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

[AnonymousBleep]

I really feel for ordinary Americans. It's bad enough on this side of the Channel, hearing daily about Trump's latest petty, spiteful, idiotic bullshit - that rant against the Bishop who asked him to have mercy on immigrants, the ridiculous and insulting attempt to blame 'diversity' for the plane crash - but living under it must be so much worse. And heaven help you if you're LGBT or a woman. Or an immigrant. Or not white. Or poor. Or anyone else Trump and his freakshow of a government despises. I moan about the UK all the time, like everyone else who lives here, because god knows it's far from perfect, 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.

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

It sounds like you did not.

*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

@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...🙄

Genesis92 and meh2025, thank you for your good sense.

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

unless you’re not interested in facts.

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.

Thanks for posting this.

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.

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

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

Godwin's law is proven correct again.

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.

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

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

It's scary.

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.

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 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!!! 😱

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...😱

"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.

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.

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.

I wish I didn't.

OMG dei wasn't the cause of the collision.

OMG reread what I wrote