FTC Democrats sue Trump, say firings break law and Supreme Court precedent
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I can tell you right now that the job market is pretty shit in New Zealand. We currently have a right wing trump-light government who are busy slashing public spending for tax cuts. So far the only thing they have managed to prove is that slashing public spending actually doesn’t boost the economy (they drove it further into recession). We have at least another year of theses assholes.
Aussie is a little better off, but they are just about to head into election season so who knows!
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I'm a bit puzzled about the kind of help you want, are you expecting the Canadians to march south and burn down the White House for you?
This is clearly an American political problem if a third* vote for Trump and a third* can't be bothered to vote and therefore were OK with Trump winning but before reaching for the gun there are other things you can do first if you get more politically involved. I don't need to list them here, the Internet is full of info about that.
* Approx.
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Y
Sabotage
You’ve lost control of your country, a country with largest military in the world that is going to be used to seize a country.
How about not making your failures everyone else’s problem as it’s inevitably soon to be, and start working on containment at least?
Last time I checked, you still needed boats and planes to actually practically exercise that military might of yours…
What the American people can do at this point is:
Sabotage
You’ve lost control of your country, a country with largest military in the world that is going to be used to seize a country.
How about not making your failures everyone else’s problem as it’s inevitably soon to be, and start working on containment at least?
Last time I checked, you still needed boats and planes to actually practically exercise that military might of yours…
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Australia has mandatory voting so the electorate won't tend to vote for extremes. It's an easy patch that should be rolled out elsewhere.
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Mandatory voting AND preferential voting.... both are very important.
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Surely even if by some miracle they win this, Trump and his minions are just going to deep dive through their work to find anything even remotely viable to twist as "inefficiency" and simply fire them again? Or just say that suing the God-Emperor is classed as malfeasance and not even let them back in?
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But they won’t have set a precedent that effectively turns all the semi-independent commissions into just another wing of the White House.
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Because they know they can always go back and do it later, but they’d rather test the waters to see how far they can go and what they can get away with. It also serves them well to tie up the courts with nonsense as it creates chaos which works in their favor.
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An excellent point, well raised. Thank you for helping me understand the point!
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Yeah the fact that they didn't and are instead gunning after humpries either means Trump was too lazy to bother (certainly possible) or this is misdirection and the real goal isn't firing these two but overturning that precedent to them go after a similar commission in the executive.
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Looking at Plaintiffs proposed remedy “ permanently enjoin the FTC Chairman, Commissioner Holyoak, and the FTC Executive Director from taking any action that would prevent Plaintiffs from fulfilling their duties as Commissioners and serving out the remainder of their terms." Would effectively make the judge here an executive branch officer. This will never happen.
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Didn't stop the onion eater from kicking out one of the most moderate leaders either major party has had in years. Fortunately, he went back to the motherland when he got kicked out, and is now suckling on a Murdoch teat I believe amongst other things.
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Please explain how massively cutting taxes for the wealthy improves the debt situation. Republicans never cared about the debt. Nearly the entire debt is due to their tax cuts and wars they started.
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Right now, Captain Tupolev is removing the safety features on all his weapons. He won't make the same mistake twice.
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It's become abundantly clear that you can choose a progressive government or a democracy but you're unlikely to get both. You will get neither at all without gradual mass casualties, 10 to 100 million drop in US population between deaths and deportations, across all income brackets and political beliefs, either from gradual drops in standard of living or actual revolt.
Those casualties are written in stone. You will not be able to get America to politically reform back to its shining city on the hill roots without paying that tax to purge it of the far right MAGA body politic and the prior 100 years of conservative-fascist rot leading up to it. Nazi-ism was an American export before WWII.
Regardless of whether you want democracy in general or want the government to collapse enough to get proper progressive governing policy shoved down the people's throats for once, in neither case can you keep a functioning government while the right wing Republican populist-fascist ideology exists.
It's not enough to force an Overton Window swing back to a European center-left and move on, which is what people 'defending democracy' entail without realizing it, a return to a corrupt status quo.
The most productive mindset over the next ten years is to fight for something, anything better, and stop fucking quibbling over whether it's a multi-party democracy forced to form and dismantle coalition governments (in many cases the EU has demonstrated this is still shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic if they can't throw their hard right parties in prison or tattoo and televise El Salvadoran deportations of young Nazis) or a progressive monoparty government allowed to gradually collapse back to a bipolar status quo, just with a conservative opposition whose wealth has been stripped and taxed away to pacify it's gaslighting Nazi tendencies allowed to fester since the first American Civil War's conclusion and how the losers during the Reconstruction Era acted like the MAGA of today.
For example: the Charlie Kirk coalition of today doing their 'pedophile hunter' and other vigilante bullshit, it makes them feel important but underneath the current moment of crowing about victory by abusing and gaslighting other people, they are either blind to or secretly and rightly fear effective permanent slavery or imprisonment if they don't come out of this crab-bucketing dismantling of government and entitlements rich beyond belief. The Millennial and Gen-Z conservative crowds are invariably going to end up paraded on national television in chains or deported to slave prisons or quietly dropped into the oceans themselves to pay for what's going on now, not out of a sense of vengeance but necessary sacrifices to pay for their Baby Boomer and Gen-X forebears, and get the public body politic to communicate over right wing wholesale generational political and economic surrender before rule of law is reinstituted.
If and when that happens it will be as generationally traumatic as Russia sending off its men to war in a meat grinder, but also very very necessary to show the public 'If you dick around in conservative social media spheres this is the result because you are a threat and revelling in dismantling rule of law to be an Accelerationist'
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You would be surprised how much your sentiment matches what a common russian thinks about politics and government. I always tought that the commoners resolution to defend the freedomn and democracy is the real difference between totalitarian and free societes. Its interesting (and horrifying) to observe this situation.
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It's what the voters wanted.
Every empire fades. I'm not really surprised that the voters voted for the country to fail. We have a toxic society and the country was never really set up correctly in the first place.
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Your understanding is overly simplified.
If you cease pointing the finger at 'calcification of the system as a whole' and examine the blame where it has always lain, at the feet of the last century of willful conservative corruption and misbehavior ever since the Reconstruction Era, only then can you explain both the culture war and economic disputes, and still account for building a coalition of resentful cultists over generations to overthrow the system with no plan to move it toward anything but a kakistocracy composed of themselves.
Progressive democratic socialist government hasn't been given a completely fair unopposed shake yet and Globalization was dismantled before it could be given a populist-left shake at fixing it. That in and of itself demonstrates the flaw in the logic of concluding the current MAGA trajectory is a desperate cultist gamble with an eye towards being overthrown. Nothing in Project 2025 indicates planning for being overthrown with a better equilibrium in place like the Democratic socialists ought to plan with their own Project 2032.
Class warfare is important but for The Left, Class Warfare and lack of social mobility is The Problem, for the right it's a very potent tool but not one to be front and center of their political reforms to form a monarchy or theocratic tech oligarchy.
Globalization was always about power, dismantling that in a fit of corrupt, bad faith rage because it failed in its promises to lift the Rust Belt and Appalachias out of poverty was an extremely egregious historical political error without first letting Democratic Socialists get elected unopposed into a supermajority to take a crack at forcing fixes to the system.
Now the Democratic Socialists will eventually get their shot at doing that unopposed, it's just going to be at the cost of a mostly dismantled rule of law and tens of millions of casualties at the hands of Nazis first before the body politic that 'just wants to live its life' concludes it can't do so and have peace without first taking political and economic generational vengeance on The Right.
When 'Martial Law' is declared by Trump and MAGA, that is the absolute very last card they can play. They have no more cards after that beyond what violence right wing militias will commit because they have already mistreated the military. Maintaining that state to throw out their opposition on the killing fields and sending the remainder to El Salvador and Guantanamo as deterrents to liberal opposition will backfire, but it will be a long grinding tit for tat when it does before the Right inevitably eats itself after enough pressure from a justified revolt.
Funny thing is, the exact numbers of those casualties may not ever be recorded. Once Martial Law is declared all it takes is a barrage of AI generated sensationalist stories of the right wing implementing mass killing fields out to the world regardless of truth to light that match and finish collapsing rule of law, because their opposition will take a page from the Project 2025 playbook and stop caring about the truth of the accusations to act on overthrowing and erasing the Republican body politic.
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You seem to think that things are fixable at this point. They aren't.
Canada is done with you. Carney's speech last night was not the same blustery empty hot air that an American claiming that he has guns to protect the Constitution might use. It reflects where we are and what's going to happen now.
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The airlines have announced that bookings by Canadians for travel to the U.S. this summer are down 70% from this time last year. That’s an astonishing figure that the U.S tourism industry will definitely feel.
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To clarify your approx. further:
77 million for Trump
75 million for Harris
152 million stayed home
A small fraction of the 152 million were impacted by Republican election interference planned prior:
polling station, election machinery and gerrymandering fuckery at the state level
An even smaller faction of the 152 million were disaffected Democrats incorrectly deciding Trump couldn't be worse than Harris to lodge protest over Biden's realpolitikal support of Israel over Gaza.
The other 26 million unaccounted for in the total population of 330 million covers children, immigrants who can't vote, and criminals who even if they were given the right to vote had it institutionally stripped away by MAGA at the state level by requiring the convicts to pay back taxes on their own incarceration up to date to first vote (See: Florida)
You can further cut into the 152 million by increasing the share of 26 million ineligible voters but that illustrates the enormity and urgency of the US copying and implementing Australian mandatory voting policies.
The rest you can take your pick of poor education, social media bubbles, bread and butter economic concerns overwhelming their singular shot at having a voice to make things better (and not understanding that even the poorest and most overworked American must participate intra-party politics at the primary and state levels no matter how humiliating it is not to have money against political price tags just for basic housing, travel and hotel accommodations)
Other than all of this, yes, unless Americans decide the MAGA-GOP must be excised, 1st Amendment and democracy be damned, this won't improve.
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Not to mention Ars Technica has had "Policy" listed on its Front Page for as long as I've been here.
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It doesn't need to be discussed that Canada should be viewing the US as a rabid dog at its borders and consider cherry-picking the most ideologically aligned and least populated States for annexation to make this point over the next 10 years, starting with Alaska, and then considering Washington, Oregon, the Dakotas and Maine to make this point.
This is just a given, there is no need for Canadians to remind American citizens they are responsible for letting the Nazis demonstrate the entire world is allowed to hold the American 2/4 year election cycle in contempt for not keeping economic and foreign policy stable.
If you want to remind Americans of this fact, simply provoke Trump into firing the first shot and start looting in self-defense, man. It'll probably help galvanize grassroots purging of the GOP proper finally.
The Dakotas are collectively less than 2 million people with tons if natural resources and Canada has more experience than the US military at this point at holding vast amounts of uninhabited territory. It's a literal fucking smash and grab if you're that done with American trade treaties. Just do it already. It's free real-estate and it's tiny population are all MAGA heads that directly caused the current problem.
I seriously doubt you'll be nuked either, the GOP is too incompetent.
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I’ve read through the comments to this point. I understand the frustration and anger non Americans feel. As an average American (if such a thing exists), I do think anger will continue to percolate and Americans will start to mobilize. some of the things people are suggestin: violent protests (will embolden Trump and allow him to tighten his grip), leaving the US (is exactly what Republicans wish for- fewer liberals in the US to try and stop or vote).
my opinion, non Americans are better situated to help stop this then Americans at this moment. This is not a cop out and I hate saying this because it will hurt americans (though we likely deserve what we get):
STOP BUYING AMERICAN GOODS AND SERVICES. Foreign governments should be cooperating in unison against the US, sell American treasuries, tax things we have to buy (like Canada taxing electricity exports), etc. Trump has an advantage with tariffs when it’s one in one since we buy more then we sell, but not when it’s the US vs the world. He loses support much faster (and by much more powerful people than the average american) if our economy craters.
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As a fellow long-time member, I think you should remember that ArsTechnica has always covered political topics (remember DeCSS?) but the stakes used to be a lot lower and the political instincts from our youth are outdated. In the 90s, it was somewhat possible to ignore politics because the American parties hadn’t fissured from the Cold War consensus that we were broadly on the same side, and Fox News hadn’t finished purging libertarians or non-social conservatives from the Republican Party.
The stuff we talked about affected fewer people, and was still happening in a context where you could assume the general rule of law – not perfect by any means (ask Rodney King) but a lot of people had memories of Nixon as an example that even members of the same party would (eventually) enforce the law over the person. Even the big Clipper Chip debate assumed the FBI would follow rules of the pre-War on Terror era. Now we’re at the point where the question isn’t whether the president will follow the law on things which affect millions of people, or even whether the courts will rule against him, but whether anyone can enforce the law when he loses those cases.
So, yes, I’d love to see less politics on Ars because politics wasn’t pushed into every aspect of life, not because we’re all just ignoring what’s happening. Until we unambiguously live in a constitutional democracy again, however, it’s unavoidable.
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If you're really so upset about reading political articles, might I suggest you avoid reading the news? Anywhere, ever? I hate to break it to you, but politics have an enormous affect on literally everything that happens in society, which means that news is simply inherently political.
None of the cool shit you want to read about happens in a vacuum (unless you're only here for space stuff), and given that almost all of the tech news reported here is related to massive American corporations, they are all affected by things that happen at the FTC.
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Neither do the Republicans. Why do all of their proposals involve cutting the bits of government that actually help people, while also cutting taxes for people who are obscenely wealthy? A group of billionaires have decided that feeding the starving and medicating the sick are waste and that the rich deserve to keep even more of their money.
Their revenue plan seems to be tariffs that will fuck the middle and lower class.
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I wouldn't say removed, per se. They're driving the largest coal roller available crushing the guardrails like grass.
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There are areas where the govt has gotten overly process-focused and I do legitimately understand the frustration. It makes it feel like the govt is taxing without providing value.
But the assumption this "burn the house down and rebuild it better" misses the key problems - the Republican party will not give up power, and they have demonstrably been unable to successfully build.
I'd also like to point out that Trump is very closely following proj 2025, and that is a playback on subverting the exact defense systems you reference. Congress is already cowtowing to him, and continued attacks on the judiciary are explicitely intended to remove that check. What defense systems are you referring to? Because they all have targets on them. Republicans won't even launch investigations into SignalGate, which is one of the most insane security fuckups I have ever heard of - despite Fox News trying their best to downplay it.
It's going to be a mess, and I am actively trying to figure out where I want to rotate my finances to given risk to US equity exposure. If a insignificant peon like me is doing that, while the rest of consumer confidence is at decades lows, it's not a good sign.
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Which will accelerate under Trump in order to speed up wealth inequality growth by giving the rich huge tax breaks, and increasing taxes on the rest of us via tariffs.
I find it absurd we have this kind of debt, but giving money to the rich isn't exactly the solution. Trickle down relies on economic growth acceleration, in a contracting economy it's an insane socialist handout.
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Whoah, there. Let's remember who we're dealing with now.
It'll probably be something even dumber, like "They were supporting the use of HAARP by the deep-state to mind control illegal voters."
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The defaetism among the American commenters is sad. The U.S. has really been through worse than what we're seeing in its history. The power is in the people and when we forget that then the country is truly in trouble.
You can do more than vote. You can nonviolently protest and disrupt what they're doing. We have historical examples! Stop spending time on social media and in comment threads and get out and do something. Courage and action are called for, not commiseration. I'm doing stuff. Why I don't spend my life in these comments threads or on social media. If more people unplugged and started doing things in the real world this might not have happened in the first place.
You can do more than vote. You can nonviolently protest and disrupt what they're doing. We have historical examples! Stop spending time on social media and in comment threads and get out and do something. Courage and action are called for, not commiseration. I'm doing stuff. Why I don't spend my life in these comments threads or on social media. If more people unplugged and started doing things in the real world this might not have happened in the first place.
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