this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
471 points (99.0% liked)

politics

22813 readers
3033 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
all 37 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

Do it, pussy ass bitch

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago

may have

MAY have?

They've wiped their ass with court orders so far, they've literally stated that they can ignore court orders, they literally don't care what you say and they have made that abundantly clear

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Let's keep considering, suggesting, studying, pontificating and actually do something for a change? How egregious does something have to be before some form of action is done?

'judge considering action against POTUS after dropping nuclear bombs on state capital, indicating he may have committed a crime'.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago

Just like they were doing on his criminal trials, just stringing things along, and we know they plan on not charging him in. The end. But very swift, against someone like mr luigi

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Fascism is always "bad faith".

It's hard for judges to recognize since they've devoted their entire lives to the same cause.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago

Contempt of court or they're never going to listen to you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It is my hope that a judge will deputize America as a whole to arrest Trump's officials if the Marshals refuse to do their duty. Maybe set a $100,000 bounty, dead or alive per head. Musk's can be at least $1,000,000.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Make Musk pay his own bounty

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

May is disingenuous.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

Oh Lord, he's thinking about it!

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yeah, and after 30 or 40 more hearings, he might consider threatening to possibly hold hearings to consider the possibility of maybe sending Trump a frowny face letter if he violates court orders another few dozen times.

Notice how not a single one of these judges is actually seriously threatening consequences. Because they know they have no enforcement power. They know that Trump's response is going to be some variant of "What the fuck you gonna do about it if I don't?". They know they have zero actual answers for that, and they know exactly what it means when they are unable to answer.

They're just stringing things along holding on to the illusion of power and hoping that people simply don't notice that they hold no real power.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Even if the marshals refuse to comply, the federal courts do have the power to hold people accountable. They have enforcement power. They're just too chicken shit to use it. Federal courts can deputize people to enforce orders, just like an Old West judge appointing a posse to round up an outlaw. A judge could deputize volunteers from the community and give them orders to round up people who refuse to follow court orders. I'm sure you would have zero problem finding a few hundred people willing to volunteer and show up with their own weapons to enforce a lawful court order.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If you think that a comparative handful of volunteers with some self-supplied weaponry has any chance of going up against the US Marshalls, I've got beachfront property on Mars you may be interested in. These people would be rounded up and disappeared to El Salvador by dinner. What you're saying sounds like a great inspirational speech leading into the final act of a movie plot, but it's leading lambs to the slaughter in reality.

And that's assuming you can even find enough volunteers. For the past couple of months, all these people that said they would be the ones to stand up and fight Trump and his power grabs end up being the first ones to capitulate in hopes of not being shipped off to some black site in El Salvador.

Who's Boasburg going to hold in contempt? Trump? He's already been declared immune. Bondi? Yeah, good luck with that. Now let's see him round up a couple of hundred volunteers and send them to DC to arrest her. What exactly do you think the end result of that is going to be? A bunch of volunteers with zero experience and who are just hoping to make it home tonight are going to be told by US Marshalls that outnumber them, have better weapons, more training, and body armor are going to tell them to go fuck themselves with a chainsaw. They absolutely will not have the ability to physically enforce Boasburg's decision.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Unlikely that this will happen but if we are playing a game of escalation perhaps he could deputise people with access to millenary equipment. Remember, the armed forces pledge allegiance to the constitution and nobody else. They also have the duty to not follow an illegal order.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wish some of our judges would grow a spine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Spine removal is perhaps the most important stage of becoming a judge.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago

Then use your fucking power

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What this judge is weighing is whether or not he can save face should he drop contempt charges and trump wipes his ass with them

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Please please.... Let the judge order Trump to do something and let Trump ignore. The constitutional crisis it would create would have to be dealt with.

I'm gonna go grab some popcorn and watch this place burn

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Please please.... Let the judge order Trump to do something and let Trump ignore. The constitutional crisis it would create would have to be dealt with.

That's already happened a few times and nothing came out of it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No, it hasn't.

It's been threatened several times, and there's been plenty of arguments by Trump's DOJ that they didn't actually violate the text of orders (including in this case, where the judge didn't include in the written order to return flights that have already left U.S. airspace), or that any violations were inadvertent and not intentional, but this is the first case that is dealing with the question of whether the administration intentionally violated a court order.

The judge is taking the steps to learn the facts here, and the shocking thing is that DOJ just put the main attorney on administrative leave (and pulled him off this case) for conceding obvious things in open court. Despite just promoting him to his position the week before.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Trump arguing those is disregarding court orders. Only maga idiots think that a judge's verbal order does not carry the same weight as a written one

By your line of argument, trump will get away with any and all excuse. Inadvertent breaking the law is still illegal

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No, and this is really important.

Intentionally disobeying court orders is a red line, in a way that merely breaking the law isn't.

If you argue that the Trump administration has already crossed that red line several times, and people start believing it, it carries less force when they actually do cross it. It's a big deal, and the mere fact that his administration is arguing that they haven't crossed it (yet) is important for a few reasons:

  • The rank and file federal employees don't yet feel that they have the precedent to follow executive branch orders that would violate court orders.
  • The political actors aligned with Trump don't yet feel emboldened enough to do the same, if Trump hasn't done it first.
  • The resistance can point to that specific act, of crossing the red line, as a position to fight on, for both recruiting fence sitters and their effort to active resistance (and justification for no longer fitting themselves purely within the bounds of the law).
  • On the other hand, crying wolf about the red line before it is crossed confuses those fence sitters (hyper technical arguments about whether and how the Trump administration broke the law don't carry the day) and makes it less politically powerful when that line is crossed.

So long as the Trump admin still pretends to care about the law, there's still a lane for lawsuits and litigation as active resistance. If the Trump administration starts openly flouting court orders, which has not happened yet, that opens up a new chapter.

Trump is pushing limits, but is still being really careful about what is technically legal. If they stop tip toeing around that line, then the resistance is clear to escalate into technically illegal conduct, too, while still aiming for a return of the rule of law.

Muddying the waters by arguing that the line has already been crossed is misreading where we are in this resistance movement.

And disclosure: I'm a lawyer and I have filed things in court against the government, so I have a vested professional and personal interest in believing that what happens in court still matters. But I also have an above average understanding of exactly what the constitutional and statutory powers of the presidency are, and what kind of actions would actually threaten the continued viability of our constitutional government.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

you'll continue to move the goal post holding to the hope the law will prevail

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

There's not a goal post being moved. I'm describing now where the line has always been for a constitutional crisis: a judicial contempt order that gets disregarded by the executive branch. And the path to that is basically:

  1. The executive branch does something illegal.
  2. Someone sues in court.
  3. The court rules that action to be illegal.
  4. The executive branch doesn't obey the court order.
  5. The court orders the executive branch to show cause why contempt should not issue.
  6. The court finds the executive branch officials to be in contempt and orders sanctions (aka a punishment).
  7. The executive branch disregards that punishment and refuses to enforce it or obey it.

Steps 1 through 3 are pretty routine, and happen all the time.

And there are off ramps that avoid that constitutional crisis. Maybe it's a case where the court's ruling gets overruled on appeal. Maybe the court finds that it doesn't have jurisdiction to rule on that issue. Maybe the executive branch backs down. One of those has happened so far in all of the cases that have ended.

It's the cases that are still active where things might go off the rails. This particular Salvadorean deportation case has made it further than any other (past the fifth step I described above) ~~and is the one where DOJ has suspended its own lawyer for admitting that he didn't have the answers the judge was looking for.~~ In a closely related case, DOJ has suspended its own lawyer for admitting personal frustration with his client (that is, ICE/DHS). These are concerning and worth pushing back on at every turn, and to sound the alarms when that line is actually crossed.

This defeatist attitude, that Trump has already won and is unaccountable, is counterproductive. We're still busy fighting, and we can still win because we haven't lost yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ok, sorry I only replied a single line yesterday (trying a new android keyb and I am too slow). I did not mean to dismiss your thoughtful replies with a one liner.

Now, you know about this more if you are indeed a lawyer but I do not buy the idea that Trump and co are trying to be careful to not to cross the line into illegality. I mean, they have publicly called for judges to be removed

If any regular folk had pulled 1/2 of what trump has done, we would have had those contempt charges coming like a bullet. I mean, they are claiming national security for not answering questions about the kidnapped Venezuelans yet they broadcasted the entire saga as a super bowl commercial online and on tv

Sure, I get if the "good side" were to be as cavalier with the law as trump is, the entire thing falls apart even faster. But I have no doubt in my mind the "rule of law" in the USA is over. For decades, the law applies to you in reverse proportion to your wealth, the richer you are the less the law applies. The bottom has now fallen off and SCOTUS basically declared trump a king while in office.

I am willing to bet my bottom dollar these judges "considering" contempt charges will ever drop them or, if they do, trump would ignore with no consequence.

I mean you have examples like this which seem to be pretty clear cut... when should we expect to see actual consequences?

https://www.courthousenews.com/trump-slammed-for-covertly-withholding-fema-funds-from-blue-states/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Sure, I get if the "good side" were to be as cavalier with the law as trump is, the entire thing falls apart even faster. But I have no doubt in my mind the "rule of law" in the USA is over.

I'm not willing to make that call, yet. It's on life support, with the doctor in charge coyly hinting at whether he's going to finish it off himself, but it hasn't happened yet.

And in this case, the Supreme Court bailed out the President. They went ahead and said all 9 justices disagree on whether the courts have the power to review this dispute (rejecting the most extreme and most unaccountable theory of executive power), but said that the proper forum is in Texas, not in DC. So this DC judge who was weighing contempt was stripped of jurisdiction to do so.

That's not a constitutional crisis, which is what I'm very concerned about being that uncrossable line, but it is still separately a bad result.

These are nuanced distinctions, and I don't want to make it seem like I'm only watching out for a constitutional crisis and ignoring all the other ways that Trump is hurting the rule of law, but I think that violating court orders is a special kind of harm that needs to be viewed as its own especially dangerous thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

are we there yet? I'm actualy asking because you seem to know your stuff

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I'm Canadian but as you know, the world is getting splashed by the open blender the USA is right now... for all our sake, I am wishing hard you are right and I am wrong.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago