"...the President shall communicate in writing the substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons for any such removal or transfer to both Houses of Congress (including the appropriate congressional committees), not later than 30 days before the removal or transfer."
It's a bit more than "detailed". And he didn't even try to meet any of the elements above. It's essentially a loyalty purge.
"Detailed and case-specific." The case-specific reason can be appointed by my predecessor on such and such date. The law doesn't place any limits on what those reasons can be.
It’s not. It’s a gutting of a norm. That’s an important difference. The law provides for independent agencies where the President can’t just fire them. It didn’t provide this cover to the IGs.
> Which of course isn't likely to happen in this case
No. But that's in the hands of the American people. A simple majority in the house to impeach and 67 votes in the Senate to convict. 34 seats are up for election in 2026 [1]. Dems only have 47 seats, and a 20-seat pick-up is almost impossible. But if Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, South Carolina and Florida [2] swung, that could convince moderate Republicans to convict.
Of course, we'd then have the practical matter of getting him out of the White House...
Please let’s not go back to the 2016-2020 impeachment and removal fantasies. The man was impeached twice, once even after his presidency was over and still the American people put him back into office.
Also, of note, every time he has run for president he received more votes than prior runs—even in 2020. There is literally only one person who has ever received more votes than Trump and that’s Biden in 2020 and frankly there will forever be an asterisk after that election due to the pandemic and Trump’s subsequent win in 2024.
If you want him out of office before his term ends, you will need to have 67 democrats as senators with probably at least a quarter of those senators being willing to lose their own elections for that vote. Bottom line, he is in for the next four.
I think impeachment is a long shot. We agree in that Trump’s popularity is what gives him power. If he lost it, one woudln’t need 67 Democratic Senators on Capitol Hill, the GOP would save itself. It’s just difficult to imagine what Trump could do to fuck up that badly.
Hard disagree on 'forever be an asterisk', if you're referring to the 2020 election itself. You really think a 7 million vote margin leaves room to question this election yet another time after all the audits and Krakens, etc.? Negative sentiment on Trump was strong going into the election, especially considering the economic conditions brought on by COVID. This, being the COVID that he was seen to have mishandled, largely with his own concern at heart, wanting testing curtailed so that ever-higher cases wouldn't hurt his election chances. I guess he loved America so much that he just didn't know how to express it.
Why Trump lost in 2020 and then won in 2024 is clear. Biden's election win was no fluke. The 2024 election was about going with the devil-that-you-know, hoping that kitchen table concerns could be alleviated, and still delivered no landslide (unless you're Stephen Miller).
Just wait until all these Trump voters have to swallow the totality of merely the last 2 weeks of changes (and recissions, in some cases), and they'll find that wanting a bull in a China shop has severe consequences. After 100 days, when actual results will be expected, all the fun Trump & Musk had as they had their way uprooting bureaucrats will be over. As recriminations flow, whether Trump can hold together the crew he started with will be a major question. Interesting times.
I am saying that the pandemic caused an statistical outlier election shift that year and Trump’s election in 2024 where the stats sort of reset to baseline makes it seem pretty likely that without the pandemic and with his ability to increase votes in every election, the 2020 election would have been much closer. Frankly with the weak dem field in 2020 and without the pandemic, I would have bet on Trump winning.
I am not sure what the first 100 days of his second term will bring and I will make no dire predictions (literally all of the dire predictions people made in 2016 were wrong). I have never voted for Trump, but I am not tribal enough to automatically assume that everything he does or is doing is bad either. Short of the last 9 months of his first presidency, his first time in office had zero negative impact on me.
Truthfully, my bet is this second term will likely be as equally uneventful…at least for me and my family.
He just has to notify. The law doesn’t give the Congress nor judges discretion over whether the reasons are good. Just detailed.