He’s setting up a go at the presidency. He knows that the DNC will want him to lean conservative, but he doesn’t want to be painted as flip flopping or pandering, so he’s leaning into it early. Now when the GOP inevitably calls him a woke far left extremist (or whatever buzz words they’re using by that time) he can point back to this period as proof that he’s “always been a centrist” who can appeal to non-MAGA conservatives.

Of course, he and the rest of the DNC haven’t figured out yet that conservative voters are NEVER going to vote for the LESS conservative party.

Haha I know 🫠

2026

The midterms are going to be brutal; Republicans can’t afford to lose either chamber of Congress.

Well, Sears went under because the CEO was a True Believer in the Libertarian/Atlas Shrugged/Starve The Beast method of running a business. He genuinely thought that making stores and even individual departments fight for ever reducing funding was going to make them better. What he learned is that when people have their livelihood at stake, they fight dirty and lie.

When Sears finally closed forever, he said he regretted it. Probably not as much as the people whose lives he ruined.

Wait for it, it’s coming: some variation of “make Greenland great again” political campaign to try to win over Greenlanders so they’ll support annexation by the USA.

Thankfully they get a preview of what making a country great looks like according to Trump.

It makes me genuinely wonder if they’re going to actually try to reprogram it or just do nothing and say they did.

Another real possibility is Musk ours a small team of three or four fresh college graduates on the job knowing that they’ll fail, essentially setting them up to be the fall guys if he can’t avoid repercussions.

Either way the goal is not to benefit the people who rely on social security.

Look, Pennsylvanians know a thing or two about election a representative, that representative having a personality changing life event, and then that representative going on to fix absolutely nothing and in fact make things measurably worse.

But even still they did the math, calculated the risk:reward of their vote, held their nose and cast their ballots.

Just as I have for every election my whole life.

You want real, meaningful change? Support progressive candidates at the local level who will be in a position to get rid of first past the post voting. The two party system that enables the Democrats’ laziness is a direct, organic result of FPTP. Thankfully how voting works is legislated at the local level, meaning if we can get some form of Rank Choice then suddenly Democrats are going to have to care A LOT because it’ll be easier to vote them out without simultaneously voting a Republican in.

But until we can fix the source of the problem (FPTP) damage mitigation will continue to be the name of the game, and it’ll be a game we will eventually, inevitably lose.

We CAN fix it, but we need less cynicism* and apathy.

*I didn’t say “no cynicism” that’d be terrible, I don’t think I could get through the day without a cup or two… But everything in moderation, ya know?

If your support was conditional, then it was insincere. I don’t know what group you think you belong to, but you were never one of “us.” If you would like to be, you can make a good start by growing enough backbone to stand by whatever morals you have instead of “being an ally” and then “not an ally anymore” depending on whatever shit people say to you.

It blows me away that we’re still seeing “both sides” arguments even after the last two months.

Have liberals failed to help us? Yes. Have conservatives failed to help us? No; they can’t fail at something they never attempted to do.

Both sides are not the same.

But if you want to argue that the two party system has failed, we can certainly agree there. The two party system is an organic result of first past the post voting. The good news is that voting is determined at the local level, where it’s easier to get progressives who are willing to move away from FPTP into office. We’re not going to vote away fascism, but voting reform absolutely needs to be one of the many strategies employed against fascists.

(Note: I switched to"liberals" and “conservatives” because your source spans multiple eras with different political parties, including when Democrats and Republicans switched after Republicans adopted the Southern Strategy. Interestingly, the modern Democratic party (post-Southern Strategy) has only held a unified government a mere 5 times)

Afaik they’d have to go through customs for the country they’re trying to enter. I can’t recall ever having to deal with US customs when leaving the US, it’s always been the country I’m traveling to.

Count me as another ally you threw away because you can’t see past your own ignorance.

LOL if you think this way then you were never an ally.

She got it backwards, they side with Trump because Russia said so.

The Trump administration is operating on a “it’s not legal/constitutionally protected until a judge says it is” and if they punish you before the judge says you don’t deserve punishment, oh well!

So in this case, because we don’t have any case law saying that deportation is an infringement of the 1st amendment, Trump gets to say it isn’t until a judge says otherwise. At which point maybe Trump will obey the court, or (probably) not.

It’s bullshit and backwards, but that’s what we’re up against.

What do you mean? We’ve always been at war with Eurasia

They’re already doing this ALL the time. Even before the Trump administration, an average of one citizen gets deported every month, and if you don’t have a lawyer on the outside fighting for you, you’re fucked.

You might be on to something there

I’d be shocked if they even bothered to hire any this time around lol

Huh. TIL.

I guess this is exactly what the judicial branch was created for. We’ve got an undefined area of legality, somebody’s got to sort it out, and until they do we just can’t say for sure one way or the other

Has he ever given any indication that he knows what the CHIPS Act is? Because I’m 99% sure he’s confusing it with CHIP Children’s Health Insurance Program which iirc is part of social security and we know he’s aiming to get rid of that.

IMO you’re overthinking it.

The Constitution applies to all people within jurisdiction of the United States. Immigration or citizenship status isn’t a factor; he absolutely has a first amendment right to say what he said.

The question you’re struggling with is regarding people who aren’t already within the jurisdiction, or are applying for citizenship.

All of that said, if ICE already deported him then that complicates things. Normally somebody who’s been deported will be denied reentry for that reason alone; there’s a waiting period (5 years iirc) if they’re ever going to be allowed back in at all. But you’re correct that they could also deny him reentry for his political views. It’s likely that, if he’s already out of the country, legally removed or not, a judge will have to order him to be allowed reentry despite both of this things.