I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see how the SCOTUS ruling would impact a state case about something that candidate Trump allegedly did. Even if one accepts the facts of the case, it would not be an official act of a president.
A New York judge has delayed Donald Trump’s sentencing until September as his lawyers seek to challenge his conviction after a Supreme Court ruling.
Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced on 11 July.
His legal team asked for his conviction in a hush-money case to be overturned after the nation’s highest court ruled Monday that former presidents had partial immunity for “official” acts during their presidency.
Justice Juan Merchan said on Tuesday that he would issue a decision on the motions by 6 September.
If sentencing is necessary, the judge wrote, it will take place on 18 September.
Call me cynical, but I believe that the sentence will be in direct correlation to Trump’s position in the polls at that time.
The president came into the debate with a low bar to clear, and he stumbled. He was flat. He was rambling. He was unclear.
Roughly midway through the debate, the Biden campaign told reporters that the president was battling a cold – an attempt to explain his raspy voice. That may be so, but it also sounded like an excuse.
For 90 minutes, more often than not, Joe Biden was on the ropes. Particularly early in the evening, some of his answers were nonsensical. After losing his train of thought he ended one answer by saying, “We finally beat Medicare” – an odd reference to the government run healthcare programme for the elderly.
[…]
For those of us who have been paying attention, Biden’s terrible performance was not a surprise. At least, the fact that he’s an incoherent, mumbling, liar who is clearly well down the path of mental decline, was not a surprise. Perhaps the only surprise was the degree to which that is true and the fact that he is so far gone that they couldn’t juice him up enough to even pull off the first half hour of the debate before slipping.
The most pressing concern I had throughout the debate is, “WHO THE HELL IS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY!?!?” And no matter what one thinks about how the debate impacts the election, it cannot be overstated how the world just saw that the United States is rudderless without a captain at the helm right now.
While Biden’s performance was very bad, Trump’s performance was pretty good. There were a few times when he let his temper get the best of him and he strayed, but most of the time he was measured, direct, and stayed on the issues.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the debate format and moderators. I enjoyed the way each candidate spoke with very little crosstalk. The format, with slotted time and muted microphones, ended up favoring Trump. It kept him disciplined and on message. And the questions, while slightly slanted to the Left, were not terrible. They asked hard questions about the economy, border, inflation, etc. to Biden. These are issues that favor Trump. Of course they asked about abortion and global warming too. Trump’s answer on the abortion question was quite good. It was nuanced and compassionate while Biden’s was a screed. The only hot topic that was glaringly missed was about trans issues. But given the content of the rest of the debate, it may have just fallen victim to time.
By the standard that it is very hard to win a debate, but the goal is to not lose… Biden clearly lost. But even had Biden been more coherent in his delivery, his content was also bad. He contradicted himself on raising taxes, the inflation rate when he took office, and his administration’s record. He also shamed himself by bragging about the Afghanistan surrender and ignoring the Americans who were killed. Biden repeated proven lies, like the Charlottsville claim, even though that was debunked as recently as last week. It is clear that there is a world happening in his addled brain that is a reflection of BS that his wife and staff have been feeding him, and there is the world we are all living in. We needed a president who was willing and able to address the real issues hitting Americans. Biden is not that president.
Will the Democrats replace Biden? That seems to have been the overarching question after the debate being proffered by liberals and conservatives alike. I think some might try, but it will be difficult. There are two major roadblocks. First, the Democratic Party consolidated so much power into the hands of the president during Obama that Biden holds all of the reins of power. They cannot oust him without his consent. Given Biden’s tremendous ego and seemingly sincere belief that he is doing a great job and is the best protection for America against Trump, I do not think he will abandon his campaign unless he dies.
Second, who do you replace Biden with? The only real choice is Kamala Harris. She has the national name recognition and the Democrats have been telling us for four years that she is the best person to be a heartbeat away from the big chair. But if there is any Democrats less liked than Biden right now, it’s Harris. And were she to be the nominee, she would still have to own the disastrous results of the Biden presidency. But her ego is such that she will not willingly step aside either. And the intersectionality of the Democrat Party culture will not abide them pushing aside a Black woman in favor of another candidate. Such a move would fracture their already fragile coalition.
I believe that the most likely scenario is still that Biden meanders his way to November with his staff doing their best to hide him and gaslight the American people. Then the American voters will have a choice to make. Let us hope that that choice will be accurately reflected by our questionably secure and accurate electoral process.
Of those who said they see the election as a judgement on Trump, most vote for Biden, 66 percent to 34 percent. When people see it as a judgement on just Biden, they vote for Trump, also 66 percent to 34 percent.
With voters who see it as a comparison between the two candidates, slightly more respondents are voting for Trump, 53 percent, over Biden, who shored up 47 percent support.
‘Does (Trump) want to become a loser president? Do you understand what can happen… the institutions of the United States will become very weak – the US will not be the leader of the world anymore.’
[…]
‘A ceasefire is a trap,’ he said, adding that Putin would humiliate Trump by violating the terms of any deal to ‘go further’ in Ukraine and pursue his own goals.
He said that failure to continue providing Ukraine with aid and military support would degrade America’s reputation as a powerful world leader.
‘This is not about him [Trump], as a person but about the institutions of the United States. They will become very weak. The US will not be the leader of the world any more… in terms of international influence it will be equal to zero,’ the Ukrainian president declared.
He also warned a Trump decision to end US support of Kyiv could embolden other countries and groups with nefarious intentions to risk waging wars of their own.
And finally, he confirmed that he remains in close contact with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whom he said he was ‘using as an instrument’ to hold informal talks with the US, and apologised for doing so.
We all knew it was inevitable because it was clear from the beginning that the trial was rigged. A biased partisan prosecutor fabricated charges in front of a hack judge and a jury of stupid rabid liberals with not enough integrity to see past their own hate to uphold the rule of law. All of this was done for political reasons to eliminate a presidential candidate for the benefit of the sitting incumbent. From the perspective of thinking of the general health of our Republic, this is a true turning point. We do not easily walk back from this.
From a political perspective, the verdict is still out. No doubt this will continue to polarize the electorate. I can say from personal observation that it has hardened my mind. It has moved me from being a grouchy and reluctant Trump voter to one who will vote for him for the sake of our Republic. If Biden and the Democrats are allowed to retain and extend their power after throwing their opponents in jail, they will repeat the tactic at all levels forevermore. Biden has become America’s Putin.
It is also noting how the Democrats are willing to mobilize the entire judicial system to prosecute and convict Trump for an alleged paperwork crime (it was not a crime) from a decade ago, but they let rapists, thieves, and violent criminals walk the streets with impunity. Were I a New Yorker, I would be beside myself that I can’t safely walk through Central Park while my politicians use the police and judicial system to further their political interests.
There will be brighter days, but our Republic is different now. Worse. More flawed. Less fair. Less free.
One would never know from looking at the data that Trump is the defendant in a criminal trial in New York City that’s been going on for weeks, where testimony has implicated him in cheating on his wife with a porn star and planting sleazy smears of his political opponents in national tabloids.
Trump critics have spent nine years waiting for Americans to have a “eureka” moment that he’s unfit for office. But the problem has never been getting voters to recognize that he’s unfit; the problem has been getting them to agree that he’s less fit than his opponent.
Between persistent inflation, left-wing wedge issues like the war in Gaza and of course his very advanced age, Biden is less qualified now than he was four years ago to make the case that he’s the fitter of the two candidates. Despite his best efforts to turn the race into another referendum on Trump, the data suggests that for most voters it’s more of a referendum on the incumbent, as reelection bids tend to be.
For cripes sake, he’s at 33% in the Times swing-state poll when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West are included as options for respondents.
Democrats likewise lead in the generic ballot average nationally even though Biden consistently trails Trump head-to-head. The president’s the weak link in the Democratic Party, plainly; a meaningful share of swing voters who are open to voting for Democrats in principle really do not want to vote for him again.
It took me a while to get Trump’s appeal in 2016, but I think I get it now. I can understand this columnist not getting it. What continues to flummox me is liberals’ inability to see Biden’s failures. His term has been an utter disaster on the domestic and foreign fronts. Americans are significantly less well off in terms of their economic well-being and physical security since Biden took office. And yet, liberals seem to keep thinking that it’s a messaging problem. It’s not. It’s a performance problem. And even though Trump is a mess of a man, he was a helluva a president. Americans get that.
If Trump were to defeat President Joe Biden in November, the SEC under his administration would likely start by curtailing many of the rules recently put in place tied to the environment, according to experts and people close to the former president. An initial target of the SEC under a second Trump administration would be to roll back the new climate disclosure rules, these people explained.
Gensler and the SEC adopted a rule in March requiring large publicly traded companies to disclose their levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The largest companies are required to make climate disclosures as early as fiscal 2025, with specifics on greenhouse gas emissions as soon as fiscal 2026.
Gensler argues greenhouse gas emission levels and other climate related data have a material impact on businesses, and investors deserve to know this information.
But an SEC chaired by a Trump appointed Republican would likely remove these Biden-era disclosure requirements, these people said.
The rule “costs companies and investors a tremendous amount of money, and provides them no benefit,” said a person advising Trump on SEC related matters. Like others in this story, they were granted anonymity in order to recount private conversations.
The prospect of a Trump pullback on the SEC’s climate disclosure rules is also tied to the former president’s dislike of environmental, social and governance investment standards, some of these people explained.
During his term in office, Trump issued an executive order that made it harder for employers to offer ESG funds in employees’ 401(k) retirement plans. The Biden administration later softened the Trump rule.
In February, he said in a Truth Social post that if he is elected to a second term, he would reinstate his previous rule.
by Owen | 0739, 22 Mar 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
I continue to think that polls are fundamentally flawed and nobody has figured out how to do it in our modern world, but the trends are worth noting. As long as the methodology remains consistent, polls should reveal trends even if the actual percentages are off. That being said, this is interesting. Trump appears to be expanding his support while Biden is in a rearguard action. One challenge for Trump is that he is gaining support in historically less reliable voting blocks – young people and independents.
Voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania – two states that flipped from red to blue in the 2020 presidential election – begin this year’s general election campaign more dissatisfied than pleased with the candidates they have to choose from, with a fairly small but crucial share saying they are open to changing their minds on the race, according to new CNN polling conducted by SSRS.
The surveys of registered voters find a dead-even race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in Pennsylvania (46% each), with Trump ahead in Michigan (50% Trump to 42% Biden). Both polls were fielded after Trump and Biden each clinched enough delegates to win their party’s nomination for president, according to CNN’s estimates.
The polls suggest that in this rematch with Trump, Biden’s winning 2020 coalition may now be more intact in Pennsylvania than in Michigan. The Pennsylvania poll finds Biden leading among women, voters of color, college graduates and independents, and running about even with Trump among voters younger than 35. In Michigan, though, women split about evenly, Biden’s margin among voters of color is narrowerand he trails Trump by significant margins among independents and young voters. In both states, Biden holds on to about 9 in 10 of his self-described 2020 supporters, while Trump keeps slightly more of his own 2020 voters.
Excellent. Surprising that it was unanimous, but a good sign that the justices can sometimes put aside their personal political biases in favor of the Constitution.
Using the 14th Amendment to derail Trump’s candidacy has always been seen as a legal longshot, but gained significant momentum with a win in Colorado’s top court in December, on its way to the US Supreme Court. Since that decision, Trump was also removed from the ballot in Maine and Illinois.
“On my first day back in the White House, I will terminate every open borders policy of the Biden administration, stop the invasion on our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said at an Iowa campaign event in December.
None of this
The former president has projected a my-way-or-the-highway approach to international dealings, floating the idea of a universal 10% tax on all goods coming from countries outside the U.S., in an attempt to prioritize domestic production.
Or this
Trump has suggested using the National Guard to address crime, which he argues is worse than it’s ever been.
Meh. Should be done, but not a priority that actually impacts the lives of the American people.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family,”
It’s difficult to see how this survives SCOTUS for a lot of reasons (how does a court in Colorado decide that someone committed a crime in another jurisdiction where the defendant is never afforded due process), but it does show just how anti-democratic the liberals have become and the lengths to which they are willing to go to get their way.
DENVER (AP) — A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.
The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.
Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
C’mon, America. Are we really going to do this? In a country of over 330 million people with legions of brilliant, ethical, honest, compassionate and humble servant leaders, are we really going to be forced to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? Is this the best we have to offer? If the polls are any indication, we are barreling headlong into choosing between these two terribly flawed grouchy old men.
The Democrats appear to be committed to nominating President Joe Biden to be considered by the voters for a second term. Biden’s cognitive decline is as obvious as it is distressing. The incidents of Biden getting confused, wandering off and rambling incoherently are increasingly frequent. His press conference in Vietnam last week was tragic. He rambled from inappropriate jokes to getting confused over questions and admitting, “I’m just following my orders here” to having his staff cut him off as he closed with, “I’m going to go to bed.”
As happens with many elderly people who are in cognitive decline, Biden’s unsavory personal traits have come to the surface. Unable to stop himself from wandering from a podium, he is now vacillating between strange whispering into the handheld microphone to shouting for no apparent reason. Biden has always been known for his prolific lying. He was even run off the presidential campaign trail in 1988 when he was caught plagiarizing. His sagging ability to think on his feet have him blundering into even more obvious lies. His claim last week that he was in Manhattan the day after 9/11 was disproven within minutes by video of him in Washington D.C. that day.
Biden’s years of rank corruption are also coming to the surface. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has released some of the evidence they have gathered about the Biden’s real family business. The evidence shows years of corruption where tens of millions of dollars from foreign bad actors flowed through a web aliases (Joe Biden had at least three) and shell companies controlled by Biden family members with Hunter Biden serving as the primary bag man. The product they were selling was allegedly access to one of the most powerful people on the planet — Joe Biden. The Biden family has not offered any other reasonable explanation for why foreigners have been giving them millions of dollars.
As if the lies, corruption, and slip into senility was not enough, Biden’s first term has been an unmitigated failure. Inflation has raged out of control eating into every American’s quality of life. People are struggling to buy groceries, cars and homes as real wages have stagnated. The Southern border is wide open with tens of thousands of illegal aliens flowing into our nation every month to eat at our overburdened social safety net. Our nation is running up our national debt to a nation-killing level. Our enemies and friends are laughing at us as the world order reorients away from a languishing lion.
Despite all of this, the Democrats seem dead set on propping up old Joe for another term.
The Republicans are not doing much better. Despite several fantastic alternatives who are younger, smarter, more conservative, more likable, and with better records in public office, the Republicans seem dead set on nominating former President Donald Trump.
Only three years younger than Joe Biden, Trump’s cognitive abilities are holding firm even as his stamina slumps with marathon rallies being replaced by short and infrequent campaign stops. His lifetime of lying is currently manifesting itself in a voluminous attempt to gaslight the nation as to his record and the records of his Republican opponents. His energies that were focused on the righteous populist anger of the average American in 2016 and 2020 have been redirected in 2023 to his lengthy list of personal grudges and electoral fantasies.
While the litany of indictments against Trump are the more the result of the Marxist weaponization of our judicial system than a true assessment of Trump’s behavior, he has always shoved past dowdy ethical to flirt with the skirts of law.
Trump’s record as president was decidedly mixed. He was exceptional in securing the border, deregulating, selecting conservative judges, pulling America back from bad international deals, destroying ISIS, and reigniting our economy. These remarkable successes are weighted down by his prolific spending, ballooning debt, and lethargy in adjusting government policy to the reality of the pandemic. Perhaps his greatest failure was his terrible selection of, and support of, government officials from Anthony Fauci to Christopher Wray. Instead of draining the swamp, Trump added to and protected it.
America deserves better than to have a presidential campaign that resembles two semi-coherent old men yelling at each other from opposite ends of the bar about the television channel. Or do we?
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week.
To Wisconsin’s conservatives, the surest path to a second term for President Joe Biden, with all of the economic and civic destruction that would occur, is to vote for Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. And even if there was a path to victory for Donald Trump in a general election, which there is not, a second Trump term would not yield any conservative fruits.
Only halfway through his first term, President Biden has rent our great republic to the point that it will take generations to reverse the damage – if it can be reversed. Our national debt now far exceeds our country’s full annual economic output. Inflation is crushing dreams and robbing the middle class of their spending power. Our borders are wide open with terrorists and criminals intermingling with the world’s indigent. All of them are stretching and breaking our social fabric. Crime is eating out the core of our once great cities. America’s power on the international stage is at its lowest ebb since World War 1. All of this is being overseen by the increasingly senile head of what is proving to be one of the most prolific criminal family organizations our nation has ever seen, according to the investigation of the U.S. House Oversight Committee and IRS whistleblower.
Despite all of that destruction, if the Republicans choose Donald Trump as their nominee, it is more than probable that Biden will win reelection.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was lightning in a bottle. He managed to speak to the large, disaffected segment of the populace who were fed up with Washington ignoring them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party nominated a uniquely disliked political figure in Hillary Clinton after a fractious primary where the party’s schism with the socialists, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, failed to heal before the general election.
Trump’s term in office was terrific in many ways. He pushed back the regulatory state to allow the American economic engine to flourish. The Trump-Ryan tax cuts unleashed American capital and drove up real wages faster than in decades. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy was clear and sensible. Trump’s excellent choice in federal judges and fortuitous opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court justices has proven to be the only bulwark against Biden’s rapacious rule.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Trump accelerated the decadent spending of his predecessor and built the foundation from which Biden launched generational inflation. While Trump did well with Operation Warp Speed and the initial response to the pandemic, he was lethargic in letting America get back to normal and perpetuated the Rule of Fauci. Despite all of the bluster about “draining the swamp,” the swamp won.
Even with the full power of incumbency, Trump failed to win reelection. Irrespective of your thoughts on the integrity of the electoral process in 2020, Trump in 2020 was simply less popular than Trump in 2016. After all, he lost to a candidate who ran an anemic campaign from the comfort of his basement.
Trump in 2023 is in even worse shape than Trump in 2020. There is a noticeable difference in Trump’s message and priorities. Instead of talking about Making America Great Again, Trump is just a rhetorical blowtorch to anything and anyone who threatens him. Trump’s message in 2016 was about us. His message in 2023 is about him.
This is why Trump cannot win the general election. Despite what you may think of him, he has irreparably damaged his relationship with half the conservatives, three-fourths of the independents, and he never had the liberals. No matter how you work the electoral math, he cannot win a national general election again. He has let the lightning out of the bottle.
Given his record, his obvious physical and mental decline, and the weekly revelations about his alleged corruption, President Biden should not win reelection. The only reason Democrats are not seriously challenging him is because they think the Republicans are going to be stupid enough to nominate the only candidate who Biden can defeat: Donald Trump. Unlike 2016, the Democrats are united. The socialists in their party have won and they have united behind the imperfect avenging instrument of their rage: Joe Biden.
Trump’s time is past. If Republicans do not realize that fact very soon, then they will fail to arrest the coming onslaught from which our nation will never fully recover.
Only halfway through his first term, President Biden has rent our great republic to the point that it will take generations to reverse the damage – if it can be reversed. Our national debt now far exceeds our country’s full annual economic output. Inflation is crushing dreams and robbing the middle class of their spending power. Our borders are wide open with terrorists and criminals intermingling with the world’s indigent. All of them are stretching and breaking our social fabric. Crime is eating out the core of our once great cities. America’s power on the international stage is at its lowest ebb since World War 1. All of this is being overseen by the increasingly senile head of what is proving to be one of the most prolific criminal family organizations our nation has ever seen, according to the investigation of the U.S. House Oversight Committee and IRS whistleblower.
Despite all of that destruction, if the Republicans choose Donald Trump as their nominee, it is more than probable that Biden will win reelection.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was lightning in a bottle. He managed to speak to the large, disaffected segment of the populace who were fed up with Washington ignoring them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party nominated a uniquely disliked political figure in Hillary Clinton after a fractious primary where the party’s schism with the socialists, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, failed to heal before the general election.
Trump’s term in office was terrific in many ways. He pushed back the regulatory state to allow the American economic engine to flourish. The Trump-Ryan tax cuts unleashed American capital and drove up real wages faster than in decades. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy was clear and sensible. Trump’s excellent choice in federal judges and fortuitous opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court justices has proven to be the only bulwark against Biden’s rapacious rule.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Trump accelerated the decadent spending of his predecessor and built the foundation from which Biden launched generational inflation. While Trump did well with Operation Warp Speed and the initial response to the pandemic, he was lethargic in letting America get back to normal and perpetuated the Rule of Fauci. Despite all of the bluster about “draining the swamp,” the swamp won.
Even with the full power of incumbency, Trump failed to win reelection. Irrespective of your thoughts on the integrity of the electoral process in 2020, Trump in 2020 was simply less popular than Trump in 2016. After all, he lost to a candidate who ran an anemic campaign from the comfort of his basement.
Trump in 2023 is in even worse shape than Trump in 2020. There is a noticeable difference in Trump’s message and priorities. Instead of talking about Making America Great Again, Trump is just a rhetorical blowtorch to anything and anyone who threatens him. Trump’s message in 2016 was about us. His message in 2023 is about him.
This is why Trump cannot win the general election. Despite what you may think of him, he has irreparably damaged his relationship with half the conservatives, three-fourths of the independents, and he never had the liberals. No matter how you work the electoral math, he cannot win a national general election again. He has let the lightning out of the bottle.
Donald Trump has officially announced he is running for president for the third time in 2024 in a speech attacking President Biden, the ‘radical left’ Democrats and their record on the economy and the world stage in the two years since he left office.
The former president ignored Republican critics and those who blamed him for the GOP‘s disappointing midterms to go full steam on stating his intent to be back in the Oval Office to ‘drain the swamp’ with the country ‘being destroyed before our very lives’.
‘I order to make America great and glorious again, I am today announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,’ he confirmed to huge cheers before laying into the FBI raid, the ‘fake’ dossier’, the ‘deep state’ and lobbyists.
Mr Trump is accused of inciting a mob that stormed Congress last week after he repeated false claims of election fraud. Five people died.
The trial will be held after the president leaves office next Wednesday.
If Mr Trump is convicted, senators could also vote to bar him from ever holding public office again.
The trial follows Wednesday’s vote in the House of Representatives that formally charged – or impeached – the president with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the riot.
The Republican president has rejected responsibility for the violence. In a video released by the White House after the vote, he called on his supporters to remain peaceful, without mentioning his impeachment.
Notice how the BBC refuses to use his title? They use the titles of other people in the story.
Anyway, the storming of the capitol building has all of the hallmarks of a crowd whereby a contingent turned into a mob and did what mobs do. There was no planning and no actual effort to overthrow a government. It was contemptible, harmful to the body politic and the Trump cause, and, ultimately fruitless… but I understand it. I also understand that many of these same Democrats cheered when mobs sacked the Wisconsin Capitol for weeks after Act 10. I understand that these same Democrats protected Antifa and BLM when they looted private businesses, government buildings, and set up rebellious zones within cities. Their attack on Trump and conservatives is steeped of the zealotry of hypocrisy.
But we need to pull the lens back a bit. What happened in Washington and around the country is part of a bigger picture. We have a fractured America in which some want to continue in a relatively liberal and free Republic and some want a Marxist Regime. And there is a great swath of people in the middle who just want to go to work and be left alone. Politics are always an amplified projection of our culture. It’s not our politics that is broken. It is our culture.
The Trump appointee in charge of initiating the formal transition to a Joe Biden-led administration has so far refused to sign off on the necessary paperwork to begin the process, raising concerns over whether there will be a smooth transfer of power.
Emily Murphy was tapped by President Trump to head the General Services Administration, the agency in charge of federal buildings.
By law, if a new president is elected, the GSA administrator is required to sign paperwork that officially hands over millions of dollars to the transition team of the incoming administration, formally launching the handover process.
In 2016, disillusioned with the Republican Party, distrustful of Donald Trump’s agenda, and fearful of the rise of populism in America, I cast my vote for a third-party candidate. I strive to not repeat mistakes. This year, I will cast my vote without reservation for President Trump. He has earned this conservative’s vote by advancing and defending issues about which I have deeply cared for my entire adult life.
In politics, as in life, it is more imperative to judge people on what they do rather than on what they say. In most cases, this advice is a lesson to watch for oily people who say what you want to hear while doing the opposite. In the case of Trump, you have to sometimes ignore his ramblings and bombast to see that he has a record of conservative accomplishments strong enough to rival any president.
In the modern era where we have allowed our federal government to reach into the smallest crevices of our lives, federal court judges and justices have become critical to preserving our liberties — particularly those continuously threatened liberties enumerated in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the Constitution. Supreme Court Justices get all the press, and rightfully so. For the high court, Trump is 3 for 3 in appointing superb judicial conservatives. He has strengthened the SupremeCourt and helped protect our civil liberties.
Only a small percentage of federal cases, however, ever end up at the Supreme Court. The vast majority of cases are decided in the Appeals Courts. Trump has appointed 53 mostly conservative Appeals Court Justices. In doing so, he has even begun to turn the heretofore rogue 9th Circuit Court of Appeals into a court that is more balanced and constructionist. Combined with the 161 federal District Court judges that Trump has appointed, Trump has significantly shifted the federal judicial branch to one that is more conservative and more protective of individual liberties.
Beyond shaping the judicial branch, Trump hasadvanced many conservative domestic policies. The Trump-Ryan tax bill was a landmark piece of tax reform. It decreased the corporate tax rate to be more competitive with the world. It lowered individual tax rates until 2025. It reformed tax perks, incentivized companies to repatriate their foreign profits, and cut the death tax. Importantly, it also ended the unconstitutional individual mandate provision of Obamacare that forced people to buy health insurance.
On foreign policy, Trump strengthened our nation’s border. He removed the United States from the destructive Paris Climate Agreement and from President Obama’s dangerous Iran nuclear deal. Trump unleashed our military to defeat ISIS and moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem to strengthen our ally Israel. Despite liberal prophecies of Middle East doom, Trump helped negotiate the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel, thus ushering in the promise of stability in the region. It also signals the realignment of the region against America’s most volatile enemy in the region, terrorist-exporting Iran.
The big policy items necessarily get the attention, but the Trump administration’s unrelenting push to the right has racked up hundreds of successes that get overlooked in the mix.Bureaucracies are slashing regulations to let Americans and their businesses breathe and thrive. The Department of Education is encouraging school choice and rejecting the socialist indoctrination that has permeated public education. Trump reformed Veterans Affairs to bring accountability and more health care choices — including telehealth technology — to give our veterans more and better health care.
I have only begun to scratch the surface of Trump’s conservative record. Sure, Trump still spends too much, supports tariffs, and supported weakening our criminal justice system, but for conservatives who purport to care about protecting unborn lives, the 2nd Amendment, free speech, lower taxes, less regulation, an America-centric foreign policy, and a love of country, President Trump has made more tangible movement in advancing and protecting those principles than any other president in my lifetime. He is not the perfect conservative messenger, but he sure is an effective conservative doer.
As I pray for the speedy recovery of our president and those close to him, I also look forward to casting my vote for his re-election.
