@DougWahl1 A NDA signed under duress is invalid. If CIC orders them to sign, the NDA IS IRRELEVANT because he has in effect ordered them not to discuss their experience. Ordering them to appear to voluntarily sign is a deception beyond constitutional authority & infringe sev 1 am rights
@ProfUnger@steve_vladeck There’s one obscure case I can’t remember. But there is nothing that I am aware of that prevents sua sponte reconsideration at a later date. Since current SCOTUS has less regard for precedent & for the case and controversy requiring, it could indirectly undercut a prior decision
@OrinKerr@PWolfson6 But when the policy becomes unitary executive = no one is independent except the president, the tradition reverts to its pre revolutionary roots. This requires the SG to always be guessing what his eminence permits or requires even on small matters. Not enviable or workable
@RBReich The immediate cost of DOGE does not include the far greater long term costs, including costs in productivity, innovation, reputation, reliability, health and longevity. Introducing a short-sighted corporate burnt earth policy threatens dysfunction and societal collapse
@TristanSnell meanwhile The wrong Kennedy wants to remove additives from food. seems the net focus by the administration will be to talk about problems being solved either by not looking at them or by turning a hatchet to institutions and departments that regulated
Vance's antagonism toward Europe is not rooted in cultural disdain, but in a deep-seated ideological aversion to the political architecture Europe embodies—such as the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, and transnational regulatory frameworks and the broader ethos of transnational cooperation, liberal pluralism, secular governance, environmental accountability, and supranational institutions that serve as constraints on nationalist authoritarianism. His posture reflects not a reaction to European people, but to the normative frameworks that challenge his movement's aspiration for unaccountable power.
Europe reflects an alternative model to the political project advanced by Trumpism, which seeks to erode liberal democratic norms, marginalize dissent, and dismantle the scaffolding of international order—such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and other multilateral institutions. While Europe remains imperfect, it nevertheless aspires to preserve civil liberties, media independence, and the legitimacy of institutional checks and balances. Vance, like Trump, depends on undermining those very aspirations.
This pattern is evident both domestically and across the transatlantic sphere, manifest in his disdain for NATO, his dismissal of Ukraine’s sovereignty, his erosion of diplomatic norms, and his tacit reverence for autocratic regimes. These positions are not strategic contradictions; they are deliberate and consistent articulations of a worldview that elevates obedience over deliberation and control over consensus.
The populist authoritarian project does not require a coherent foreign policy doctrine grounded in strategy or diplomacy; it requires a foreign antagonist onto whom domestic anxieties and resentments can be projected with moral clarity and political utility. it requires a reliable external antagonist. Europe—particularly a united Europe—functions as the last formidable emblem of collective governance grounded in mutual constraint. And to a political movement that defines freedom as the absence of accountability, rather than the democratic ideal of freedom as shared responsibility and participatory self-governance, that model is not merely undesirable—it is existentially threatening.
Thus, Vance's hostility is not directed at Europeans per se, but at the enduring threat posed by what institutions like the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament symbolize: the possibility that democracy, pluralism, and shared power might not only endure, but prevail.
That is the true threat—not to American sovereignty, but to the illiberal project Vance now serves from within—a project defined by its hostility to democratic constraint, pluralist legitimacy, institutional transparency, and any system of governance that places ethical limits on the exercise of power.
@bronze_age_zee@McFaul this response seems rather ahistorical. my recollection offs that for decades US wanted to run the security show in Europe. After all, post WW II, US sponsored rebuilding Europe in a peaceful world (lend lease and UN), making its success proof of US power, diplomacy, ingenuity
@RMFifthCircuit are differently motivated people now going to law schools? once there were 2 primary motivations: as a route to money, power, business; idealistic liberal or law and order. what's the draw now? breaking things, vengeance, or defense of democracy?
@jurgen_nauditt a contract signed under duress is no contract - under pre-Trump US law. and since Trump believes every agreement is breakable at will without consequences, why should anyone else sign a "deal" he shoves in their face?
@SenAdamSchiff and 5) make sure cronies control the archives and all other federal records so they can be adjusted to support T&M's myths about their activities in and out of government. dictator +greed = worst of all possible worlds
@TristanSnell If you buy any part of t’s bizarre idea, wouldn’t Canadians have to have a referendum? Shouldn’t they be 5-7 states (including for semi autonomous indigenous groups)? Shouldn’t capital be moved to Quebec? All US documents in English and French? Americans would have to be nice?