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submitted 3 months ago by PortoPeople@lemm.ee to c/politics@lemmy.world
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[-] Freshparsnip@lemm.ee 108 points 3 months ago

A lot of things he's done should have invoked the 25th ammendment

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 50 points 3 months ago

A lot of things in Trumps last term too. And a few things in Bidens term. The 25th doesnt really function.

We used to talk about "constituional crisis" too, and Trump is now just ignoring judges and asking what anyone will do about it. That should also trigger the 25th, if congress lived up to their oaths, but their oaths are vastly secondary to party politics, self interest, and money making, on both sides.

[-] samus12345@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago

What did Biden do that warranted invoking the 25th? I suspect if you think it should have with him, it should have with every president.

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Our laws plainly spell out that if a state is interfering with aid distribution, aid and weapons to them must stop. Biden refused to admit that Israel was interfering with aid distribution in any way. According to Biden the gazans have food aid and aid workers have not been interfered with. I dont see how this violation can possibly be debated.

In the face of strenuous complaints by congress, Biden refused to admit that Israel could plausibly be involved in genocide, which would have triggered automatic safeguards in the Leahy laws and other laws around shipment of weapons and giving of foreign monetary aid.

Israel/Biden also repeatedly and consistently violated the geneva conventions, which we are a signatory of, so thats binding law in our legal system. That makes him a war criminal with blood on his hands.

Biden swore an oath to faithfully execute our laws, which he grossly violated, doing massive amounts of grievous criminal harm. These are the very definition of "high crimes".

https://www.commondreams.org/news/leahy-law-israel

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/17/palestine-israel-leahy-lawsuit

[-] samus12345@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago

And that's different than what any other US president would have done? Kowtowing to Israel is US government policy.

[-] lapping6596@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Nothing different. I'd argue that's another indicator that the US's 'health' has been bad for a long time.

[-] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

The point is whether the 25th amendment should have been invoked.

If the conditions were met, then other past presidents doing the same thing just means the 25th amendment should have been invoked in those situations as well.

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[-] DrFistington@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ok, so def like -100 karma points for Biden, but it's kind of petty to focus on that when Trump was already at like -20 million before he even took office

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

Is there some rule that we just imprison whichever one lawbreaker is worst? I dont think thats how laws work. Supposedly we are a nation of laws.

[-] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 months ago

Kyle Rittenhouse has entered the chat

[-] DrFistington@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I mean there is, thats why if you break the law and speed you get a ticket and pay a fine, but if you break the law and commit premeditated homicide, you get life in prison.

The issue is that laws have to be applied evenly to everyone, and penalties need to scale with income level. They need to be both punitive and prohibitive to EVERYONE.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Oh come on, that’s ridiculous. I was with you calling Biden an enabler for Israel’s actions in Gaza, but I just don’t see the leap to war crime

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Well we can google what is a war crime.

Lets do that:

What qualifies as a war crime?

A war crime, a serious violation of international humanitarian law, is a breach of the laws or customs of war committed in the context of an armed conflict, whether international or non-international, and can lead to individual criminal responsibility.

Here's a breakdown of what qualifies as a war crime: Key Elements:

Context: War crimes always occur within the context of an armed conflict, whether international (between states) or non-international (internal conflicts).

Violation of International Law: They involve serious breaches of the laws and customs of war, as defined in international treaties like the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Individual Responsibility: Perpetrators of war crimes incur individual criminal responsibility under international law.

Examples of War Crimes: Attacks Against Civilians: Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population or civilian objects.

Torture and Cruel Treatment: Inflicting torture, cruel treatment, or inhuman treatment on prisoners of war or civilians.

Taking Hostages: Taking hostages.

Pillaging: Pillaging or looting property.

Sexual Violence: Rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, or any other form of sexual violence.

Use of Prohibited Weapons: Using weapons that cause unnecessary suffering or are prohibited by international law, such as chemical weapons or cluster munitions.

Disregard for the Wounded and Sick: Attacking medical personnel, facilities, or transports, or preventing them from carrying out their duties.

Deportation or Transfer of Populations: Forcibly deporting or transferring populations from their homes.

Use of Child Soldiers: Enlisting or using children under the age of 15 in armed conflict.

Killing or Wounding Surrendered Combatants: Killing or wounding combatants who have surrendered or are hors de combat (out of action).

Important Considerations:

Proportionality:

Military actions must be proportionate, meaning the harm caused to civilians and civilian objects must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.

Distinction: Military actions must distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between military objectives and civilian objects.

Necessity: Military actions must be necessary to achieve a legitimate military objective and should not cause unnecessary suffering.

Humanity: Military actions must be conducted with humanity and should avoid unnecessary suffering.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Which of those did Biden commit?

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I'll just block you instead. You clearly arent worth the time for me or anyone else to reply to.

[-] Franklin@lemmy.ca 42 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That's the problem, the republican party captured the levers of power and now get to police themselves. This is what happens when you get a Republican clean sweep.

[-] techclothes@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

People who voted for AOC and Trump really confused the fuck out of me. Shit made zero sense.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 41 points 3 months ago

The guy already should be rotting in prison for a whole host of reasons, but here we are.

[-] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 40 points 3 months ago

It should have been done even before that when he blatantly started contributing to the Russian war effort

[-] WiseScorpio@lemmy.world 36 points 3 months ago

In his deal with Putin, Trump is closing the investigations into child trafficking and kidnapping of Ukrainian children, and closing down war crimes committed by Russian military.

I agree, Trump advocating for invading Canada and Greenland is enough for the 25th Amendment and on moral grounds I hold him accountable for absolving Putin and Russia of war crimes.

[-] skozzii@lemmy.ca 34 points 3 months ago

What should have happened in America and what is actually happening are two different things.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago

Jesus Christ that comes across as even worse than Putin deciding he needed to annex Ukraine. How is it that in a world of too many bad guys, we’re turning into the worse guy?

[-] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago

Trump being elected should have invoked the 2nd amendment, but as we all know the American citizens are the most spineless bags of hot air since the hot air balloon.

[-] dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 3 months ago

Trump’s Call to Annex Canada as a State Should Have Invoked the 25th Amendment

The president was clearly irrational. Instead, there was Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick seconding the motion.

By Charles P. PiercePublished: Mar 17, 2025 5:29 PM EDT bookmarksSave Article president trump signs executive orders in the oval office

Chip Somodevilla//Getty Images

What has become plain this week is that the entire administration has committed itself to the president’s pipe dream of annexing Canada as the 51st state. It wasn’t just the president’s bizarre appearance with Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, in which the president took a short stroll around the Izonkosphere.

“Canada only works as a state. … This would be the most incredible country
visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through
it, between Canada and the U.S., just a straight artificial line. Somebody
did it a long time ago, many, many decades ago, and makes no sense.”

It is necessary at this point to mention that the so-called “artificial line” is usually referred to as a “border.” The president seems to grasp the concept when referring to the “artificial line” separating the United States and Mexico. Strange, that. The president went on.

“It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state. I love [O, Canada]. I
think it’s great. Keep it, but it will be for the state, one of our
greatest states, maybe our greatest state.”

Wonderful. He’s going to let them keep their national anthem, one of the world’s most stirring, but only as a state song, like “On the Banks of the Wabash,” “Georgia on My Mind,” or “On, Wisconsin.” I suppose he’ll let them keep their hockey teams, too.

The whole episode should have brought about an instantaneous Cabinet meeting at which the 25th Amendment was invoked. The president was clearly irrational. Instead, there was Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick seconding the motion. From the Hill:

“The best way, the president has said it, the best way to actually merge
the economies of Canada and the United States is for Canada to become our
51st state. If they want to merge it, that’s how you make it the 51st
state,” Lutnick said on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co.

It really is a cult, you know.

On the Bluesky app, journalist and author Garrett Epps shrewdly pointed out that in Fletcher Knebel’s Night of Camp David, one of the first manifestations of President Mark Hollenbach’s mental illness was his secret desire to merge the United States and Canada—as well as all of Scandanavia—into a single entity called “Aspen.” In fact, the book was reissued during the first Trump administration, and it was referenced on TV by both Rachel Maddow and Bob Woodward. Now, though, with the president’s grand design seeming to parallel the grandiose foreign-policy proposal of the fictional President Hollenbach, the book has taken on an even greater salience.

(By the way, the hero of the book is a young, ambitious first-term senator named James McVeagh with whom the crazy president shares his notions in the aforementioned night at Camp David. Maybe you can see J. Divan Vance in that role, but I can’t.)

In the novel, the crazy president sounds almost rational in explaining the irrational.

“Canada is the wealthiest nation on earth.” Hollenbach’s words raced after
each other. …“The mineral riches under her soil are incredible in their
immensity. Even with modern demands, they are well-nigh inexhaustible.
Believe me, Jim, Canada will be the seat of power in the next century and,
properly exploited and conserved, her riches can go for a thousand years.
...

.. But the merger of know-how, power, and character, the United States,
Canada, and Scandinavia, the new nation under one parliament and one
president could keep the peace for centuries. The president of the union
should be the man who dreamed the dreams of giants. ...

… “I only exclude Europe at the start,” said Hollenbach, and his face
quickly lighted again. “Right now, Europe has nothing to give us. But once
we have built the fortress of Aspen, I predict the nations of Europe will
pound at the door to get in. And, if they don’t, we’ll have the power to
force them into the new nation. … There are other kinds of pressure, trade
duties and barriers, financial measures, economic sanctions, if you will.
But, never fear, Jim. England, France, Germany, and the Low Countries, too,
can be brought to heel.

When Knebel wrote his classic Seven Days in May, about an attempted military junta in Washington, he was drawing on inside knowledge about the turmoil in the Kennedy administration between the president, the Joint Chiefs, and the intelligence community—turmoil that would do a lot to feed suspicions after the president’s murder in 1963. JFK was a big fan of the book, so much that he allowed director John Frankenheimer to photograph the White House so he could make the sets for his film adaptation.

In the case of Night of Camp David, Knebel was able to draw on American attempts to absorb Canada that dated back to the founding of the nation. In fact, Article XI of the original Articles of Confederation read as follows:

Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the
United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages
of this Union.

The American Revolution helped the new country break off those parts of British North America in and around the Great Lakes. We tried to seize the entire country in the War of 1812, but we failed, and we got Washington burned in the bargain. Through the years up to the American Civil War, there were annexation groups on both sides of the border.

In 1860, Secretary of State William Seward came close to annexing the territory from Washington state all the way up to Alaska, which at the time was owned by Russia. For a while, it looked like Great Britain might actually swing for the deal. But,when Seward bought Alaska in 1868, the people in the region began to feel uncomfortable with the U.S. closing in from both the north and south, so popular opinion shifted. Then, of course, there were the Fenians.

The Fenian Brotherhood was a product of one of the periodic risings in Ireland against British rule. It was the American wing of what was called in Ireland the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The American Fenians were a substantial force. They had money—upwards of $500,000—and weapons and an army made up of veterans of the American Civil War. (They were led by John O’Mahony, who’d fought with the 69th New York, part of the famed Irish Brigade.) After the war, the Fenians launched a series of raids into Canada. They came in two bursts—one in 1866 and another in 1870–71. They occurred all over Canada, from Manitoba to the Maritimes. None of them succeeded, and one of them, a raid around the Minnesota–Manitoba border, never even made it into Canada. The only real result was to strengthen Canadian nationalism; the raids were pivotal in the eventual development of the Canadian confederation in 1867, an arrangement that the current U.S. president believes would make a helluva 51st state. In the debate over forming the confederation, Sir John MacDonald said:

If we do not take advantage of the time, if we show ourselves unequal to
the occasion, it may never return, and we shall hereafter bitterly and
unavailingly regret having failed to embrace the happy opportunity now
offered of founding a great nation under the fostering care of Great
Britain, and our Sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria.

One of MacDonald’s primary concerns while forming the confederation was American meddling, especially in the rebellious western parts of Canada. He wrote to his minister of finance:

I cannot understand the desire of the Colonial Office, or of the Company,
to saddle the responsibility of the government on Canada just now. It would
so completely throw the game into the hands of the insurgents and the
Yankee wirepullers, who are to some extent influencing and directing the
movement from St. Paul that we cannot foresee the consequences.

You always have to watch out for those Yankee wirepullers. Can’t trust them worth a damn.

[-] linuxpriest@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Thanks for that.

[-] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 19 points 3 months ago

Imagine thinking you have a constitution when living under a king lmao

[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

Except trump has something like 75% approval rating with republicans. So its wishful thinking, unfortunately.

[-] Dadifer@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago
[-] Slax@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago

It's the Trump administration -- it doesn't matter what it says.

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 months ago
[-] ctkatz@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

i'm going to take a counter argument here. the united states should annex canada and buy greenland.

why?

because the population of canada is more than california.

because there are 48 democratic senators.

because canada and denmark are both more left leaning than california is.

see where i'm going here? canada and greenland gives dems enough people to force through their agenda through the house and senate. and with enough backlash there's probably going to be a lot of gop senators who aren't going to be senators in 2026, probably enough to hit 69 which would be the minimum to remove trump from office. probably enough to impeach that little lickspittle vance too. and then enough votes for a democratic president (since the house would be run by democrats, 3rd in succession is the speaker of the house) to sign bills giving canada it's "independance" and return greenland to denmark.

if trump wants it that badly, then lets give it to him.

[-] PortoPeople@lemm.ee 14 points 3 months ago

They'll make them a territory like D.C. or P.R. who don't have senators.

[-] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

So you want to forcefully exploit people in other nations for your own benefit too, just in a different way to Trump.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Chances are that if the lonnie and donnie show annex Canada that the idea of free and fair elections would be over. Or, if they were to somehow come out of such a scenario with free and fair elections, they do something to rig Canada so any progressive majority would be blunted (just like it is already) by the Electoral College.

[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 3 points 3 months ago

Eh, "should" this, "supposed to" that, whatever.

this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
656 points (100.0% liked)

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