A 12-yr-old boy, flanked by President Donald Trump, shared his story about what a school in California forced him to do during a recent hearing of the […]
The country's theocracy hopes to see millions flood the streets of the capital beginning Saturday in scenes reminiscent to the burial of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.
A federal appeals court just upheld a New York state ban on gas stoves, which is very strange, considering the fact that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York insisted that the ban on gas stoves wasn't even happening.
The post Appeals Court Upholds New York ‘Gas Stove Ban’ That Chuck Schumer Insisted Wasn’t Even Happening appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
In a 6-3 decision breaking on partisan lines, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that Trump can fire Federal Trade Commissioners and other federal agency directors without cause. The ruling overturns longstanding Supreme Court precedent and express statutory instruction that combined to protect the political independence and subject matter expertise of federal agencies for over 90 years.The ruling presents a novel reading of a president’s Constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” expanding that power for a rogue president hellbent on breaking laws instead of executing them. As Justice Sotomayor put it, “The Court… is elevating (Trump) above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”An activist Roberts Court has now written into existence an all-powerful unitary executive despite elaborate instructions in art. I, II and III to keep the three branches of government separate and equal. Rejecting federal laws that restrict a president’s removal of agency directors to for-cause removal, SCOTUS has made the president all powerful and Congress less relevant, while arrogating scientific and technical questions to itself.Trump’s corporate donors can now choose their own regulatorsBefore republicans on the bench rewrote it this week, the Federal Trade Commission Act stated that a President could only remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That statute clearly and intentionally barred presidents from firing directors for partisan or corrupt reasons, and from punishing regulators who rule against a president’s corporate donor(s). Vesting a singularly authoritarian executive with unprecedented, expansive powers, the Supreme Court re-wrote federal laws to advance their own political narrative.Over two dozen federal agencies will be affected, covering everything from the financial markets, the commodities markets, and nuclear power. Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission were all Congressionally designed to be independent watchdogs, enforcers insulated from partisan whims. Now Trump can remove any commissioners who threaten to rule against his allies, assuring that his political supporters will be afforded preferential review, licensing, merger approvals and other rulings.With Trump’s new latitude to fire any agency head who threatens meaningful regulation, his corporate donors have been effectively empowered to choose their own regulators. Federal laws passed to protect human health, finance, banking, communications, workplace safety, and clean air, soil and water have been rendered functionally meaningless.Replacing science, expertise and merit with political fealtyCongressionally created and funded federal agencies serve express, statutory purposes written to safeguard the American public. The Supreme Court had protected agency autonomy and expertise dating back to 1935, ruling that some degree of autonomy was necessary for federal agencies to meet specific scientific, economic, communications, trade, health, and environmental mandates. Federal agencies were never meant to be a president’s personal toys with which to reward donors and cronies.For a president in the habit of accepting lavish gifts and cash from foreign governments, along with hundreds of millions from domestic supplicants, finding even more room for self-dealing, corruption and political favoritism must be heady. For the rest of us, it’s dangerous. We actually need competent people to run the federal government, even in its post-DOGE watered down state.If Trump declares that every home must be heated by dirty coal, the head of the Energy Commission must try to effectuate that command no matter the harm to Americans’ lungs. If Trump declares that particulate matter, fossil fuels and the widespread use of Monsanto is good for the environment, any EPA director who contradicts him with cancer and death statistics will be silenced through removal. It’s governance by full Idiocracy.A know-nothing, anti-science president can now follow his gutTo every American outside the Fox News propaganda bubble, Trump has demonstrated astonishing incompetence on all fronts. From economically illiterate tariffs to our defeat in Iran, sprinkled with comically disastrous results in between, an ignorant and arrogant “I follow my gut” Trump revels in rejecting science and expertise as Americans pay the price.The only thing saving the nation from complete chaos and disaster to date is that several federal agencies had retained some level institutional competence despite Trump (and Musk’s) best efforts to dismantle them.
President Donald Trump stunned his critics on Thursday with a remark he made about his kids during an interview on CNBC. Trump was asked by CNBC's Joe Kernen about allegations that his children are using insider information to gain favorable business deals. The president recently disclosed that he earned more than $2 billion during his second term, alarming many political analysts and ethics experts. "I feel bad in a way for my kids because every time my kids do, if they invest in a stock or if they go and do a bill, anything they do, because the presidency is so powerful, so big, everything if they buy a cupcake company, well, the energy to make the cupcakes is sort of like, how’s my energy policy?" Trump told Kernen. "So therefore, you have ... almost anything they do, if they buy an energy-efficient truck, they have inside information. So it’s pretty tough in that sense. I tell my kids, 'Stay away from as much as you can stay away from.' But they also have a life.”Questions about the investments made by Trump's children, Don Jr. and Eric, have swirled following the release of Trump's financial disclosures. For instance, Trump's sons recently invested in a mining company in Kazakhstan that later won a nine-figure contract with the federal government. Trump's critics sounded off on social media after the CNBC interview was over. "He actually says this? Wow," Stephen Soldz, a psychologist and researcher in Boston, posted on Bluesky. "Pure corruption. I look forward to the congressional hearings," Zak Williams, a political consultant at Zenith Strategies, posted on Bluesky. "The most corrupt administration in American history and it’s not even close," Max Berger, co-founder of the Momentum Training Institute, posted on Bluesky. "Looking forward to all the Hunter Biden critics weighing in. Especially on Fox," David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, posted on Bluesky.
A legal expert shared a sobering warning on Thursday about President Donald Trump's continued efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court rebuffed his latest attempt. Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told Michael Popok, a lawyer and host of "The Intersection" podcast, on a recent episode that the Trump administration's birthright citizenship case was "just the tip of the spear." Last year, the administration signed an executive order stripping birthright citizenship from people who are born in the country but whose parents are here illegally. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Wednesday that the executive order was unconstitutional. Wofsy warned during the interview that the Supreme Court's decision is not the end of the road for the Trump administration's efforts. "What cases like the Birthright decision show is that we can keep fighting and we can win these fights," Wofsy said. "There are battles so fundamental and central to who we are as a country that we can overcome.""I hope that gives some hope to those who may be feeling a little hopeless in this moment, but I also don't want to at all undercut that this is an incredibly frightening and demoralizing time for so many people in our communities," he continued. "This is an example of our allies, our communities, the American people, who stood up and said no to this idea of rewriting a fundamental constitutional guarantee, and we held the line in this case," he added. "It's an example of why we have to keep fighting, but it is by far not the end of the fight."