I think it might have slowed somebody else. But when you take over the payments and refuse to pay the judges, who knows what they'll do. But mostly, I think that it will slow Democrats and not Republicans.
But also, the refusal to regulate and just refuse to pay Federal employees or contractors could do more damage than anyone envisioned.
Apparently there is a court order re: DOGE and the Treasury systems, so we may be about to find out.
Mostly it's wishful thinking. Chevron was struck down not because the Sinister Six had principles about judicial scrutiny, but because they want to be able to thwart Democratic regulations only, at their own discretion. That said, it might take cases a little longer to resolve because judges who want to let some Republican action stand can't just say "Chevron, case closed."
On the original point, I don't think it's so clear-cut the Supreme Court will bless what he's doing. There was an interesting analysis on Bluesky I can't find anymore which said the worst four of the six are indeed Fox News-brain-poisoned conspiracists who are all in for Trump, but while Roberts and Barrett are just as gung-ho for right-wing policy, Roberts wants to maximize his own power (hence the immunity decision that was so vague and complicated as to make it impossible to extrapolate to a future case without the Court weighing in again) while Barrett hates Trump personally and does not want him to be a dictator.
What happens if the Court rules against Trump and he continues to ignore them (note there is already ignoring going on, as lower courts has enjoined payment freezes of all kinds in broad language & nothing frozen has turned back on) is of course also scary to think about.
Loper Bright as being helpful is complete wishful thinking. Chevron deference only applied to actions that were in accordance with a reasonable interpretation of statute. Anything we're reacting to now is way, way outside Chevron deference, so more scope for the courts to ignorantly micromanage reasonable agency actions doesn't do any good at all.
Whether it is a "constitutional" crisis or not, the penchant for bald-faced lying is something I think is not accounted for in these types of analysis. Courts do not have magic insight into what is actually going on inside the government.
At the end of the day the only remedy for a president behaving in an unconstitutional manner is impeachment, and once McConnell decided to not push for removal after J6 it's abundantly clear that there's nothing he could do which would result in Republicans removing him from office, so he can do whatever he wants with no regard for the law. The post-J6 impeachment was the constitutional crisis.
(Not nothing, of course, if he came out in favor of a 1% tax increase on rich people or in favor of abortion then Republicans would all rediscover their constitutional principles, but nothing that will actually happen.)
McConnell lived just long enough to see for certain that he destroyed everything he claimed to believe in.
The end of Chevron deference gave me a lot of feelings. I had really wanted to take administrative law but the teacher was notoriously awful so I skipped it and have been pissed that one super crappy teacher could be the reason I have this hole in my understanding for decades. So now I'm glad I didn't learn it. Also, the whole time I was in law school, I was all "this is all arbitrary bullshit, back-reasoned to kinda justify itself" and all the law teachers were all "this is a painstakingly accumulated set of decisions that mostly point the right way to conclusions that we absolutely cannot ignore" and so I was happy to see that it really was all arbitrary bullshit 'cause I like being right. Now I like to think of judges having to immerse themselves in the details of where the salinity threshold must stay in the Delta based on the local plant and fish physiology.
9: You might really enjoy the Five Four podcast, Megan. Totally punctures the mindset you were describing.
The pedant in me has grated against the specific phrase "constitutional crisis" which I've always understood to mean a clash of multiple constitutional interpretations with no intra-constitutional means of resolution. What we have here, so far, is more like "constitutional collapse." Two branches of government (at least) have teamed up to simply ignore the constitution.
It strikes me that Elon and the bros are the Seal Team Six hypothetical come to pass. Even assuming he's giving the orders, Trump is immune and he can immunize his goons through pardons and control of law enforcement. The only constitutional checks are: courts say "don't do that" and they listen (eh) or impeachment (lol).
What will be the event that triggers an Operation Valkyrie (revised)? Is there an event that would trigger an Operation Valkyrie?
(I guess that makes this comment today's an installment in "Ask a Germanist How Bad It Can Get.")
9: Dahlia Lithwick had a talk with Kim Scheppele, a Princeton professor (so presumably not a law Professor) said she could not teach Constitutional law after Bush v. Gore.
9: I kind of feel that way about law, and it's what I do for a living. I do think that the starry-eyed belief that it's all intellectually meaningful and coherent probably makes you a better lawyer at some level, but it is straight-up bullshit.
I was fresh out of engineering school so my smug perspective was that real laws enforce themselves. Everything else is just decisions.
That made me very popular with my law school professors.
Any analysis that includes "they would have to" or "they wouldn't be able to" is useless. The entire problem is that they are doing things they can't and they aren't doing things they have to.
And that no one can or will stop them.
I am going to have to go over to Leopards Eating Faces to calm myself down.
Now there's a court order blocking most of Musk's demons. Potential even bigger "lol nothing matters" moment incoming.
Bluesky thread on it:
Another visualization project is launching soon: Pardon Tracker -- documenting the statements, activities, and networks of the pardoned Capitol Rioters.
12
What will be the event that triggers an Operation Valkyrie (revised)? Is there an event that would trigger an Operation Valkyrie?
Deploying the armed forces against specific Republican Congressmen?
The actual Operation Valkyrie was a contingency plan to use the reserve army against a domestic insurgency and/or slave revolt. So 12 has two possible answers.
I guess I need to watch the Marvel movies to catch up.
23: You will note the "(revised)" bit in my question, because I remembered something about that and went to check.
Anyone in Hakeem Jeffries office? Call him. He just had such a weak press conference.
27: Jeffries saying "Rs are in charge, if the gov't shuts down it's their fault" isn't weak, it's precisely the correct message. Because Rs suck, they can't, in fact, prevent a shutdown without D votes. But if the story is that Ds, mad at Trump, shut down the gov't, that's bad for Ds. The public needs to be mad at Rs in case of a shutdown, because that forces Rs to come begging to Ds for help, which maximizes their leverage.
Jeffries holding a press conference where he brags about having leverage means giving up that leverage. There was nothing wrong with that conference, and the Indivisible guy who was live-tweeting it was full of shit.
It feels a little weird when Trump does something like cancel the penny, which you don't exactly disagree with.
I know. I actually kinda agreed with Trump's rearrangement of the USBR regions, which no one could do unless they hated the bureaucrats in it. Likewise, I actually do think that Interior employees should live in the West. (Yes, I understand the cost to current employees and also that Trump was doing it to drive out existing knowledgeable Interior staff.)
I would enjoy not having to think about what to do with accumulating pennies. It also reassures me that I haven't lost the plot- that I'm still actually reacting to ideas, rather than just reflexive outrage.
That's less reassuring if you zoom out. It would be kind of nice if it turned out that actually none of this was so terrible and we're all just having a collective consciousness tantrum
Jeffries saying "Rs are in charge, if the gov't shuts down it's their fault" isn't weak, it's precisely the correct message.
IANA political strategist, but I'm also not so sure engaging in an explicit "we will shut you down" campaign will actually work. One problem is that even with pro-Republican media bias, Republicans still managed to get blamed for pretty much all the previous shutdowns. So even if Democrats are not in the wrong and not the cause of the shutdowns as the Republicans have been, saying "we are going to shut things down" has a poor track record for the people who say it.
I agree 100% with the strategy of not helping the Republicans without significant concessions, it's declaring that you are prepared to shut things down that seems like a bad idea.
It seems more likely that we will learn that the debt ceiling isn't real after all and no one has to do anything except transform pennies into a single platinum coin with Trump's face on it. Or something like that.
I agree with 32, and would add that one demand should be the elimination of the debt ceiling -- or maybe permanent elimination should be a bargaining chip to get other demands met. It's a tool that shouldn't exist, even if it's one that should be employed ruthlessly in this moment. So I think also think 33, while not ideal, is an outcome that would improve the status quo.
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New Yorkers (if your employment doesn't prevent you from doing this), please, please, please volunteer for a primary challenger to Eric Adams. Trump's election saved his bacon, so the only remedy is political.
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What was wrong with the guy before? Bill something or other.
29-30: if this article is accurate it does actually sound like the FAA has been up to some highly dubious stuff in the name of DEI. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring
Switching away from an aptitude test to a strange and inexplicable "biographical test" whose aim is purely to give black candidates an advantage may be defensible; phoning up all the black candidates in advance and saying "just so you know, here are all the correct answers to give to the biographical test so you get the highest score" is less so.
otoh I'd start with a look at the practice of mixing VFR and IFR fixed wing and rotary wing traffic and asking pilots if they can identify planes by type in the dark as a separation measure before worrying about the FAA's diversity outreach.