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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2383 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 26, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is there anything to this: "The Coup We've Feared Has Already Happened"?

The coup we’ve been fearing has already happened. Utterly servile to Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to convene the House of Representatives for even pro forma business (and by extension Congress) indefinitely, thereby shielding Trump from all manner of inquiry and accountability, not least the Epstein files, and giving him de facto full dictatorial powers. The longer the shutdown continues, the more irrelevant Congress becomes. Next expect unilateral executive decrees on assuming full funding authority, essentially rendering Congress defunct. It may never reconvene. Suspension of the Constitution cannot be far behind. Dictatorship came to us while we slept.

Is this what it seems like to me — just more lefty pearl-clutching and crying wolf — or is there something to the arguments James Bruno and Tonoccus McClain are making?

So, it needs to be said- Trump is factually ruling by decree right now, in a way that previous government shutdowns- under both Trump and other presidents- did not see. The statement 'Trump is a dictator' is perhaps an exaggeration, but it is not unhinged.

Now this is resistancelib ranting, yes. But it isn't totally unfounded, even if their chain of cause and effect are wrong. Trump is ruling by decree and a lot of his action during the shutdown is flatly unconstitutional/illegal.

IMHO the details are what need to be said. The discovery that someone thinks "Trump is factually ruling by decree" is not new information to anyone; someone always thinks that. The discovery that Trump added 10 points to Canadian Tariffs, under 'emergency' powers, because Ontario aired an ad with some anti-tariff audio from Ronald Reagan and Trump mistakenly thinks it must have been a deepfake, might not be widespread knowledge yet. If you start making a list of decrees, with sublists for the ones of dubious or failing constitutionality+legality, how long a list do you have?

TBH, Trump unilaterally spending money and changing taxation policies without congressional authorization, that's a big escalation from anything Obama(who was not a good actor and did a lot to centralize power under the president) did or anything Trump did that was supposedly creeping authoritarianism.

is this really an escalation over like, DACA?

Yes. Changing tax policy is a pretty strong brightline on bypassing congress.

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