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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Yeah the exact meaning here is really nuanced in a way that most people struggle with and it's not fully fleshed out yet either. Courts are not completely blind, there is flexibility for basic human reasoning and interpretation built into them but they are also majorly concerned with procedure.

A (highly simplified) way to explain what will happen is that the courts essentially go "Ok Trump show us what steps you've taken to help to facilitate his return and what barriers prevent you from achieving that goal", the Trump admin responds "We've done X, Y, Z, and have A, B, C barriers", the judges use their sense to determine how serious that response is and if they appear to be acting in good intentions to follow the order and rule accordingly.

As an example, let's say someone (idk John) has a restraining order on him for domestic violence and he has a stay away provision of 100 yards from Jane. However unknown to John, him and Jane both shop at the same grocery store. This happens sometimes and the restraining order typically accounts for it. As long as John takes action to leave immediately and not engage (that includes not finishing his shopping/pumping gas/whatever) then normally a judge wouldn't really punish for that, they know mistakes happen.

However let's say the court received legally admissable evidence of phone records where John messaged his friend Joe "Hah, I just saw Jane at the grocery store. I think I'll keep going there and maybe she'll see me and freak". The judge can take that into consideration and say "John, you violated your order. This was not incidental, you knew it would happen and continued to shop there for that reason".

Now not all evidence is so explicit as John admitting to it himself in text. It could be just testimony from Joe, it could be certain weird actions John took like always hanging around the store on the days and times Jane normally went shopping, whatever. Or maybe John didn't leave immediately and even worse went up to Jane to talk, which is now breaching the order with intent. Quite a few people end up violating restraining orders (to them "unfairly") because an accidental encounter was turned into an intentional breach by their choice to not disengage and make distance. Whatever it is, the judges take context into account.