What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[viper37]

The Democrats were not relying on the Virginia seats to take the House.  Seems the Democrats will take the House.

I still have doubts.

Not betting on any Dem victory this fall.

[Syt]

https://apnews.com/article/alabama-redistricting-supreme-court-congress-ba371351585b79c2965f9efb0332f33d

Supreme Court halts order for Alabama to use US House map with 2 largely Black districts

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for Alabama to eliminate one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year's midterm elections, creating an opening for Republicans to gain an additional U.S. House seat in a partisan battle for control of the closely divided chamber.

The decision follows a Supreme Court ruling in April that struck down a majority-Black U.S. House district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, significantly weakening a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Alabama officials had pointed to the Louisiana case as reason for the Supreme Court to end a judicial order to use a court-imposed House map until after the 2030 census. The high court on Monday overturned that order and directed a lower court to reconsider the case in light of the Louisiana decision. That could free the state to instead use a map approved in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that includes only one district where Black residents comprise a majority.

Anticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a May 19 primary for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries. Alabama had asked for an expedited decision ahead of the primary.

Alabama Republicans praised the decision.

"Today, the Supreme Court vindicated the state's long-held position. Now, the power to draw Alabama's maps goes back to the people's elected representatives. That's our Legislature," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a video statement. Marshall said his job was "to put the legislature in the best possible legal position to draw a congressional map that favors Republicans seven-to-zero." He concluded with the statement, "Stay tuned."

Republican House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter called the decision "a massive victory not just for Alabama, but for conservatives across the country."

In a dissent to Monday's brief ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Louisiana case had reversed only one of the grounds upon which the Alabama case had been decided. Although the Voting Rights Act violation is gone, Sotomayor said a lower court could still find that Alabama had intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the 14th Amendment.

The decision was a setback for Black residents and groups that had waged a legal fight for several years to get a second Alabama congressional district where Black voters had an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

"We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow. And anybody who is alarmed by these developments — as everybody should be — better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can," NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

Deuel Ross, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney who argued the Alabama case, said, "We will consider all of our options to fight to protect the rights of these voters and keep the court ordered map in place."

Shalela Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said she was disappointed in the decision.

"For me, I feel like this is a step backwards towards the Jim Crow era for congressional representation. The state is not going to stop here," Dowdy said, predicting Alabama will eventually go after the remaining district.

Primaries are just a week away
The decision comes a week ahead of the May 19 primaries, setting up a potentially confusing scenario for voters. Alabama lawmakers last week approved legislation to allow special primaries in four impacted congressional districts if the state is able to switch maps. The special elections would be set by the governor.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen called the decision a "historic win for Alabama voters." Allen said the May 19 primaries will proceed as scheduled and his office will remain in close contact with the governor's office "as this situation continues developing."

The change would give Republicans a chance to reclaim the district now represented by Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat. Figures was elected in 2024 under the court-ordered map. His election gave the state — where Black residents comprise more than one quarter of the population — two Black representatives in its congressional delegation for the first time in history.

Figures called the Supreme Court action an "incredibly unfortunate decision" that "sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and '60s in terms of Black political representation in the state."

Alabama is one of several states trying to change their congressional district boundaries before the November elections as part of a nationwide redistricting battle being won, so far, by Republicans.

Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, immediately after a census, to account for population changes. But President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw congressional districts to their advantage in a bid to hold onto a narrow House majority in the midterm elections.

Democrats in California countered with their own redistricting. And numerous Republican-led states have followed. The high court's Louisiana ruling provided fuel for Republicans to intensify their redistricting efforts.

So far, Republicans think they could win as many as 14 additional seats in the November elections from new districts enacted in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Tennessee. Democrats think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah. But Democrats suffered a major setback when the Virginia Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved redistricting amendment that could have yielded four more seats for the party.

Let's say after all the gerrymandering the Republicans still lose at the midterms (including their newly drawn districts), what are the chances of them accepting the results at this point instead of finding spurious reasons (maybe backed by SCOTUS) to throw out the results?

[Syt]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxp27j1xyjo

Trump's 'Golden Dome' will cost $1.2tn and might not stop all-out missile attack

US President Donald Trump's futuristic "Golden Dome" missile defence system will cost about $1.2 tn (£882bn) to develop, deploy and operate over two decades, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.

That figure is significantly higher than the initial sum of $175bn (£129bn) that had been earmarked.

And the system designed to shield the US against ballistic and cruise missiles might not even work. The new CBO report warned the Golden Dome could be vulnerable to a full-scale attack by Russia or China.

Acquisition costs alone would be ⁠over $1tn, including for the interceptor layers and a space-based missile warning and tracking system, the fiscal scorekeeper said in a new report.

Just days after returning to the White House in January, Trump unveiled plans for the system, aimed at countering "next-generation" aerial threats.

He said last year that the programme would require an initial investment of $25bn, with a total cost of $175bn over time.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who requested the estimate in the report, said on Tuesday: "The President's so-called 'Golden Dome' is nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans."

The BBC contacted the White House and the Pentagon for comment.

There have been doubts about whether the US would be able to deliver a comprehensive defence system for such a huge land mass.

Officials have warned that existing systems have not kept pace with increasingly sophisticated weapons possessed by potential adversaries.

Despite the projected costs of the Golden Dome, "the system could be overwhelmed by a full-scale attack mounted by a peer or near-peer adversary", the CBO said.

An executive order calling for the creation of what was initially termed the "Iron Dome for America" noted that the threat of next-generation weapons has "become more intense and complex" over time, a potentially "catastrophic" scenario for the US.

A week into his second term, Trump ordered the defence department to submit plans for a system that would deter and defend against aerial attacks, which the White House said at the time remain "the most catastrophic threat" facing the US.

Trump said the system would consist of "next-generation" technologies across land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors.

The system would be "capable even of intercepting missiles launched from the other side of the world, or launched from space", the president said last year.

SpaceX and Lockheed Martin last month won contracts worth up to $3.2bn to develop space-based missile interceptor prototypes for the system.

How's the repainting of the Reflecting Pool at the Washington Monument coming along, btw.

[crazy canuck]

The military person in command of the US forces in the war with Iran said the US may have destroyed the school but denied there were any other schools or medical facilities that were damaged.

The NYTimes says it has verified over 20 were damaged by US bombing, of the over 300 that they are still verifying.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Hey Valmy, can you tell us more about the six gender vegan Democrat running for Senate?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-says-james-talarico-is-a-vegan-with-six-genders-in-bizarre-rant/ar-AA1ZiFnd

 

[grumbler]

Hey Valmy, can you tell us more about the six gender vegan Democrat running for Senate?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-says-james-talarico-is-a-vegan-with-six-genders-in-bizarre-rant/ar-AA1ZiFnd

 

Trump Derangement Syndrome is very real, and the press (and the cabinet) let him get away with it.

[Valmy]

Hey Valmy, can you tell us more about the six gender vegan Democrat running for Senate?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-says-james-talarico-is-a-vegan-with-six-genders-in-bizarre-rant/ar-AA1ZiFnd

 

Talarico made a remark that there are six biological combinations of sex chorosomes that exist in humans. He wasn't talking about gender at all.

Many many years ago when Talarico was running for the state house he made a remark praising a group of vegans who were supporting him.

He neither believes there are six genders nor is he a vegan. This is just pure cancel culture war nonsense.

It is kind of pathetic this is all the Republicans here talk about. Culture war cancel culture, this person a decade ago once said a thing that we are going to outrage you with.

[crazy canuck]

The Trump regime has entered the "take what you can while the taking is good" phase.

From the NYTimes

The Justice Department said that it had created a $1.8 billion fund that could compensate supporters of President Trump who contend they were mistreated by Democratic administrations. The announcement came as part of a settlement with President Trump of his $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S.

[Valmy]

It's been there for awhile.

I do have to say the strategy of suing your own government and then forcing it to give you billions of dollars is really creative and impressive. Such a nakedly corrupt and crooked way of doing things, it just never occured to me that anybody would do it or that it would be allowed.

I guess that is one really easy to way to get things like reparations for slavery. Just become President, sue the Feds for trillions for slavery. Pay yourself and then spread around to descendents of slaves.

Hell you can do that for anything. So much for Congress' power of the purse.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Don't be ridiculous Valmy, no future Democratic president will be able to use that approach to make their own slush fund. The courts will rule that only Republican presidents can do things like that.

[crazy canuck]

It's been there for awhile.

I do have to say the strategy of suing your own government and then forcing it to give you billions of dollars is really creative and impressive. Such a nakedly corrupt and crooked way of doing things, it just never occured to me that anybody would do it or that it would be allowed.

I guess that is one really easy to way to get things like reparations for slavery. Just become President, sue the Feds for trillions for slavery. Pay yourself and then spread around to descendents of slaves.

Hell you can do that for anything. So much for Congress' power of the purse.

The fund has not been there for a while.  It was announced today.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

still like the belgian method better for surreality value:

government funds ngos
ngos sue government that funds them
government needs to pay fines and damages to the ngos
 

basically the government sueing itself, but with extra steps and graft

[Valmy]

It's been there for awhile.

I do have to say the strategy of suing your own government and then forcing it to give you billions of dollars is really creative and impressive. Such a nakedly corrupt and crooked way of doing things, it just never occured to me that anybody would do it or that it would be allowed.

I guess that is one really easy to way to get things like reparations for slavery. Just become President, sue the Feds for trillions for slavery. Pay yourself and then spread around to descendents of slaves.

Hell you can do that for anything. So much for Congress' power of the purse.

The fund has not been there for a while.  It was announced today.

Not this particular fund but he has been doing this exact thing for awhile.

Edit: Whoops I see where the confusion came from. I meant the Trump regime have been in this phase for awhile. The phase of "take what you can while the taking is good". Not that the fund has been there for awhile. Bad use of pronouns on my part.

[crazy canuck]

It's been there for awhile.

I do have to say the strategy of suing your own government and then forcing it to give you billions of dollars is really creative and impressive. Such a nakedly corrupt and crooked way of doing things, it just never occured to me that anybody would do it or that it would be allowed.

I guess that is one really easy to way to get things like reparations for slavery. Just become President, sue the Feds for trillions for slavery. Pay yourself and then spread around to descendents of slaves.

Hell you can do that for anything. So much for Congress' power of the purse.

The fund has not been there for a while.  It was announced today.

Not this particular fund but he has been doing this exact thing for awhile.

Edit: Whoops I see where the confusion came from. I meant the Trump regime have been in this phase for awhile. The phase of "take what you can while the taking is good". Not that the fund has been there for awhile. Bad use of pronouns on my part.

Ah, got it - yes, agreed

[Valmy]

still like the belgian method better for surreality value:

government funds ngos
ngos sue government that funds them
government needs to pay fines and damages to the ngos
 

basically the government sueing itself, but with extra steps and graft

The Trump regime is advanced as it doesn't bother with that intermediate step. USA USA USA