Yes, progress is fragile and needs constant defending. This is an important observation you have made.

No, but during the eight years after him, we did get:

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
• Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act
• Affordable Care Act
• Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy
• Removal of 180-limit for wage discrimination claims
• Withdrawal of US forces from Iraq
• Paris Climate Agreement
• Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
• Clean Power Plan
• Shepard & Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act (allows crimes motivated as gender identity to be prosecuted as hate crimes)
• Death of Osama bin Laden

Saying they didn’t get “everything done [that] they wanted” is disingenuous to the achievements accomplished and shows a lack of understanding of how progress is made.

Historically, when a party is defeated electorally over and over again, its members either form a new party or they rebel against leadership and the party lurches left or right in the direction of the voters. This happened to the Republican Party after they lost five presidential elections in a row (four of which were won by Franklin Roosevelt). The next Republican president in office was Dwight Eisenhower, who by today’s standards would be a moderate liberal.

You can also see it happen in other countries. After being stuck on the left side of the room for 14 years the British Labour Party elected a… moderate conservative as leader and then subsequently won the next election.

Generally speaking, when a party keeps losing elections over and over again, picking a more extreme candidate is usually catastrophic to their electoral chances—see what happened in Canada and Australia.

Before anyone comments with objections or observations of this dynamic in modern American politics, do note that no party has lost 3 elections in a row in five decades.

I’m pretty sure if that were the case then someone would have blown the whistle on this several years ago. These people employ staffers, many of whom are very ideologically dedicated to the progressive cause, and would not hesitate to become a person familiar with the manner who agreed to an interview on condition of anonymity. In fact, this is probably where 90% of Congress leaks come from.

The last time the Democrats won control of Congress, they tried to pass a very large electoral reform law.

This bill bans partisan gerrymandering, requires Congressional constituency lines to be drawn by independent boundary commissions, introduces new limits on campaign finance, requires polls to be open for at least two weeks, introduces an automatic voter registration scheme, makes the final day of voting a federal holiday, expands postal voting, makes obstructing voter registration a federal crime, restores voting rights to felons when they leave prison, bans lying to voters about when or where to vote, introduces public financing of elections, limits the amount of money that political parties can spend on an election, requires candidates for president or vice-president to disclose their tax returns, imposes a code of ethics on the Supreme Court, and bans companies from making big donations to inaugural committees.

This bill did not pass because the Senate was evenly divided and the Democrats suffered a backbench rebellion from two “centrist” senators.

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump died tonight at the age of 79 after suffering a stroke, the White House announced in a statement. While having dinner with his family, a White House staffer noticed Trump suddenly began slurring his speech before collapsing on the ground. The president was rushed by ambulance to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where despite emergency treatment, he was pronounced dead. The time of death was recorded as 11:57 PM. J.D. Vance was notified of the president’s demise shortly thereafter and was immediately administered the oath of office. In a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, President Vance stated:

It is with great sorrow and a heavy heart that I announce the passing of President Donald J. Trump tonight. President Trump was a gallant and brave warrior who fought for the American people and the MAGA movement until his last breath. Today, I step into the enormous shoes left by the late President and gave an oath to defend and uphold the principles of our Nation as your next President. I swear to serve faithfully the American people as did President Trump. I will pray for President Trump, and our hearts go out to his family in this difficult time. Thank you, and may God bless our beautiful nation.

President Vance further announced that a state funeral would be held with full military honors for Trump in the coming weeks, with details to be announced. Flags were ordered to be lowered to half-mast until January as the nation enters a period of national mourning. Mourners will have the opportunity to view Trump’s coffin in the Capitol Rotunda, with ticket sales expected to begin Monday.

News of the Trump’s death comes as his approval ratings hit their lowest point yet, with 54% of Americans disapproving of his performance, according to a recently-released YouGov poll. Immediately after news of his passing broke, spontaneous demonstrations erupted in several major cities, with cheering residents filling the streets of New York and Chicago in a jubilant atmosphere amid chants of “The fascist is dead!”.

President Vance strongly condemned the celebrations in a post on X, stating the gatherings show “a complete lack of respect to the family of President Trump, regardless of what you thought of his America First policies.” Vance has called for order to be restored and has threatened to re-deploy the National Guard to halt the celebrations.

Congress will meet in emergency session tomorrow to discuss the implications of President Trump’s passing. President Vance is expected to address the nation during a joint sitting of the Senate and the House of Representatives tomorrow.

In America, €120 million could buy half of Congress.

She did do that but it was also under her that monumentally beneficial laws like the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and even some bills that the Senate (or really, just Joe Manchin) sank, like the DC Admission Act, Build Back Better Act, and a couple more were enacted. She knew how to whip her caucus.

Yes, but Pelosi, to her credit, at least was a great parliamentarian who knew how to get bills passed and an agenda enacted. Hakim’s whipping skills are way too poor for him to be acting like this.

I feel like Jeffries is the guy who vaguely knows he is supposed to act like a Democrat without understanding what it really means to be a Democrat.

He only uses that when he’s making proclamations. Otherwise, he usually signs his messages “President DJT”.

This new Radical Left legislation VERY UNFAIR to our Hardworking Members of Congress! They spend day and night advancing our America First agenda and working for the American People! I urge Leader Thune and all other Patriots in the Senate to immediately VOTE DOWN this extreme Proposal! Otherwise, I will be forced to VETO THIS HORRIBLE BILL as President of the United States!

I am deeply offended by that. I worked in a municipal government for several years and I can assure you that there are plenty of Republican civil servants who take their jobs just as seriously and act with as much impartiality as their Democratic counterparts.

Like I said, to dismiss someone as “biased” only because they have the opposite political orientation is Trump-level reasoning.

I don’t consider mere membership in a political party as very strong evidence of bias. There are only two viable political parties in America and “membership” is nothing more than ticking a box on a form. Even I’m technically a Republican despite being a “woke lefty” because I just wanted to vote against Trump in the 2024 primary election and because it causes the Republican Party to waste money mailing me “get out the vote” campaign material which I immediately throw in the recycle bin.

Civil servants are allowed to have political leanings. This doesn’t make them automatically biased. That is Donald Trump-level reasoning. Just like he was wrong to attack the New York prosecutor who happens to be a Democrat, I’m not going to attack this guy just because he happens to be a Republican.

I don’t think this is at all a valid counter-argument as all of these powers can equally be given to civil unions, if they aren’t already. In my eyes, if you propose to someone and “get married” and want to give your spouse the legal powers associated with what was previously marriage, you would register a civil union.

No civil marriage doesn’t mean that people can’t connect themselves legally; it just means that you have to register a civil union to do so. All of the points you raise are easily defeated by just defining civil unions to replace marriage in all respects. The system is already very close to how I describe. You can “get married” at a church or wherever else and in most countries that does not mean anything until you have registered it with a local registrar. I’m just saying that the thing that happens in a church is “marriage”, and the thing that happens with the legal paperwork at the registrar’s office is called “civil union” regardless of the genders or sexualities of the parties involved.

Am I reading this wrong? The article seems to indicate that he’s just a civil servant prosecutor? Is there any indication of bias?

Honestly I don’t know why the state is still in the business of giving out marriages. Who gives a shit what other people want to call marriage. The state should not even have the authority to perform marriages at all. It should be left as a cultural or religious institution. It has no right to legislate what is and is not marriage. The only thing that should be available is civil unions, being defined as a financial and legal union of two or more consenting adults.

That way, anyone can “get married” at their local church, at a secular ceremony, or piss-drunk in a pub by a barmaid. It would be legally vacuous and has only the meaning that the parties ascribe to it, or that is given to it by the religious authority they choose to follow. But if they want to be legally joined together then they would go register a civil union at the local registrar’s office.

If you’re a bigot and don’t consider two men in civil union to be married, cool, whatever, the law should not care about your opinion. You can privately think “those two are not married” all day, and be right in your mind. The only people whose opinions matter are those who want to call themselves married. There is no institution of “marriage” to defend, because you’ve already won. You can consider marriage to be anything you want and be right. Now you can leave other people alone.

These are not the same thing. At least in America, these terms are only superficially similar in the sense that they are “people who say they love their country”.

When someone points out a country’s shortcomings and how it could be fixed, a patriot listens and makes plans, while a nationalist denies those shortcomings exist or blames them on external factors.

When someone says we should learn from our history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, a patriot pulls out the history books, while a nationalist instead goes through them with a black highlighter.

When someone burns the country’s flag as a protest, a patriot asks why, while a nationalist will say they should be thrown in prison.

When abuses of power happen by the police or government agents, a patriot will demand an investigation and accountability, while a nationalist will say that actually, they deserved it.

I did hear an NPR interview with Ro Khanna (member of Congress representing California 17, discharge petition signatory) today, where whether he had concerns about the authenticity of the files to be released, and he did say that he did. When asked further how he could be sure that the files so released are complete and accurate, he said that it would be dumb to attempt a cover-up or incomplete release, because many of the victims’ lawyers have already seen the files and thus would know if the released files are incomplete, inaccurate, or inauthentic.

That being said, I do not expect Trump and his crack(pot) team of advisers to have the metal acuity to judge the probability of a successful cover-up correctly.