The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Consider certain graffiti. The person tagging a building doesn’t think that he is improving it. Rather, he is showing that he has the power to put his name on places where other people don’t want it. In doing so, he asserts dominance. That’s what legacy is in a zero-sum mindset where success must mean someone else’s failure - a record of whom he defeated.
I don’t think the intent is to make the center look good - it’s to humiliate.
“Controversial” here seems like a basic statement of fact. One might think that she ought not to be controversial, but she is.
That’s not how it would work even for an ordinary person. This is an accusation about something rather far-fetched happening 35 years before the accusation was made, with no evidence for it except the accusation itself. It wouldn’t lead to criminal charges.
Any true Roman Empire appreciator would happily be devoured by lions for the amusement of Emperor Nero.
Please, don’t make me choose between Rome and libertarianism. I love them both too much.
I’m not sure why people want him to humiliate Democrats by trying something doomed to failure. Hegseth can’t be impeached successfully unless multiple Republicans support doing so.
So we’re at the “I didn’t do it, but if I did then it isn’t so bad” stage.
My favorite part of this is that the redistricting would have had no problems in court if the Republicans had simply not talked about their race-related motives in public.
With that said, I don’t have high hopes for the Supreme Court here.
he has no control over his party
He can’t actually order them to do anything. One might argue that if he was a better leader, he could have persuaded them to stick with the plan longer, but maybe he had already done that weeks ago and this is the longest that anyone could have persuaded them to hold out. It is the longest shutdown ever, after all…
The random sample survey of 604 D.C. residents was taken between August 14 and 17 shortly after Trump signed the executive order. It indicates some 65 percent of residents do not believe the presence of FBI agents and uniformed National Guard troops from an increasing number of states makes the city safer.
Eight of 10 residents surveyed oppose Trump’s executive order to federalize law enforcement in the city. Seven in 10 oppose it “strongly.”
I’m not sure why they thought a DC jury would ever convict, given that even a DC grand jury (which hears only the prosecutor’s side) didn’t indict.
Because disenfranchising people is the solution to disenfranchising people. But who knows - this may be the least bad option.
So people want him to (1) believe that the Catholic faith is essential for eternal salvation but also (2) not care whether or not his wife is Catholic? That wouldn’t make any sense. Of course any Catholic who cares about his loved ones is going to hope that they convert to Catholicism.
I wouldn’t say that Trump is interested in being a theocrat - his movement pays lip service to Christianity as part of its nostalgic fantasy of America the way that it used to be, but the actual Christian conservative movement has been sidelined within the Republican party since 2016 (if not earlier). Trump and his inner circle care about Christianity only to the extent that it is a label that divides “us” from “them”.
That’s true, and I think that Trump is actually not a Catholic theologian but rather that he is expressing the view, common among cultural Christians today, that God weighs a person’s good and bad deeds against each other. There’s still the hope for divine forgiveness in this view, but the abandonment of the idea of unearned grace is contrary to the teachings of every Christian denomination, as far as I know.
Catholics consider the idea that any living person can be sure of getting into heaven a heresy. Trump isn’t Catholic but he’s still not saying anything theologically controversial here.
Reid’s longtime partner, Alonzo Mable, is Black.
If they’re into race play, that’s weird but none of our business. Judge not lest ye be judged for the porn that you like.
It may be related to the motive for the shooting somehow, but it’s neither chilling nor political.
I guess some protestors woke up and thought “Today’s the day that I’m going to do something which cannot possibly accomplish anything useful.”
I don’t see anything in there that substantially challenges the facts presented in the New York Times coverage being criticized.