Regarding the Israel thing, I'm curious...how does this trip of theirs benefit the US in any way shape or form? It sort of seems like these politicians are trying to use their time, taxpayers money, and position as a US official to impact religious items in other countries, that quite frankly, have absolutely nothing to do with bettering the US.

You were elected to make the US a better place (this goes to ALL politicians), how about you work on that.

Well, Tlaib wanted to go there for private reasons. After all, her family lives in the West Bank, the territory from Jordan that Israel occupied after the six day war in 1967. Her Grandmother is in her 90's, so that could be one of the last opportunities to visit her. And I doubt she was intending to do so on anything else than her own funds.

The problem is that it got politicized later on, partly due to Omar's plan to go there, in this case as an official member of the House Committee of foreign affairs. Part of the job is to conduct oversight over the foreign aid a country receives by travelling there and having a good look what is done with that money. And that's what she wanted to do, although to be fair, the committee could probably have sent somebody else instead for this.

And since both are friends, they probably intended to travel to Israel together. I mean, if you and a friend of yours wanted to go to the same place, wouldn't you also planning to go there together? But that's probably where the problems started.

It also makes Trumps tweet about going home and fix their countries hilarious, since he tried to disallow Tlaib to go "home" by basically ordering Israel not to let her in after the Ambassador said that both were free to enter the country.

Totalitarianism is a bit different than authoritarianism. I am not talking with the abolition of other parties, but the support for the powers of the President without a legislative process. I was actually shocked to learn that the US even had these "executive orders" in the first place, I didn't know of their existence until Trump.

But authoritarianism on the right doesn't shock me. The natural order of right-wing politics is for a hierarchy with the top having high authority.

Proof that Trump is certifiably insane: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49367792?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-reporting-story

This is not some kind of April fools joke, Trump actually thinks he can buy Greenland. The guy is a lunatic .

Where did I say anything about totalitarianism there?

Fun fact: Harry Truman tried to do the same about 60 years ago. And before that, there was an attempt in the mid 19th century to buy Greenland.

Begs the question why the US are so interested into the Island...

But in any case, Greenland already said that they're not for sale.

Well all politicians take holidays/time of/go golfing or whatever.  Plenty of politicans also misuse their time to go have a talk with lobbyist and accept donations that clearly are negative to the public see for example the Tabac industry in the past. 300K/500K yearly deaths in the USA alone during those years.

It is also ironic to say to a politician 'go back to your country and fix that place first' so she wanted to go back to her own country and criticize show, the world what problems their are and he tried to ban her. 

More evidence of Trump's insanity. He tweeted this:

"The fake news media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election"

Seriously US, are you kidding me? This guy is supposed to be a world leader and he sounds like a drunken primadonna that just got fired from her role on Days of Our Lives.

That's a serious and disgusting accusation. As for human-rights violations probably exaggerations by FAR-LEFT nutjobs, and when you look at them you will find that previous presidents have done exactly the same. I really wish the sane leftists would speak up more, they are letting the crazies talk too much

Yeah it's kinda gross to not allow American congresswoman in your country. But who am I to tell Isreal how they should enforce their laws.

I remember when Snowden first blew the whistle, it was a moment when my diehard Republican mother and I saw eye to eye and agreed that the man was an American hero. Now that Trump is in support of restarting the NSA spying program Snowden's exposure got scrapped, I'm afraid to ask her how she feels. It would just be disgusting to watch so many Republicans defend this, but I've no doubt they will:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/16/alarm-trump-requests-permanent-reauthorization-nsa-mass-spying-program-exposed

And for those that would prefer a more conservative news source:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-administration-nsa-phone-data-collection-program

I did find it encouraging to see a lot of the Fox News comments not thrilled by Trump's move here, but I've seen them squirm at some of his actions before only to come around and defend them later when he didn't back down.