Basically reservists, the National Guard is brought up under control of the states/feds for emergencies/disasters. Generally you'd see them building flood levees or rescuing people in hurricanes or (occasionally) shooting college students in the '70s. They're not really designed for peace time occupation but the admin's gotta find jack boots somewhere.
All gerrymandering works on suppression by dilution so it's a fine line to tread. When they try to scramble a solid blue city into 3 red districts, for example, there's a good chance that you cut it incorrectly and end up with 1-3 blue seats.
Trying to turn a whole state one color is really playing with fire, especially when you're churning out deeply unpopular policies the whole time. I'm sure everything will wash out with supplemental election tampering anyway, but this gerrymandering might not be as impactful as it's made out to be.
There's a lot of comments about how digital devices are viable/helpful for note-taking and just as good as a pen. I think that's missing the crucial point: virtually every device we own today is designed as a distraction machine.
A pen + paper isn't going have any notifications or reminders or updates or emails or texts or ads or alarms or alerts. If there's any device without those that's as reliable and as cheap as a notebook, I've never heard of it.
Idk, when I have more friends and then family locked up are you gonna do something? You're afraid for your own personal liberty in a silly show of customs theater? Quick turnaround from all the talk of dearresting.
Chaos that the article states aside, overt interference with elections is a slightly different type of crisis than the rest for this admin. If he pretended he could suspend any election it's putting the states on the offensive in a way that the other unconstitutional stuff doesn't.
"Prove that the president can't" becomes "stop us from electing someone else". It's obviously not out of the realm of possibility to suppress them by force, but enacting that across multiple states all at once is a tall order.
Voting is a very diffuse process, and states are basically only beholden to their own constitutions. That is to say, they can change their own rules as much as Trump can.
I'm not saying he'd let it happen, but this is one scenario where the constitution is perfectly clear and it's within the states' authority. They could even ignore the SCOTUS if they wanted, though I think even the SCOTUS would struggle to justify stopping an election.
Meh, just hold one without him. Get an electoral college quorum and move the new guy in because it's 100% state driven and he can't change the constitution. Like an old time papacy schism, let God sort it out.
We've discovered a technology that explores the fundamental truths of human nature, gaze into the black mirror and reflect upon your modern folly.
...Also all the scientists are straight white men and we invented new ways for our women to cook dinner.
Edit: To be clear, old sci-fi is genuinely great. Merely pointing out the funny juxtaposition of nerdy white guys not fathoming any social change in their generally progressive and thought provoking works.
If you can't fill in: "don't support X or Y but ___" then why make a comment tearing down any particular candidate? You're clearly not interested in what's possible in our current, real-life political environment.
If you're positive it's impossible to get anyone decent elected then go set something on fire or some shit. I'm not judging any radical position but we're talking about ballot boxes here.
This looks like when you see a weird, unflattering picture of a celebrity. Earth just woke up and hasn't put its makeup on and you put it on blast like this
What are you on about? There is no progressive wing. The center doesn't need the left to get anything done, as evidenced by the last 50+ years. All they need is the permission of the right.
Again, you're complaining that there's no space for your platform but that has nothing to do with centrists secretly favoring the right. In the USA (and most 21st century democracies, to some extent) we have a rigged spectrum with only Center, Center-Right and Hard Right.
If you want to play the political game as it stands then you're submitting yourself to the Center. It's not back stabbing, you just have no political weight to merit anything but lip service. Gaining the clout to influence policy isn't going to come from the good will of the Centrists, it has to be built independently.
It's arguably an insurmountable task but it starts by making policy that appeals to voters across the current spectrum. That means a hard focus on economic solutions for the wage-earning class. Look at the success of Bernie, AOC and Mamdani, their focus is generally-to-exclusively economic. Once you build that Center-Left you sap some life from the right and can build from there.
Of course, all of this is going against coordinated establishment attacks. You can see those headliners getting it from all media outlets, but as long as they stay on message they have success. Attacking them for not being progressive enough is silly when they're actively pushing the limits of what the system allows. That is the essence of the "purity test".
Uh... Why would they? Progressive policies are on the far end of the left spectrum by definition. If they had the political weight to carry the party then they would no longer be progressive.
What you're actually complaining about is the window of modern politics being dragged so far to the right, which is due to external factors and separate from any party loyalty concerns.
I'll take "things foreigners say when they've never been to China" for 500 Alex