Will airlines be next? Trump is bent on destroying anything that actually functions.

This is just more silly theater, from everything I've read DC Union Station is beautiful and Amtrak already kind of reports to Duffy so having Duffy take it over is basically meaningless but the press will report it like it's some amazing thing.

if you use it as an excuse to bring in more and more troops to"patrol" the station to intimidate the tourists.

There are bus tours that stop there and let people go in and around the station. The last time I was down there, the double-decker one we were on did that (although I had been in there many times before but it was my niece's first time).

They always reveal their guilt by "projecting" who is doing "overreach" and imposing the ""big hand of government" onto institutions (that they accused Biden of wielding less than a year ago).

Trump, Mussolini, or imaginary? Hard to tell these days.

Remember this?



This is the hotel at Union Station in Washington DC, and Trump never owned it. He had a 99 year lease and his company managed the hotel until he gave it up at few years ago. During his first term this hotel became notorious as a way for international (mostly Arab) businesses to "book rooms" for exorbitant amounts of money and basically pay bribes to Chump while he was in the White House.

The shining headline "Pay Trump Bribes Here" in the photo, was an actual light shining on the building from across the street, and it was done by protesters as a way to illustrate the ease with which Chump was abusing the system. I remember another photo which showed the light saying "Pay Trump Emoluments Here" which is basically the same thing.

This is NOT the RAILWAY, it's the HOTEL that's adjacent to the railway. Chump never managed or had anything to do with the railway. This is an all-new power-grab by Chump and he's hoping none of us will notice.

When I was last down there in 2018 (which was during his first term), I was with my sis, BIL, and niece and we got on one of those "big bus" tours (the double-decker ones) and it drove by there and I covered my eyes and started gurgling "Ewwww".

I think that is within eye-sight of the White House (on Pennsylvania Avenue), and IIRC, you could see the WH straight down the street from there about 1/2 a mile.

There weren't many customers in the place and it looked kind of shabby. Chump wasn't anywhere near it at that point. I'm actually not sure when he took it over, but it was a meaningless venture until he became president.

and it hosted a number of events with foreign heads of state that prompted a pile of accusations, investigations, and legal cases regarding violations of the "Emoluments Clause", that slogged through that first term until the SCOTUS tossed the cases when he lost the 2020 election.

One of my job requirements was to occasionally travel for my company and represent them at trade shows. I'm sure that was why I was in downtown Washington DC on a regular weekday, but I can't remember the exact year.

about 2 weeks into his first term and watched (and cried) with a bunch of my co-workers when my Philly work building took down the Obama portrait in the lobby on Inauguration Day 2017, but thankfully was not there when 45's went up.

The building is historic and GSA apparently leases it out and did so to 45 in 2012, and he sold the hotel's stake in the lease a couple years after Biden was elected.

Don't want anyone getting hurt.

More atomization because fewer collective solutions. Your fellow citizens are in the same boat as you if you all ride the same trains every day. They are your enemies if you are all in cars competing for space on the streets. This is evil.

although Union Station is just one stop on one of the various Metro lines (Red Line) that run across the city and D.C. metro area. A significant number of commuters use the Metro to commute around the area in any case. The rest of Union Station's function is as an Amtrak station.

ETA -

Like the Bolt bus. If people decide they would rather get in their car than be scrutinized or perhaps even searched by armed yahoos every time they enter or exit Union Station, it is a big deal. It is thousands of people a day.

me and my coworkers would get on Amtrak and get off at Union Station and hop the Red Line to get to our work building(s), since there were several. But a few years later, we started getting off Amtrak at New Carrollton, MD and hopped the Orange Line, then switched to the Red Line at Metro Plaza, avoiding dealing with Union Station to get to the Red Line.

After that, I just started driving... to the point where my car knew the route by heart. It still took about 2.5 - 3 hours to/from Philly but I knew what times to go/leave to avoid the worst of the Beltway, where one drop of rain slows the thing down to a near stand still. But while down there, I did hop Metrobus shuttles to Silver Spring.

As I soon as I moved to DC, I sold my car and went everywhere by metro, bus, bike and foot. And I never looked back. Commuting by car now makes me nervous. I try to live within a five mile radius of where I work. My last four jobs have been a less than 2 mile radius. I love it.

either for "in person" meetings, training, conferences, etc. But I did know a few who were commuting down there daily - but they used Amtrak. Some of them couldn't move down there because they usually had a kid trying to finish up high school, so moving wasn't in the cards... but some actually rented an apartment down there and came home for weekends.

This was all before I retired and telework makes it much easier for remote workers (I guess before the DOGEshit guys came in and blew that away ).

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