New Yorkers Sue Trump & The Reason Is Tweet-Worthy

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President Donald Trump remains not exactly popular. He’s turned the United States into a literal laughingstock, facing the taunts of diplomats during a recent appearance before the United Nations General Assembly thanks to his outrageous but familiar hyperbole. On the home front, his administration has pushed for his normalization through the implementation of a presidential text message alert system — but a group of New Yorkers have taken opposition to the idea to the next level.

Last week, they filed a lawsuit seeking to stop a test of the system scheduled for this week, although at present, their case hasn’t yet made any headway. No hearings have yet been scheduled by the judge in the case, Obama appointee Katherine Failla.

Although there are provisions in the only recently enacted law allowing for the new alert system meant to keep it from being a propaganda tool, the New Yorkers who have brought the case — J.B. Nicholas, Kristine Rakowsky, and Liane Nikitovich — argue that they’re not enough, terming the measure “unconstitutionally vague.”

They assert:

‘Without more specific definitions… officials – including President Trump – are free to define ‘act of terrorism’ and ‘threat to public safety’ as they see fit, potentially broadcasting arbitrary, biased, irrational, and/or content-based messages to hundreds of millions of people.’

Without comment as to the merit of their case, it of course remains very true that the president is fond of such messages — just check his personal Twitter profile. As the president of the United States, he regularly spews bonkers conspiracy theories, lies, and personal jabs at his opponents, earning mockery and a continued place in the conversation in the process.

Just this week, for instance, even though you’d hope he’d be relatively non-partisan, that hope has long proven to be a pipe dream. Trump joined Congressional Republicans in claiming Democrats are just pulling a political trick in calling for further scrutiny of the credibly accused sexual predator — and nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court — Brett Kavanaugh. After public pressure, a brief but renewed FBI investigation into his background with a focus on the accusations got underway recently.

Casting his support on the wrong side of that case isn’t where the president’s repugnance ends, though — not by a long shot.

He has gone so far as to offer his own redefinition of a national security threat, repeatedly terming much of the mainstream media the enemy of the American people. He’s claimed that he’s just calling the “fake news” the people’s enemy — but that distinction is irrelevant since he’s termed the vast majority of the mainstream media “fake.”

In other words, the concern underlying the aforementioned case about Trump imposing an arbitrary definition of national security issues in his usage of the text message alert system is well placed.

Under the program, there’s no immediately available way to opt-out of presidential text message alerts, considering they’re in theory supposed to be meant for only the highest priority messages. The currently scheduled Wednesday test of the system comes weeks after a September 20 test was postponed thanks to the onslaught from Hurricane Florence.

Featured Image via YouTube screenshot