Trump 2.0 - Defying court orders (and lying to the courts)

 It's Constitutional crisis time.

Who's going to stop him?

UPDATE 08:25 am:  But does it matter?  The coup has been effected.  There are no courts being respected or obeyed.

Trump is laying the groundwork for a more authoritarian scheme of government by undermining the legal system, ignoring the plain language of the Constitution and violating statutes.

[...]

Trump is claiming power no president actually has and sowing chaos in the government he purports to lead. Treating our public sector as if it were a mere cog in his business empire, Elon Musk is zeroing out programs and accessing financial information about every American without any authority from the Constitution, the Congress, the law or the voters.

However disoriented Democrats may be, they have to understand that Trump has given them a mission. They need to accept it — all of it.

Which means that a lot of what once passed for strategy is useless now. Democrats cannot pretend that business-as-usual behavior is appropriate to this moment. They cannot “choose their battles” because what’s at stake is not just this or that policy but whether we will endure as a free republic in which presidents recognize they are not monarchs. It’s absurd to say of Trump “we will work with him where we can” when the project on which they’d be “working with him” involves shattering the rule of law and making it impossible for government workers to do the jobs Americans expect them to carry out.

Democrats who want to save the nation — and their party — need to end their malaise, mobilize their supporters and fight for something that matters. If our constitutional democracy doesn’t matter, I don’t know what does.

[...]

The Musks of the world want you to believe that “regulation” is a horrible word that means red tape, bureaucracy and inefficiency. But regulations are rules to protect consumers, workers and things of value (clean air and water, bank deposits, food safety) in ways that the market by itself will not. As Trump and Musk sweep away regulations, a smart opposition would show how their deregulatory fervor is serving corporate interests at the expense of citizens.

[...]

Trump and Musk want to eviscerate the financial rights of consumers. Late Friday, Musk signaled an end to the agency, which he has no legal right to shut down, with a post on X – “CFBP RIP”. Hours later, Trump put Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 svengali Russell Vought in charge of the agency, a sure sign he wants it terminated. On Saturday morning, the CFBP’s homepage no longer existed. The public outcry should be loud and persistent. And Trump’s firings have disabled the National Labor Relations Board by depriving it of a quorum. It now has no way of enforcing labor law and protecting workers’ rights. That’s his reward to the many working-class voters who helped elect him.

[...]

What Republicans understand is that voters often notice an issue only if a party is persistent enough in forcing it into the public conversation. The trans debate and Hunter Biden’s problems were hardly front of mind for most voters. Republicans worked hard to put them there.

Citizens in large numbers will only start noticing how truly radical Trump’s designs are when Democrats find dramatic ways of standing up to them — and linking them to issues voters care about. Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) offered a useful example of public defiance when they announced a blanket hold on all of Trump’s State Department nominees until the administration reverses Elon Musk’s shut down of the U.S. Agency for International Development. In the House, the GOP’s divisions and flimsy majority give Democrats the opportunity to play hardball, particularly on budget bills. Anyway, what’s the point of Congress laying out a spending plan if Trump and Musk will just ignore it? Of course, Republicans who control Congress should also be up in arms about the Trump-Musk incursion on their authority. But since they’re falling into line behind a surrender to the executive branch, Democrats have no choice but to make the Trumpist GOP’s going as difficult as possible.

[...]

Of course, Democrats need to face up to their own problems. They do have a lousy “brand,” are hemorrhaging working-class votes at an alarming rate and need to find a more unifying way of talking about cultural issues.

But the best immediate answer to these challenges and the best way to occupy the broad middle ground is to call out Trump’s radicalism and his lack of focus on what swing voters care about.

[...]

Trump, after all, promised to “slash your prices” and bring down “the price of everything.” But his priorities — revenge, political control of the administration of justice, the intimidation of civil servants, and, for that matter, takeovers of Greenland and Gaza — have nothing to do with lowering what consumers pay for groceries, gas or housing. His tariffs will only make inflation rise.

  WaPo

I'm afraid MAGA is going to have to feel it to believe it. They're not hearing it. Even when Democrats are screaming it, they are not listening.

Trump’s base may love his callous approach to migrants. The voters who will decide coming elections prefer sensible and decent solutions. Democrats should use the coming years to offer them.

[...]

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist who studied the anti-Trump movement, noted recently in the New Republic that what worked the last time were the “persistent, community-based efforts by 2,000 to 3,000 grassroots Resistance groups in every town, city, and suburb across virtually all congressional districts.” The events of the past three weeks summon Americans again to diners, churches, libraries, union halls and taverns to organize, to pressure their elected officials (especially the 15 House Republicans who won last year by five percentage points or less), and to reach out to their friends and neighbors to warn them about what Trump is doing to their democracy.

“Move fast and break things” is the tech slogan inspiring what Trump and Musk are doing to our government and our constitutional arrangements. Those who want to stop their wrecking ball need to act with the same urgency.

This should be the scene at every federal building in the country every day.

UPDATE 09:08 am: