[ExI] My prediction

[Adrian Tymes]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 10:52 AM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> There are serious repercussions: the cases end up in court.  Usually the
> action is on hold pending adjudication.  The system works.

SCOTUS has, in many cases, overturned the lower courts on flimsy or
fallacious grounds.  I am aware of multiple cases where they flat-out
lied about the facts to justify their overturning.

> The current POTUS, with majorities in both houses of the
> legislature, with his own party working in perfect unison, were unable to
> stop the opposition party from shutting down the government.

They were unable to because that's not what happened.

The Republicans could have:
1) exercised certain options to ram the budget through anyway (but
this would have required more unity from their own party than they
had), or
2) actually compromised with the Democrats to get a budget with
bipartisan support (but this - the job that Congressional parties have
done for centuries - was ideologically abhorrent to them).

Keeping the government open was within their power.

It has been a frequently observed tactic of the Republicans to claim
they had no agency when bad things happen, and that only the Democrats
were capable of acting.  In most such cases, the Republicans could
have done something, but refuse to admit it.

> For the record, I agree with the protesting senate minority, even if not for
> the same reasons they shut down the government, and I am unhappy with them
> for caving.

I admit that I find it strange the Democrats were protesting on health
care.  It has been pointed out that these were pitched as temporary
subsidies, that "temporary" was expiring as scheduled, and the problem
of "there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government program"
applies to this case.  There were better grounds to object on, such as
continued executive usurpation of Congressional power.