volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@El_Jefe It's between him and his constituents, really.

If they like his performance in office, that's what matters.

@shoq keep in mind that this can be a feature and not a bug.

The key is to make sure that politicians need to be responsive to people to keep getting that power.

@hfaust But... Spider-Man?

This seems like just a new flavor of the same old pop. Just more teenage angst instead of deep thought.

I don't think there's hope here. It's going to be comic book stuff instead of relationship drama stuff.

@carnage4life people voted for this because they didn't understand economics or governance, and because they didn't understand how the world worked they were misled into thinking that these policies were good ideas.

It's a great example of the adage Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

But we need to recognize it so we can address the problem and try to avoid this in the future.

@yodaladywhooo

The reason that I'm harping on this is because the way to defeat him is to point out what a loser he is to his own people. When we talk about him as if he is effective, even when it's to say that he is corrupt and out for profit, that plays into the idea that Trump knows what he's doing.

So take for example the recent court process where he lost on SNAP payments. The judge emphasized that the government lawyers were making one argument while Trump kept contradicting his own lawyers as he posted to social media. Trump lost that judgment because he couldn't just let his lawyers do their job. And that happens over and over.

I don't think it has anything to do with billionaires having his number. He screws up so often that he's screwing over even billionaire friends, and he's likely going to put himself in prison at some point.

No I think the obvious conclusion based on this long track record is that he's just an idiot. It really is that simple. No conspiracy theory, no profit seeking, he's just a moron.

And if we emphasize what a moron he is, maybe his supporters will stop voting for it.

@yodaladywhooo I think you're giving him too much credit.

Trump doesn't get much profit from things like raising tariffs. It's another example of him being too damn stupid to know how any of this works, so he shoots himself in the foot once again.

That's how he ended up committing felonies in the first place, after all. He doesn't understand how the world works at all.

This isn't about Trump doing something that profits himself. He doesn't even know how that works. This is him just doing random things because that's how he lives his life.

His supporters fall for it because they don't know how it works either.

@glynmoody

@null_aleph this article seems confused about which branch of government issues the documents.

It's a pretty sensational headline, but I think it's misleading.

@yacc143 consumers will still benefit, though.

It's good for everybody when we have a rule of law.

@glynmoody

@yodaladywhooo we've had months of reports from small business owners dealing with these tariffs.

But in the end there is no benefit here. Trump did damage to people, and this is about maybe undoing some of the damage that he did. The people are not made whole, but at least some of the damage can be mitigated.

So this is neither about rich people nor about benefits. This is about Trump doing something really stupid and making up for that.

@glynmoody

@LevZadov The problem was that she was being told different things by two different governments, so she was being asked to violate state law.

This whole thing is a mess, and people don't really recognize just what a mess it is.

@knutson_brain The problem is that there is no objective way to define what fair maps are.

Everyone wants fair maps. The problem is conflicting interests where different people will have different ideas of what that means.

@Nonilex

@yogthos It's worth emphasizing that those refunds are not particularly chaotic. The US trade system has facilities built in to deal with this kind of thing.

There's a lot of people fretting that the court case would throw everything into chaos, but it really wouldn't.

@cwarzel.bsky.social Well because it's the law.

We elected crappy lawmakers, so we got crappy laws.

We should stop reelecting crappy lawmakers.

@Lyle the headline is incorrect.

SCOTUS didn't rule on this at all.

They issued an order, not a ruling, temporarily pausing a lower court order while the issue is working its way through an appeals process that already has it.

It's a huge difference.

@epicdemiologist @BakerRL75

The headline is wrong.

What the Court did was to temporarily pause a lower court order while a separate court is addressing the dispute.

Full SNAP payments are not blocked. That's not how that legal process works.

@shimon the headline is wrong.

SCOTUS didn't block full SNAP payments. It paused a lower court ruling while a separate appeal is in progress.

The admin is no less free to issue full SNAP food aid payments after the order.

@mason

Ketanji Brown Jackson is hardly known to be a fat cat...

The reason for the temporary stay is that there's already an appeal in process, that's expected to be resolved any hour now, so they wanted to pause this case until that one comes down.

It makes sense.

@carstenfranke That's not quite how it works.

Just because there is money in the account does not mean that the office responsible for spending the money itself is funded.

There are a lot of parts of government that are experiencing exactly that right now, where there is technically funding appropriated, but the offices needed to write the actual checks aren't funded so the money can't be released.

That's just how the federal government works.

@LilHulkQ No it just makes it clear that they would prefer not to take something called the nuclear option, and it has a name like that for a reason...

Seriously, when something is reasonably called a nuclear option, we shouldn't be so quick to say, well why don't they pull the trigger on that?!

Democrats are voting against the legislative process under the current rules. Yes, it is possible to pull the nuclear option and change the rules, to flip the table, but that's not exactly something we should be proud of encouraging...