The Official President Trump Thread - Second Term Edition

By "America", I take it you are referring to some fraction of the 32% of eligible voters who cast vote for the Republican ticket in 2024. Because it's obviously not the case that every Trump voter supports everything Trump does or said he would do.

 

@Reeko this will piss you off

 

How a Push to Amend the Constitution Could Help Trump Expand Presidential Power

A draft lawsuit being floated to attorneys general in several states argues Congress must call a convention over the national debt. But the legal theory mixes and matches petitions from states dating back to 1789.

A behind-the-scenes legal effort to force Congress to call a convention to amend the Constitution could end up helping President Donald Trump in his push to expand presidential power.

While the convention effort is focused on the national debt, legal experts say it could open the door to other changes, such as limiting who can be a U.S. citizen, allowing the president to overrule Congress’ spending decisions or even making it legal for Trump to run for a third term.

Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica have obtained a draft version of a proposed lawsuit being floated to attorneys general in several states, revealing new details about who’s involved and their efforts to advance legal arguments that liberal and conservative legal scholars alike have criticized, calling them “wild,” “completely illegitimate” and “deeply flawed.”

The endeavor predates Trump’s second term but carries new weight as several members of Trump’s inner circle and House Speaker Mike Johnson have previously expressed support for a convention to limit federal government spending and power.

Article V of the Constitution requires Congress to call a convention to propose and pass amendments if two-thirds of states, or 34, request one. This type of convention has never happened in U.S. history, and a decadeslong effort to advance a so-called balanced budget amendment, which would prohibit the government from running a deficit, has stalled at 28.

Despite that, the lawsuit being circulated claims that Congress must hold a convention now because the states reached the two-thirds threshold in 1979. To get there, these activists count various calls for a convention dating back to the late 1700s. Wisconsin’s petition, for example, was written in 1929 and was an effort to repeal Prohibition. The oldest petition they cite, from New York, predates the Bill of Rights. Some others came on the eve of the Civil War.

“It is absurd, on the face of it, that they could count something that had to do with Prohibition as a call for a constitutional convention in 2025,” said Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who co-wrote a book critical of convention efforts like this one. “They’re just playing games to try to pretend that the founders of this country wanted you to be able to mix and match resolutions from all different times in American history.”

To avoid the threat of a convention, the legislatures in some states like Colorado and Illinois have passed resolutions withdrawing their petitions. The draft lawsuit says those actions don’t count because “once the Article V bell has been rung, it cannot be unrung.” Nearly half the states the draft counts have rescinded their petitions.

The draft lawsuit is the work of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, a low-profile nonprofit that has drawn support from balanced budget advocates and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. The group’s chair, David M. Walker, oversaw government accountability as U.S. comptroller general during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The draft lawsuit is signed by Charles “Chuck” Cooper, a high-powered conservative lawyer in Washington, D.C., who represented Trump’s previous attorney general during the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Walker and his team have shopped the lawsuit to over a dozen state attorneys general and Republican-controlled legislatures seeking to find states to serve as plaintiffs, according to emails obtained through records requests, public testimony and interviews. Alongside ALEC’s CEO, they met with members of the Utah attorney general’s office in 2023, trying to recruit the state to take the lead, and planned to meet with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, emails show. Lawmakers in Utah, Arizona, South Carolina and West Virginia have sought to get their states to join the lawsuit.

Walker declined to confirm the authenticity of the draft complaint and wouldn’t say which states have signed onto the lawsuit. But it mirrors the legal arguments Walker and his group have made, and the document’s metadata shows Cooper’s firm authored it. Neither Cooper nor his firm returned repeated requests for comment. An ALEC spokesperson said the group has merely provided a “forum” to “exchange ideas.”

Walker said an attorney general’s office has written its own version with “modifications.” He said he hopes the states will announce their intent to sue within the next two months and file shortly after.

Walker and the draft complaint say the convention is necessary to confront the national debt and would be limited to discussing fiscal responsibility.

“Some people think that the convention would get together to basically rewrite the Constitution. That’s totally false,” Walker said. “That has nothing to do with what we’re proposing. Under Article V, it’s just a separate way to get an amendment to the existing constitution.”

Dozens of legal scholars and hundreds of civil society groups, organized by the government watchdog Common Cause, have warned that it would be exceedingly difficult to constrain a convention to just one idea and that calling one would expose the entire Constitution to revision. Some of them say the risk has grown under Trump.

“Nobody is observing any restraints on their power,” Georgetown law professor and convention critic David Super said. “If he continues to lose in the courts, one can imagine he will be trying to get a convention to adopt his view of presidential powers.”

Asked to respond, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly accused Wisconsin Watch of having “TDS” (Trump derangement syndrome) and being a “dark money” group. (Wisconsin Watch makes its donors public here.)

Sam Fieldman, of the campaign finance reform group Wolf-PAC, has individually worked with the foundation on the lawsuit. He said the process empowers states to check the federal government and change the Constitution if Congress fails to act.

“People who are claiming that this process will lead to tyranny are sitting here twiddling their thumbs while we are heading toward tyranny like a rocket right now,” Fieldman said.

Rest: https://www.propublica.org/article/constitutional-convention-congress-donald-trump-power

 

If you think so just keep drinking that hateraid.

 

He should focus more on lowering egg prices and releasing the Epstein files instead of discussing cats.

 

Make America Great Again by forcing diabetic patients to pay more for insulin for no reason!

MAGA !!!

 

Even people that hate Trump are better off but will never admit it....

No one is going to start a civil war because some Puerto Rican dude got arrested lol....

Woke people are delusional

 

Bruh, woke people think that Americans want to die for some random Puerto Rican lol...

 

LOL better off? Stock market collapsing, federal reserve predicting a recession, tariffs destroying the housing market, millions of people will soon be kicked off their insurance. Trump eliminating banking regulators allowing massive fraud to occur to consumers with no recourse.

Jesus how are you braindead morons this delusional. What the hell has Trump has accomplished in office?

 

Who talks like this and? Are you 12

 

yeah, f-ck those brown people. The black and yellow ones too. Did I get that right?

 

99% of your comments in the DD have the word 'woke'. It's as if that's the only word in your vocab.

 

That's a crazy dumb as Biden saying the ERA is now in the Constitution. You can't have it both ways.

 

@Buck Turgidson this is truly shameful. Calling Jackie Robinson a DEI player is insane

 

Your trolling has failed again.

 

Yet here we are, everyone knows this grift is probably the best shot they have at remaking America and the billionaire class will not let it be squandered away...

 

@SamFisher should read this thread.

 

Much like your posting

 

You just can't handle facts .