The Imperial Presidency

[Labster]

I've been drinking because of public holiday here so this idea might be a little less credible than most (Also, this whiskey is old enough to drink itself. 21 year old whsikey - my god)

But, instead of Canadian resistance, why not bring the whole teetering edifice down from the inside? You'lll have 40 million new  'natural born' US Citizens who want cheap healthcare, sensible government, and a general lack of stupidity suddenly absorbed by an entity that wants none of these.

But more than that.

You'll have the current King of Canada - also, arguably also a citizen of the Great State of Canada when it gets assimilated, and therefore eligible to run for the Presidency of the United States of American and Canadia.

Given the choice between the milk toast of the democrats, the swastika of republicanism, the third option is the Presidency of Chuck Windsor - billionaire landowner, landlord and owner of half the fucking British isles.

If American truly wants a King, now you can have one who at least knows how to arrange a murder to look like a car accident.

Truly noncredible in a good way, share on /r/NonCredibleDiplomacy please.

Trump of course doesn't give a crap about international law -- Republicans are, of course, above all the laws of God and man and attempting to hold them to them is political persecution.  The question is, does the rest of the world care enough about those laws to go up against the World's Oldest Toddler and dare say no to him?

Honestly some Republicans are mad because they're like "you promised us isolationism" (while others think "oh joy, one step closer to the Second Coming!").  

That said, building Gaz-a-Lago is yet another distraction, and yes we are at the phase where threatening genocide is a distraction.  You need to follow the money.  And that is, in fact, what Trump is doing.  I'm going to link some long articles, but then summarize them.

Elon Musk Wants to Get Operational Control of the Treasury’s Payment System. This Could Not Possibly Be More Dangerous ... and the same day follow-up, where it in fact got more dangerous, Afternoon of Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: Changing the Treasury Payments Source Code & the Treasury’s “DOGE” gag order.

Basically, the US federal government is huge, with thousands of offices and contractors and all of that kind of stuff.  Rather than trying to reform or take over all of these offices, most filled with bureaucrats hostile to Trump's vision of America, they're targeting the one office that handles 85% of the payments.  So rather than hiring bureaucrats and replacing them everywhere, all they have to do is stop funding the things that they don't like.  Just impound the payments, and the downstream agencies will be forced to change their strategy.  As a side-effect, this allows the Doge to access mountains of personal data on most Americans and companies, bypassing previous privacy restrictions.

The followup mainly notes that Musk's longtime employee now has write access to government payment systems (and will presumably take all of the fractions of cents, no one will notice them), and can proceed to move fast and break things.  Also all Treasury Department officials are prohibited from discussing DOGE, even internally.

Next, a Vox piece with a theory: America’s constitutional crisis could come to a head in four months. How Donald Trump and Elon Musk could use a debt ceiling breach to usurp Congress’s power.

Trump's appointees have been making noises about how the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional, saying that the President does not have to spend money allocated by Congress -- this law passed in 1974 because Nixon was the first person who thought he could get away with it.  If we go into a debt ceiling fight once again, which is scheduled for this spring or early summer, depending on how many accounting tricks Treasury does.

If we hit the debt limit, it gives Trump an excuse to start drastically cutting programs he dislikes.  Congress with a 5 seat majority in the House, won't pass a budget that isn't a poison pill to Democrats on Republican votes alone.  Negotiations to compromise with Democrats may hit a stumbling block, because any funds allocated to programs Democrats want will simply be impounded by Trump, so there is no reason to cooperate if Dems think their opponent will defect.  Eventually there will be no budget, and Trump will take the power of the purse to stabilize the national economy in the resulting crisis, showing that we need a strong leader to tame the petty and quarrelsome Congress.

Obviously there are lots of ways out of this scenario, but it's certainly not unthinkable.  Democrats could simply fold, Congress could get their act together.  A real, honest compromise could happen.  But it could also happen that Congress manages to make itself look less competent and less legitimate than the President, which looking at those guys is somehow possible.