Summary

Speculatively, Trump might use the Insurrection Act to impose martial law, citing false claims to justify military deployment.

Pentagon purges have removed officials who previously blocked his orders, raising fears of unchecked power.

Mass detention centers, like Leavenworth, could be repurposed for immigrants and dissenters, echoing Project 2025 plans.

Concerns grow over Elon Musk’s access to government AI, potentially aiding surveillance.

  • Lukas Murch@thelemmy.club
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    22 hours ago

    I’m thinking he’s got to do something before the 2026 elections. If he loses the House and Senate by a lot, he could be impeached and removed. We don’t have 4 years, we have 1.

    Summer 2026 could really suck.

  • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    From the article…

    The clock is ticking down on a crucial but little-noticed part of President Donald Trump’s first round of executive orders — the one tasking the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to submit a joint report, within 90 days, recommending “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.”

    Always watch what the other hand is doing.

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

  • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Trump just moved an entire Stryker brigade, vehicles and all, to the Mexican border.

    I think the clearest way to declare himself President for Life, or at least grab a third term, is to invade Iraq Mexico for WMDs fentanyl, provoke a war, and bend everything in his favor in a system he’s already fixed.

    • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      The foolish orangutan wants to have Iraq on America’s doorstep.

      As Critical Magazine states

      “Invading Mexico to wipe out the cartels would effectively jettison everything America learned from our mistakes in the War on Terror. It would be costly, both in lives and treasure. It would be deeply unpopular — and it would fail.”

      “For starters, the cartels are not mere gangs. The cartels effectively control chunks of Mexico and are in many ways ingrained into society there. They are not a separate external growth which can be lasered off with a well-aimed cruise missile: the infection has spread throughout the body. Wiping out the cartels would require our soldiers going door to door, house to house, waging war. This is not to even mention the massive cost of such an attack. A Harvard study found that the total cost of the Iraq War was about $3 trillion; we have no reason to think Mexico would be cheaper.”

      As some guy on the internet stated:

      “There are mountains in Mexico as tough as Afghanistan. Mexicans taking to the hills, like the Afghans, would give the US a constant headache until the Americans are thrown out. Remember, like the US, Mexico started as an insurgency. Every. Single. Mexican conflict has been asymmetrical guerilla warfare (heck, that’s what the drug war is in the first place, that’s why it’s so hard - now we’ve just multiplied the problem by sending the entire Mexican Army packing to the forests and mountains). That’s what Mexico knows best. And that’s a nightmare scenario for the US.”

      The Mexican military has RPG-29s and the RPG-29 was considered so dangerous that the US refused to give M1 tanks to Iraqi security forces until years later and when they did, Iraqi M1s started to drop like flies.

      • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        To him it doesn’t matter how foolish it is, how much money it would cost, or how many lives, Mexican or American, it would grind up. If it’s a viable vehicle for him to consolidate emergency powers, rile up a fervent base, and become an American Emperor, he will take it.

        It may start out relatively focused as a counterterror/counterinsurgency op…but once he pisses off the Mexicans enough for them to fight back, he’ll have his casus belli (to his base) for open war. The unrestrained conservative order of battle will make the invasion of Iraq look positively pleasant. It was very common for war hawks back then to pine for the day we could just wipe Iraqi cities off the map and “let god sort them out”. It’ll be less Fallujah, more Gaza.

        If he can get away with launching a Special Military Operation against the cartels and then Mexico as a whole, then Greenland and Panama are next. Then Canada. Then god knows who else. Maybe our war chest will bottom out by then, but that chest runs very deep.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        22 hours ago

        Did you happen to notice that GWB is not currently president or dictator? Like, yeah he was shitty, but he didn’t participate in a violent attack on the nation’s capitol. He didn’t illegally try to get other states to “find him votes”. He didn’t participate in a fake elector scheme. He didn’t say the 1st Amendment wasn’t legal anymore. He didn’t consider imposing martial law…

        • thallamabond@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          Like, yeah he was shitty, but he didn’t participate in a violent attack on the nation’s capitol.

          Not in DC, but in Miami many of his staffers were involved in a violent riot. The threat of violence was enough for them to suspend the counting of votes, and after a deadline passed, Bush won with a supreme court decision.

          Bonus points for similarity, Roger Stone organized a violent protest (riot) with the explicit goal of stopping the counting of votes, for the benefit of republicans.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot

        • venotic@kbin.melroy.org
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          21 hours ago

          You clearly didn’t pay a single fraction of a thing that guy has done, obviously. He was more subtle with his crookedness.

          • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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            20 hours ago

            Yes, W and his cronies were more subtle and worked more within the system. That’s the criticism.

            At the end of the day, even though W was a bad President, he still participated in the transition of power that this country has done previously. Trump tried to attempt a coup.

            • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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              18 hours ago

              That was the lie they tried.

              That Iraq was storing weapons of mass destruction and coordinating with Al-Queda. It didn’t make a lot of sense to anyone, but dissenting opinions were immediately called treasonous so people went with it. Or maybe not went with it- more like they didn’t know what the crap to do and shrugged.

              Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was just something Bush wanted to finish fucking up something his dad started and a bunch of rich people made a lot of money because of Cheney’s influence on it.

  • TheObviousSolution@kbin.melroy.org
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    22 hours ago

    Yes, obviously. He isn’t just being dumb with the Canada and Greenland threats, he wants to provoke the circumstances to invoke the Insurrection Act. It’s the easiest way to bypass midterms and elections. They know what they are doing is unpopular, they know they are only maintaining the veneer of having popularity. It allows political persecution of “traitors” and “propagandists”. They aren’t casually siding with Russia, Russian authoritarianism is their model. Hope Musk gets thrown out a rocket window to make room for someone more loyal and less overbearing on Trump, he’s unpopular enough on both sides that it might actually be considered good PR by Trump.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      Here is what our American oligarchs have to look forward to. That is, if it hasn’t already happened. Is it worth it? You are not special and it won’t be different for you.

      Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: bend to my authority, stay out of my way, and you can keep your mansions, superyachts, private jets, and multibillion-dollar corporations (corporations that, just a few years before, had been owned by the Russian government).

      In the coming years, the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into exile or die in suspicious circumstances. The loyalists who remained — and the new ones who got filthy rich during Putin’s long reign — became like ATM machines for the president and his allies.

      https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      19 hours ago

      He doesn’t have to do shit to justify anything. He hasn’t thus far.

      All he has to do is say “I declare an insurrection” and the democrats will hem and haw while the republicans move in lock step. And the military will support him, just like they did last time.

      Oh, wait, that pisses people off. Let me try again

      The military will wait for orders from the POTUS to figure out what to do about the POTUS. SUPPORT THE TROOPS MOTHER FUCKERS!!!