Trump administration 2024-2028

[RangerRay]

When your interior design preferences run to third world dictator chic or New Orleans whorehouse.

I always thought of it as “Versailles meets Liberace”.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Nancy Pelosi announced she will not seek reelection. After 40 years.

I think everyone can agree this was probably 39 years too late.

Nancy Pelosi announces retirement after decades in US Congress

Pelosi made history as the first female Speaker and left an indelible mark on US politics.

www.bbc.com

 

[Brad Sallows]

Becoming forgetful or just really bad taste?

Trump adds gold-script signage outside of Oval Office

Would look good on a hotel bar or restaurant entrance.

 

[Brad Sallows]

ICE has managed to deport a lot more illegals under the Obama Administration without having to resort to questionable or illegal tactics, hiding their identities or producing war porn.

Three things: everyone from activists down to mere enthusiasts temper their oppositional energy and tactics when they find themselves opposing one of their own (and it is difficult to image a greater partisan divide than Obama and Trump); it is easy to have greater output numbers when you allow greater input numbers; Trump's administration is dealing with the insufficiently policed borders of the Biden administration, not the Obama administration.

The fears of doxxing are fear porn produced by the Administration and Fox “News” to excuse their goon behaviour, when it’s their behaviour that is making them extremely unpopular.

Joshua Jahn. The concern is irrefutably legitimate.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Yes. Sykes is a former conservative radio host who lost his show when he refused to get on the Trump Train and saw him for the disaster It is. He also wrote a book titled “How the Right Lost its Mind”. Great book, highly recommended. I appreciate hearing from apostates because they are usually trying to warn people of trouble coming from their camp.

Sykes isn't part of the Republican camp. He's with the community of self-exiled (former) Republican NeverTrumpers, who followed in the footsteps of David Frum by declaring themselves the True American Conservatives and reading everyone else out after Trump's ascent. (Of course the American conservative polity has always been a big tent, but they were accustomed to sitting at the head table during the Bush administration.) Several prominent members of the tribe openly declared that if the Republican party tolerated Trump, it would be better for the Republican party to be destroyed and rebuilt. Their attitude is approximately that they shouldn't have to do the hard work of remaining within the party to influence its course; they can stand outside lobbing molotov cocktails until it burns down and then they will show up to take over the ashes. Their maturity is close cousin to leaving the playground with their ball and going home.

They seek to conserve nothing except to restore their own proximity to power. Many of the prominent writers are people I used to read regularly, mostly at National Review. My views still mostly align with libertarian-inflected classical liberalism and what was conventional during the Mulroney/Reagan/Thatcher era; their minds are distraught and it shows in what they write. They've been 9 years without influence in Republican WH-contending circles, and 16 years out of the WH. Trump's unexpected second win has elevated my earlier prediction that they were pitching a fit because they foresaw a likely 16 to 24 years in the political wilderness (no turn again in the WH) to a time-out of 24 to 32.

Meanwhile they throw their weight behind Democrats, who are objectively becoming much more extreme relative to the NeverTrumpers' professed conservativism. (It is a trivial matter of common sense to observe that US progressives are moving left with a much velocity greater than conservatives, and that US conservatives also have a net leftward velocity.) They claim to be conservatives even as they support progressive political fortunes. They may or may not be conscious that to Democrats they are useful idiots; they will each in turn be discarded when they cease to be useful. A fitting end for people who think they are entitled to reap the profits of voters' support to their own ends and then to discard the interests of those voters when the latter doubt their interests were being served in the first place.

 

[Lumber]

(It is a trivial matter of common sense to observe that US progressives are moving left with a much velocity greater than conservatives, and that US conservatives also have a net leftward velocity.)

Disagree completely.

The Democratic party went Clinton->Obama->Biden->Harris->Newsom/Shaprio?
The Republican party when H.W. Bush->W. Bush->Trump->Trump 2.0

Looking at those two progressions, how can you possibly say that the Democrats have moved with "greater" velocity than the Republicans?

 

[Brad Sallows]

Disagree completely.

The Democratic party went Clinton->Obama->Biden->Harris->Newsom/Shaprio?
The Republican party when H.W. Bush->W. Bush->Trump->Trump 2.0

Looking at those two progressions, how can you possibly say that the Democrats have moved with "greater" velocity than the Republicans?

Political Values 1994-2017 (Pew Research).

That aside, is it your contention that Republicans are closing the ideological gap between them and Democrats, or that Republicans continue to drift rightward? The former seems absurd. To the latter, apply common sense: on matters of sexual expression alone, the median US conservative is more accepting now (eg. general lifestyle choices, acceptability in mainstream society, same-sex marriage) than during the Reagan/Clinton era. On matters of racial politics, the same. Bottom line, there is no evidence of more than a very small minority of extremists wanting to revert to pre-1980 norms let alone pre-1964 ones.

If Republicans are not actually drifting right and are not closing the gap with Democrats moving left, they cannot be moving with greater velocity in either direction. The claim that Republicans are becoming "more extreme" is a rhetorical misrepresentation of the increasing distance between the median ideological attitudes, but as in physics, there are no preferred frames of reference in politics. All we can do is pick a date and measure changes in attitudes since that time.

Definitionally: progressives seek more change than conservatives.

[Add: for the presidential succession comparison - which is not a reflection of the US as a whole - as a matter of policy positions, Trump is held by many US political observers to be approximately a 1990s Democrat].

 

[RangerRay]

Three things: everyone from activists down to mere enthusiasts temper their oppositional energy and tactics when they find themselves opposing one of their own (and it is difficult to image a greater partisan divide than Obama and Trump); it is easy to have greater output numbers when you allow greater input numbers; Trump's administration is dealing with the insufficiently policed borders of the Biden administration, not the Obama administration.

It still doesn’t justify Gestapo tactics and disguising you identity and legitimate law enforcement status.

Joshua Jahn. The concern is irrefutably legitimate.

I don’t see anything about doxxing goons (I refuse to give them the respect of law enforcement officers so long as they act unprofessionally deploying questionable, if not illegal tactics) here. A psycho shoots randomly at a known ICE facility killing detainees. As far as I know, it’s still not clear if he was targeting agents or detainees. Even if he was targeting goons, they were employing these tactics before the incident.

If a psycho shoots up a police station and killed some prisoners, would you argue that beat cops need to wear masks and plainclothes and not identify themselves when making arrests?

 

[RangerRay]

Sykes isn't part of the Republican camp. He's with the community of self-exiled (former) Republican NeverTrumpers, who followed in the footsteps of David Frum by declaring themselves the True American Conservatives and reading everyone else out after Trump's ascent. (Of course the American conservative polity has always been a big tent, but they were accustomed to sitting at the head table during the Bush administration.) Several prominent members of the tribe openly declared that if the Republican party tolerated Trump, it would be better for the Republican party to be destroyed and rebuilt. Their attitude is approximately that they shouldn't have to do the hard work of remaining within the party to influence its course; they can stand outside lobbing molotov cocktails until it burns down and then they will show up to take over the ashes. Their maturity is close cousin to leaving the playground with their ball and going home.

They seek to conserve nothing except to restore their own proximity to power. Many of the prominent writers are people I used to read regularly, mostly at National Review. My views still mostly align with libertarian-inflected classical liberalism and what was conventional during the Mulroney/Reagan/Thatcher era; their minds are distraught and it shows in what they write. They've been 9 years without influence in Republican WH-contending circles, and 16 years out of the WH. Trump's unexpected second win has elevated my earlier prediction that they were pitching a fit because they foresaw a likely 16 to 24 years in the political wilderness (no turn again in the WH) to a time-out of 24 to 32.

Meanwhile they throw their weight behind Democrats, who are objectively becoming much more extreme relative to the NeverTrumpers' professed conservativism. (It is a trivial matter of common sense to observe that US progressives are moving left with a much velocity greater than conservatives, and that US conservatives also have a net leftward velocity.) They claim to be conservatives even as they support progressive political fortunes. They may or may not be conscious that to Democrats they are useful idiots; they will each in turn be discarded when they cease to be useful. A fitting end for people who think they are entitled to reap the profits of voters' support to their own ends and then to discard the interests of those voters when the latter doubt their interests were being served in the first place.

So when your party goes off the deep end and there is no way to right the ship, you should just STFU. Got it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

It still doesn’t justify Gestapo tactics and disguising you identity and legitimate law enforcement status.

Those are two different things. It isn't rhetorically clever to "AND" them to force an association. Gestapo tactics aren't justified. Disguising identity under some circumstances is. ICE isn't the first agency to conduct operations masked.

I don’t see anything about doxxing goons (I refuse to give them the respect of law enforcement officers so long as they act unprofessionally deploying questionable, if not illegal tactics) here.

You're condemning all for the actions of some - I suppose only a few. That makes no sense.

A psycho shoots randomly at a known ICE facility killing detainees. As far as I know, it’s still not clear if he was targeting agents or detainees. Even if he was targeting goons, they were employing these tactics before the incident.

We can never know, since he killed himself. But he was an anti-ICE activist, not an anti-immigrant activist.

 

[Brad Sallows]

So when your party goes off the deep end and there is no way to right the ship, you should just STFU. Got it.

The party has not gone off the deep end. The political structure of the US from top to bottom is much, much more than just a presidential administration.

It is impossible to know whether a ship can be righted if you don't put in some hard work first. The NeverTrumpers are spoiled children acting like control of Republican presidential politics should be handed to them on a platter by unquestioning voters who merely express gratitude for the benevolent rulers whose chief skills are regime change and other foreign interventionism, all of it very costly.

But, yeah, they and those who follow them are missing an excellent opportunity to say nothing, preferably for years. It's not as if they are pure disinterested critics delivering perspicacious objective insights from afar. They've mostly allied with what used to be their antithesis. And as I just wrote, there's a lot more going on in America than just a presidential administration. The fact that they focus on that so much reveals their power obsession.

 

[Lumber]

Political Values 1994-2017 (Pew Research).

That aside, is it your contention that Republicans are closing the ideological gap between them and Democrats, or that Republicans continue to drift rightward? The former seems absurd. To the latter, apply common sense: on matters of sexual expression alone, the median US conservative is more accepting now (eg. general lifestyle choices, acceptability in mainstream society, same-sex marriage) than during the Reagan/Clinton era. On matters of racial politics, the same. Bottom line, there is no evidence of more than a very small minority of extremists wanting to revert to pre-1980 norms let alone pre-1964 ones.

If Republicans are not actually drifting right and are not closing the gap with Democrats moving left, they cannot be moving with greater velocity in either direction. The claim that Republicans are becoming "more extreme" is a rhetorical misrepresentation of the increasing distance between the median ideological attitudes, but as in physics, there are no preferred frames of reference in politics. All we can do is pick a date and measure changes in attitudes since that time.

Definitionally: progressives seek more change than conservatives.

[Add: for the presidential succession comparison - which is not a reflection of the US as a whole - as a matter of policy positions, Trump is held by many US political observers to be approximately a 1990s Democrat].

Well, getting away from Presidents and focusing on congress, this Pew Research article from 2022 states that Republicans have become more conservative more than Democrats have become more liberal:

The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades

On average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.

www.pewresearch.org

 

[Brad Sallows]

Well, getting away from Presidents and focusing on congress, this Pew Research article from 2022 states that Republicans have become more conservative more than Democrats have become more liberal:

The polarization in today’s Congress has roots that go back decades

On average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years.

www.pewresearch.org

That is interesting.

Is there an explanation consistent with my assertions?

The results for 1994-2017 are surveys of the American public using the same set of questions. Those are measurements relative to a fixed point, and my conclusions are drawn with reference to that fixed point.

The congressional polarization survey is a survey of congressional members voting records on issues measured by whatever DW_NOMINATE does.

"Both parties have moved further away from the ideological center since the early 1970s. Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative."

An ideological center is a midpoint between two ideologies, and necessarily moves as the respective ideologies change. Even if the claim is that the methodology is supposed to have a fixed center, DW_NOMINATE cannot define such a fixed point because legislative votes are not a set of fixed questions; there is a subjective judgement as to where they fit in the ideological space.

All that has to happen for Republicans to appear to move one way is for a not truly fixed center to move the other. But let the premise of the fixed center be granted. If Republicans on average started more moderate than Democrats, they would appear to move more as both parties purged their moderates - which is what is claimed: "Five decades ago, 144 House Republicans were less conservative than the most conservative Democrat, and 52 House Democrats were less liberal than the most liberal Republican, according to the analysis.".

Regardless, Congressional voting records on arbitrarily siloed and scored issues are not a proxy for public attitudes and in particular for the ideological shift of the American population of Democrats and Republicans throughout the country and up and down the levels of government. I maintain that progressives are, definitionally and empirically, moving left faster than conservatives, and that conservatives are moving left.

 

[Altair]

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/06/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-pay-full-snap-benefits-00640627

Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided,” said U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr., an Obama appointee. The government “knew there would be a long delay in paying [partial] SNAP benefits and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”

McConnell also noted that President Donald Trump’s post on social media that benefits wouldn’t be funded until the government reopened “stated his intent to defy the court order.”

Seems we are at the ignoring the courts phase of this administration.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Seems we are at the ignoring the courts phase of this administration.

They aren't ignoring the courts; they're challenging the courts. An unanswered question is how much latitude the courts have to decide how Congress means appropriations to be spent. If Congress didn't intend the contingency fund to be used for covering a shortfall during a routine (for Congress) budget dispute in the legislature, a court may not have the power to order it so.

A separate observation: too much ridiculous behaviour from a few ideologically-motivated judges, and all judges will look equally ridiculous. The profession's reputational integrity is only as strong as its weakest members'. Judges, regulate thyselves.

 

[MrWhyt]

The profession's reputational integrity is only as strong as its weakest members'.

Like for example when a judge receives multiple "gifts" from wealthy "friends".

 

[Brad Sallows]

Like for example when a judge receives multiple "gifts" from wealthy "friends".

Potentially. Like for example when the friends have actual business before the court.

 

[RangerRay]

Some more on the latest TACO with Beijing.

Tariffs, Rare Earths, and Retreat: Trump’s Failed Fight with China

Trump promised to win the trade war. Instead, he raised prices at home and surrendered abroad.

adamkinzinger.substack.com

It has been a week—which means Donald Trump has already moved on to new outrages—but one of his decisions from his recent trip to Asia is going to stick. After meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, Trump announced he would pull back from the trade war he launched shortly after taking office in January.

In doing so, Trump walked away from a worthwhile goal: pushing back against China’s decades-long assault on global manufacturing. Thanks to massive subsidies, Chinese industries now dominate world trade. Chinese factories produce one-third of all globally traded goods—more than the U.S., Germany, and Japan combined—while hollowing out manufacturing jobs at home and abroad.

Put simply, China doesn’t play fair. Its state-backed companies flood markets with cheap products to undercut competition. Presidents from George W. Bush to Joe Biden have tried to counter this with targeted tariffs. Trump initially implemented a broader but still rational tariff strategy, which Biden even kept in place. But in his return to office, Trump escalated that strategy into a chaotic trade war driven by personal impulse, not policy. He forgot that China had a powerful weapon of its own—and was more than willing to use it.





China controls the global control of rare earth minerals—critical components for high-tech manufacturing (worth noting, the US possesses plenty of these minerals, but mining restrictions and regulations have prevented access good or bad). Most importantly, it produces 98 percent of the world’s rare earth magnets, essential for everything from missiles to smartphones. On September 9, China imposed restrictions on rare earth exports, sending shockwaves through the tech industry. Trump’s trade representative, Jamieson Greer, put it bluntly: “This will give China control over basically the entire global economy and the technology supply chain.”

Outmaneuvered, the Trump administration quickly agreed to a deal that included:

• A 50% reduction in U.S. tariffs on certain Chinese products
• A drop in overall tariffs on Chinese goods, from 57% to 47%
• A one-year pause on export controls for high-tech U.S. products like semiconductor equipment, which to this point had been restricted due to the AI race. This gives China a win, and a leg up in the race.
• A similar pause on port fees for Chinese-built, owned, or flagged cargo ships

And what did the U.S. get in return? China agreed to suspend retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural products and buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans- EXACTLY what they were purchasing BEFORE. It also agreed to resume sales of rare earth metals and magnets.

The rare earth issue may have forced Trump’s retreat, but let’s be clear: long before that, his 125% tariffs on Chinese imports were already hurting Americans. Consumers paid higher prices for clothing, furniture, toys, electronics, and more. There is still no evidence that even a single American manufacturing job was created as a result. Meanwhile, China continues to dominate the booming market for solar panels and wind turbines, and it’s rapidly closing the gap with the U.S. in artificial intelligence and information technology.

So how did Trump respond to China’s growing strength? He canceled federal programs that supported renewable energy production in the U.S. He even proposed cutting a program that helps build domestic semiconductor manufacturing—the very technology that powers AI and keeps America competitive.

When it comes to China, Trump is missing intelligence in more ways than one. He doesn’t even understand who pays the price for his tariffs. Just weeks ago, Goldman Sachs released a report showing who actually bears the cost: American consumers pay 55%, U.S. companies pay 22%, and exporters in China and elsewhere pay just 18%.

Trump and his allies keep insisting that America is “winning.” If that’s true, then why are we the ones retreating?

 

[PrairieFella]

Assuming not everyone who works for ICE is a goon, it's reasonable for the ones worried about being doxxed and harassed or threatened to tell the FBI to go pound sand and tell all applicable LEOs to do their job and go after people impersonating officers.

Surely they have nothing to worry about identifying themselves if they arent breaking the law?

 

[RangerRay]

And “sandwich guy” acquitted.

Jury acquits D.C. 'sandwich guy' charged with chucking a sub at a federal agent

Sean Dunn faced a single misdemeanor after federal grand jurors refused to indict him on the felony charge sought by prosecutors.

www.nbcnews.com

The Feds refused to allow him to peacefully surrender himself to the police and went in with a tactical team and film crew instead.

Dramatic video shows feds re-arresting Subway sandwich slinger after he pelted officer with hero in DC

Sean Charles Dunn, 37, was cuffed by an armed team of at least a half-dozen US Marshals in a Wednesday night raid, per footage shared by the White House.

nypost.com

The DOJ then failed to indict him for a raft of felonies, only getting him indicted on a single misdemeanour. I guess it’s not as easy to indict a ham sandwich as they say it is.