To be really glad I don't live in America right now

@TankFlyBossW4lk I had three scans before 19 weeks with one of my pregnancies in the US.

Why do you persist in normalising a felon and an insurrectionist being voted into one of the most powerful positions on Earth. This is insanity.

We don’t even scan until 20 weeks.

@TankFlyBossW4lk Does that differ by state? Where I live, it’s standard to have a scan during the first trimester, typically by 10 weeks. I don’t know about other states though.

19 states ban or limit abortion. We don't even scan until 20 weeks, just to give you an idea of how early the restrictions are.

Yeah, I agree Brexit and 14 years of Tory corruption and stealing from the till have got us here. Don't you agree , Maggie?

I’m still waiting for @AlertBrickBear to tell me how many ICE raids have occurred at schools.

and @izimbra to back up their claim that I am misrepresenting information

I have an idea 💡 Izimbra should challenge Alertbrickbear and save me some time! 😁

OMG reread what I wrote

OMG dei wasn't the cause of the collision.

I wish I didn't.

DEI hire didn’t mean brown people, it meant poor, white, veterans, rural dwellers

Only veterans get preferential hiring, and that’s for the public sector.

Brown people made up a very small percentage of the DEI hiring

It’s true, white women benefit the most.

But … DEI caused a huge problem among the ATC for example, and it’s sad it took a fucking plane crash for people to start noticing.

They got what they voted for. Too many people were attracted to the othering and scapegoating and are in for a world of pain when they realise that the dog whistling they liked so much included them. DEI hire didn’t mean brown people, it meant poor, white, veterans, rural dwellers. Brown people made up a very small percentage of the DEI hiring.

Never underestimate some people’s ability to repeatedly (remember the Affordable Care Act) to vote against their own best interests in a desperate effort to belong to a group who give zero fucks about them.

Yes Trump is a fucking idiot but the real powers behind that fucking idiot, are far more dangerous.

The American Dream is the shiny object that distracts poor people from the reality of the real world. Too busy getting high on debt and over consumption, pretending to have made it.

Hopefully they will learn but I wouldn’t bank on it.

"but at least we don't have a government in charge who is trying to strip huge swathes of the population of their rights and citizenship."

Are you serious? Take a while to look through the independent media outlets & you'll soon see you're wrong on that one.

Glad to know that it's not just me that can see the distinct possibility of that scenario being a reality although maybe 'glad' is not really the right word if you know what I mean?! 🙄
The sad fact is that pre leadership Starmer appeared to give the impression that he was slightly left leaning with socialist ideals and beliefs, or maybe I was just totally naive along with the many others who voted for him to be leader? 🤔
Stealthily, using the weakest premises, he has one by one evicted from the party anyone with even slightly 'leftist' tendencies, and, not only is he coming across as weak, pompous and indecisive in many ways, several of the policies and decisions made so far would sit better in the Tory camp than in the Labour Party!! 😡
As we know the electorate is fickle and unforgiving and the Reform party is now just biding it's time as other right wing fascist parties have previously done before triumphantly marching to victory...😱

I think Mumsnet needs to install a WTAF button because honestly, to hear you use the expression 'a breath of fresh air' while even obliquely referencing Donald Trump must surely beggar bucket loads of the proverbial disbelief?! 🙄
Whilst however I do see the point that you're attempting to make, whether or not it's a 'positive' that policies get implemented 'quickly' must surely depend on what those policies are and who they affect as, in Trumps case, most of what he has decreed already will have the worst effect on huge numbers of those who voted for him...as the saying goes and is once more proven...Turkeys keep on voting for Christmas!!! 😱

they ran an unconstitutional campaign of "lawfare" against Trump, trying to put their political opponent in prison so that they did not have to face him at the polls. What they don't realise that by doing that, they made certain he would win. The American people saw through their nonsense. None of that is to say Trump is an ideal candidate but Americans decided fairly and freely to elect him and they will get the benefit or pay the consequences. Liberals squawking about it as unjust, unfair, undemocratic, are doing exactly what they charge him as doing after the 2020 election, Get a grip and buckle up

(1) It was not political opponents who prosecuted Trump; it was the legal and justice system. Just maybe he has done some things to deserve it. Corrupt Democrats get prosecuted too; I heard that one of the Democratic senators just got quite a long prison sentence for corruption..

(2) I don't think anyone here has been saying that Trump wasn't legitimately elected. Just that he and his policies are evil and dangerous. It's perfectly possible for evil governments to be legitimately elected; has happened on numerous occasions. As Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst possible system- except for all the others.

(3) Just because a narrow majority voted for him, doesn't mean that all of America supports his policies. Nearly half (in fact, just over half if you count those who voted for the independent candidate) voted against him. And I doubt that everyone who voted for him fully endorses all the policies. Some just always vote Republican; some thought he'd be better for the economy; some thought that being so isolationist would at least mean his not getting into conflicts with other countries (his threats about Greenland and Panama, etc. started after he was elected). So right-wingers should not assume that hard-right views have triumphed and should be emulated elsewhere; and left-wingers should not reject all Americans as hard-right.

(4) There is a lot of talk by right-wingers- and sometimes even left-wingers, to the effect that the right-wing win because left-wingers and centrists attack and 'demonize' right-wingers too much; and that we should all shut up or we'll just strengthen the right wing. But this is contradicted by Trump's own success. He is an absolute champion at sneering at and demonizing his opponents - 'Crooked Hillary', 'Sleepy Joe', claims that Obama was born abroad; etc. - and those .who vote for them. Perhaps he is more effective at doing so. In countries with relatively low voter turnout, there is always a tension between whipping up your voter base sufficiently to bring them out against your opponents and irritating the other side sufficiently to bring them out against you. If calling some of your opponent's supporters 'deplorable' is counterproductive, while calling them the 'enemy within' is successful, that clearly is not because attacking your opponents is intrinsically counterproductive. If it were, Trump wouldn't have gottem anywhere. This does NOT mean that Democratic/Labour/ Remain leaders have always fought excellent campaigns: they need to offer a lot more in the way of concrete policies on bread-and-butter issues. .But the 'We win because you criticize and attack us too much; so shut up!' argument is just the Right's version of cancel culture.

(5) There is nothing that the UK can do directly about whom the Americans choose as their president. However, we should try to be vigilant against hard-right poison creeping into our system. And not assume that it's just older people who are affected by it; the worst affected at the moment are probably young men.

I'm American (been here almost 30 years) and I'm sure glad I don't live there. I feel terrible for my family and am worried for many.

It's scary.

Actually, half the people voted it in. And yes, the entire world had to live with the consequences,

Ahh yes but Godwin himself condemned the far too frequent use of his law !

The American public voted for him and many of them seem comfortable with a level of chaos/ shake up in their public institutions. He could do a lot of damage but his last term wasn't hugely different from the Democrats ultimately. Also I'm pretty sure most lesbians don't have a problem with his pronouncements on the sex binary. I do think the Dems and a lot of their supporters have lost the plot on gender identity, medicalisation of children, men in women's sports etc. You could see Trump waking up to this own goal. And he has used it very effectively as a wedge issue.

Godwin's law is proven correct again.

Why aren’t we all talking about how similar this all is to pre war Germany???

Well the people voted it in. They made their own beds. Now we all have to deal with the consequences

Reform/Nigel Farage are likely to pick up young voters in the UK because:

1. They are very proactive on Tiktok etc and working the algorithms to their advantage. Labour/other parties need to compete with them but it is likely to be very hard without looking either cringey or being offensive (parties like Reform aren't held to the same standards being the outsiders)
2. I can remember the 2008 financial crash and the austerity that followed. And the promises Farage made about Brexit and the issues Brexit caused. Younger people can't. So he won't automatically look like a massive hypocrite/conman to them. And a lot of the UKs issues currently are caused by austerity but I can remember tuning out in the early 2000s when my parents talked about Thatcher. She just didn't seem relevant.

That isn't what I WANT to happen mind. But it is a risk.

Thanks for posting this.