alexandergruchala.bsky.social

@alexandergruchala.bsky.social

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

The polls didn't predict a first-place finish for National Rally. For the love of god learn how other countries' electoral systems work.

BREAKING NEWS: Voters turned out in numbers not seen in decades to stop the far-right National Rally from taking power in the French National Assembly. Polls predicted a first-place finish for National Rally, which instead came in third in initial results as polling stations closed.

Projections in France's election show voters rejecting the far rightwww.npr.org Voters turned out in numbers not seen in decades to stop the far-right National Rally from taking power in the French National Assembly. Polls predicted a first-place finish for National Rally, which ...

Look on my low-cut toe socks and despair.

Every time someone complains, I get a lower-cut pair of socks

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

“He took away abortion and he wants to be a dictator” should be plastered on every surface and blaring out of every speaker.

Nothing is stopping every single Democratic elected official and apparatchik from taking the airwaves every single day to articulately and decisively repeat a set of cogent talking points about Trump (ie 45). Nothing. Dem PACs could be slamming him with ads now. Stop whining and do that.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Constitution: People involved in insurrections should not be President. Roberts court:...hmm, no, I don't see it. Constitution:.... Roberts court: but the president should have immunity for crimes

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

“The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” couldn’t be clearer!

if only Federalist 69 were just, in its entirely, Hamilton saying super clearly “sure, this constitution has one executive leader, but I can’t stress enough that it’s different from a king because a President is accountable, including to criminal law” avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century...

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 69avalon.law.yale.edu

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

occurs to me that bribing the president is now /always/ legal, since in every case the only way to distinguish gratuity from bribe is via evidence that could never be admissible

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

"Don't worry, if the president imprisons his political enemies, you can still get a writ of habeas corpus." "But to prove that's why you've been imprisoned requires proof of..." "Presidential motive!" "And under Trump v US, presidential motive is..." "Inadmissible!"

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Reminder that POTUS can direct the DOJ not to prosecute the trigger puller and, failing that, pardon anyone who carries out his order and still faces federal charges. Utterly lawless.

Real news in 2024. Not a drill. www.politico.com/news/2024/07...

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Mississippi is the poorest state in the US. Even though the state gets federal welfare funds, it is difficult to get welfare. The money was all getting stolen, and they got away with it. Now the journalists who exposed the story are facing a lawsuit and jail. www.nbcnews.com/investigatio...

She exposed how the nation's poorest state spent federal welfare money. Now she might go to jail.www.nbcnews.com "The rabbit's got the gun now," said a lawyer for former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who is trying to force reporter Anna Wolfe to reveal her sources.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

these people do not intend to ever lose power again

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" www.mediamatters.org/project-2025...

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution"www.mediamatters.org

I can see the campaign ad: a vignette of the greatest hits of all the stupid shit this man say. “Do you really want to have to listen to this guy for another four years?”

A huge winning message for the Democrats is "you will not have to think about this guy ever again"

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

A huge winning message for the Democrats is "you will not have to think about this guy ever again"

Just at the most basic level it is really unhealthy to have to thought about Donald Trump as much as everyone in America has over the last nine or so years. Spending a decade of my life thinking about a super boring, super shitty crook and all the bad stuff he's doing or might do. It's embarrassing.

At first I thought the SC was crazy: “What happens if the Pres orders a goon squad to start throwing people out of helicopters and then pardons the perpetrators?” Then it hit me. The SC majority thinks that Pinochet did nothing wrong and that throwing people out of helicopters would be really cool.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Look, I'm willing to try anything at this point.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Traveling back in time to explain our current moment to the founding fathers, who react with horror; when I return the constitution explicitly forbids appointing Catholics to the Supreme Court

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

We keep talking about Trump ordering Seal Team 6 to kill his rivals. I don't that's how it'll work - too much chain of command involved. He'd rather assemble a small team of loyal military operatives assigned to the White House, who answer only to him, to take such orders. Basically a death squad.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

the usa is best understood as a latin american country with English flavoring instead of Spanish

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Brazil being a more solid democracy than the US has me pretty shook www.pbs.org/newshour/amp...

Brazil's Bolsonaro indicted for suspected falsification of his personal vaccine recordswww.pbs.org During the pandemic, Bolsonaro was one of the few world leaders who railed against the vaccine, openly flouting health restrictions and encouraging other Brazilians to follow his example.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

One thing I think people forget is how relentlessly *stupid* every day of the Trump administration was. He doesn’t need to do a big elaborate complicated conspiracy, he can just (e.g.) email a list of every U.S. agent in the field to Putin and say it’s to own the libs, and *that* will have immunity.

So Mexico got rid of presidential immunity—a relic of 20th authoritarianism in that country—while the US is adopting it. www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/...

Mexico ends presidential immunity amid controversywww.aa.com.tr Presidential decree enacted in same week as backlash soars for candidacy of politician accused of sexual assault - Anadolu Ajansı

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

There are few things in the U.S. Reports as offensive to the rule of law as John Roberts' reference to "congressional statutes." Those statutes are "the supreme Law of the Land" according to the fucking Supremacy Clause.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Reply to

Don Zeko

It's completely ass backwards. The danger of a president committing crimes as an individual is nothing compared to him using the government for criminal ends. The very things that we should be most concerned about a corrupt president doing are the things he can't be punished for.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Of all the things people are saying the Democrats/Biden should do to make sure he wins in November, the least controversial is to talk about abortion rights over and over and over and over... Appeals to abstract notions of democracy are great but abortion access is how we maintain democracy.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

life under authoritarian regimes is like war: most Americans don’t know that it’s often really normal and boring, up until the rarer, horrible moments when it isn’t

Pretty much. What it mostly boils down to is that most Americans really don’t have the faintest idea what living under modern authoritarian regimes actually looks like, and how it’s often at the same time way more boring and way more scary than they’d imagined.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

Living under authoritarian regimes is both relatively boring and normal AND incredibly corrosive to the human soul. These things can absolutely co-exist. This is why everyone needs to resist authoritarians, even people who privately assume they’ll be just fine.

The damage this causes across generations (even if the regime is short lived!) is so hard to grasp if you haven’t lived with it. It touches every aspect of life. It makes trust impossible, and without some level of trust and a belief in the possibility of justice, *nothing in society works.*

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

March 23 1933, the Enabling Act becomes law in Germany, giving the chief executive power enforce his own laws without checks and balances. The passing of the Act marked the formal transition from democratic republic to totalitarian dictatorship. 6 months later, it was a 1 party state.

It’s either President Biden or King Trump.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

roberts’ reasoning is fundamentally (lower-case “r”) anti-republican. i know we dunk on the framers here but roberts has issued a rebuke of the revolutionary assumption that concentrated, unaccountable power is a fundamental threat to liberty.

It's just hilariously disingenuous. Imagine looking at, say, ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY and concluding that the biggest threat to liberty isn't abuse of power, but powerful people refraining from sufficiently wielding their authority out of fear that they might one day be held accountable.

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alexandergruchala.bsky.social

The Court has purported to strip us of all legal recourse for crimes committed by the most powerful person in the nation. Each and every one of us is now, effectively, at the mercy of an autocrat, who could order our death if he simply made the pretense of connecting it to his official duties.

Criminal law probably functioned as some kind of deterrent on abuses of presidential power, and that deterrent is now gone. But even if that weren't true, today's ruling would be an appalling display of contempt for the American people and for the basic principles on which this country rests.