Trump directs Pentagon to pay troops during shutdown
www.bbc.co.uk
The president's directive would ensure US military personnel don't miss a scheduled paycheque next week.

Donald Trump is directing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay military personnel despite the federal government shutdown.

The president said on Saturday that Hegseth must make sure troops do not miss out on their regular paycheque, scheduled for Wednesday. The directive comes as other government employees have already had some pay withheld and others are being laid off.

“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

  • Kirp123@lemmy.world
    2·
    22 hours ago

    The founders disdained European-style parties, and did not want to replicate them here. They envisioned a country where individuals ran for office, and then all came to Congress representing their individual districts. They did not forsee how easy communication would get in the future, making the local District perspective less important.

    The first US party was formed in 1789, that’s only 13 years after the US declared independence and only 6 years after the end of the Revolutionary War. Pretty much all of the founders were alive when the Federalist Party was formed, communications didn’t get much better than in 1776. By 1794-1795 both the Federalist Party and the newly formed opposition Democratic-Republican Party had state networks working on a local level in pretty much all the states.

    I always love how Americans treat their current 2 party system as a new thing that arose due to modern communications but instead it was there since basically the beginning of their country.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      21 hours ago

      But it is still a fact that the 2 party system is not engrained in our founding documents anywhere, and we have no idea of an “opposition” party. Either one party controls the Presidency and Congress at the same time, or it doesn’t.

      And although those 2 parties did emerge early in the country’s history, they eventually dissolved, and are no longer around in any capacity. Another poster here noted that parties are simply human nature.

      Rather, the current two-party system is an artifact of the first-past-the-post voting that states adopted. The Constitution doesn’t even mandate it, but it is how most states have run their elections since the founding.