400 million? Wasn’t it 300, up from 200?
Just started another forever war in the Middle East…time to build a ballroom.
This is so alarming. Doesn’t have authorization. Does it. It gets pulled back. It is destroyed. History is gone. No other repercussions?!
Hope he destroys the rest of the building. It’s a symbol of oppression.
The power of the US president has been growing year after year. In the past sometimes it was constrained by laws, but those laws have been changed over the last 250 years. Other times it was constrained by customs and precedent, but Trump has ignored those. So, now Americans are realizing what it’s like to be ruled by a mad king.
In one possible future, Americans agree this can never be allowed to happen again, and the constitution is dramatically changed.
But, the more likely future is that there’s squabbling over changes to the constitution or laws and nothing happens until there’s either a civil war or an invasion or something to finally put an end to the American experiment.
Ironic that you use a monarchist term to describe one of the oldest countries in the world that has retained their current form of government since inception.
Has it though? At the beginning the US was a loose confederation of states, each with a lot of power and a strong identity. These days the states are much weaker and a lot more authority is held by the mad king. Even if you ignore all the constitutional amendments, the US has changed its form of government a lot since the early days.
There’s been some adjustment within the framework, but we are one of the oldest countries that hasn’t thrown out their framework to start over with a new government ideology. I would agree that some of that adjustment comes extremely close to shattering load bearing beams of the framework, but that hasn’t happened quite yet.
Unlike, for instance, China or Russia, both of which have thrown the framework completely out the window in favor of a new framework twice in the last century.
The question of: if we need a new framework, or need to modify the existing framework to be better for the people and humanity is a discussion for a different thread.
Regardless, “The American Experiment,” is what the British, and what became Germany’s aristocracy referred to us as, until after The Civil War, because they saw us as the death knell of “The Right and Proper God Given Rule of Kings, (and queens,)” and were hoping that The US would fail as an idea and political system. I also suspect that the fact that the US version of democracy being based almost entirely on a system that the local Native Americans had been using successfully for over 15,000 years may have also played into their fears about this.
I’d argue that even though the Americans split from the British because of the power of the British king, in many ways the British system is the same as it was when the US first formed as a country. There’s still a king in charge, there’s still a house of commons, there’s still a house of lords, the courts work the same way. It’s just that gradually the king has receded from being a key decision-maker to a ceremonial figurehead.
Also, I think there’s a lot more in common between the British system and the American system than there is between the American system and any Native American system.
The British system has the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The American system has the same two bodies just renamed to the House of Representatives and Senate. They function in a very similar way to the British system. The British King had close advisors in a cabinet, so did the US president, they just use different terms: “minister” vs “secretary”. The king was the head of the armed forces, the president was commander in chief.
Even elections were effectively the same between Britain and its rebel colony. White men who owned property were allowed to vote, and the method of voting was similar.
I’m not sure where you get the idea it has something to do with how Native Americans did things.
Great Britain is specifically why I only called the US one of the oldest. You guys have barely modified your framework since what, the battle of Hastings or some shit around 1200 when the Magna Carta was written?
Yeah, that shit has lasted far longer than it ever should have to be quite honest. I can only chalk that up to Brits and their stiff upper lip. Y’all don’t seem to like upsetting the tea cart.
If you read The Constitution of the Six Nations, you’ll see why I said they had a bit more influence than The Magna Carta, and Commonwealth Law. After all only 2 of the colonies remained commonwealths to the present day, and only 3 in the last century.
Almost the only thing we didn’t directly rip from their constitution, that is in their constitution, was the concept that “all laws passed must directly benefit all children of the next 7 generations of unborn children.”
The founding fathers also referred to the US as an experiment. It’s literally part of George Washington’s first inaugural address.
True. We rather quickly stopped using the term. Jefferson, and Madison used it a couple times and stopped. No other American president uttered the phrase after that because the experiment was already done. We achieved self sufficiency.
Now imagine how Iran is feeling right about now.
Ohhh. Make them remediate back to the original form.
…using the same products, tools and methods. It’s like if you’re cursed with owning an historic building in the UK, you’re stuck doing any renos with 19th century artisans using hand tools.
It’s gonna be great, guys.
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Fun fact, those laws got imported into the US, so at least East of the Mississippi River, the same shit applies, though admittedly it is newer techniques than the freaking 800’s like your historical buildings.
Trump ignores judge … as is tradition.
This congress will probably ok it anyway.
But the thing is, that’s the way it should be. If they approve fine whatever. But the president can’t just do random shit.
Or I guess now a days he can… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Looool leave it half done and then have the next president set it on fire
Next president ROFL!
I think there should be no next president, America needs to stay single for a while
We really just need to work on ourselves.
Honestly we are going to need a whole new constitution
You’re going to need to clean the ketchup stains off of this one.
Or uhhh we could just start enforcing the current one
Its obviously inadequate.
It’s flawed and I also think it needs an update, but while people mostly tried to enforce it it made 250 years
I do wonder a but about the times the parties changed since presumably that was a train wreck for the way the US is set up, but the country continued on
Beter: conclude that going alone hasn’t worked. The experiment failed. Back to being English it is.
Welcome home chaps!
If y’all hadn’t been dipshits and done a Brexit I’d be all for it
Hehe touche!!
The largest protest in US history, 8 million people, was the No Kings protest last weekend.
That would be extremely ironic
Like: “well… Not THAT king”
It’s “No KingS”. They’re allowed to have one.
An Elvis impersonator came to our rally…
Nah, the upper midwest wants to join canada.
They’re waiting for a better offer
Isn’t Canada still technically a British territory?
Not for quite a while, no. We have a prime minister and everything.
How can you have survived school and know so little about your closest country?
It’s part of the commonwealth still, isn’t it? The prime minister is chief of state, but head of state is still the king of england, no?
No
Think we should use one of the systems originally proposed but they didn’t go with. Like a plural executive system where two or three separately elected individuals comprise a Presidential committee.
This was favored by founders worried about a new monarchy being formed via the Unitary Executive system. Sounds familiar.
If some weird genie wish suddenly granted me the ability to rewrite the American constitution from the ground up, I think my main focus would be to end the two-party system by switching Congress to proportional representation.
After that, a lot depends on the details of the genie wish. If I can impose whatever changes I wanted I’d probably go further - a drastic reduction of presidential power is an obvious step, perhaps have both a president and a prime minister like many European countries do with the duties split between them. Strict term limits might also be good, though I’d want to study that issue a bit more - there are some upsides to having very experienced politicians in government along with the obvious downsides we’re seeing.
The Supreme Court needs reform, maybe give the judges a fixed term so that they don’t end up stuck with random health conditions determining who gets to appoint who and for how long. More broadly, we’re seeing a lot of flaws in the judicial branch and law enforcement that need correcting. Maybe have multiple Department of Justices with separate leadership to keep each other in check? Tricky.
Or just put an AI in charge of it all and see what happens.
Proportional representation, and no artificial limit on the size of the House. A lot of our current problems are made much worse by the 435 limit created in 1929 in large part because they didn’t want to have to keep making the building bigger. Using the same proportions as then we should be at like 1500 House seats now. District sizes should be determined by the smallest district on the country. If the smallest district has 30,000 people, then that’s what every district must represent.
Definitely at least 2 heads for the Executive, maybe even make it three. One of the originally proposed systems had 3 executives elected separately operating as a committee.
The Supreme Court matches the number of federal judicial districts, so 12 at the moment. No more than 2 appointments per presidential term. The judicial branch also takes over control of the Marshal service. Separate from the Executive, specifically to enforce Judicial decisions. Relying on the Executive for this was a ridiculous oversight.
Or just put an AI in charge of it all and see what happens.
Managed Democracy I think my main focus would be to end the two-party system by switching Congress to proportional representation.
If I understand your comment correctly what you are describing is how Congress was originally setup! It was broken by the Re-Apportionment Act of 1912. No need to re-write the Constitution it’s “just” a Federal Law.
a drastic reduction of presidential power is an obvious step
The President only has as much power as they do because Congress has been steadily handing it over since the 1940s.
perhaps have both a president and a prime minister like many European countries do
We weren’t far away from the spirit of that but we broke it in 1804 with the passage of the 12th Amendment.
The Supreme Court needs reform…
It’s really not SCOTUS that needs reformed it’s actually our Constitution. It was simply never meant for the environment in which it now exists, it’s unfit for purpose. The easiest way to explain is that the US Constitution wasn’t meant to control an all powerful central authority, it was meant to prevent one. SCOTUS twisted that shortly after the Civil War and now here we are trying to manage ourselves by looking at a mirror reflection of our guiding document.
Stupid.
I refuse to believe this man won’t drop dead someday
He’ll die, but will the next ruler be elected or appointed? That’s the big question.
Or will he seize power in a coup? Or simply be the only person left alive after all the bombs stop exploding?
The monarchy will continue.
Next premier, then.
leave it half done
This is exactly why the “war powers act” also fails. Because it lets the president start a war if he pinky-swears to ask congress for authorization later.
But no congress is ever going so say “no” at that point since it would be potentially dangerous and wildly unpopular to do so.
Same here - I’ll bet stupid money that at least 25% of democrats even vote to allow it to continue rather than be responsible for a gaping hole in the ground.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington granted a preservationist group’s request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily halts President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project.
Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims because “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”
Seems this judge hasn’t heard of the “try and stop me” statute.
could he prosecute the contractors if they continue a work that is illegal?
Judges don’t bring charges, prosecutors do. Presumably, the authority with jurisdiction over work on the White House would be the Trump DOJ.
Contempt.
Oh shit, Trump is going to come unglued about this. This is his favorite thing. He talks about the ballroom at Iran briefings because it’s all he can think about
Of course it’s his favorite thing. He’s been using the project as a way to get “donations” from companies and people he did favors for. The same with his inauguration ceremony, which was pretty shit but also garnered hundreds of millions in donations. All of that money is going straight in Trumps pocket.
He’ll be all like “We got rogue judges!!”
Well - fortunately for him he also loves throwing insane rants about “woke” this and that. So he’ll have that…
He talks about it at Iran war briefings as a distraction from how shit the war is going.
The levels beneath the ballroom is conspiratorially much more interesting.
Oh the tantrum we’re about to see. That ballroom was Trump’s favorite soother.
About time. This decision should have came down before demo started.
Impossible. Trump and his enablers just started this illegal demolition without asking. You know, because there’s no consequences…
Have come
if I was President I would turn it into a sex thing
If you were this current President, it would be a sex with minors thing.
What a backwards country. Destroys the whitehouse, then a year later decides it’s illegal and must be stopped. At this point you might as well finish it, fucking idiots…
Well, I guess Congress could form a commission to decide what to do with it.
I don’t especially like Trump’s aesthetic decisions at all. Personally, I kind of like the comparatively-modest look that the US historically went with. But that aside, but I don’t know if a ballroom would be the worst thing. Could remodel it to be whatever too, under the next administration.
I’d be fine with spending some taxpayer money on it. I mean, we do sporadically need to renovate the thing, and we rebuilt the entire thing once after the British burned it and then again basically gutted the entire thing for major renovations later. Might as well get the next renovation done now, seeing as he’s torn the wing down already, give it some decades to last before we have to do another gut-and-rebuild.
