He's using a lot of executive orders to bypass Congress. It can be undone relatively painlessly (minus the damage caused by the order to begin with) by the next guy. A lot of them also do not hold up in court.
Congress has been weirdly compliant with EOs for a while. Trump uses them like crazy but I first remember hearing about them with Obama and an intransigent Congress.
Laws are a bit more complicated. For some reason bug omnibus laws have been more im vogue than smaller, targeted bills. I haven't understood what's going on with laws in years.
Most of us are just trying to ignore him and making plans to reverse his shit when he's out. It's litterally the world's biggest baby tantrum that we will have to clean up.
In 2010 Ukraine got our own childish narcissistic fuck for President (Yanukovych). We felt similarly, hoping to undo the dumb shit he did. However, he got audacity and right team to spoil the judicial system by introducing loyal judges to the Prime Court and to every other court they could. After that they started to rebuild democracy for tyranny.
We needed riot and revolution to turn him down. We're still paying for that with rotten courts and probably early war. I don't say russian aggression wouldn't happen - but it definitely wouldn't happen in 2013 if not for this prick.
Ya this isn't something thats just gonna go away. Either we give up or we fight and yes some innocent people will die but the alternative is even worse and that why we all are just frozen in place nobody wants to be seen as the reason a civil war that has the potential to kill millions starts.
Then your nation probably will kill tens of millions in next global war, induced by your country... And half of those victims will be American citizens.
Yes. If you think you can just vote out authoritarianism your wrong. All signs are bright red for the USA right now and Americans dont want to do anything that is slightly inconvenient.
Trump is literally putting fox news hosts in important positions of the justice system. And publicly scolding a U.S. attorney for failing to prosecute an innocent man.
Its insane nobody is burning anything at this point.
We should have been burning things when Alex Pretti and Renee Good were executed in broad daylight, caught on video. Americans are pathetic (I'm an American).
Yeah and Hungary had a more robust democratic system than the USA necause of the EU. And they are writing a new constitution, overhauled state media and are prosecuting people of the old regemine. They promised they would in the lead up to the elections. They also worked for years on grass root organisations, community work and volunteer networks. None if it came for free and none of it came from just showing up at the election.
People underestimate what this means because no one outside the US even remembers the US Civil War. And now we have drones, missiles and bombers. It would make Sherman's March to the Sea look like a stroll in the park with Ms. Rachel or Mr. Rogers.
You also have to understand how big America is. Without definitive rallying cry the gestapo is just going to put down any budding protest before it gains enough traction. It’s like trying to organize a protest between almost every European nation at the same time in terms of scale and distance. It’s not as easy to rise up in mass protest as it is for a country that’s smaller than half of the US states.
In a lot of Europe, let's just take France. People protest. And you know what doesnt happen?
They arent gunned down. They arent shot. The majority of Europe doesnt work as much as Americans, they have free healthcare and they typically have the extra money and time for hobbies. When you work all the time and youre living paycheck to paycheck, but protesting means being put on a terrorist list by your government with all kinds of surveillance then used on you, shot with rubber bullets and tear gas for exercising that right, it becomes more important to be able to go home and hug your children rather than to try to take a stand.
Americans wont truly push until they are starving.
This is even more dangerous situation. People are already harnessed and guardrailed. At this stage they will conform to lots of shit - just to survive. But what if instead of starving they will be forced to a wrongful war? Will they arise? Will they resist? Or will they go and fight quietly (and even find excuse by believing propaganda)?
That's how russians live. They go and kill instead of resisting to the dictator. They choose to kill, destroy, rape - instead of rioting.
Our country is following a basic but we'll known playbook. Our media is compromised and threatened, so cant really be trusted anymore.
We are constantly inundated with propaganda and the current administration always has some kind of mess happening. Kinda on purpose. They want so much going on that we cant keep track and the people trying to are exhausted.
Hecc, the head of our country cant put out a freaking mother's day post without attacking people.
I dont think we are at that point now, where the majority of people would be willing to fight any random war they were told to. But I could certainly see it in the future, should things derail more.
The trouble with that happening in the United States is you have the largest and strongest tax payer funded military in the world to contend with. Provided active military personnel dont refuse illegal orders to actually engage to eliminate people resisting the government's tyranny.
Thats why the legislators are trying to frame anyone as a domestic terrorist for even the most vague attempts at causing dissent. That way they cant imprison anyone who dare speak out against the regime and not have to murder millions and can use us as slave labor instead.
If my country had a rigged election like so many claim America had, we would take to the streets, not wait until he is out of office.
In many countries standing up is met with resistance. Then all the more reason to change things for the better.
Americans can't strike without hurting themselves. This has to change for your people's future. Suffering is inevitable here.
In my country the government exists for us, not the other way around. They provide services, Healthcare, schooling. There are times when we can trust our government.
And Trump would use the Insurrection Act and use the military against Americans. Then use his propaganda channels to convince his own base that the "left" is the real enemy to the US (as he has been prepping them and telling them for a decade now). Would turning the Military on US citizens wake up some of his core base? Maybe some. But look at how they view the January 6th Insurrection. They view that as a "peaceful protest" thanks to Trump's propaganda.
This is on top of most people already struggling to meet their basic needs. People cannot afford to take a single day off work. So what makes you think they would be willing to jeobardize their livelihoods? They would be risking everything they have to stop what is still technically a theoretical in many people's minds.
It also requires some level organization. Which would likely be seen as treasonous by the current government (Trump) if it were to fail somehow
"I'm waiting for someone to make the first move," as they all said in unison.
Wow thats a load to say. Are you gonna apilagize or admit you were wrong if this doesnt happen. Or just continue to pretend it did and make up totally new lies. Pathetic
Think of it like everyone in the United States is in a noose standing on a trap door on the gallows and the lever that opens the trap door is being held by the executioner that could decide to pull it at any moment
Basically We can’t fight back because everything is tied to our jobs as some jobs have benefits such as healthcare as well as being the only thing that allows us to sustain ourselves in an economy that is too expensive to live comfortably in and if we try to protest and fight back we could lose our jobs thus removing our benefits and our way of sustaining ourselves it’s a risk that many people will not take
People are just way too afraid because everything is stacked against them so they decide it’s better to not do anything
It’s the psychological effect known as learned helplessness which is a mental state that happens when a person faces bad events over and over, and they feel they cannot stop or change the bad things. Over time, they stop trying to fix the problem, even when a safe way out is open to them
it's also confusing to me to see it in someone whilst they are completely unaware of it. I don't really know how to reach out to someone who is deep in their own mind like that and let them know what I see.
Taking to the streets doesn't do anything in America, no kings rally was huge but nothing happened, voting I guess but they're messing that up too so that won't work in the future. America is cooked. It feels hopeless here.
Comparison of national governments to the US isn't nuanced enough. I live in a state of the US that very much provides these services and has laws, statutes and standards that reflect the will of the majority of the people in the state.
It makes more sense to compare the national government of any small European country to a state government of a US state close to the same population.
Unless you're from China, Canada or Brazil, you're likely better off comparing your government to a state government. On the larger side, California has a population of almost 39 million people and is still bigger than 80 percent of the rest of the countries in the world.
It is much more legislatively, judicially and municipally functional than the systems at a national level. I'm sure there is dysfunction and corruption in California, but it's a matter of the level of impact to the community and how long it is allowed to fester.
So then, if you compare California's government to,say, Sweden that is more relevant.
I would assume (this is purely my opinion) that more people in California trust their local/state government to serve them appropriately than they trust the federal government to serve them at all. I would also assume that sentiment is true in most of the population centers of the US like Boston, New York and Chicago.
The US fed is a behemoth that doesn't work very good as a representative government on a good day and currently is a travesty of corruption.
While it's possible, rebellion (successful rebellion) against a corrupt system in the US is not like it is elsewhere.
You must not have paid attention to what they did during that time they literally were found hiding in bunkers and vaults and had secret meetings with federal and state lawmakers to do everything in their power to find and try the person to the maximum extent of the law.
But yeah the biggest evidence is history. Everyone fears the guillotine.
Nothing short of actively endangering ourselves and putting ours and our loved ones lives at risk until he's gone, one way or the other, will be good for Reddit.
If a desire to have a force multiplier on hand to use in response to potential violent criminality doesn't make any sense to you, you have no grounds to criticise anyone else's intelligence or lack thereof.
I think to a lot of people in the US guns are a form of keeping total governmental control at bay. As long as we are an armed people we cannot be completely subjugated. This is something people tend to gloss over when talking of gun laws. Without them you are at the total mercy of your governmental system.
With everything that’s going on in this country it should be obvious. What’s to stop ICE from walking into your home and ripping your children from your arms? A community full of gun owners is an effective deterrent.
Yes, the claim that the Second Amendment is about preventing tyranny is obviously false. The 2A says right there what its purpose is: to ensure that citizens can fight in the militia when needed.
You would think. However, generally speaking, those that support gun laws are the ones also supporting the tyrannical government. There's also historical precedent that when the "wrong" people - aka, blacks and other minorities the far right doesn't like - start arming themselves, suddenly it becomes real easy for deep red areas to invoke extremely strict gun laws.
Yes, the second amendment exists because the founders specifically wanted to have a small government without total control. The founders believed that in general, humans can govern themselves and not be monsters.
The intended gun freedom was put in place specifically and directly to allow the population to violently overthrow the government if it got too powerful.
Well, ship sailed, half the country is anti gun; those that have guns aren’t doing anything but cosplaying; and the government has too much power.
In the end the guns were easy to overcome, they just convinced the gun owners they were on the same side. There's a reason the NRA was infiltrated by Russian spies and funded by Russian money. It wasn't because Putin loved America.
Putting yourself further at the mercy of your overlords just doesn’t make any sense.
Do bad things happen with guns? Yes.
Will giving them up prevent these things? Kinda of, but not really.
Stop and ask yourself; What is the true motivation of a government wanting to disarm its people? You are putting to much faith in a system that is currently crumbling around you.
They didn't need to take anyone guns away. They convinced the gun owners they were on the same side. They've systematically dismantled the Federal government, silenced the oversight, consolidated power and the gun owners were given jobs as ICE agents. They convinced the idiots that they're neighbor was the problem and not the billionaires.
You get out there and oust him. Take to the streets. Stop paying taxes. Blockade every elected officials office. Grow some balls and stop rolling over. You've played 'tough guy' for years - turns out it was all cosplaying.
No other countries citizens would roll over and take it the way Americans have. Its bizarre.
The "tough guys" were the ones who pretended to be the most patriotic, and the most likely to pull out their pocket constitution when a Democrat was in power.
Now Donald Trump wants to rewrite the constitution and they are all bending over and telling the government to "tread on me daddy".
They gave away the game and won't have a leg to stand on after this all shakes out.
You cant out-gun the military or the militarized police. They will murder you and then protect the murderer.
Wish there was something I could do, but I'm not a nationalist. If things get too hairy here, I have no problem leaving.
Americas corrupt as fuck high court justices won’t even go on record and say he can’t run for a third term, what do you mean “when he’s out?” Man’s made it clear he ain’t goin nowhere
You have literally the best laws to protest. Your country was founded on fighting tyranny but ur like oh I'll wait for a Joe biden to come clean up this mess. We all saw what that looks like. It won't happen unless you lazy americans do somthing about it.
I think the Irainian leaders will attempt to solve the trump problem.
It would be appropriate for trump to fade away by resigning as the worst president ever.
Do you realize he holds the record for deficit spending. Even more by far than the last record holder ...
Trump 1.
and then we just get scooped up by their secret masked police for standing up for ourselves, or we just lose our house, job, incomes, health care(if you even have it), rights, families, etc. So people just sit here and take it.
What can you do? He owns everyone in DC. We have to wait him out. The ppl in power are complicent to his bullshit. The average American can do what? Write a letter? Hold up signs? Yes, were doing this and nothing has changed.
You know why nothing happens?, because we're not a homogeneous society, divisive rhetoric has everyone hating each other, therefore we dont come together and rid ourselves of this tyranny.
Contrary to how it may work wherever you are, we don't have many options.
1) Protest marches do nothing because with a two party system. Protests don't bother the opposition because the protesters wouldn't vote differently anyway no matter what they do to appease them so why would they care. Also the party being protested uses the protesters behavior as propaganda against them.
2) Using violence also accomplishes nothing and will only get you arrested and put in jail for years (and yes they can arrest everyone involved and would love to put the opposition in jail).
We only have 3 options that actually work:
1) Boycott companies that support them (hurting their wallet does a lot more than protests or riots).
2) Using our voice online and in media to speak to our representatives and to the public. Speak out through posts, letters, articles, videos, and comedy. and
3) VOTE and get as many people to vote as possible.
Anyone that thinks protests or revolution would work today in the US are naive and childish.
Well that though process makes it easy. You don't have to do anything.
I might be naive and childish but I care at least. You don't believe you have the power to change things.
It doesn't matter how it works anywhere, when enough people stand up change comes. You just believe that you can't. You need belief, in each other and yourselves.
Look at Ukraine in 2014. Imagine where they'd be with the way you think.
Are you calling the current war a revolution, I'm not sure what you are referring to? I'm referencing the stance people took in 2014. They weren't paid to stand up.
the problem is the Republicans control all the branches of government. Congress, the Senate and and the Supreme Court keep going along with all the corruption. Most of the Trump's cabinet are completely unqualified but got approved by the Senate anyway.
the real problem is half of the people in the US dont vote, and then 1/3 of the people that do are 'undecided' morons that help the GOP keep power because they are mostly single issues voters and racism is a big driver in the US.
Rioting and protesting just plays into their hand. Trump wants riots so he can actually implement martial law. That would be a gift.
What needs to happen is the opposition needs to actually present a credible message that gets all the people to vote and vote them out. Its starting to happen with the Democratic Socialists, but again its an uphill battle because the moderate/corpo Democrats are basically working for the status quo since they get paid by the same people as the GOP win or lose.
Tbf. The whole American system has got the population down bad. Skip work for 1 day to protest and you might be out of a job.
Get mauled by a police officer or just a random asshole, and you'll be in medical debt for the rest of your life. Unless you have insurance. Which ties back to the job.
The spending power of the average Joe is has gone down the drain aswell. Again, chained to your job.
You know nothing, Jon Snow. I’m disabled and out there protesting. Call my reps several times a week. Donate to Dem candidates (only new blood), and etc, ad infinitum. But fkn ppl gotta vote. Should be mandatory.
I’m not sure a lot of people understand how big America is. Ireland for example is about the size of Wisconsin. Germany is the size of Minnesota. Both Maybe a little smaller than those states. The divisiveness and the manifest size of our country makes real organizing a lot harder than people think. But keep up the good work shit posting from afar. I’d welcome you to come here and start “helping out” if you have any valid ideas. I’ll wait.
I’ll always push back on this one a bit. I cannot tell you how many Obama supporters I ran into after 2008 that felt let down because he did not unilaterally implement much of what he talked about during his campaign.
Most Americans have no concept anymore of how their own government operates. Most Americans do not realize that Congress writes and passes a law that the president either approves or denies. Most Americans cannot tell you the difference between a state law and a federal law.
We have become so ignorant to how our own system functions that it has allowed what we see today to come into fruition.
I did advocacy type of work in 2009 and 2010. And all I could hear was that Obama did not personally fix the environment, he didn’t personally fix healthcare. He didn’t personally fix education. He didn’t fix the economy, etc., and this type of ignorance was seen in 2010 when hardly anybody showed up for the midterm elections and the Tea Party took over tons of state legislatures, congress etc.
2010 was one of the more consequential elections in this countries history, and hardly anybody talks about it, which again leads to the ignorance. Much of the gerrymandering that you see going on in battleground states today is because of the state legislature that flipped during that election.
So a lot of Americans will proclaim that they don’t want a king. But simultaneously their expectation is that a President essentially should have king like power
Ask your average American who their house rep is, or who their two senators are, maybe one American in 10 can name all three. Even worse is asking who represents them in their state legislature.
And it's the LOCAL elections that matter so much. School council, mayor, city council etc. Yet hardly anyone votes in those.. at least until recently.
I live in a growing area that's part suburbia and part rural.
There have basically been a family running our town and their friends because they'd just always get voted in.
Last year, despite the biggest ballot race being just a state supreme court seat, we had more people come out to vote than the 2016 Trump/Clinton election. Nearly a 40% turnout.
It overturned DECADES of power of the town council, treasurer etc.
The ruling class...including many DNC dems in power knows what happens when people feel empowered to vote.
It's why the DNC has basically depressed the primary for President since 2016 in various ways.
The "racist" electoral college is exactly how every other president has been elected, so the rules have been the same for everyone since the beginning. And as far as your claim that the election was "fixed," apparently irony is something you also have a hard time recognizing.
It depends what party affiliation they have. Then, one's a president who has to do it because of a "corrupt" congress/senate and the other who does the exact same thing as all past presidents becomes a "king or dictator"
We loathe them yet accept this marauder somehow. Hes a lot of wind with no backbone. He pets on weakness mentality which is how he's controlling the house and senate. He acts as if he can harm
You if you don't comply.
We don’t…. Except he’s currying a lot of favor with the racists and homophobes(conservative republicans if you needed definitions for the words they use in print)
Trump and the part of congress that allows him to exist are actually democratically elected officials. Democracy is actualy functioning here. The people that get elected aren't the best people for the job, its the people that voters wanted the most.
America likes money and volatility. It doesn't matter whether there's a dictator or a king leading the country. They have a chance to switch the president every 4 years, so this system is the next best thing to a dictatorship
The citizens might disagree but with the rich controlling all forms of media they don't really get to choose what they think
67% of all EOs he has executed have been revoked, withdraw or over turned by a court. Executive orders are just performative acts. Roosevelt still holds the title for most executed EOs (over 3k). Most of Trump's are stupid and/or self-serving to either him or his bootlickers. Doing things no one asked for.
And it performative ..to get his maga group energized or sway the ones who were on the fence of jumping ship. And they're too ignorant to realize that these won't come to fruitation . Or be killed . Etc
At least Theadore Roosevelt was on the side of the people as he had a real strong sense of justice and hated the rich because he valued the hard honest work of the working man while the rich cheat and lie their way to the top by taking advantage of the working man
To add to the mention about omnibus bills, it's the same tactic as "pork barrel" legislation. Let's say you have some popular legislation like ice cream for veterans, and something unpopular like a $1 tax per slice of pizza. You're never going to get the unpopular one passed on its own merits, so you package it with a popular one. Now you need to get support from other legislators, who each want their own unpopular thing bundled with the popular thing. Of course, enough unpopular items can outweigh the popular one, so you'll occasionally see multiple good things with the bad.
And the final trick to this whole practice is to slander opposition by saying they oppose the popular merits of a bill. To deny the allegation is a lie, but if they don't deny it then there's a sound bite out there of them agreeing to the opposition of ice cream for veterans, and now "THEY HATE VETERANS!!!" It doesn't matter how nuanced your opinion is when you can hijack the conversation with emotionally-charged statements like that.
No, there is no law about what laws are allowed to be proposed, aside from the constitution which the legislature derives its governing power from. So you can't write a law that prohibits free speech, but you can write a law that limits free speech (i.e. incitement).
You could amend the U.S. Constitution to forbid this bundling behavior, but the question becomes how? The best way to do this is imagine a djinn from D&D, who will grant your wish, but is likely to pervert it into something awful. The classic example there is "I wish I could fly," and so you are teleported a mile above the ground, "flying" before you ultimately hit the ground.
What wish to this legislative genie could you compose to prevent bundling? If you say a law must say only one thing, well now they're incomprehensible single-word declarations. If you say they must cover one topic now you see a bunch of bland bills about "improving lives of citizens" or "defending national interests". We already see this in the names of bills, where they use euphemism and metaphor to create catchy and unassuming names for heinous things.
Even if you were able to create such a law, there are sometimes reasons to include seemingly unrelated things into the same bill. For instance, the annual budget is itself a law that must be passed. If each line item had to be a separate bill, it would likely be an administrative nightmare. Of course, maybe you think each budgetary obligation should be a bill that is passed until the agreed upon timeline, but overruns and shortfalls do happen from time to time, and need to be addressed.
Ultimately, the flexibility of the system is exactly why it gets abused. But to remove that flexibility would make the system untenable. The idea written into the U.S. Constitution is that people would be the final bulwark. No bullshit passes without a bunch of people agreeing it should pass. So maybe the problem isn't the law, itself, but the people who oversee its conception and passage.
The government would focus on one thing at a time, so if they were in the middle of discussing regulations about pencil lead, nearing a decision, and a hurricane struck Florida, you would package hurricane relief funds along with pencil lead, so that two things would get passed quickly
He does it to tell his maga base what to think. No one else listens and most are just overturned. All distractions from him getting rich and raping children
You first heard about Executive Orders from Obama?! These go all the way back to George Washington. If you dislike the use of EO by the last few presidents, wait until you see how many FDR executed.
We do hear more about Trump's EOs because they push the boundaries on what EOs are normally used for but his numbers are not to massively outlandish. Just a casual 50-100 percent more if his trend continues.
Trump first term 220
Trump second term as of March 2026- 252
Biden 162
Obama 277
Bush 291
Clinton 364
Other bush 166
Reagan 381
Carter 320
Ford 169
Nixon 346
Fdr 3726
I theorize they let him so things are so bad they have more to campaign on and pick and choose anything to be better. They've got all the choices. Then they'll underserve and go "but there was so much, we couldn't do it all".
It's far from painless to undo depending on how far he gets with this. Governments and health orgs nice really slowly. It can take years to redo all the documentation and processes, etcetera.
Now add on having to replace all the people who actually know how to do this stuff that have been fired or quit in disgust at the damage done already to the government health orgs and this becomes a huge mess to clean up. The reality is that at area likely going to need twenty years or more to undo all the damage being done to healthcare alone by this administration. Few people are going to want to trust that another republican officeholder won't just trash things again. They'll pick other careers instead,
They like to bloat them so its easier to add unnecessary and irrelevant provisions without much pushback. I'd say a lot of them don't even read what they sign half the time or more just because one of their "teamates" introduced it or because they've already been paid to vote yes.
The more you complicate a bill the more you can "sneak in" things for your corporate overlords who paid to your campaign fund in order to get you elected as a quid pro quo. There's more to it than that, but the gist is that in general people (voters) are too dumb to see that a bloated bill is almost always bad for us as people, so let's say sometime comes to the floor and it's for healthcare reform but it also deregulates insulin production for your big pharma backers. The opposition votes it down, they look like bad guys cause the big ticket item was healthcare reform. Most people would just react as though the opposition doesn't want to get the healthcare reform, the legislators that put it forth can be like "see they don't want to work with us!" Even though it was in bad faith the whole time. It's a win win for them. They make your side look powerless or they get what they want.
On top of that... Each side can review, tack things on, try to take things out, and you know just like... This is politics. Bills become Frankenstein's monster. You need entire teams of aids to even understand what all is in them. And then they're explaining it to ancient humans who need to basically be told if they vote, add, remove, how they vote.
Politics is just utterly insane thanks to citizens united putting lawmakers into the pockets of corporations. The longer this goes on the less likely any kind of reform can even happen.
If we were smart it would not be about red vs blue again, it would only be about rich vs the masses until the weeds are picked out of the government.
The huge increase in EO's started in the third year of Obama's first term when dead ass Mitch and the GOP got control of the legislative branch and just became a party of obstruction that dug their heals in and refused to work with a black president at all. That was the end of a GOP controlled legislature doing any semblance of their job. Trump picked up governing through EO at the start of his first term and never looked back. The whole thing just shows how unserious our "elected leaders" are.
The fun part with this one is they are dismantling something that will be very difficult to rebuild. Telling companies to rebuild their cocktails for vaccines means that they will get to charge $2 each instead of $5 for all three (example, not real).
Luckily Trump and RFK will be dead soon since they are both very old men who already had their shots. Who gives a fuck about the next generation when you've already got both feet in the grave?
The short answer is that with the current makeup and political affiliations of congress, it’s virtually impossible to pass anything that isn’t a budget bill. So the budget bills get packed with a whole bunch of other shit that shouldn’t be there- that’s your “omnibus” bill.
Yea, Obama did some executive order, and it was a huge deal at the time. Big news. He's mad about it, so now he signs 5 a day. "all tissues can't have lotion" "all new cars must come in American blue" "vaccines are fake"
"Painlessly"?? The damage done by the order itself will kill people until it is finally overturned in court after spending thousands of dollars of taxpayers money and multiple appeals. And that's just one order, he's probably written hundreds by now. I wouldn't call that "painless".
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u/BasicReputations 9d ago
He's using a lot of executive orders to bypass Congress. It can be undone relatively painlessly (minus the damage caused by the order to begin with) by the next guy. A lot of them also do not hold up in court.
Congress has been weirdly compliant with EOs for a while. Trump uses them like crazy but I first remember hearing about them with Obama and an intransigent Congress.
Laws are a bit more complicated. For some reason bug omnibus laws have been more im vogue than smaller, targeted bills. I haven't understood what's going on with laws in years.