“President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025, a 900-page opus of conservative policy recommendations published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. But he has nominated two of the document’s co-authors to Cabinet-level positions, and many others served in his first administration, which suggests the document may be a window into what the next four years could bring.”
“There’s only so much the administration can control, however. Although Trump can take notable steps to try to increase fossil fuel production, actual upticks in oil and gas extraction will depend heavily on the private sector and the economics of the industry.
Still, while Trump faces some constraints, he has significant policy levers he can pull to encourage production of fossil fuels. Wright, Burgum, and Zeldin have also signaled they’re prepared to execute on the president-elect’s vision, including changes to drilling on public lands and speedier permitting for oil and gas projects.
“President Trump and his energy team — Mr. Burgum, Mr. Wright, Mr. Zeldin — can go to considerable lengths to make expanded production attractive and relatively easy,” Barry Rabe, a University of Michigan environmental policy professor, told Vox.”
“According to the New York Times, Trump is planning to invoke the Insurrection Act to bring in the military to carry out mass deportations. The law is a key exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military to enforce federal law without the permission of Congress or the Constitution.
Only in rare instances have presidents invoked the Insurrection Act. President George H.W. Bush was the last one to do so amid the 1992 Los Angeles riots that broke out in response to the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King. President Dwight D. Eisenhower also notably used the Insurrection Act to facilitate the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The provision of the Insurrection Act most likely to apply in Trump’s case is one that allows the president to unilaterally activate the military domestically to enforce federal law whenever they determine that “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion… make it impracticable [to do so] by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”
Mirasola said Trump would have a “relatively easy time” making the case that cartels trafficking immigrants across the border constitute an “unlawful obstruction” to the enforcement of US immigration law. Trump has in some ways appeared to begin building his case for invoking the Insurrection Act through his rhetoric on the campaign trail this year by describing an “invasion of criminals” coming across the border.
But Mirasola said it would be harder for Trump to argue that it is impracticable to enforce immigration laws through the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” That’s because presidents have done so for decades, and border crossings are no longer unusually high: They have sharply declined this year and are down even from certain points in the first Trump administration.
However, the law gives the president “sole discretion, in most instances” to determine whether the criteria necessary to activate the military have been met, according to 2022 congressional testimony given by Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Joseph Nunn, the Center’s counsel in the national security program.
Goitein and Nunn also argued that the “vague and broad criteria for invoking the Act, combined with the lack of any provision for judicial or congressional review, render it ripe for abuse.” At that point, their concern was that Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to interfere with the certification of the 2020 election results. The use case is now different, but the potential for overreach is the same.
That is to say, while advocates may challenge Trump on whether the two key criteria for invoking the law have been met, the law gives presidents a wide berth — and the courts little power.
“For all practical purposes, courts have been cut out of the process,” Goitein and Nunn write.”
“Trump talks often about using the DOJ to target his political adversaries and people he views as foes. An NPR report on October 22 found that Trump “made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies.” That includes a threat to, in Trump’s words, “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
Trump also accused former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of the incoming president, of “TREASON” and threatened “TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.” (Which, if they were to actually happen, would presumably take place in the Defense Department’s legal structure, but could involve some DOJ personnel.)
Trump’s decision to name Gaetz, a staunch loyalist, to lead the Justice Department created considerable alarm. Historically, the White House has obeyed strong norms against interfering with Justice Department prosecutorial decisions, but these norms have no legal force. A Trump loyalist like Gaetz could have torn down this barrier altogether. (If someone like him is confirmed atop the Justice Department, that barrier could still go.)
Trump’s decision to appoint his personal lawyers to top DOJ jobs is equally concerning. Federal lawyers are supposed to represent the interests of the United States, not of any particular politician, while they work for the government. But Trump has selected three people who aren’t simply accustomed to representing his personal interests, but who have also likely collected considerable legal fees from him.
Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so.”
“For millions of families, a spike in health care costs might be around the corner because crucial subsidies are set to expire at the end of next year. Some families will see their premiums rise by thousands of dollars; others might lose their insurance altogether.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act, which included a provision that enhanced the premium tax credit — a piece of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that subsidized the cost of premiums for some lower- and middle-income families. The Biden-era enhancements, which essentially expanded the number of people who qualify for the tax credit, were originally set to expire at the end of 2022, but Congress extended them through 2025 when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act. (For families at or slightly above the poverty line, the enhanced tax credit subsidizes the full premium. For people making more than 400 percent of the poverty line — people who were previously ineligible for this subsidy — it caps their premiums to 8.5 percent of their income.)
The enhanced premium tax credits contributed to a record number of insured people in the United States. In February 2021, before Congress expanded the premium tax credits, 11.2 million people were enrolled in health coverage through ACA marketplaces. By 2024, that number shot up to 20.8 million people.
There are many reasons for the dramatic increase in marketplace coverage — including the fact that millions of people were disenrolled from Medicaid coverage after Covid emergency measures lapsed and had to turn to other forms of insurance, including the marketplace — but the enhanced premium tax credit played a critical role. Its expansion was the main reason so many more people were able to enroll in health care coverage from the ACA marketplace, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
If Congress allows the enhanced premium tax credits to expire, millions of people will see a noticeable rise in out-of-pocket expenses. Many will likely lose their coverage, and that’s without considering how much more will be at stake if Medicaid gets slashed as well. For low-income families, particularly those who live just above the poverty line, that could be a nightmare.”
““The president has unilateral authority to fire general officers,” says Katherine Kuzminski, the director of the military, veterans, and society program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank specializing in national security. Under the wide-ranging powers presidents are given by the Constitution as the country’s commander-in-chief, they can remove generals at will over a loss of confidence in their leadership.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the incoming administration is already laying the groundwork for such firings. Per a draft executive order the publication obtained, the Trump White House is considering establishing a “warrior board” of former generals and military officials who will be dedicated to reviewing current military leaders. Following their review, the panel will reportedly determine which officers they’d like to remove, with the aim of retiring them at their existing rank within 20 days.
Trump has only spoken in sweeping terms about changes to military leadership, so it’s unclear exactly how many high-ranking troops might be fired. However, were the president-elect to follow through on his promises — particularly at a larger scale — they could have a disruptive effect on military operations.
A mass firing would need to be followed with the elevation of lots of new leaders, some of whom might lack the experience of their predecessors. Several national security experts also told Vox they worry about the message a mass firing would send — including the idea that military officials have to express political views in line with Trump’s in order to hold onto their jobs.”
Trump pick accused of sexual assault and abusing women claims accusations are based on nothing when there’s a police report and the words of his own mother. He acts like “they” are out to get him rather than dealing truthfully with the evidence against him. Megyn Kelly lets such bullshit go unchallenged like she doesn’t care or didn’t do basic homework before talking to an important guest.
“These experiences have given Patel a worldview that I think is best defined as paranoid.
Patel believes that foreign enemies — ranging from China to Iran to drug cartels — are doing their best to infiltrate the United States and wreak havoc on its homeland. Only Trump has the strength and the fortitude to stand up against these enemies and defend American allies like Israel.
The Democrats, he believes, do not just disagree with Trump on how to handle these threats: They are actively aligned with America’s enemies.
In one War Room segment, for example, Patel hosted a discredited China “expert” named Gordon Chang to warn that China was “planning an attack on our facilities on our soil.” But it’s worse than that, Chang argued: China had installed Joe Biden as the president of the United States.
“They were actually able to cast the decisive vote in 2020,” Chang told Patel, claiming without evidence that China “poured money into Joe Biden’s campaign” through the Democratic crowdfunding platform ActBlue. Patel’s response was not skepticism but credulity: “I hope people are paying attention.”
But Democrats are not merely unwitting cat’s paws of foreign powers, per Patel: They are nefarious actors aiming to tear down American democracy.
One of Patel’s favorite phrases, one that he uses again and again on Bannon’s show, is “two-tiered system of justice.” In his mind, federal law enforcement employs two distinct standards — one for “the deep state’s” friends and another for its enemies. Its allies, like the Bidens, receive only limited and superficial scrutiny, while its enemies are constantly harassed and persecuted. The four prosecutions of Trump, for Patel, are not legitimate inquiries into wrongdoing and abuses of power, but rather agents of a corrupt system lashing out at the one man who threatens their grip on America.
For this reason, Patel has an enemies list — literally. His book Government Gangsters, which he is constantly hawking on War Room, contains an appendix listing dozens of names that comprise the “executive branch deep state.””
…
“he is constantly proposing schemes — like Congress arresting Garland — that amount to efforts to criminalize political disagreements. This includes proposals to investigate prominent Democrats and even prosecute journalists.
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said in a guest appearance on War Room last year.
“Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.””
“According to exit polls, 55 percent of men voted for Trump in 2024, compared to 45 percent of women, for a 10-point gender gap — 1 point less than the 11-point gap in support for Trump in both 2020 and 2016.*
Compared to other exit polling results that point to how Trump’s victory may have boiled down to a referendum on President Joe Biden and the economy, this relatively static gender gap may not point to gender as a major factor in the election. But differences in the gender gap across groups of voters — such as growing gaps among Black and Latino voters — can tell us more about the country’s changing partisan landscape. And there’s a reason gender has also been widely discussed in the aftermath of Election Day: The role that gender played in each party’s 2024 presidential campaigns highlights a potential shift in the parties’ approaches to male and female voters, and how voters think about gender and politics.”
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“Trump’s 11-point gap in support between men and women in 2016 and 2020 was a record, but men have been consistently more likely than women to back Republicans since 1980. From then until 2016, the gender gap in support for Republicans ranged from 0 points (in 1992) to 10 points (in 2000), according to exit polls. (The phenomenon of men consistently showing stronger support for the more ideologically conservative party than women is not limited to the U.S., either.)”
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“the gender gap isn’t uniform across all groups. For example, white men and women voted more similarly to each other in 2024 than Black or Latino men and women.”
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“Nonwhite and younger voters had the largest gender gaps”
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“in 2020 Trump won 61 percent of white men and 55 percent of white women, for a 6-point gender gap among white voters. That gap was just 1 point bigger this year according to exit polls — 60 percent to 53 percent, for a 7-point gender gap among white voters. But the gender gap among nonwhite voters increased by significantly more.
Among Black voters, even as the vast majority of both men and women voted Democratic in both elections, Trump gained 2 points of support among men and lost 2 among women, moving the gender gap from 10 points in 2020 to 14 points in 2024. The gap is even more striking among Latino voters, one of the groups among whom Trump gained the most support overall compared to 2020. Four years ago, 36 percent of Latino men and 30 percent of Latino women supported Trump, a gender gap of just 6 points. That gap nearly tripled in 2024, as Trump’s support among Latino men went up by almost 20 percentage points: He won 55 percent of Latino men and 38 percent of Latino women, for a gender gap of 17 points.”
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“49 percent of men and 37 percent of women aged 18 to 29 supported Trump, for a 12-point gender gap, 3 points larger than in 2020. The gap among men and women aged 30 to 39 was also 12 points, while it actually shrank among voters over 50.”
Trump made peace with the Taliban, stopped fighting with them directly, pulled out U.S. forces, leaving behind a rump force, and agreed to fully pull out during the next term, which ended up being Biden’s term, leaving Biden the choice of reneging on Trump’s deal and restarting the war directly with the Taliban which would require more troops, or pull out.
Hitler stole land with the threat of military force and with military force, Europe allowed it hoping Hitler would be satisfied. This history is reminiscent of Putin’s actions.