they're okay with paying higher prices for Trump's agenda, and conveniently not mentioning they voted for Trump for lower prices. They haven't forgotten, but they would rather die than admit they made a mistake. And considering what's happening to everything from the CFPB to Medicaid to SS, they'll be able to demonstrate that.

The big irony, and I do mean BIG irony, is he could literally get everything he wants passed through Congress right now instead of doing everything illegally. The Senate most definitely would have no issue removing the filibuster to give Trump what he wants. And everything that DOGE and his EOs are doing could easily be done officially. And there would be nothing the Democrats could do about it as they do not actually have any means to stop it if the filibuster was removed.

But Trump, like a lot of criminals, just love to do things illegally for the sake of doing them illegally. Because doing things illegally is far easier than doing them legally. Especially in this case.

- - - Updated - - -

He means it, but it's never gonna happen. Canadians are rallying across political divides against this bullshit, Trump would have to use military force, and the moment he rolls a single tank over the border, the rest of NATO is going to stomp his balls in.

Not to mention the likely internal civil war it'd provoke in the USA and no country being willing to trade with the USA any more, leading to complete ecoomic collapse.

It's not that I don't think Trump's that stupid. It's that I think it's so stupid an idea it will inevitably fail terribly even if he does try to pull it off.

Don't worry. Give it a few months and the US will probably be on its way to a Civil war anyway if SCOTUS rules against him and he decides to ignore them and Congress does nothing.

I will personally go march on DC to demand Congress to be removed if they do that as, at that point, I will demand nobody pay their salaries as they are no longer needed as the US Constitution is invalid. I will demand DOGE to cut them out seeing as they abjugated their core responsibilities to the Executive. Why have a Legislative if the Executive can decide what laws to follow or not? At that point, they are no longer laws, they are suggestions. And I won't be the only one.

At that point, I figure California will demand their independence from the country as, once again, the US Constitution is invalid. And the US Constitution is the thing that is the basis of what constitutes the Federal Government and governs how they function. Same with Texas as they have always been wanting to leave the US for a long time now.

- - - Updated - - -

In honour of America's newest head of the Health Services, I present this...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AYdrU6H0qu4

Its crazy how far these once sensible people have fallen. I knew he was a Dem, but preaching about the very things he is now a part of. What does trump command over these folks? Its not blackmail, they have proudly admitted to some shameful acts. Its not money, most of these fellows are already more wealthy than most of us. Its not that they suddenly woke up one morning and admitting to liking trumps policies, or heard he is a really loving and kind man.

I sure hope one day in the future we find out that what made people like RFJ Jr, JD Vance, and all those others flipflop into loving trump and give up not their souls, but their very idealogies and principles.

ps. Why aren't videos embedding?

Well, because somewhere down the line, they delved into the conspiracy black hole. Doesn't matter what conspiracy it is. The moment you go down that hole and start to believe in any part of them, it tends to cause a brain rot which then causes them to lose objective judgement over things. And, because people like Vance are opportunists, they will latch onto anything that will give them power. Even if it means their "morals" are no longer a thing.

[PhaelixWW]

There are times I think the US would have been better off if the South had been allowed to secede.

[Calfredd]

There are times I think the US would have been better off if the South had been allowed to secede.

Or if the North didn't give them the equivalent of a slap on the wrist when punishing the South.

[Tech614]

There are times I think the US would have been better off if the South had been allowed to secede.

Eh lets be clear on one thing, while the north was the "good guys" by slightly having more human rights than the south it was still full of racist assholes who practiced segregation well into the 50s. The main goal of the civil war from the north was putting the south in their place, they didn't really care about the black people that much.

So no, I don't think much would be different at all and the north is still full of Trump voting morons and tbh the north could of ended up even worse if the south didn't lead the charge of civil rights protests mid century.

Country was founded by racists, and in the grand scheme of things very little has been done to solve this over the nation's life the north or south doesn't really matter.

[gondrin]

So, in the first ruling in the Birthright Citizenship lawsuit, the judge basically calls the DoJ and by extension Trump pretty much a bunch of idiots.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/re...79876.46.0.pdf

In opposing the requests for injunctions, the defendants assert an array of arguments, which the Court addresses briefly here and in detail below. For starters, each plaintiff has standing to sue, because the uncontested facts establish each would suffer direct injury from the EO’s implementation. The plaintiffs are also likely to succeed on the merits of their claims. In a lengthy 1898 decision, the Supreme Court examined the Citizenship Clause, adopting the interpretation the plaintiffs advance and rejecting the interpretation expressed in the EO. The rule and reasoning from that decision were reiterated and applied in later decisions, adopted by Congress as a matter of federal statutory law in 1940, and followed consistently by the Executive Branch for the past 100 years, at least. A single district judge would be bound to apply that settled interpretation, even if a party were to present persuasive arguments that the long established understanding is erroneous.

The defendants, however, have offered no such arguments here. Their three main contentions are flawed. First, allegiance in the United States arises from the fact of birth. It does not depend on the status of a child’s parents, nor must it be exclusive, as the defendants contend. Applying the defendants’ view of allegiance would mean children of dual citizens and lawful permanent residents would not be birthright citizens—a result even the defendants do not support. Next, the defendants argue birthright citizenship requires the mutual consent of the person and the Nation. This theory disregards the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment: to recognize as birthright citizens the children of enslaved persons who did not enter the country consensually, but were brought to our shores in chains. There is no basis to think the drafters imposed a requirement excluding the very people the Amendment aimed to make citizens. Simply put, the Amendment is the Nation’s consent to accept and protect as citizens those born here, subject to the few narrow exceptions recognized at the time of enactment, none of which are at issue here. Finally, the Amendment requires states to recognize
birthright citizens as citizens of their state of residence. The text includes no domicile requirement at all.

Beyond sidestepping Wong Kim Ark, the defendants urge the Court to read three specific requirements into the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The defendants contend these requirements are necessary to ensure adherence to the phrase’s original meaning. None of these requirements, however, find support in the text itself or the cases construing and applying it. And, more importantly, each of them, if applied as argued, would prevent the Citizenship Clause from reaching groups of persons to whom even the defendants concede it must apply.

First, the defendants suggest the “jurisdiction” phrase is satisfied only by persons who owe the United States “allegiance” that is “direct,” “immediate,” “complete,” and “unqualified by allegiance to any alien power.” New Jersey, Doc. No. 92 at 27-28 (cleaned up). Certainly, allegiance matters. Various sources link the “jurisdiction” phrase and concepts of allegiance, including Wong Kim Ark. See, e.g., 169 U.S. at 654 (noting English common law provided citizenship to those “born within the king’s allegiance, and subject to his protection”). The defendants veer off course, however, by suggesting allegiance must be exclusive, and that it derives from the status of a child’s parents. If that were so, then the children of dual citizens or LPRs could not receive birthright citizenship via the Fourteenth Amendment. A dual citizen necessarily bears some allegiance to both the United States and the second nation of which they are a citizen. LPRs, unless and until naturalized, remain foreign nationals who are citizens of other countries bearing some allegiance to their places of origin. This principle would also rule out the petitioner in Wong Kim Ark, whose parents resided for years in the United States but remained “subjects of the emperor of China” (and, indeed, returned to China when their U.S. born son was a teenager). 169 U.S. at 652-53. The defendants, however, agree that children of dual citizens and LPRs are entitled to birthright citizenship, and that the petitioner in Wong Kim Ark was as well.

These anomalies are avoided by focusing on the allegiance of the child, not the parents. As noted earlier, the Citizenship Clause itself speaks only of the child. A child born in the United States necessarily acquires at birth the sort of allegiance that justified birthright citizenship at the common law. That is, they are born “locally within the dominions of” the United States and immediately “derive protection from” the United States. Id. at 659. A child born here is both entitled to the government’s protection and bound to adhere to its laws. This is true regardless of the characteristics of the child’s parents, subject only to the narrow exceptions identified in Wong Kim Ark. Allegiance, in this context, means nothing more than that. See id. at 662 (“Birth and allegiance go together.”).

As James Madison explained:

It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in
general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will be therefore unnecessary to investigate any other.

So, “allegiance” does not mean what the defendants think it means, and their first proposed rule founders.

Next, the defendants seek to graft concepts of social-contract theory onto the “jurisdiction” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by arguing birthright citizenship requires
“mutual consent between person and polity.” New Jersey, Doc. No. 92 at 45. The defendants again center their argument on the parents at the expense of the child whose birthright is at stake—perhaps, in part, because infants are incapable of consent in the legal sense. In the defendants’ view, mutual consent is lacking where a person (the parent) has entered the United States without permission to do so, or without permission to remain here permanently. The absence of “mutual consent” in those circumstances means, according to the defendants, that the children of such parents fall beyond the “jurisdiction” of the United States for Fourteenth Amendment purposes.

This argument fares even worse than the first. The Fourteenth Amendment enshrined in the Constitution language ensuring “the fundamental principle of citizenship by birth” in the United States applied regardless of race—including, and especially, to formerly enslaved persons. 169 U.S. at 675; see Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 262-63 (1967). The defendants do not (and could not) deny this. Enslaved persons, of course, did not “consent” to come to the United States or to remain here. They were brought here violently, in chains, without their consent. These conditions persisted after their arrival. Against this backdrop, it verges on frivolous to suggest that Congress drafted, debated, and passed a constitutional amendment, thereafter enacted by the states, that imposed a consent requirement necessarily excluding the one group of people the legislators and enactors most specifically intended to protect.

Finally, the defendants seek to transform the use of the term “reside” at the end of the Citizenship Clause into a basis for finding that the “jurisdiction” phrase eliminates any person without a lawful “domicile” in the United States. The defendants contend that persons here with temporary visas retain “domiciles” in their native countries, and persons here without lawful status cannot establish a true “domicile.” And so, the argument goes, they cannot “reside” in any state, and they remain outside the “jurisdiction” of the United States for Fourteenth Amendment purposes. This, once again, shifts the focus away from the child and the location of birth to the parents and the status and duration of their presence in this country.

The word “reside” appears in the Citizenship Clause only in the phrase specifying that a person entitled to birthright citizenship becomes a citizen not only of the United States, but also of the state where they live. For example, a state within the former Confederacy (or any other state) could not constitutionally deny state citizenship to the child of a formerly enslaved person who lived and gave birth there. The word “reside” does not inject a “domicile” requirement limiting the reach of the Citizenship Clause as a whole and justifying examination of the immigration status of a child’s parents. See New Jersey, Doc. No. 123 at 11-12 (articulating the flaws in this theory). In any event, it is not so clear that “illegal entry into the country would . . . , under traditional criteria, bar a person from obtaining domicile within a State.” Plyler, 457 U.S. at 227 n.22.

In sum, the defendants invite the Court to adopt a set of rules that work (except when they don’t). None of the principles the defendants advance are sturdy enough to overcome the settled interpretation and longstanding application of the Citizenship Clause described above. Each principle, applied uniformly, would lead to unintended results at odds with the text, meaning, and intent of the Fourteenth Amendment—and, in some instances, with the parameters set out in the EO itself.

For all these reasons, the Court finds the plaintiffs are exceedingly likely to prevail on the merits of their constitutional and statutory claims. This conclusion would allow the plaintiffs to “show somewhat less in the way of irreparable harm.” Astra U.S.A., 94 F.3d at 743. That relaxed burden, however, is not essential, as the second factor also favors the plaintiffs strongly.

Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof literally means to be subject to the laws of the land where you are at. If I go by what Trump and his administration are trying to define it as, that means that since undocumented immigrants would not be subject to the laws of the land here and therefore cannot be charged with any crime seeing as to be charged with a crime, you also must be subject to the jurisdiction of the land where you are at. That means they cannot be held against their will and are free to commit whatever crimes they want as the courts would have no standing to render a judgement seeing as they would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the land where they are at.

[PhaelixWW]

Eh lets be clear on one thing, while the north was the "good guys" by slightly having more human rights than the south it was still full of racist assholes who practiced segregation well into the 50s. The main goal of the civil war from the north was putting the south in their place, they didn't really care about the black people that much.

You will never, ever convince me the US wouldn't have transitioned through the Civil Rights Era more gracefully without the festering wound that is the South and its self-identity rooted in bigotry.

The point wasn't that it would have been all sunshine and rainbows, but that it would have been better.

Low bar is low, and all that.

[Tech614]

You will never, ever convince me the US wouldn't have transitioned through the Civil Rights Era more gracefully without the festering wound that is the South and its self-identity rooted in bigotry.

The point wasn't that it would have been all sunshine and rainbows, but that it would have been better.

Low bar is low, and all that.

The south was the entire reason the civil rights movement was a huge thing. The north was happy to act like they where civilized while practicing lower key segregation and throwing their POC under the bus whenever it was convenient. Like how northern universities would sit their black athletes at the request of playing a southern university with 0 pushback.

I don't think it would be better at all, in fact I think without the civil rights movement gaining steam in the south the north is far worse off and has a far slower transition to normalcy than they did. Because the type of racism in the north was the type we have resurging today, the type that's far harder to get away from while racists try to feign ignorance. The south was more of the out of control bullshit that will always spur a revolution and it did with the civil rights movement.

[PhaelixWW]

I don't think it would be better at all, in fact I think without the civil rights movement gaining steam in the south the north is far worse off and has a far slower transition to normalcy than they did. Because the type of racism in the north was the type we have resurging today, the type that's far harder to get away from while racists try to feign ignorance. The south was more of the out of control bullshit that will always spur a revolution and it did with the civil rights movement.

Then I guess you're thrilled with the Trump presidency.