Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[gondrin]

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to launch plans for mass layoffs and reorganizations at 19 federal agencies and departments, including the CDC and Social Security Administration, while litigation continues.

Crazy that after 250 years of Presidents this new found thing of a President being able to crush the Federal system by mass layoffs. The discovered power of a President changing the federal system that may be impossible to recover but now the precedent of one President coming in an fixing this and next one destroying it.

Really makes us have a stabilized government.

Honestly, the blocking of mass layoffs is relatively new. Up until 1935, the notion that the President could fire pretty much anyone that isn't sitting in Congress or the Judiciary was a real thing with Humprey's Executor. The problem is that unless a position is defined under a statute or law, there is actively nothing there to actually stop the President from firing said person. SCOTUS just literally overturned said ruling they gave before without actually ruling on it.

This is why every department, outside of the Department of Defense(maybe even them), should be under the control of Congress and not the Executive. That way, if the President wanted to fire people, they would actively have to go through Congress in order to do so. The US Marshalls should be under the authority of only the Judiciary instead of being both under the Judiciary and the Executive.

- - - Updated - - -

So, Trump claims that the Federal Government can come in and just run US Cities. Not just DC(which the federal government can technically do), but actual cities in the States themselves.

Last time I checked, no, the Federal Government cannot do this. But Congress won't tell him no.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...06b498e2&ei=12

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said the White House has "tremendous power" to run U.S. cities "when we have to" in response to a question about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist.

Speaking during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump responded to a question about New York City's mayoral election by criticizing progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani and suggesting the federal government has broad authority to step in when cities falter.

At the same cabinet meeting, Trump suggested that his team is already weighing a plan to assume direct control over Washington, D.C., citing dissatisfaction with local governance.

"We could run D.C. I mean, we're looking at D.C.," he said, as quoted by Bloomberg. "We're thinking about doing it, to be honest with you. We want a capital that's run flawlessly."

The comments come as the administration debates how far it can go to exert control over cities struggling with crime, homelessness and political infighting. The prospect of federal intervention in D.C., which has operated under limited home rule since 1973, would mark a dramatic departure from decades of precedent.

Under the Home Rule Act, the District maintains its own local government, but Congress retains ultimate authority and can overrule local laws. Trump, however, framed his remarks as a potential solution to rising crime rates and what he described as a failure of local leadership.

Trump, who has repeatedly vowed that the U.S. would "never be a socialist country," warned that New York could be irreparably damaged if "a communist gets elected" as mayor. "New York City will work properly. We're going to bring New York back," he said.

He called Zohran Mamdani, a progressive candidate, a "disaster" who had sold New Yorkers a "good line of bulls***" and dismissed Republican Curtis Sliwa as someone who "runs every four years," while noting that Democrat Eric Adams is running as an independent this cycle.

When asked how he wants Republican voters to cast their ballots in the mayoral election, Trump declined to endorse anyone but reiterated his broader warning: "If a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to. We could run D.C. ... we don't want crime in D.C. We would run it so good ... we're thinking about doing it, to be honest with you."

He concluded, "New York City will work properly. We're going to bring New York back."

During the meeting, Trump also said his administration was still attempting to work with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, but left open the option of unilateral action.

[Edge-]

So, Trump claims that the Federal Government can come in and just run US Cities. Not just DC(which the federal government can technically do), but actual cities in the States themselves.

Last time I checked, no, the Federal Government cannot do this. But Congress won't tell him no.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...06b498e2&ei=12

weird how all the

"muh states rights"

and

"muh small gub'mint"

folks have become so deathly silent with donald doing his level-best to expand federal power over states and dramatically increase the scope of much of the federal government including its domestic spying apparatus

does anyone think it's because they never actually believed that nonsense? i think that might be why

[tikcol]

Daily reminder that Epstein didn't kill himself.

[postman1782]

Daily reminder that Epstein didn't kill himself.

Yes, we know. Trump had him killed.

[Paranoid Android]

Honestly, the blocking of mass layoffs is relatively new. Up until 1935, the notion that the President could fire pretty much anyone that isn't sitting in Congress or the Judiciary was a real thing with Humprey's Executor. The problem is that unless a position is defined under a statute or law, there is actively nothing there to actually stop the President from firing said person. SCOTUS just literally overturned said ruling they gave before without actually ruling on it.

This is why every department, outside of the Department of Defense(maybe even them), should be under the control of Congress and not the Executive. That way, if the President wanted to fire people, they would actively have to go through Congress in order to do so. The US Marshalls should be under the authority of only the Judiciary instead of being both under the Judiciary and the Executive.

Idk about this interpretation.

Admittedly the first few links I have little knowledge of these sites. Here is Library Congress which just text.

https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/what-doe...-wald-donahue/

So what I read this was narrow to heads of agencies. Recent example is NLRB removals of Trump and of course. Seems that this is no way to mass layoffs.

While common sense once more would say mass layoffs is chaos, SCOTUS does not have to factor this but I think this is a big jump of power of Humphrey’s Executor, or previous rulings.

But the scope of Humphrey’s Executor is not clear, in part due to its difficult-to-parse use of early-twentieth-century terms of art that have largely fallen out of fashion.

From source and yes this is just a opinion piece of article. Noted.

I get you are not arguing for the ruling and just in the end this an incredible devasting ruling of just adding new powers to President and the damage.

[gondrin]

weird how all the

"muh states rights"

and

"muh small gub'mint"

folks have become so deathly silent with donald doing his level-best to expand federal power over states and dramatically increase the scope of much of the federal government including its domestic spying apparatus

does anyone think it's because they never actually believed that nonsense? i think that might be why

I think that since Trump knows that Congress can take over pretty much DC on a whim if they wanted to, he thinks it applies to all US cities. Yeah, no. DC is special because of the fact it is its own territory that is the seat of the federal government.

I would love to see a Democrat President come out and say "There is too much gun violence in Random City in Texas. I think we should run it ourselves as the White House as tremendous power to do so." the next time a school shooting happens in a red state.

Watch all the MAGA and far rights head explode.

Remember, Trump just literally said the same thing because NYC might vote for someone that he doesn't like. So if a Democrat comes out and says what I put up there, no far-right, MAGA or Trump supporter has the right to actually state they cannot do it. Because they haven't disavowed what Trump has said.

- - - Updated - - -

Idk about this interpretation.

Admittedly the first few links I have little knowledge of these sites. Here is Library Congress which just text.

https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/what-doe...-wald-donahue/

So what I read this was narrow to heads of agencies. Recent example is NLRB removals of Trump and of course. Seems that this is no way to mass layoffs.

While common sense once more would say mass layoffs is chaos, SCOTUS does not have to factor this but I think this is a big jump of power of Humphrey’s Executor, or previous rulings.



From source and yes this is just a opinion piece of article. Noted.

I get you are not arguing for the ruling and just in the end this an incredible devasting ruling of just adding new powers to President and the damage.

I know in the 1800s up until the beginning of the 1883, there was pretty much no recourse for any federal worker as they actively worked "at the pleasure of the President". It got so bad that Congress passed Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act to combat it. Under that act, people had to be fired for cause and not just at the whims of whether the President liked you or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle...ce_Reform_Act#

It got added onto by this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_...rm_Act_of_1978

[Breccia]

The second question, where we are on farm labor, a little bit earlier, but what I will say is that Lori Chavez-DeRemer is our Secretary of Labor. And the H2A visa program, all of the programs that ensure to moving in seasonal ag workers are under Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. She has been working around the clock with her team.

I think we’ll probably hear a little more about this today, and the conversations will continue. But I can’t underscore enough. There will be no amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way, and we move the workforce towards automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly. Thank you.

-Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Rollins, who immediately left without taking questions

Yep. Cut Medicaid, then suggest that the people whose Medicaid you cut go pick cotton in the fields.

[gondrin]

-Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Rollins, who immediately left without taking questions

Yep. Cut Medicaid, then suggest that the people whose Medicaid you cut go pick cotton in the fields.

And then masta can give us our daily bread. /s

Yes, that is racist to even say. But it literally is the mindset of Rollins and the rest of the Trump Administration.

"Out with the immigrant, onto the American slave labor. Because nothing beats American. Even in slave labor. Brought to you by Trump Jr's. Because it's got electrolytes."

[Breccia]

Debunking 11 of Trump’s false claims at Cabinet meeting

This is why I keep banking all those FOX News points. Now, I can post a CNN article (one which cites dozens of sources, just so we're clear) and nobody is allowed to object.

Speaking of which, because we have some people here who need to see it, posting the whole thing.

Trump again turned a Cabinet meeting into a wide-ranging conversation with reporters – and again uttered a whole bunch of false claims in the process.

Trump’s Tuesday remarks at the White House included inaccurate assertions about inflation, immigration, his tariff policy, the massive domestic policy bill he signed last week, China’s use of wind energy, US and European aid to Ukraine, the US relationship with South Korea, and other subjects.

Here is a fact check of 11 of the president’s false claims. This is not a comprehensive list.

I love that bolded statement.

The economy, tariffs, taxes
Inflation: As he has repeatedly, Trump falsely claimed Tuesday, “We have no inflation.” The US does have inflation – an annual inflation rate of 2.4% in May, an uptick from a 2.3% annual rate in April. That April rate was the lowest since early 2021, and lower than some economists expected for April after Trump imposed significant new tariffs, but it’s not “no inflation” whatsoever. (And on a month-to-month basis, US consumer prices increased 0.1% in May and 0.2% in April.)

Tax on Social Security: Touting the new domestic policy legislation, Trump repeated his false claim that it achieves his campaign promise of “no tax on Social Security.” It does not.

The legislation does create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.

Trump’s tariff letters: Trump spoke of the letters he sent to various foreign leaders announcing the tariff rates he plans to impose on their countries beginning in August – and said, “I just want you to know - a letter means a deal.” That’s just not true. Multiple letters the White House revealed on Monday announced tariff rates Trump said he plans to unilaterally place on imports from foreign countries; those letters did not describe negotiated deals.

Who pays tariffs: Trump repeatedly spoke of how his new tariffs mean other countries will have to “pay” the US for the privilege of doing business in the US. Contrary to Trump’s frequent assertions, it is the US importers who buy foreign products, not foreign countries themselves, who make the tariff payments to the US government.

Tariff history: Trump repeated his regular false claim that the US was “proportionately” at its “wealthiest” between 1870 and 1913, when tariff revenue made up a much larger share of federal revenue before the reintroduction of the income tax. Trump didn’t explain what he meant by “proportionately” or “the wealthiest,” but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then.

Environment and energy
China and wind power: Trump, asserting that “smart countries” don’t use wind and solar energy, repeated his recent false claim that China, the world’s biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, barely uses such equipment itself - wrongly saying, “They don’t have a lot of wind farms, I’ll tell you; very, very few.” In reality, China is the world leader in the generation of wind power and has massive wind farms onshore and offshore; it continues to install additional wind capacity much faster than the US.

California and energy: Trump, reviving a previous inaccurate complaint about California’s use of renewable energy sources, falsely claimed: “They have blackouts and brownouts every week.” The state simply does not; its power system has improved significantly since the rolling blackouts of a 2020 heat wave.

Daniel Villasenor, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a Tuesday email that Trump is again “lying about California.” Villasenor wrote: “The state has not experienced any rotating outages since 2020 – and in the last three years, no Flex Alert calling to conserve power has even been issued. Not only has our grid been increasingly resilient, it’s also cleaner than ever – clean energy provided for 100% of demand on our grid for at least some part of the day 167 out of the first 180 days of the year.”

Foreign affairs
US and European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that the US has provided “far more” wartime aid to Ukraine that Europe has, saying the US is “in there for over $300 billion; Europe’s in there for over $100 billion.”

Those numbers are not close to accurate.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks international aid to Ukraine, the US had committed about $139 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022, just prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion, through April 2025 – well short of about $298 billion committed by European countries and the European Union. The gap was much narrower in terms of aid actually allocated through April 2025 – about $183 billion for Europe to about $134 billion for the US – but even those figures clearly disprove Trump’s claim.

South Korea’s military cost-sharing: Trump repeated his false claim that South Korea convinced former President Joe Biden to let it stop making payments to help cover the cost of the US military presence in South Korea, saying Biden “cut it down to nothing.” In fact, Biden’s administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea agreed to pay more than it did during Trump’s first term.

US troops in South Korea: Trump again exaggerated the US troop presence in South Korea, falsely saying, “You know, we have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea.” Official Defense Department data, published online, says the US had 26,206 military personnel in South Korea as of March 31, 2025, with 22,844 on active duty.

Immigration
Migration and mental health: Trump falsely claimed that unnamed foreign countries “released their insane asylum – the insane asylum population into our country.” Even Trump’s own presidential campaign could not produce any evidence for his frequent claims, which he has repeated for more than two years, that foreign countries deliberately emptied their mental health facilities to somehow get patients to migrate to the United States.

That is a lot of blatant falsehoods on major topics.

Trump, who some people here voted for and continue to approve of and support, is either incapable of telling the truth, or is capable but choosing not to. None of the honest statements on these topics are flattering to him, but the deceit is demonstrating mental illness, incompetence, or willful lack of direction. There is no redeeming option here.

Trump lies all the time about everything, and has nothing but failures to show for it. The people who voted for this, and support this, are traitors.

[Roneth]

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to launch plans for mass layoffs and reorganizations at 19 federal agencies and departments, including the CDC and Social Security Administration, while litigation continues.

Crazy that after 250 years of Presidents this new found thing of a President being able to crush the Federal system by mass layoffs. The discovered power of a President changing the federal system that may be impossible to recover but now the precedent of one President coming in an fixing this and next one destroying it.

Really makes us have a stabilized government.

Did you notice the lone dissenter. Justice Jackson, the epitome of feelings over law, was the lone dissenter because yeah, she always is. You may not like what he is doing, but the previous Presidents, including Republcan ones, liked putting people in places as rewards.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Every single day it feels like the new headlines are...

"China cures previously uncurable disease, invents technology thought to be impossible to invent"
and
"America sends 1000 more brown people, both citizens and immigrants, to super torture prison"

The west has fallen, but it's only because of the Nazi fucks in power. They constantly complained about the decline of the west being LGBT and immigrants and everything else, but then when they get into power they dismantle the very institutions of education and invention that made America great in the first place.

I'm so tired man, I hope China surpasses the US in every single way, including military might, and challenges the American hegemony. I live in America and I want these fascists to see just how weak and puny they really are.

[Roneth]

Guess they didn't think and pray enough for the Christian camp.

I noticed you did not post the racist rant by the democrat about the camp. Not surprising for this board.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/pol...c-20628967.php

“I know I’m probably going to get cancelled for this, but Camp Mystic is a whites-only, girls’ Christian camp,” Perkins said in the video. “They don’t even have a token Asian, they don’t have a token Black person. It is an all-white, white-only, conservative Christian camp. If you ain’t white, you ain’t right, you ain’t getting in, you ain’t going. Period.”

It's just rambling, nonsensical racist diatribe, but looks good for the democrat party. They should pair her up with Crockett.

[alach]

I noticed you did not post the racist rant by the democrat about the camp. Not surprising for this board.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/pol...c-20628967.php



It's just rambling, nonsensical racist diatribe, but looks good for the democrat party. They should pair her up with Crockett.

Sounds like he's describing a white, catholic, girls camp to me.
Don't be so sensitive.

[Bwgmon]

I noticed you did not post the racist rant by the democrat about the camp. Not surprising for this board.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/pol...c-20628967.php



It's just rambling, nonsensical racist diatribe, but looks good for the democrat party. They should pair her up with Crockett.

Looks like a low-level employee who said something and is going to face consequences for it (namely, losing their job at the minimum), which tends to be the case in these things when a Democrat is involved. Sucks they had that viewpoint, good they're being held accountable, strange it never happens to Republicans who go on racist tirades.

On that note, you're definitely calling for Loomer to lose her position after joking about throwing the entire latino population of the US into a concentration camp and feeding them to alligators, right? And you're also upset over Trump saying he'd like to sell human prisoners to farms, right? Because that would be one hell of a double standard otherwise.

[Kaleredar]

Every single day it feels like the new headlines are...

"China cures previously uncurable disease, invents technology thought to be impossible to invent"
and
"America sends 1000 more brown people, both citizens and immigrants, to super torture prison"

The west has fallen, but it's only because of the Nazi fucks in power. They constantly complained about the decline of the west being LGBT and immigrants and everything else, but then when they get into power they dismantle the very institutions of education and invention that made America great in the first place.

I'm so tired man, I hope China surpasses the US in every single way, including military might, and challenges the American hegemony. I live in America and I want these fascists to see just how weak and puny they really are.

The issue with that is that China isn’t exactly a bastion of free speech, freedom, and individual rights.

If your issue with Trump is that he’s a hard-nosed authoritarian that rules with an iron fist and quashes all dissent while wanting to exploit workers and repress minorities… China is that, realized. China just has more decorum about it and is smart enough to keep competent people in positions of power. Trump wants to be like China, just with him and corporate fat cats in place of the CCP and instead of intimidating competent people into working for him just replacing them with incompetent yes-men.

[tehdang]

I noticed you did not post the racist rant by the democrat about the camp. Not surprising for this board.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/pol...c-20628967.php

It's just rambling, nonsensical racist diatribe, but looks good for the democrat party. They should pair her up with Crockett.

She should get hired by Mamdani's campaign. He likes globalize the intifada, she likes whites-only girls Christian camps. They can talk about subtle dog-whistle racism from groups they don't like, and decide to ignore the most obvious examples from their allies.

But, honestly, the ideological basis for this type of hot air is so discredited in America these days that this one barely registers. Whitmire attempts to remove her, because people still are shocked at racists posting these dead schoolgirl hot takes to social media. Texans know that her manner of thinking is widespread in some left-wing and progressive circles. Democrats still can't own up to this now, since some of their base is repelled by it, but they may soon be saying that she only phrased it wrong and is sorry at how some people registered her words.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Now that it's clear that the Epstein files are never being released (Because Trump is probably in them) MAGA on social media is doing a HARD SHIFT to victim blaming the literal teenagers and pre teens who were trafficked, given drugs, and raped by Epstein and his friends (Trump).





There's been a very sudden swing from MAGA accounts, claiming that these 12-14 year olds were druggie prostitutes who willingly stayed on the island to get high and have sex and it's their fault and they should have never reported these powerful men.

[PhaelixWW]

The "she was asking for it" rebrand is in full swing, I see.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The "she was asking for it" rebrand is in full swing, I see.

Not only that, but Elon's rebrand of Grok has basically turned Grok into a card carrying armband wearing Nazi.



Conservatives were crying so much that Grok wasn't spitting out conservative talking points (Because they're always lies) so Elon has now made sure Grok is only programmed to be a Nazi.

[s_bushido]

Looks like a low-level employee who said something and is going to face consequences for it (namely, losing their job at the minimum), which tends to be the case in these things when a Democrat is involved. Sucks they had that viewpoint, good they're being held accountable, strange it never happens to Republicans who go on racist tirades.

It's just such a blatantly disingenuous thing for the obvious troll to bring up. Someone involved in Democratic politics faces instant consequences for their speech, meanwhile Republicans are out there cheering for the assassination of Democratic politicians, deploying soldiers to the streets of the country, and gleefully setting up their concentration camps...and nothing. Not even a "maybe this looks kinda bad?"