Summary
Judges across the U.S. are blocking Trump’s aggressive executive orders, with some rulings expressing deep frustration.
A Trump-appointed judge halted his attempt to place 2,200 USAID employees on leave, while another blocked Elon Musk’s team from accessing Treasury records.
A Reagan-appointed judge condemned Trump’s disregard for the rule of law in a ruling against his birthright citizenship plan.
These legal setbacks are forcing federal agencies to reveal more details and raising concerns over Trump’s expansive use of executive power.
Who will enforce the judges’ rulings, is my question.
Or said another way: what prevents Trump and his goons and sycophants from simply disregarding them and carrying on whatever the hell they’re doing unabashed?
Nothing as far as I can tell, but the media, and even a lot of people on Lemmy still seem to think they care about the law or feel in any way obligated to abide by it. And I do not get it.
It’s not about this being some sort of firewall to stop him in his tracks or anything, the opportunity for that was last election, and we failed. It’s now about being an effective opposition, just like they try do when we win.
To paraphrase AOC, there needs to be sand in his gears. Yeah, he can push a lot of stuff through anyway, but we definitely want it to be as difficult as possible, costing them extra effort.
Here’s a kinda tired-seeming AOC chit chatting about all this stuff for 90 minutes on livestream:
Though the main battle is still over teaching logic and critical thinking to the public and individual civic dialogue imo.
Bingo. It ultimately won’t stop him, but every act of resistance will slow him down, and every act of submission will speed him up. Choose to resist.
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
Mario Savio
It provides cover for the resisting people in the agencies. Right now the nazis have the fig leaf of executing an EO when they enter these facilities and do their treason, and when the courts strip that it makes it legal (maybe required?) to bar physically them from the facilities
…at which point they get whichever security forces they want to physically force their way into the building. With weapons.
You’re still thinking they play by the rules when they just don’t.
Unless you’re talking about borrowing ICE, the rest of the feds are also not participating in this so far or are also suing the administration. And the DC police seem to have pretty strong opinions from what I’ve read since '21. The Trump administration has not demonstrated they have the force level to storm these facilities in the face of active opposition and are counting on people just letting them in on their fraudulent authority.
i thought the ultimate rule was to follow the Constitution … like if a tyrannical president orders the army generals to kill everybody on Earth (or similar insanity) then, those generals will refuse the order based on the Constitution … and same would go for other people in authority … ?
Turns out the Constitution is just an old piece of hemp paper.
… until the people rise to defend it … i am still hoping.
Maybe they shouldn’t be worried about defending anything if they rise up.
Even if the Trump administration is not compliant, the alternative would be approval of this coup d’etat.
Another alternative is to resist them in mass action.
But that requires effort.
In the end, I suspect he doesn’t have the military sucking his cock. If he starts openly disobeying the rule of law, military officers have an obligation to overthrow him and protect the constitution. That’s the one hope we have left.
In the end, I suspect he doesn’t have the military sucking his cock.
Yeah I think you got that right. He barfed on well-respected generals and disrespected veterans so much I don’t think the military really loves Trump all that much.
They’ll never overthrow him. If he can’t fill the top brass ranks with toadies, at most they’ll just refuse to violate posse comitatus without a damn good reason for martial law.
The actually physical people that are supposed to be affected play a big role. Short of locking people our of a space and systems, if an EO declared an agency “closed” but a judge said “nope, do it legal-like,” people still showing up to work and expecting to get paid are all following the law.
They hoped to be able to just wish this all away because they hate doing the real work of governing.
people still showing up to work and expecting to get paid are all following the law.
People aren’t going to risk putting up a fight to defend their job. If Trump and Musk post goons at the entrance, no employee in their right mind will try to force their way in because they’re legally supposed to be at work. They’ll all stay at home and demand to be paid their salaries, because they were willing to work but were prevented to.
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Short of real humans locking the doors, just keep showing up.
Doors locked? Work from home.
No system access? OK, well you’re not on paid leave, so does someone preventing you from earning an income have legal authority to do that? Sounds like a lovely lawsuit.
Don’t just roll over and disappear, that’s giving them what they want.
Don’t just roll over and disappear
If I’m drawing a salary from you and you don’t give me proper notice and a pink slip, I’ll be all over you like a fly on a ripe turd. I don’t think anybody who’s lawfully employed by the agencies that have been taken over by Trump’s goons are going to let the matter slide and sulk in their corner. It’s just that a job isn’t worth physically resisting said goons.
It would have to be us.
Inevitably, he will defy the courts. And then, I fear, it is time for violence on both sides. “Very fine people”.
Eventually it comes down to the military. If the military decide to park their tanks in front of the white house and shoot or bombs protesters it’s game over. If they decide the president is a traitor and go after him then he’s gone.
Good. Let the courts resist him on all fronts for what he is; a fascist. The more legal material the Democrats have laid at their feet; the faster they can use it to rebuild and build the case against Trump to convict him of base tyranny, treachery and treason.
Trump deserves to rot in solitude in our worst federal prison until he expires naturally.
Guantanamo Bay, even
That is our worst federal prison by far; and it’s no longer only a military-prison; with the immigrants stopping there. :)
Hard to execute your Machiavellian overnight decapitation conquest when so many people believe in the checks and balances designed to inhibit takeover by a King.
The relevant section of Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) that Trump, despite having four years to have his loyalists prepare a government takeover, has failed to do over the past few weeks:
… on seizing a state, the usurper should make haste to inflict what injuries he must, at a stroke, that he may not have to renew them daily, but be enabled by their discontinuance to reassure men’s minds, and afterwards win them over by benefits. Whosoever, either through timidity or from following bad counsels, adopts a contrary course, must keep the sword always drawn, and can put no trust in his subjects, who suffering from continued and constantly renewed severities, will never yield him their confidence. Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, so that they may be more fully relished.
Hoping for a very painful and debilitating aneurysm.
Great aneurysm, the very best aneurysm, the very most painful and debilitating aneurysm
It’s not clear to me what penalty there can be if Trump simply ignores Court orders he doesn’t like. Even if the Supreme Court rules against him, what can they do? The sole remedy for an out-of-control President is impeachment, and that gets started by Congress.
I seem to recall some additional failsafe being put in place shortly after the Constitution was written. In fact I believe it was the second idea they had on how to strengthen our system of government. Unfortunately, I’m so forgetful I can’t quite put a name to it.
Trump’s temper tantrums hit judicial kabuki theater – media gasps as the orange wrecking ball smashes their porcelain institution. Where was this performative horror when Roberts greenlit Muslim bans or Citizens United? Courts aren’t ‘under attack’ – they’re just tasting the bile they’ve been brewing since Dred Scott.
This outrage is curated amnesia. The same hacks who mythologized Scalia’s ‘originalism’ now clutch rosaries over ‘norms’? Spare me. Trump’s judicial meltdowns are feedback loops of a system that legalized torture and mass surveillance – suddenly allergic to its own toxins.
And for those who didn’t click the link, the ‘visceral fury’ is that of the judges. Not of Cheeto, which is the way I first read it. It sounds like a headline mean to provoke fear of Drumpf, 'Oh no, daddy is mad, really mad, quick, hide under the bed!". No. Pity, it would be all the better if it was Orange Diaper Baby’s visceral something or other (probably filling his diaper), it’s fun to watch a spoiled brat rage. Muskrat is already coming unhinged at not being able to play with ALL the toys he wants.
What about those of us who clicked the link but got turned away due to content blockers :p
“Impotent rage”: trump “shitting a pant” as his illegal blustering is upset by objective reality.
My apologies for the pessimism, but any judge’s ruling against Trump is at best a temporary delay. All findings that this that or the other Trumpocalypse is unConstitutional will be appealed to the Supreme Court, which is a subsidiary of the Republican Party. The Supremes will say NO to a few lesser outrages to maintain credibility, but YES to all the most outrageous outrages.
The Constitution and the Law no longer matter.
Keep on making him madder maybe hell give himself an aneurism and be forced to resign
