Trump and Republicans for years lied and exaggerated about Democrats using the justice system against them. Now, in full honesty, Trump repeatedly uses the justice system against people who criticize him. U.S. democracy is on shaky grounds.
“President Donald Trump threatened to open an investigation targeting Chris Christie over the former New Jersey governor’s decade-old “Bridgegate” scandal after Christie criticized Trump on television earlier in the day.
The threat came just days after the FBI searched the home and office of another Trump critic, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, as part of an open criminal investigation. Trump lashed out at the former friend-turned-foe Christie in an evening Aug. 24 post on Truth Social, remarking that he just watched “Sloppy Chris Christie” on ABC’s This Week.”
“The Trump administration’s 50 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were expanded this week to cover hundreds of imports that plainly are not steel or aluminum. Among the items targeted by the new tariffs: dairy products like milk and cream, as well as gasoline and other fuels, fire extinguishers, baby strollers, furniture, engines, and motorcycles. In short, anything that contains steel or aluminum or that is (as with dairy products) transported or stored in steel or aluminum containers could now be subject to those massive import taxes.”
“The initial images of bored Drug Enforcement Administration agents strolling past perplexed joggers on the National Mall were more clownish than carceral. Local street resistance to the occupation was limited to a drunk guy throwing a sandwich at a federal agent.
But inevitably, as this operation has dragged on, things have taken a darker turn. The sandwich-thrower was overcharged and rearrested in a needless, publicized show of force.
Masked federal agents have set up an unconstitutional checkpoint, violently arrested at least one delivery driver, and filmed themselves tearing down a banner protesting their presence in the city. Each day, more and more National Guard members pour into the capital.
The conversation about Trump’s declared crime emergency has understandably, albeit unhelpfully, provoked a lot of discourse about how safe D.C. is, whether a federalized local police department will make it safer, whether federal agents are being deployed in the right places and going after the right crimes, and on and on.
This incessant crime conversation has distracted from just how un-American Trump’s show of force in the nation’s capital is.
Uniformed troops and masked federal agents doing routine law enforcement at the command of the president is just not how we do things in the United States.
The entire point of the U.S. Constitution is to prevent the federal government from becoming a despotism, and one of the primary ways it does this is by limiting how many men with guns it has at its disposal.”
Trump’s big beautiful bill takes away money from growing renewable energy that employs more jobs than coal and toward dying coal. It’s not just bad for the environment, it’s bad business. The bill makes it difficult to use components from China, even though China is one of our key suppliers. This will limit U.S. production.
The bill expands fossil fuel subsidies. Subsidies are essentially giving money to companies. This should be done when certain industries are important to emphasize above and beyond the incentive for profit-making, like environmental benefits. Considering fossil fuels cause deadly air pollution as well as contribute to global warming, subsidizing them makes no sense.
Fossil fuel industries are already built out, so subsidies pay such companies for doing stuff that they were doing anyways. Renewable industries are still developing and growing, so subsidies actually create new business. Once you consider the environmental impacts, fossil fuel subsidies net a negative return.
Trump’s bill has led to a lot of fired scientists. Foreign countries are offering bonuses to hire these scientists. These nonsense policies are producing American brain drain.
“These strange divisions underscore the complex political dynamics of the president’s latest power play. It’s become a loyalty test that could boost Republicans’ chances of keeping their trifecta in Washington, but one that also carries significant electoral risk for several of their own members in Congress and potential for broader voter backlash.”
Trump’s Federal police action in DC is costing one million dollars a day.
Right wing media uses a deadly car accident where an illegal immigrant with a driver’s license made a driving mistake and people died…as evidence of illegals killing people. JD Vance refers to this deadly car accident as murder.
FBI raided John Bolton’s home in search of classified documents. Trump does not like Bolton because Bolton told the truth about Trump’s problems. This is potentially a huge abuse of power to harass someone who criticized the president. But maybe it’s legit, we’ll have to keep an eye on it.
Trump dishonestly screamed about rigged elections, and then tries to rig his own midterms. Ridiculous hypocrisy and dishonesty.
“The pressure on Indiana lawmakers comes as Texas is moving forward with a redraw of its congressional map at the request of Trump — and California is crafting its own retaliation.
On Monday, dozens of Texas Democrats returned to Austin after protesting redistricting by remaining out-of-state for two weeks, denying Republicans the ability to conduct legislative business. As Texas Republicans are back on path to passing their new, more aggressive gerrymander, national Republicans have turned their attention to other states like Florida, Missouri and Indiana.”
It looks like yet another political use of the criminal justice system by the Trump administration, and yet another dent in U.S. democracy.
“The federal officer who arrested the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city outside an immigration detention center in May suggested that he was making the arrest at the direction of the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Todd Blanche, according to law enforcement body camera footage described in a new court filing.
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Witness accounts and other video footage taken that day showed the mayor had been allowed inside a gated area by a guard, stood there peacefully for the better part of an hour and left the gated area when federal agents threatened him with arrest. That day, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) told POLITICO that he’d witnessed an agent inside the gated area talking on the phone with someone who told the agent to arrest Baraka, who by the time of the call was outside the gate. McIver gave a similar account in a press conference at the time.
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Less than two weeks later, federal prosecutors dropped a trespassing charge against Baraka. But a federal judge chided the effort to charge him in the first place. Magistrate Judge André M. Espinosa called it an “embarrassing retraction” that “suggests a failure to adequately investigate, to carefully gather facts and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power.””