President Donald Trump is openly hinting at taking over the midterm elections by declaring a national emergency.
Newsmax’s Wayne Allen Root interviewed Trump just after midnight Tuesday morning, and said that Trump had the right to declare a national security emergency next month, forcing through photo identification, proof of citizenship, limits on mail-in ballots, and other heavy voting restrictions. Trump seemed to like that suggestion, but didn’t want to tip his hand.
“Let me just say stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that,” Trump said.
Trump is afraid of massive Republican losses in November’s midterms, and has been unsuccessfully pushing his allies in Congress to pass the draconian SAVE Act. With that appearing more unlikely each day, Democrats and other Trump critics are raising concerns that he may take drastic action, such as declaring a national emergency and maybe deploying legions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the polls.
In fact, Democrats have been trying for close to a year to get documents from the Department of Homeland Security regarding its policies and memos on sending ICE agents to polls. Agents were seen at polling places in Texas during its May primaries and in California in June, but when Democrats used the Freedom of Information Act to investigate, they were sent useless press clippings.
If Trump tries to invoke national security to take over federal elections, it would shatter precedent and could set off lawsuits and protests across the country. His repeated, disproven claims about voter fraud and rigged elections suggest that he’ll make the same excuses in November. The question is how to ensure a fair and accurate result that can stand up to his attacks.
Americans have been putting up with stolen elections for a long fucking time. How many people are willing to get into a shooting battle with the ICE-aligned PD or chud-filled national guard over Republicans holding seats in states and districts they've been squatting in for decades?
Even if people are individually angry, there is no collective organization that opposes the current administration. At best, you have good hearted pacifists who play the game by the rules and get rolled every two years. At worst, a bunch of grifters and bait-and-switchers promising to take your money and votes for a sense of false hope, then blame civil rights groups and minority voting blocs for not fighting hard enough whenever they lose.
Sure, you can say you're at war. But it's you and what army? Name, rank, and serial number soldier.
Dude, did you not see the UNARMED woman standing up to ICE with a gun to her face?
You have no idea how fast a grass movement happens.
You're not going to beat an ICE agents gun with your face. Let me know when it's an armed woman.
Occupy, Tea Party, BLM, Anti-vaxers, #MeToo, Palestine protests. Grassroots movement pop up fast and die out even faster.
The Tea Party might be a bad example as they pretty successfully mainstreamed a whole bunch of crazies and got them elected. We're still dealing with them. I wish any left movement had half the organization and backing the Tea Party did.
The Tea Party was an outgrowth of the '08 Ron Paul movement that got devoured from the inside out by neocons and tech fascists. And that was back in the '10s, years before Trump made his fateful run.
Yeah, people won under the Tea Party banner. But mostly empty suits like Paul Ryan and ethno-nationalists like Mike Lee. Your Thomas Massie types were always vanishingly few and far between.
Very big assumption that it'd just be a shooting battle. It'd probably be more like car bombs.
Don't yuck other people's yum
Quite a few, if necessary to defend our rights. Why do you think they got run out of Minneapolis? People started barricading the street and doing armed patrols. In a number of other locations, people actually started shooting. Some were never apprehended, some got insane sentences. But stealing an election openly and shamelessly is a whole different ball game.
Lmao wtf are you talking about? Are you just a liberal who never left the house? There is substantial organization against Trump's Gestapo.
Ahh yes. Ask Washington DC how that's working out. They have National Guard there posted and now have legal authority to do so until Jan of 2029. Trump has already said this will be part of the plan for national elections is to send ICE and National Guard to ensure 'safe' voting. If it's not being dispelled in DC, or really anywhere (more people have been kicked out of the US than basically anytime in history), how do you actually expect things to be different?
ICE didn't get 'run' out of Minneapolis, they finished their job, they nabbed 3400 people, and deported 1700 of them. Oh and killed a few Americans while they were at it. Minneapolis was about as effective at handling ICE as the BLM was at actually changing black policing in the US.
...Yeah, DC, just about the only place in the US that doesn't require a governor's approval or Insurrection Act criteria to be met in order to call in the National Guard. Great example, for sure, yeah man, totally gonna expand to the whole country.
ICE absolutely got run out of Minneapolis. Tf you mean they "finished their job", do you think there are zero immigrants left to kidnap in the whole state?
You can keep crying and doomsaying and insisting we're powerless, that's what liberals are good for after all. The people actually in the streets (which I'm increasingly certain is not you) will hold it down, don't worry. Not to mention Trump probably doesn't even have the political capital to pull off a coup amongst his own base anymore.
This is a fantasy.
the problem isn’t that people won’t, it’s that people don’t want to be the crazed lone gun man.
one of the reasons i hate no kings, among a TON of issues. it’s their stance on armed protesting. they are organized around cooperating with police to ‘other’ anyone they find is armed, but armed protestors is not to stand there with a conceal carry you are not going to draw, it’s to stand there with your weapon out as an open threat to tyrants. you need solidarity.
i kinda believe that no kings is not there to do anything but provide a circus, so that people who would otherwise protest with leverage, gets corraled with the group that would stop protesting because the police tell them to go home.
if you protest with a gun by your self, you will be charged with branishing, if you are white… worse if you are not.
One might even suspect they are organized as a means of building solidarity with the police. That the police (and the national guard and the military at-large) are positioned as a neutral unbiased arbiter, and not a reactionary gang leveraged by private industry to intimidate and displace the working class.
Definitely felt like it was a manufactured outlet for dissent. Especially when you had those protests in Europe that had to be rebranded as "No Tyrants", for fear of offending actual kings.
I mean the 50501 OG leadership got ousted pretty early on in the movement, by what seemed to be DNC "centrist" types, which is why the 50501movement reddit got made by the OG leadership afterwards. So I do find it believable that No Kings was meant to waste our energy and frustrations so we didn't do anything truly effective with that energy.
the largest national protest in america, and it didn’t even make the news other then as a foot note punctuating trumps fucking birthday military parade.
and the goal? to show everyone how mad we were and to back the democratic centrist. it was a fucking joke and a waste of my fucking day. it angered me that such potential was wasted. no demands, no leverage, no threat, just everyone waving a flag. the police didn’t even bother to show up. a disgrace
It was fun to show up in keffiyehs and watch the old libs clutch their pearls, at least.
And to pass out anti-ICE info to middle-aged and older folks who may not have necessarily been aware of those resources.
But yeah fuck No Kings.
Yup, if your "protest" doesn't have the background of potential violence when your needs aren't met. That's a parade not a protest. Something that a lot of these "pacifist" types either don't understand, or choose to ignore. The whole point of a protest is to show you're a threat, that things will go poorly if we can't negotiate in good faith.
...You left the part out of your quote where I specified examples of it already happening
Battle of Algiers style my bruh. individual actions that can't be connected to a "group." So what if no one is behind me. It's live in a terrible nation and die because I'm gay and disabled or die fighting a fruitless battle. I choose the latter because that's with in my control. I can't speak for everyone, but I took the "you first" idea very seriously.
Damn right. A lot of these naysayers probably haven't even knocked on their neighbor doors to build that organization. I mean I did, got a BBQ going, invited my neighbors and got to know them. Once I built rapport, I asked how they felt about ICE and if they would be interested in mutual defense in case they show up on our street. We have been stockpiling food, medicine, and ammunition since then.
Admittedly getting anybody to do more than though has been met with push back. Maybe that will change after midterms, maybe it won't. Either way I'm with you, and agree that a way forward is individual actions that can't be connected to a group. They started the war, and now the livestock who aren't yet affected think that their chastisements matter. But really their opinion matters to me as little as it matters to their masters. Which is to say, not at all.
People who want brown, black, disabled and neurodivergent people to sit down and take it should be the first ones volunteering to be in a Concentration Camp. After all, according to them, it's not a big enough deal to get violent over. So let's see them prove it.
I'm sorry, what? It could absolutely be connected to the National Liberation Front. That's who the French were trying to run down and were willing to torture half the damned city to find. Arguably, it was the French hyper-police response to the guerrilla group that sparked enough backlash to yield a national revolt.
Even then, the French haven't properly decoupled from Algeria to this day. We're a far cry from any kind of Battle for Algiers in this country, much less a multi-generational independent government grappling with the long history of humanitarian crimes perpetrated against our people.
I said style, not that the USA is like Algeria. I'm glad you read up on it at some point. But, the point is that groups are not forming because it's abit too risky. Like, if a group did form, it'd be the wet dream of the dictatorship. A real scape goat. A real entity. Not the fake ones they make up. that's why it has to be loose as fuck. Individuals doing things. Like the take down of flock cameras recently. That's not a group, that's individuals.
I would like everyone to unite, but sadly, too many are afraid. I am not. So I will be brave for them.
One hell of a movie.
I might suggest it's less an issue of fear than division. Getting people to work together is hard, especially when cynacism runs as high as narcacism.
I hear you, but, for sure it's fear, even my most staunch liberal friends are saying that they are afraid. I will also agree that there is cynicism, but it's the fallout flavor / flowey flavor. Absurdism is in on there somewhere. Nihilism has done a number on us. (Minor edit changed "Ai" mistype to "in" )