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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   9412 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Now that Trump has ignored the order of a judge to unfreeze the funds he is withholding comes the first constitutional crisis. This is where checks and balances should kick in. If he brazenly defies the courts then Congress can take action against him by impeachment and removal. Hopefully.

  • -25

It appears that the judge’s daughter is at a presidential appointed position at Dept of Ed, a department squarely within the crosshairs of DOGE. So not only is the ruling dubious on constitutional grounds, but there is also a concern that his order directly helps his daughter suggesting a conflict of interest.

I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

I thought the Democratic Party was primarily ideologically motivated, but I'm realizing more and more that it's a patronage network. Their sinecures are more important than ideology, the country, the debt, everything.

Let me know when you have such a shocking realization about anyone you actually liked.

If you find a conservative-leaning individual that actually believes the Republican Party and broader right wing is low on people who were likable but turned out to act as though "sinecures are more important than ideology, the country, the debt, everything", please point them to me. I can come up with a pretty wide list of once-loved (among soccons) conservative politicians and speakers that turned out quite willing to sell their movement up a creek, sometimes for embarrassingly few pieces of silver light grift.

To be fair, the Republicans only got into their new position of Shiva the Destroyer because they were so inept at the power game they lost nearly 100% of the elite.

We're lucky in a way. Normally it takes a war or a depression or other major crisis to clean up government. But we're getting a cleanup on the cheap. It's a miracle really. Normally the corruption would be split equally between the two parties, and would be impossible to get rid of. But since everyone in the elite was so united against Trump, he can go after corruption without any political cost.

Don't worry, I'm sure if Trump gets what he wants, there will be lots of corruption flowing to Republicans as well. In a way, the current situation is a result of the Dems just winning so hard for so long.

I donno about that. There are reports I'm inclined to believe that Trump's SV donors are having their way slashing away at regulators (even justifiable ones) that have been hounding them. I'm taking the reports with a grain of salt, but if they are to be believed and aren't just fear mongering we may see rollbacks of numerous pro-consumer banking regulations. Like how banks and credit cards can't order transactions to maximize fees. But we shall see.

I still think 4 years of SV theoretically looting the commons won't be as bad as the last 4 years of open borders, schools secretly transitioning children, DEI mandates and your quality of life constantly being attacked (no plastic straws, gas ovens, etc) because "muh environment". But maybe they'll surprise me. Maybe they'll invent fresh horrors the likes of which makes me beg we could return to debating only sterilizing and mutilating children.

You guys are whipped up in a frenzy over mere speculation. Is there any actual evidence to suggest corruption here? Trump constantly engages in brazenly corrupt behavior, but all I hear from the acolytes here are apologetics that strain the limits of credulity.

This is not really sufficient effort for a top level post. It's good that you at least added a link to a story in a response downthread, but that should have been proactively provided (particularly given the overt partisanship of your post) in the first place. You also haven't really explained what each of the parties under discussion actually did, or made any attempt to steelman either side.

Remember,

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light...

So low effort wishcasting is frowned upon generally, but doubly when it is a top level post.

Heard (5000% not trying to be sassy I just think getting modded doesn’t deserve much more than an acknowledgment and a yes sir. I said a while the modding here is not for me so if I’m gonna keep posting here I’m 1937467% not arguing with the mods)

As a notable Yale law grad recently explained:

If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.

If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal.

Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

Maybe the real Constitutional crisis is some random judge deciding that the President's powers as described in Article 2 are actually reserved for that particular judge and they personally shall decide how and if the President may exercise them.

That is literally what judges do though. They say "this particular military operation, or this particular use of prosecutorial discretion, is illegal". That's their only job in the US legal system. I don't really see how this law grad you speak of can say that a judge isn't allowed to do such things. Judges don't have unlimited power to control the executive, but they do have some power to do so.

It is pretty unprecedented for a district judge to order such a sweeping injunction that affects a core executive duty / power. All the more so when this is certainly a political question (ie Trump isn’t saying he won’t ever spend money Congress appropriated; he is saying first he needs to understand what it is being spent on because what it is being spent on may not be in line with the congressional grant and/or the grant may be impossible.

Also I don’t think judges have ever said “this particular military operation, or this particular use of prosecutorial discretion, is illegal.” Like can you find one case?

United States v. Calley, 1971.

I don't have specific examples to hand, but I was speaking from the judiciary's role in the American legal system. Since they are responsible for determining what is and is not in violation of the law, that would then mean that if a particular case comes to court they are therefore deciding if the actions of the executive were ok or not.

Yes but that is comparing like with unlike. These particular rulings are rather unprecedented and responding by saying that rulings in other areas on other matters restrict the executive are common is not responsive.

It is what some judges do, very few. The nine on the Supreme Court.

District judges have no authority to issue injunctions against the President, and we know this because the first time it happened in the history of this country was by Judge James Robart in 2017. Do consider the history of this country: FDR hasn't quite passed from living memory, Trump may violate many contemporary norms, the travel ban violated no historic norms and represented no sweeping and dubious exercise of executive authority. Certainly not compared to the sweeping, unprecedented and wholly unconstitutional exercise of judicial authority by who ended up being multiple district judges attempting to actively restrain the authority of the executive. This is why SCOTUS ruled in favor of the XO per curiam.

I don't know if this is the hill where Trump should invoke Jackson -- probably because I expect SCOTUS will issue another per curiam -- but unless district judges are permanently shaken of the delusion that they have the constitution's endorsement to issue sweeping federal injunctions, let alone those against the executive, that moment is inevitable.

I don't know if this is the hill where Trump should invoke Jackson -- probably because I expect SCOTUS will issue another per curiam -- but unless district judges are permanently shaken of the delusion that they have the constitution's endorsement to issue sweeping federal injunctions, let alone those against the executive, that moment is inevitable.

The judges doing this don't really expect that their orders will stand. They're just playing the delaying game; if they can pretend to be just reasonably issuing restraining orders to preserve the case, and avoid the Supreme Court taking it up on the emergency docket, they can keep Trump from doing anything for years, perhaps even his entire term. If Trump invokes Jackson, the higher courts (even those he appointed) will side with their lower-court brethren and we'll have a full-on Constitutional crisis. So he'll try to play the same "I'm not touching you" game the Democrats do, and hope his courts will allow him the same leeway nearly all courts do the Democrats. I'm not sure that'll work, though.

I wonder if there is a way to go to a Republican friendly jdx and get an opposite ruling to effectively force a split.

It has to roll before the fifth circuit.

In the American legal system, judges have traditionally held that certain domains are non-justiciable—outside judical power to review. Military operations and prosecutorial discretion were mentioned here because those are two such traditional domains. So no—the traditional judicial response to suits about a military operation is to say "sorry, my hands are tied, it's categorically outside my judicial authority to be involved" and dismiss the suit.

You can argue that it shouldn't be this way, that judges shouldn't categorically exclude themselves from certain domains. There's a reasonable argument for that! But that shift, if it happens, would be a departure from traditional legal norms. And one judge doing so on his own can certainly be criticized as being at odds with the existing limits on judicial power as has been hitherto understood by the judiciary.

I'm not weighing in on the object level question of if the specific question in this particular suit should have been ruled as non-justiciable. It very plausibly is analogous to traditionally non-justiciable domains (like military operations.) But it's hardly cut and dried the way a suit about a military operation would be. There's precedent to be made here by higher courts in the future.

My point here is on the meta-level, that the US legal system recognizes some domains as categorically non-justiciable, and that this is why military operatorations and prosecutorial discretion were invoked as examples.

Fair enough. I was actually unaware of that, so thank you for the correction.

Yes I agree impeachment should be on the table…for the judge who wrote this absurd TRO. The sole random district court judge is requiring the president to violate his Art II core duty with zero precedent for such a sweeping declaratory TRO. It wouldn’t be unfair to label what the judge is doing as a judicial coup.

I assume you are referring to this order following up on the judge's temporary restraining order freezing (heh) the funding freeze. This is a bit of a strange situation. It's not entirely clear what specific action is being enjoined. They are prevented from... not funding things? Which things? Which specific transactions are required to go through? Which funding decisions are a result of following the president's executive order (forbidden by the court's order), and which funding decisions are simply government officials implementing what they consider to be the proper policy of the government? What even are the proper funding procedures in the absense of executive-directed policy? Are agency heads supposed to pretend that Biden is still president and fund whatever he would want instead?

Huh. Just from reading the TRO - maybe what the Trump administration did was bad (I suspect that SCOTUS will rule that there's at least some areas regarding funding that judges cannot issue this sort of order about due to the separation of powers but arguably you should wait for them to overrule the lower court before assuming that!) but in and of itself my guess is that "the executive branch imperfectly follows a TRO" is not exactly a rare occurrence. I did a quick Google, for instance, and found that the Obama administration, to my untrained eye, appears to have pulled a similar stunt in the national-security context.

This should be expanded upon for a top-level post.

If he brazenly defies the courts

laughs in Heller and Bruen

Yeah, it sure does suck when nobody respects court decisions and just does whatever they want in active contempt of those decisions.

Yeah, I've got a small genre of posts just for this sort of stuff, followed by places where the administration swore it wasn't going to do something, waited for the court case to end, and then did it anyway. This was this week, and I didn't even have to go searching for it. There's a million ways to talk about how all of these cases are tots different and there's some line that absolutely wasn't drawn by a Texas Sharpshooter, but the idea that this is terra nova is laughable.

Do you have a link to what you're talking about?

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-violating-court-order-freezing-funding-judge-2025-2

Thank you!

Checks and balances does not mean that your political enemies don't get to do any of their agenda. Sometimes in a democracy things happen you don't like. The judiciary is the least democratic institution in the American republic, the least accountable. If the President defies the judiciary and Congress supports him then the President gets his way. That's the part of checks and balances you probably don't like, and that's probably how it's going to end.

I literally don’t think that’s how the government works. If I did, then I’d take the L.

The judiciary doesn't have any formal mechanism to enforce a ruling upon the executive branch other than by tradition and precedent. If he makes unlawful, unconstitutional orders, Congress has reason to impeach him. But if Congress doesn't want to impeach him, then he gets away with it. It really is that simple. What do you want the judiciary to do? Send in the US Marshals, start a civil war?

Now perhaps there's a constitutional argument to go against whatever the president is doing. Certainly you could make a case for anything. But the vesting clause is very clear that the President is endowed with the full powers of the office. The Supreme Court will not suddenly make a ruling that will formalize any sort of control on the executive branch.

Do you have an argument to bring to bear against the unitary executive? How is the presidency supposed to work? Is there a strong legal theory behind the ability of fifty state judges to have a veto over the President?

Can't the judiciary hold members of the Treasury in contempt for not unfreezing the funds?

They could. But then Trump could instruct the DoJ not to enforce that ruling.

You see, without the rule of law and trust in institutions, all judges are is old people in unfashionable black robes. They're not wizards. If the judiciary is percieved (and acts) in a partisan way, then the other branches of government can hit back. The people shouting about checks and balances are unhappy it's being used on them.

All of this line-pushing is designed to go to the Supreme Court. It's clear from the Trump Administration's intent that they will no longer tolerate the judiciary getting in the way of their agenda with legalese. They don't regard them as a neutral institution enforcing the rule of law, but one colonized by its enemies.

I predict that the Supreme Court will give way to Trump to preserve its own legitimacy, as the court did to FDR to prevent him from stuffing it with his appointees.

I’m confused. You said if the President goes against the Constitution, then he should be removed. He has clearly violated the Constitution. Therefore he should be removed.

The presidency works by following the proper channels of checks and balances, not spamming Executive Orders until the courts block it. I have a very hard time believing that if a Democratic president did the same behavior you would have the same reaction.

  • -13

I’m confused. You said if the President goes against the Constitution, then he should be removed. He has clearly violated the Constitution. Therefore he should be removed.

There is general agreement on this, but the question is who decides when this happens. According to the Constitution, the answer has been "Congress." As such, attempts to force this result by the judiciary are in this tradition inappropriate.

Spamming executive orders until the courts block it has been how presidential admins work since Obama lost his supermajority. Biden blatantly ignored the court orders blocking him from student loan forgiveness and eviction freezes and nobody thought it was a constitutional crisis.

Biden in fact attempted to get student loan forgiveness placed wholly outside the ability of the courts to review by arranging so nobody would have standing. The response of the Democrats was to be angry at the Republican's almost-as-tenuous methods of obtaining standing anyway.

Probably the closest we came to a crisis was Biden's extension of the rent moratorium after the Supreme Court's deciding vote (Kavanaugh) said basically "It's unconstitutional but we'll let you wind it down".

Popular presidents ignore the constitution all the time. Unless you're arguing that FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans was constitutional. The Biden administration made clear its intent to ignore the constitution when it was searching for a way to make good on its promise to make a handout to the college educated. It's unclear as to the executive branch auditing itself and controlling its staffing is unconstitutional: the Trump administration should ignore the lower courts until a clarifying ruling comes down from the Supreme Court.

The institution which interprets the US constitution, and has the final say on its meaning is the Supreme Court. It famously okayed the camps in Korematsu so from its issuing the matter was no longer in dispute. But in 2018 Hawaii case, USSC repudiated it.

So the camps were constitutional, as affirned in Korematsu, from their inception until 2018.

The Democrats in Congress don't have the votes to impeach him though, so that indeed creates the crisis.

The Republicans in Congress may have the votes to ratify the freeze though. That resolves the issue.

Alternatively there could just be escalating contempt of court proceedings against underlings and disregard for the judiciary.

IIRC the Republicans would have to abolish the filibuster for legislation to ratify it (I presume they'd otherwise have done it already), which means that this crisis greatly increases the chances of that actually happening.

As a thought experiment, what do you guys think it would take for Republicans in congress to impeach and convict Trump?

Like, suppose all those Reddit comments are right, and Elon really is looting billions of dollars from the treasury for his personal benefit. If Trump turns a blind eye, or even worse, pardons Elon, surely that would be enough right?

At this point I don’t think anything can. If Trump turns a blind eye and pardons Elon, I believe the base will think it’s correct/legal/not a big deal. I don’t even think murder would do it; I think there would be a spin that Trump had to do it.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think if Trump supported the LGBT population, was pro-sex education, or something else very much so not socially conservative, I believe it’d do it. But then he wouldn’t be Trump, so it’s kinda a moot point.

  • -17

President Clinton established that profound moral corruption was no bar to Presidential office. President Bush II established that reasonably sound moral character was insufficient to prevent disastrous misrule. President Biden killed any possible appeal to formal rule of law, and did some dancing on the grave of the moral character question in the bargain.

There aren't really a lot of valid norms remaining upright at the moment. In 2016, Democratic candidates stumped on the policy of taxing religions they didn't like and publicly laughed at the idea of Constitutional restraint for their desires. With this last election, I note that numerous Blue Tribe commentators explicitly dismissed the actual person murdered in the attempted Trump assassination, because he was a Trump supporter and therefore fair game. Likewise, one notes the Luigi fandom. If you're worried about people endorsing murder, there's no need to speculate about hypotheticals when we've got live examples around us at this very moment; likewise for other forms of extremism.

Do... do you... you really believe Trump is a doctrinaire social conservative? Like he doesn't support abortion up til birth without apology, I guess that makes him a radical Christian nationalist or whatever the snarl word is now?

Trump's support among social conservatives is that he'll protect us from efforts to make it illegal to be socially conservative, not that he'll enact socially conservative policies. Nobody expected him to be even as socially conservative as he is, we just expected him to make sure the little sisters of the poor get left alone.

I think if Trump supported the LGBT population

He waved a rainbow flag once. Roy Cohn was his mentor. He weirdly petted Peter Thiel's hand in a meeting in 2016. Theil called Trump more recently and asked him to select Vance as VP. No one cares that Trump is fine being friends with gay guys. A journalist asked Trump which restroom a transwoman would need to use in Trump tower and he said he doesn't care.

I'm not sure if Trump "supports" them, but he doesn’t seem to be anti-gay.

Trump made a gay married guy with gay adopted kids a treasury secretary.

Trump is not anti-LGBT per se, he's just pro owning the libs, so because libs funded the cause he froze that funding.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think if Trump supported the LGBT population, was pro-sex education, or something else very much so not socially conservative, I believe it’d do it.

Those are some interestingly selected examples. Let me go grab a big drink of water and -

cough hack

... are you intentionally trying to channel Darwin levels of being wrong for the engagement, or does this mean anything?

No, I’m not, and I don’t know why you want to insult me by saying I’m not commenting in good faith.

Because I’ve looked at your profile page:

yes I’m addicted to downvotes every time I get one it’s like a bump of that sweet smoking gun and yes I’m into BDSM let me get into my St. Andrew’s real quick and then you can call me a troll until your throat hurts.

( I don’t downvote lightly, and this haven’t done so here yet.)

…..I feel like the joke went over your head.

I'm pretty sure I get the joke. What I'm interested in seeing is whether it's a joke in the 'ha ha, I'm going to act the exact opposite of this' sense, or in the 'ha ha, I'm going to be extra wounded if someone notices a pattern' sense.

If you'd rather we spend three posts getting to the point where you can even recognize the "or does this mean anything?" part of my post above, I think that illustrates a lot of why I'd comment the way I did.

Darwin never had a sense of humor, at least she's got that.

I'll respect our difference of opinion if you don't find it funny, but I chuckled.

I am 100% certain Trump would be impeached and removed if he was caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

Besides that, I'm less sure.

Define "caught". We're getting into territory where "how high on TDS do you have to be to believe that actually happened, rather than being an insane slander thought up by his enemies" would trump most sorts of evidence that could realistically be produced.

I donno, he's rubbing shoulders with a Kennedy now. Maybe some of that Chappaquiddick magic will rub off on him.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters be impeached and removed from office, OK? It's, like, incredible."

Is it really that far from precedent, though? Clinton's ATF and FBI burned a bunch of women and children to death in Waco. Obama ordered drone strikes on American citizens abroad. Cheney actually shot a man while in office. Two of those successfully ran for re-election afterwards.

And when the man Cheney shot got out of the hospital, he told the press conference, "My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with."

On the one hand, it was an accident, and it's possible that the victim contributed to it by moving too far ahead of the line of hunters too soon, and legitimately felt guilty about that.

On the other hand, it was Cheney, who you can absolutely imagine walking up to the guy he just shot and stating "If you survive this, the first thing you're going to do is apologize for getting in the way of my shot."

As long as Republicans think that Trump will get them stuff they want, he's invincible on a personal level. Like all politicians, first you have to gut the support, THEN you have to run the smear campaign. That's why Cakegate in the UK only started hitting home when conservatives realised that Boris Johnson was going all-in on lockdowns and immigration. Mind you, I think that UK voters are more invested in outward good behaviour from politicians than US ones, though I don't know how long that will last.

Enforcement is an exercise for Congress, not the courts. We have been exactly in the presumptive, possibly apocryphal, here before: “Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it”.

What crisis?

Andrew Jackson is supposed to be his favorite president.

What crisis?

Isn't "constitutional crisis" a general term where the branches contradict each other and it's not clear what to do to resolve it?

The thing is that it's pretty clear what happens here: Executive tells the judge to go pound sand, and if the case eventually ends up in front of the supreme court they will certainly write it off as nonsense.

I don't see how this has any teeth.

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