anon_
5d ago
Of course that's not true. SDNY has no special legal status over say the Northern District of Alabama.
It has no such legal status, but it does have a much higher caliber of staff. Bondi lost a lot of her best lawyers, which will no doubt translate to losing a lot of important cases.
anon_
5d ago
As an outside observer of American politics, the concept of sanctuary cities never made sense to me as anything else than aiding and abetting crime you approve of.
Well, there's a motte and there's a bailey. Cities and States are not obligated to assist the Federal government (amusingly, this is a precedent set by conservative States in not wishing to assist in Federal gun control). But they are also not permitted to obstruct the federal government.
So the mottey person says: sanctuary cities are just cities that have an institutional policy of not assisting where they don't have it. And of course that's true, justifiable and very quickly crosses the line into impermissible obstruction.
anon_
5d ago
I gotta say things rings true. Adams sold out for pretty cheap, at least you'd hope a mayor of a core city would be expensive to buy.
anon_
5d ago
I think you could satisfy both 2/3 by dividing the land between privatization and public park/monument/wilderness area rather than the current status of BLM leasing. A world in which the BLM leases to a rancher satisfies neither efficient usage nor preservation of natural beauty.
The real impediment is the lack of water. We need to force California to repeat rules against desalination, especially since the excess of cheap (even free!) power during the middle of the day is an excellent match for plants that can use ~infinite excess power on a moment's notice and then give it back later. A win/win for growth and clean energy -- of course CA can't fucking do it.
Of course, you'd have to let them buy power at the actual market-clearing price, by the hour. That's a minor technical glitch.
anon_
5d ago
No, but institutions operate according to incentives in a long run way. If the leaders of liberal states realize that taking a hard-line stance on nullification buys them negotiating power, that increases the incentive to do so.
A very worrying state of affairs.
anon_
6d ago
I don't think it was terribly effective at all. The policy of segregation was dismantled with great speed.
Of course, the practice persisted beyond the policy, but that's not within the purview of the courts. Certainly no school system retained any kind of segregation policy into the 70s.
anon_
6d ago
The part that's awful is being rewarded for doing awful things or, if you prefer, allowing people that chose to do awful things to be rewarded for stopping it.
Behavior that is rewarded is repeated.
anon_
6d ago
It is absurd. Eisenhower sent the US Army to Arkansas to enforce desegregation. That debate ought to be put to rest.
anon_
6d ago
I think this is far beyond the line of Federalism. NY doesn't have to assist Bondi or Homan, but they cannot prevent the Feds from accessing Rikers or intentionally obstruct them. And yes, I think the courts should forcefully assert it but it's also the purview of the Executive to stand up for its prerogatives.
In fact, using it as a bargaining chip is implicitly acknowledging that the State and the City may do so.
anon_
7d ago
If it was the continuous policy of NYC to cooperate with immigration enforcement, then the entire bargaining chip wouldn't be valuable because the next mayor would just continue the policy. Bondi would have no need to do anything because she would already get what is her due anyway.
[ I also don't quite see this as him being extorted into it. He's obviously very clearly guilty of the charges against him, and so it's more like he's cashing it in to have those charges go away. If the charges had been baseless, then I would agree with the characterization. The baseline matters. ]
That's what I mean about the game theory of it -- it pays for the leader of the locality not to do what they are supposed to do. The longer they don't do it, the better and more valuable the leverage, it seems.
anon_
7d ago
I'm leaning on the latter. FedSoc is a bastion of actual honest-to-goodness WASPiness.
anon_
7d ago
Nothing wrong with a quid-pro-quo when it comes to things that either side is entitled to use as bargaining chips. You get me an airport, I'll help your stadium, we'll build a bridge, I'll pass your law, all that's regular politics.
What's awful about this is that both "I won't obstruct immigration enforcement" and "I will have your criminal indictment dismissed" are both beyond the Overton window of things to be bargained with.
IOW -- there's nothing wrong with trading favors, provided that thing you're doing is actually supposed to be a discretionary thing.
anon_
7d ago
Not judges, DAs. One of them was a 2 bronze star vet, clerked for Roberts and Kavanaugh.
Interesting that his letter still leans into mistake theory and even avows that he supports the administration and even says that he understands why the administration wanted to have something over Adams to get his cooperation on other matters.
anon_
7d ago
Some amount of it's probably just that Trump isn't very pro-gun, and doesn't really want to spend the political capital on it.
There's different things here. I think he's reasonably pro-gun, he just thinks he's fulfilled his obligation to the NRA and friends by getting Bruen done for them (and likewise for the pro-lifers and Dobbs).
Trump is a lot of things, but he's not the kind of person to consider an obligation like that as open-ended.
anon_
7d ago
Eric Adams and Shit They Supposed To Do
In what seems like it had to be cultural eons ago (1996), Chris Rock had a famous routine about black men trying to take credit for shit they are supposed to do. Barack Obama referenced it approvingly.
Well, it's decades later and Eric Adams is apparently going to have his corruption charges dropped in exchange for not obstructing the Federal Government's power to enforce immigration law. The punchline here writes itself, but the long term trend ought to be worrying -- a political system can't operate in an environment where dereliction of one's duties can be weaponized into a point of leverage to be bargained for. Adams isn't bargaining for a favor he can do Bondi here -- he's bargaining to stop doing something he was never supposed to be doing in the first place.
The game theory is clear -- the less of your obligations you fulfill, the more leverage you have.
anon_
11d ago
I think you didn’t understand or I didn’t clarify the word “that” in there.
It is not possible to unambiguously make all misrepresentations impossible in advance. But once you know of a specific singular and defined misrepresentation, it is quite easy to pass a statutory fix that makes just that specific one no longer possible.
As I said, it’s an iterative game. Except one side loses interest after a few rounds
anon_
11d ago
I can’t stress enough how certainty is far more valuable to regulated businesses than leniency.
anon_
11d ago
But they could still allow Congress to pass laws, limiting the CFPB.
And now they found themselves in an even worse situation where bank interests only have to confirm one director through Congress in order to completely torch the agency.
anon_
12d ago
Here's another Sunday evening squeeze. We've heard below about Congressional appropriations and the anti-impoundment act, but did you know that the CFPB doesn't have a specific appropriation from the treasury.
Yes, you're right -- no one appropriates the CFPB's budget. Rather, and I'm not joking, the Federal Reserve transfers to the CFPB the amount determined by the Director to be reasonably necessary to carry out the authorities of the Bureau up to some cap.
The Supreme Court said this is legal -- Congress passed a law appropriating the money and they don't have to specify a particular dollar amount to count as satisfying the Constitution's command that "[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”. There's some nice Founding-era history in the decision which seems convincing (or at least defensible) .
So in exercise of that confirmed power and seemingly in a fully legal fashion, the just-confirmed director said
Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not "reasonably necessary" to carry out its duties. The Bureau's current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment.
Quite amusing and a fairly good use of the law.
anon_
12d ago
We're not talking about legal machinations, this is misinterpretation by the agencies. That takes an entire APA cycle. They move at about the speed of molasses.
anon_
12d ago
It’s an iterative game! You win because you always have the right of immediate response whereas the opponent has to go back to the district court and start over.
Meanwhile each misrepresentation because more and more fantastical along the way.
This is literally Congress’ primary job!
anon_
12d ago
Correct. There was also an air of “if we don’t self regulate effectively , OSHA or some other dept will and the result will surely be far worse.
Lesson there eh
[ I don't claim to be an ordinary American. ]
It's always hard to tell with Trump, but I think threatening to blow up the relationship is the only realistic way forwards. What I mean is that for a few decades, Europe failed to live up to its end of the bargain without any realistic way to snap them out of it.
For my part, I don't really want to see the end of the alliance, but I also don't want to continue living in the world where because ending the alliance is unthinkable, one side continues shit the bed.
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