Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

https://www.lawdork.com/p/donald-trump-elon-musk-democracy

In hearing after hearing and ruling after ruling, judges have been sharp when needed to challenge the administration’s moves when they intrude on the legislative function, ignore established laws, or violate the Constitution.

The anti-birthright citizenship order has been blocked by preliminary injunction three times now; Lamberth blocked enforcement of the order that would force trans women in federal prison to be housed with men and end all trans-related medical care; the Office of Management and Budget grants and loans “pause” was blocked and then rescinded and then blocked again, even under any other name; the USAID “administrative leave” directives have been blocked; access to Treasury systems has been restricted; and a judge on Monday evening blocked the indirect costs rate cap issued February 7 by the National Institutes of Health, as applied to states that sued over the act on Monday morning.

And yet, if you look around, that is not the general understanding of the first three week’s of the second Trump administration. Instead, the general views seem to be either that what Trump is doing is fine and good or that it is unconstitutional, illegal lawlessness — but, in either event and whether implicit or explicit, the end result is inevitable and Trump is winning.

That’s wrong, and I want to explain why — not because I think we are safe from the very dangerous consequences being discussed but because those consequences are not inevitable even though Trump and Musk and their allies want you to think they are.

i'm not letting that fuckface steal my joy

Yes, some of it will be found unconstitutional. But a lot of the administrative stuff that DOGE is doing will not be. Not only because SCOTUS likes the unitary executive model, but also because some of this is probably just stuff a president can do. It's just that they haven't before, like this anyway.

I say don't give these pieces of shit an inch on a single issue, whether it's trans rights or the Gulf of Mexico (and thank you for the Battle of New Orleans reference above)

yeah i'm gonna be honest you don't know that for sure xpost

i'm not trying to steal anyone's joy, but eyes need to be WIDE OPEN right now. even law dork agrees

not because I think we are safe from the very dangerous consequences being discussed but because those consequences are not inevitable even though

It's not about giving an inch, it's deciding which problem to chew my nails over. I only have 10 fingers!

But a lot of the administrative stuff that DOGE is doing will not be. Not only because SCOTUS likes the unitary executive model, but also because some of this is probably just stuff a president can do.

The majority (all?) of the DOGE stuff has been found to be illegal and they have backtracked on it. Presidents can absolutely not do the stuff he's been doing (like firing all of the federal works that he has, for one example) and to think otherwise is laughable

*workers

go ahead and be doom and gloom and once they start disobeying judge's rulings we will see what happens if his lawyers get jailed for contempt and then we will be in some real shit

None of us knows anything for sure, but I don't see any reason to expect anything but the most minimal of guardrails from this Supreme Court. Birthright citizenship will probably survive on like a 7-2 decision. Abolishing USAID, I have no idea, it depends on the specific wording of the statute and on the arguments presented. Will SCOTUS tell a president he can't relocate an administrative office into another department? Maybe, but it's hardly a given. A lot of this other stuff? SCOTUS will say tough titty, elections have consequences.

nevermind, my mind has been changed.

we're fine!

go ahead and be doom and gloom and once they start disobeying judge's rulings we will see what happens if his lawyers get jailed for contempt and then we will be in some real shit

― a (waterface), Wednesday, 12 February 2025 16:49 (nine minutes ago) link

They are. NIH study sessions still cancelled.

some are meeting again

https://i.imgur.com/74n6gAN.png

what are we arguing about

About the correct settings for our eyes

whether to keep eyes open or not. negronis taste good with eyes open

xp

“BIDEN INFLATION UP!”

He should revoke Biden's Inflation Clearance

i'm not arguing (or at least don't feel like i am) and apologize if i am coming across too harshly

Meanwhile, Republican Congress is looking to help the rich and corporations by trillions more in the budget reconciliation bill they plan to pass by March. No complete details yet from Stenographer “journalist” Jake Sherman on X

The House GOP's budget resolution is not final yet. But the general discussion is around a res that looks something like this:

- $4.5T for tax cuts.
- $300B increase in mandatory spending.
- $1.5T in spending cuts.
- Assuming 2.8% economic growth.

- $1.5T in spending cuts.

This appears to include eliminating Medicaid.

I don't know about yall, but I'm done using any Google stuff after reading that they are removing pride, women's, and black history months from their calendar. I've been wanting to de-Google for a long time anyway and this is the catalyst I've needed.

what do we use instead? duckduckgo?

I've been using that for years for search, but also have continued using gmail, Drive, Photos, etc. It's going to be a big project but it's worth it to me. Withholding $$ and / or my attention is the only tool I have to protest this shit.

and by "this shit", I mean pretty much everything

I've just now tried Duckduckgo for the first time and it reminds me of Google circa 2015, obviously a good thing

@ waterface - I get where you're coming from and I want to believe as well. I do think the key points towards pessimism here are:

a) what happens when the judge's stays, rulings etc., make their way up from the judges who issue them to SCOTUS? the Court now has the most right-wing alignment it's had since the early 1930s, and after ages of horrible right-wing decisions on countless areas of constitutional law and bare statutory interpretation, has (with the Trump appointees) already issued outright fascist rulings like the Trump immunity decisions. their disinterest in baseline Constitutional premises is plain, so it's hard to feel confident that they will really care about the separation-of-powers issues here, or that they won't sign on fully to the unitary-executive theory. our hopes may hang on a string of 5-4 decisions where Roberts and Barrett, or maybe Roberts and Gorsuch, join the liberals. for how many of these items can we reliably count on that happening? of course, we don't know. my hunch unfortunately is "a few, mainly for show, and written/reasoned to still enable a substantial rightward shift."

b) what happens in cases where Trump/Musk ultimately lose in court, but continue to do the thing anyway? this is already happening to varying degrees with the existing stays and will likely get worse. we actually don't have good mechanisms in place for what to do when the judiciary tells the executive to do something and the executive just says "go jump in a lake."

need some blue state governments to start defying federal judicial orders and say either everyone obeys them or nobody does, get in front of the crisis they're clearing itching to trigger and give it a Democratic frame

clearly

the only way shit might get stopped is if his approval rating drops to the point where Republicans start getting scared of losing their seats. no amount of racism or fascism will accomplish that, after all that's why he was elected in the first place, but I still think once fundamental shit starts breaking and people start dying because he stopped Medicare and Social Security payments while prices soar 30% due to these pointless trade wars....maybe

Minnesota lawmakers are doing a good job. Keith Ellison is leading the way on blocking efforts with other states’ attorneys general; Walz seems to be keeping his powder dry right now and I am genuinely proud of Tina Smith and Ilhan Omar.

xp yeah, it's instructive to remember the fate of Sen Joe McCarthy... one minute everyone was afraid of him, and a few minutes later they all told him to go pound sand

good thing that happened before he could win the Presidency two times

I'm done using any Google stuff after reading that they are removing pride, women's, and black history months from their calendar

apparently this actually happened months ago, no one noticed it until now

yeah, here is Google's statement on that:

For over a decade we’ve worked with timeanddate.com to show public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar. Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world. We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable. So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.

My best guess on which of Trump's radical decrees won't survive judicial scrutiny is whether the basis in law for whatever he's trying to destroy rests on very specific and precise language in the enabling legislation or simply cites one or more broadly worded standards while passing along the power to the executive branch to create the precise implementation. I don't think we can rely on any of the judicial precedents created around the present interpretations of the law. The original law will have to be very clear in language that leaves little or no room for evasions.

The Trump Justice Department will try to also do, as Trump did, slow down and block lower court rulings that rule against him, and then ultimately appeal to the Supreme Court while keeping agencies shut down on a temporary basis until they get their Supreme COurt ruling a year or so from now.

Meanwhile the Republicans are trying to get their reconciliation budget bill through that will go after the poor on Medicaid.

“This Republican plan isn’t just bad policy—it betrays the middle class. Their proposal slashes critical programs that millions of hardworking Americans rely on, all while adding trillions of dollars to the deficit to bankroll massive giveaways for giant corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk,”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-gop-releases-budget-calling-trillions-cuts-taxes-spending-rcna191215?fbclid=IwY2xjawIZzudleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHUl2dIhgzwaEpmzslTo7mIaJBS8PnoL_l2TYX03QDgLX--M5iN2UxbkypQ_aem_2JaHWIfUA9TNE7OORa8WfQ

On one of the government projects I worked on, we always made sure the legislative mandate for the activity was prominently mentioned in every communication, to attempt to preempt doge-esque shenanigans. I've posted my Tommy Thompson story so won't repeat it.

In areas where the pain might reach into red territory, we need to call attention to Republican efforts to soften the blow for *their* voters while screwing over bluer constituencies.

Like the effort to have Food for Peace continue under USDA. Not so fast, bucko. If we can't stop the leopard from eating faces let us make sure it eats some maga ones.

Something to note:

https://popular.info/p/breaking-nih-admits-funding-freeze

I’ve never been more confused than the current era where half of the democrat-leaning social media is questioning why people think the economy is in a bad state, all while their peers or even they are sharing stories about record numbers of unhoused people, crackdowns and laws criminalizing camping or sleeping in public spaces, etc

The reaction to the visibility of people who are panhandling, camping, or otherwise out in public varies depending on your outlook but I can’t help but think “the economy is bad” is a direct result of people who are not suffering expressing empathy, disgust, or a combination at the fact the number of people without consistent shelter went up 12% year-over-year.

The entire system has been shocked by the drawback of covid era relief, gig economy precarity, and rising housing costs but it’s the people who are most visible on the street and in camps who got the worst of it. And the reaction in many places has been to criminalize those who are worst off because apparently everyone else is hoping for some out of sight, out of mind approach

now going after private companies for upholding DEI practices

“Following President Trump’s executive actions, we have ended the FCC’s promotion of DEI,” Carr wrote in a social media post on Wednesday publicizing the letter. “And the FCC will be taking steps to ensure that every company the FCC regulates complies with the civil rights protections enshrined in the Communications Act and agency rules. We are starting with Comcast for the reasons set forth in my letter.”

In his letter, Carr noted that on Comcast’s website the company lists DEI as a “core value” of its businesses and has promoted these values across its television and cable arms.

We all know that Comcast's corest core value is increasing its profits. In second place is increasing 'shareholder value'. DEI comes in somewhere well down the list.

need some blue state governments to start defying federal judicial orders and say either everyone obeys them or nobody does, get in front of the crisis they're clearing itching to trigger and give it a Democratic frame

― fluffy tufts university (f. hazel), Wednesday, 12 February 2025 18:41 (one hour ago) link

This would never happen.

I grant you that in any counterfactual world where this might happen, things would never have gotten this far

Jim Crow states were notorious for simply ignoring federal judicial orders until the Executive branch enforced them via sending in troops. Trump would be delighted to follow that precedent against blue states.

sending in troops to force people to ignore judicial orders?

"them" = the federal court orders
not sure how you could misconstrue that

he needs to win a federal judicial order first is the thing