America - The Official Thread

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dylansan
Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani wins NYC mayoral primary, beating Andrew Cuomo by a significant margin and defying all polling.

Here's hoping any sitting politicians who endorsed Cuomo to stop Mamdani get primaried. They completely failed to meet the moment.
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I don't know how anyone can look at Cuomo and think he should be the leader of anything. Dude is openly corrupt.
 
Joey D
I don't know how anyone can look at Cuomo and think he should be the leader of anything. Dude is openly corrupt.
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Cuomo has too much baggage but he's still trying to see if he can run as an independent (which would pretty much hand the mayoral election to Mamdani). He wants to run for President in 2028 so he views this as a stepping stone. On one hand, he isn't worse than Trump (very hard for him to meet that criteria). On the other hand, he is not much better in terms of personal character.
 
Blitz24
Cuomo has too much baggage but he's still trying to see if he can run as an independent (which would pretty much hand the mayoral election to Mamdani). He wants to run for President in 2028 so he views this as a stepping stone. On one hand, he isn't worse than Trump (very hard for him to meet that criteria). On the other hand, he is not much better in terms of personal character.
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I really don't see how he could expect to win after being defeated by such a surprising margin here, but you never know. The general election could be messy. I really don't know who would spoil who.
 
dylansan
I really don't see how he could expect to win after being defeated by such a surprising margin here, but you never know. The general election could be messy. I really don't know who would spoil who.
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It ignores the fact that Adams is already running 3rd party. Cuomo 3rd party would essentially split the votes and probably hurt both of them.
 
Gingerale
I have never seen a country being demolished this obvious and out in the open, and people just stand by and seem to accept it. Why do Americans feel its ok to cut so much benefits. 25% less money to healthcare? 15% cut in education?

I mean, i get when people think its okay to cut stuff like public broadcasting (I dont agree, but oh well). But accepting a cut in your very own health? Thats weird man. They just accept it because they think Trump is going to get rid of foreigners right?
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Because many of them have been brain washed into believing that their tax dollars to fund those things will go directly into the pockets of those they've been told are "lower" in the social hierarchy (immigrants, single mothers, non-whites, gays, etc.) & completely blocked from being told they will benefit from those things as well. Everything is treated as a zero-sum game to modern day conservatives/MAGA; if you preach gay acceptance, you're trying to dwindle Christianity. If you talk about allowing easier immigration, you're trying to eradicate white people.
 
I think we are probably doomed in America

Tripped over this on Reddit and now I need therapy

I asked ChatGPT to translate it and ChatGPT said it now needs therapy too.

LANGUAGE WARNING

1750959190462.jpeg
 
I had to read that post in Dale from KotH’s accent as it was the only way it made any sense. The first couple of sentences were fine, then he ran out of language skills.
 
Blitz24
Try reading it as Boomhauer.
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Talkin' bout voted for dang ol' Trump three times, man, but the dang ol' tariffs making it might hard, man, to do business, y'know? That price o'diesel is dang ol' 47 cents higher, y'know, man? Just boom to the dang ol' moon, man. Y'know? Dang ol' tariffs.

Yup....Yep....Mmmhmm
 
Democrats get some wins on the BBBBBBill, including on Medicaid cuts, and trans and gender-affirming healthcare coverage under Medicaid.

 
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www.theverge.com

The Trump Phone no longer promises it’s made in America

American ‘design,’ built… where?
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
sometime in the last several days, the Trump Mobile site appears to have been scrubbed of all language indicating the phone is to be made in the USA. (Like, for instance, the huge banner on the homepage that says the T1 is “MADE IN THE USA.” Just to name one example.)
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It was originally advertised to have a 6.78-inch AMOLED screen, but now the T1’s site says it’s 6.25 inches. The site used to list the phone as having 12GB of RAM, and now doesn’t list RAM at all.
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When Trump Mobile first launched, it was also promising the T1 Phone 8002 would ship in September. Now, the only timing I could find was “later this year.”
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Guess the Wingtech was too expensive.
 
They could always use the workaround a lot of tool companies have been using for the last 10 years or so, just have someone slap a screen protector on over here before they go into the boxes and change the banner to:

🇺🇲 ASSEMBLED IN THE USA* 🇺🇲
*final assembly completed in US facility, using global materials
 
Seems like porn is going down in conservative states. That didn't take long. One more reason why Texas is the one-star state. Free Speech! Except when we don't like it.
 
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Famine
www.bbc.co.uk

Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship broadens Trump's power

The US's top court limited the ability of judges to issue nationwide injunctions, making it easier for Trump to carry out his agenda through executive orders.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk

Oh good.
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This one is pretty complicated, and very technical legal. Trump will call it the greatest blah blah ever to blah whatever. But as far as I can tell, and I don't totally understand it, it's really about narrowing the lower courts ability to block executive orders for constitutional violations as a whole, and kinda makes them evaluate every case and let the EO stand in general.

I still don't think the SC has the appetite to overturn birthright citizenship. But they definitely wanted to make executive orders more dangerous in the interim.
 
Blitz24
Conservative SC kneecaps itself to appease Dictator Trump.

Incidentally, this also means that I may no longer be considered a US citizen, so if I get sent off to El Salvador, you'll know why.
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Maybe Trump decides to execute the whole court as he can do as he pleases based on their decision - wouldn't be much of a loss at this time tbh. SCOTUS became one of the worts American institutions in recent years.
 
TheHun99
Maybe Trump decides to execute the whole court as he can do as he pleases based on their decision - wouldn't be much of a loss at this time tbh. SCOTUS became one of the worts American institutions in recent years.
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Other than Alito and Thomas, who would be more than happy to appease Trump even at their own expense, I doubt the rest of them would agree to bury themselves. If that were to happen, then Trump has cleared the field of all branches of government and is officially a dictator.
 
TheHun99
Maybe Trump decides to execute the whole court as he can do as he pleases based on their decision - wouldn't be much of a loss at this time tbh. SCOTUS became one of the worts American institutions in recent years.
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Blitz24
Other than Alito and Thomas, who would be more than happy to appease Trump even at their own expense, I doubt the rest of them would agree to bury themselves. If that were to happen, then Trump has cleared the field of all branches of government and is officially a dictator.
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He can already order SCOTUS executed and simply pardon anyone who does it. And then he can order anyone in congress who wants to impeach executed (either by mob or military) and pardon anyone who does it.

So he already has this power. Checks and balances are broken.
 
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Danoff
I still don't think the SC has the appetite to overturn birthright citizenship.
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Didn't they just do that though? Of course, the Congress with GOP majority will not lift a finger to point out that changing the Constitution starts with them and ends with the States, where neither the president, nor the SCOTUS plays any effing role in that. As you point out though, he can simply now pressure anyone and everyone to vote as he pleases, so of course this doesn't effing matter... I gotta go and finally learn how to shoot, and then exercise my 2A rights and spend a boatload of money on weapons to get ready for some major uprising...
 
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TheHun99
Didn't they just do that though?
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No. The news is sensationalizing this, and Trump is too because he likes it. But that is not what the SC just did. What they did is very technical with the way lower courts block executive orders. It narrows their ability to stop executive orders, kinda forcing the issue back up to appellate courts and the supreme court. It basically makes it harder for lower courts to impede executive orders (as I understand it).

What it really does, again as I understand it, this one is kinda technical, is that it makes the supreme court more powerful, but it makes the president more temporarily powerful in the process. It basically makes it take longer to get an injunction against an executive order.
TheHun99
I gotta go and finally learn how to shoot, and then exercise my 2A rights and spend a boatload of money on weapons to get ready for some major uprising...
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I'm not gonna tell you that's a bad idea.


Edit:

Here, from @Famine's article, this best captures what's going on:

article
The court's decision to limit the power of lower court federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions will have immediate, wide-ranging consequences.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents have often criticised what they say are ideological jurists in federal district courts who have been able to singlehandedly block executive actions and even legislation passed by Congress.
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Danoff
No. The news is sensationalizing this, and Trump is too because he likes it. But that is not what the SC just did. What they did is very technical with the way lower courts block executive orders. It narrows their ability to stop executive orders, kinda forcing the issue back up to appellate courts and the supreme court. It basically makes it harder for lower courts to impede executive orders (as I understand it).

What it really does, again as I understand it, this one is kinda technical, is that it makes the supreme court more powerful, but it makes the president more temporarily powerful in the process. It basically makes it take longer to get an injunction against an executive order.

I'm not gonna tell you that's a bad idea.
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And if the SC chooses not to hear any challenges to an executive order (or 1 or 2 of them refuse to come to session), doesn't that mean the executive order goes unchallenged?
 
Blitz24
And if the SC chooses not to hear any challenges to an executive order (or 1 or 2 of them refuse to come to session), doesn't that mean the executive order goes unchallenged?
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Basically yes. But that was always the case. That has not changed.

The previous paradigm (and this is based on me reading about this for 5 minutes and not being a constitutional lawyer so take this with a grain of salt), was one in which a lower court could effectively block an executive order such as the birthright citizenship order as being unconstitutional, and prevent it from going into effect nationwide. That could be overturned at any level above it, including by the supreme court.

The new paradigm as of today, is that they can only issue such an injunction for those with standing to sue. So if you are a target of an unconstitutional EO that has not made its way to the supreme court, you must sue to get an injunction even if 2000 other people already have. That puts the burden on you and a lot of burden on lower courts. The supreme court still has the ability to declare the EO unconstitutional.

This is a win for authoritarianism, because EOs take longer to block and are harder to block. But it's not automatically a nation-breaking move. EOs arguably shouldn't be nullified by lower courts immediately (to be clear, I'm not making that argument). Being able to get a nationwide injunction against an EO by a lower court is fundamentally conservative, because it makes new law and new executive policy more difficult to install. This new ruling is the opposite of conservative, because it enables the executive to more quickly change policy and in a way that is more difficult to get any relief from. It effectively elevates EOs to the supreme court level, and makes it so that lower courts don't have powers that the supremes do, making them a more relatively powerful court.


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I guess what's really disturbing about this is that it enables the executive to put the constitution into a kind of default pause state. The Executive has made a clearly, on its face, unconstitutional executive order. Obviously the executive does not have the power to remove rights from the bill of rights, and yet the executive has stated that they have done this. If lower courts can't block that instantly nationwide, it leaves all of us seeking remedies in court for constitutional violations until it makes its way to the supreme court.

It's not a massive change. But it's a move in Trump's direction.
 
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So… when can we start electing SC court judges again?

If all EO orders have to be approved by a 6-3 conservative SC, unless you’re MAGA you won’t get any EO through.
 
FuriousDemon
So… when can we start electing SC court judges again?
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Not soon enough.
FuriousDemon
If all EO orders have to be approved by a 6-3 conservative SC, unless you’re MAGA you won’t get any EO through.
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Well that's almost the opposite of what's happening. They're saying EOs are default active until they make it to the supreme court (or possibly some appellate court, I'm not sure), even if they lose in lower courts. But it has always been the case that the supreme court could nullify an EO for being unconstitutional.
 
The longer I spend reading about the birthright citizenship case decision the more I think it's not at all the problem everyone is making it out to be. People have gone through Sotomayor's dissent and pulled choice quotes from it. It seems like Sotomayor is making a big deal out of the role that lower courts played in protecting us all. And she makes a fine point about quickly getting nationwide relief from bad actions at the executive level, but it's the headlines say things like "no one is safe - sotomayor" implying that what's really happened is that there is no birthright citizenship in the US anymore and Trump could deport you tomorrow. That's not what's happening, but left leaning news rags are having a field day getting people scared right now.

Sotomayor's dissent seems totally overly alarmist given that protections against EOs still exist for individuals and at the national level through the supreme court. I've seen some legal analysis that suggest that nationwide injunctions from lower courts are still totally possible, and even for this specific case, in light of the majority opinion. How can that be? I'm not sure, but people who understand the workings of nationwide injunctions from lower courts better than I do seem to think so. What Sotomajor's dissent really seems to be crying havoc about is that it gives Trump a little more room to play, and that's a fair point. But it's not the sky is falling moment for birthright citizenship. And news organizations that are trying to make that connection are absolutely trashing their credibility.

This is reminding me of the 303 Creative opinion in which everyone was convinced (by the news and Sotomajor) that because an artist couldn't be compelled to make certain kinds of art on a cake, that people were going to be refused service at restaurants and grocery stores on the basis of bigotry. I tried to convince everyone that despite the scary headlines that's not what the ruling said. I was met with a lot of skepticism. This feels like that. The news is pretending that birthright citizenship is gone. It's not true.

I wish Sotomajor had used that level of fury when she was asked to find that Trump was ineligible for the presidency based on insurrection. Where was she then? Concurring with all of the other justices in saying that the constitution somehow doesn't forbid Trump from running, despite the plain language. I can't see her as anything other than a hypocrite for stumping so hard on this case while not standing up for the constitution in that one. She felt that this excerpt, straight from the constitution, did not bar Trump from office:

14th
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
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How can you look at that and say the supreme court has no role in preventing him from taking office? How can you just erase this section of the Constitution? Where were you that day Sonia?
 

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