"Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings ... The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account".
(CNN)
@W_Lucht - we are indeed in grave danger, with the vice president making remarks like this:
There are 3 branches of government, and the executive is supposed to execute the laws, and the legislature is supposed to write the laws, and the judiciary is supposed to adjudicate the laws.
It isn't the job of the executive to write laws or adjudicate laws.
It isn't the job of the legislature to execute the laws or adjudicate laws.
It isn't the job of the judiciary to execute or write the laws.
Now, there are places where these three roles do marginally intersect. Fair enough, but if an executive is saying that the executive has certain powers the judiciary has no power over, that's just a statement of fact, notwithstanding any mechanisms that directly slip into those roles for different reasons. If anything, it's a bad thing that we have so much of the government that wasn't elected to execute the laws trying to direct the execution of laws. Now, if the executive actions are unlawful, that's a different thing, but even within oversight the judiciary is only allowed to limit executive actions within the scope of the laws they have to work with.
If the action is legitimate -- meaning it is legal and constitutional -- and people disagree with it, then there are two methods to solve the problem. the first being legislative -- change the law to make it illegal, the second being political -- vote the bum out. In fact, the people did vote Trump out of office once already. He didn't like it, but they did.
If the action is not legitimate -- meaning it is not legal or not constitutional -- then the court has the power to do something about it. Trump already in his first term agreed to concede on issues the courts refused him on, such as his exectuive order on DACA or his executive order on the so-called "muslim ban", so it isn't like it's unprecedented. His executive lost lots of cases, and his executive abided by the decisions. We have examples from history that show the executive doesn't necessarily have to comply with court orders, the best example being FDR who ran roughshod over the supreme court to get his agenda blasted in.
The legal system isn't exactly like a math equation, but it does share some attributes like having rules that generally apply, and you have to keep those in mind when reading statements about the government because people can really make something that's just factually true sound scarier than it is. "In some geometries, the sum of the angles in a triangle is not 180 degrees." sounds pretty scary too until you realize you're just talking about non-Euclidean geometry.
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@sj_zero @johncarlosbaez
I predict you'll find your words were too theoretical. Illiberalism cements its power under the guise of such theories, not by formally overthrowing but by subverting the state. But I hope I'm wrong.
@sj_zero - sure, Vance has stated it in an unassailable way, but given what is happening, he is laying out the administration's plan to deal with those annoying judges.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-constitutional-crisis.html
Read free here:
It's fear porn.
The right has their dose of it too, if you read the right wing papers Joe Biden was both the most competent evil chessmaster in history and also basically pudding, a vegetable they had to hold his hand to sign anything. They were making the exact same noises about how Biden was trying to violate the law and court decisions to cancel student debt without an act of congress.
I'm not saying don't keep an eye on things. Just make sure you're actually getting worked up over things that happened and not things that the press is trying to make you think happened. You know, in the end Biden didn't really get to cancel much student debt because he did follow the court orders. 4 years passed and a lot of Republicans weren't happy with what happened, but American is still there.
When these people are saying "this is unprecedented!" they're just lying. Lincoln was a little dictator, and FDR was practically a king until he died. We have precedent for presidents who go way too far and we're not actually anywhere there yet. Trump's just a jerk. If we're being honest, is Trump even as bad at his worst as George W. Bush was on his best day? How much of everyone's freedom was taken out permanently under *that* administration? Do you remember the patriot act? Do you remember "torture is great we should do it every day"? An innocent man from my country was kidnapped on a layover and shipped to Syria where he was tortured for months, and it's just "well sucks to be you". Which guy would you rather have in the oval office right now?
I've had to admit I'm wrong about politicians in the past repeatedly because I'm kinda dumb, so if and when we start seeing Trump the fascist, I'll be right there with you. Last think I want is to see our neighbor actually being the thing the media kept on saying he is.
@sj_zero @W_Lucht - I remember the Bush administration quite well; I set up a whole webpage called "Torture" in his honor:
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/torture/
I won't compare presidents and discuss who is better or worse - it's just distracting.
Trump is carrying out a flood of illegal actions, which luckily have unleashed a flood of lawsuits, listed here:
So far judges have issued 8 orders pausing Trump's attempted actions. We will see if he obeys those orders; he has not yet.