Schumer must go

 

Our flailing democracy will not be saved by hope.

UPDATE 08:57 am:

Elon is illegal

 

Constitutional crisis

 

Another judge's order to ignore

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the nation’s premier health agencies to restore online access to several websites that monitor HIV, health risks for youths and assisted reproductive technologies, which were abruptly taken offline to ensure they complied with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on gender.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates granted a temporary restraining order requested by the nonprofit advocacy group Doctors for America, directing the administration to bring back public information maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration while a lawsuit challenging the administration’s decision to remove it is pending.

[...]

About a dozen public health websites, some of which had been online since the 1990s, were pulled from the internet late last month after Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to recognize only male and female genders, and the Office of Personnel Management issued a memorandum saying agency heads should “end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology.” A Justice Department attorney representing the health agencies said they needed to review the sites’ content for compliance with the order.

Doctors for America, whose members practice medicine in all 50 states, said the removals went beyond the terms of Trump’s executive order and have left the public exposed to a broad swath of health risks.

  MSN

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:

Judge Luttig is worried

Born in Tyler, Texas, he was assistant counsel to the president under the Republican Ronald Reagan, and clerked for then judge Antonin Scalia and the supreme court justice Warren Burger. He served on the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit from 1991 to 2006 and was committed to an “originalist” interpretation of the constitution.

He endorsed the George W Bush White House’s post-September 11 policy of declaring terrorism suspects “enemy combatants” so that they could be held by the military without charges. He was an advocate of the death penalty.

[...]

“I am more worried for America today than I was on January 6,” he warns in a phone interview with the Guardian. “[Trump's] election would be catastrophic for America’s democracy.”

[...]

“On that day, America finally came face to face with the raging war that it had been waging against itself for years. So blood-chilling was that day for our democracy, that America could not believe her eyes [...] .”

[...]

“All that [Trump] has done beginning with January 6 has corrupted American democracy and corrupted American elections and laid waste to Americans’ faith and confidence in their democracy to the extent that today millions and millions and millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in their elections."

[...]

Luttig draws a fine but important legal distinction between a rebellion against the constitution, as described by the 14th amendment section 3, and rebellion against the United States. He claims that groups that filed lawsuits in Colorado and elsewhere to bar Trump from the ballot are confused on this issue.

“They do not yet understand what disqualifies the former president, namely an insurrection or rebellion against the constitution. They have argued the cases as if he is disqualified because he engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

“That’s why they have, unfortunately, focused their efforts on establishing or not that the former president was responsible for the riot on the Capitol. The riot on the Capitol is incidental to the question of whether he engaged in a rebellion against the constitution.”

  Guardian

See Project 2025, and this Axios article:

The people leading these efforts aren't figures like Rudy Giuliani. They're smart, experienced people, many with very unconventional and elastic views of presidential power and traditional rule of law.

The government-in-waiting is being orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation's well-funded Project 2025, which already has published a 920-page policy book from 400+ contributors. Think of it as a transition team set in motion years in advance.

[...]

The Trump campaign tells us no outside group speaks for him: "The campaign's Agenda47 is the only official comprehensive and detailed look at what President Trump will do when he returns to the White House. ... While the campaign is appreciative of any effort to provide suggestions about a second term, the campaign is not collaborating with them."

  Axios

And they won't melt away even if Trump is defeated in 2024. Vote Republican at your own peril if you mistakenly think you'll be in the elite group.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It pays to pack the highest court in the land

Both of those cases were heard and ruled on by more than one federal court.  They made it through the Appeals courts with their rulings in tact.  There was nothing in the cases to make them worthy of a hearing in the Supreme Court - unless you count the fact that the asshole in question is the president.

It's highly suspect that the Supreme Court decided to take these cases in the first place, but if they overturn all those lower court decisions, I think we will have an indisputable answer about whether the Supreme Court is now a political body.  And if it is, our system of government is completely broken.  Sorry, founders, you did your best, and you had a good run.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

UPDATE:  

That's skating awfully close to the edge of bribing a judge.  He's treating Kavanaugh like he did Manafort when he was in a position to help or hinder Trump.  And why not?  Kavanaugh is as much a Trump asset as Manafort.

Jesus wept.

Amen, Bill Kristol

Also...

When your president is a national security threat

Presidents have, of course, acted inappropriately in the past, and our constitutional system has a framework in place for addressing misconduct by the chief executive. But it’s designed to deal with straightforward criminal activity, not national security threats. The special counsel regulations, for example, were created to deal with a Watergate-like situation as a worst-case scenario. So they take into account the need for an investigation insulated from political influence and give special counsels the ability to make prosecutorial decisions independently of the rest of the Justice Department or the attorney general. The rules even envision a report that might be made public.

This approach is appropriate when an investigation involves collecting evidence that can hold up in a court of law. But it is inadequate to address potentially noncriminal conduct that may nevertheless endanger the national security of the United States.

This split was evident in the report on the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, submitted by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Although Mueller’s mandate was broad, and potentially encompassed a counterintelligence investigation, he narrowed the scope of his inquiry to criminal matters. The final report lays out only the decisions to charge or not charge individuals based on the evidence collected, noting only briefly that counterintelligence information was shared with the FBI for use in its (presumably ongoing) classified investigation. As a result, the public remains in the dark on whether Trump may be wittingly or unwittingly compromised in his dealings with Russia, or if the FBI and the intelligence community have information to explain his oddly submissive behavior with world leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  WaPo

I think it's pretty obvious.

Very few people seem to know what’s going on with the counterintelligence investigation: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee chairman, has said that his panel doesn’t know the status of the probe, or even if it’s still going on, even though the law requires the administration to keep the lawmakers up to date.

But counterintelligence investigations are stymied if they involve the president.

That's why the framers gave Congress the power to impeach.

Counterintelligence investigations [...] seek to monitor and neutralize national security threats behind the scenes, which means the public has no way of tracking their progress. And the normal ways of resolving counterintelligence threats — like blocking a compromised subject’s access to classified information — don’t work with the president, who controls what is and isn’t classified and is the ultimate consumer of the intelligence the government collects.

[...]

In a normal case not involving the president, the inspector general’s conclusion that a complaint was credible and urgent would make it to Congress, with commentary from the director of national intelligence if he chose to add it. Congress would review the complaint and decide whether to take action: Lawmakers could hold hearings, request additional information from the agency involved in the complaint, and ensure that any misconduct is addressed or corrected within the agency.

[...]

If a call is about official foreign policy positions of the executive branch, for example, the president might have strong grounds to keep the content confidential — part of the president’s job is negotiating with foreign leaders, and to do that he must be able to assure his counterparts that their discussions won’t be made public. Even George Washington refused to turn over diplomatic communications to Congress.

And because the procedure for handling whistleblower complaints related to intelligence doesn’t address — or really even contemplate — what might happen if the president is endangering national security, there’s plenty of room for the chief executive to cloak unlawful actions in presidential authority, making them harder to detect.

[...]

Without oversight or accountability, neither Congress nor the public has a way to know, for example, if the president is using his powers as leverage for a country to confer a benefit to him personally or to undermine the integrity of our democratic processes in his favor.

Rudy Giuliani has made it abundantly clear in this case.

And if Trump wins any litigation, that might mean that even the ultimate check on presidential abuse — impeachment — would be nearly impossible on national security grounds: Congress isn’t likely to bring articles of impeachment if it is prevented from obtaining the evidence that would form the basis for them.

The framers of the Constitution did foresee the possibility of a presidential candidate who might be compromised or beholden to a foreign power: The electoral college was intended to act as a second fail-safe in the event of poor voter judgment, if a truly dangerous candidate came along.

Yea, how'd that work out for us?

Like the breach of multiple hulls in the Titanic, the mechanisms designed to keep our democracy afloat are giving way one by one.

A GOP wet dream, never mind Putin.

Are we now in a full-blown Constitutional crisis?

Deconstructing America

Also, at 47:00, discussion of Nancy Pelosi.

How Trump's Office of Legal Counsel works

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti talks with Erica Newland who quit her job at OLC because she felt they were simply aiding Trump's lies.  Mariotti and Newland are both on the edge of my listening tolerance as speakers, but I think what Ms. Newland has to say is both enlightening and important.  (And admittedly, I have a very low auditory tolerance, if that's the right way to say there are more things I can't stand to listen to than things I can. 

I'll also note that previous administrations have used the OLC for justifying unconstitutional and amoral policies, but as Ms. Newland describes it, there was a process for ascertaining the truth and necessity of Executive Orders before they were issued that Trump's administration has simply bypassed altogether.

Anyway, the podcast is here. (Or here with other Mariotti podcasts, at Episode 34.)

Check it out.  Also, his other podcasts are pretty much always interesting and enlightening as well.

And, oh yeah, impeach Trump.  (Dump Trump and Ditch Mitch for a return to democracy.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He'll be emperor one day

The US government is planning to end birthright citizenship for babies of non-citizens and undocumented immigrants born on US soil, President Donald Trump said in an interview on Tuesday.

In an interview with "Axios on HBO", Trump said he is working with legal counsel to put an end to the practice, which has existed since 1968 and stipulates that citizenship is automatically granted to any person born within US territory.

Revoking birthright citizenship would lead to a court fight over whether the president has the unilateral ability to change an amendment to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment guarantees that right for all children born in the US.

  alJazeera

Another reason packing the courts is so important.

When we were children in the 50s, they warned us in school constantly about the danger of waking up Communist one day, but they never said anything about waking up Trumpist.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Flake and Coons at the Atlantic Festival

The graphic is the link

Activist judges: losing faith in the US Constitution

First Citizens United, now the Muslim ban.  It turns out the US Constitution wasn't bullet proof. 

Listen to Mehdi Hasan's interview of Rep. Keith Ellison and activist Debbie Almontaser regarding the consequences of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Donald Trump's Muslim ban.  This, together with the child internment policy at the border, make up the Constitutional crisis people keep warning about, and don't seem to recognize when it hits.

It's hard not to give up on this country; maybe they can help us.

Deconstructed:  The White Supremacy Court Upholds the Muslim Ban

Trump: "I AM the law"

[T]he most important passage [of the recently leaked Trump lawyers' memo to Mueller] is its sweeping assertion of presidential authority.

“The President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction,” they write, “Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.”

They did indeed put it simply. The implications of this authority are breathtaking. Trump, in their view, has unlimited control to open or close any federal investigation.

  NYMag

I wonder why they stopped at federal investigations. Some of these crooks are going to end up getting tried in state courts. How's he supposed to get them out of those?

Trump has been angrily tweeting demands that the investigation into him and his allies be halted, and that the Department of Justice instead open investigations into his political enemies.

Now that's scary. That's some Stalinesque shit there.

These tweets have been treated as the ravings of a blowhard who just happens to occupy the most powerful position in the world, yet is somehow merely blowing off steam.

And that's how you end up with pure Stalin.

Trump cannot obstruct justice, according to his official legal stance, because justice is whatever Trump says it is. Before this is over, either Trump’s sweeping claim will survive, or the rule of law will, but not both.

I'm not feeling optimistic, given the Congress we have.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And this may be the bottom line...

The Constitutional Crises Posed by Trump as President

The national-security services are apparently coping with Donald Trump in ways that circumvent the president’s constitutional role as commander-in-chief.

[...]

The military and intelligence agencies are learning new habits of disregard for presidential statements and even orders that those agencies deem ignorant or reckless. By and large, those agencies’ judgments are vastly to be preferred to the president’s—but that does not make these habits any less dangerous.

[...]

Among other insights, Corker’s Sunday interview forces Americans to confront some tough questions: By what methods is the president being contained? Is he, for example, being denied sensitive information by agencies that remember how he blurted a closely guarded secret to the Russian foreign minister and the location of U.S. nuclear submarines to the president of the Philippines?

  Atlantic

This just highlights how dangerous this presidency is. This can't be good for either Republicans or Democrats, and yet they are all side-stepping the obvious remedy: removal from office.

Are allies and potential adversaries being signaled that presidential statements do not actually represent the policy of the United States government?

Of course they are. Especially when somebody immediately "interprets" what he just said for the press.

It seems incredible that the military would outright defy a presidential order. But not hearing it? Not understanding it? Not acting on it promptly? Holding back information that might provoke an unwanted presidential reaction? White House insiders told a reporter Monday that Vice President Pence had made a mistake in telling Trump he planned to attend a game featuring a tribute to Indiana football great Peyton Manning on Sunday: It was that casual remark that goaded Trump into ordering Pence to stage his walk-out stunt.* Whether the story is true or not, it reveals the preferred method of managing a distrusted president: Deny him information that could have unwanted effects.

This is actually General Kelly's stated mode of operation: all documents headed to Trump must pass by Kelly first for approval. People are no longer permitted to just drop in to the Oval Office.

The Constitution provides a way to remedy an unfit presidency: the removal process under the 25th amendment. Regencies and palace coups are not constitutional. I dare say many readers would prefer a Mattis presidency to a Trump presidency. But to stealthily endow Secretary Mattis with the powers of the presidency as a work-around of Trump’s abuse of them? That’s a crisis, too, and one sinister for the future.

A military coup d'etat without the fireworks.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.