As a result of the elections, Trump and the GOP will have control of both houses of congress. So far, Republicans lead 220-213 in the House of Representatives with two races still to be called. Trump has picked three house members – Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, and Mike Waltz – to be part of his administration so special elections will have to be called to replace them but since they represent districts that have been Republican for years, those are not likely to change the balance. Gaetz has already resigned, no doubt to end the congressional ethics inquiry into allegations of his behavior towards underage women and other malfeasances. It is not clear if the report that has been compiled will be released.
Republicans also control the US senate by a margin of 53-47. With the US Supreme Court pretty much serving as a backstop to defend Trump and right wing policies, the Republicans have the ability to do pretty much what they want.
But it also means that they have no excuses for not delivering on Trump’s promises. During the campaign Trump promised the moon, such as immediately deporting tens of millions (his figure) of undocumented immigrants, closing the southern border, ending crime, eliminating inflation, enacting high tariffs on all imports, lowering the prices of everything, ending the war in Ukraine and the turmoil in the Middle East, eliminating the department of education, reducing the federal debt by reducing the size of the federal government by billions (if not trillions) of dollars, attacking the rights of the LGBT community and in particular suppressing the transgender community, further restricting abortion rights, lowering taxes, replacing Obamacare with something better, ending the deaths of birds and whales by windmills, bringing back high water-use dishwashers, toilets, and showers, and who knows what else.
Some of these were always phantom issues that did not really exist except in his own mind and served to rile up his base. Thus after a short period of time he can simply declare that he has solved those problems and the GOP and rightwing media will support him and that will become the new reality.
But other promises require tangible actions that will not be easy. But not to worry! Trump and the GOP have made an art of claiming that white is black and they are not going to be held back from crowing about their success by being contradicted by data and such trivial things as objective reality.
Deep state! Saboteurs! Dolchstoß!
this is what i mean when i say there is a tiny sliver of hope in that this has become their country to lose. with the crony cabinet of incompetent clown-ass drug friends and pedophiles, they look like they’re trying to speed run the collapse of the roman empire.
It’s also a lame duck presidency while the House has an election in 2 years and a third of the Senate will need to be re-elected after Trump is long gone.
Most of what Trump has promised requires Congressional action, such as most of the shakeups in federal agencies and slashing the budget. While Trump could claim that he’s winning in every lane he promised, he’s shown that he’s fickle and chaotic and wanders from issue to issue. He also clearly suffers from worsening dementia, so his behavior will only become even more erratic. The only thing I can comfortably predict is that most of our predictions will be wrong.
he should pardon ghislaine maxwell. god damn that would be funny. her ass should be incarcerated forever, if anyone should be, but i’d just like to see his cultists trying to square that with their belief system.
If there are witnesses to Gaetz bragging about screwing minors, and have seen photographic evidence on his phone… why exactly have police not been called?
One indeed wonders.
As you pointed out, the list of promised “actions” is veeeery long, and would tax even the most competent, well-organized of governments. But what is being built looks more like a clown car, so one can only speculate about the chaos that is going to be unleashed.
At this point, anything is possible:
-- on one extreme, this bunch of idiots will do nothing and keep things as they are, while claiming the bigliest accomplishments (and we have seen that MAGAts will swallow any old codswallop, so that’s the easy part).
-- the other extreme, well… if they really try to do ALL of that, anything could happen, up to and including a world-girdling economic crisis (1929 on crack cocaine) and maybe partial societal collapse in the US.
I am no prognosticator, but reading the news in the next years is truly going to be something else.
Could this not all backfire? The elected representatives in both houses might see the actions of Trump and his cronies damaging the country/their chance of re-election/their source of income. It would only take a few on the GOP side seeing they have nothing to lose by opposing Trump and voting with the Democrats. Further, they could control Trump by letting him know that otherwise they would declare him unfit thus losing him the position he feels entitled to/keeping him out of prison. The clowns that Trump has appointed will go along with this because their jobs depend on Trump remaining POTUS.
Elon Musk’s intended goal of slashing a third of the federal budget would be absolute suicide for the Republicans. It would hurt their own voters so hard they would be candidates for local dogcatcher after 2026.
In the senate it would take four Republicans abstaining, or two voting along with the Democrats to block appointments. In the house the analog numbers would be eight and four.