Every time I come away thinking that the investigators themselves have not spend much (or any) time understanding the basics of these businesses.
And so they resort to what they know: speeches/lectures to let their constituents hear and see them on the record standing for anything.
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you make these links?
javascript:void(open('http://archive.ph/?run=1&url='+encodeURIComponent(document.location)))This is bizarre. ICE is an (enforcement) arm of the government. So the government is investigating Apple for hosting tracking apps used by the government?
Congress has to start working for the people it represents again, so I really hope the Democrats start pushing lots of legislation that addresses the real needs of the people. Even if every bill gets vetoed, make sure Trump and the Republicans around him own the lack of progress in a very visible way to ensure 2028 is an easy-mode Democratic win.
But... they also have to undo the damage to the rule of law that has been supercharged by the Trump administration.
Letting bygones be bygones and trying to move back to the old status quo without addressing actual wrongdoing is how you end up with Trump getting reelected even after January 6th.
If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
Not "where it will score political points" or "where we really want to get that guy". Where just and applicable.
So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
If Todd Blanche weren't busy pursuing Trump's political enemies with frivolous lawsuits, maybe he could have gotten around to this.
Wait, SBF is already in jail.
Against this backdrop, it takes some truly extraordinary selective attention to be scandalized by the Pelosis managing to beat QQQ by one percentage point last time I checked.
I'd support it.
By the same token, if Bill Clinton gets damaged by a full release of the Epstein files? Good. Fuck 'em then. I'm not a team booster. Investigate likely wrongdoing and punish the guilty, regardless of their politics.
Though of course... Nancy Pelosi isn't remotely the only one who likely benefited from insider knowledge, there are long lists of people from both parties who are in the same boat. Pelosi just gets elevated as a figurehead here because of her high profile (and despite not being a big Pelosi fan myself I still think, if we're being honest, at least a smidge of misogyny)
We should also just ban trading for all elected officials during their terms in office.
there is absolutely nothing even remotely true about this. please focus on his real issues like being responsible for the deaths of 14 million people instead of making things up
Do you mean that Russia could have more easily conquered Ukraine thereby bringing about the end of the war?
Congress doesn't have power to prosecute anyone.
That said, you're right. We should impeach Todd Blanche for selective prosecution.
The three listed companies are some of the biggest in the country. If you want to start somewhere, seems like a good place.
"we shouldn't persecute our political enemies" of course, but you are being obtuse if you think what happened to letitia james is similar to what is happening here. it's a bit different when he donates enough to take over the federal government to protect his businesses and secure contracts
Obviously. How else they will understand that they should be your political allies and not the enemy?
Wouldn't that be amazing if Trump will be impeached for his 200 felonies and put in jail for the rest of his life? Along with all his allies who helped him to commit crimes and to avoid the responsibility. And the life sentence for Musk for treason and the other crimes he had committed.
And multi‑billion‑dollars fines for Zuck, Bezos, and others to show everybody that it is not okay to support the worst criminals alive just because they have won the election.
The rule of law no longer exists when crimes are ignored in fear of the appearance of political retribution.
Holding people accountable and fixing the cracks in the system are the only way to ensure the Trump administration doesn't serve as a trial run for an even worse administration in the future.
The worst possible outcome would be for the Democrats to repeat their behavior under Biden and spend all their effort attempting to return to the status quo while pretending the Republican party won't try again the moment they regain power.
Trump was clearly into "vengeful prosecution" territory, at least with some of the people he told DOJ to go after. But "go after nobody" clearly isn't the answer either.
And when you go after someone, if you don't find enough to prosecute, let it go. None of this "try three times to find a case" stuff that Trump's DOJ did.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/11/05/what-de...
No, you don't. In fact that's exactly the wrong approach because it recognizes them as institutions.
Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
Note that I'm using the term oligarch precisely. Not just rich people. Rich people holding direct political power. You don't control that without empowering it, you remove the direct political power.
This is controlling them.
Both sides are wrong on this, giving or accepting.
But more than that - giving bribes is fucking over people who cannot afford to give bribes so they are treated unfairly.
So not only it's a crime - it's also morally evil.
... Wait, what? You prosecute _both_.
> Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally.
The "just following orders" defence is, fairly, notoriously, weak. "Just following requests" is presumably even weaker. If you assist law enforcement in doing something illegal, you shouldn't assume that you're magically in the clear.
[^0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...
Good luck with that Mr. Jordan. The House minority leader doesn't have the power to issue congressional summons, and there is a 0% chance that the Democrats will allow him to take any committee assignment that would put him in such a position (and even his own party didn't trust him enough to put him in charge of anything important after it was revealed that as a coach at OSU he knew about the sexual abuse of minors and student athletes for decades and did nothing about it).
You had every chance to fix this yourself. In Trump's first term, in between terms, and again in his second term. But it appears you are incapable of self-imposed accountability. Now it's our turn to enforce the law.
Will you have the consistency to say it's good on both sides? Will you support deporting Ilhan Omar, for example? I highly doubt it. You're just another partisan, and we all live in Brazil now where an election means locking up your opponents.
No treatment of him by Democrats will be seen as remotely fair (and be honest, it won't be remotely fair), and only makes us progressively into more of a shithole country.
Not to mention, half of the lawfare that's being proposed is against Elon, who is abrasive but legally a far cry from Trump. It's just lawfare.
Edit: and it's too bad to see I was right about you!
No, you're not being honest. The consistent failing of Democratic attempts to enforce the law is having too limp a wrist. Being too meticulous, forming too much bipartisan consensus, giving too much opportunity for "delay until it goes away." All the way from Jerome Powell through the Epstein investigation to the Jan 6 prosecution.
If that changes -- and to be clear, I hope it does -- it will be a dramatic departure from trend.
We can raise the minimum wage ($12.50 in 2027, $15 in 2028, $17.50 in 2029, $20 in 2030 then indexed to CPI); expand Medicare (I’d add neonatal and pediatric care); restore the ACA subsidies; call a War Powers Resolution (to end Trump’s war in Iran and ban the on-and-off trick); and cut the deficit by slashing DoD and DHS funding while also impeaching and removing Hegseth, Blanche and RFK; while also pursuing the Epstein cover-up; while also investigating everyone who made donations and received a pardon; while also investigating Musk’s treason and the Cabinet’s self dealing and the crypto corruption by David Sacks et al.
Hell, if I were Speaker I’d announce a special schedule for Year One that has Congress running over time every week until these priorities are passed.
Now that it's obvious that being a Trump shoe-licker is harmful for electoral chances, Democrats should be able to assemble veto-proof majorities to pass compromise bills. Only a handful of Republican defectors are necessary. For example, impeaching Hegseth, a war powers resolution and passing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act are obvious candidates. Those 2 will establish a pattern and they can proceed from there.
Given the Miller appointment, probably.
> Much of it should still be done as a performative measure as 2028 election prep
It's more than that. It's getting together a cohesive policy package that Democrats can agree on. It's putting Republicans on the record opposing popular policy. And it's something that could yield extra seats as special elections come up.
The 3 agendas: investigations, performative legislation and bipartisan compromise legislation are going to be really hard to balance in the next 2 years. That's a lot of work in very little time. How well they do so will be how they're judged in 2 years time.
Unfortunately that also means housing can't become affordable because housing can't simultaneously be affordable and a good investment.
I'm not just being cynical. It's genuinely a hard problem, since crashing real estate would open the door to the next generation while bankrupting all previous generations and causing a banking crisis.
We are very much painted into a corner here, and the US doesn't even have it the worst compared to other developed nations.
Also, crafty government policy can make housing more affordable for some buyers while letting prices seem to rise. I’m not crafty enough to know how this would work, but it works in other markets. For instance, apartments that have high and increasing rent but with months of “free rent” and “discounts” thrown in that reflect a different reality, or new cars with “cash back,” or tuition at expensive selective private universities that is almost completely fanciful.
hide your power levels if you are going to play the village idiot, it is more convincing. just extremely bad faith commenting
And when you try to have meaningful conversations on this topic, both sides will use Gish Gallop until you shut up or go away.
Also, Congress can do more than one thing at once, if it puts its mind to it.
1. Destroy the country
2. Complain your opposition doesn’t solve all the problems you contributed to
For one, what you consider “wasteful”, others might not.
Maybe consider being an entrepreneur and go start your own country?
Of course, you'll end up paying most of your income as tribute to the various warlords, but they won't be taxes! They'll be "payments in lieu of death."
Or, you could live in the real world and pay taxes because they enable things like...preventing warlords. Also unimportant things like roads and police and clean running water.
There's a civil war going on right now with various rebel groups, but overall they certainly do have a federal government. They have an income tax rate around 30% plus a VAT of 15%.
DOGE never actually went after corruption, though, and only idiots ever believed that was their intention. They said they were pursuing savings by finding fraud, waste, and abuse and then ignored one of the biggest sources of all three: The DOD.
And then the Republicans decided that the remarkably efficient and perennially audit failing Pentagon should get an extra half trillion dollars. Largely to pursue contracts with companies owned by Musk, Thiel, Lucky, and other Trump inner circle types.
And how, by the way, did Democrats shutdown DOGE? Republican president, Republican Senate, Republican House. They controlled everything they needed to to continue operating DOGE. DOGE is squarely a Republican failure to do anything useful.
Dirtbag USD in Medicare/Medicaid Fraud
-------------- -----------------
Philip Esformes $1300M
Judigeth Negron $ 205M
Lawrence Duran $ 205M
Daniela Gozes $ 50M
Simon Melgen $ 42M
John Davis $ 4M
Comments like that should be preserved for their historical value alone, it's like seeing the photo of the last known thylacine.