US Politics, March 2020 — There’s a very good chance you’re not going to die.

Trump's signing statement is pointless. they carry no legal weight, they're just a signal of intent/interpretation, and we all know how it will play out. he'll try and violate the terms of the bill, he will get sued, and eventually either a federal judge will tell him to stop or say "hey this is ok". he'll probably lose on this one as it's actually written into the bill itself, not an obscure thing that requires Constitutional interpretation or case law. unless somehow he got SCOTUS to hear it and strike down parts of the Bill as unconstitutional.

it's how he does business, it's how he acts as President.

signing statements do need to be outlawed though.

He has stacked the courts and the language that Schumer and Dems negotiated is weak. No subpoena power for oversight panel, etc. I think he will get away with this:

Signing statement also says Trump will ignore requirements that congressional committees be consulted before reallocating funds

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/trump-congress-coronavirus-relief-oversight-152560

And just like that, the Congressional oversight provisions for the 1/2 TRILLION dollar Wall St slush fund (which were *already* too weak) are tossed away the day the bill is signed," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "This is a frightening amount of public money to have given a corrupt admin w/ 0 accountability."

Not a Naomi Klein fan but this tweet/

One of the major profiteers from the last global financial crisis, whose was nicknamed "The Foreclosure King," is running the bailout for Trump. Sure he foreclosed on elderly people who were pennies behind in their payments, but I'm sure he has their best interests at heart.

waiting for the Calm Down ILX faction to retract the "HuffPost story is bullshit" verdict; it appears it was not, and the slush fund will operate with toothless "oversight."

Trump has lost in federal court, even SCOTUS (census). The victories he tends to win are those where there is ambiguity to exploit in terms of the extent of Executive power. Usually his executive orders.

He is actually saying he'll ignore the law that is explicitly written, so it'll require federal courts deeming restrictions imposed on him as unconstitutional, or agreeing with his alternate interpretations.

He has stacked the courts, but though he's won a number of bullshit victories for his travel ban, deportation, and his wall, he's lost a lot in federal court too.

I ain't saying it's not going to happen, just to stop treating it like a foregone conclusion. And that's why, though I adore AOC, I would have hoped for a stronger statement here, saying something like "Nah bruh, we're going to enforce that law, soz", like Nancy did.

AOC's statement feels like a concession, like they won't challenge him. I know that's not true and that she will be a loud voice in that fight, just wish she'd used it here

HuffPo was bullshit. It said Mnuchin alone had the ability to direct the money and left out the oversight committee and inspector general.

That's empirically wrong - there's no debating it.

Had they said "Although there are protections in the bill, we think the Oversight Committee will be toothless and easily upended", then ok. But they said something was written into the bill and it quite definitively was not.

And I'm a little tired of these gotchas which require posters to be soothsayers

The language in the bill itself is too weak for Dems to get anything enforced by the courts. The oversight board doesn’t have subpoena power and even if it did, the Trump administration ignored Ukraine subpoenas, so why would this be any different.

Yes there’s an inspector general but Mnuchin is gonna do what he wants first, and then after the fact the oversight folks will raise concerns.

just waking up. long night of drinking, etc.

so wait - is the gist that trump added a bullshit provision in his signing statement so he can enrich his family and friends' corporations on his way out of office (rosy future lenses: because he's literally holding people hostage now, in states both blue and purple, micro-anthropomorphizing those states and people down to just their governor's name or even just their gender ("the michigan woman") and withholding obviously desperately needed aid), knowing that he get away with it while the signing statement's legality is tied up in courts (which may be packed with federalist society goons)?

good morning!

If we're just going to judge bills not by their content, but by how Trump is likely to react to them, legally speaking, then we aren't really judging the efficacy of bills at all, especially since Trump tries to flout the law on almost any non-GOP passed bill, regardless of how ironclad it is.

What if Trump states he will block States from granting federal unemployment?

What if Trump cancels the stimulus checks?

What if what if what if

https://prospect.org/economy/repeating-the-mistakes-of-the-2008-bailout/

in any case, it's my least favorite part of the bill, and was probably the most the Dems could get given they're the minority party, even if that minority had shrunk to one member.

at the moment, my bigger concern is withholding of federal aid from states simply cos their governors were mean to him.

thousands of people will fuckin' DIE over this.

Folks who were involved in Tarp and who studied it are saying the content of this bill is inadequate. Damon Silvers and David Dayen are not just pointing at Trump and Mnuchin, they are analyzing the wording of past bailouts and this one, and they’re saying the bill itself is not worded strongly enough. They wanted a board to get the role of giving out money, not Mnuchin with a weak advisory group. They wanted an oversight group with subpoena power and a funded staff . We didn’t get that.

didn't say it was a well-written provision, but saying that what HuffPo reported was factually inaccurate, because in their report, there was zero oversight at all, IG, or committee. mediocre or bad as what got passed might be, that is inarguably worse because then there isn't even a chance of malfeasance making it into the news, to hammer with as we march to November.

I rarely cited Huff Post articles; henceforth I won't.

"US Politics"

At a White House briefing on the coronavirus on March 20, President Trump called the State Department the “Deep State Department.” Behind him, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dropped his head and rubbed his forehead.

Some thought Dr. Fauci was slighting the president, leading to a vitriolic online reaction. On Twitter and Facebook, a post that falsely claimed he was part of a secret cabal who opposed Mr. Trump was soon shared thousands of times, reaching roughly 1.5 million people.

A week later, Dr. Fauci — the administration’s most outspoken advocate of emergency measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak — has become the target of an online conspiracy theory that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.

That fanciful claim has spread across social media, fanned by a right-wing chorus of Mr. Trump’s supporters, even as Dr. Fauci has won a public following for his willingness to contradict the president and correct falsehoods and overly rosy pronouncements about containing the virus.

An analysis by The New York Times found over 70 accounts on Twitter that have promoted the hashtag #FauciFraud, with some tweeting as frequently as 795 times a day. The anti-Fauci sentiment is being reinforced by posts from Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group; Bill Mitchell, host of the far-right online talk show “YourVoice America”; and other outspoken Trump supporters such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who has falsely claimed to be the inventor of email.

Many of the anti-Fauci posts, some of which pointed to a seven-year-old email that Dr. Fauci had sent praising Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State, have been retweeted thousands of times. On YouTube, conspiracy-theory videos about Dr. Fauci have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in the past week. In private Facebook groups, posts disparaging him have also been shared hundreds of times and liked by thousands of people, according to the Times analysis.

One anti-Fauci tweet on Tuesday said, “Sorry liberals but we don’t trust Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

and now that you've been fully prepared on the background, you are ready to see this. look out - this is one of those delimiting moments in your life, before and after you saw what he did. here we go:

https://i.imgur.com/JPP7XaY.jpg

(left, the treasonous hand, right, the forehead of benedict arnold)

(counterpoint: at least half of those likes/retweets/shares were probably bots)

And who’s knows better that in this climate, touching your face is simply suicide?

The Democrats are the Washington Generals.

People compare politics to professional wrestling, but that's a disservice to wrestling, which can have some pretty surprising plots.

American politics is a Globetrotters game. One team to win, the other to make a good show at losing

— Nobody/Nothing 2020 (@DevourerRose) March 28, 2020

if your awful politics caused you to believe we need a giant corporate slush fund to rescue the markets, and that rigorous oversight could lead to dangerous populist outrage, but also knew your core constituents would balk at a blank check for corporations, how might you proceed

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 28, 2020

It does suck to only control one chamber.

stfu

it's their fucking fault they don't control the other one. no convictions, no courage.

I know grumbling is your means of distraction, darlin', so please proceed.

The bill's far better than it looked last Saturday, let alone two weeks ago when I thought Pelosi 'n' Schumer would fold. It doesn't go far enough, nor would it have because you have a lawless president and a Senate controlled by the other party. Our best hope is to win the Senate and the presidency and, if I had my druthers, abolishing the Senate.

But I know you know this because you're a smart boy and you've watched Advise and Consent

What are the odds that Trump's signing statement that negates key concessions was prearranged secretly between McConnell and the WH at the very same time that McConnell was negotiating those concessions with Schumer? That depth of that man's duplicity never fails to stun me.

one minor detail: trump still doesn't have a chief of staff. technically it's mulvaney still (?), and meadows (looooool at choosing him) is still trying to figure out how the role works, or something?

15 days ago I joked that Trump would sign the coronavirus stimulus with a bunch of pens and then hand them out, but I honestly never imagined that was possible in reality pic.twitter.com/uDsWlOjpX5

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) March 28, 2020

if I had my druthers, abolishing the Senate.

This would require quite a bit of amending the US Constitution, which in turn would require a dozen or so small states to willingly reduce their national political clout by a substantial amount. Ergo, so not gonna happen.

sure, but all this is IF he had his druthers, that's the point. druthers are hard to come by these days

So there's a druthers shortage too now?

Amazon Prime's working overtime. I'm sending Aimless a bottle of druthers.

Good idea. I'm overstocked on bitters.

flashback to Feb 5:

Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough.

Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 5, 2020

https://news.yahoo.com/senator-says-white-house-turned-down-emergency-coronavirus-funding-in-early-february-003319950.html

Jared Kushner is demanding his tenants keep paying rent - while asking for leniency from his creditors: WaPo reporter (@fawfulfan / Raw Story)https://t.co/JmmXAXjTjEhttps://t.co/T1ot9v0eG1

— memeorandum (@memeorandum) March 28, 2020

well sure

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/03/27/texas-ag-says-gun-stories-are-essential-businesses-during-coronavirus/

if only it was confined to "gun stories"

If he closed gun stores it would prompt mass protests, which in turn would defeat social distancing, which would then spread the virus more rapidly, overload hospitals, and possibly kill innocent people who are not gun nuts.

If only there was a disease that just killed gun nuts

honestly not much different from every other Judge Jeanine clip I've seen

Judge Jeanine missed the first segment of her show tonight because of “technical difficulties” and then hosted the rest of it in this condition pic.twitter.com/KxGGBXUkly

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 29, 2020

she's pretty loose

He's scared, that's certain.

President Trump said Saturday night that he will not impose a quarantine on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut but would instead issue a “strong” travel advisory to be implemented by the governors of the three states.

Mr. Trump made the announcement on Twitter just hours after telling reporters that he was considering a quarantine of the three states in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus to Florida and other states.

Navarro is sticking with the US-China trade war and instituting new "Buy American" restrictions even tho it costs American lives. Madness https://t.co/Jiu0SQubH5

— Tobita Chow 周鳶多 (@tobitac) March 29, 2020

NY Post:

The Trump administration has added the firearms industry — gun shops included — to a federal list of critical infrastructure during the ongoing coronavirus emergency.

The new language, added Saturday to the website of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, now deems as critical “Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges.”

Previously-designated critical industries include energy, food production, emergency services, government offices, transportation and healthcare.