A federal judge found probable cause that the Trump administration acted with contempt of court in violating his order to immediately halt deportations of Venezuelans suspected of being gang members.
US District Judge James Boasberg issued an order Wednesday saying that officials acted in “willful disregard” of his verbal order on March 15 to turn around planes carrying Venezuelans now held in a notorious prison in El Salvador. Boasberg said at a court hearing on April 3 that “the government acted in bad faith throughout that day.”
This is Congress’ and the SCOTUS’ chance, right here. This is it. This is what they need to reign in the POTUS. Will they rise to the occasion…? Most likely not.
I don’t know if I can comfortably say “most likely,” but I’m not optimistic about that possibility. Since Trump won, it’s been my position that nobody’s coming to save us working class peons. We will not get a group of Avengers striking from the outside or a lone Adam Jensen fighting from within.
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).
Nice Jensen drop!