Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[s_bushido]

Really: If you're a lawful US resident, just don't travel out of the country.

Or do, so you can escape the rise of fascism here...

[btlcryct]

damn

donald and republicans really heard democrats say "defund the police"

and then said "i bet we can do a better job of it" and here we are

how is it good that programs for victims of sexual assault are being ended, again?

how is it good that mental healthcare funding for police officers is being ended, agin?

Because victims of SA aren't real victims (see what he's been convicted of, I'm sure he's convinced they enjoyed being "mushroom'd" by him and therefore he didn't commit SA) and mental health is all in your head (yes, pun intended as this is a sarcastic reply).

If you think about it, him being convicted of SA is exactly part of the reason. I mean, he still holds a grudge from 40+ years ago about his tiny hands. Of course he's going to go after those he perceives as having wronged him.

As a 'businessman' all he cares about is the bottom line, and damn the torpedoes on how you make it bigger. There are tons of his generation that think mental health is malarkey and all those first responders who saw horrific things just need to snap out of it and get back to work. In their minds, who cares about social services, look at all the money they saved. That regular folks will never see a dime of.

[DarkTZeratul]

https://www.trucking.org/news-insigh...nt-flooding-us

Ah, that's why.

Because of MAGA conspiracies about millions of foreign truckers coming to the US.

Anyways, seems he's trying to use this EO to try to make English the official language as the US? Or argue he has even though it would likely require a legislative act?

This is stupid.

It's especially stupid because it's de facto already required for truckers to speak English because the test for a Commercial Driver's License is only available in English.

[Edge-]

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/28/nx-s1...secrets-access

Two members of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have been given accounts on classified networks that hold highly guarded details about America's nuclear weapons, two independent sources tell NPR.

Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, and Adam Ramada, a Miami-based venture capitalist, have had accounts on the computer systems for at least two weeks, according to the sources who also have access to the networks. Prior to their work at DOGE, neither Farritor nor Ramada appear to have had experience with either nuclear weapons or handling classified information.

why does a 23 year old intern and a venture capitalist, neither of whom i bet went through background checks, have access to our nuclear secrets?

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy flatly denied that Farritor and Ramada had accessed the networks.

"This reporting is false. No DOGE personnel have accessed these NNSA systems. The two DOGE individuals in question worked within the agency for several days and departed DOE in February," the spokesperson told NPR in an emailed statement.

The two sources contacted by NPR declined to be identified publicly because they were not authorized to speak about the matter to the press. They were able to directly see Ramada and Farritor's names in the directories of the networks. The network directories are visible to thousands of employees involved in nuclear weapons work at facilities and laboratories throughout the U.S., but the networks themselves can only be accessed on specific terminals in secure rooms designated for the handling of classified information.

NPR has far more credibility than this administration, and we've already seen multiples stories the administration has denied be completely true, including multiple Singal-related scandals in recent weeks.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes I did watch John Oliver's bit on RFK Jr. so I'm sharing one of the horrific things done - https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/14/...-osh-director/

But as of April 1, the Office on Smoking and Health — responsible for the Tips campaign along with other projects aimed at spotting trends in tobacco use and preventing it at the national and state levels — is effectively shuttered, the roughly 120 full-time employees who worked there dismissed along with the contractors who lost their jobs in February. That’s left the future of OSH initiatives unclear, including not just the Tips campaign, which continues to air for now, but also the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey, which helped spur federal action on the alarming uptake of Juul and other e-cigarettes among teenagers a few years back. States and U.S. territories, which received the bulk of OSH’s $240 million in funding, relied on the agency’s support to run quit hotlines — which provide callers with counseling as well as access to medications — and to introduce other anti-tobacco initiatives like cigarette taxes or restaurant smoking bans. OSH was also responsible for Surgeon General’s reports on tobacco use, which in recent years had focused on topics like health disparities in tobacco-related disease and death, smoking cessation, and e-cigarette use among young people.

Making Smoking Great Again, I guess?

Amid the 10,000 job cuts so far this month at the U.S. health department, what happened to OSH is “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century,” said Tim McAfee, who headed the division from 2010 to 2017.

Apparently so.

Odd that such a "health nut" in charge of HHS would kill a small department that was focused on reducing the number of people smoking cigarettes which is objectively a good thing. I say this as a repeat former smoker.

[Draco-Onis]

why does a 23 year old intern and a venture capitalist, neither of whom i bet went through background checks, have access to our nuclear secrets?

Because this is 2025 and a out and about neo Nazi named bigballs has access to government secrets, at least he is old enough to drink?

[Xath]

Or do, so you can escape the rise of fascism here...

Well they are talking about people who actually try to come back.

[Moralgy]

So question to the young Americans that got deported. Since the moms got rushed out, how tf do these kids prove they are American in the future if they try to come back.

I'm actually willing to believe the parents took them with them but the logistics of it feel like they are probably never able to prove they are American in say five years etc.

[Edge-]

So question to the young Americans that got deported. Since the moms got rushed out, how tf do these kids prove they are American in the future if they try to come back

that's a good question

i mean, they technically have social security numbers/cards and birth certificates

do you think donald's government let them get those documents before deporting them without due process?

[Moralgy]

that's a good question

i mean, they technically have social security numbers/cards and birth certificates

do you think donald's government let them get those documents before deporting them without due process?

Yea that's what I'm looking at here, even if they are technically able to come back when they are old enough, it's just gonna get rejected due to losing the documents during this

[Sunseeker]

that's a good question

i mean, they have social security numbers/cards and birth certificates

do you think donald's government let them get those documents before deporting them without due process?

Fixed that for you.

Lets be clear, they dont "technically" have these things, and they werent "deported". Theyre US citizens who just had their citizenship effectively stripped. "Exiled"? "Kidnapped"? "Human trafficked"? Yeah those are all more accurate than "deported". The reporting on this is flatly disgusting.

Theres no technically nothing. Theres no suggestion that they are anything BUT citizens, except from Trump and Co who think anyone who isnt white and blonde isnt a citizen.

[Edge-]

https://time.com/7265175/the-effort-...ite-watergate/

Amid a historic wave of firings and other attacks on federal employees, Trump recently declared that the president of the Richard Nixon Foundation, Jim Byron, would oversee the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on “a day-to-day basis.” Trump touted the experience of the 31-year-old Byron, who “has worked with the National Archives for many years.” He neglected to mention that this experience began with the Nixon Foundation, where he started as an intern.

Since 2007, the Nixon Foundation has had a contentious relationship with the National Archives. That year, the Nixon Library was absorbed into the federal presidential library system. Instead of controlling every facet of the library as a private facility, the Foundation now operates alongside a new federal office that oversees nonpartisan exhibits and events. The most public dispute between the two sides focused on NARA’s exhibit on Watergate, curated by the library’s first federal director, Timothy Naftali.

Under Byron’s leadership, the National Archives has already fired 27 employees across the federal presidential library system, including the Deputy Director of the Nixon Library who was reportedly at odds with the leadership of the Nixon Foundation because of a disagreement over its plan to expand its campus. The announcement followed Trump’s decision to fire Colleen Shogan as Head of the National Archives, a move that came after the Archives alerted the Justice Department about his mishandling of classified materials.

But the story at NARA is also alarming, given the decades-long campaign led by some conservatives to rewrite our cultural understanding of the Watergate Scandal. Byron’s appointment reflects how Trump and an increasing number of Republicans have embraced new lessons about Nixon. In their view, Nixon cared too much about presidential norms, should have never resigned, and that he was the victim of a liberal-left conspiracy to destroy his presidency. Rather than seeing him as someone who abused presidential power, to these conservatives, Nixon has become a useful symbol in their war on the administrative state, revealing the fragility of norms after Watergate that shaped how presidents responded to scandals.

For decades, the fear of a second Watergate has cast a pall over U.S. politics. Presidents Ford and Carter kept their distance from Nixon, as did almost anyone with presidential ambitions. Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.), a longtime defender of Nixon, opposed Ford’s controversial pardon of the disgraced president in the middle of a close reelection bid in 1974. “The pardon of Nixon was premature…The damaging part is the feeling that people have that this is the same old ball game,” said Dole, who barely won his race that year. George H.W. Bush, who served as chair of the Republican National Convention, during the final days of Watergate, made it known that he told Nixon to resign on August 7, 1974.

Ronald Reagan adopted a different stance. Unlike most mainstream politicians, he never criticized Nixon during his presidency. Nearing the end of his two terms as governor of California, the longtime defender of Nixon told reporters on the day of resignation, “I think it is important to recognize that Mr. Nixon has suffered as much as any man should.” While he rarely commented on Nixon or Watergate during his presidency, the Watergate consensus was powerful enough in the 1980s to ensure that Reagan avoided appearing publicly with Nixon.

Nixon, the criminal.

Or for Republicans

Nixon, the victim.

I wonder how much more history Republicans will try to rewrite?

[tehdang]

This is a case Ive been waiting for more details b4 posting about it but now that more details have come ...

Still very much reliant on "according to a lawyer."

The default should be that a mother of a 2 year old would of course want to be together with her young child. The rest of the factual record is not stated. The basic "what we know now" was that she stated her intent to have her minor children be with her, and was deported.

Untested claims otherwise by a lawyer aren't dispositive.

The father of VML, who lives in the U.S., sought custody of VML after the mother was detained this week and asked that the girl be placed with a custodian who is “ready and willing” to care for her in the U.S., attorneys for the custodian wrote.

All kind of hearsay potential bullshit. Is he also subject to a due-process removal order? I gather what's unsaid is that the parents weren't together and weren't married, based on what was said about "legal custody." This is to say, if it turns out the mother had legal custody of her children, and wanted to be with them (very natural), it's not likely that a non-custodial parent could force her to part with her minor children.

Of course, if the situation were reversed, we would be talking about the malicious act of separating a mother from her children, just because the mother was in the country illegally. So, yeah, let's see further developments on why that father didn't have legal custody of his children, and all the things that a lawyer wouldn't bring up to sympathetic news outlets. The entire course of the last two months should establish that news outlets are acting as mouthpieces for immigrant lawyers.

I'll also add that child US citizens are still eligible to return, the provisions of a valid US port of entry and guardianship notwithstanding.

[Edge-]

Of course, if the situation were reversed, we would be talking about the malicious act of separating a mother from her children, just because the mother was in the country illegally.

did the administration make any attempt to place the child with family?

i mean, i love how we're treating the administration as acting in good faith what with all the other "accidental" wrongful deportations and arrests and detainments of lawful us citizens and folks with valid residency or literal just tourists and shit

[DarkTZeratul]

The default should be that a mother of a 2 year old would of course want to be together with her young child. The rest of the factual record is not stated. The basic "what we know now" was that she stated her intent to have her minor children be with her, and was deported.

As the judge very clearly pointed out, we do not know that she stated her intent to have her minor child be with her. We know that ICE claims she did, but nobody was actually allowed to talk to her to confirm that. You also seem to be ignoring that the father of the 2 year old stated his intent to have his minor child be with him.

[Polgara]

did the administration make any attempt to place the child with family?

i mean, i love how we're treating the administration as acting in good faith what with all the other "accidental" wrongful deportations and arrests and detainments of lawful us citizens and folks with valid residency or literal just tourists and shit

We should just take the kidnappings in good faith you see, but honestly I can see why a proud defender (not you) of sexual assault would be more than happy to cheer on, again, kidnapping.

[Breccia]

(refuses to touch Trump demanding criminal investigation into unflattering polls)

Translation: "I support and approve of Trump not just failing to serve the Constitution, but his attack on it directly. This is what I voted for and want."

[Edge-]

Translation: "I support and approve of Trump not just failing to serve the Constitution, but his attack on it directly. This is what I voted for and want."

you see donald demanding investigations into news media that report on him negatively (60 minutes) or that report negative news (these polls) is actually a national priority right now

there's just nothing more important than that

[Xath]

you see donald demanding investigations into news media that report on him negatively (60 minutes) or that report negative news (these polls) is actually a national priority right now

there's just nothing more important than that

Trying to control the media via pressure and lawsuits definitely doesn't smack of authoritarianism at all /s

[PhaelixWW]

donald and republicans are focused on the serious issues

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trum...-polls-2064949

he needs to know why his polls are so low so he's going to have that investigated

Answer:

he fucking sucks and people hate him

The judges will accept this answer as well.

[Draco-Onis]

Answer:


The judges will accept this answer as well.

The DOJ is his own personal attack dog, he will try to drown these news outlets and pollsters in legal fees and prying investigations.