The Political Thread

[Comrade Khan]

So ya its a full on coup happening

 

[Comrade Khan]

Tik Tok and Fox gonna be your info networks after they shut down the rest of the networks and censor all the isps. Wonder how much longer we have to talk

 

[Grim]

Getting half their staff fired.

Context:

 

[Chris]

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/politics/judge-blocks-birthright-citizenship-executive-order/index.html

A second federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship, saying it’s likely unconstitutional and “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.”

The nationwide preliminary injunction from US District Judge Deborah Boardman is a significant ruling against Trump’s Day 1 order, which was swiftly met with legal challenges and put on hold days later by a separate judge.

The order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth,” Boardman said during a hearing on Wednesday.

 

[Chris]

Context:

C.I.A. Sends White House an Unclassified Email With Names of Some Employees

The list of partial names was provided in an effort to comply with an executive order to trim the federal work force.

www.nytimes.com

The C.I.A. sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries.

The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation — and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking them to identify them.

The agency normally would prefer not to put these names in an unclassified system. Some former officials said they worried that the list could be passed on to a team of newly hired young software experts working with Elon Musk and his government efficiency team. If that happened, the names of the employees might be more easily targeted by China, Russia or other foreign intelligence services.

 

[Chris]

What the fuck

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www.reuters.com

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States will take over and own the Gaza Strip, adding that "the same people" should not be in charge of rebuilding and occupying the land.

I'm so tired of "yes he said this but I think he actually meant this" with the president, that is rationalizations you make for mentally unstable children

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to clarify President Donald Trump’s radical assertion the US should “take over” and “own” Gaza by saying that Trump was only offering for the US “to become responsible for the reconstruction of that area” and for Gazans to temporarily move out during the process.

“The only thing President Trump has done, very generously, in my view, is offer the United States’ willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that’s on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions,” Rubio said at a news conference in Guatemala City with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo,

He said “in the meantime, the people living there, the people who call that home will not be able to live there while you have crews coming in and removing debris, while you have munitions being removed, etc.”

 

[Chris]

Trump signs order banning transgender women from female sports

He says the move, which covers non-elite levels, restores fairness but human rights advocates have condemned it.

www.bbc.com

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that prevents transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.

The order provides guidance, regulations and legal interpretations, and it will enlist the Department of Education to investigate high schools thought to be non-compliant.

Republicans say it restores fairness to sports but LGBT advocacy and human rights organisations have described the move as discriminatory.

 

[Comrade Khan]

So trans men ok?

 

[Chris]

The FBI is being instructed to investigate itself for investigating the January 6th insurrection. Clown world

New Leaders of Justice Dept. Move to Assert Control Over Agency

The department’s current No. 2 official, Emil Bove, escalated his growing conflict with the interim leadership of the F.B.I.

www.nytimes.com

The new leadership of the Justice Department moved swiftly on multiple fronts Wednesday to assert control over the F.B.I. and marshal the power of federal law enforcement to investigate those who investigated President Trump.

Pam Bondi, who was sworn in as attorney general in an Oval Office ceremony, signed a memo creating a working group to review the “weaponization” of the criminal justice system by officials who brought criminal charges or civil suits against Mr. Trump. It was one of 14 directives that shuttered department task forces, restored the federal death penalty and, above all else, mandated obedience to Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Ms. Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, arrived at a moment of profound and disruptive conflict between the department and its historically independent and powerful investigative arm, the F.B.I.

 

[Comrade Khan]

Investigate yourself for investigating a crime

 

[Grim]

Feb 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would create a White House faith office and direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead a task force on eradicating what he called anti-Christian bias within the federal government.

Trump delivered remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol and used his speech to call for "unity", telling lawmakers his relationship with religion has "changed" after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year.

At a second prayer breakfast in Washington, Trump struck a more partisan tone, took a victory lap for getting "rid of woke over the last two weeks" and announced steps to protect Christians from what he said was religious discrimination.

"The mission of this task force will be to immediately hold all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI and other agencies," Trump said.

The president said he will sign an executive order on Thursday to have Bondi head the task force and vowed his attorney general would work to "fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide."

The president did not cite specific examples of anti-Christian bias during his remarks but has previously claimed that the Biden administration used the federal government to target Christians specifically.

Biden's administration announced a strategy in December for countering anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry, and a similar plan to fight antisemitism in September 2023.

The actions announced on Thursday could pose constitutional questions about the separation of church and state, with the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment limiting government endorsement of religion.

Trump, who has become the de facto figurehead of conservative American Christianity, has repeatedly invoked a religious anointing since he survived an assassination attempt last year. "Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason," Trump has told supporters at events around the country.

In the last three election cycles, White evangelical Christian voters, who make up a critical piece of the Republican base, have supported Trump. His message of male power has complemented the growing anxiety among many conservative Christians about changing gender norms and family patterns.

The president on Thursday also announced he will create a White House Faith Office, led by Rev. Paula White, who has served as a religious adviser to him for many years.

Trump established a similar office at the White House during his first term and regularly consulted with a tight group of evangelical advisers.
Trump also said he would create a new commission on religious liberty, and criticized the Biden administration for the "persecution" of believers for prosecuting anti-abortion advocates.

"If we don't have religious liberty, then we don't have a free country," he said.

In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two events, the one on Capitol Hill attended by lawmakers and a separate private event for thousands at a hotel ballroom after some lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group following questions over how it was run and funded.

 

[Chris]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/06/trump-federal-employee-buyout-court-challenge-.html

A federal judge in Boston paused the Thursday night deadline for federal employees to accept the Trump administration’s offer of buyouts.

Judge George O’Toole Jr., during a brief hearing Thursday afternoon, said his injunction suspending the deadline would continue until at least a hearing Monday, where he will listen to arguments on the merits of a lawsuit by employee unions challenging the legality of the buyout.

O’Toole’s order Thursday came as more than 60,000 people — about 3% of the federal workforce — have accepted the offer.

 

[Chris]

USAID Workforce Slashed From 10,000 to Under 300 as Elon Musk’s DOGE Decimates Agency

The US government’s primary foreign aid organization is losing the vast majority of its staff, forcing the agency’s lifesaving work to screech to a halt.

www.wired.com

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gutted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), taking a team of over 10,000 down to just under 300, according to an internal email viewed by WIRED and several current USAID employees.

The move leaves only 12 people in the agency’s Africa bureau and eight people in its Asia bureau, with around 290 overall. There will be some additional foreign workers retained, two USAID employees tell WIRED, but it is unclear how many.

“There are more impoverished people in Asia than anywhere else, and our presence has always helped counter the influence of China,” says one USAID employee, who was granted anonymity due to fears of retaliation and because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the agency.

On Tuesday, USAID workers received an email noting that all personnel would be put on an administrative leave starting Friday, February 7, with the exception of “designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions.” The notice was published on the agency’s website shortly thereafter. It also specified that the agency’s workers stationed abroad would be recalled back to the United States.

USAID and the US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This was not an unexpected move. USAID has been a special target in Musk’s crosshairs, with the centibillionaire calling it a “criminal organization” on X and boasting about “feeding it through a wood chipper.”

 

[Comrade Khan]

Disgusting, selfish and callous.

 

[Grim]

Is this a coup? Home of the Coup-o-meter

Prevention is the best medicine: Get background on coups, how they happen in a democracy, and what we can do to stop one.

isthisacoup.com