Wow, like you could not literally bend over more for Putin than this s##t deal, this is unbelievably bad and shows just how Trump is under the thumb of Putin.
__________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday pushed back at the idea of Ukraine ceding territory to Russia as part of any potential peace agreement, a day before American, European and Ukrainian officials are set for high-level talks in London.
Quote:
amid media reports about the U.S. proposal, Zelenskyy said the idea of ceding territory — including Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, seized by Russia more than a decade ago — is a nonstarter.
“There is nothing to talk about — it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people,” Zelenskyy said.
Apologies if already posted, but this is only slightly disturbing, if not unexpected. Links are in the article:
Quote:
The White House on Friday morning launched a new website championing the theory that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was a human-made pathogen that leaked from an infectious disease laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The page revives a long debate about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic that has seen investigations by federal agencies, global health organizations and congressional committees. In January, the CIA issued a report concluding that a lab leak was likely, but with “low confidence” in that judgment, paralleling similar conclusions from the Energy and State departments.
The CIA had previously said it did not have enough information to make a determination about where the virus originated. The World Health Organization has said it remains open to all hypotheses, including that the virus spread from animals to people in a Wuhan market.
Wow, like you could not literally bend over more for Putin than this s##t deal, this is unbelievably bad and shows just how Trump is under the thumb of Putin.
Probably the kind of deal his group wants for Canada. They don't need to take over the whole country, just the areas that have what they want.
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Since the beginning, it was really stretching Occam's Razor to think that the virus started in a wet market, that basically is down the street and serves as a defacto cafeteria for a biolab that works directly on coronavirus.
Saying it was anything but the lab was to protect China and the world's dependence on their manufacturing. These days that's not as much of a concern, so we can finally say that it was a Chinese made virus that got out. Remember how upset people got, when that was said during the pandemic? That part is retrospectively cringey.
The world is safer if we are honest about it.
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"By Grabthar's hammer ... what a savings."
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My neighbors are from Russia and I have never seen them so sad and angry.
I must say Russian curse words do sound kinda sexy. But seriously, they hate Putin. They’re having flashbacks; they’re older and see what happened in Russia is happening here. If only we could get MAGAs to see that. The cancer is in deep.
It's good that someone is standing up to Trump, but at the same time, what does Harvard need government funds for? Their endowment is over 50 billion. They're a hedge fund that runs a small school on the side. They could charge $0 tuition and run forever without another dollar coming from the government or from any future donors.
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"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
Mr. Tang is a professor at the University of California, Davis, law school and a former law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
A legal doctrine popularized by conservatives on the Supreme Court to constrain the reach of regulatory agencies is now being brandished by opponents of President Trump to challenge his seemingly boundless claims of presidential power.
It is quite a turnaround.
In the hands of the conservative justices, the so-called major questions doctrine was used to strike down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program and to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The doctrine, a particularly potent brand of judge-made law that coalesced in Supreme Court rulings in recent years, requires the government to point to a “clear congressional authorization” when it makes decisions of great “economic and political significance.”
Will This Conservative Legal Doctrine Undo Trump’s First Months in Office?
April 20, 2025
By Aaron Tang
Mr. Tang is a professor at the University of California, Davis, law school and a former law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
A legal doctrine popularized by conservatives on the Supreme Court to constrain the reach of regulatory agencies is now being brandished by opponents of President Trump to challenge his seemingly boundless claims of presidential power.
It is quite a turnaround.
In the hands of the conservative justices, the so-called major questions doctrine was used to strike down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program and to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The doctrine, a particularly potent brand of judge-made law that coalesced in Supreme Court rulings in recent years, requires the government to point to a “clear congressional authorization” when it makes decisions of great “economic and political significance.”
Now, as the saying goes, what goes around, comes around. And it is not likely to be good for Mr. Trump.
One of the most recent challenges against the Trump administration was brought by a conservative legal group, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, against the president’s economy-rattling tariffs. Because the tariffs present a matter of “vast economic and political significance,” the group argues in its lawsuit, the major questions doctrine requires the president to show that the law he invoked “clearly authorizes” the tariffs. “The president cannot make that showing,” the group asserts on behalf of a Florida stationery retailer.
A surprising number of conservative thinkers have signaled support for this argument. Their goal may be to rescue Mr. Trump from a self-destructive policy choice. But the legal argument they are advancing would also undo much of his first three months in office. For like his tariffs, Mr. Trump’s attempts to freeze federal funding, revoke birthright citizenship, interfere with states’ administration of their elections and slash the government using the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are all issues of major national significance that Congress has not clearly authorized the president to decide.
Many lawsuits raising these exact arguments are now pending in federal courts around the country. Here, for example, is the major questions doctrine at work in a lawsuit brought by Santa Clara County in California challenging Mr. Trump’s attempt to revoke birthright citizenship for children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants: Under the major questions doctrine, the county argues, “it is untenable to read” federal immigration law as “granting the president the authority” to revoke birthright citizenship.
Here is the doctrine being wielded again in a brief filed by 14 states challenging the sweeping actions taken by Elon Musk and DOGE: On the question of whether Mr. Musk or DOGE has clear congressional authority to take “major economic, political and social” actions to dismantle the federal government, the states argue: “The answer is a resounding no. Defendants do not even attempt to suggest otherwise.”
The doctrine is front and center, as well, in a legal challenge by the National Council of Nonprofits and other groups to the president’s attempt to unilaterally freeze federal funding. And it is also prominent in a lawsuit brought by 23 states and Washington, D.C., over the president’s abrupt decision to cancel billions in funding for public health measures such as childhood vaccines.
In all of these cases — and many others — litigants are seizing on the major questions doctrine in an effort to rein in Mr. Trump’s boldest assertions of authority.
There is a deep irony here. The Supreme Court deployed the major questions doctrine to block broad invocations of presidential power by President Joe Biden. The conservative justices did so to surmount a big obstacle: Each of those actions was permissible under existing legal doctrine that gave government agencies broad discretion in how they would carry out congressional mandates.
Liberals castigated the court for inventing the major questions doctrine, which appears nowhere in the Constitution or any federal statute, yet still operated as a “heavyweight thumb,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it, against the Biden administration.
Now the tables have been turned.
Mr. Trump, like Mr. Biden before him, seeks to take decisive action on major questions while Congress sits on the sidelines. So the doctrine should be equally applicable.
There is no guarantee, of course, that the conservative justices will play fair now. Perhaps the major questions doctrine truly was meant to be a one-way ratchet, good for striking down Democratic presidential action but dormant during Republican presidencies. That would be a shame — and a further black mark on the legitimacy of an already embattled court.
But there is a chance the major questions doctrine, even if dubious at the outset, could be used for noble ends. That is because it has the potential to forge a surprising consensus among the court’s liberal and conservative justices.
The conservative justices may well be sympathetic to the merits of Mr. Trump’s aggressive efforts to cut down government, redefine citizenship and limit voting rights. The thrust of the major questions doctrine, though, is that even if the president were right on the substance, these are all major issues that Congress ought to decide given its role as our nation’s constitutionally ordained lawmaking institution.
The conservative justices could accordingly rule against Mr. Trump not because they disagree with his policy choices, but rather because they believe the Republican-controlled Congress ought to be the one making them. Rulings like that are laudable because they leave options available to the losing side — in this case, to pursue the administration’s goals through the usual legislative process.
In the end, it is rarely a good bet to hope for salvation from wonky, judge-made rules of questionable legal origins. But at a time when our constitutional order faces immense pressure and uncertainty, we should take what we can get. And presidential restraint in the name of the major questions doctrine would be better than no restraint at all.
Aaron Tang (@AaronTangLaw) is a professor at the University of California, Davis, law school and former law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor. He is the author of “Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court — and How We Can Fix It.”
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
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E=NG
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It's good that someone is standing up to Trump, but at the same time, what does Harvard need government funds for? Their endowment is over 50 billion. They're a hedge fund that runs a small school on the side. They could charge $0 tuition and run forever without another dollar coming from the government or from any future donors.
I mean they don't just receive random money from the feds, they are given research grants to, y'know, perform research that the government is presumably interested in.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Settle down there, Temple Grandin.
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Mr. Tang is a professor at the University of California, Davis, law school and a former law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
A legal doctrine popularized by conservatives on the Supreme Court to constrain the reach of regulatory agencies is now being brandished by opponents of President Trump to challenge his seemingly boundless claims of presidential power.
He writes as though the Supreme Court obeys the rule of law, or has any respect at all for precedent.
They don't. They proved it with Roe v. Wade. The conservative justices are bought and paid for.
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It's good that someone is standing up to Trump, but at the same time, what does Harvard need government funds for? Their endowment is over 50 billion. They're a hedge fund that runs a small school on the side. They could charge $0 tuition and run forever without another dollar coming from the government or from any future donors.
That's exactly why they can fight this when many others can't. And that's why they should.
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I've always struggled with how so many people find Trump appealing, and willing to fall down and worship him at everything he says, but it really is simple... he allows everyone to let their ugly side out, instead of hiding it. He truly does encourage the worst parts of everyone to stand proud, unapologetic and unashamed.
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