Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Serbia has been building up its military and has declared its intention to unite with Serbs living in other countries while also taking an authoritarian turn and having friendly relations with Russia and China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DxIErgeX3k
“For over a week now, Donald Trump and the Justice Department have been flouting the law meant to shut down TikTok. The legislation was unambiguous and was passed by large, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress; it was affirmed by a unanimous Supreme Court less than two weeks ago. And for the most part, both Republicans and Democrats have sat quietly by as Trump has waved away their previously stated concerns, as well as the constitutional powers and institutional prerogatives of Capitol Hill.
The TikTok ban was supposed to be a critical national security response to the threat posed by the Chinese government and its control over an app with 170 million users in our country. Shortly before the law went into effect, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a speech on the Senate floor that “without question, TikTok’s lethal algorithm has cost the lives of many American kids.” He announced that there would “be no extensions, no concessions and no compromises for TikTok.””
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“On his first day in office, Trump declared that he would effectively ignore the law, and so TikTok lives. He appears to have engineered a short-term bailout for TikTok — whose app should have gone dark in the U.S. by now — after a wealthy donor supported the move and amid some belief that TikTok helped him get reelected.”
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“he has created a precedent — that he can direct his own administration to ignore laws that he believes are politically or personally unhelpful to him — that ought to trouble Republicans and Democrats alike.
To start, there is no real question about the state of the law on paper: Trump is breaking it.”
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“His executive order was little more than a public declaration that he would ignore the law on the theory that it interfered with his ability “to assess the national security and foreign policy implications.” Not only did he direct the attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days, he also instructed the Justice Department “to issue a letter” to each TikTok service provider “stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability for any conduct” during the 75-day period.
Some Republican China hawks, like Cotton and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, had taken the position that state attorneys general could enforce the law anyway, but Trump unilaterally decided that they were wrong about that too. His executive order purports to prevent “attempted enforcement by the States or private parties” and to grant the Justice Department “exclusive authority to enforce the law.”
This is generally not how executive orders are supposed to work. They are not supposed to be vehicles for the president to pick and choose which laws passed by Congress he wants to enforce — or which ones he wants to change by fiat.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/28/trump-tiktok-bailout-00200800
“The Constitution’s text is clear that Congress must authorize appropriations and the president must “take Care” that those laws are “faithfully executed.” There is no basis in constitutional text or history for the president to claim open-ended power to impound funds in the manner of the OMB memo. In 1975, the Supreme Court rejected former President Richard Nixon’s claim to be able to spend less than Congress had appropriated. That ruling would have had to come out the other way if the president had a constitutional power to impound. (Perhaps aware of this reality, OMB issued a later memo claiming the freeze was not, in fact, an “impoundment.” But this is just a semantic sleight of hand: For entities that need federal funds this or next week in particular, there is no meaningful difference.)”
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“If anything, the Supreme Court has tightened the constitutional leash on such unilateral claims of executive authority untethered from a statutory anchor. With Justice Neil Gorsuch leading the charge, it has stressed instead the need for clear authority from Congress for the exercise of any delegated power, including the power to write regulations. The OMB memo makes a mockery of those decisions by allowing the president to do with money what now isn’t allowed with regulations.
It is true that there is a scattering of past instances of impoundment. But these isolated cases largely concern foreign affairs and national security matters. In 1803, for example, Thomas Jefferson declined to spend funds for 15 gunboats for fear that they would upend secret talks with a foreign sovereign, Napoleonic France. Whatever unilateral presidential authority exists over foreign affairs cannot constitutionally be spread with reckless abandon to cover any or all domestic spending.
Past presidents have also confronted conflicts between a legislative command and Congress’ failure to appropriate funds to execute that command. There, presidents are forced to make a choice between dueling statutory orders. Courts rarely address these conflicts. But it is striking to note that in a 2012 case involving competing mandates, the Supreme Court rejected the executive’s claim to be able to withhold promised funds.”
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“The impoundment power Trump’s White House asserts would drive a stake through Congress’ constitutional authority.
Exactly like the line-item veto invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1998, the claimed impoundment power is de facto power to selectively edit duly enacted laws. This claimed nonenforcement should elicit whiplash among conservatives. After all, it was red states such as Texas, aided by Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller, that once excoriated the Biden administration for negating federal laws on immigration via nonenforcement. (The Biden administration, however, could point to statutory conflicts that don’t exist in this case.)”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/29/trump-funding-freeze-power-grab-00201186
Kash Patel isn’t qualified to be Director of the FBI, but he is a Trump loyalist. Trump already fired one Director for the purpose of protecting himself and his allies from a legitimate investigation. Will Patel be focused on good police work, or abusing the powers of the FBI to serve Trump?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnBpWjz9Y8M
When it comes to the Jan 6 rioters there’s an emphasis on what they did to police offers. That matters, but the most important part about the incident wasn’t the attack on the police, but the attack on United States democracy. The rioters attacked the legislature of the United States in their seat of power, and some did so with the intent of, at least temporarily, ending U.S. democracy by keeping a president who lost an election in power.
“A Republican judge has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/north-carolina-voters-jefferson-griffin-supreme-court-challenge
““No. 1, he had the legal authority to do it,” Graham pointed out. “But I fear that you will get more violence. Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer, violently, I think, was a mistake because it seems to suggest that’s an OK thing to do.” Graham made similar comments to CNN’s Dana Bash, saying the pardons “sent the wrong signal.”
Members of Trump’s loyal base flipped out over Graham’s mild chiding of the returned POTUS. They slammed the senator as a “snake” and a “RINO,” or Republican In Name Only.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-mistake_n_6797340de4b01edab1f9223a
“”If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” J.D. Vance, now the vice president, said last week. But that “obvious” caveat was notably missing from the indiscriminate pardons Trump actually issued, which he claimed were necessary to remedy “a grave national injustice” and start “a process of national reconciliation.”
Such a reconciliation is impossible when the president is willing to excuse political violence as long as it is perpetrated by his supporters.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/22/biden-and-trump-show-presidents-how-to-abuse-clemency/
CUBA Has Collapsed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGcgBodh9QQ
Ben Shapiro is in denial about the differences between Trump’s attempt to overthrow U.S. democracy and Democrats complaining about Russian interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmfxA8J2B8