The General US Politics Thread

On the 538 polling aggregate, I think it's important to note that it's current 38.8% figure is currently an all-time low.

While individual polls have had him lower in the past, there were never enough of those to push his average below 40% up until a few days ago.^note with the exception of a single day during the initial failure of the AHCA. This could be a sign that his base is starting to fold.

I'm not holding my breath.

His base does not fold until at least 50% of the Republican voters disapprove, and it stays that way for more than a couple of weeks. We have a long way to go.

Michael Flynn to invoke the 5th Amendement and will not hand over Personal Documents to the Senate, who had subpeona'd him for them.

And thus, Flynn has proven himself Guilty of something. He still might be held in Contempt of Congress, which is just as bad as being held in Contempt of Court.

I don't think he can legally do that

Wait, wait. Let's not get carried away. The Fifth Amendment is intended to protect against self-incrimination; its invocation may be memetically associated with guilt, but it is legally the precise opposite of such an admission.

Now, I have no doubt that Flynn is a slimy piece of garbage and possibly a direct traitor to the U.S., but his use of the Fifth is not legally permitted to be used as evidence against him.

It may be possible for him to be found in contempt of Congress and imprisoned for that, however. I'm not quite sure how it works.

Edit: Okay, per a quick Google search, you can invoke the Fifth Amendment to refuse to testify in a way that would incriminate yourself — specifically, this applies to "testimonial" evidence, whether in a police interrogation, a courtroom, or before Congress. It cannot be used to prevent the collection of physical evidence (hair, fingerprints, DNA samples, and so on) from your person.

Further, it cannot be used if the testimony being requested is about the guilt of a third party (say, Flynn implicating Trump), unless you giving that testimony would directly implicate yourself as well. This is why prosecutors will "grant immunity" to witnesses — it makes their testimony unusable against them and thus negates a Fifth Amendment plea.

edited 22nd May '17 9:02:02 AM by Fighteer

Admittedly I can't find the exact spot he said it, but it sounds like him.

The question is whether the Senate has to accept that pleading. Remember, if they don't Flynn cannot seek relief in court as the constitution explicitly disallows courts and other non-Congress bodies from reviewing in-parliament decisions.

Yes, it is a tricky Constitutional question.

Then, in this case, I think it's fair to say there's a 50-50 chance; Flynn could get raided and have his documents taken from him legally, or the Senate could accept his 5th Plea and not press it.

edited 22nd May '17 9:14:46 AM by DingoWalley1

BREAKING: US Supreme Court finds North Carolina illegally took Race into account for Districting in 2 separate Cases. One of these cases the courts agreed unanimously. Neil Gorsuch was not a part of this Case.

This, I think, seals it; North Carolina is gonna go Democrat State wide (especially in 2018), and become a competitive Purple state nationally.

When fucking Clarence Thomas of all people thinks you've crossed the line you KNOW you done fucked up

That's two congressional districts. Not sure if it will be sufficient to flip a state never mind its legislature.

Yes, it's only two congressional districts. However, they presumably border other districts which would need to be redrawn as well. There's a reason all the districts tend to be redrawn at once, and that's to avoid a slow spread of redistricting.

The Texas state House passed their version of the "bathroom bill," which would only require transgender students in K-12 schools, instead of the Texas Senate's all government and public school, college, and university buildings, to use multi-occupancy bathroom or locker room of their birth gender unless no one is around, or if there is, they must use a different single-person restroom; House version of said bill still needs to pass the Senate.

Is anyone actually taking new polls? I feel like every time anyone asks what Trump's approval rating is, the answer is, "All time record-breaking low of 38%, which is down from 40-something earlier."

That's been the answer for weeks. I don't think any new surveys are actually being done.

New polls are taken every day. But because different polling firms use different methods and there's a fair amount of random noise that can end up in the system, Trump's approval rating will often cross a particuar threshold a dozen or so times over the course of a week as the trend occurs across many different polling firms and aggregators.

A Mississippi state rep openly called for the lynching of people who took down Confederate monuments. As in, actually used the word lynch.

He represents the city where Emmit Till was tortured and murdered for allegedly talking to a white woman.

There's also a selection bias in your little anecdote, Tobias: nobody wanted to talk about the polls that showed Trump clawing his way back to the low 40s.

Basically, the story so far is that he started low, got lower when the initial AHCA vote failed, got higher when he bombed Syria, and then AHCA round 2 and Comey and the Intel leak happened and pushed him lower than ever.

He's been at an abysmal floor for a while, so technically, a shift from 38.2% to 37.7% really is an "ALL-TIME NEW LOW."

I believe this is the first time the aggregates have gotten so low, other than daily blips.

I wonder how long it will take for the swing Trump supporters (the relatively non-crazy ones in swing states, who often voted for Obama, Kerry, Gore and Clinton) to start ditching him? If they go, then the midwest swings back to the Democrats relatively easily. And Trump promised them the impossible...

Whew. I am amazed by that little display. How did that representative think he could get away with saying stuff like that.

A lot of the post-mortem articles talking about them said it was mostly just a matter of time. That they were going to give him about, oh, six months to a year maybe and then if things didn't get better they wouldn't be voting for him again.

Turkey Reprimands U.S. Over Violence During Erdogan's D.C. Visit

Very brazen.

x7 A link would help next time. Only took me five seconds to find one.

And he apologized, but I suspect it was more of an "CMA" apology than being genuinely sorry for his choice of words.