Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)B

booly

@ booly @sh.itjust.works

Posts
1
Comments
201
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Maryland Sen. Van Hollen says he finally met with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia

    Jump

  • shows how you know this,

    Ok, where to begin. I'm a lawyer with decades of experience, including with the occasional case that involves the government. I know how to read a case and follow the news from an informed perspective, and I recognize the individual traits/characteristics/background of the judges involved. There's not one place to read it, but let's try.

    Here's a litigation tracker that updates on all the big lawsuits trying to rein in Trump's lawlessness:

    https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/

    CTRL+F "Abrego Garcia" for the rundown of Kilmar's case. "Update 5" describes the appellate court's decision not to stay the district court's order to "facilitate and effectuate," and contains a link to the opinion, which includes Judge Wilkinson's concurrence that "facilitate" is a legal order but "effectuate" might exceed the court's power to order the government to do specific things in foreign policy matters. The Supreme Court agreed that "facilitate" was a lawful order, but told the district court to make sure it doesn't overstep by ordering "effectuation" in a way that infringes on the President's constitutional powers.

    Judge Wilkinson is a Reagan appointee who is widely regarded as a superstar in the Republican party, in Federalist Society circles. He was an influential thinker and jurist on conservative causes, and clerking for him as a first job out of law school is a marker of an up and coming conservative lawyer superstar. Many of those clerks went on to clerk for Scalia, Roberts, etc. Clerking for him remains a fairly prominent part of the pipeline for future Republican judges and politicians.

    Yesterday, he wrote the majority opinion for the Fourth Circuit that makes very clear that the government's position is "shocking" and a threat to "the foundation of our constitutional order."

    The work continues. This is just one case. All the other cases will have different results, but Trump isn't going to win all of them, and each Trump loss draws blood, while his lack of focus means that he'll continue to make unforced errors while opening new fronts to fight on: Gulf of Mexico, Greenland, Tariffs, picking a fight with the chair of the Federal Reserve, flip flopping on which federal programs or contracts to cut, all the different mistakes in administration, etc.

    I'm not on board with doomerism or even accelerationism. I think there's still a fight to be had in the legal arena, and I still think our side can win there. Watching how the cases are playing out confirms that the other side believes it, too. Otherwise, why would they be fighting this hard?

  • ‘We Are All Afraid’: Republican Senator Admits Colleagues Are Terrified of Being Punished for Criticizing Trump

    Jump

  • Alaska is just weird, and I wouldn't attribute too much in national electoral trends to that specific state. It now has an instant runoff general election after a top-4 jungle primary, which makes the craziest candidates less viable. Sarah Palin is very much a Trumpist, but couldn't win a statewide election in 2022 (enough Republicans in the state hate her that they voted for Begich first, then flipped to the Democrat or didn't vote once Begich dropped out in the instant runoff).

    It'd be hard to properly analyze a hypothetical about Murkowski running for reelection amidst a Trump attack campaign and an endorsement of a more Trumpist opponent, but I wouldn't discount her chances even in that environment. Especially if she does succeed in forming a mini caucus with other Republican Senators that fight to preserve legislative power to check the Presidency.

  • Weather Service Prepares for ‘Degraded Operations’ Amid Trump Cuts

    Jump

  • It's not just free weather reports, either. It's weather reports at all! The paid services all rely on the public data with their own layers of analysis built on that foundation. If the foundation crumbles, the expensive stuff built on top of that will break, too.

  • US senator says El Salvador denied request to meet Kilmar Ábrego García

    Jump

  • Maryland Sen. Van Hollen says he finally met with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia

    Jump

  • That's why I'm in these threads saying it's worth it to fight this out in every avenue. In the courts, in the legislatures, in the media, on social media, in the streets.

    Trump claimed to be able to deport people without courts being able to review. The Supreme Court rejected that view, and now the Trump administration has to spend the effort defending its actions in court.

    Under tough questioning by a judge in a case aggressively litigated by Kilmar's family, Trump's lawyers then acknowledged an administrative error was made and that Kilmar shouldn't have been deported. They fired the first lawyer to concede it, but the Solicitor General conceded it, too, and the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump has to help get him back.

    Sen. Van Hollen went to El Salvador to meet with him. Many comments online, especially here on Lemmy, openly commented that it was futile and that Kilmar was dead. But Sen Van Hollen doesn't give up that easily, showed up in country and was turned away. Then he stayed and fought for access, and was able to meet with him and ensure that he was healthy and safe.

    Meanwhile, the Reagan appointee on the appellate court, Judge Wilkinson, has published a scathing ruling that the Trump administration owes the courts and Kilmar Abrego Garcia much more. Note that his concurring opinion last time around essentially became adopted as the 9-0 Supreme Court opinion.

    There's cynicism all around, but most of what has already happened is the type of stuff that the cynical pessimists would've never expected to happen in this case.

    The brazen lawlessness of the Trump administration is currently backfiring, and now things are escalating into full blown discovery into the ICE/DHS deportation decisions,

    The message is that this fight is still worth fighting. Every little step matters.

    And when we force these issues into the court for plainclothes arrests, arbitrary revocation of student visas or other authorizations to be in the country, we force the Trump administration to actually say what they're doing, to be scrutinized and analyzed.

    The lawsuits are bringing transparency and may still bring results, so quit with the doomerism. Even if we don't win every fight, the struggle continues, and we force the other side to expend their resources and effort in a way that makes it harder for them to accomplish their agenda.

    Donate to the nonprofits fighting for this stuff. Volunteer your time. This fight is worth fighting.

  • ‘We Are All Afraid’: Republican Senator Admits Colleagues Are Terrified of Being Punished for Criticizing Trump

    Jump

  • they can't use the threat of a primary against her

    She lost the 2010 primary during the height of the Tea Party movement, ran a campaign to have people vote for her as a write in candidate, and won as a write in.

    In the end, the problem is that her vote doesn't actually matter this cycle, at least not by itself. In order to flex any muscle she'd need to actually persuade some colleagues to stand up to Trump. At this point she's more of a Republican Fetterman than a Republican Sinema/Manchin.

  • Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case

    Jump

  • Ha I should be clear, in my normal day to day responsibilities I mainly sue over money, which tends not to involve political considerations at all. That being said, the arbitrary way that the Trump admin has canceled contracts, yanked grants, canceled things that others have had to rush in and fill the vacuum on (including spending their own money), I might very well end up with a politically charged case at some point.

    And maybe there's something to be said to committing some time or effort or money to public interest and public impact litigation for the types of cases not typically in my wheelhouse.

  • Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case

    Jump

  • Exactly. I'm gonna do the lawful good thing on my end, and work my hardest to protect the actual institutions that still have power to provide some checks on the government currently in the hands of a wannabe dictator.

  • Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case

    Jump

  • Authoritarianism only stays strong when people don't do the most basic of things to oppose it.

    Yeah, I subscribe to the Green Lantern/Tinkerbell theory of authoritarianism: the dictator only has power as long as people believe it. So skepticism of claims of power become self fulfilling, and belief in dictator power also becomes self fulfilling.

    So don't comply in advance. Make them work for every inch, even on things that seem inevitable. Every delay you cause to their agenda buys someone else a reprieve.

  • Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case

    Jump

  • In reality, it will take all of us doing different things to resist, and hopefully, that collective effort over time will be enough. It will still suck in the meantime.

    Exactly this.

    I'm a licensed attorney and I sue the government from time to time. I still think I can do that.

    I've always known that the courts have limited power to reign in the President, especially in the modern era where American political parties have strengthened to the point where there's very little internal party resistance to the President's agenda (contrast to earlier eras when a Speaker of the House might have tanked the same-party President's agenda).

    But the point of suing and getting the court orders is still important for the "lawful good" types to lay as much groundwork as possible for us to try our best to preserve the rule of law. If it gets frayed or bent in places, we still fight within that framework the best we can, knowing full well that in a vacuum where the law no longer constrains the powerful, that situation legitimizes any movement to do things in a "chaotic good" kind of way, from nonviolent civil disobedience to destructive acts to outright violence.

    Those of us who are lawyers (and judges and even elected politicians) have our lane, at least for now, to try our best to maintain accountability within the law. If the law can't keep up, then we should still be satisfied that we tried our best to keep it within that lawful framework, because losing on that front still has the silver lining of increasing the popular will and support for extra-legal options. If they sidestep the restrictions of the law, then they'll find themselves outside the protections of the law. And maybe they have some confidence in their odds in a "might makes right" situation, but their current power structures still depend heavily on the law (even basic things like whether a dollar is legal tender or whether a piece of paper says you own something valuable).

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • No, even if tuition and books are free, financial aid still needs to help full time students have food to eat and have a place to live and ordinary day to day expenses. In many places, the aid on room and board is much more money than aid on tuition and fees.

    And community colleges tend not to have their own dorms or anything like that, so it comes in the form of a monthly payment that helps the student pay their rent. That's an incentive for fraud.

  • Judge says US government may have 'acted in bad faith' as he weighs contempt over deportation order

    Jump

  • Getting close. Over the weekend the Trump admin might have crossed the line in Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. They might try to weasel out of the Supreme Court's order by saying they're following it the best they can, but Trump is also the type of person who seems incapable of that nuance, and might basically force that showdown with the Supreme Court.

  • Fintech founder charged with fraud after 'AI' shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines | TechCrunch

    Jump

  • Yeah, investing in a company is investing in the whole company and all of its projects. Lies about your company are only fraud when the lies rise to the level of making a material difference to how a typical investor would value that company. If the lies are about a very minor percentage of revenue or profit, then it's not gonna rise to the level of securities fraud.

  • What's your superpower?

    Jump

  • I have a watered down version of this, but I'm a lawyer so it's very very valuable. If I get a question I might not know the answer to, if I've read it somewhere I usually know roughly where to go back to get it. And since lawyers mostly look things up instead of trying to memorize everything, a powerful "indexing" memory is valuable in the profession. At least in my practice.

  • 33 at the end of the month. Kill me.

    Jump

  • 1987: Black Monday

    That one didn't really matter that much to regular Americans. Less than a third of Americans owned stock back then, and that crash didn't have an obvious cause from actual economic fundamentals. And the Fed managed to contain the liquidity crisis, as your linked Wikipedia page describes, so that the broader economy was largely unaffected.

    Recessions matter. Stock market crashes only matter when they are caused by, or are the cause of, an actual recession in the real world.

  • Judge says US government may have 'acted in bad faith' as he weighs contempt over deportation order

    Jump

  • Sure, I get if the "good side" were to be as cavalier with the law as trump is, the entire thing falls apart even faster. But I have no doubt in my mind the "rule of law" in the USA is over.

    I'm not willing to make that call, yet. It's on life support, with the doctor in charge coyly hinting at whether he's going to finish it off himself, but it hasn't happened yet.

    And in this case, the Supreme Court bailed out the President. They went ahead and said all 9 justices disagree on whether the courts have the power to review this dispute (rejecting the most extreme and most unaccountable theory of executive power), but said that the proper forum is in Texas, not in DC. So this DC judge who was weighing contempt was stripped of jurisdiction to do so.

    That's not a constitutional crisis, which is what I'm very concerned about being that uncrossable line, but it is still separately a bad result.

    These are nuanced distinctions, and I don't want to make it seem like I'm only watching out for a constitutional crisis and ignoring all the other ways that Trump is hurting the rule of law, but I think that violating court orders is a special kind of harm that needs to be viewed as its own especially dangerous thing.

  • Judge says US government may have 'acted in bad faith' as he weighs contempt over deportation order

    Jump

  • There's not a goal post being moved. I'm describing now where the line has always been for a constitutional crisis: a judicial contempt order that gets disregarded by the executive branch. And the path to that is basically:

    1. The executive branch does something illegal.
    2. Someone sues in court.
    3. The court rules that action to be illegal.
    4. The executive branch doesn't obey the court order.
    5. The court orders the executive branch to show cause why contempt should not issue.
    6. The court finds the executive branch officials to be in contempt and orders sanctions (aka a punishment).
    7. The executive branch disregards that punishment and refuses to enforce it or obey it.

    Steps 1 through 3 are pretty routine, and happen all the time.

    And there are off ramps that avoid that constitutional crisis. Maybe it's a case where the court's ruling gets overruled on appeal. Maybe the court finds that it doesn't have jurisdiction to rule on that issue. Maybe the executive branch backs down. One of those has happened so far in all of the cases that have ended.

    It's the cases that are still active where things might go off the rails. This particular Salvadorean deportation case has made it further than any other (past the fifth step I described above) and is the one where DOJ has suspended its own lawyer for admitting that he didn't have the answers the judge was looking for. In a closely related case, DOJ has suspended its own lawyer for admitting personal frustration with his client (that is, ICE/DHS). These are concerning and worth pushing back on at every turn, and to sound the alarms when that line is actually crossed.

    This defeatist attitude, that Trump has already won and is unaccountable, is counterproductive. We're still busy fighting, and we can still win because we haven't lost yet.

  • Judge says US government may have 'acted in bad faith' as he weighs contempt over deportation order

    Jump

  • No, and this is really important.

    Intentionally disobeying court orders is a red line, in a way that merely breaking the law isn't.

    If you argue that the Trump administration has already crossed that red line several times, and people start believing it, it carries less force when they actually do cross it. It's a big deal, and the mere fact that his administration is arguing that they haven't crossed it (yet) is important for a few reasons:

    • The rank and file federal employees don't yet feel that they have the precedent to follow executive branch orders that would violate court orders.
    • The political actors aligned with Trump don't yet feel emboldened enough to do the same, if Trump hasn't done it first.
    • The resistance can point to that specific act, of crossing the red line, as a position to fight on, for both recruiting fence sitters and their effort to active resistance (and justification for no longer fitting themselves purely within the bounds of the law).
    • On the other hand, crying wolf about the red line before it is crossed confuses those fence sitters (hyper technical arguments about whether and how the Trump administration broke the law don't carry the day) and makes it less politically powerful when that line is crossed.

    So long as the Trump admin still pretends to care about the law, there's still a lane for lawsuits and litigation as active resistance. If the Trump administration starts openly flouting court orders, which has not happened yet, that opens up a new chapter.

    Trump is pushing limits, but is still being really careful about what is technically legal. If they stop tip toeing around that line, then the resistance is clear to escalate into technically illegal conduct, too, while still aiming for a return of the rule of law.

    Muddying the waters by arguing that the line has already been crossed is misreading where we are in this resistance movement.

    And disclosure: I'm a lawyer and I have filed things in court against the government, so I have a vested professional and personal interest in believing that what happens in court still matters. But I also have an above average understanding of exactly what the constitutional and statutory powers of the presidency are, and what kind of actions would actually threaten the continued viability of our constitutional government.

  • Judge says US government may have 'acted in bad faith' as he weighs contempt over deportation order

    Jump

  • No, it hasn't.

    It's been threatened several times, and there's been plenty of arguments by Trump's DOJ that they didn't actually violate the text of orders (including in this case, where the judge didn't include in the written order to return flights that have already left U.S. airspace), or that any violations were inadvertent and not intentional, but this is the first case that is dealing with the question of whether the administration intentionally violated a court order.

    The judge is taking the steps to learn the facts here, and the shocking thing is that DOJ just put the main attorney on administrative leave (and pulled him off this case) for conceding obvious things in open court. Despite just promoting him to his position the week before.