How you feeling about the whole “Republicans are the party of fiscal sanity” thing given the tariffs?
Hmmm, there's a few things to be said there.
First of all, in general prior to the Trump era, I was generally opposed to tariffs. During the Trump era, I have become more and more sympathetic to them.
But, I especially don't like the various Trump tariff plans that have been haphazardly implemented and then suspended over the last 2-3 months.
I do think there is a world where we could implement (and enforce) tariffs in a way that would benefit the United States national interest, especially as a useful foreign policy tool that significant enough to force other nations to adapt in ways that we like but is still short of military conflict. The Trump tariffs are not that.
However, one good thing about President Trump is that he really does practice the adage of not throwing good money in after bad. Specifically he doesn't fixate on his own bluster, unlike many in American politics today. Eg, his most rabid supporters who feel the need to defend whatever Trump says or does, or his adversaries who similarly oppose it.
Trump himself is willing to backtrack or make concessions when the situation requires, which is a very good thing imo. And is definitely much better than his predecessor, the hapless ex-President Biden, who not only opened the floodgates of illegal mass migration, he _kept them open_ for 3+ years
Specifically, in terms of fiscal policy, I think Trump is actually making very important progress there in a bankshot kind of way.
Specifically, the American voters have no interest at all in any kind of cost-saving reform of Medicare and/or Social Security.
It is likely over the coming years that this will change as the fiscal consequences of not reforming them become worse and worse, to the point of threatening the viability of economy as a whole.
And a necessary condition for that imo, is that the voters are going to have to see that things like USAIDs and mass migrations are over. This has to be done in order for grassroots-level Americans to believe there is a real actual internal social interest worth enough to make sacrifices for.
And related to that, nobody is going to believe that the American fiscal situation is truly dire while such things continue to be funded.
So even if we aren't in the middle of partisan fiscal conflict as we were in 2011 or whatever, in present terms the Trump Administration is obviously not doing anything to help the situation. But I do think the Trump Administration is doing good things that we can realistically hope to benefit us down the road a few years.
Lying, misrepresentations, distortions, demagoguery, corruptions, etc are bad things in our discourse. And if in some circumstances such things seem unavoidable or necessary, they should never be entirely routinized.
Unfortunately in America things have deteriorated to the point where such things are foundational to the practice of contemporary liberalism. This is a bad thing, certainly for America as a whole, and maybe even for the libs as well.
Therefore, as the liberal Kelsey Piper argues, we should collectively repudiate those libs who have particularly corrupted our politics in the context of the last Presidential election, in the twitter thread mentioned below:
Kelsey is in particular talking about the President Biden's inner circle who were most responsible in promotion if the distortion that President Biden's mental strength was perfectly acceptable.
And certainly we should be faulting those people but in addition, I think we should also punish in the same way those who promoted the central distortions of the Biden era: inflation, transgenderism, and migrations, pundits and pols both.
In this way we can hope to end the sleazier practices of lib politics and return truth and honest discourse to prevalence in America.
I dunno, it seems pretty clear to me. I support the President retaliating against Perkins Coie for its misconduct against the best interest of America.
That said, I do want to elaborate a bit on the big-picture subject of the the thread, specifically a tweet-thread from a woman much more lib than me, to describe what meaningful accountability for Demos might look like.
x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733
That, because the essence of the Demo message last cycle was to lie to the American people, that we should demonstrate a new sense of purpose as a party and to that end we should punish the individuals most clearly responsible.
It really is a meaningful act, unlike joining in on Al Green's clownshow which Radley Balko wants. The only thing wrong with it, as Kelsey describes it, is that her case is narrowed to Biden's cognitive decline (and she only mentions political figures).
If we extend her thread to the pundit class, as well as subject matter, ie, trans, Biden-era southern border migrations, and inflation, there's a lotta lotta libs and Demos who are culpable.
It would be very difficult for the Demos to actually execute on this, but somehow if they did, it would be a number of actions where collectively the Demos could hope to be a legitimate vessel of public trust instead of what they have been.
I personally am not holding out very much hope of this, but if a lib ever says there's nothing the Demos could do, just realize that he's wrong.
Well yeah. In America we have the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are not the Democrats and the Democrats are not the Republicans. The are not situated in the same place, and they don't have the same problems.
Libs want to believe the GOP isn't worthy of winning, or governing. Unfortunately for them, in reality that's not the GOP's problem. That's the Demos' problem, as we talked about above.
GOP's problem is about how we break the sclerosis of PMC-entitled governance while preserving the appearance and reality of normality of government, the economy, and culture.
Demos are finding it hard now to a significant extent because for them to address their issues given their situation would require them to really look hard at their situation and how they got there and it's just too painful for them.
I see why the choir would like them… but we’re trying to get people back. I’d give Koz a similar speech about how this isn’t about people who voted for Trump either.
Yeah yeah. And I'd tell you that trying to get people back is a bad thing to be about in the first place. I did tell you that in fact.
Trying to get people back is in the abstract a reasonable thing to want to do for a political party but we're not in the abstract. For the American Democratic Party in 2025, it's a misperception of its situation and an attempt to address a problem at the wrong level.
The problem of the Democratic Party is who they are, what their intentions are, want they want. Who the Demos are caused what what the Demos did (at the policy level) which caused what the Demos said (at the message level).
Trying to improve the circumstances of their situation at the message level without addressing who they are and what they did, that's not the solution to anything, _that_ is the problem.
A problem, I should note, that you correctly criticized them for:
The one thing I might incorporate from his suggestion might be a little contrition “okay, we got over our skis… we understand why we were a less attractive choice and we’ve changed. Here’s how.”
Going thru all the little tactics and all the little flaws of the Demos' message and persona
(and all of its successes for that matter) is a stupid exercise. This iteration of the Democratic Party is _supposed to lose_. It might be different for a different party.
Therefore, the challenge for the Democrats right now is how to be a different party that's worthy of winning, instead of how to be the same party just more electorally successful.
Yeah yeah yeah this is all bullsiht, at a fundamental level. This is more clear when you look at the Radley Balko link below together with Jaybird's comment to see the full panoramic sense of the failure of lib in America.
At this point in his career, Radley Balko is a certified grade A TDS mouth-foamer, and Jaybird is well, Jaybird. But in this case they share the same bad intention. That is, we should be inclined to create scenarios where Demos _lose_, not where they win. _That_ is in the best interest of America, and maybe at some level the best interest of Demos as well.
To strategize in favor of the Democratic Party now, is to empower libs' contemporary corruption: that the larger populace and voting base is reduced to be a target is libs' message manipulation, instead of the final authority of legitimacy that all factions must be accountable to.
But beyond that, this premise is simply objectively wrong as well. Ie, the idea that it's the libs who really have the real clue as to what's going on the Trump Administration whereas the actual voters are mindless NPCs, it's simply not true.
As it relates to trans, as it relates to southern border migrations, as it relates to inflation, Middle East, Biden's cognitive decline, Kamala's emptyheadedness, in each of these things in addition to being sovereign the voters were also just plain right and the libs were and are wrong.
Therefore, in order to imagine the legitimate rebirth of Democratic Party and the mainstream American leftism associated with it, libs should not be talking about what they should do or say in order to improve their standing in public opinion. Instead, they should be thinking about who they should _be_ in order to be a legitimate vessel of public trust.
And to that end, they need to have a real public accounting of all the distortions and misrepresentations they have been a part of, going back to at least one full Presidential cycle.
"I, as lib, misrepresented the extent of President Biden's fitness in office and I am sorry. As a consequence the voters fairly and accurately repudiated my representations and my candidate."
It didn’t make much sense then and doesn’t make any more sense now.
Oh sure it does.
There is a very important tendency in life wherein bad people tend to have fewer choices and fewer opportunities in life than not as bad people.
_Libs_ _are_ _bad_ _people_, especially as it pertains to representations and advocacy in our political culture. Therefore, they don't get the same consideration that another maybe apolitical, maybe right-of-center group of real Americans might get. I suspect libs are going to find this out to their displeasure over the next weeks and months relating to Trump's EOs and reorgs and whatnot.
As it pertains to Romney, the point being is that libs have a narrower set of choices than they think they do, so they should not disdain opportunities such as Romney like they do.
And continuing on this, if David did somehow did make a real attempt to reassess his prior posts here at the League, especially in the context of the 2024 election, I'm sure you and I would disagree quite a bit at a substantive level (he and I too for that matter), but at least we'd be engaging at the level of honest discourse instead of mindless derp.
So you weren’t “necessarily wrong” about what didn’t happen — and what relatively few were anticipating — but somehow wrong about what actually did happen? A similarly thoughtful piece about why you thought what you thought and why you got it wrong might be instructive.
Yeah, this.
Frankly I don't see what value is supposed to be realized by continuing to publish David Thornton here at the League.
It's not just that because David was wrong in the past that everything he says now or in the future is necessarily wrong or worthless. But it has to be noted that he was egregiously, diabolically wrong about the 2024 election, the players in it, and the events leading up to it,.
That he just keeps on keeping on, without any meaningful attempt to account for the things he has said in a similar vein over the past 6-18 months, how the things he's saying now are somehow different than the things that were repudiated by the 2024 election, it's a kind of gaslighting and the editors should not allow it.
Obviously David Thornton wasn't the only one who got the 2024 election wrong and maybe you could try to say the same thing about the Baghdad Bob libs here and elsewhere, but David is the OP of this post and CJ is right.
What even conservatives should be worried about, not that I imagine they will be, is an approach to governance that amounts to yelling ‘Somebody stop me!’ like Jim Carey in the Mask. Our system is only capable of containing so much defection and aggressive probing of boundaries before sparking a constitutional crisis.
Yeah, but no. The Somebody Stop Me in this situation is Congress, and it's important to note that Trump so far at least, is not picking any fights with them.
Not spending these legacy appropriations, maybe de minimis violations of something, maybe not, in any event not very important.
More important for the context of this train of comments, even if the Administration is guilty of de minimis violations or adverse court rulings about this or that, it won't necessarily stop them.
And to reiterate, in the bigger picture, even if it does, the Administration can, if it wants, just come back next year with majorities in both houses and solve whatever problems legislatively.
And specifically wrt USAID, rolling up USAID into the State Dep't might or might not require legislation depending on how the ball bounces from here, defunding USAID does not.
USAID will automatically be defunded when its current appropriation runs out, whatever whenever that is. It will require Congressional majorities to re-fund that which seems to me to be a dimmer prospect than cranky GOP House holdouts throwing a wrench into Trump's agenda.
If the Executive wants to change priorities at a macro and not micro grant level, it needs to get it’s budget passed so the appropriations match the intentions.
That's certainly one way to do things.
Otoh, you could just reallocate things from the Executive Branch. That'll probably work too.
On top of that…are you aware there’s literally a law requiring the president to spend money allocated by Congress, called the Impoundment Control Act of 1974? This was created when Nixon tried literally the same trick Trump is, refusing to spend funds for programs he did not approve of, under the justification of the laws (which did require him to do the thing) did not explicitly say what he had to do with it.
“Yes, I agree I am supposed to be spending this money by law, but I don’t see how I can do that.”
You might know the Nixon-era history better than I do, but my understanding is that's not what Nixon did/said at all.
AFAIR, Nixon opposed some enviro project in New York administered through the EPA, and in fact vetoed and was overridden wrt the policy statute.
There was never any ambiguity as to where the money was supposed to go.
Here, there's a lot of leeway one way or another. Let's say Trump loses the above point in court and some judge rules he has to spend the money. Well guess what, Marco Rubio is functionally the head of USAID now and he'll figure out a much different set of priorities to advance and therefore a much different set of disbursements.
For whatever has been appropriated by Congress and not yet spent. Let's see how much more is coming down that pipeline.
As DD said, where Congress has spent the money, not spending it is a violation of the law. There’s already been at least one lawsuit filed.
_One lawsuit_?
Please, give me smelling salts. I don't think I can handle the trauma that one lawsuit will bring.
Yeah, libs are going to bytch and sue and complain as best as they can, but the reality is they're completely outgunned. You don't see lib district judges throwing out injunctions like confetti. The Trump lawyers are much better this time around. And Trump's actions are much more purposeful and popular this time around, so they are easier to defend.
And if Trump loses, so what? There will be jurisdictional workarounds, waivers, EOs and so on to continue what Trump wants. And if that doesn't work, Trump might just ignore adverse judicial rulings. And if that doesn't work, Trump could just fold and bring it up again in Congress 4, 8, 18 months later where GOP has a majority in both Houses for now and the forseeable future.
There's so many levels of backstop involved, Trump is going to get a lot of things done, one way or another. It's just absurdly silly not to see this.
But they aren’t all like that. Federal largesse is spread out all over the place red and blue state alike, and plenty of Frontline GOP representatives have interests in keeping this or that alive. Currently you can only lose 4 votes.
Well yeah, those programs either won't be cut, or cuts that do happen will be restored toot sweet.
And for that matter, I expect that many of the USAID programs will end up being re-funded at some point in the future as well, after a good bit of culling and being administered by different, more ideologically simpatico bureaucrats.
Also are you really suggesting that if the GOP couldn’t get the votes to pass its own budget, to the point Medicare claims payments were at risk, that the Democrats would be blamed by the public for that? Come on now.
Well, before the Demos get into play, there's the problem of herding cats among the GOP in the House especially. Maybe the Senate too a little bit but definitely in the House. Suppose you have 210+ House GOPs pass a budget and/or CR but Massie and Chip Roy and whoever prevents a GOP majority.
In that case, I think the entire GOP will come down like a ton of bricks on the holdouts to keep the trains moving.
If somehow that doesn't work and the Demos come into play, it will depend on what their ask is. If it's restoring USAID, and it probably will be, among a lot of other things, then absolutely I think the Demos will get blamed for that.
But again, I suspect that won't happen. The more outlandish the Demo ask is, the more incentive/more pressure for GOP holdouts to cave.
Yeah, I thought so too a week or two ago, but clearly that's not the way it's happening now. Putting the payment and personnel systems under close operational control of the President is a big game changer.
Plus, specifically wrt USAID and parts of the deep state in a similar situation, it should be understood that a lot of the novelty of the Trump Administration isn't just DOGE but it's also substantive ideological agreement with Trump/Musk among Republicans in Washington.
Logistical/operational issues aside, 15+ years ago this would never have happened because Republicans would want to support foreign aid. Money for trans people in Sri Lanka is annoying but the thought was, there was still very important bipartisan foreign policy objectives being advanced. Now, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Not even close.
Yeah, but no. USAID still exists now, under Trump. It's part of the Department of State and it reports to Marco Rubio.
Tbh, I don't know much about the Foreign Service Act. From what I recall, it defines what USAID (and other foreign aid bureaucracy) _can't_ do. Ie, it can't give aid to communist countries and/or countries that practice torture. And even there, those restrictions are waivable by the President if he makes certain findings, ie, that aid is not going to torture or for support of a communist government.
There are quasi-independent agencies that are sort of executive, sort of not, where the leadership is established by statute (and usually has fixed terms). Trump has tried to fire some of those people as well, and that will end up depending on whether some New Deal-era precedents for independent leadership are upheld.
USAID doesn't even have that. Part of State, not part of State, it doesn't matter it always reports to the President. So the President can always stop its disbursements.
Now you’re right that if Congress passes an appropriations bill eliminating funding for an agency then that that will indeed be the law of the land, but we all know that hasn’t happened yet and we also know that the GOP majority has barely been able to pass continuing resolutions by itself. So I think your best case is that this is all a lot of cart before horse. But until that happens I think we should fully anticipate that he is going to lose in court and lose a lot.
Oh, no. I'm surprised you're falling for this. In order to defund USAID (and the like), Congress doesn't have to pass any defunding legislation, in fact they don't have to pass anything at all. Whatever has been appropriated will run out soon enough, either by time or dollars.
And that's if, somehow, Trump is forced to spend what's already been appropriated, which very likely he won't. Because, following on from my previous example, there's no law that says NGOforAfrica or the LGBTQ community in Sri Lanka gets X dollars toward the prevention of malaria. So there's no trans person from Sri Lanka who can legitimately sue in federal district court somewhere.
So to summarize, unless there is a client level appropriation or objective actually in statute, Trump and DOGE control the payment systems (and the personnel systems) so the money he stops will stay stopped.
And how do you think this is going to play politically? Activist Demos are desperate to find some leverage to stop Trump but where is it? Do you think Booker, Fetterman, Chris Coons and Hickenlooper are going to say, "We won't vote for any appropriations bill or CR unless funding for USAID is restored." Again, Demos are desperate, they might. But then Thune will say, completely truthfully, "Demos are hijacking your Social Security and Medicare in order to give money to trans people in Sri Lanka." No, push comes to shove I don't think Demos will go there.
Plus, so what if they do? Demos will try to hold that line but even if they band together they still can't defend it. GOP will just get the appropriations they need through Congress on party-line votes. Then Demos will be the party of defunding Medicare and USAID will still be zeroed out.
Christ you people are fkkking morons. My Lord, where to start?
First of all, Trump might not win every single one of the cases arising from his executive actions since he's returned to office, but he's going to win the vast majority of them.
About cutting money he's cutting, that will depend on the actual words in appropriations bills or CRs. If the law says we appropriate $1 billion dollars to add an extra lane on I10 from Phoenix to LA, that money will go out. But my guess is, most laws don't say that.
What's more likely is that a lot of appropriations, especially the ones at issue, say the Secretary of HHS will appropriate up to $500 million toward worthwhile public health initiatives in Africa, Asia or the Near East. Then some NGO gets a letter from the Program Director for External Affairs at HHS and it says, "Congratulations, you have been approved for $1million in staff cost and $2 million in program expenses to toward your program to help prevent malaria among the LGBTQ community in Sri Lanka."
_That_ is going to get zeroed out by DOGE, and it's going to stick. And somehow, even if Trump loses, it's not going to matter a whole lot because USAID and the other whiners aren't going to be reappropriated anyway. So whoever's getting zeroed out has 2, 3, 8 months whatever in a best case scenario.
Push comes to shove GOP can do it in reconciliation because it's clearly a money issue and not a policy issue, so Demos can't even filibuster. But frankly I don't think it's going to get that far.
Same with going after the DOGE wunderkids for unauthorized access of this or that. F that, they are authorized by the President himself.
No, the things that are upsetting for a certain kind of Democrat is not going to get any traction for a while. Trump is popular, in an effective sense he's going to get more popular as people trust him more. He has vastly more support from the judiciary, from institutions in general, from professional white-collar America in general than he had in his first term. And, the people he has working for him are much more competent than the first term Trump people.
No, Trump is going to get hurt politically, when some _Trump_ initiative is seen to backfire against some group of people who were previously neutral or favorable towards Trump. This hasn't happened yet, and there's nothing plausibly in play right now to where it looks like it could happen soon.
Zeroing out USAID, banning trans in women's sports, the more Demos/legacy media/GOP talk about these these things, the better Trump looks and more satisfied the American people are with electing him.
Frankly, in terms of ideological vibe-level domination, the GOP hasn't had it this good since Reagan.
First, when does responsibility for something shift from Biden to Trump? Is there some benchmark event that needs to occur? (Other than “the price of eggs falls below X.”) Some objective amount of time? That’s a serious question even if I admit that, yes, of course, making a fuss over the price of eggs is not a particularly serious indicator of Trump’s performance.
Well, that's at least a little bit subjective. It has to do with when one Administration's personnel, or policies, or existence can reasonably be thought to affect the economic conditions in the America outside the narrow political bubble. Of course, in this case, the whole question is irrelevant, since whatever the answer should be, President Trump is not responsible for the price of eggs one week into his term, as you yourself admit.
But I think you’ll agree with me that there are a lot of people who are not so sophisticated as you or I, less able to separate the sober promises from the bullsht.
Actually I disagree with that quite a bit, and it's a very important point. In reality, the American people are getting quite good at separating Trump's mindless bluster and hyperbole from his actual intentions and expectations and accountability. In fact, it's a big part of why he's getting an actual honeymoon for this term, and why the lib/Demo opposition to him is so incoherent and lacking in intensity.
This is a very significant mistake on your part imo, and the premise of some very bad things. Ie, the misbelief that because Trump is a successful demagogue, I have to demagogue harder in order to win. First of all, you've already lost, you're not writing a campaign ad or replying to Sean Hannity on cable news. Now is the time to play it straight.
More important than that, the whole idea of what you're supposed to do win is wrong from the get go, because you're _supposed_ to lose. Not just in the sense that you should lose because you disagree with me, though obviously I do believe that.
But well beyond that, I probably haven't read every word you've written over the last few years, but I've read enough. And at no time ever have you ever attempted to offer any accountability for the representations you and the people you are politically associated with have made to the American people. If this is unfair, I'd certainly listen to any argument to the contrary but I think we both know that it's not. No, what you write is always about what can I say to manipulate the American people into doing what I want politically, just like what you wrote in the comment above that I criticized you for in the first place.
In this world it shouldn't surprise anybody that the American people are just tuning you out, especially as to your representations of the supposed dangers of Donald Trump being President. This turn of events is a you problem, not a they problem or a Trump problem.
America has chosen poorly and that has been graphically demonstrated daily for the past ten days and I expect will be so for the next 1,541
No, America has chosen well, and I don't think anybody misses any of the Democrat officeholders or lib pundits who got turfed out as a consequence of the election. Fwiw, I personally am much more enthusiastic now, about the prospects of a second Trump term, than I was in November when I voted for him.
If you are less enthusiastic than I am (and of course you are), the first place to change things is to offer some accountability for the misrepresentations you've made to the American people over the past x or whatever years and a credible explanation as to how you will make amends and/or do different things in the future.
Or I dunno, keep on keepin' on with the demagoguery. That seems to be working well for you.
First, when does responsibility for something shift from Biden to Trump? Is there some benchmark event that needs to occur? (Other than “the price of eggs falls below X.”) Some objective amount of time? That’s a serious question even if I admit that, yes, of course, making a fuss over the price of eggs is not a particularly serious indicator of Trump’s performance.
Well, that's at least a little bit subjective. It has to do with when one Administration's personnel, or policies, or existence can reasonably be thought to affect the economic conditions in the America outside the narrow political bubble. Of course, in this case, the whole question is irrelevant, since whatever the answer should be, President Trump is not responsible for the price of eggs one week into his term, as you yourself admit.
But I think you’ll agree with me that there are a lot of people who are not so sophisticated as you or I, less able to separate the sober promises from the bullshit.
Actually I disagree with that quite a bit, and it's a very important point. In reality, the American people are getting quite good at separating Trump's mindless bluster and hyperbole from his actual intentions and expectations and accountability. In fact, it's a big part of why he's getting an actual honeymoon for this term, and why the lib/Demo opposition to him is so incoherent and lacking in intensity.
This is a very significant mistake on your part imo, and the premise of some very bad things. Ie, the misbelief that because Trump is a successful demagogue, I have to demagogue harder in order to win. First of all, you've already lost, you're not writing a campaign ad or replying to Sean Hannity on cable news. Now is the time to play it straight.
More important than that, the whole idea of what you're supposed to do win is wrong from the get go, because you're _supposed_ to lose. Not just in the sense that you should lose because you disagree with me, though obviously I do believe that.
But well beyond that, I probably haven't read every word you've written over the last few years, but I've read enough. And at no time ever have you ever attempted to offer any accountability for the representations you and the people you are politically associated with have made to the American people. If this is unfair, I'd certainly listen to any argument to the contrary but I think we both know that it's not. No, what you write is always about what can I say to manipulate the American people into doing what I want politically, just like what you wrote in the comment above that I criticized you for in the first place.
In this world it shouldn't surprise anybody that the American people are just tuning you out, especially as to your representations of the supposed dangers of Donald Trump being President. This turn of events is a you problem, not a they problem or a Trump problem.
America has chosen poorly and that has been graphically demonstrated daily for the past ten days and I expect will be so for the next 1,541
No, America has chosen well, and I don't think anybody misses any of the Democrat officeholders or lib pundits who got turfed out as a consequence of the election. Fwiw, I personally am much more enthusiastic now, about the prospects of a second Trump term, than I was in November when I voted for him.
If you are less enthusiastic than I am (and of course you are), the first place to change things is to offer some accountability for the misrepresentations you've made to the American people over the past x or whatever years and a credible explanation as to how you will make amends and/or do different things in the future.
Or I dunno, keep on keepin' on with the demagoguery. That seems to be working well for you.
On point #2, I think the salient commodity we kept talking about during the election campaign was eggs? Here’s what’s been happening with the price of eggs. “Oh, that’s the bird flu!” Republicans will say. And yes, it sure is. And it was back when Biden was President, and y’all tried to blame the Vice President for it, so turnabout is fair play. Eggs have never been more expensive in American history than they are today, in either objective or inflation-adjusted dollars.
Burt, you at least have the capacity to be a pretty judicious guy, so you should be able to appreciate that it looks ridiculous to be all "Nothing to see here move along," through years of Demo Biden Administration inflation, but one week in to Prez Donald Trump II you're like, "What about the price of eggs?" (Actually, fck that about how it looks ridiculous, it _is_ ridiculous. Come on, be a person who you would want to take seriously if you were just meeting them for the first time.)
Obviously, if Trump was inaugurated a week ago and the price of eggs is too high, it's Biden's fault. Vote Republican.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
Hmmm, there's a few things to be said there.
First of all, in general prior to the Trump era, I was generally opposed to tariffs. During the Trump era, I have become more and more sympathetic to them.
But, I especially don't like the various Trump tariff plans that have been haphazardly implemented and then suspended over the last 2-3 months.
I do think there is a world where we could implement (and enforce) tariffs in a way that would benefit the United States national interest, especially as a useful foreign policy tool that significant enough to force other nations to adapt in ways that we like but is still short of military conflict. The Trump tariffs are not that.
However, one good thing about President Trump is that he really does practice the adage of not throwing good money in after bad. Specifically he doesn't fixate on his own bluster, unlike many in American politics today. Eg, his most rabid supporters who feel the need to defend whatever Trump says or does, or his adversaries who similarly oppose it.
Trump himself is willing to backtrack or make concessions when the situation requires, which is a very good thing imo. And is definitely much better than his predecessor, the hapless ex-President Biden, who not only opened the floodgates of illegal mass migration, he _kept them open_ for 3+ years
Specifically, in terms of fiscal policy, I think Trump is actually making very important progress there in a bankshot kind of way.
Specifically, the American voters have no interest at all in any kind of cost-saving reform of Medicare and/or Social Security.
It is likely over the coming years that this will change as the fiscal consequences of not reforming them become worse and worse, to the point of threatening the viability of economy as a whole.
And a necessary condition for that imo, is that the voters are going to have to see that things like USAIDs and mass migrations are over. This has to be done in order for grassroots-level Americans to believe there is a real actual internal social interest worth enough to make sacrifices for.
And related to that, nobody is going to believe that the American fiscal situation is truly dire while such things continue to be funded.
So even if we aren't in the middle of partisan fiscal conflict as we were in 2011 or whatever, in present terms the Trump Administration is obviously not doing anything to help the situation. But I do think the Trump Administration is doing good things that we can realistically hope to benefit us down the road a few years.
"
Ok, then by all means have at it then.
Fwiw, I think that post has aged very well. In fact, I may start quoting myself from it to say I told you so to various people.
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I'm still here, barely. In fact, I just submitted a guest post which hopefully we'll see in a day or so.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/10/25”
You mean the Weekend at Bernie's people were actually just now saying something important?
No?
Oh, I didn't think so.
On “So Let’s Put Together a Democratic Party Ad Campaign”
Hmm ok, let me try again.
Lying, misrepresentations, distortions, demagoguery, corruptions, etc are bad things in our discourse. And if in some circumstances such things seem unavoidable or necessary, they should never be entirely routinized.
Unfortunately in America things have deteriorated to the point where such things are foundational to the practice of contemporary liberalism. This is a bad thing, certainly for America as a whole, and maybe even for the libs as well.
Therefore, as the liberal Kelsey Piper argues, we should collectively repudiate those libs who have particularly corrupted our politics in the context of the last Presidential election, in the twitter thread mentioned below:
https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733
Kelsey is in particular talking about the President Biden's inner circle who were most responsible in promotion if the distortion that President Biden's mental strength was perfectly acceptable.
And certainly we should be faulting those people but in addition, I think we should also punish in the same way those who promoted the central distortions of the Biden era: inflation, transgenderism, and migrations, pundits and pols both.
In this way we can hope to end the sleazier practices of lib politics and return truth and honest discourse to prevalence in America.
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I dunno, it seems pretty clear to me. I support the President retaliating against Perkins Coie for its misconduct against the best interest of America.
That said, I do want to elaborate a bit on the big-picture subject of the the thread, specifically a tweet-thread from a woman much more lib than me, to describe what meaningful accountability for Demos might look like.
x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733
That, because the essence of the Demo message last cycle was to lie to the American people, that we should demonstrate a new sense of purpose as a party and to that end we should punish the individuals most clearly responsible.
It really is a meaningful act, unlike joining in on Al Green's clownshow which Radley Balko wants. The only thing wrong with it, as Kelsey describes it, is that her case is narrowed to Biden's cognitive decline (and she only mentions political figures).
If we extend her thread to the pundit class, as well as subject matter, ie, trans, Biden-era southern border migrations, and inflation, there's a lotta lotta libs and Demos who are culpable.
It would be very difficult for the Demos to actually execute on this, but somehow if they did, it would be a number of actions where collectively the Demos could hope to be a legitimate vessel of public trust instead of what they have been.
I personally am not holding out very much hope of this, but if a lib ever says there's nothing the Demos could do, just realize that he's wrong.
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Me
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Well yeah. In America we have the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are not the Democrats and the Democrats are not the Republicans. The are not situated in the same place, and they don't have the same problems.
Libs want to believe the GOP isn't worthy of winning, or governing. Unfortunately for them, in reality that's not the GOP's problem. That's the Demos' problem, as we talked about above.
GOP's problem is about how we break the sclerosis of PMC-entitled governance while preserving the appearance and reality of normality of government, the economy, and culture.
Demos are finding it hard now to a significant extent because for them to address their issues given their situation would require them to really look hard at their situation and how they got there and it's just too painful for them.
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Yeah yeah. And I'd tell you that trying to get people back is a bad thing to be about in the first place. I did tell you that in fact.
Trying to get people back is in the abstract a reasonable thing to want to do for a political party but we're not in the abstract. For the American Democratic Party in 2025, it's a misperception of its situation and an attempt to address a problem at the wrong level.
The problem of the Democratic Party is who they are, what their intentions are, want they want. Who the Demos are caused what what the Demos did (at the policy level) which caused what the Demos said (at the message level).
Trying to improve the circumstances of their situation at the message level without addressing who they are and what they did, that's not the solution to anything, _that_ is the problem.
A problem, I should note, that you correctly criticized them for:
Going thru all the little tactics and all the little flaws of the Demos' message and persona
(and all of its successes for that matter) is a stupid exercise. This iteration of the Democratic Party is _supposed to lose_. It might be different for a different party.
Therefore, the challenge for the Democrats right now is how to be a different party that's worthy of winning, instead of how to be the same party just more electorally successful.
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Yeah yeah yeah this is all bullsiht, at a fundamental level. This is more clear when you look at the Radley Balko link below together with Jaybird's comment to see the full panoramic sense of the failure of lib in America.
At this point in his career, Radley Balko is a certified grade A TDS mouth-foamer, and Jaybird is well, Jaybird. But in this case they share the same bad intention. That is, we should be inclined to create scenarios where Demos _lose_, not where they win. _That_ is in the best interest of America, and maybe at some level the best interest of Demos as well.
To strategize in favor of the Democratic Party now, is to empower libs' contemporary corruption: that the larger populace and voting base is reduced to be a target is libs' message manipulation, instead of the final authority of legitimacy that all factions must be accountable to.
But beyond that, this premise is simply objectively wrong as well. Ie, the idea that it's the libs who really have the real clue as to what's going on the Trump Administration whereas the actual voters are mindless NPCs, it's simply not true.
As it relates to trans, as it relates to southern border migrations, as it relates to inflation, Middle East, Biden's cognitive decline, Kamala's emptyheadedness, in each of these things in addition to being sovereign the voters were also just plain right and the libs were and are wrong.
Therefore, in order to imagine the legitimate rebirth of Democratic Party and the mainstream American leftism associated with it, libs should not be talking about what they should do or say in order to improve their standing in public opinion. Instead, they should be thinking about who they should _be_ in order to be a legitimate vessel of public trust.
And to that end, they need to have a real public accounting of all the distortions and misrepresentations they have been a part of, going back to at least one full Presidential cycle.
"I, as lib, misrepresented the extent of President Biden's fitness in office and I am sorry. As a consequence the voters fairly and accurately repudiated my representations and my candidate."
Rinse, lather, repeat.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
Oh sure it does.
There is a very important tendency in life wherein bad people tend to have fewer choices and fewer opportunities in life than not as bad people.
_Libs_ _are_ _bad_ _people_, especially as it pertains to representations and advocacy in our political culture. Therefore, they don't get the same consideration that another maybe apolitical, maybe right-of-center group of real Americans might get. I suspect libs are going to find this out to their displeasure over the next weeks and months relating to Trump's EOs and reorgs and whatnot.
As it pertains to Romney, the point being is that libs have a narrower set of choices than they think they do, so they should not disdain opportunities such as Romney like they do.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
And continuing on this, if David did somehow did make a real attempt to reassess his prior posts here at the League, especially in the context of the 2024 election, I'm sure you and I would disagree quite a bit at a substantive level (he and I too for that matter), but at least we'd be engaging at the level of honest discourse instead of mindless derp.
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Yeah absolutely, I would too.
But continuing push through a steady stream of no-filter derpy bullshtt isn't doing anybody any favors.
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Yeah, this.
Frankly I don't see what value is supposed to be realized by continuing to publish David Thornton here at the League.
It's not just that because David was wrong in the past that everything he says now or in the future is necessarily wrong or worthless. But it has to be noted that he was egregiously, diabolically wrong about the 2024 election, the players in it, and the events leading up to it,.
That he just keeps on keeping on, without any meaningful attempt to account for the things he has said in a similar vein over the past 6-18 months, how the things he's saying now are somehow different than the things that were repudiated by the 2024 election, it's a kind of gaslighting and the editors should not allow it.
Obviously David Thornton wasn't the only one who got the 2024 election wrong and maybe you could try to say the same thing about the Baghdad Bob libs here and elsewhere, but David is the OP of this post and CJ is right.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
Yeah, but no. The Somebody Stop Me in this situation is Congress, and it's important to note that Trump so far at least, is not picking any fights with them.
Not spending these legacy appropriations, maybe de minimis violations of something, maybe not, in any event not very important.
More important for the context of this train of comments, even if the Administration is guilty of de minimis violations or adverse court rulings about this or that, it won't necessarily stop them.
And to reiterate, in the bigger picture, even if it does, the Administration can, if it wants, just come back next year with majorities in both houses and solve whatever problems legislatively.
And specifically wrt USAID, rolling up USAID into the State Dep't might or might not require legislation depending on how the ball bounces from here, defunding USAID does not.
USAID will automatically be defunded when its current appropriation runs out, whatever whenever that is. It will require Congressional majorities to re-fund that which seems to me to be a dimmer prospect than cranky GOP House holdouts throwing a wrench into Trump's agenda.
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That's certainly one way to do things.
Otoh, you could just reallocate things from the Executive Branch. That'll probably work too.
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You might know the Nixon-era history better than I do, but my understanding is that's not what Nixon did/said at all.
AFAIR, Nixon opposed some enviro project in New York administered through the EPA, and in fact vetoed and was overridden wrt the policy statute.
There was never any ambiguity as to where the money was supposed to go.
Here, there's a lot of leeway one way or another. Let's say Trump loses the above point in court and some judge rules he has to spend the money. Well guess what, Marco Rubio is functionally the head of USAID now and he'll figure out a much different set of priorities to advance and therefore a much different set of disbursements.
For whatever has been appropriated by Congress and not yet spent. Let's see how much more is coming down that pipeline.
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_One lawsuit_?
Please, give me smelling salts. I don't think I can handle the trauma that one lawsuit will bring.
Yeah, libs are going to bytch and sue and complain as best as they can, but the reality is they're completely outgunned. You don't see lib district judges throwing out injunctions like confetti. The Trump lawyers are much better this time around. And Trump's actions are much more purposeful and popular this time around, so they are easier to defend.
And if Trump loses, so what? There will be jurisdictional workarounds, waivers, EOs and so on to continue what Trump wants. And if that doesn't work, Trump might just ignore adverse judicial rulings. And if that doesn't work, Trump could just fold and bring it up again in Congress 4, 8, 18 months later where GOP has a majority in both Houses for now and the forseeable future.
There's so many levels of backstop involved, Trump is going to get a lot of things done, one way or another. It's just absurdly silly not to see this.
Well yeah, those programs either won't be cut, or cuts that do happen will be restored toot sweet.
And for that matter, I expect that many of the USAID programs will end up being re-funded at some point in the future as well, after a good bit of culling and being administered by different, more ideologically simpatico bureaucrats.
Well, before the Demos get into play, there's the problem of herding cats among the GOP in the House especially. Maybe the Senate too a little bit but definitely in the House. Suppose you have 210+ House GOPs pass a budget and/or CR but Massie and Chip Roy and whoever prevents a GOP majority.
In that case, I think the entire GOP will come down like a ton of bricks on the holdouts to keep the trains moving.
If somehow that doesn't work and the Demos come into play, it will depend on what their ask is. If it's restoring USAID, and it probably will be, among a lot of other things, then absolutely I think the Demos will get blamed for that.
But again, I suspect that won't happen. The more outlandish the Demo ask is, the more incentive/more pressure for GOP holdouts to cave.
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Yeah, I thought so too a week or two ago, but clearly that's not the way it's happening now. Putting the payment and personnel systems under close operational control of the President is a big game changer.
Plus, specifically wrt USAID and parts of the deep state in a similar situation, it should be understood that a lot of the novelty of the Trump Administration isn't just DOGE but it's also substantive ideological agreement with Trump/Musk among Republicans in Washington.
Logistical/operational issues aside, 15+ years ago this would never have happened because Republicans would want to support foreign aid. Money for trans people in Sri Lanka is annoying but the thought was, there was still very important bipartisan foreign policy objectives being advanced. Now, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Not even close.
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Yeah, but no. USAID still exists now, under Trump. It's part of the Department of State and it reports to Marco Rubio.
Tbh, I don't know much about the Foreign Service Act. From what I recall, it defines what USAID (and other foreign aid bureaucracy) _can't_ do. Ie, it can't give aid to communist countries and/or countries that practice torture. And even there, those restrictions are waivable by the President if he makes certain findings, ie, that aid is not going to torture or for support of a communist government.
There are quasi-independent agencies that are sort of executive, sort of not, where the leadership is established by statute (and usually has fixed terms). Trump has tried to fire some of those people as well, and that will end up depending on whether some New Deal-era precedents for independent leadership are upheld.
USAID doesn't even have that. Part of State, not part of State, it doesn't matter it always reports to the President. So the President can always stop its disbursements.
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Oh, no. I'm surprised you're falling for this. In order to defund USAID (and the like), Congress doesn't have to pass any defunding legislation, in fact they don't have to pass anything at all. Whatever has been appropriated will run out soon enough, either by time or dollars.
And that's if, somehow, Trump is forced to spend what's already been appropriated, which very likely he won't. Because, following on from my previous example, there's no law that says NGOforAfrica or the LGBTQ community in Sri Lanka gets X dollars toward the prevention of malaria. So there's no trans person from Sri Lanka who can legitimately sue in federal district court somewhere.
So to summarize, unless there is a client level appropriation or objective actually in statute, Trump and DOGE control the payment systems (and the personnel systems) so the money he stops will stay stopped.
And how do you think this is going to play politically? Activist Demos are desperate to find some leverage to stop Trump but where is it? Do you think Booker, Fetterman, Chris Coons and Hickenlooper are going to say, "We won't vote for any appropriations bill or CR unless funding for USAID is restored." Again, Demos are desperate, they might. But then Thune will say, completely truthfully, "Demos are hijacking your Social Security and Medicare in order to give money to trans people in Sri Lanka." No, push comes to shove I don't think Demos will go there.
Plus, so what if they do? Demos will try to hold that line but even if they band together they still can't defend it. GOP will just get the appropriations they need through Congress on party-line votes. Then Demos will be the party of defunding Medicare and USAID will still be zeroed out.
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Christ you people are fkkking morons. My Lord, where to start?
First of all, Trump might not win every single one of the cases arising from his executive actions since he's returned to office, but he's going to win the vast majority of them.
About cutting money he's cutting, that will depend on the actual words in appropriations bills or CRs. If the law says we appropriate $1 billion dollars to add an extra lane on I10 from Phoenix to LA, that money will go out. But my guess is, most laws don't say that.
What's more likely is that a lot of appropriations, especially the ones at issue, say the Secretary of HHS will appropriate up to $500 million toward worthwhile public health initiatives in Africa, Asia or the Near East. Then some NGO gets a letter from the Program Director for External Affairs at HHS and it says, "Congratulations, you have been approved for $1million in staff cost and $2 million in program expenses to toward your program to help prevent malaria among the LGBTQ community in Sri Lanka."
_That_ is going to get zeroed out by DOGE, and it's going to stick. And somehow, even if Trump loses, it's not going to matter a whole lot because USAID and the other whiners aren't going to be reappropriated anyway. So whoever's getting zeroed out has 2, 3, 8 months whatever in a best case scenario.
Push comes to shove GOP can do it in reconciliation because it's clearly a money issue and not a policy issue, so Demos can't even filibuster. But frankly I don't think it's going to get that far.
Same with going after the DOGE wunderkids for unauthorized access of this or that. F that, they are authorized by the President himself.
No, the things that are upsetting for a certain kind of Democrat is not going to get any traction for a while. Trump is popular, in an effective sense he's going to get more popular as people trust him more. He has vastly more support from the judiciary, from institutions in general, from professional white-collar America in general than he had in his first term. And, the people he has working for him are much more competent than the first term Trump people.
No, Trump is going to get hurt politically, when some _Trump_ initiative is seen to backfire against some group of people who were previously neutral or favorable towards Trump. This hasn't happened yet, and there's nothing plausibly in play right now to where it looks like it could happen soon.
Zeroing out USAID, banning trans in women's sports, the more Demos/legacy media/GOP talk about these these things, the better Trump looks and more satisfied the American people are with electing him.
Frankly, in terms of ideological vibe-level domination, the GOP hasn't had it this good since Reagan.
On “Trump’s Unforced Error”
Well, that's at least a little bit subjective. It has to do with when one Administration's personnel, or policies, or existence can reasonably be thought to affect the economic conditions in the America outside the narrow political bubble. Of course, in this case, the whole question is irrelevant, since whatever the answer should be, President Trump is not responsible for the price of eggs one week into his term, as you yourself admit.
Actually I disagree with that quite a bit, and it's a very important point. In reality, the American people are getting quite good at separating Trump's mindless bluster and hyperbole from his actual intentions and expectations and accountability. In fact, it's a big part of why he's getting an actual honeymoon for this term, and why the lib/Demo opposition to him is so incoherent and lacking in intensity.
This is a very significant mistake on your part imo, and the premise of some very bad things. Ie, the misbelief that because Trump is a successful demagogue, I have to demagogue harder in order to win. First of all, you've already lost, you're not writing a campaign ad or replying to Sean Hannity on cable news. Now is the time to play it straight.
More important than that, the whole idea of what you're supposed to do win is wrong from the get go, because you're _supposed_ to lose. Not just in the sense that you should lose because you disagree with me, though obviously I do believe that.
But well beyond that, I probably haven't read every word you've written over the last few years, but I've read enough. And at no time ever have you ever attempted to offer any accountability for the representations you and the people you are politically associated with have made to the American people. If this is unfair, I'd certainly listen to any argument to the contrary but I think we both know that it's not. No, what you write is always about what can I say to manipulate the American people into doing what I want politically, just like what you wrote in the comment above that I criticized you for in the first place.
In this world it shouldn't surprise anybody that the American people are just tuning you out, especially as to your representations of the supposed dangers of Donald Trump being President. This turn of events is a you problem, not a they problem or a Trump problem.
No, America has chosen well, and I don't think anybody misses any of the Democrat officeholders or lib pundits who got turfed out as a consequence of the election. Fwiw, I personally am much more enthusiastic now, about the prospects of a second Trump term, than I was in November when I voted for him.
If you are less enthusiastic than I am (and of course you are), the first place to change things is to offer some accountability for the misrepresentations you've made to the American people over the past x or whatever years and a credible explanation as to how you will make amends and/or do different things in the future.
Or I dunno, keep on keepin' on with the demagoguery. That seems to be working well for you.
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Well, that's at least a little bit subjective. It has to do with when one Administration's personnel, or policies, or existence can reasonably be thought to affect the economic conditions in the America outside the narrow political bubble. Of course, in this case, the whole question is irrelevant, since whatever the answer should be, President Trump is not responsible for the price of eggs one week into his term, as you yourself admit.
Actually I disagree with that quite a bit, and it's a very important point. In reality, the American people are getting quite good at separating Trump's mindless bluster and hyperbole from his actual intentions and expectations and accountability. In fact, it's a big part of why he's getting an actual honeymoon for this term, and why the lib/Demo opposition to him is so incoherent and lacking in intensity.
This is a very significant mistake on your part imo, and the premise of some very bad things. Ie, the misbelief that because Trump is a successful demagogue, I have to demagogue harder in order to win. First of all, you've already lost, you're not writing a campaign ad or replying to Sean Hannity on cable news. Now is the time to play it straight.
More important than that, the whole idea of what you're supposed to do win is wrong from the get go, because you're _supposed_ to lose. Not just in the sense that you should lose because you disagree with me, though obviously I do believe that.
But well beyond that, I probably haven't read every word you've written over the last few years, but I've read enough. And at no time ever have you ever attempted to offer any accountability for the representations you and the people you are politically associated with have made to the American people. If this is unfair, I'd certainly listen to any argument to the contrary but I think we both know that it's not. No, what you write is always about what can I say to manipulate the American people into doing what I want politically, just like what you wrote in the comment above that I criticized you for in the first place.
In this world it shouldn't surprise anybody that the American people are just tuning you out, especially as to your representations of the supposed dangers of Donald Trump being President. This turn of events is a you problem, not a they problem or a Trump problem.
No, America has chosen well, and I don't think anybody misses any of the Democrat officeholders or lib pundits who got turfed out as a consequence of the election. Fwiw, I personally am much more enthusiastic now, about the prospects of a second Trump term, than I was in November when I voted for him.
If you are less enthusiastic than I am (and of course you are), the first place to change things is to offer some accountability for the misrepresentations you've made to the American people over the past x or whatever years and a credible explanation as to how you will make amends and/or do different things in the future.
Or I dunno, keep on keepin' on with the demagoguery. That seems to be working well for you.
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Burt, you at least have the capacity to be a pretty judicious guy, so you should be able to appreciate that it looks ridiculous to be all "Nothing to see here move along," through years of Demo Biden Administration inflation, but one week in to Prez Donald Trump II you're like, "What about the price of eggs?" (Actually, fck that about how it looks ridiculous, it _is_ ridiculous. Come on, be a person who you would want to take seriously if you were just meeting them for the first time.)
Obviously, if Trump was inaugurated a week ago and the price of eggs is too high, it's Biden's fault. Vote Republican.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.