Judges are getting angry. Federal District Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the Trump administration to resume USAID payments and he wants it done:
During the contentious, 90-minute hearing, Justice Department lawyer Indraneel Sur told Ali he was “not in a position to answer” whether the Trump administration had taken needed steps to allow the assistance to begin moving.
“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” Ali responded. “We are now 12 days in. You can’t answer me whether any of the funds … covered by the court’s order have been unfrozen?”
Trump keeps stalling on stuff like this, perhaps in hopes that he can get away with delaying until he appeals to the Supreme Court and persuades them to overturn the lower court ruling. That's probably what I'd do, though it isn't foolproof. Even if the Supreme Court agrees with Trump on the merits, they're almost certain to first rule clearly (even unanimously?) that he has to obey legal court orders. They won't undermine the judiciary by playing coy over this.
As you've noted in an earlier post, when the Convict Chief actually gets into court, he generally loses. That's why his entire MO for decades has been to delay, delay, delay, hoping the lawsuit will be dropped.
In the past, he's been correct in that assumption. But he's playing with the big boys now.
They're not very angry if they haven't thrown the lawyers into jail for contempt. Just saying.
What are the chances the convicted felon Trump orders federal marshals to stand down and not enforce any contempt charges?
I think that's a very good point. Ultimately, judges understand that they'll be obeyed because nobody wants to go to jail or be disbarred. The one interesting thing that all of the legal actions involving Trumpian or MAGA people have in common is that the threats never been made and Trump's stooges known full well that there's no consequences for defying a judge. Look at the situation with Rudi: He ignored and totally blew-off all of the judges without the slightest consequence and eventually the plaintiff settled for chump change because they could see the writing on the wall.
What the country needs is deeds, not words. Judges should stop posturing and do their jobs.
Lawyers don't get thrown in jail because their clients aren't obeying court orders, and imprisoning a cabinet secretary is not something any judge does until he's worn out all other alternatives.
Can they be held in contempt for not providing information that they absolutely are able to get and provide? so, not held in contempt because Trump isn't doing what the judge ordered but held in contempt for not even attempting to gather the information the judge had ordered?
I honestly don't know
Yes and no. In theory, yes a lawyer who ignores a judge’s order can be held in contempt, can be thrown in jail, or can be fined money (which in places like California must be reported to the bar association and the lawyer is arguably subject to discipline). But, as a practical matter, lawyers don’t show up and tap dance in front of an angry judge. Unless the client is a big time cartel figure or (more recently a big time MAGA guy), in which case the lawyer is able to do whatever he wants and the judge has to take it and like it.
It's true that lawyers don't usually get thrown in jail because their clients aren't obeying judicial orders. But that's generally because they either force their clients to comply or they throw them under the judicial bus in an act of self-preservation. Something that I've seen many times over the years.
Similarly, I've never seen a high government official (particularly an elected one) defying a court order and risking being jailed because up until the dawn of the modern Republican Party that was seen as career suicide.
But my guess is that it's going to be a lot more common from now own because judges aren't willing to stand up to the Republican Party. And unless you can show me otherwise, I believe that all other alternatives apart from total submission to the monarch have long since been exhausted.
No, lawyers don't get thrown in jail for their client's misdeeds simply because they are THE CLIENT'S MISDEEDS, not the lawyers'.
No, but they get thrown in jail for knowingly misrepresenting what their client is actually doing.
You have more faith in this court than it deserves. All it really has to do is take a very very serious look at the issues and of course include very very serious consideration of the doctrine of Trumpian infallibility. And voila maybe in 8 months or so we might have a favorable ruling. This is not the court of our youth...it's waiting.......
100%. There's a whole lot of undeserved faith in conservative-controlled courts to do their jobs as apolitical arbiters of the law. They've shown time and time again that they will do the maximum that they think they can get away with.
And that is before you take into account threats against judges, which can cause even honest judges to be "accomodating".
He is hoping that SCOTUS (of Gilead) will continue their support of the imperial presidency.
Unfortunately, he may get his wish. He has rolled the dice on lawsuits, felony charges, felony conviction, running for reelection, business ventures (like TrumpCoin) and he has yet to a roll snake eyes. Absolutely nauseating.
Here in Gilead we call it SCOG.
Even if the Supreme Court agrees with Trump on the merits,
SCOTUS ruled some time ago that the line-item veto -- which zeroing out the USAID budget is -- was unconstitutional. But then again, when has this court given a shit about precident? Plus, they already ruled that he can't be charged with doing anything illegal while in office, so what does he care?
I thought the no line item veto ruling was upon President Clinton, a Democrat. Different party, different rules. And of course, that's just wrong.
It's difficult to know exactly what the court would feel compelled to do before upholding whatever it is that King Donald wants to do. Supreme Court justices live very comfortable pleasant lives at essentially the top of the legal food chain. Insofar as I'm aware, they tend to have pretty minimal, very basic security.
They certainly don't want to jeopardize either their lifestyle or their lives by defying the reining absolute monarch or enraging his MAGA followers (many of whom have violent tendencies and even more of whom will try to make the lives of the justices or their families a misery by, for example, calling in false reports to the police about crimes at the justice's home in the hope that the police will accidentally kill them or a family member during their response or regularly telephone threats to the court.
Given that they're going to uphold whatever King Donald does, it seems pointless for any Republican justices to make his or her life miserable by breaking solidarity with his fellow right-wing assholes just to make a purely rhetorical point. It probably will mean a lifetime or harassment, abuse, and threats. Especially because the king is the embodiment of the state itself and whatever he does is inherently legal (as the Supreme Court itself has already said).
Laws and judicial orders are not self-enforcing. There needs to be somebody with the will and the power to enforce them if they're to be meaningful. And the unfortunate reality is that it's the executive branch that has the army and the police force. So even if he wanted to retain some power over the king, where's John Roberts' army?
"So even if he wanted to retain some power over the king, where's John Roberts' army?"
Somewhere, the ghost of Andrew Jackson is smiling.
Nevermind. I see the quote from Jackson about making the SCOTUS enforce their decisions is apocryphal.
True, but it's still a great (and particularly applicable) one. Except for the fact that John Marshal was a real Supreme Court justices who intended for his rulings to be enforced and not a stooge or a lackey like the current "chief justice".
Jackson would probably be happy but actually my guess is that it's John C. Calhoun who's absolutely ecstatic because his philosophy is now the governing one at the Supreme Court and in the Republican congress. Evidently, the South has indeed risen again.
+1
This seems to presume that only right wing assholes can get angry and violent. It's true that centrists or left wingers have a higher threshold for that sort of thing, but this SCOTUS might be unwise to assume that the threshold is infinite. Keep issuing right wing rulings that are laughable on their face, and see what happens. IOW, FAFO.
It is very assymetric in the current situation: Left-wing violence will be dealt with properly, or worse, by law-enforcement agencies. Right-wing violence will not be dealt with properly, and sometimes even supported by law-enforcement agencies.
Furthermore, it's the right wingers that have the guns, since left wingers have been more interested in keeping guns out of people's hands.
I dunno, all my midwestern liberal relatives are big proponents of both gun control and gun ownership. They're all good shots, too, fwiw.
Trump v. Everyone
Who knew that Everyone would even include the Army Choir? Here they are singing the protest anthem "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Misérables in front of Trump and the MAGA elite at the White House Governors Ball.
https://bsky.app/profile/larrytenney.bsky.social/post/3liwp4adhas2h
That takes courage. Very moving. Everyone (!) is already pretty damned tired of this crap.
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
IDK, they probably missed the symbolism and just thought it was a good song from a popular musical, one that's about and sung by white people.
There's a zero percent chance that's what happened.
You don't pick a song to sing for the president without knowing some history of the song, its context in the musical and elsewhere. It's a been used in protests in Hong Kong. Even Trump has used it before.
I meant that the audience may not have caught the symbolism, not the other way around.
I misread you.
Yes, that makes sense.
"You don't pick a song to sing for the president without knowing some history of the song" ... like "Rockin' in the Free World"?
I wish, but I think they are singing they are ready to kill the protesters… that’s how the story ended, no?
Empty chairs at empty tables…
No. The song is an anthem to rally the people to rise up and overthrow the regime. There's no way to read the intent as a signal to kill protesters.
I tend to think these lawyers really don't know, because the agencies they're representing don't tell them anything. This is malicious compliance (or non-compliance). It's done this way partly to protect the lawyers from having to lie knowingly in court, which will get them sanctioned or disbarred, and also because if the administration toadies told these lawyers the answers, they'd have to answer truthfully. Dogie is doing the same thing by refusing to tell their own lawyers who runs the operation or how decisions are made. They're all dragging the process out as long as they can.
As I've seen some commenters say, the right approach is for judges to send these lawyers out of the courtroom to make phone calls and get a responsible official from their agency down to the court post-haste, where they'll be sworn in and told to explain what the hell is going on. Kollar-Kotelly seems pretty close to that point with dogie, to judge from snippets of transcripts.
I think the judges understand that most of these lawyers are just caught in the middle. But they're not looking forward to calling in the agency officials and having to freeze everything while that order gets appealed and then appealed again, ad infinitum, and having no visibility into compliance while all that's going on. It's the same endless foot-dragging by judiciary appeal that was so effective for the felon in his criminal cases.
Some people are calling this the beginning of a coup. First it’s a bloodless one. People comply or resist peacefully. Judges get threatened and they either do what trump wants or they pay some price. I have no idea how this ends but I can’t imagine it ending with trump and musk backing down. It’s not in their nature.
Trumps going to find a way to force judges to do his bidding. It’s just a matter of time. The FBI hasn’t even gotten started yet.
Trump wants to undermine the judiciary. He’s got to do it.
Trump is a coward, which is consistent with him being a bully. He backs down all the time. He bootlicks Putin, for instance. Perhaps because he's scared of being thrown out a window.
The issue is that the Supreme Court has no threat in evidence that he cares about.
None of the lawsuits will ever affect him personally. It's not his money. He will never go to jail.
The only threat that will get his attention is removal from office. Which is unlikely to happen unless his approval gets to maybe 20 percent. That seems unlikely.
So, I don't know where this is going. i think if things get bad enough, Trump will throw Musk under the bus. Musk will never see it coming, either.
"Trump is a coward, which is consistent with him being a bully. He backs down all the time."
Exactly true.
At this point, I think we've gone beyond approval ratings. It's going to be very difficult for the Democrats to make much headway in the upcoming special elections or in the next midterms but that very probably the country's last best hope because Trump will break the Democrats the way that he's already begun to break the media and the organs of state security. Essentially, it's seems likely that by 2026, we'll be basically Hungary (if we're lucky) and on the road to becoming Russia.
At that point, only a "color-revolution" would make any difference at all and that would essentially mean a civil war. But one more like the Irish troubles with two opposing ideological forces fighting each other and the US military and police fighting against the forces of democracy. I think Trump's learned from his mistakes and he's greatly emboldened by the timidity of the Democrats (during Biden's presidency and in the period immediately after it and to date).
Till about a week ago, I thought there may be no stopping Trump. But the tide is turning. He's on his way to being deeply unpopular, which doesn't mean much to an authoritarian, but the protests of one kind or another will continue to mount, and if the battle is between his wimpy cosplay of a dictator and the growing anger of wide swaths of the American people, the republic will prevail.
No doubt, the damage will be great. Americans in time can repair what happens here. But the international order will never be the same. Bye-bye, Pax Americana.
One thing hard to see is how he leaves office. An election of a new president someday will not do it. It's going to take extraordinary means. Piss off enough of the wrong people and they'll find a way.
People think they still have a say… they don’t. Sooner or later, they will learn that lesson and comply.
Remember: "He who saves the country violates no law." That can embolden some "extraordinary means" folk, potentially.
Sounds from the article like Musk and Big Balls broke the system too:
"The groups allege that instead of complying with Ali’s directive, the Trump administration “chose to take a series of new actions” around access to a key reimbursement system, adding new approval processes and terminating “hundreds of critical personnel” — “all but halting the disbursement of foreign-assistance funds,” according to their emergency motion.
Despite the State Department granting a waiver for certain lifesaving aid to resume, the plaintiffs contend that the payment system remains down, with employees seeing a variety of error messages when they try to submit invoices. Many organizations have not been paid for expenses incurred in the fourth quarter of 2024, before Trump returned to the White House."
Twenty-one former US Digital Services civil-service employees who were placed under DOGE have resigned. Department heads are still resisting Musk’s stupid ‘what did you do last week’ memo and threat. It is reported that the responses would have been fed to an AI to classify them as ‘mission-critical’ or not. That would be even stupider.
This memo was exceptionally stupid.
But it still served to piss off large number of federal employees, which is part of their method.
Piss off, sure. But more important is to demoralize and intimidate us.
The worst is to see our leaders at all levels - very much including the ones who understand what we do and why it needs to be done - play it by the book as if these nonsensical orders were normal.
Just when we need to see management standing in solidarity when we are in danger, they are playing it safe.
I'm sure they would say something like "it would do no good for me to speak out and get fired immediately, then be replaced by someone far worse. I'm trying to make sure that this agency can get through this hard time and rebuild".
That might contain some truth, but with status and clout go responsibility to stand up when us peons can't. Otherwise what's the point of being a "leader"?
It's startling how much of the government working is dependent on good-faith actors. Trump has figured this out and has basically given the middle finger to everyone. It's not clear who can stop him. The only enforceable remedy is impeachment, and that's not going to happen. None of this should be the least bit surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. And, as I've said before, if you expect him to leave office quietly on Jan 21, 2029, you really haven't been paying attention.
"None of this should be the least bit surprising to anyone who's been paying attention."
Before the elections this blog was full of people saying that he will just play golf or similar ideas. And these are people that do pay at least some attention.
He is good at bamboozling people, either to support him, or at least not
to recognize how dangerous he is.
Even now people here fail to see what he is doing, because he is "moron" or "cannot plan" or other such stupidities.
I'm sorry, but anyone here who was saying he'd "just play golf" or similar really wasn't paying attention and didn't know what they were talking about.
I don't recall that being the majority opinion.....
Oh, he is a moron and can't plan or execute anything meaningful. What he can do is destroy stuff, because that requires no planning, no competence, and little effort. He's extremely dangerous because he has terrible ideas, surronds himself with terrible people, and generally just sucks in every way. It's one thing to be wrong sometimes, or occasionally screw something up, but to be so consistently and completely wrong about everything all the time is kind of impressive. He's like the anti-president. I'd say he's the worst president in history, but it's not clear that he even after all this time understands what the job is, so it's hard to call what he's doing 'being president'.
If you went to a concert, and the band decided to instead crawl around and lick the stage floor, how would you rate their vocal harmony? Would it be the worst ever, or would you just scratch your head and walk away? That's Trump's super power - he's so fucking bad at everything that nobody is sure how to proceed.
I used to think he's dangerous in the way that a dog is dangerous if you let him drive your car. I've evolved on that. Now I think he's dangerous in the way that an intemperate toddler is dangerous if you get him hooked on meth and hand him a flame thrower. The dog might have good intentions, but just can't drive the car. The toddler is angry, amped up, and looking to destroy anything in his path.
Oh, he is a moron and can't plan or execute anything meaningful.
Agreed. But Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, JD Vance, Kash Patel, Susie Wiles and various other regime officials aren't morons.
I'm not sure I agree. They may not be morons exactly, but they're way too full of themselves and are very over-confident. How else would you explain Musk's sloppiness in making wild claims about his success? Mistaking a $8 million saving for $8 billion? 20 million dead people collecting SS? Sending off idiotic emails instructing people to explain what they'd accomplished in 5 bullet points? If you made those kind of mistakes, how long would you keep your job? Being smart and being incompetent are not mutually exclusive.
You are definitely in a small minority here who see TFM as a mastermind. IMHO he made deals for support with various groups and individuals during the campaign — Musk, RFK, Jr., the Project 2025 principals. Their price in each case was to be empowered to carry out their agendae, should he win. That’s why he often doesn’t seem to know what Musk is doing, and why the White House is sometimes out of sync with department heads. He’s not really fully in control.
Yep. The fact that Cheato's brain has seen better days doesn't mean top officials of the MAGA regime aren't still in their primes.
As usual, the argument is based on igoring significant facts.
In particular, he is clearly working on complete corruption of the DOJ and FBI, and probably other law-enforcement/security agencies. he doesn't let Musk get into these, only people that he can trust.
Any discussion of Trump perdormance which ignore these is simply not to the point, and it is just sticking your head in the sand. That what Trump feels is important, and it will be important to everybody else before the 2028 elections, and maybe long before that.
"You are definitely in a small minority here .."
True, and positively depressing. Apparently intelligent people simply ignore facts that don't match their priors.
"perdormance" = "sleeping on the job"? Which TFG has been seen doing more than once.
Yehouda is convinced that Trump is some sort of Lex Luthor-genius supervillain, and that every thing Trump does is some sort of carefully calibrated move in service of his master plan to do a big tiananmen square here in the US.
Accordingly, all of the many, many stupid and ill-informed things that Trump does or talks about (Hannibal Lecter, tariffs on Canada, "taking" Gaza for the purpose of building hotels, swaying to Ave Maria for the better part of an hour, etc.) gets slotted into Yehouda's conviction that these are all clever distractions that prevent the rest of us "apparently intelligent" un-initiated from recognizing what is really going on.
It doesn't matter if you fully agree with Yehouda that Trump is dangerous, or even that Trump is seeking to turn the US into a failed democracy and that he's succeeding; Yehouda will still claim that you don't recognize the danger unless (apparently) you espouse Yehouda's view that Trump is some sort of nth level genius, all evidence to the contrary.
"Yehouda is convinced that Trump is some sort of Lex Luthor-genius supervillain,"
Start with a straightforward lie.
"and that every thing Trump does is some sort of carefully calibrated move in service of his master plan to do a big tiananmen square here in the US. "
I never talk about "acrefully calibrated moves" or anything even cclose to this phrase. Another grossly dishonest statement.
"slotted into Yehouda's conviction that these are all clever distractions that prevent the rest of us "
I dodn't say "clever". I don't say "clever", but they are definitely distraction.
".. claim that you don't recognize the danger.."
You failed to mention anything about the FBI or DOJ, even I mention them in almost every comment I make. The danger is there, and you cllearly don't recognize it. Why? Because you are an idiot, apart form being dishonest.
He’s being hobbled by his own stupidity, sloth, his lack of interest in finding out how government actually works, and his preference for toadies instead of competent underlings. Still, a great deal of damage is being done; much will need repair if/when rational people regain power.
Almost all human interactions are based on good-faith presumptions. Nobody holds a gun to the McDonald’s cashier to make sure that the food comes out after the cashier takes the money… but technically nothing stops the McDonald’s from just taking your money and then closing up shop before you get your food. Everyone just trusts that the transaction will be honored. If there was no presumption of good faith, any non-violent transaction or agreement t would be subject to reneging, and basic civilization (eg more than a family unit living in close proximity to each other) would be impossible.
I really don't expect Trump to live until Jan.21, 2029.
OT, but my search for an update about the "big beautiful bill" resulted in discovery of trump's latest proposal as bad as his attempt to overturn birthright citizenship by executive order: he wants provide an unspecified path to citizenship to people who can pay $5M to obtain a US "gold card."
He doesn't even have to obey criminal law. What on Earth makes you think ignoring court orders is a bigger sticking point?
"They won't undermine the judiciary by playing coy over this."
I fear you're misreading the situation.
If the Supremes rule against Trump and he ignores their ruling, then the entire judiciary system is dead. It has no means of fightng back. Trump controls all the levers of real power.
So the only way for the judiciary to preserve itself (and the illusion of relevance) is to rule in Trump's favor on everything.