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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   30622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Trump did an interview with "Time," to mark the end of the first 100 days of his second term. The first topic they discussed was Presidential power:

Q: You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?

A: Well, I don't feel I'm expanding it. I think I'm using it as it was meant to be used. I feel that we've had a very successful presidency in 100 days. We've had people writing it was the best first month and best second month, and really the best third month. But that you won't know about for a little while, because it takes a little time in transition. You know, we're resetting a table. We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade, and you can't do that. I mean, at some point somebody has to come along and stop it, because it's not sustainable. We were carrying other countries on our back with, you know, with trade numbers, with horrible numbers, and we've changed it. You see the market fluctuates quite a bit. Today, it's up 1,000 or 1,200 points. It goes up and down, but that will steady out, and we're taking in tremendous amounts of money. We have, as you know, already, 25% on cars, 25% on steel and aluminum—

Q: Mr. President, I think what we’re driving at is that you've taken congressional authority on trade and appropriations. You fired the heads of independent agencies. You're challenging the courts right now, as you know. You're using the levers of government to weaken private institutions like law firms and universities. Isn't this seizing power away from institutions and concentrating them inside the presidency?

A: No, I think that what I'm doing is exactly what I've campaigned on. If you look at what I campaigned on, for instance, you can talk about removing people from the country. We have to do it because Biden allowed people to come in through his open border crazy, insanity. He allowed people to come into our country that we can't have in our country. Many criminals—they emptied their prisons, many countries, almost every country, but not a complete emptying, but some countries a complete emptying of their prison system. But you look all over the world, and I'm not just talking about South America, we're talking about all over the world. People have been led into our country that are very dangerous. If you were walking down the street, and if you happen to be near one of these people, they could, they would kill you, and they wouldn't even think about it. And we can't have that in our country.

Q: So you're not concentrating more power in the presidency?

A: I don't think so. I think I'm using it properly, and I'm also using it as per my election. You know, everything that I'm doing—this is what I talked about doing. I said that I'm going to move the criminals out. I saw what was happening early on when I heard that he had open borders, when I, because it was a hard thing to believe. I built hundreds of miles of wall, and then he didn't want to, and we had another, an extra hundred miles that I could have put up because I ordered it as extra. I completed the wall, what I was doing, but we have, I wanted to build additional because it was working so well. An extension. And he didn't want to do that. And when he said he wasn't going to do that, I said, “Well, he must want open borders.” There were sections that were being built. And he stopped to work on it, and I said, this guy actually wants to have open borders. That's going to be a tragedy for our country. That's going to mean that other countries will release into our country some very rough people.

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

He also claimed to have made more trade deals than there are countries... The way he answers questions is peculiar and worth reading. Near the end of the interview:

Q: You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization of the Justice System under Biden. You recently signed memos—

A:Well, sure, but you wouldn’t be—if this were Biden, well, first of all, he wouldn't do an interview because he was grossly incompetent.

Q: We spoke to him last year, Mr. President.

A: Huh?

Q: We spoke to him a year ago.

A: How did he do?

Q: You can read the interview yourself.

A: Not too good. I did read the interview. He didn't do well. He didn't do well at all. He didn't do well at anything. And he cut that interview off to being a matter of minutes, and you weren't asking him questions like you're asking me.

Q: Well, we appreciate that you are able and willing to answer these questions. It says something about you, Mr. President.

A: I am indeed. I've been answering them for years and I’ve been getting elected by bigger and bigger numbers all the time, but you didn't ask questions like this to Biden, because if you did, he would have crawled under this beautiful desk.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

  • -17

He doesn't have the kind of dementia where you forget your kids' names, but he obviously has severe cognitive decline relative to any old video of him talking. He's settling further into routinized thought as his mental plasticity disappears. His perception of the world is now filtered through a few basic ideas that are now hard-wired into his brain: trade deficit BAD, media LIARS, deport the illegals. He's not capable of moderating his ideas or taking account how context has changed since he first had these thoughts in the 80s. Which doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. Old people with fixed beliefs can sometimes provide a useful perspective. The issue is with letting him unilaterally make horrible policy decisions in domains where details matter, like trade. Biden's dementia wasn't a big issue, because he surrounded himself with trusted advisors who helped him make the actual policy.

Biden's dementia wasn't a big issue,

Yes, yes it was. Trump's presidency might be worse than Biden's(on the measures I care about it's definitely not, but you might care about different ones), but "Biden talking to dead people, not realizing where he was, unable to make decisions" is obviously disqualifying even if Trump isn't a great president either.

Biden was a replacement level president, who left the running of government to his appointees, to a probably illegal extent. Biden remembering things didn't matter.

Trump routes everything through himself. Leaving things to his appointees would be total chaos.

Although an interview is insufficient to diagnose dementia, I think there is something to be said for age related mental decline . I have seen it. Just go to anywhere old people tend to congregate and eavesdrop. Their conversations tend to be very simple. Even if they have advanced degrees and were successful, by their 70s they have regressed a lot. Now compare to conversations by college students, which are faster-paced and more complex. This is why I spend so much time on writing and math, to avoid a similar fate. I am not going to be 70 and sounding like one of those people who have mentally checked out for the remaining 20-30 years of their life ("dead at 50 and buried by 80"). I don't think Trump has checked out, but this is a speech pattern of his.

"using it as it was meant to be used?"

Fundamentally he seems either deliberately unwilling or simply unable to comprehend that the interviewer is asking about means rather than ends. Saying 'I was elected to close the borders/change our terms of trade' is just a total non-sequitur response to the question 'have you expanded the powers of the presidency'. It would be one thing to say 'I don't care about process, I care about results', but he doesn't say that, he's just talking past the question.

AFAIK this is (sadly) standard political interview technique. Open live debate with a hostile interview can go wrong in too many ways, so you don’t do it unless you’re desperate. The standard technique is to totally ignore anything the interviewer says and repeat your talking points until they give up.

Even if the interviewer gives you a jumping off point for what you want to say you still shouldn’t take it because there’s too much chance they've booby-trapped the framing.

Sad but true.

It's not sad, it is a rational response to the fact that journalists have zero interest in reporting anything honestly and are de-facto hostile in every interaction you have with them. You would be a fool to ever answer their questions in the same way you'd answer a friend's or co-worker's. You treat it as an opportunity to get your talking points and story out -- nothing more.

Source: me, a local politician

IQ Distribution Meme.

Left: Why can't he just answer the question??

Middle: The interviewer is hostile and can trivially control the frame.

Right: Trump is feigning ignorance and deliberately misunderstanding the question in order to sneak in a non sequitur in a transparent attempt to change the frame. He must think we're idiots.

Edit: I got the meme exactly backwards. Of fucking course this is one of my most-engaged-with comments in my history on this website. No you're salty.

Alternative, IMO more accurate frame:

Left: Thats a stupid question.

Mid: Why not answer the question.

Right: Obviously no one would respond to a hostile question.

Are you familiar with the meme? The point isn't to flatter the one you agree with as the highest-IQ response. The humor lies in the irony that Joe sixpack could see the world more clearly than the wordcel egghead. Maybe you and I disagree on what levels of intelligence is required for each response.

Yes, I am aware of the meme. You are using it wrong. The overly wordy "High IQ" answer in your depiction is exactly the sort of thing that is classically put as a midwit answer. Plus, journalists themselves are probably the most commonly depicted class of persons as exemplifying the midwit in both this specific meme and internet culture as a whole.

Damn you're right.

I think you're the one that's using the meme incorrectly. The first and third propositions are not the same because the third is too wordy. For the meme to work, the idiot has to come to a gut conclusion and not state an open question. The fact that you have to explain what it means and it is not immediately obvious - unlike anti_dan - supports this conclusion.

The humour is that the instinctive/heuristic response of Joe Sixpack is often in line with the ultimate response of a very high IQ guy because JS I’d drawing on correct evolved heuristics. It’s the midair who tries to be contrarian and puts together a cool ‘akshually’ response that both JS and the genius wizard can see isn’t viable.

The way I've always seen it used, the humor is in the fact that people graduate past the naive idiotic conclusion by noticing some principle and grabbing onto it... and then it turns out that if you're even better you go back to the original "idiotic" answer because of some nuance that the principle overlooks.

That’s what I mean. It’s sad in the broader sense of ‘it would be nice if things weren’t this way’ not ‘loser’.

Good to hear from someone with actual experience!

From the same interview

Well let’s talk about the tariffs. You want companies to build and make goods here in America.

Not in all cases. There are some products I really don't want to make here.

Like t-shirts?

I can’t–I can give you a list because I actually have a list, but if you want, I could give it to you.

Why does he sound surprised that he has a list of the products he is and isn't trying to encourage domestic production of?

(To be clear I don't think this is evidence of dementia, I think it's evidence that Trump's policy positions are not chosen on the basis of being likely to achieve specific economic/diplomatic/etc goals)

To me this sounds a specious reasoning. People with dementia often continue doing the same things that there doing in their lives and have internalized them. Even with half-rotten brain some patterns are so strong that they can do those things quite well. It is just that they loose a plot how it relates to the reality.

Trump is famous for his deflecting and highly confusing talk. He has done it whole life and it has brought him success. He can still do it, it just doesn't relate to anything real anymore. He is on autopilot to throw the interviewer off. Too bad that it doesn't make any sense. But people are used to Trump not making any sense therefore they don't notice any difference.

I used to listen to Trump and previously he made all sense. It was just people found a fault with his manners and way of speaking that they criticized him unduly for things that he actually didn't meant too. The classic example is that Trump encouraged drinking bleach. He didn't, he only said something expressing wishes to find a scientific way to disinfect lungs from pathogens with UV light or some other method. Which is actually what the science to actively trying to do (it is a hard problem, no good solutions so far). Accusations of him were completely unjust, tribally driven. If you discarded this mentality and tried to be neutral, you could easily see that.

But now what he says is mostly rubbish. Or maybe you are right that his goal simply is not to achieve anything but troll us all. Which could also be a sign of dementia because he was trolling people all his life and has internalized that behaviour. But at least he had some goals before. Now only trolling remains.

It's always helpful to remember that Donald Trump a) will never intentionally admit he did anything wrong b) is a fully post-truth individual. I don't think Trump has been all there in a while, but he's also a narcissist and a pathological liar.

On a different note, this interview helpfully provides an illustration of how Trump likes to pretend to be retarded but is also just an idiot. They're quite easy to tell apart. Compare:

TIME: The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that you have to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. You haven't done so. Aren’t you disobeying the Supreme Court?

Trump: Well, that’s not what my people told me—they didn’t say it was, they said it was—the nine to nothing was something entirely different.

TIME: Let me quote from the ruling. “The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.” Are you facilitating a release?

Trump: I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you're saying. But I leave that to my lawyers. If they want—and that would be the Attorney General of the United States and the people that represent the country. I don't make that decision.

to

TIME: Well, I mean, the question is, how can CEOs make long-term plans and investments if our tariff policy can change from day to day and still remains so uncertain?

Trump: How can they make long-term investments? I'll turn it around. How can they make long-term investments if our country is losing $2 trillion a year on trade?

TIME: Will you consider giving exemptions—

Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.

"Golly shucks, I'm just the president of the United States, what do I know about one of my banner policies?" vs defensive gibberish.

our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade

"lost". It honestly is just so extremely stupid. As if it were that we had something of value that was just lit on fire. Or was simply stolen from us without providing anything in return. As if I should say that I "lost" however much money to Walmart last year. Or that my employer "lost" money in employing me. The entire point of those trades is that each and every party to them gained more value than they "lost"; otherwise, they wouldn't have made the trade!

agree. it's like thinking that imports subtract from GDP and should be avoided at all costs

It is stupid. Trade deficit is basically about buying things on credit. Not good in itself, but it doesn't mean that you are buying bad things. Americans buy that stuff because they really like it. It is a good deal.

Now you could argue that going deeper into debt is problematic. You buy too much cheap staff from Walmart with the credit card? What can you do? Maybe stop buying (austerity policy, increase of taxes) or get a better paying job.

Growth supporters suggest the second but maybe sometimes the first is also needed.

Trump suggest a different way. Put a tax on cheap Walmart stuff, even so much tax, so that you would quit your well paying job and start making all these Walmart things yourself. It will make you poorer because Chinese provide this stuff by paying their workers less. You will lose your salary in your high tech job and instead will get paid much less in some factory. And nobody outside the US will buy the stuff you make because initially it will be of low quality. It takes many years to learn to manufacture quality things. The learning curve is real.

Tariffs were used 100 years ago and abandoned like we abandoned ineffective treatments in medicine. Some poor countries still use them because they are so bad at collected tax that tariffs is the only way they manage to finance government.

Probably not the examples you want to use for that argument.

Employers do regularly lose money and value in employing bad employees and producing bad value. We know this because employers regularly go out of business. Those bad employees will be ideally fired before that, but their are reasons from corruption to labor protection laws to conflicts of interests why value-losing employees. Trades are made on an expectation of some sort of value gain, trade is not a proof that the value has bee gained. Especially when there are reasons beyond the initial value-premise that trades keep happening (not least because [value] isn't static).

Shoppers do regularly lose- in the sense of waste- money on goods and services. There are entire industries based around the legal and psychological tricks to make people spend more than they 'rationally' should, particularly for luxury non-essentials. 'Value' is not a fully substitutable nature- hence historic prohibitions against gambling and addictive, no matter how much 'value' that fun has, or against recognition that parasitic corruption is bad no matter how much easier it makes the 'buyer's' life to engage in that bit of society-wide prisoner's delimma.

Not all trades are good, any more than all investments are good. There are plenty of bad, corrupt, wasteful, and outright harmful investments. It is not hard to find histories of similar trade dynamics fully open to critiques of being driven by bad decisions and bad value judgements. Treating either 'trade' or 'investment' as axiomatic virtues because the point of the word is the good thing is not going to be convincing to skeptics of judgement.

I think it's still perfectly fine. Absent some significant external reasoning, the continued existence of trade is at least a prima facie reason to think that there is probably value there. For precisely one of the reasons you give; if businesses keep paying lots of people who aren't providing them value, they go out of business.1 As such, they're probably going to try to fire you if you're consistently negative value. As you say, it is obviously not proof that 100% of all employment relationships are positive sum, but if the vast majority of them aren't, then almost everything is thrown out the window (...all of the businesses go bankrupt, etc.). One can acknowledge that some percentage probably aren't perfect, but then we have to get into details of whether/how we can identify them from the outside, whether/how we have any tools to change that, or if it's best to just acknowledge that the employers are in a better position to judge the value of their employment relations. They have the best incentive to make sure that the lion's share of their employment decisions are positive value, and we should observe that they are, indeed, positive value. Normal curves are normal, but the mean is positive, and probably significantly so.

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

make people spend more than they 'rationally' should

Again, one must impose some sort of external reasoning to overcome the prima facie case. You point out one of the very very few examples where this external reasoning is the strongest - gambling - for we can simply compute the mathematics and have almost no need to get into the much thornier problems that such external reasoning normally requires.

No refined conversation here would allow us to look at the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost".

Not all trades are good, any more than all investments are good. There are plenty of bad, corrupt, wasteful, and outright harmful investments. It is not hard to find histories of similar trade dynamics fully open to critiques of being driven by bad decisions and bad value judgements.

Fully granted. Now, overcome the prima facie case that most are good (especially given some conditions on freeness and such) by calling upon some sort of specific external reasoning for the instant case. Not just that there is some tail on the normal distribution, where someone bought some useless gadget from Temu or whatever. Justify that the entire trade (in goods) deficit is "lost".

1 - Note that the fact that businesses go out of business is "probably not the example you want to use for that argument". The vast majority of the time, businesses go out of business for a whole host of other reasons that are significantly more poignant than just making some bad deal with some employee(s).

Fully granted. Now, overcome the prima facie case that most are good (especially given some conditions on freeness and such) by calling upon some sort of specific external reasoning for the instant case. Not just that there is some tail on the normal distribution, where someone bought some useless gadget from Temu or whatever. Justify that the entire trade (in goods) deficit is "lost".

The prima facie concept itself is what is in doubt / contested. The construct that shapes the [valuation] of trades is what is being challenged.

The question isn't whether there is value in the trade. The question is whether the value-distribution resulting from the structure is desirably structured. Or in other framings, it is a direct questioning of whether the [value] the system delivers is actually valuable compared to other considerations of [value]. The judgements of preferences decades/generations ago are not inherently persuasive.

To bring an extreme historical metaphor- there were a lot of 'good' trades between Britain and India during the British empire. 'Most trades are good' could honestly be made on most trades that were made. However, the macroeconomic structure of the system meant that the [value] that was generated was not mutually beneficial. India economically devolved as these 'good trades' continued. The British Isles certainly benefited from being the seat of empire, but the benefits to the Indians were incidental, not deliberate. This [value] got worse, not better, the more trade occurred, despite the [value] being greater and greater to the British.

So when you say-

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

The answer is... sure. Similarly, no amount of trade volume can be looked at and say 'this represents [value] gained.'

The only way to make a moral judgement on the nature of the trade is to make a moral judgement on the structure of the trade. Big numbers good if you think the big number implies a good thing. But by a different premise, bad trade structures get worse, not better, with scale.

Now, on a less-extreme historical metaphor, but one more relevant to the United States- the value of the neoliberal model in play starting in the 90s and since.

A lot of neoliberal economists have argued over the decades that this was a Good Deal. Free market liberalization and international trade allowed cheaper imports and increases to the value-added economy. That the [value] to the United States outweighed the [costs]. GDP per capita would go up. And lo and behold, it did.

The issue is that [the United States] is not an individual actor. It is a collective of hundreds of millions of individuals. And the [value] most appreciated gained went to people and actors who did not suffer the [costs]. The system did not produce results in which everyone felt they were gaining [value]. The Rust Belt, once a significant contributor of [value] to the nation, did not become an even larger contributor of [value], except in so much that sacrificing their interests benefited others. The [value] that went into American shipyards was better able to grow in other ways.

Which is fine in and of itself. Winners and losers and all that.

Except that the neoliberals were also wrong on various [cost] estimates. Not only were they wrong about the nature of the [cost] that would be born by people other than themselves. They were also wrong about what future collective values would [value]. The neoliberals did not place much [value] on sovereign supply chains. They placed high [value] on [cheaper supply chains], with things like the just-in-time model reducing [costs] like warehousing and stockpiles and such.

They did not recognize things like, say, global pandemics or cyber-sabotage that could paralyze distribution systems and leave to supply bottlenecks at ports. They did not think profit-minded countries would make deliberate plays at developing global monopolistic power on supply chain inputs, even selling at a loss, and then using economically-irrational cutoffs as a geopolitical weapon. They did not factor in policies intended to result in regulatory capture of global markets beyond sovereign borders. They did not recognize that a military, or paramilitary, could be crippled by attacking the supply chain and replacing cellphones and radios with bombs enmass. They did not think that countries might want an industrial base capable of massive wartime production capacity on short notice.

Or if they did recognize it, they didn't value it very much. But modern governments do. And governments- not just Trump but globally- have begun to hire people who have somewhat different [value] judgements.

So when you say things like-

One can acknowledge that some percentage probably aren't perfect, but then we have to get into details of whether/how we can identify them from the outside, whether/how we have any tools to change that, or if it's best to just acknowledge that the employers are in a better position to judge the value of their employment relations. They have the best incentive to make sure that the lion's share of their employment decisions are positive value, and we should observe that they are, indeed, positive value. Normal curves are normal, but the mean is positive, and probably significantly so.

I'm inclined to agree. I'm also inclined to consider [advocates of neoliberal models] to be equivalent to the [employees] in this metaphor, and that the new waves of [employers] place increasing relevance on characteristics other than process economic efficiency when determining [value]. We'd probably both agree that [employees] who are not delivering the desired [value] to their [employers] quote-unquote 'should' be fired to improve [value].

I'm also fairly sure you'd disagree with their judgements on value. But that in and of itself is the point- the judgement of how to [value] things is a first principle judgement. The [employee's] appeal to a prima facie is not actually relevant if it is not actually the prima facie standard.

Most of this is "refined discussion", which I am generally not opposed to.

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

The answer is... sure.

But this is really where we are. And I think we can mostly jump to:

So when you say things like-

No refined conversation here would allow us to look at the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost".

My instinctive response is to find this a claim needing justification I doubt you'd be able to provide. Not because you wouldn't have arguments, but because I doubt you'd recognize or acknowledge as worthy of respect paradigms where spending at Walmert could be concluded as 'lost.'

I would simply request a description of a single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost". A single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount of wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost". I don't know whether I would recognize or acknowledge it as worthy of respect until I hear at least one. I don't think you've presented one. I think you're in the land of refined discussions of details and percentages and such, where things can be shaded slightly through some other valuations and other external reasoning. Nothing close to, "Yeah, that entire amount is just lost."

(Just so you don't have to guess, I am sympathetic to external reasoning about supply chains for defense/pandemics/etc. That is a far cry from simply saying that just the bulk dollar figure is "lost".)

Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.

yeah, these big companies have the cashflow, pricing power, and market dominance to withstand tariffs, smaller competitors do not. this works to their advantage, especially after trump is gone and tariffs are reversed. Its not so much about tariffs being good economically, but that it hurts their competitors.

Trump has always sounded like that. He's definitely slowed down as he's aged, but he has probably the most distinctive cadence in a politician today. I would argue that the only sign of senility I'd take seriously is if he suddenly started speaking normally because that's Trump reading off a canned script.

His opposition's sneers about his dementia were always whataboutism, deflecting from Biden's (obvious) incapacity. In the aftermath of the former president's downfall, it feels like so much vivicarious seethe: 'now it's our turn to throw this attack in their faces!'

But no, that's not how it works. The coverup was worse than the scandal, so to speak. Trump gets a pass on his age because of his opponent's hypocrisy. People aren't that stupid. Trump isn't going for reelection anyway, so if his brain goes out before the midterms Vance is ready for prime time in a way Kamala was not.

He didn't sound like this during The Apprentice . There are plenty of videos of trump pre-2016 when he's not campaigning and he sounds more normal. It's like he knows he has to dumb it down when on camera. it's like code switching. But it's hard to argue with success.

[epistemic status: shitpost]
Based on my observations it's pretty easy to argue with success.

People have regularly been pointing out that Trump routinely devolves into gibberish since 2016 at least. This is a guy whose re-entry into the political sphere was in the form of spearheading the most trivially disprovable conspiracy theory I've ever seen. His mental fitness is not a new topic. His supporters just don't care, because they have never cared about any aspect of Trump's fitness.

If you want to hit politicians for pushing things that are obviously not true then you can throw in the entire left and their belief in intersectional social justice. People hate polished and focused grouped politicians so much that they're willing to give rambling grandpa a chance. The ultimate test of a politician's fitness is the electorate, not whatever gatekeeping standards mostly imagined by the readers of the New York Times.

If you want to hit politicians for pushing things that are obviously not true then you can throw in the entire left and their belief in intersectional social justice.

Now you're just threatening me with a good time. Can we also hit the politicians who pushed rent control, CAFE standards, absurd occupational licensing requirements, etc while we're there?

Yes, but you have to do all that FIRST, otherwise it's just who/whom.

If you want to hit politicians for pushing things that are obviously not true then you can throw in the entire left and their belief in intersectional social justice.

Can goals not be true? They can certainly be impossible to achieve, or theoretically possible but only at such great cost that no one would think it was worth the sacrifice involved, but I don't think the goals that motivate intersectional social justice can really be "false" in this way.

Technically, I think you could believe in HBD, reject blank statism and still have the basic goals of intersectional social justice. You'd just be using different levers to achieve your agenda than are currently used by progressives.

But this is all a bit silly anyways. There's plenty of wrong to go around for politicians of all political stripes. I think the nature of politics is that it is almost impossible for political coalitions to have a set of policies that connect to their stated goals in a coherent and evidence-based way.

You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?

The US President is not very powerful, all things considered. Random judges can impose blocks on his domestic policies. He needs the approval of legislators to make permanent changes and the US legislative branch seems to be very slow and inefficient.

What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them. He makes motions towards annexing Greenland and Canada but can't actually get it off the ground. He can't end the war in Ukraine. He can pump and dump stocks with tariffs but can't fundamentally rearrange global trade in the US's favour, American manufacturing has actually been declining since tariffs began.

He can, over many years, create a few hundred kilometres of border wall that's easily diverted around by future administrations. He can cut taxes and run up debt. He can accelerate COVID vaccine development but can't take credit for it, can barely even convince his supporters to take it. He can beat ISIS, with the help of Russia, EU, Iran, Iraq, Syrian govt, Kurds and co.

The US presidency's main powers are the ability to flail around in highly energetic ways. Xi seems significantly more powerful, he has the ability to create and control, enforce his vision in his own country at minimum. Xi wants less real estate and more manufacturing, it happens. Xi wants a stronger PLA and PLAN, it happens. His fleet isn't shrinking. Xi wants subversive NGOs shut down, they're shut down. Xi wants autarchic economics, domestic food and energy production, it's happening. Xi wants Taiwan but hasn't achieved it.

US legislative branch seems to be very slow and inefficient.

That's because by and large they have given up on legislating as bodies, and instead are some combination of grifters, insider traders, and wanna-be pundits. Also, they're not very representative because turnout is low and very few people are engaged with their local legislative representatives and instead care almost exclusively about presidential/national politics.

I agree. The US presidency is powerful inasfar as the US is powerful, but relative to the power of the country, the US president is weak. He is restricted by Congress, by the Senate gerrymander, by random partisan judges and by the Supreme Court. Comparatively, the UK Prime Minister is basically an elected king (albeit one who can be deposed by his MPs if they're not happy with how he's governing).

In practice the UK is an elected dictatorship of the MPs in the governing party (if there is an absolute majority), but the prime minister’s authority is relatively fragile because that system encourages, by its very nature, MPs to depose unpopular prime ministers quickly and brutishly. An American or French president can be far more unpopular in power than a Westminster system PM, and therefore the former have more latitude to make tough decisions.

What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them

A tax cut to help the very companies that promote wokeness and censor its users on its platforms. Big handouts to AI companies. But I don't see much else happening legislatively. The real power is in the courts--things like judicial appointments, pardons. SCOTUS is where the real lasting change is. The 2024 ruling on affirmative action, for example. Stimulus and tax cuts tend to be popular.

What has Trump got the power to achieve?

I am tacitly of the opinion that some of the executive orders might actually remain in effect into the next term. Affirmative action and friends (disparate impact, maybe) have long been unpopular (see California referendum results), but have hung on for half a century largely on bureaucratic inertia. Those haven't gotten as much press as some of the more dramatic actions on immigration, and I think EOs to re-establish that might actually be a hard sell for a future administration. Maybe also the Title IX sports changes.

He makes motions towards annexing Greenland and Canada but can't actually get it off the ground.

IMHO I think Trump might actually have been successful with Canada if he had pitched it differently: "I want to work with Justin to investigate forming a great, big, beautiful customs union and harmonization of laws -- we're gonna make trade so easy -- including a roadmap to a more formal union by 2050" sounds at least sellable. "Fifty-first state" really dishonors Canada by putting it equal with, I dunno, Delaware and Rhode Island: Canada has a population around the size of California.

Neoliberals broadly like nice-sounding ideas like "unity" and EU-style bureaucracies, but specific details never sell well (where's that combined EU army?). The only way that seems plausible is to sell the big picture, start the institutional inertia in motion, and let bureaucrats sort out the details down the road: Maybe the US decides to mark speed limits in metric. Maybe it's just a treaty combining military commands and establishing EU-like residency and border rules. What do we do with the existing national governance frameworks?

I'm not sure that I'd endorse the outcome if he had done that, but I don't have any particular animosity towards Canadians and am not gut-opposed to it either.

If there's a future democratic administration, they'll surely undo all Trump's internal culture war executive orders as soon as they can or route around them somehow. It wasn't a great look for Biden to open the floodgates of illegal immigrants but he did it anyway, I don't think they care much about optics in the 'I shall not do this since it will lower my popularity' sense, rather it's the 'if people don't like this we need to improve our messaging' kind of optics. Only if that fails massively and obviously do they change course and grudgingly lock up the criminals, as has been happening in San Francisco.

In Washington State they're giving grants to black homeowners as reparations. That's probably not too popular with the voters but who cares? You can just do things.

This is dumb bait. But I think the Bill Maher discussion of his dinner with Trump soundly puts to bed any arguments here. Bill Maher, is about a raving of a TDS as almost anyone, coming away and praising his sharpness and conversability is not something that can be shrugged off with gestures toward nothing like this.

Trump's quoted point at the end is completely coherent, just ideosyncratic and favoring his point over debating the minutia. I'm not defending either the content or point of view, but it's entirely coherent, and the demential complaint is dumb as hell. Here's a summary of the not even subtext of that clip:

Interviewer starts to try a tu quoue about some Biden tactic analogy to Trump. Trump doesn't want to take the bait, so pre-empts with an reverse objection about a double-standard of critique. He uses that to launch that into an attack on Biden's competence. This single sentence has tons of intent:

  • The media's critiques of Trump are invalid double standards
  • As evidence by the media's protection of Biden
  • Biden was not just bad, but incompetent, and the media / deep state covered for him/ controlled him.

All this could be disagreed with, but rather than being incoherent, its a very tight conveying of meaning.

The interviewer then tries to dodge the question of Biden's competence by arguing whether Biden actually did an interview with them or not in some given timeframe.

Trump first starts to engage, but then decides he's not going to lead the interviewer to any Socratic point, so just throws out the idea that he didn't do an interview into being a well informed that he 'barely' did an interview and it was terrible.

Is Trump lying that he's familiar with that particular interview? Yeah probably. (or else he was lying that Biden didn't do an interview and lying or mixed up about the length). But that's not really evidence of mental acuity. The lie makes complete sense in context of the picture he's trying to paint.

The interviewer then gives a sarcastic praise. Trump takes it straight-faced, and uses it to restate his thesis: Biden was incompetent, and any appearance of power-grabbing from him is just hostile coverage from the media

Again, without any bias here (tbh I deeply dislike Trump), Trump's entire bit in that last exchange is tightly governed by a specific frame and defense against a percieved hostile frame. He just favors rhetorical point over detail consistency.

Trump doesn't even remember that Biden had dementia. Biden wasn't just incompetent, he was clearly senile. It was the only reason why Trump got elected.

Now Trump comparing himself with Biden (saying that he is better, of course) is funny because that way he acknowledges that he is in the same boat, i.e., both with dementia.

I can almost hear him boasting – I have the best dementia, it is great, you wouldn't know how great it is... But he didn't because he couldn't remember that word.

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Considering how often Trump refers to "sleepy Joe Biden" I'm pretty sure he remembers.

If you want to criticize Trump there is no shortage of true things you can say.

Sleepy doesn't mean senile.

At the end even Scott Alexander admitted that Biden was senile and had to write a post apologising why he didn't see it sooner.

Now Trump is boasting that he is better than a senile man. If I was a Trump's fan, I would find it disgraceful.

Yeah but you're not a Trump fan and the people who are Trump fans have different standards for disgrace. Else they wouldn't be Trump fans.

Good point!

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

Do you think so?

If so, why?

You've not made a position. Vaguely gesturing towards quoted material without taking a position is not taking a position.

In 2004 I watched some episodes of The Apprentice and he seemed sharper. Trump today is not quite there. Not quite dementia, but not at 100%. Trying to make a diagnosis based on a transcript or TV is always going to be unreliable. There is a reason the criteria for dementia are defined in a certain way. Specific criteria have to be met, like the failure to recall a small string of numbers, fewer than even at the low-end of an IQ test. A diagnosis of dementia entails a significantly reduced level of mental performance, not just sounding bad on TV.

I think also some of this is playing to the audience. Trump repeats himself and uses simple language to prevent being misunderstood.

I think it is obvious now that he has a mild form of dementia.

Scott Alexander wouldn't accept that Biden was senile but it was clear to me early on. It is not professional to diagnose people online, but from the other hand it has to be done for political persons who could cause a lot of harm.

Biden could function because he was surrounded by reasonable people. It does not appear to be the case with Trump. Trump should be removed from the office for reasons of mental incapacity.

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Biden could function because he was surrounded by reasonable people.

Hardly.

You might be right, but it sounds like so much special pleading.

Biden could function

Really? It didn't look like that to me. It looked like he couldn't function, and he was surrounded by liars who propped him up and did their best to hide and deny any lapses.

Biden should have been removed for reasons of mental incapacity, and he was forced to abandon his already-won primary nomination when he couldn't hide it any more. Trump isn't as bad as that guy, so recent in our memories, so why should I care now? Applying the standard to Trump is just another way to try to take him down, and not a genuine concern about the mental capacity of the executive.

If Wilson, Reagan, and Biden can finish their terms, I don't see why Trump should be any different, and I'm not willing to entertain talk of dementia as anything other than partisan sour grapes.

Biden should have been removed. I am just saying that even though he wasn't, it didn't seem to be so bad because people who actually made the policy on his behalf were reasonable. Not great but competent.

Maybe the same expectation was with Trump. It doesn't matter how crazy he is if the administration is reasonable. No one believed that absurd tariffs will get implemented etc. In a way, the problem is not with Trump but that he is surrounded by people who are not competent.

No one believed that absurd tariffs will get implemented etc.

Have they actually gotten implemented though? I keep hearing that Trump keeps kicking the ball down the road on them. Which is a pretty classic negotiating tactic - hit people with sticker shock, and then walk it back.

I am still very very suspicious that some of the motivations behind the Tariff Whiplash Phenomenon is Secret Sauce Stuff that will come out in 1 - 40 years. Not confident, just suspicious. (There seem to be other plausible explanations.)

Either way, I don't really think Tariff Whiplash is really good evidence that Trump has dementia (I suspect he has lost a step but isn't suffering from a mental illness if that makes sense).

Have they actually gotten implemented though?

"Currently, the US's 145% tariff rate on goods from China and a 10% baseline rate on all other countries are in effect."

Many communities are freaking out right now as either goods or parts used by US manufacturers have now more than doubled in cost. For individuals there's the additional insanity of a flat minimum of $100 / $200 fee for individual packages where the tariff would fall below that amount, starting in one week from now.

There you go - sort of a silly question from me, sorry, it's just that there's been so much stuff announced and then paused that I haven't been tracking when all of these things were actually for real kicking in (as opposed to being announced. I guess I'm not used to the government working so quickly!)

Anyway, to my point, it's looking like The Latest is that they'll be brought back down, at least a bit, supposedly. Which is, again, pretty classic negotiating. Slap them on, show that You Mean Business, pull back when you get a deal, which...might be happening?

For individuals there's the additional insanity of a flat minimum of $100 / $200 fee for individual packages where the tariff would fall below that amount, starting in one week from now.

I hope this helps reshore domestic light manufacturing. Not sure that it will, but that could be good.

I hope this helps reshore domestic light manufacturing. Not sure that it will, but that could be good.

The problem is that applies to any goods or parts that are imported. Need a $2 component to fix something? That’ll he $100 in one week and $200 starting in June. Ordering a batch of prototype pcbs (something no US manufacturer has capacity / interest in providing)? That’ll be $200 extra. The biggest freakout about the tariffs is in communities dealing with or closely associated with small manufacturing businesses as their materials costs are suddenly doubling or more.

This demonstrates possibly the largest single difference between Chinese and Western manufacturers / vendors. China is chock full of manufacturers who are perfectly happy to handle small quantity orders while Western manufacturers by and large are only willing to deal with major customers.

Need a $2 component to fix something? That’ll he $100 in one week and $200 starting in June. Ordering a batch of prototype pcbs (something no US manufacturer has capacity / interest in providing)? That’ll be $200 extra.

Tiptrans (package consolidation) is going to make absolute bank.

This demonstrates possibly the largest single difference between Chinese and Western manufacturers / vendors. China is chock full of manufacturers who are perfectly happy to handle small quantity orders while Western manufacturers by and large are only willing to deal with major customers.

Yes. I tend to think this should change. I would prefer it changed in a smoother way, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

Some still believe that general tarifs apart from specific cases could be a reasonable policy, not great but somewhat reasonable.

I see them as if the hospital director decides that some medicines are too expensive and have many side-effects and suggests replacing them with some complementary medicine (such as homeopathy or any other alternative treatment without evidence base). Trump or his handlers basing his idea about tarifs on 100 year old use cases is exactly like that.

In some third world countries the medical system still uses such treatments. In India it was common for politicians to say that they want to improve healthcare but also dedicate more funds for Ayurveda. It is a total waste of money though and can harm by denying people effective treatments. Poor countries are poor because of corruption and incompetence of leaders.

Any such hospital director in the western country however would be swiftly fired or let to retire. It would be too obvious that he is no longer competent. Otherwise the staff would revolt.

Trump is offering homeopathy to treat cancer. He has lost his plot.

Ordering a batch of prototype pcbs (something no US manufacturer has capacity / interest in providing)? That’ll be $200 extra.

My man, are you not familiar with OSHPark and DigiKey Red? The bare PCB options there are fairly cheap as long as you can use their standard stackups.

If you need something more complicated and/or populated, there are choices like Advanced Circuits, too. At least in my area, if you look, there are commercial shops that can populate SMT/TH boards. Admittedly, these might be more than $200 above the Shenzen costs today.

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People have been expecting Trump comebacks all the time and somehow he always did. At least with elections, he still had his genius. But ultimately everyone succumbs to old age and loses everything. It is very hard to accept the ultimate demise but with Trump it is now. With Biden most people including Scott Alexander managed to live in denial until the end of his term. Could happen the same with Trump.

How would you differentiate “lost a step” and “suffering from dementia”? Dementia is exactly like that, initially mildly losing a step, with some better days and some worse days. Trump has always been very erratic and that's why many people don't notice. But if you are able to separate his rhetoric, you could see that now he has lost a plot.

How would you differentiate “lost a step” and “suffering from dementia”?

You peak at intelligence in the late teens or early twenties - before you are even eligible to be President. So from that perspective all Presidents have "lost a step" - none of them are as bright as they once were. I think Trump was better at debates in 2016 than in 2024.

I'm not a doctor, so I tend to defer to them for the definition of dementia. Personally I would use a sort of everyday definition - if someone is mentally lucid enough to take care of themselves in the day-to-day. With POTUS, the standard should arguably be higher - "if they can fulfill the duties of the office."

But if you are able to separate his rhetoric, you could see that now he has lost a plot.

Which plot specifically? I don't see "Trump doing wacky stuff with tariffs" as, by itself, indicative of dementia. But I don't typically watch Trump speeches, so if he was noticeably out of it, the way Biden sometimes appeared to be, I wouldn't necessarily notice. If Trump is actually suffering from dementia then he should step down quickly, before it meaningfully impacts his duties.

Less intelligent decisions are one thing but doing senseless things are completely another.

Trump's dealings with tariffs make no sense. Some people continue to refer to hidden motives but by now we are aware that this is not the case. He is not capable to fulfil the duties and is greatly harming the US. It's only going to be worse with every day. A lot of loyal people will be in denial. Just like many still believe in Havana syndrome as real or something like that. And his election was mostly luck. Democrats hid Biden's dementia and people felt cheated and decided to punish them for this. It just happened that Trump was the candidate. Could have been any other guy. Now people will be even more angry when they realize they have been cheated again.

Trump's dealings with tariffs make no sense.

I dunno. I would have a stronger opinion of this if I considered myself more economically literate. But the basic strategy that seems to be shaping up, as reported, of essentially forcing countries to choose between the US and China does make sense. We'll see if he's able to pull it off.

Some people continue to refer to hidden motives but by now we are aware that this is not the case.

I don't really think that's true. Keep in mind that the press has sat on really big stories in the past at the request of the executive branch. If (as has been rumored) China was planning to attack Taiwan - and this precipitated some frantic economic maneuvers - I could definitely see "us" being unaware of the story. I don't hold that theory strongly but it's been in the back of my mind.

Just like many still believe in Havana syndrome as real or something like that.

Why would you use this as an example? (This keeps happening, to me, I swear!)

Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome is real and is being covered up by the US government to smooth over relations with foreign powers and/or conceal the fact that we have and use the same technology. We know how it works (it's a directed energy weapon). It's possible that the symptoms are not even being induced as an anti-personnel attack, but rather an electromagnetic spectrum attack that targets data. President Bush and his family were plausibly affected by this at a summit in Germany (and he wrote about it in his memoir). The Russians have even been reported to have alluded to these types of weapons publicly. There are other incidents, too (such as then-Vice President Richard Nixon being bombarded by extremely high doses of radiation - probably not due to any attempt to harm him, but rather due to a wiretapping attempt) showing that certain foreign powers are willing to irradiate high-ranking US personnel in potentially dangerous ways as part of their espionage programs.

This stuff is all public knowledge and findable on a Google. That doesn't mean that every reported case of Havana syndrome is legit, but there's absolutely zero reason to believe that it's somehow impossible and very good reasons to think it is real.

Now people will be even more angry when they realize they have been cheated again.

And rightfully so, if your idea is true.

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JD Vance is competent, but these people are chosen for loyalty

By the metrics of 'accomplishing their/Trump's' agenda, Trump's appointments are mostly highly competent, at least so far.

I can understand that some say nothing against Trump because of loyalty. But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA. Most likely they are not competent and don't even understand that.

But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA.

Is the economy that central to the American nation? I understand that market freedom has been an important component of our political strength, but at the same time, this feels like preparing for the last Cold War right as we are in the midst of a new one.

Is the economy that central to the American nation?

Yes.

I think nothing is more important than economy. People talk about different values and in that sense we need more than economy, for example, democracy and pure air (ecology). But economy is a central thing that allows the country to thrive because everything is based on it. It is just that historically the growth was non-existent (0.01% per year) therefore not many past thinkers have mentioned it in the list of good values. We need to add this to the constitution of every country that achieving growth is very important.

I dunno, I think both left and right have been directionally-correct in that the economy is not the end-all-be-all of civilization. Plenty of societies in the past didn't give as much consideration to economic growth, yes, but they seemingly didn't really need it.

The way you wrote this post, I genuinely cannot tell if you are being sincere, because, at risk of mod intervention, it sounds like an alien value. If anything, I think it's the opposite: there are other values that allow us to have economic power, they are what lead to an economy and not strictly the other way around.

We are at this point, and you are concerned, because some of the very values that enable the economy are themselves weakened and endangered.

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My hypothesis is Trump did not think the stock market would react as negatively as it did, so he has since backtracked.

It is quite an indictment of the Trump administration's competence for them to not know the stock market would respond like that. We'll see if we get anywhere on retreat. April 9 changed the flavor, but not the severity, of the damage. The small shift toward sanity on car parts is good news, but we still have the Section 232s looming over a lot of things, Trump getting played by China, and the 10% tariffs that seemingly are not going to go away.

Trump had made it abundantly clear during campaign and after winning that there would be tariffs, and even when he floated some tariffs in January 2025 and Feb against Mexico and Canada , the stock market brushed it off, only to crash a month ago. The market seemed to have no problem with tariffs until only a month ago.

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Imagine you knew in advance that covid restrictions would get introduced all around the world in 2020. Would you predict that the stock market goes down? Of course, you would.

I happen to believe that these restrictions were mostly unnecessary and due to overreaction. But at least covid was real to elderly and risk groups. Increased mortality among them was real due to covid (but also from misapplied restrictions).

Even if covid wasn't real and it was all Chinese hoax the same restrictions would have caused stock market to drop.

Tariffs are exactly like that. If you knew in advance that such tariffs would get implemented, you could bet safely that the stock market is going to react very negatively. That they are introduced to imaginary problem, doesn't change their effects.

Eventually people will have enough and will remove Trump from office and it will recover. I predict that Elon Musk will come out as a winner despite all his mistakes because he seems to be the one disagreeing with Trump (by openly stating that he wishes for zero tariffs between Europe). His loyalty to free market will be rewarded in long term even if we don't see how it could happen now.

There's a trick in the question.

Is using the Alien Enemies Act, for example, to immediately deport a members of a particular 'foreign' gang an "Expansion" of Presidential powers?

The AEA has been used by Presidents before, and its existed for almost as long as the Presidency has existed.

But Trump may be using it in a 'novel' way to perform an act that was not originally anticipated by Congress or explicitly approved by the courts...

So question becomes:

Has the President ALWAYS had the authority to do this under the AEA, and Trump was just the first one to receive an electoral mandate to use this authority...

or

Is Trump CREATING the power to do this via utterly novel interpretation and application of the law, and possibly thumbing his nose a 'traditional' boundaries on Presidential power... and he thinks he can get away with it?

I really think its the former. Trump saw a particular law that granted a particular power, sitting there dusty and unused in the warehouse of executive authority, and reached over and pulled the lever to activate it. But it has always been sitting there, he didn't invent it or wrest it from Congress or the Courts.

So ask that question about most of his actions. Is he 'expanding' power to take the particular actions he's taken, or do most, or even ALL of the powers he's wielding have established precedent in previous administrations, he's just one of the first to wield ALL of them this aggressively, so it looks like a scary expansion of power.

My personal view, as a guy that voted for Ron Paul in 2012, is that Trump is literally just flexing the full set of powers and authority that Congress has ceded to the President and that the Courts have permitted to continue for decades and decades.

I'm STILL mad about the PATRIOT Act, and that's 24 years old now. Congress has delegated even more power to the president since then. They could try to take it back at any time, but they don't. So they're tacitly approving of the executive's current exercise of authority.

I dunno, The Imperial Presidency was published in 1973 and lamented the expansion of the President's war powers. Congress has delegated much of their rulemaking authority to the executive since then in thousands and thousands of pages of laws creating various agencies. Its the logical outcome of about a century of SCOTUS precedent.

If you're scared of what the Presidency has become only because Trump is the guy wielding all that authority, well, I'm going to feel impotently smug once again. Or maybe smugly impotent. The problem has always been that the power is too broad and lacks any effective checks, if you were counting on the goodness of the man occupying the seat of power to keep the office limited, you're basically praying that God doesn't put madman on the throne.

Has the President ALWAYS had the authority to do this under the AEA, and Trump was just the first one to receive an electoral mandate to use this authority...

I find the AEA argument to be quite weak in this case. For the TDA members and their supporters. The AEA was passed when John Adams was President and Thomas Jefferson, his main political rival, was Vice-President. If we transported both to 2025 and had someone neutrally describe TDA, with no conclusion language or question begging (i.e. don't use "invading army", "criminal gang" etc to describe them), describing their place of origin, appearance, and actions both would agree on the outcome. It would go something along the lines of, "Sure I guess we can expel them with the AEA, but why not just hang them like we do with the rest of the Indian warbands that do those things?"

So the dilemma is not real a dilemma about the AEA, its a dilemma about whether expulsion or public execution within 48 hours is the more appropriate punishment. Due process is not something appropriate for foreign savages, both would tell you. In criminal courts it is for co-citizens like the British soldiers Adams defended in court, or for uniformed British soldiers eventual President Andrew Jackson would take prisoner during the war of 1812, who would be held pending the outcome of the war, or immediately expelled under the AEA, depending on what was militarily appropriate. Jefferson, in his later years might note that very few Barbary pirates were ever afforded the opportunity to surrender in that war, mostly ships were left to sink or set ablaze with losses frequently being total.

TDA, with no conclusion language or question begging (i.e. don't use "invading army", "criminal gang" etc to describe them)

But Tren de Aragua are a criminal gang. That's their purpose for existing. The BBC, no fan of Trump or his deportation agenda, say it started as a corrupt local railway union which extorted carriers and contractors on their section of line, then turned into a prison gang, and now is a "transnational criminal organization" which controls diverse economic activities including gold mining and sex trafficking, and engages in political assassination as well as more commonplace "murder and torture."

The question is whether their activities in the US are in coordination with the Venezuelan dictatorship, as asserted by the administration.

But Trend de Aragua are a criminal gang

That is the word we use to describe them now. But the question at hand is what are the words John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have used to describe them in the early 1800s. To those people in that time "gang" would have strong implications that a matter is local of origin and scope. Thus, I think in our hypothetical using the word "gang" to describe TDA can only serve to mislead.

A "transnational criminal organization" which controls diverse economic activities including gold mining and sex trafficking, and engages in political assassination as well as more commonplace "murder and torture."

This just sounds like a rogue government. Or some rogue offshoot of a chartered international corporation like the Dutch East India corporation. Adams and Jefferson would PRESUME any org engaging in all that sort of commerce must be sponsored by some government, otherwise the other governments would crush them. Or they would ask you something like, "this Venezuela is a lawless land of pirates then?" We hang pirates, or sink them, of course. "

The question is whether their activities in the US are in coordination with the Venezuelan dictatorship, as asserted by the administration. Coordination or permission is how I understand the idea to be being presented.

Adams and Jefferson would PRESUME any org engaging in all that sort of commerce must be sponsored by some government, otherwise the other governments would crush them.

Adams defended John Hancock in court after the latter's smuggling business was caught out. The big deal in smuggling back then was just getting wine and tea without paying taxes on them, but that was enough that it helped fund and train colonists for and prompt the American Revolution.

Jefferson fought the first of the Barbary Wars, against foes who were nominally Ottoman protectorates but really independent warlords funded by human trafficking, extortion, and piracy.

Explain to them that we now have drugs so destructive that we ban their shipment at any price and yet so addictive that their market is over $10B/year, and I think they'd understand right away that those drugs' smugglers would avoid becoming a legible (and thus easily targetable) government but would still become powerful enough to stand up to weak governments anyway.

"this Venezuela is a lawless land of pirates then?" We hang pirates, or sink them, of course. "

This was Jefferson's thinking going into the First Barbary War, despite that being evenly matched enough that we have to call it the "First" and we didn't get a complete victory until a decade later. Pitting the modern US vs Venzuela would seem to be a much more obvious and less bold decision.

I'm not sure that works as a metaphor here, though. That "avoid becoming a legible government" trick in the modern case is a sneaky one. If we can't stop Tren de Aragua from operating here in the US under our noses, why be surprised or angry with Venezuela about the fact that they also can't stop it there? But if we can, then from our point of view the problem is solved here, no need to go nation-building to try to solve it elsewhere.

Adams defended John Hancock in court after the latter's smuggling business was caught out. The big deal in smuggling back then was just getting wine and tea without paying taxes on them, but that was enough that it helped fund and train colonists for and prompt the American Revolution.

So an arm of the revolutionary government and its precursors. State.

Jefferson fought the first of the Barbary Wars, against foes who were nominally Ottoman protectorates but really independent warlords funded by human trafficking, extortion, and piracy.

Yes. And we took basically zero POWs. We just sank pirates until their state sponsor agreed to some terms.

I'm not sure that works as a metaphor here, though. That "avoid becoming a legible government" trick in the modern case is a sneaky one. If we can't stop Tren de Aragua from operating here in the US under our noses, why be surprised or angry with Venezuela about the fact that they also can't stop it there? But if we can, then from our point of view the problem is solved here, no need to go nation-building to try to solve it elsewhere.

Yes its a problem of will here, not means. While its more of a question of means/will (aka intentional by Venezuela). I think there is a lot of intentional burying the head in the sand on this question. 3rd party groups is how modern war by inferior powers is conducted. People acting like Venezuela should be treated like a real nation state that is going to conduct proper military operations are delusional.

So an arm of the revolutionary government and its precursors. State.

Proto-state, sure, with the benefit of hindsight. The actual State at the time was the government they fought against for 8 years, who wasn't their sponsor.

I really think its the former. Trump saw a particular law that granted a particular power, sitting there dusty and unused in the warehouse of executive authority, and reached over and pulled the lever to activate it. But it has always been sitting there, he didn't invent it or wrest it from Congress or the Courts.

No it isn't. There was a separate law that was passed at about the same time as the Alien Enemies Act that really did give the president the power to do what Trump did. That law is no longer in effect.

In comparison, for those who haven't looked at the text of the still-existing law, the important part that is about to be argued in all the courts says:

any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government

Having not looked at any briefs yet, just the face of the text, I think it's going to be a bit of a tough road to hoe to argue that the nation or government of Venezuela is perpetrating, attempting, or threatening an invasion or predatory incursion. They would indeed be on far stronger grounds if the Alien Friends Act were still in effect.

Mmhmm.

So which branch of government is tasked with DECIDING if the government of Venezuela is attempting an invasion or predatory incursion.

And what if, for example, the FBI issued a finding that Venezuela is intentionally releasing gang members to the U.S. to undermine public safety?

Are courts authorized to overrule that finding?

I think courts are authorized to, at the very least, assume that the assertions of the executive branch are correct as to what is being alleged (which they may or may not need to do; this part gets complicated), then decide whether or not those assertions, as stated, constitute "an invasion or predatory incursion [that] is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government" as a matter of statutory interpretation.

Possible hypo land. Suppose the literal Venezuelan government sent precisely one spy to the US. This spy does some stuff. Maybe standard espionage stuff. Maybe a targeted assassination or something. The executive branch asserts this and decides to throw all the rest of the Venezuelan nationals out of the country. Is that enough to trigger the statute? I think courts might want to say "no", even if the executive branch wants to say "yes". But I don't know! They might say yes! I could even imagine reasons for them to say yes! But I do, indeed, think that they have some room to do statutory interpretation. ...then, we proceed down a chain of increasing hypos until we start to get a sense for how to interpret the statute.

Can you think of any cases whatsoever where a court overruled a President/executive agency's finding of fact or application of law when that finding was related to the executive's power to set foreign policy?

Taking a look at the "Muslim Travel bans" from Trump 1 is possibly instructive here.

Taking a look at the "Muslim Travel bans" from Trump 1 is possibly instructive here.

Precisely. They engaged in standard statutory interpretation of the INA. If the INA had said something different, for example, (or the Trump I administration was trying to do something different,) then perhaps that statutory interpretation could have come out the other way. Their opinion was in no way, "Eh, this is remotely related to 'a President/executive agency's finding of fact or application of law when that finding was related to the executive's power to set foreign policy', so we just can't say anything at all." Instead, they had a statute that delegated certain powers under certain conditions, and they did standard statutory interpretation to decide that the executive branch was, indeed, correct in interpreting it in a way that allowed them to do the things they were doing in the situation which they were doing it.

It's a tough road to hoe, but not entirely crazy. I expect he's properly going to lose, but fortunately there are of other laws that can be used to deport TdA members (including to El Salvador, if their home country won't take them), though they require more paperwork to be done.

road to hoe

*row to hoe (as in a line on a farm field)

@ControlsFreak

Thanks! I know I'd heard this correction before, SMH...

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

I think the only think Trump has done that really counts as an expansion of Presidential power (off the top of my head, but I am quite willing to be shown other examples) is asserting authority over independent agencies. (Pushing for diversity of viewpoint from universities also seems...novel...but I have not read the supposed authorities cited and "regulators pushing an extremely novel interpretation of US civil rights law on universities" is not exactly new, so I am not sure if that's really a good example, but it is the other one that readily comes to mind.)

I believe there's a fairly mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that holds that these independent agencies shouldn't exist, because they are not contemplated in the traditional Constitutional scheme, as they are neither executive agencies, nor part of Congress, nor part of the judiciary. Under that interpretation, Trump is not expanding his power by asserting authority over independent boards - he is exercising authority that has always been his, over all executive agencies. And in fact it seems to me like an awful lot of the stuff that Trump has done that's been attacked as being a novel use of Presidential power has just been exercising latent power over the executive branch.

From my point of view, the most problematic thing Trump has done from a separation-of-powers issue might be TARIFFS. Congress is supposed to make the laws, and, you know, our overall tariff policy is pretty important and under the original Constitutional schema probably would be left to Congress to decide. But guess what? Congress - as I understand it - decided to delegate him those powers. So he's not aggregating new powers to himself, unless SCOTUS rules that those powers are inherently those of Congress and that the executive may not modify them, which as far as I know they have not done. And probably are unlikely to do.

I think it's quite fair to argue that Trump is sort of double-dealing here - he's pushing (on the one hand) for expanded executive power from what might be a more originalist or right-of-center angle (the "you can't delegate too much power to unelected bureaucrats" theory of the Constitution) while on the other hand he's making maximal use out of the power that Congress delegated him under the more modern way of doing things (you might call this the "legislating is hard, let's let the President do that" theory of the Constitution) that might itself be subject to criticism under more originalist means of governing.

But here's the fundamental deal. The executive was always supposed to have a lot of decisive authority over the executive branch. It's just that the scope of his duties was originally quite small. Over the course of 200 years a number of makeshift patches were applied in US law that arguably would not fly by original-intent standards but (charitably) were necessary to make the Constitution workable so that the President and Congress could delegate sufficient functions to experts or (uncharitably) were necessary to subvert democracy by placing an unelected class of power-maximizing bureaucrats between the American people and their elected representatives and the levers of power. (That's not the only two options, and I think the truth of the matter is more complex than either or both of them, but I think phrasing it like that is clarifying). And when wielding both of those powers, the President might be much more powerful than contemplated under either the original or hotfixed versions of the Constitution.

And now we've essentially gotten the point where the President is willing to make vigorous use of the full scope of his authority under both the Constitution and those makeshift patches that we've applied, and in a way that is not only controversial but also impacts a lot of people. (Remember that Obama straight-up drone struck a noncombatant American citizen, which was controversial and arguably a bigger Presidential power-grab than anything Trump has done, but it only, ah, impacted a few people directly.) So now, maybe, Congress will decide to take the reins and do something about it.

Or not. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.

So he's not aggregating new powers to himself, unless SCOTUS rules that those powers are inherently those of Congress and that the executive may not modify them, which as far as I know they have not done. And probably are unlikely to do.

Given how extreme Trump's tariff policy is, they may invoke "major questions doctrine," as with Biden's student load policy.

Quite possible. I don't know that much about the legal grounding of the tariffs. My understanding is that Congress delegated a truly insane amount of authority to POTUS in "times of emergency" - I suppose SCOTUS might also rule there is no justifying emergency.

The fundamental issue, I think, is that SCOTUS and Congress want POTUS to have sweeping emergency powers. They have arguably relied overmuch on "norms" to govern the President's use of them.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

No.

I'm sure Trump is declining from his peak but you're just

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

How about the one where most of the stuff Trump is doing is actually upheld in court or not even challenged in the first place. It's only a few cases that the fake news is trying to use to try to dunk on Trump.

Biden got bonked in court many times as well, but I never saw the never trumpers criticize him one bit for it.

I'm sure Trump is declining from his peak but you're just

Just what?

I got distracted and didn't finish my thought. Given that I'm under 35 so I still can't be president yet, it's safe to say that I don't have dementia either though.

Speak plainly—this routine is obnoxious. Do you think he expanded presidential power? In what way? How does his "expansion" compare to Biden's use of power, since you are in fact able to predict these objections beforehand, aren't you?

Do you think he has dementia?

"Just asking questions"

Rather than having anything to say.

Not being a lawyer, I reserve judgement. Note that I also didn't ask for other uninformed opinions - I specified "mainstream interpretation," because I know that there are as many "idiosyncratic" interpretations as there are possible policies.

The dementia question was a bit cheeky, I concede, but the quoted section reminds me of confabulation.

  • -14

If you weren't meant to understand the law as a layman, it would have been written in Latin. You shouldn't fear your own understanding of these things, and you should discount others' only on their merits.

While I disapprove of him generally, and don't trust his Constitutional analysis as far as I could throw it, I do have to sympathize with his bemused "this is what I talked about doing" refrain. It was, and if I was in his shoes I would probably feel equally bemused and annoyed that the media flips its lid every time I implemented another point of the program I'd been very loudly advocating for years, as if I'd gotten elected under false pretenses and revealed hidden true colors. I'd wager he's less concerned with the exact wording of the law than with a sense of… fair play? "Well I said I'd do all this, and the American people elected me anyway in full knowledge of that, so it can't be as outrageous and anti-democratic as my enemies are now claiming."

I'd wager he's less concerned with the exact wording of the law than with a sense of… fair play? "Well I said I'd do all this, and the American people elected me anyway in full knowledge of that, so it can't be as outrageous and anti-democratic as my enemies are now claiming."

Unless the administration is trying to expand Presidential power, since you can't elect someone to do something unconstitutional.

Sure you can!

Voters elected George W. Bush, in part, to defend a traditional concept of marriage that had existed for well over 2000 years and had never been questioned by the men who wrote the Constitution.

Turns out that was unconstitutional!

Your first line reminds me of a famous political speech, which seems oddly relevant to the topic at hand:

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come.

We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

(Not trying to make an argument here, I just had a memory lightbulb light up and I thought it was funny.)

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