300
Except trump has something like 75% approval rating with republicans. So its wishful thinking, unfortunately.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
300 points (99.7% liked)
politics
21970 readers
3654 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
That the problem, the republican party captured the levers of power able to do anything about it. This is what happens when you get a Republican clean sweep.
A lot of things he's done should have invoked the 25th ammendment
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.
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.
He should have been banned from running long ago when he incited an insurrection trying to stay in power.
Banned from earth.
A crazy, washed-up former reality TV host running for a new term as president while in exile on the moon sounds like the plot of a fun sci-fi political thriller, but not a reality I want to live in.
It should have been done even before that when he blatantly started contributing to the Russian war effort
25th Amendment needs to start with the Vice President, so we know that's not going to happen:
Section 4
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Even if the VP started it the president can still override them unless unconscious/in a coma.
This seems like such a short-sighted design by our founding fathers and subsequent leaders when we look at it with today's lens. I know they likely would have assumed that people would riot with pitchforks and torches of anyone engaged in corruption during their era, including having the support of the VP. I know the 25th amendment was a more recent addition (1967), but I'm surprised there weren't more catching points for this written into the foundation.
I guess they hoped we would never allow things to get this shitty.
The 25th wasn't intended for illegal actions. It was for when the president has a stroke and goes comatose, or other forms of incapacitation.
Impeachment is the constitution's main way to get rid of a corrupt president.
The founders didn't consider it at all, the 25th wasn't added until 1967. Pre-Nixon even.
Bear in mind that in the early years of the USA, the vice president was generally the person who was running against the sitting President for the seat. It was another built in check to power, though unfortunately not codified. The idea of just picking a VP candidate came much later.
Not that much later. Jefferson was the third president, he's the one who decided voters be damned he's picking the VP.
The corruption was a feature, not a bug. The founders of the US were not good dudes.
By modern standards, absolutely not. By the standards of the time, they were pretty radical. Part of why France was a major ally during the revolutionary war.
Unlike all the modern gooch sniffers who treat the founding fathers as infallible and the last word on everything. Including modern issues they could have never imagined. The founding fathers knew their constitution and laws were never perfect. And would likely need updating every 20 to 50 years. They didn't fail us. We failed them in many ways however. We allowed those who amassed power to only amass more power. And put up roadblocks to any meaningful change in most instances. Which is why it was so hard to get things like civil rights or women's suffrage. Nearly impossible to get anything at all today. Because it does not serve the entrenched wealthy and Powerful. And your average man is so uninformed that you really don't know what's going on or who the actual enemy is.
Our whole system was hanging on the hope that We the People would identify and not elect a power-hungry egomaniac.
On the contrary, they assumed that grossly unfit morons would have mass appeal and that's why the constitution has so many provisions to make sure that popular will is not reflected at the ballot box.
They hoped that the rich would not elect a grossly unfit traitor, which all of history shows is a laughably stupid assumption.
"We The People" only referred to white land owning men. Even with the expansions of reconstruction, women's suffrage, and civil rights (all won by working class organization and opposition) our entire representative democracy has been designed to the benefit of capital owners. Neoliberalism just shifted that into overdrive.
The design seems to be to prevent a single person going rogue and doing whatever. Not designed for when someone has won elections and start damaging the country.
All the nonsense of "Republic is not a democracy because democracy is mob rule and not good for minorities" seems to no longer work.
Any threat to Canada is a threat to the whole commonwealth!
Yes but No
No country will put themselves in a strategically loosing situation willfully. The UK is militarily very intertwined with the US : An abrupt divorce with the US isn’t possible. Just like Ukraine’s European allies are still buying Russian gaz, many NATO allies will try to play both side and the smaller Canada essentially being abandoned to itself. Easier to organize a blockade with the Atlantic Ocean as a boarder after Canada is attacked and mostly lost. I say this painfully as a Canadian. Hopefully we have time to make it too expensive to attack us.
Canadian, eh?
Eh, "should" this, "supposed to" that, whatever.
Lol