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

There is so much ignorance on this thread about US politics, which is not that important since it isn't our country, but just to correct a couple of things that have been said:

First, the US absolutely does have "checks and balances," they are built into their constitution so that executive/legislative/judicial branches check one another's power. This means that any of the EOs that Trump has announced are subject to judicial review, or Congress can constrain them, or an incoming president can overturn them (Trump overturned 67 of Biden's). The checks and balances do not just exist at the federal level but are built into federal structure so that states can make policy that defies or challenges executive action, or states can make law that is outside of the remit of the federal government (amendment 10 of the constitution) - such as with abortion law. Many of the states that elected Trump, for example, also passed liberalising abortion laws in 2024.

On the abortion issue, since this seems to be a major point of contention here: the overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court was a legally valid opinion since it had rested on the 14th Amendment which does not support it. I say that as someone who is very pro-choice but even the lawyer who argued Roe in 1973 has said the constitutional grounds were shaky and vulnerable to be overturned; she said back in the 1990s that women should organise to protect abortion through other legal and political channels since (a) it was inevitable that Roe would be overturned, and (b) conservatives were mobilising to overturn it. Unfortunately, her words were not heeded and pro-choicers mostly relied on the US Supreme Court to protect their rights.

That said, since Roe was overturned, some states have liberalised their laws - which had been on the statute books for decades but were reactivated when Roe was overturned. Currently, 12 states of the 50 have a virtual ban but most of these allow abortion in cases of threats to maternal health (including mental health), unviability of the fetus at birth (ie postnatal death or severe disability), rape, incest, and some other exceptions. For example, Alabama has a total ban but over 3,000 abortions were performed there last year (still about half of the number before Roe was overturned). These laws were mostly already on the books and people are now working to modify or liberalise them. 4 more states have a 6 week ban, which might as well be a total ban but these have come under heavy challenge and Florida almost overturned it in 2024 - more than half voted to liberalise it but they had a 60% threshold (I think it was about 57% said liberalise).

The idea that Trump's victory was not democratic - someone has made the claim that the system did not reflect the will of the people - is ludicrous. Trump won the electoral college AND the popular vote; his party also won both houses of Congress. The electorate decidedly rejected the poor candidacy of Kamala Harris and would have done even worse if they had stuck with Joe Biden. The Biden administration was unpopular, not just for allowing bonkers identity politics to run riot, but for allowing wars to start in Ukraine and Israel (Trump has already stopped one and will stop the other within months), for running the economy into the ground, and basically for being very bad communicators: Biden hid from the public, Kamala did not have any kind of democratic endorsement for her candidacy since she was parachuted in after the primaries (which Biden had won handedly), and 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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyeg61pnl5o.amp

unless you’re not interested in facts.

Genesis92 and meh2025, thank you for your good sense.

@AnonymousBleep

Reading through a lot of your replies, it's clear you have literally no knowledge or understanding of Reform as a party. It's understandable, because as a PP said you're doing the equivalent of toddler politics and putting your fingers in your ears going "la la la".

A huge amount of growing Reform support is coming from under 25s. They have a lot of policies that aren't just to do with immigration. Maybe read their manifesto? They want to nationalise water companies for example.

Also it's gets so boring hearing that they're "far right". They're literally just a normal right of centre party. It's shows how delusional people have gotten about what's right and left now. The Tories are/were basically centrist for a long time. And to correct something else you said, they did and will continue to steal Labour votes.

I wouldn't write them off, you could be in for a shock in 4 years time.

Cue all the Reform/Tory bot comments...🙄

*They won't. Their voters are all older people, and there's simply not the numbers to make that happen.

Seem to be a fair few of them on MN though.*

Re Reform. And this is what is called delusion from the left

Have you actually read background into what happened with the FAA and the ATC recruitment?

It sounds like you did not.

The pilots were white men, the air traffic controller was a white man.

What Trump has done is remove the law that makes it illegal to discriminate against people based on skin colour. If a black woman is the best candidate for the job it’s now legal not to hire her.

People often wrongly perceive white men to be more capable than they are, due to their own inherent biases.

Children of illegal immigrants will have to accompany their parents back home. If ICE have their parents in custody, it will be reasonable to pick up their children from school. You should comply with this tbh.

My family who live in the Midwest are not at all delighted or perfectly happy. Fortunately for them they also have Australian passports so they have options.

In the normal scheme of politics we cycle between left and right and occasionally nutcases get elected but then the voters see through them and vote them out.

The dangerous thing about Trump is he’s likely to at least try to circumvent democratic processes for himself and his acolytes. And by the time people realise the only one he cares about is himself it might be hard to get rid of him.

Lovely for holidays but I’ve never wanted to live there because

Guns
Healthcare
too right wing

I don't think "democracy" explains any of these autocratic actions.

U.S. government agencies are now being ordered to make announcements and distribute press releases through Elon Musk’s company rather than through emails or other means.

Elon Musk and a team of DOGE infiltrators have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by connecting non-government computer servers to the US personnel mainframe computers. They have reportedly seized private information about millions of federal employees. They have locked the senior managers of the OPM out of their agency’s computers. They have moved “sofa beds” into the OPM offices and put the offices into a “lockdown mode.”
The hostile takeover of OMP allowed Musk to send an unauthorized memo inviting millions of federal employees to resign in exchange for eight months of “non working paid employment.”

Elon Musk and a team of DOGE infiltrators have attempted to seize control of the US Treasury payments system—the gateway through which ALL funds from the federal government flow. When a senior manager at the Treasury asked why Musk needed access to the highly sensitive system, the manager was immediately placed on leave.

As of Friday evening, the Acting US Attorney for Washington, D.C., fired about 30 US Attorneys who prosecuted January 6 insurrectionists. See Politico, DOJ fires dozens of prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases. Think about that for a moment: The convicted felons who attacked the Capitol have been pardoned and the loyal servants of the Constitution who prosecuted them have been fired.
Also on Friday evening, the FBI told eight of its most senior leaders to resign or be fired on Monday. Those senior officials head divisions of the DOJ responsible for cybersecurity, national security, and criminal investigations.

The FBI has fired dozens of agents who worked on investigations of January 6 insurrectionists and has asked for a list of every agent across the US who worked on the largest criminal investigation in the history of the FBI. That list will include hundreds—possibly thousands of FBI agents. The implication of the memo ordering the compilation of the list is that those agents may be fired.
Also on Friday, the FBI told the senior agents in charge of field offices in Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles to resign or be fired on Monday.

Dozens of government websites were taken offline on Friday, ostensibly to be scrubbed for references to diversity, gender, or human attributes that are not white, male, and Christian. The effort was brutish, clumsy, and ignorant. The Census Bureau website was offline as DOGE infiltrators attempted to remove references to the fact that America includes people who are not white male Christians. Websites relating to LGBTQ equality, women’s health, transgender issues, and scientific knowledge in general were taken down.

And as all of the above is happening, Republicans in the Senate will vote to confirm a Director of National Intelligence with suspiciously warm views toward Putin and an FBI Director who published an “enemies list” that included dozens of politicians, journalists, military officers, and career government officials.

Or I should say he appears to be- from what my dcs tell me and from seeing him over Youtube a lot.

Farage is relentlessly targeting gen Z on YouTube and TikTok. They probably don't realise a lot about him like that he went to an exclusive private school for example.

They won't. Their voters are all older people, and there's simply not the numbers to make that happen.

You're joking right? They are the popular party among older teens where I live, and those older teens will be eligible to vote next time round.

Also seem popular with the millennials.

Not saying it's enough to win but it certainly isn't old people voting Reform round my way!

Are you on glue?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I know what far right means. I was asking for your definition.

Didn’t think you’d be able to provide any examples of these “far right” accounts that inexplicably appear on your feed despite you not looking for political content. Yes sure you do, let’s see a screenshot of your feed…

Trump is what happens when you only listen to the people in your own echo chamber.

But strangely he does have some populist (well supported) policies, Upholding title ix, getting rid of the GI influence and CRT in schools and DEI (which is different to the discrimination laws but various people don't want you to know this).

And as others have said if the UK isn't careful its sleepwalking in to the same thing with reform which is gaining support from all ages. Yet the to major parties don't seem to care.

If you don't know what far right means, perhaps you should look it up. As for hate speech on Musk's platform, it's a cesspit of racism and antisemitism. Lol.

Musk is great. Lol. He's currently supporting the AfD in Germany, lol. It's a far right party (look it up) with Nazi sympathisers. Lol

I didn't say that Facebook was any better.lol

Meta CEO recently admitted they’d been coerced into giving out misinformation about the safety of Covid so-called “vaccines” and withholding information reaves detrimental to their political masters. Facebook fact checkers were biased.

X under Musk has made lots of new technical developments including community notes where users with different views can update on the veracity of a post or source. Other social platforms have now said they will adopt this system.

You say that “far right” accounts are in your X feed? What’s your definition of far right (everything that’s leftists disagree with is now far right lol) and what are these accounts called? Care to name them? Or are you talking rubbish like that BBC “journalist” who was rightly called out by Musk for telling lies about hate speech in the platform?

Farage, like Trump, cares about one person and that's himself. People who think he will put their best interests at heart are very deluded. It may be that people clock on to that once we see what the net result is in the US, but you never know.

thanks for the laugh! 😂who are all these “reasonable” people leaving the platform for Threads?!! Who the fuck uses Threads lmfao and Bluesky is either full of centrist dads who can’t bear to hear any opinions that don’t align with theirs or weirdo perverts.

the fact that a county council left is laughable! Is it only centrist dads or leftists who need breaking news about the all-important changes to the recycling and refuse collections. People with many political views pay taxes. So if some public sector digital media staffer with MDS or EDS doesn’t want you to get your news that way they’ll make their point by sticking it to Elon by taking their custom elsewhere. Tragic.

why didn’t those same “reasonable” people leave Twitter1 when women were being inundated with rape threats and violence just because they didn’t believe that human beings can change sex and weren’t prepared to be coerced into playing along with an ideology that sought to keep people on a medical pathway for life and endanger women who didn’t want men in their spaces, sports or prisons?

How many ICE raids have happened in schools?

Good luck out there, if you continue to hate, fear and despise people just because they have different opinions and vote differently to you, you're going to need it.

The irony. Meanwhile, in the blue state where I live, our superintendents of school districts are having to send us emails telling us how they are protecting children within the schools from visits from ICE officers. Which are actually happening. Yet, apparently everyone is so happy in America and we are all happy with this situation. And we are the ones that are hating? Sounds good. I just need to reframe it and be excited about those lovely, kind ICE agents popping in to have a chat with children in schools.

I completely agree with you! I am so against everything Trump stands for. It's horrific that people even elect leaders like him into power. I can't believe the amount of people who don't mind him or are apathetic towards him on this post - apathy can cost lives.