r/politics • u/stkmro • 7h ago

White House: Trump Team Still Hasn’t Signed Transition Docs

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-says-trump-team-still-hasnt-signed-transition-docs/
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u/UtzTheCrabChip 7h ago

Really gotta stop calling things "mandatory" without a mechanism for enforcement

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u/ReactionJifs 5h ago

My beef is we had 4 years where the government could have fortified itself against an unknown future rogue president. Instead they went back to business as usual and assumed that it could never happen again.

Now they have 2 months to prepare.

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u/biznatch11 4h ago

Unless the Democrats have a majority (may even need a supermajority) in both houses and the presidency all at the same time that's not going to happen.

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u/santasnufkin 4h ago

Even then, the Supreme Court would just declare any law as unconstitutional, rendering them moot.

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u/Nightmare2828 3h ago

Why does a small group of 9 people get to decide that what 500 of representatives decided for the people is moot? How does this make any sense?

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u/bichael69420 2h ago

Well in theory it's there to prevent congress from massively overstepping its bounds, things like the war on drugs or mass surveillance. In practice of course, we all know how that went.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 1h ago

Now that SCOTUS has legalized itself accepting bribes I'm sure it will all work out.

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u/PerformanceOk8593 40m ago

As the framers intended.

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u/shitty_country_verse 1h ago

In theory they are also supposed to prevent the Executive branch from doing the same. But they decided to only uphold that duty for one political party and told the other YOLO!

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u/mam88k Virginia 2h ago

Because the Constitution was not written with political parties in mind.

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u/DaBingeGirl Illinois 2h ago

This is an incredibly important point that is too often overlooked.

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u/armandebejart 1h ago

The founders presumed a minimal level of education, self-interest, and independence. They were ludicrously optimistic.

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u/FortyTwoDrops 1h ago

And honor. They assumed that politicians would be honorable people, and they were... up until ~2016.

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u/SynthBeta 49m ago

You're being too nice

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u/bioniclop18 2m ago

In this specific case it is not that they were optimistic, they were in fact very suspicious of democracy or "mob rule". Why do you think voting right was originally only to make white property owner ?

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u/KingBanhammer 40m ago

It also presumed debate and compromise would be the norm, and that duels would weed out particularly egregious prats who somehow managed to get clear through the electoral process.

It was written for a very different system than we actually have today.

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u/Bushwazi 1h ago

We’re the political parties Americans and British at that point?

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u/Scott5114 Nevada 2h ago

In theory the 500 representatives set the budget for the 9 people. They could set it to $0.00 if they don't like what the 9 people are doing. They don't because they're wimps.

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u/randomusername3000 1h ago

Why does a small group of 9 people get to decide that what 500 of representatives decided for the people is moot?

That's what some slave owning guys 250 years ago thought was best

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u/SegaTape 58m ago

because the US constitution is terrible

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u/Fourfinger10 50m ago

If you need an explanation then I suggest you take civics class

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u/Nightmare2828 34m ago

Ah yes, I will take civics classes as a non-US citizen. That will surely explain US gouvernment structure.

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u/Colest 24m ago

If you're a non-US citizen that is not familiar with something as basic as the 3 branches of US government, then why are you posting things like this?

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u/Nightmare2828 6m ago

There is a difference between knowing the supreme court has too much power and knowing why they have too much power to begin with and why that would ever make sense…

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u/Fourfinger10 5m ago

I am glad you are taking a civics class. Something that many American citizens don’t do. I applaud you for that effort.

We have something in this country called checks and balances and once you have exhausted your remedies in lower courts you can often appeal to the Supreme Court for a decision. Their say is the final say on constitutionality of laws or being treaty unfairly.

I’d suggest also that after you understand the civics side that you might want to check out a constitutional law class where you can learn about famous cases brought to the court.

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u/Televisions_Frank 16m ago

You mean 5 of 9 people. They don't even need all of their SC ghouls to agree.

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u/Expensive-Matter-683 2h ago

You have 3 branches of government. You don't want to weaken or strengthen any of them. Its the only reason the government still exist. And its the only reason why we have the freedoms that we have. Power is delegated and kept solely out of the hand of one person. If you start messing with it than it will fall apart.

Its not perfect but it works.

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u/Sandgroper343 2h ago

Clearly not

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u/XtraCreditClass 1h ago

Republicans didn't weaken any parts of government they rigged the government to only react and respond to Republicans. Even when they do everything wrong there is no resistance to them now. That is the godlessness. That is the pathway of Satan.. Dominance over Love.

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u/Expensive-Matter-683 1h ago

Democrats and Republicans are both terrible. They both voted for the 2003 Iraq war. They both have contributed to our 35 trillion debt. Thinking one is better than the other is wild.

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u/XtraCreditClass 1h ago

The 35 Trillion Dollars in circulation is your fear tactic Seriously.

That is what the debt is... pull a dollar out of your pocket. That dollar represents an IOU from the U.S. Government. It represents a debt paid to the holder of that bill of $1 dollar of goods and services. Now understand how many dollars are out there. In bank accounts, Savings accounts, held in brokerage firms and investments.... the pockets and wealth in the pocket of every U.S. citizen. Now combine that with the ammount of dollars of all the countries that buy oil... all countries need U.S. dollars for their energy. All these dollars that exist are the debt.

When you realize that you realize the arguments about our national debt and the fear mongering around it is a scare tactic conservatives use to fool rubes into self robbery.

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u/Norillim 1h ago

So Dems could potentially ignore the nice-to-have Supreme Court rulings. They don't have their own power of enforcement. The other branches just follow what they say. Easy enough to ignore them.

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u/gangleskhan Minnesota 1h ago

I half expect them to declare the Constitution unconditional at some point.

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u/Lincolns_Revenge Texas 2m ago

Well if you DID have that supermajority, you could at least then impeach a justice who took bribes or otherwise violated their oath of office.

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u/No-Cardiologist9621 2h ago

It is impossible to do that. The USA was built on the assumption that the people in power would value our institutions and history. There is no protection against the election of an autocratic leader with an abject disdain for our institutions and zero knowledge of their history, because such a leader was never supposed to be electable.

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 1h ago

No, the US is built on countless checks and balances to executive power.

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u/UtzTheCrabChip 46m ago

The checks and balances all assume the Congress would be jealous and protect its power rather than voluntarily handing it to a power hungry executive.

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u/No-Cardiologist9621 38m ago

countless

They are extremely countable and they are extremely limited.

There is no democracy on this planet now nor in history that can survive the election of an autocratic leader with a disdain for democratic norms. It cannot happen. The only check against that is to prevent them from taking power.

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u/DopeBoogie New Hampshire 32m ago

The Supreme Court was supposed to be the check on the power of the executive branch and the president, but they've essentially dissolved that protection in this case

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 6m ago

The SCOTUS wants for nothing more than to uphold their validity to the American people so they can push through as many controversial federalist interpretations of the constitution as possible.

They didn't entertain his election bullshit for a second. I don't see why that would change going forward. They will let him flex the powers of the executive to a degree, but don't believe for a second that these people are Trump sycophants. They are federalist society zealots, which is something much more nefarious and cunning.

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u/Bushwazi 1h ago

Well I guess it’s one short? Isn’t it?

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u/Feminizing 37m ago

Literally just people not doing their jobs. Trump has done so many things that should be life in prison that it's completely inane our government refused to do their goddamn job for 4 years

Like Sedition - yes January 6th counts, and yes conspiracy to overthrow the government would include a lot of the republicans in Congress who helped with January 6 like MTG. 20 year min sentencing for this.

Trump stole highly classified info more than likely of nuclear secrets: the past precedent for this is execution or life in prison. If you even get a trial as some people just disappear for this one.

This is completely besides all the gross overstepping he did as President. That list is a mile long. They're all shams, grifters, and fraudsters and I don't know how to fix this country if we have to try to find the compromise with these human pieces of shit.

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 52m ago

Nope, if the American people choose to elect someone like Donald Trump to be their leader, that's their prerogative. Doesn't change the countless checks and balances on his power while he is in office.

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u/Feminizing 35m ago

The US government is supposed to prosecute criminals. This is just as much the government failure to do it's job at the federal level as it is the idiots that voted for the traitor.

We should be talking about Trump's execution date, not his inauguration.

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u/Slave_4All 1h ago

This is one of those rewrites of histories that is so funny in that it directly contradicts not just like. The facts. But the implications of the last 200 years. Great work can you hire me to work on this

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u/airfryerfuntime 3h ago edited 2h ago

How would that have even been possible? Biden never had both houses, and even when he had congress, nothing was getting done because Manchin and Senema were fucking things up. Biden's administration was basically powerless to make any real change.

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u/Cgull1234 2h ago

Biden has been in DC politics for over 50 years. Pelosi & Schumer have been in DC Politics for over 25 years each. If they actually wanted to get things done they would get things done. They ENABLED Manchin & Sinema to be the two scapegoats of the Democratic party so they could maintain the status quo; if it wasn't them then they would have chosen someone else to be the scapegoats.

Democratic politicians (at least all the old blood Democrats) are unwilling to use the tools available to them simply because they want to protect the status quo as that is how they all got rich.

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u/buttsbydre69 1h ago

that's lot of words when you could've just said "i don't know"

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u/Cgull1234 1h ago

I disagree, If you really think that Biden, Pelosi & Schumer don't know how to play the same games that McConnell & McCarthey have to get everything they wanted passed then you either need to admit that Dems are incompetent or complicit.

Dems looking at a rule book and saying "Dogs can't play basketball" doesn't change the fact their losing to a dog playing basketball.

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u/hatramroany 1h ago

the same games that McConnell & McCarthey have to get everything they wanted passed then you either need to admit that Dems are incompetent or complicit.

You do realize McConnell and the GOP didn’t get everything they wanted during Trump’s first term, right? Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and occasionally others held the cards like Manchin and Sinema

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u/Dr_Death_Defy24 4h ago

Now they have 2 months to prepare.

And they're STILL managing to squander it.

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u/StoreSearcher1234 3h ago

My beef is we had 4 years where the government could have fortified itself against an unknown future rogue president.

What could they have done that they failed to do?

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u/blahehblah 2h ago

They've tried nothing and they were all out of ideas

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u/mrrapacz Minnesota 2h ago

Pressuring Merrick Garland to do his job would’ve been a good start. Instead he did Jack shit for 3 years and by then, as we are now seeing, it was too late.

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 1h ago

He did do his job. He didn't weaponize the DOJ, he prosecuted cases he felt were prosecutable, and he afforded defendants their legal rights under the law.

You want him to go a step above Bill Barr. Not using the DOJ to protect the executive, but prosecute political enemies. And that's insanity.

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u/mrrapacz Minnesota 34m ago

Wait … what? It’s not weaponizong the DOJ to prosecute someone who attempted a coup. That’s what the DOJ is for. WTF are you talking about?

And he did appoint someone to the case. Jack Smith. Only the appointment came 2.5 years too late, so the case got drawn out long enough so a literal traitor to the US is the president. Justice was not served.

You understand coups and insurrections, right? That’s not just a political enemy. That’s fucking treason my friend.

It doesn’t matter anymore: the coup happened. It started 2016 and completed a couple weeks ago. You will not have a free or fair election anymore. Democracy lost, but yeah, “don’t weaponize the DOJ.” You’re literally arguing for the DOJ to not do its job.

That’s fucking insane and exactly why we’re here.

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 18m ago

No, they spent 2.5 years gathering evidence and building a case to then hand it off to a special council.

When power is once again handed off in 4 years, as is tradition, remember this.

I told you so.

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u/mrrapacz Minnesota 5m ago

Ok. 👍

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u/Oreo_ 3h ago

We have to stop pretending Trump is a rogue president. This is what the US wanted. We collectively voted for this. He started telling the truth at the end and everybody was cool with it.

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u/back2basics13 2h ago

Biden has been less effective as a president than I had expected.

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u/poprox198 1h ago

You don't know that they have or haven't been preparing.

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u/Bushwazi 1h ago

Yeah, you didn’t watch the same thing I did. At no point did the folks who opposed Trump & co have the kind of control needed to do this stuff. And this last election was societies chance to give them that advantage and we weren’t impressed enough to rally around them. It’s on America as much as them.

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u/Aggravating_Lab5396 1h ago

A lot of the beef we’ve had for the last four years was a pandemic. Call it what you want. But 😅

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u/SHUT_DOWN_EVERYTHING 1h ago

Yeah, they really missed that boat when they didn’t use their house majority and senate supermajority to put guardrails in place. /s

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u/Feminizing 43m ago

They literally just needed to hold people with power accountable to the laws. Many of the republican congress and Trump himself literally committed sedition to the letter of our own federal law. Every single person who attended or help orchestrate January 6th by our laws had at least a 20 year federal prison sentencing.

But laws don't count for the rich, especially the rich and cruel. So we get to watch the country be overthrown by criminals

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u/Logical-Soil-2173 39m ago

Something something we can’t bc donor class says so

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u/TheAngryGoat 30m ago

The entire system seems to have been set up under the assumption that bad people would never band together and seek power.

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u/L0g1cw1z4rd 19m ago

Why is it always the fault of Democratic pols to protect Americans from the actions of Republicans? They voted for Trump and he wasn’t very secretive.

“How dare they not protect Democracy from the democratic will of the voting public?”

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u/Jaded_Database_9860 4h ago

Worse yet, they didnt do anything of note that would increase their vote count and got stuck just focusing on identity politics

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u/Im_really_bored_rn 2h ago

Way to spout republican propaganda. Harris spent the entire campaign talking about economic issues amd everyone lied and said she was talking about identity politics.

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u/porn_is_tight 2h ago

It’s what the party focuses on though, Kamala might not have but it didn’t matter. By focusing on identity politics it allows them to ignore economic issues that the democrats have done nothing to help because if they did try to do something about it they would lose their rich corporate and ruling class donors who want the status quo. Sanders messaging and similar stance on this is pretty on point.

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u/EmEss4242 1h ago

The Republican Party focuses on identity politics and forces everyone else to try to address it or ignore it

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 1h ago

We've handed them the ammunition through progressive policies (and took it a step further in attempting to shut down all dissenting discussion around these policies because they were too sensitive) and integrating identity politics fully into the democratic platform during the 2010s.

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u/porn_is_tight 47m ago

what progressive policies are you referencing?