Supreme Court lets Trump fire FTC Democrat despite 90-year-old precedent
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Why do you think republican states are shoving through redistricting maps that add multiple republican-lock districts? They intend to flood the House with enough new republican members to keep their majority. They know they’re vulnerable in the midterms (which, frankly, I’m still not convinced will happen) so they’re doing everything they can to keep that majority.
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Even now for the last election, Harris was making big public promises to appoint Republicans to important positions in her administration. And we still see no change. The Democratic party just responds, always letting right wingnuts and business interests define the bounds of all issues and arguments. They react more or less strongly, but aren't assertive and proactive. There is no big plan, or even a concept of one. Remember that "project 2029" theater from a couple of months ago that was so super serious? Neither does anyone else.
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I mean, if you load a gun and pass it back and forth between a person who is principled and doesn't want to shoot anyone with it, and someone who is only too happy to murder people if you give them the means... well, do we need to bluntly word it as "guess who does the shooting?"
The current regime doesn't need to care if they rule forever, when the current rulings really only fit one moral compass (which isn't to say Democrats are all or even mostly principled angels, there are definitely those who will happily use tools like secret police if handed them), and any degree in which they are used in the future to try to build anything back up... well, it's pretty easy to destroy 100+ years of work in a few months, if there are no rules stopping demolition.
Much of the worst of what's been done and being done can't simply be "undone" with the stroke of a pen, and building back from it would require majorities or even super majorities, possibly even constitutional amendments at this point. I don't think people understand just how horrifically destructive some of this is, particularly in terms of the way Supreme Court rulings like this will carry forward with little recourse. "Just don't use them" doesn't work when one side is willing to sink that low, every time it can.
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Changing the structure of the government will require abandoning the same moral high ground the Republicans have.
Enlightened Centrism will fight harder against that (even in internet comment threads and social media as has been evidenced lately) than they ever will against fascism, and if they won't, their corporate backers running their campaign infrastructure will.
The fact that during and after 2026 election integrity officers will be paid to permanently keep Democratic electoral margins between 40 and 49 percent by massaging the numbers, even if the lack of landslide victories provokes the right wing voters further, shouldn't be lost on anyone going forward when debating when to plan for abandoning the playing field.
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You do have to stockpile connections and resources in case you're punished for doing so, years in advance, before choosing carefully when to abandon the moral high ground at the moment corruption grinds a despotic or authoritarian administration to a halt.
Much of that abandonment of moral high ground involves recognition that hypocrisy is a power flex instead of a 'gotcha' and that a lot of necessary actions (such as imprisoning federal officials for state crimes and ignoring SCOTUS not merely refusing to cooperate) are going to look like making the situation worse in the early stages of resistance.
Admittedly the existence of social media mucks the timing up on this severely and makes it even more uncertain. By 'this' I mean California and New York would both would have to make the first move and withhold federal tax revenue with the appropriate timing to cause the most pain to federal government operations, a supercharged version of a government shutdown. The timing to do that with a list of Progressive and pro-democratic demands, including Constitutional Convention votes guaranteed in California and New York's favor, is likely between 2030 and 2032.
I doubt anyone will realize this is well and truly the path forward until after ActBlue, Planned Parenthood, and Media Matters are truly dead along with public broadcasting and even most of the AP.
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Which is exactly what many of that 40% you reference (who happen to own, maybe, 80% of the guns) have been desperately hoping for since at least the 1980s. Seriously.
And, therein, is the problem. Any civil-war-like actions taken by people wanting to restore american democracy and the constitution are very likely going to run headlong into that heavily-armed (and supported by the emperor) 40% who fucking want an excuse to
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I get that. But americans have been gently trained over a long period of time to not take one bit of interest in politics, or to pay attention to anything other than work and play.
They’ve had the message that “government is broken” hammered into their heads since at least the Reagan era, and they’ve learned/been taught to simply not care. Just go to work, buy a truck, and blame all your (imagined) problems on liberals. And let the mouthy republican fix it for you while you’re at work.
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I might argue that Bush v. Gore was the lawless opinion that set a whole bunch of dominos in motion (including the GOP takeover of SCOTUS).
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Personally I'm worried about other countries attempting to follow in MAGA's footsteps and collectively make every situation MAGA had professed to fix even worse.
Canada hasn't taken the US's actions seriously enough to nullify it's conservative right to rule. This is going to lead it right down the path of its Conservative flank trying to quietly coordinate with MAGA to speedrun some version of what is happening to the US democracy.
The UK's Labor Party is about to pull a Biden but worse instead of properly securing their legal and culture war holds by punishing the Conservative Party for Brexit entirely. That Brexit was a catastrophe will be conveniently ignored like most of the US judicial precedent, and eventually a Conservative Party will attempt to do what the federal government is doing to US websites and rewrite history by dustbinning inconvenient political history and then attacking The Internet Archive and Wikipedia globally now that US conservatives successfully pressured Google to ditch website caching.
Japan looks like a high trust, collectivist, traditionally conservative society that necessarily needs immigration to not cease to exist by 2050 but has it's own MAJA party increasing in prominence which as we've seen is always a vote to burn down the government in favor of Russia's governing systems.
The EU still hasn't addressed the AfD or similar right wing groups and despite how chaotic and fascist France can appear to be, may collectively narrowly avoid conservative corruption and kick out Hungary from NATO and the EU if Orban keeps being the Trump Administration wet dream.
I'm less certain about other areas of the globe because the fact of the matter is in general 20-50 years no matter how carefully China tries to rebuild the globalization the US abandoned they are going to be surrounded by fascist governments that think worse than they do.
The UK's Labor Party is about to pull a Biden but worse instead of properly securing their legal and culture war holds by punishing the Conservative Party for Brexit entirely. That Brexit was a catastrophe will be conveniently ignored like most of the US judicial precedent, and eventually a Conservative Party will attempt to do what the federal government is doing to US websites and rewrite history by dustbinning inconvenient political history and then attacking The Internet Archive and Wikipedia globally now that US conservatives successfully pressured Google to ditch website caching.
Japan looks like a high trust, collectivist, traditionally conservative society that necessarily needs immigration to not cease to exist by 2050 but has it's own MAJA party increasing in prominence which as we've seen is always a vote to burn down the government in favor of Russia's governing systems.
The EU still hasn't addressed the AfD or similar right wing groups and despite how chaotic and fascist France can appear to be, may collectively narrowly avoid conservative corruption and kick out Hungary from NATO and the EU if Orban keeps being the Trump Administration wet dream.
I'm less certain about other areas of the globe because the fact of the matter is in general 20-50 years no matter how carefully China tries to rebuild the globalization the US abandoned they are going to be surrounded by fascist governments that think worse than they do.
You then have the problem that the only thing a fascist-conservative government hates more than liberals is a bigger fascist-conservative government neighbor telling them what to do (rules for me and not for thee is bad enough with Democratic Administrations in realpolitik but causes wars without any liberal moderating influences)
If the US can ignore the Constitution and play games around precedent then the whole world is going to ignore the U.N.
What will happen in the midst of all of this if there's no opposition to fascists other than other fascists will be the rise of organzied crime families that historically can and always have played the game better than fascist governments as the fascists succumb slowly to the corruption inherent to the government ideology. It's hard to say if a crime family with tech know-how can outmaneuver a corrupt fascist government.
I suspect trade agreements between Democratic governments that remain and can prop up some version of proper globalism will remain the holy grail to preserving themselves against this wave so long as they can prop up their middle class and small business international access. That would ward off a lot of these predictions on top of worldwide cultural variances in the Overton Window (non-US versions of the liberal and conservative party platforms)
I also suspect that without strong US and China-independent trade agreements, being multi-polar societies will not necessarily save a country from partisan gridlock fuelling more desires to suicidally imitate the US.
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The best thing you can do about that is get involved in the primaries. Vote for candidates that are who understand that human rights are to be fought for, not negotiated over. Or call them, tell them not to compromise with the enemy, to concede nothing to these craven fascists, that they should not reach the aisle to a hand that does not believe in democracy.
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It depends on the Dem that wins.
If you're hoping it's a Progressive like Mamdani, chances are likely they will arrest the entire SCOTUS panel, because what choice will they honestly have? Padding the court will take too long and no sane Progressive will repeat Biden and Obama's mistakes even if they have to abandon the moral high ground. Look for the GOP to be branded a domestic terrorist organization at this point because freezing and reappropriating their funds to fix their corruption will be more important to move faster than they can react on over social media or any other sore losers' reaction.
If it's an Enlightened Centrist then you will get another Biden who will promptly fall to J.D. Vance's successor for 8-12 years after a short reprieve of four years and a total failure to repeal tariffs and attempt to even begin rebuilding foreign trade or tax the wealthy (including retroactively for the years they funded the Trump Administration and GOP campaign/policy arms)
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LDA, your assessment is very astute. Definitely need to get rid of all of these center and right-wing folks or heaven forbid their ideas take root and spread.
I especially love how you consider anything right of center dystopian and fascist. I assume you consider anything that one would believe that is different from your view as such as well.
Just going to say, best of luck, but I believe there are lot of folks waking up to smell the coffee and realizing the ideas you and your friends have are at best completely illogical and at worst dangerous enough to stay far away from.
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I can't wait for the next Dem to be elected President and go through cleaning house of ever Repug and seeing how these idiots of the court start contradicting themselves in their rulings.
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Every elected President should be able to fully choose the officers and agency heads who are exercising his delegated power in order to implement the policies chosen by the voters.
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I mean, the precedent that the Constitutional Convention is no longer a prerequisite to change the US Constitution is right around the corner. At some point someone says 'fuck you all, I have altered the Constitution, pray I do not alter it further' and that's not a partisan take. Either side is justified in doing this now specifically because MAGA pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed since losing the American Civil War as the Confederacy and Southern Democrats.
As soon as MAGA loses power either due to the opposition or their own corruption, and regardless of whether that loss of power is 'legal' you're staring down the formation of a New American Government that is necessarily going to cherry pick what precedents it will abide by when discussing a new Constitutional Convention that likely won't follow the conventions of the previous ones.
The only open question is what sacrifices are written in stone to get to that stage and what the blast radius is for other mature democracies facing their own MAGA imitators trying to speedrun the last century of American Conservative political maneuvering.
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Think Scott Walker and Wisconsin. He had a ton of power till a dem was elected and the state legislature quickly drafted laws outlawing what he did and then he signed them right before his term was up.
I fully expect that to happen here.
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Never have I been more thankful for Australia's system of (what I used to think was ridiculous) compulsory voting.
It's a paltry fine if you don't vote (something like AUD $50) and they can't force you to actually cast a vote - we have comparatively high 'donkey vote' numbers (deliberately invalid votes) - but it means we always have very, very, very high rates of voter participation and turnout - around 90%. https://www.aec.gov.au/election/fe25/participation-rates.htm
(Lots of voting options - including early voting and postal votes - also helps with turnout.)
Our various electoral commissions - state and federal - are also independent bodies that organise and run the elections, including setting electorate numbers and boundaries. So no gerrymandering shenanigans.
It's not perfect, of course, no system every could be - but it means we usually get a centrist, moderate government, often with a few fringe voices in the Senate (who do sometimes wield outsized power) - making it much more difficult for the fringes to take over.
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That's a myth the NRA cooked up in the 1970s. The real purpose of the 2nd amendment was to put down insurrections and rebellions on behalf of the government. Hence the first clause of that amendment about a militia, that the Supreme Court also wiped away in their 2008 ruling.
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Also it's not like this court would favour a democrat in the same way anyway
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Is it really "extra-judicial" to ignore the court if the Supreme Court is ignoring the plain text of the law in its rulings?
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Actually, overturning this would strengthen the separation of powers. It would confirm that Congress does not have the power to limit the president’s Article II authority to remove executive officials.
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The plain text of the law is not at question here. Whether it is at odds with the Constitution is the question.
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A lot of this is because spineless democrats refused to go after corrupt schmucks like Justice Alito. They allowed the fascism to fester and flourish in the name of “reaching across the aisle”.
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Ah, a common mishearing. They actually said they'd respect presidents. (And read "respect" as "bow down to")
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Whether it is a regular law, or the "supreme law of the land" does not matter. They've been ignoring the plain text of both to get the result they want.
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And protest in the meantime, and participate in strikes if they ever start.
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I think that’s why they’re not ruling on these things formally but abusing the emergency docket. It’s not just that Roberts probably isn’t quite willing to embrace being the type of corrupt partisan the founders warned us about but that he doesn’t want it on the books if Trump drops dead or the Republicans lose power. If that happens, he can just be like “we finally got through our inboxes and alphabetizing the filing cabinets and, whoops, it’s clear that Madame President can’t tell the Trump nominees at the independent agencies to do anything”. That’s similar to what he did with the Trump immunity ruling where they didn’t rule that the president is fully above the law but kept the power to decide so they could ensure it’s not granted to Democrats.
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That's not fair. Canadians don't expect the Prime Minister/government to solve difficult issues with the wave of a magic wand -- they expect the issues to be solved with the stroke of a magic pen.
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Where did all these half-baked ideologues, that don't even understand the US Constitution as well as a typical Canadian, suddenly pop up from to offer their quarter-baked, misinformed insights into the Constitution and the structure of government?
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This isn't a concern to me, because if a Republican judge is left in place that can actually do this, or enough of a Republican Congress tries to do this, the legislation will promptly be used to wipe the incoming Administration's ass (regardless of how legally the administration comes into power) and it might be used as justification to imprison the officials who try to do this.
What we 'expect' about that particular incident only matters insomuch as it is the next step in chaos, not something a theoretical President who isn't neoliberal or neoconservative minded will mind in terms of precedent or rule of law. The key point of interest at that point is the timing and other externalities to that eventuality, not whether the incoming Administration will give a damn what the precedent was prior until it feels things are stable (which will in all likelihood mean no more billionaires in the country and the assets frozen of the ones who try to leave)
Any laws ignored and steps to fix the damage MAGA and SCOTUS have done are going to look a lot like making US political instability worse until most of the world is proven wrong.
We're already in the banana republic stage, what matters is the back and forth particulars as to how fast the Enlightened Centrist portion of the population that has been passively enabling corporate and Christian Nationalist corruption up to this point is dragged kicking and screaming to the Progressive point of view (e.g. the destruction of Democratic party leadership around AIPAC and Third Way Centrism, or hijacking of the party infrastructure as a stepping stone to getting ready to confront the GOP).
I don't necessarily suspect the Progressives will get such a resounding victory that MAGA style conservatives, including the downvoted in this thread, are permanently evicted from social media for a generation, but seeing them try will be morbidly entertaining whether they succeed or not. The Enlightened Centrists have for the most part professed a passive preference for the fascism over actually pushing through democratic socialist reforms. That needs to be addressed, and the reality of that is dependent on the GOP continuing to intentionally 'misread its mandate'.
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We're fucked. Either the descent into Fascism continues or the midterms are so overwhelmingly blue that impeachments become achievable in which Trump absolutely will order the killing to start and Hesgeth will gleefully try to carry it out.
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Sorry that accurately describing your favorite fascists upsets you so.
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