Trump doesn’t need to withdraw from NATO. He just needs to give Putin additional top secret intelligence, ignore all treaties, and do whatever the fuck he wants to do. Seriously, does anyone expect anything else?
And you think giving NATO intelligence to Putin won’t screw up our relations with NATO and other nations? Because that’s what he would do if reelected. Hell, knowing Trump, he’d probably invite Putin to the swearing in, and give him Top secret materials as a goody bag when he went home.
I mean the majority of us didn’t. But yes let’s hope even less next time. Sorry for stressing our friendship random person from unknown other country, we tried to stop it
If Trump is elected, honestly we have bigger problems than backing up NATO forces. I mean, at least there are NATO forces besides the US. It would be bad, but literally everything about it would be bad for everyone everywhere.
Trump doesn’t follow laws and has and continues to be at war with the constitution and rule of law. Nothing congress does matters. Especially when it’s filled with brown shirt traitors.
Gee I wonder why they have no choice but to take advantage of the thing Republicans already take advantage of legally to win. Could it be because Republicans caused gerrymandering to be legal in the first place and fought for it every step of the way?
You need to read your own link btw. Gerrymandering started before there was even a split between the two parties. It’s been going on for over a century and isn’t going to go away. Acting like the Dems only do it because the repubs do is naive.
SEC. 1250A. LIMITATION ON WITHDRAWAL FROM THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION.
(a) OPPOSITION OF CONGRESS TO SUSPENSION, TERMINATION, DENUNCIATION, OR WITHDRAWAL FROM NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY.— The President shall not suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty, done at Wash- ington, DC, April 4, 1949, except by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur, or pursuant to an Act of Congress.
(b) LIMITATION ON THE USE OF FUNDS.—No funds authorized or appropriated by any Act may be used to support, directly or indirectly, any decision on the part of any United States Govern- ment official to suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty, done at Washington, DC, April 4, 1949, except by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur, or pursuant to an Act of Congress.
(1) CONSULTATION.—Prior to the notification described in paragraph (2), the President shall consult with the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives in relation to any initiative to suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty.
(2) NOTIFICATION.—The President shall notify the Com- mittee on Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives in writing of any deliberation or decision to suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty, as soon as possible but in no event later than 180 days prior to taking such action.
(d) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize, imply, or otherwise indicate that the Presi- dent may suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw from any treaty to which the Senate has provided its advice and consent without the advice and consent of the Senate to such act or pursuant to an Act of Congress.
(e) SEVERABILITY.—If any provision of this section or the application of such provision is held by a Federal court to be unconstitutional, the remainder of this subtitle and the application of such provisions to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected thereby.
(f) DEFINITIONS.—In this subtitle, the terms ‘‘withdrawal’’, ‘‘denunciation’’, ‘‘suspension’’, and ‘‘termination’’ have the meaning given the terms in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, concluded at Vienna May 23, 1969.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but if there’s an article 5 declaration and any President decides to stand in the way of the MIC from cranking on full profit mode, they’d get Kennedy’d.
I absolutely hate The Hill simply because they cannot be bothered to take 2 seconds to link to the damn bills they talk about in their articles.
For all I know they could talk about Congress passing a bill ratifying that the color of the sky shall be considered Red and the reader has no idea if it is true or not.
I mean, the President-elect must take the Oath of Office as stated in Article II, Section I , Clause 8 of the Constitution:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: – “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”.
So it is on there. But it’s really just a pinky promise between you and a higher power. Whether that be a deity, the government, society/the social contract, or whatever.
There are two problems with this:
1, president Trump did not believe in a higher power than himself. He may present as Christian or even a twice-a-year Christian, but make no doubts, he saw himself as the highest power, answerable to no one
2, the president shouldn’t be answerable to no one. But the system of checks and balances is broken by a party-before-country half of Congress and a stacked and obviously biased and hyper-political Supreme Court (that has at least one seat stolen depending on how consistent you are in your beliefs. More if you think back to Bush v Gore…which is also why I hate people spouting for third parties. If half of the Florida Nader voters held their nose and voted for Gore, there wouldn’t have even been a question. Were their virtues worth the result that came of them? I say the same for the Bernie Bros who couldn’t hold their nose for HRC).
Let’s see how long it lasts. Hopefully that’s the end of the Colorado battle but you never know. The best thing that could happen is him appealing to the US Supreme Court and they affirm it, making it a national decision.
Still absurd that it was even an argument in the first place. The attorneys should be penalized for wasting time with stupidity.
Oaths are generally not legally binding. For instance, you can not swear to tell the truth in court and perjury is still a thing. The swearing in is just a formality.
Oaths are, as always, dependent upon the character of the person taking them and social consequences about breaking them.
What I’m saying is not that you can opt not to swear in, but that there are ways to commit perjury even if you have not.
In my experience, anyone who takes the stand is sworn in, it’s just a formality that is not the reason for perjury.
Sort of an “all dogs have 4 legs but not everything with 4 legs is a dog” thing.
I should hold off on posting until I make more sense
Edit: actually I’m full of shit, and you generally get charged with something lesser than perjury if you’re not under oath.
If you give a false statement but you are not under oath or make false claims without knowledge or malice, your statement will likely not reach the level of perjury charges
Only witnesses who make false statements under oath can be convicted of perjury, and they must also have intentionally misled the court. If you give a false statement but you are not under oath or make false claims without knowledge or malice, your statement will likely not reach the level of perjury charges.
So Dems restructuring the Executive branch is cool, when the GOP claims to want changes its all hands on deck? NATO should have been dissolved with the Warsaw Pact. At least the USSR kept its word, unlike the US
USA allows the deployment of forces with the War Powers Resolution of 1973
Limitations require Congress to be notified and that Congress approves an authorized use of force extension beyond 60 days
No President has followed this procedure in the past 23~ active interventions including the 4 wars that the United States has deployed forces in to this day:
Syria Niger Somalia Yemen
I think you are right about the withdrawing though. I found that this is not the first time Congress has put a treaty withdrawal restriction in a defense authorization bill and it has been ignored in the past with Open Skies.
Office of Legal counsel opinion says Congress does not have power outside of the initial agreement and rules within a given treaty.
“Restructuring the Executive branch” is a pretty bold label for this. Congress is required for getting into to treaties and ratified the US’ joining of NATO. Clarifying that they need to be apart of leaving seems like a pretty minor iteration. It wasn’t clearly defined before. Now it is.
The fact that this is even something Congress needed to consider doing is crazy.
The main purpose of the US military is deterrence. Soldiers and tanks and aircraft carriers do their job by being so intimidating that no one starts a major war. (They’re still useful if a war does start, but winning a war is far worse than not having to fight it in the first place.) A major component of this system of deterrence is the presentation of an indivisible united front between us and our allies. Simply having the President publicly question the dedication of the USA to NATO did billions of dollars worth of damage - compare how much better it would be to have had Trump keep his mouth shut than it would be to build an extra carrier battle group. (Arguments about who pays how much can be held in secret.)
The fun part is that they can pass a law to prevent Trump from officially leaving NATO, but they can’t pass a law to make him actually honor the alliance if a war does start, and they especially can’t pass a law to make the enemies of the USA believe that he would honor the alliance.
I was under the impression that while one function of the the US military is being a deterrence army, they also regularly invade countries around the globe in wars of aggression?
Eh, sorta. As far as full scale invasion is concerned, off the top of my head, it’s happened three times since WWII (Iraq twice, Afghanistan once). There are many other cases that aren’t really invasions, but are terrible in their own right.
Korea and Vietnam were both cases of the country’s government being split, and one of the factions asked the US to intervene. Then there are a hundred conflicts all over where the US was involved in some capacity–usually material support or training, but not combat. Those smaller support actions are where the really bad stuff is. Most of South America was completely fucked up in that way. The US could pretend not to be involved while one faction of locals commits crimes against humanity.
It’s not to deter countries from starting wars, it’s to deter countries from stopping using the dollar as a reserve currency. The wars of aggression come with that.
I mean: it says the president removing the US from NATO now requires Senate approval or congressal act. So what % of Senate is required for Senate approval? 50%?
As for leaving NATO, the president either needs 2/3 of the Senate to OK it, or the house and senate need to pass an act, which would be a simple majority for both bodies.
It’s some comfort at least. It’s deliberately made so that no one is going to have that sort of Senate majority of bit lickers.
It’s somewhat concerning since we know if Trump gets in, he will get in with house and Senate boot lickers. However, Congress is able to bureaucrat their way out of actually putting something up to vote even if they all want to claim they would, hypothetically, support a bill in public. Just like when Republicans had all the theoretical support they would have needed to kill Obamacare, and yet somehow dodged trying to do so for two years (after previously putting it up for a vote every few weeks when they knew it would fail).
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