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'COVFEFE Act' Would Make Social Media a Presidential Record (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) introduced legislation Monday to classify presidential social media posts -- including President Trump's much-discussed tweets -- as presidential records. The Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement (COVFEFE) Act, which has the same acronym as an infamous Trump Twitter typo last month, would amend the Presidential Records Act to include "social media." Presidential records must be preserved, according to the Presidential Records Act, which would make it potentially illegal for the president to delete tweets. "President Trump's frequent, unfiltered use of his personal Twitter account as a means of official communication is unprecedented. If the President is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference. Tweets are powerful, and the President must be held accountable for every post," said Quigley in a statement. Most people took the "covfefe" tweet to be a typo, although press secretary Sean Spicer told the media that the term was used intentionally. "The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant," he said.
The more time the congress spends on pointless stuff like this, the less time is left to waste taxpayer money. Carry on.
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the current record keeping rules are very broad and would include this, especially given Spicer's other comment that they consider Trump's tweets to be official Presidential announcements. So this seems unnecessary and more grandstanding than anything else (which is reinforced by the name chosen).
Twitter FB etc would be legally barred from deleting posts from government employees ?
How interesting.
You think a bill sponsored by a Democrat has a chance of getting passed?
You're an optimist. I like that.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
That's unsubstantiated hearsay from some unnamed person - IE Gossip.
I'm sure that the special counsel will get it straighten out in short order.
Twitter is the worst thing to happen to public discourse since TV.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
you seem to think that using twitter is making trump a less effective leader, when in reality it is more of a symptom of him not being a leader at all. So don't blame twitter, if his twitter phone was taken away from him he will think of something else to distract himself, like say play even more rounds of golf.
Trump seems to like spending time crafting executive order that get blocked by the court
I don't understand this nor the reason it was modded up. As opposed to the courts not blocking orders from the president? We have seen that and that is why we have the first year filled with E.O.'s.
Also, the arguments why he can't have his ban are specious at best. The only way the courts would allow them is if the executive prove a negative. "Prove it isn't racist!". Instead of taking the order as is and within the confines of the text to the extent that it would be enforced, the courts use campaign rhetoric that may or may not have influenced this order. But they don't have to prove it Trump has to prove it isn't racist.
Prove you are not racist and want strong immigration enforcement.
Consider the Republican perspective- if you were a Republican prior to the Tea Party era then even with your party co-opted you might be hesitant to leave the party, and if you and a bunch of other pre-tea-party Republicans leave to form a new party then there'll be two conservative parties that will diminish in-power much more than half, essentially ceding control of the government to the Democratic Party for as long as it takes for one of those two conservative parties to finally fold.
The problem with any "big tent" party is there are always forces within that party that want different things than other forces. When the issue at-hand is generally in-agreement then those disparate groups might be able to work together for the specific issue, but once that single issue is dealt-with then they can't form consensus on other issues.
The Democratic Party has similar issues at times, to the point that Will Rogers quipped, "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."
If we want to fix this kind of partisanship then we need to either acknowledge that political parties have a place in the system and use a voting method that rewards seats in legislative bodies based on the population's vote for that party, and lets voting for party-members decide who fills those seats, or else we need to revise the number of seats in our legislatures to create significantly smaller districts with significantly more representatives, so that gerrymandering is much less effective.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Do not underestimate the power of the prez. He alone is the ONLY person in the US who cannot be indicted on any federal crime while prez. Further, it is a matter of debate if he can be indicted on any state level crime. So it is possible that the US Supreme court could rule even if Donald shot and killed someone on 5th avenue he may not be able to be indicted. It is a matter of scholarly debate as to how the Supreme's would rule. It has never been tested. Further, I believe if congress does not extend the special prosecutor law, Donald can fire Mueller from investigating him. The constitution is very specific, the executive branch is a unitarian form of entity with the president solely and completely in charge. So if congress does not properly oversee and impeach bad behavior, the prez can do alot. If he doesn't like a law, don't enforce it. If he wants something reallocate funds. Frankly we are at a juncture in the US I fear, and how a republican congress acts may well change the course of history. And no I don't think I am being over dramatic.