Nightwingdragon

Remember the days when an openly racist comment like this would mean the end of your political career?

A woman candidate is a non starter.

This. This right here. This is what people are going to have to start accepting.

We heard throughout the entire campaign "Biden too old!". And to be fair, he was. That debate performance proved it. But here's the thing. Once his replacement was announced, people suddenly stopped having a problem with age, because they ran right back to Bernie Sanders. Suddenly, age wasn't nearly as much of an issue any more. The voters ultimately stood up in one voice and said "We'd still vote for a really old man or at least let another old man with dementia return to power before we vote for a black woman". It's like the voters demanded someone younger, saw the DNC endorse Harris, and said "No, not like that!"

The Gaza excuse doesn't make sense either, because Trump was actively campaigning on glassing the place and turning it into beachfront property. Never mind the fact that Harris was in a lose-lose position with regards to the war (Had she turned and supported Gaza, she'd have lost significantly more Jewish voters and the race would have been an even bigger Trump victory), but even if you believe she's "supporting a genocide", the fact of the matter is that Trump's position was not only to support it, but to speed it up. You can't claim that you didn't vote for Harris over Gaza while allowing someone who you damn well know is going to be even worse for Gaza to rise back to power. Again, this doesn't make the last bit of logical sense. Another excuse for people who just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a black woman and needed an excuse to either convince themselves or their social circle to justify it.

What else was there? "Well, she wasn't clear on some of her economic policies". Literal quote from news reporters on the Harris/Trump debate where Trump's answer to an economic policy question was "They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats! They're eating......the pets!".

Or "They're all just handpicked by the corporate elite". Or "we're trying to send a message to the Democrat party to put forward better candidates". Or my personal favorite "She campaigned with Liz Cheney that one time......".

Or whatever other excuse people keep coming up with. Not a single one of them has ever been able to answer the question of "Even if you believe that, how does allowing Trump return to power make it any better or advance your position?"

The fact of the matter is that Democrats have their own share of low-key racists and bigots. They're just not as open about it as Republicans, and still prefer to hide behind whatever convenient excuse they can come up with. But they've twice over proven that, for all their bluster about age and progressive values, they'll gladly allow an old white man with dementia to return to power before they ever consider voting for a woman. I'll echo the exact same thing you said. I don't like it, and you don't have to agree with it. But reality is what reality is. If the Democrat party puts forward a woman or minority in 2028, especially after 4 years of Trump stoking racial tensions, they're going to lose. Full stop. This country is not willing to accept a woman President. Heck, I'm willing to bet that Obama was a fluke and the voters won't vote in a minority as President again, at least not in my lifetime.

For anyone wondering, the current GOP plan is literally to tell the parliamentarian to go fuck herself.

What, you didn't think that the GOP was going to try to actually fix things, did you?

You know the answer.

If the Senate can just "overrule" the parliamentarian whenever they want, what's the point of having one?

I mean in the end, it really doesn't matter. I don't know whether to call it a game of Calvinball or Who's Line is it Anyway, but the end result is about the same: They're just making up the rules as they go along, and ignoring their own rules once they become inconvenient, and not even trying to hide the fact that the actual rules (along with anyone who tries to enforce them) are going to be ignored.

The US government isn't going to say "Drat, foiled again!" just because you used some clever semantics. Whether it's in an escrow account or the normal state-controlled bank account is irrelevant. The end result would be the same. The government will order the account seized, the courts will very likely comply, and the government will get the money with the state being able to do fuck all to stop them.

This is a legit approach for an individual with a complaint against a business like a landlord, so it seems like you could pursue similar logic

How cute that you think the two are in any way comparable. State-level issues like this are on a completely different level than a dispute between you and your landlord.

Another example that loyalty only flows one way when it comes to Donald Trump, and he will gladly have you excommunicated the nanosecond you become inconvenient or dare to criticize him in any way.

Yet nobody in the party will learn a damn thing, and about a million or so people who somehow still think that they'll be somehow immune from the same treatment are already lining up to take Tillis' place.

Seriously. Rudy Giuliani. Mike Lindell. Liz Cheney. Michael Cohen. Prominent, life-long Republicans who dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their careers, and they've all ended up ruined, disgraced, and discarded. And that doesn't count the literal dozens of prominent Republicans that have been forced out of politics because they didn't suck up to Trump hard enough or voted against him that one time. How can you see a literal cemetery of people that have been sacrificed at the altar of Trump and say to yourself "Yes, I'd like to be the next in line." How do you not see all of that and think that somehow, you're the one who's going to magically be immune? I just don't get it.

It’s that the federal government has made a commitment to provide funds to the state (e.g. the broadband construction funds, funds to build EV charging stations, etc.) and the federal government is now refusing to disburse those funds because the current administration has decided it doesn’t like paying the bills the previous administration incurred, at least to states Trump feels aren’t adequately supportive of his policies. The proposal in this case is to withhold delivery of funds the state is supposed to give the government in order to offset the funds the government is also contractually obligated to deliver.

You're getting to a level of technicalities and semantics that simply would not matter in the long run. The specific details and reasoning behind it is and would remain completely irrelevant. In the end, it would be a matter of California withholding federal payments because it does not agree with federal policies being enforced upon them. What those policies are and why is completely irrelevant.

I agree with you that this specific supreme court would definitely rule in favor of the feds, but I definitely don’t think the case is as absurdly one-sided as you seem to find it. I think a different court could probably find precedent for this kind of dispute if they were so inclined.

No they wouldn't, and it would be a disaster if they tried.

Again, what the policies are and why are irrelevant. It would be viewed by every other state as a license to withhold federal funds if you disagree with federal policy. Texas, for example, would be able to decide that they are going to withhold federal payments because they don't like the restrictions on the 2nd amendment that the federal government is imposing upon them. If Dobbs were to be overturned, for example, Florida could say "the federal government has made a commitment to provide funds to the state to fund pro-life initiatives, and the federal government is now refusing to disburse those funds because the current administration has decided it doesn’t like paying the bills the previous administration incurred. The proposal in this case is to withhold delivery of funds the state is supposed to give the government in order to offset the funds the government is also contractually obligated to deliver."

See how easy that is. If you can make the argument, so can they.

It would lead to no administration being able to apply nationwide policies without risking losing billions in federal payouts from states that disagree with those policies. It would make it impossible for the federal government to create and implement a budget as they'd have no idea how much they'd be able to collect, especially if a couple of large states were really upset over some recently passed legislation. States like Texas and California would have an outsized influence on federal policy because they could threaten to withhold federal dollars without negatively impacting their own economy, while smaller states like Maryland, Vermont, and Idaho would have no such leverage and in fact be forced to take whatever the federal government gives them and like it or risk losing federal funding and sending the state into bankruptcy.

What would that look like if a state withheld payment?

Very simple.

1. The federal government would file a lawsuit asking the courts to freeze the bank accounts that contain the federal funds. The courts would most certainly grant such a motion.

2. While the court case played out, the federal government would continue on with business as usual. The federal government would earmark and spend the frozen funds as if it were already in their possession, simply adding the spending to the deficit/debt until the case is settled and the funds are released. The funds would then be retroactively applied to bring our debt down to where it should have been in the first place.

3. Whether it's a lower court or the Supreme Court after all the appeals, the courts would eventually rule that states cannot withhold federal payments just because they disagree with federal policies that are affecting them. The only question that would exist would be how long would it take to get to this point, because there's no way the Supreme Court would or even could rule any other way.

4. Upon receipt of the court order, some bank executive in a corporate office somewhere would access the accounts and release the funds to the federal government. That corporate office and the officer that ultimately releases the funds may or may not even physically be in the affected state, rendering it impossible for state officials to even try to prevent the bank from executing the court order and releasing the funds.

There would be no standoff. There would be no bloodshed. No civil war. It wouldn't be done through shows of force, it would simply be a few clicks on the keyboard. It would be decided in courthouses and lawyers' offices, not on the streets.

And notice how I didn't mention Trump or California, because it would play out the same no matter who was President, or on the Supreme Court, or what state was withholding payment. And it should. Imagine if Alabama threatened to withhold federal payouts because desegregation was being forced upon them and they were against the Civil Rights act. That would never have been allowed to happen. If any state were ultimately allowed to just withhold funding that way, all it would do is lead to red states refusing to pay out whenever there's a Democrat president, and blue states refusing to pay out when there's a Republican in charge.

(And yes, there are just as many red states that pay out significantly more in federal funding than they receive. Democrats have California, New York, and MA for example. Republicans have states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee.)

Actually, no. What would happen is that the federal government would just intervene, contact the banks, and seize the funds.

But even in a situation where there's a fight over the money, that's not what would happen.

The Federal government is going to draw up and execute its budget as if they had the funds anyway. If any of the earmarked money is spent, it would just be added to the national debt until the federal government actually collects the state funds, through force if necessary. Then the seized funds would be applied accordingly.

In the meantime, the seized funds would just be frozen by court order in state bank accounts until the whole case is settled. And by "Settled", I mean that the SC would just rule that the states have to pay and order the banks to release the funds to the federal government.

This is what would happen regardless of who is President, regardless of who's on the SC bench. States don't have to like policies enacted by the federal government. There are deep red states like Florida and Tennessee that also give more federal funds than they receive, and they would not be allowed to withhold federal funding just because they don't like Democrat policies, either.

The courts aren't going to allow that, nor should they. Both red and blue states have multiple states that pay out more in federal funds than they receive. Allowing states to do this would only lead to a situation where blue states refuse to pay out whenever there's a Republican president and red states refusing to pay out when a Democrat is in charge.

"Louisiana hospitals warn Mike Johnson of 'devastation' from megabill"

"Yeah, that's kinda the point"

-- Johnson.

I love it. We just had a Supreme Court ruling that further anointed Trump as a king that can do what he wants, and yet the first thing everybody goes to in one of these articles is that the states can just take it to the courts and this time, THIS TIME the courts will stop him! It's not fair! What Trump is doing is illegal and unconstitutional!

No fucking shit it's unconstitutional. But guess what? The Constitution is dead. The Supreme Court has already hand-waved away half of the amendments, and the people in charge of enforcing the rest have already repeatedly said they weren't going to. They have repeatedly said that Trump can basically do whatever he wants, and Congress has given him their blessing. So what the fuck do you think the courts are going to be able to do to stop this? And what the fuck makes you think the Supreme Court would even allow it?

If states started seriously threatening to withhold federal payments, Trump would just send in the National guard. Or the military. And before the "But that would trigger civil war!!!!!", it ain't triggering shit. Trump just rolled his troops into downtown LA and started yanking citizens off the streets while Stephen Miller literally went on Twitter and told Newsom "You have no say in this, we are in control, and federal law will be enforced". And Newsom stood there and took it like a cuck. There was no violent rebellion, no resistance to the military takeover of LA. They're still there.

The courts are not going to save us. They've just been stripped of whatever ability they had to even try. I mean, should the states at least try to go through the courts? Yeah. Not that it'll matter much because the Supreme Court will just overturn any lower court decision anyway and either order the states to pay or allow Trump to seize the funds. But in the long run, it'll be a symbolic gesture of resistance as they either bend the knee and make the payments or have the payments taken from them.

Until violent rebellion happens, this is the way it is now. Trump has closed off all other viable avenues. And good luck organizing any kind of rebellion without having your group be infiltrated and everyone shipped off to some 3rd world country on treason charges long before it hits critical mass or manages to accomplish anything.