I disagree that there is nothing the states could do. They have armed personnel, they have citizens that support them, they have the law on their side. We outnumber them, we have a national guard, we have cops, and we could create militias, blue states not only should physically prevent the feds from marching in and running fixed elections, they have a duty to.

I mean, yeah, if the feds try to seize ballots, this is probably what’s going to have to happen, but please understand where this goes. Feds come in, demand the ballots to look for, “fraud,” local authorities refuse, and there is an armed standoff. Maybe a state calls in the National Gaurd for backup. Trump can then either nationalize that gaurd in response, leading to conflicting orders, and Trump almost certainly invokes the insurrection act, allowing him to send active duty troops into the state. That would be the beginning of the Civil War.

I doubt Trump wants something that messy though. He’ll almost certainly attempt to purge voter rolls wherever he can and suppress the vote with ICE. Dominion voting was also bought out by a Republican election official, so that could be another method to falsify the vote as well. Luckily those methods are imperfect (even Dominion voting requires a physical ballot trail), so we can still overcome that kind of voter suppression.

I mean, if you’re talking about Trump sending in federal agents to seize ballots, then yes, that would be bad and there is very little an individual state could do to stop it without an armed conflict. At that point, ballot stuffing would be a secondary concern over the fact that a second Civil War had broken out. I maintain that the more likely scenario, though, will be Trump sending CBP and ICE goons to stop, “illegals,” from voting, which would be a flimsy pretense for voter suppression. But, “federalizing the elections,” would require upednig Article 1, section 4 of the Constitution, and even with our deeply fucked up court system, I can imagine Trump getting that through in 9 months. Maybe I’m wrong, and a favorable court would allow him to proceed until he got it to the Supreme Court, but I think that’s a stretch.

What would stand between him are the state’s Attorneys General. They have been very successful in blocking Trump’s actions through the courts (at least until the Supreme Court, which has been ruling against lower courts’ decisions at an incredibly high rate). It’s likely that the AGs would block this long enough for the midterms.

That’s about ending the Electoral College. What Trump is talking about is the federal government taking control of how elections are run. The state’s are in charge of conducting their own elections, even federal elections, rather than the federal government, per the Constitution. This is what makes it difficult for Trump to rig elections through direct methods such as ballot stuffing.

Yes, but most of those have either not been achieved yet or have only been achieved because they were relatively easy. He tried to abolish the 14th Amendment through EO on day one, and it’s just getting to the Supreme Court now. He’s been able to illegally dissolve federal agencies because the Republicans in Congress have abdicated their power, and destroying something is much easier than building it.

Even if he signs an EO to take over the elections tomorrow, he’ll still face legal challenges that will likely wind up in the Supreme Court, and he’ll still need to build out the infrastructure to run these elections federally, something the federal government has never done. I’m not saying that he can’t steal the elections, or that we shouldn’t be worried, but the idea that he’s just going to, “federalize,” elections in fifteen states before the midterms seems pretty unlikely.

The thing is, there’s no mechanism for nationalizing voting, and I don’t really see a clear path for Republicans to do that in the next nine months. They’d have to pass legislation to do that, which would be extremely difficult given their margins in congress. Even then, states control elections as a function of the Constitution, and while the Supreme Court is happy to approve whatever unconstitutional bullshit Trump dreams up, it will take times to get through the courts. He could try to seize control of the voting process from states, but I don’t know that he has the infrastructure to manage the whole voting process through the executive branch, and the fact that he’s asking the Republicans to do this for him makes me think he knows this. Either way, any kind of coup on the election process would face the same legal challenges as legislation.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be extremely worried. I think it’s unlikely that the Republicans will, “nationalize the voting,” but I think it’s very likely he’ll send federal goons in to, “prevent voter fraud,” (AKA suppress the vote).

Honestly, I’m kinda impressed. I didn’t think you could start a diplomatic crisis wandering around Minneapolis, but ICE found a way.

Wow. Thank you for that limp-dick statement in these troubling times. Very inspiring, Mr. President.

He can’t pardon them for state crimes, only federal.

And given how many American politicians support that genocide, that’s saying something.

He’s always been a bloodthirsty neocon with a fetish for regime change in Latin America. The Trump administration is just freeing him of the pretense of civility. Wait until they get to Cuba; he’ll be demanding we make them a U.S. territory to, “free,” them from communism.

Yeah, of course they’re fucking plummeting, there’s no plan or structure to these tariffs. You can’t just put tariffs on everything and expect manufacturing to return to the U.S. You might be able to get automakers to reshore car manufacturing if you put tariffs on foriegn-made cars, but if you’re also putting tariffs on imported steel, then they’re not going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build plants in the U.S. just to spend more on materials. They’re just going to charge people more for cars.

Fuck it, let her. She had to drop out of the 2020 primary before voting started because she was on track to lose every single state, and she clearly hasn’t become more electable since then. All she could possibly do is siphon some votes and donor money off Newsom or Buttigieg. If that’s what she wants to do, I fully support that.