He is changing how the Constitution works in practice.
The Trump administration funds energy projects in red states. It terminates funding for projects in blue states.
This isn't my accusation. The administration admitted it. They stipulated to it in a court document.
DOE accepts that neither the inclusion of the ARCHES grant nor any other grants in the October notice tranche was based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.
DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.
The stipulation langugage comes on pages six and seven: DOE, Exhibit F.
Trump is a uniquely consequential president, the most consequential of my lifetime. He is re-writing our Constitution, and by consenting to his practice our institutions, the political parties, the courts, and the public are ratifying them. The 2024 election was in effect a Constitutional Convention. A compliant Congress and Supreme Court are the ratifying votes. The power to act as Trump does was latent, unspoken, and officially denied -- until now, Trump's second term. A new order is in place as relates to the balance of power among the branches of government: A president can do anything he really wants to do.
Trump complains. He pretends there are constraints because it serves his purpose. It is for show. He is like a magician clinking prop handcuffs together to prove to the audience that he is constrained. He complains the big bad Supreme Court may not let him run for a third term.
Trump can exercise vastly-expanded executive power because he is demonstrating that his purpose is not equal justice. It is the opposite, to normalize executive power as a tool for unequal power. That is what makes his power grab acceptable.
Trump rides a wave of backlash in American history. He identified and amplified an ebb tide in American thinking. Hey, America. Barack Hussein Obama is a Black Muslim from Kenya!
Trump's anti-DEI, anti-woke, race-whistling, open-misogynist behavior is a partial restoration of former relationships between races and ethnicities, between men and women, and between the U.S. and other countries. It is also assertion that unequal power is the natural state of existence. He can grab pussies if he wants. We can invade Venezuela if we want. He can call Black people low-IQ and undeserving of promotion. He can pardon lawbreakers if they are on his side. Government is not about fairness. It is about securing domestic tranquility and security by empowering the powerful and disempowering insurgent people and institutions who would disturb traditional relationships.
As I wrote here on July 21, equal justice and the equality of all men are the stated goal our patriotic documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Pledge of Allegiance -- but it has usually been a minority opinion. The Civil War brought it to a majority for a decade. The Cold War competition with the Soviets shamed us into it during the 1950s and 1960s, but conservative opinions in the U.S. have always been present. Equal justice is not the goal of a majority of White, tradition-minded Americans who elected Trump. They want justice tilted in their favor. They have a grievance: They are being displaced by demographic change and the civil rights revolutions and Trump is a vehicle for resistance.
Trump is protecting and rewarding his team. Trump makes visible an executive power that was latent in the latitude given presidents. Trump put that power to work. They can be as dictatorial and arbitrary as they want if Congress lets them.
The only constraint is the need to keep the support of one third of U.S. senators. And Trump has the capacity to reward or punish the states those senators represent. And he does.
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11 comments:
One of his many shameful acts. Do red states think he is wrong for doing this? Listened to a clip about why the US doesn’t have government healthcare unlike most of the world with the explanation being one word, racism. The US has many different cultures with many different values and Trump makes us less the “United” States.
He doesn't think he's president of ALL the people. Just the ones who vote for him. The rest can suffer. Some Republicans are breaking away. If they're crushed in the mid-terms, he'll have a real problem doing anything. Of course, he'll claim there was cheating. Most of the stuff he says can't be proven anyway. He just says it to feel good and cater to his MAGA people. I think history will condemn him to the bottom lists of all presidents. I hope he's alive to see it.
Peter said:
Equal justice is not the goal of a majority of White, tradition-minded Americans who elected Trump. They want justice tilted in their favor.
This may be true of some Trump voters, but it is not true of all of them. Many White people, including me, just want to be treated equally under the law; no thumb on the scale in favor of us, no thumb on the scale against us. This is the majority view in this country, even in very liberal places like California, where affirmative action/reverse discrimination has gone down in flames every time the public had a chance to vote about it.
Subtle accusations of racism like this are just one more thing inflaming the cultural wars in this country. It's not "racist" to want a colorblind society based on merit, with no discrimination for or against anyone on racial or ethnic grounds.
Equal opportunity for everyone was one of the founding principles of this country. It's why we eventually eliminated slavery and Jim Crow.
"Trump is a uniquely consequential president, the most consequential of my lifetime".
That is still possible, anyway, and not in any positive way. I hope it remains untrue.
"Transactional" is what I'd substitute for "consequential" His transactions end soon.
Nothing's "rewritten". He's dared to be defied, and often succeeded. Newsom, or Vance? Nah.
Michael wants to be treated equally. White people have always had the advantage. Especially white males. Now that things are changing a little, he's scared. "Treat me equal". BS What he really wants is for things to go back to when whites had all the advantage. Affirmative action was invented to swing the pendulum back to give minorities a better chance. The Right Wing doesn't like that. They want a White Male society again and all the rest can take whatever is left. In about 2050 minorities will be the majority if birth rates continue at their current rates. So, if you want to keep your majority, start SCREWING!
Peter C has no f***cking idea what I want. He’s just projecting his own darkest fears onto me instead of listening to what I actually say.
As Peter has made abundantly clear, Trump is the most racist, misogynistic, xenophobic president in our lifetime, and the GOP has welcomed him and his white nationalist base with open arms. What a basket of deplorables!
We can learn from MT's comment. Intelligent White males who were good at school, born about when I was (1949 for me) think we never enjoyed privilege, and therefore when we see efforts in the past decades to make sure that women, Blacks, Asians, physically handicapped people, are included in hiring, on decision-making bodies, etc, are now getting an unfair advantage. Just have merit, just like we had to have, we made our way to success without an edge, so don't start giving an edge now to other people. MT and I are old enough to know better, but fish don't realize they are in water, and privilege is utterly taken for granted by people who have it. MT isn't an ogre. It is natural to resist and resent the suggestion of racism, and I don't think MT is any more racist than the ethnic battleground participants I saw in Boston in the busing years. Irish resented Italians resented Blacks resented Jews resented WASPS. People love their clan, MT as well, I presume. And it is easy to be blind about the fact that until MT was about 18 Blacks weren't permitted to vote in reality. Not until MT was about 22 women could not get a credit card in their own names nor be admitted to professional schools except in token numbers. Not until MT was in his 70s could women expect not to be hit on by men in the workplace. Even today half of Americans are ok-enough to vote for a man who brags that ge grabs women by the pussies. So my sense is that there is some misogyny and racism still embedded in the culture. It is nicer to call it tribalism, and cheering for one's tribe in the endless wars in the Middle East, but profiling and predjudice exists and I. Onside r that I am a beneficiary of it. Most people of color consider themselves a victim of it. A friend of mine spent his first three years of life , 1942-1945 in a Japanese internment camp. His parents were American citizens, born in the USA just like MT and me. Blacks were redlined out of neighborhoods by practice, if not law, until into the 1960s. Mormons have a religion I consider strange, but they are tolerated. Muslims of multi generations in the US are told to go back to their own country by US congressmen. MT faces his own predjudice in the sense that many Americans think Jews have dual loyalty to Israel and are ok with sacrificing American lives and money to protect the Jewish tribe. Some also presume Jews are "sharp" with money and business and that they are intelligent in a crafty way, making them good attorneys and accountants, ideal for helping crooks. It is a mixed prejudice, being thought clever is a useful profile, and a career tailwind. Being thought clever and unethical in cutting corners, dishonest, and being manipulative is a bad one and a career impediment. My point is that profiling and racism and predjudice and stereotyping is rampant, and that it was much worse 60 years ago than it is today, but that intelligent White males are net beneficiaries of it. Affirmative action has mixed consequences for the culture, and I think it can go too far, but it is an effort to acknowledge past and current prejudice. I feel equally angry at both Israelis and Palestinians in the Levantine. I hold myself up as even-handed and not prejudice because both have behaved badly, each filled with vile prejudice against the other. So I ask: is MT equal and balanced in his feelings about those warring tribes?
Many white liberal Americans reflexively locate their assumed moral superiority at White Male (and America) Means Bad, Past and Present. Too often, it’s sheer projection, driven by familiar leftist group-oppression theory. How about everything in moderation, eh, whether it’s rote accusations of or supposed rationalizations for “racism” and “sexism”?
It is dangerous to give some group of people with political power the ability to discriminate against other groups of people to “right the balance,” whatever that might mean. It’s really destructive, even to the people who supposedly benefit from it. No one wants to be considered an “affirmative action hire.”
You cannot fix discrimination in one direction by discriminating in the other direction. The way to fix discrimination is to stop discriminating.
I am a strong advocate for Israel because I am Jewish and because no other people on this planet has as much of a history that justifies their need for a lifeboat. I would be happy with a two-state solution, if that was what the Palestinians wanted, but it is clear that they do not. What they want is no Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East.
They are never going to get that, and I will do everything in my power to help prevent them from getting that.
I agree with MT that it is very dangerous to try to do make-up discrimination. I also agree that it backfires. It may cause as much damage as good, as we are experiencing now. Here is the problem: Every person stands on the shoulders of their past. Very recent discriination against Blacks in particular, but also others, has created a situation where we have a capitalist economy where people get to keep property and pass it to children, and where educational opportunities depend strongly on zip code.. We don't have ewqual opportunity.. If there is an auto race and a startring line. MT and I started driving new Chevy Bel Aires. Blacks startred driving 25 year old broken down cars. Yes, there wwere a few jpeople driving luxury cars, so MT and I were not the most privileged, burt we had a huge head start over the kids with bad schools, bad neighborhoods. Those bad circumstances did not "just happen, Gods will, bad luck. They happened because White people in our mega-tribe insisted on it. Not us, personally, but our tribe of fellow Whites. So we benefited by pushing others down. MT, as much as anyone, understands tribal benefit and tribal responsibility. He feels parr odf the Jewish tribe. He understands that Palestinian children who get bombed are parrt of the Palestinian tribe. Not their fault, but they are part of a tribe. I believe MT needs to recognize that he is also part of a tribe of White males who as a group intentionally screwd over Blacks, Ashians, Latinos, and women for centuries up and through the time that MT and I got the giant head start of great educations. So now, with education, career, money, and momentum we say to the people and children of the people our tribe screwed over that NOW we want everyone to play fair and not give advantage. So let me offer a solution. MT and I give all our money to the poor to wash off the sins of the past. Do it as a kind of baptism or ritual cleansing. Then, from a position of equality, we tell the people who are children of generations of disadvantage that we want a fair deal. No giving tha tmoney to our children. That would give them the unfair start. Until we have 100 percednt esate tax (which I don't think is a good idea) we will not have equality of opportuinity. Until we have health care as a social good,, like free and equal public education, we wont have equality of opportunity. If MT wants equality of opportunity he needs to disgorge himself of the unequal head start he and people of his various tribes commanded for themselves to the disadvantage of others.
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