Unfortunately impeachment is also meaningless. I don’t see a circumstance where 67 senators would ever vote to convict.
The only thing that might work is to be barred from public office and placing the secret service under congressional control to enforce it. But since presidents are untouchable kings now, 2/3rds of Congress and state legislatures are never going to give that up when they could be the king one day themselves.
Do note that the demos below are just our picks. If you’re willing to wade through the shovelware, there are a lot more in there, like Slitterhead and AI Limit. Without further ado, we encourage our readers to check these demos out:
It’s wild that you’re right given that most of the new EV and battery factories are in red states. Just shooting themselves in the foot as usual.
It’s Mirror’s Edge Catalyst
Archive link: https://archive.ph/Cy1ei
You know the saying, “death and taxes”? Well, they stopped paying taxes.
It is in the KS constitution as well. I didn’t word it properly, but it was protected in section 1 of the KS constitution. The ballot measure in 2022 was to get rid of that constitutional right. That ballot measure failed, maintaining the constitutional right to personal healthcare decisions and abortion access.
*“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is the direct wording from their constitution that has been affirmed several times in the state courts to include abortion access
The fight doesn’t end with a ballot measure, in any state. They will keep trying to ban it forever. A similar thing happened in KS. A ballot measure was created to keep healthcare decisions out of the government’s hands, which was already in the state constitution.
KS GOP said people needed to vote no and that it was in no way an attack on abortion. It had nothing to do with abortion. It was just about making sure people could get medical care, absolutely nothing would be done to abortion rights. Just let the GOP help you get healthcare, they said.
The ballot measure passed, maintaining abortion rights, and the GOP, in a shocking move, immediately tried to ban abortion…twice…in 2 years.
That and he hopes it will shield the property from current and future fraud investigations against Trump Org. There was a real chance, at the time, that the business’s property could be seized by the court and having a grave would give them leverage to stop it.
Maybe a bright side; filling the executive with inept sycophants might slow down project 2025. The reason he struggled to achieve a lot of his bullshit the last time was they didn’t have skilled people to navigate the legal system.
Of course, that legal system also made him a king so…all they have to do is make him say whatever they want to do. But maybe, hopefully, they’ll spend a lot of time fighting amongst themselves.
Same, red county-district-state. I would hope the same but they won’t attribute it to their dear* leader. His Tariffs and GOP policy will fuck them too, but fox and podcasts will tell them it’s the deep state Democrats keeping them down. They all were doing the “this is Biden’s America” posts in 2020. GOP can do no wrong in their eyes. Used to be child rape was a deal breaker but even that is A-OK now, as long as the Democrats lose.
And they’ll only get better with time. I think It’ll be a little rocky the next four years in the US. But still, they are great. My house is 100% wind powered and I regret not putting solar on 5 years ago
Great points! Wind and solar are far easier to scale. Their main issue is land use, but when applied properly (with appropriate environmental impact assessments) that’s not a major concern on its own, really it’s transiting that power to use centers. Dealing with the individual property rights for a transmission line that doesn’t benefit the person under it is and has been enough to kill energy projects.
In my opinion, nuclear’s strength lies in its energy density. You could replace a coal or gas plant with a nuclear plant. This is an option being explored by a couple companies because it enabled them to use land no one wants that already has the cooling and transmission connections.
I support nuclear and it was a recurring theme in my environmental policy degree, but I am by no means against wind and solar. I think they are fantastic sources. They each have their trade offs. But we will need to make use of everything in the face of climate change.
One small note, nuclear is expensive, however be cautious when researching cost per Wh produced and look for the time scale. Wind and solar projects are often forecasted to run for just 20 years, they can certainly go longer though. Nuclear runs for 50+ years. Cost comparisons always use the lowest time scale. Nuclear obviously has a very high upfront cost that makes it stupid expensive for a 20 year plan, but over 50 it can reach parody or undercut renewables. Renewables are also done a disservice by these same reports by locking them to the low timescales when their leases are easily extended. But leases are also a large expense so renewal does bump the cost. Things get difficult to forecast with those known-unknows, so it’s easier, and more accurate to take the lowest scale and say “this is the cost for 20 years” and let the reader decide if they want to math out the 2.5 multiplier. But then it wouldn’t be accurate to the 20 years since renewal costs and…well, you see why we use the lower scale.
Kyle Hill has done a fantastic job discussing nuclear energy, if anyone is interested in learning more about its viability. https://youtu.be/J3znG6_vla0
Also, I’ll leave this safety study here as well because nuclear safety is, and should be, a top concern.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Shhhh. I don’t want these two anywhere near an office or department with merit.
One more I’ve heard from the MAGAs in my workplace: Trump did not actually get a first term because the Democrats obstructed him so 2024 is actually his first term
It’s the Tragedy of the Commons defense
He’s been campaigning for head of the USDOE for years. His time in Oklahoma office has just been bouncing from one GOP hot topic to the next, trying to catch Trump’s eye. This is just another “daddy please” from him. Unfortunately it’ll probably work. But at least the whole US will get to use his brilliance that brought Oklahoma’s education system from 49th all that way to 49.5…
Providing he doesn’t become a dictator, which is certainly probable, his impacts on the environment will be bad, but not catastrophic.
Historically, when the incumbent is out, the president flips to the other party. Businesses plan strategy out for 5-10-20 years. Trump dismantling regulation won’t force them to reconsider their strategy entirely. They’ll use the 4 years as breathing room knowing it’s probable a democratic executive will return in 2029. They’ll slow walk progress, but they aren’t going to abandon everything and start ramping up emissions. They still have to sell products in CA and the 16 states that follow CA emissions rules. We already saw that in 2016, auto makers stayed the course. They enjoyed the extra time to get their fleet MPGs up, but they knew time would eventually out and they’d need to be competitive when that happened.
Trumps “drill baby drill” plan sounds good to idiots, but oil is still subject to supply and demand. They already lease more land than they could ever use. They’ll use trump to buy up leases that would otherwise go to renewables, but they aren’t going to start pumping oil past demand and driving their profits down. Especially considering retaliation tariffs could cut into exports as well.
The IRA benefits red states more than blue and they are already begging GOP leaders to leave it alone. Trump might be able to cut individual tax credits for the middle class. Slow some solar and EV purchases, buy that’ll cut into Elon’s business as well, so maybe he won’t even get that done.
Of course, if he goes full dictator, we’re fucked anyway. But if he stays within the confines of our flawed democracy, and money prefers he do so they can continue to buy laws forever, then there’s a chance his damage will be confined as well.
Not to mention triggering Article 5 for the rest of NATO and shattering every defense agreement at once. You know, Putin’s wet dream.