Summary

California officials warned that Trump’s order to release massive amounts of water nearly caused severe flooding for farmers.

Trump boasted about the move, claiming it would help fight wildfires, but experts said the water couldn’t reach affected areas, which are over 200 miles away.

The Army Corps of Engineers initially planned to release water at maximum capacity but scaled back after urgent pushback.

Experts warned the water could have been better used months later for irrigation.

  • Lord Wiggle
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    122 months ago

    At least California has loads of water to spare… Oh wait… No they don’t. Trump is going to change California to New Ethiopia.

    • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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      192 months ago

      Perhaps. Put on your tin foil hats… Maybe it’s to remove the lower socioeconomic class from California through drought, damage, and famine. Thereby making California a republican state because only the rich would be able to afford to rebuild. This means that California would vote red, pushing a large mass of electoral votes towards the other side.

    • @dhork@lemmy.world
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      672 months ago

      He’s not supposed to be, he is just making it clear that he will fire anyone who says no to him.

    • @tomi000@lemmy.world
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      522 months ago

      Everyone is allowed to do anything as they please as long as theres noone enforcing the rules that would forbid it.

      • scratsearcher 🔍🔮📊🎲
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        2 months ago

        Everyone is allowed to do anything as they please

        This means checks- ans balances are a lie? Where are these systems that characterize democracy in times of need?

          • @tomi000@lemmy.world
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            62 months ago

            Funny how this time it was actually a democratic decision to abolish democracy. Back then in Germany the NSDAP reached 30% and then 44% the next year with a heavily rigged election. Gotta give the people what they want I guess…

    • @Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Presidents are supposed to have full power over the executive branch. The problem is that the executive branch now and when the constitution were written ware very different beasts, as the states had much much more autonomy before FDR.

  • @ricketyrackets@lemmy.ml
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    252 months ago

    Trump is such an utter fucking idiot. Nothing this useless fuck makes any sense. He’s neither a good businessman, leader, or president.

  • @ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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    382 months ago

    Trump knows his audience and the media too well.

    He claimed his actions would help wildfires. That’s a win to his audience.

    Experts said no and the Army Corps responded to pushback. That fuels his audience’s prejudices into believing Trump’s initial claim even more.

  • @WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
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    312 months ago

    The Conservative subs have been really quiet for the last few days, after all their glee a fortnight ago.

    Almost like they are hiding.

    • @Jericho_Kane@lemmy.org
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      82 months ago

      When they elected him the first time i tgought: hah, i bet they feel really stupid now because how incompetent he was. Nope, they doubled down and did it again.

        • @I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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          42 months ago

          I don’t know about the .ee instance, but the .world one tends to have every post downvoted to zero and every comment stating why conservatives are wrong. I try to keep my ear to the ground and know what crazy talking points conservatives are believing and the .world sub is pretty much useless for that. I don’t think there’s a single conservative that actually uses that sub.

    • Oh no don’t worry there is plenty of leopards eating people’s faces going on. I’ve seen so many crying about how these tariffs are gonna cost them jobs. Also saw some posts by conservative women pissed off when they found out DEI includes them as well not just people of colour

    • @Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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      22 months ago

      Almost like they are hiding.

      Hopefully, they are thinking about their decision to vote for a guy who’s coming to destroy their lives, too.

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)
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    302 months ago

    Fun thing being that this is what all of the signs in the Central Valley claimed that they wanted.

  • shish_mish
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    2482 months ago

    I think he has no idea what he is doing, and he has dismantled all the guardrails. According to project 2025 the entire country needs to be razed and dismantled. So they can rebuild it as Musk/Trump’s techno fascist state.That’s why Musk wants access to social security numbers, health data and addresses. Musk now knows where you live, what colour your skin is, your gender, your income and debt, and all your weak points. The Nazis did this, it helps with identifying perceived enemies of the state, deportation of immigrants and jailing or execution of political rivals. I am so sorry for those of you in the states who didn’t vote for this monster.

    • @thefluffiest@feddit.nl
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      1332 months ago

      I think he has no idea what he is doing, and he has dismantled all the guardrails.

      He knows exactly what he’s doing, or at least, someone else proposed this and explained it to him. What he is doing is: ruin Californias agriculture. This water would’ve been needed in summer, when the place runs dry.

      So come August, chances are, California agriculture is withering on the vine with no way to water it. At which point Orange Führer will blame the state government, just like he did with the wildfires. CA will suffer politically and economically, which is the real goal here.

      • @Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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        592 months ago

        Which in turn we devastate all the red states because California is largest tax payers in the country. Those taxes help the red states. So by destroying California economy he fucks over all of America. Well they voted for it so let them suffer. Just wish rest of us didn’t have to suffer too.

        • @Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world
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          42 months ago

          They’ll just up the debt and blame dems again or say we have to implement austerity for the good of the country.

        • Avid Amoeba
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          2 months ago

          The American government is not funded by taxes. It spends new money, then it collects taxes to stave off inflation. Trump doesn’t need a single cent from California to shower red states with dollars if and when he wants to. If you think California failing would hurt red states in some way, it has to be a real, non-financial effect. E.g. of red states important Californian food which can’t be grown because of X or Y.

            • Yeather
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              -22 months ago

              The treasury prints money, backed primarily by treasury bonds and the faith in the US government. Fiat currency is a government backed scam, just like bitcoin is a techbro backed scam.

              • @shplane@lemmy.world
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                62 months ago

                So you’re saying the government prints enough new money each year to cover its expenses and then collects taxes to stave off inflation? Do you have a source for this?

                • Yeather
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                  22 months ago

                  According to the US Government Accountability Office, “the federal government borrows money straight from the public. The government issues securities like bills, notes, and bonds through the U.S. Treasury… Individual and institutional investors can back the government by investing in these types of securities and many choose to do so.”

                  USD is backed by your faith in the US government to exist and not prints giant amounts of money. Taxes are another way of raising money, it helps to stave off inflation rising since the gov considers it better to have small amounts of inflation then deflation.

        • @thefluffiest@feddit.nl
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          432 months ago

          Sure, but as long as he and his oligarch bros get away with blaming Dems, DEI, China or whatever, it’s just another piece of red meat for the gullible

      • fadingembers
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        172 months ago

        It’s so fucked that someone willingly followed the order to release the water. I’m sure it won’t be the last time

    • @azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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      72 months ago

      Side-note but this is exactly the reason why my country never asked for my ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation (and AFAIK is not legally allowed to do so). We learned from WWII that this is too great of a liability to entrust to future, potentially hostile governments. The Nazis poured over every written registry of Jewish population census to make a handy murder list, maybe we shouldn’t facilitate their job next time?

      (Side-side note: because of what I just said it is very surprising that Germany keeps a registry of everyone’s religion for tax purposes, like maybe just find any other way to allocate subsidies?)

      (Side³ note: I’m going to guess unfortunately my government does have “legally trans” people in a database due to the logistics of changing legal gender)

      • @RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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        12 months ago

        In a system where men and women are treated equally (double surnames, same parental leave etc), it might no longer be needed for central governments to register people’s sex, only the healthcare system would need to know. I’m just thinking out loud here, this might be a bad idea for other reasons.

        • @azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          22 months ago

          Yeah that’s the gender-radical answer. I’m all for it but we’re certainly not there yet despite being on the very progressive side of gender rights.

          There are also the positive discrimination laws to take into account (in Belgium it’s illegal for companies to have a pay gap between men and wonen in equivalent positions) but IMO those should not rely on a central government database to be enforced.

          Then there’s the fact that people usually change their names if they change their legal gender… When Robert becomes Julia there’s no need for a gender marker to guess what happened.

    • @Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      2025 is right in that it’s existence and the ability of the current president to implement it tell us that we have erred in the amount of power we place in the president(s). Constitutionally he has the full power to do what he is doing, or at least he mostly does, the problem is that the constitution was written centuries before FDR expanded the power of the executive in a major and possibly anti constitutional way (as many of his contemporaries suggested).

      The Founding Fathers left us a great system, impervious to tyranny and the sort of populism that Trump represents, and we ruined it.

      • @Zexks@lemmy.world
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        82 months ago

        “Impervious” yet FFR was able to break it. Do you not hear yourself. Maybe people 300 fuckin years ago didn’t quite understand everything yet.

        • @nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          He phrased it wrong but he’s sort of right. If Americans knew how to leverage their own political system , as designed by the founding fathers, to their advantage in a focused and rational way, we wouldn’t be here. Could it have been better? Sure, but ultimately there is no democratic system that can protect voters from themselves. Democracies grsnt the people immense power, including the power to destroy their own democracy. That’s what Americans have chosen.

              • @lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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                2 months ago

                It’s ok to depend on people being generally competent most of the time. It’s not ok to depend on people never making mistakes, nor is it ok to depend on people acting in ways that real human beings don’t act. I’m politics, one if there critical failures was depending on politicians to act in good faith, and another was depending on the voters to stay informed and use critical thinking enough to avoid voting for an obvious conman.

                Maybe there’s just no truly good system for politics, and the best we can hope for is the least bad option. But we won’t even achieve that much if we pretend the US system was created by enlightened demigods. It’s a deeply flawed system created by men who had no experience with democracy and who clearly saw themselves as the leaders of a new kind of aristocracy.

                I will give them unqualified credit for one thing, though. The Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution are some of the most effective works of propaganda ever created. Saying that all people are fundamentally equal while simultaneously excluding most people from the levers of power was perhaps the greatest con of all time.

      • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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        182 months ago

        “The Ford Pinto is the greatest car ever made. Yes, it blows up and breaks down and is uncomfortable but it’s the best”

        That’s what you sound like.

      • @protist@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Constitutionally he absolutely does not have the power to do what he’s doing. Our system of checks and balances is failing because the Supreme Court and the Legislature have both all but fully ceded their authority to the Executive. Constitutionally, the job of the Executive is to implement the laws created by the Legislature and abide by rulings from the judiciary, not to do whatever they want with no basis in law or procedure.

      • @Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net
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        2 months ago

        The Founding Fathers left us a great system, impervious to tyranny and the sort of populism that Trump represents, and we ruined it.

        It’s not looking impervious in the slightest right now. We’re living in the consequences of their actions, and one of the consequences being tyranny.

        And it’s always been tyrannical, regardless of the year you pick. This country has always been enslaving, discriminating, disenfranchisng, warring, killing innocents, or otherwise robbing workers/indiginous peoples. And always done the majority of this all at the same time.

        • @Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          FDR kind of fucked it up, and from then on every subsequent president added to the enshitification of the office by expanding its powers. But yes it is inherently an oligarchy, but I do not think that is inherently a bad thing. The intentions were good.

          • @lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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            42 months ago

            Were they? Initially only white land owners were allowed to vote. Seems like they created a system that was great for people just like them.

            • @Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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              12 months ago

              Yeah because they feared the masses were too stupid to participate in democracy. More than once they describe how a popular mob would end up electing a man exactly like Trump. I would say these elections have vindicated them, although there’s no reason why it wouldn’t have worked with more participation, that’s what the electoral college is for. But the problem is that the electoral college is not working the way it’s supposed to: they are not supposed to vote for whom the people want, they are supposed to deliberate between them and elect the best candidate.

          • @BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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            202 months ago

            And all those mechanisms were designed into the Constitution. You can’t keep defending it as perfect if its very structure allowed this to happen.