Summary
Donald Trump signed an executive action revoking security clearances for attorneys at Covington & Burling LLP, the firm representing former special counsel Jack Smith.
The move escalates Trump’s targeting of those involved in past investigations against him. The administration is also reviewing Covington’s government contracts and considering similar actions against other firms.
Covington denies involvement in Smith’s investigations and is defending him in a personal capacity.
Smith previously led probes into Trump’s handling of classified materials and election interference, both dropped after Trump’s reelection.
One would think that a president using the authority of his office to exact vengeance on the people who investigated his past crimes would warrant at least some sort of response from the supposed opposition…
It’s almost as if his behavior is treasonous.
Even I can’t think of a way to paint this as an “official act.”
SCOTUS will, though.
As long as trump does it it’s official, so above the law.
By that definition his assassination would literally be an act of patriotic service 👀
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
By any honest definition, really.
They’re mostly all co-workers, not opposition. Especially the career politicians. We’ve been shown that very bluntly these past couple months.
Unfortunately a large part of the population believes he’s a victim of political persecution. Because idiots do, in fact, pop out of random holes the Earth over.
100%
The Democrats can’t do much unless they have a majority in at least one legislative house or unless some number of Republicans cross party lines. The great bulk of their ability to act comes from having that majority.
A lone legislator doesn’t have much by way of authority to block Presidential action, and 50%-1 have about that same level of authority.
The Republican Party – even though there are no doubt legislators that don’t agree much with Trump – probably doesn’t much want to start a fight with the President during a precious period when they hold a trifecta, because this is one of their rare opportunities to push through their agenda (which isn’t mostly spatting along Trump’s political grudges) without the Democrats having the ability to block it. Get in a fight with Trump and then he blocks something that the Republican legislators want, like tax policy or cutting Medicaid, and they miss their window.
Yeah - we hear that same tired song and dance over and over again.
Funny though that when Democrats held the majorities, they somehow couldn’t manage to accomplish much of anything, and blamed it all on the Republican “obstructionists.”
If the Republicans really could obstruct them then, then they could obstruct the Republicans now.
Or if they really can’t obstruct the Republicans now then the Republicans really couldn’t obstruct them then.
Either way, they’re liars.
They could at least fucking try.
What specifically do you want them to do?
They could sponsor a law, say, and then let it be shot down. That’s about as close as I could imagine to trying something and letting it fail.
They don’t have the power to initiate inquiries, not without a majority in at least one house.
I’m sure that there are members who have given speeches on C-SPAN, though I don’t watch that, or issued statements on their legislative websites. That doesn’t have an impact, though it’d let them put their position on record.
Their goal is going to just be doing whatever is most likely to politically benefit them in the midterms so that they can get majority control of at least one house in the legislature. At that point, they do have real power to affect things. My guess is that they probably have poll data on that, a lot of campaigners working on it, and a pretty good picture of what they believe is politically optimal to do there. If they thought doing symbolic political grandstanding of a particular form would help achieve that, I expect that they’d already know about it and be doing that. Like, this is their business. I’m probably not gonna be able to side-seat drive it better than they can.
At a minimum, act like there’s a group of angry citizens out there who did not vote for this, are ready to do something, and need to be organized.
The Tea Party figured this shit out. Republicans got shredded in late-2008, but you wouldn’t have known it by mid-2009. Democrats only narrowly lost, and all they can do is start committees and come up with nicknames like “Captain Chaos”.
Democrats in power no matter how much power the Republicans have: government slows to a crawl because everything gets stuck somewhere in the process
Republicans in power no matter how much power the Democrats have: FULL STEAM BITCHES! NO ONE CAN STOP US NOW!