Summary
Legal experts warn of a looming constitutional crisis after JD Vance suggested judges lack authority over Trump’s “legitimate power.”
His remarks follow a federal judge’s ruling blocking Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data.
Musk also called for the judge’s impeachment, fueling concerns the administration may ignore court orders.
Scholars argue this undermines judicial authority and could trigger a systemic breakdown, but with Republicans controlling Congress, impeachment as a remedy appears unlikely.
Would be nice but congress is Republican controlled and for any court related stuff it could just go up to the supreme Court and be ruled Trump’s way. Or just flat out ignored cause who is gonna stop him if he just ignores court rulings.
Ideally, the Dems should’ve pushed the security out of the way and physically removed the DOGE team and their hardware and software. Instead they performatively argued with a single private security guy blocking the doors. The Dems are already capitulating talking about letting the “blue dogs” vote with the GOP.
I’d like to see a large amount of Dems in congress and in other high positions to take direct action, get arrested, and jailed. I think this would force hard conversations in the media about what’s going on, and courts and judges to more or less definitively rule.
But the Constitution! Some people are having trouble coming to terms with the fact that our systems have allowed this takeover to happen and the path to get out of this is narrowing rapidly. I’d be surprised if 3 years from now we even recognize the US as it once was.
Remember when Republicans carried those vest pocket editions of the Constitution? They were keeping it at the ready for the time they could wipe their asses with it.
They haven’t already?
The real interesting question to me is how do you even really prevent something like this from happening? If every elected official decides the law doesn’t matter who is left to enforce it on them? I feel like the only real options are the military stepping in when bad things are happening but that’s a very slippery slope to normalize that or having powerful unions that can actually lead general strikes when these kinds of things happen. But atleast in the US unions have been beaten down so much that that isn’t really an option so what is left really?
We are. There is an amendment for this. Its a funny one known as the second. But good luck with that, especially if the military is going along with it.
The first ammendment is the opposition to authoritarianism - not the second.
Both are. Dudes just came from a monarchy.
I think we have a couple of bad options
It’s like a rock and a hard place…
By the end of 2025 the Us will be a christofacist theocracy if the non cult member don’t start a resistance really soon and yes that mean violence and probably a civil war but no peaceful way will stop them now
The congress and the Courts don’t matter. They don’t have the actual physical power to enforce anything. The ones who enforce are the police and the army. That is the difference between constitutional states of laws and authoritarian regimes. Which system do the people with guns protect. And the people with guns receive their orders from the President and lower hierarchies of the executive branch.
So either the people with guns obey their superiors and abolish the division of power, or they disobey their direct orders and remove the authoritarian upstarts from power. If they choose to enact an authoritarian regime instead of removing the authoritarians from power, the only way out is resistance. Resistance against the people giving the orders and resistance against the people enforcing the orders.
While police are generally ‘executive’ they are often supposed to take orders directly from the courts. Most warrants begin with phrasing in this manner: “[any] peace officer shall arrest…” Some states also allow judges to directly order peace officers to make arrests for offense committed in the judge’s presence without a warrant being drawn up first. Even if their boss is telling them to not do it, they should ignore the unlawful orders and get along with the handcuffing, but it won’t ever happen.
Just like how trump was soft-handed in every courtroom for the last four years, I can’t imagine any judge right now ordering his appearance at court or an arrest. Anyone with half a brain knows that he would ignore it, and it would go to the supreme court and they would rubber stamp whatever he had done as being not subject to the law because he was ‘acting in the presidential capacity.’
I’m fully aware of the makeup of the Senate and the “it’s ok if it’s an official act, you can have little crime, as a treat” ruling by SOTUS. Our government is a house of cards built on a “gentleman’s agreement” to generally not be a dick.
I’m just sick of it already. There’s a bird flu coming and the CDC cannot warn us about it and likely won’t be rolling out vaccines. There will only be lockdowns in the Blue states. Which will allow the strain to become more virulent in carrier populations in Red states. Tariffs are going to fuck over small businesses allowing for more venture capital buyouts and to top it all off Elon is capturing as much data as his grubby little paws can grasp.
I don’t want to make this comment any longer as it’ll fuck up the thread for everyone else, but there’s resources in the comment below if any of y’all would like
https://lemmy.world/comment/14977955