So, everybody around here who keeps saying “There are laws preventing this!” and “Even Trump won’t directly defy court orders like that!”…

Now what?

• Courts have repeatedly said that the mass federal firings must stop. These orders have all been ignored and the firings are intensifying. Nothing has been done.
• Courts have repeatedly said that various fired federal workers must be reinstated. These orders have also been ignored. As far as I know, not a single one of them has been re-hired. Nothing has been done.
• Courts have ruled that these migrants cannot be deported. Trump deported them anyway. Trump has graduated from simply ignoring court orders to openly defying them. Nothing has been done.
• Trump is now openly calling for the impeachment of judges that rule against him.

This is the justice system that you think is going to keep Trump in check and hold him accountable? They’re much more likely to rubber-stamp his agenda and give him more power. And no, that’s not hyperbole or sarcasm. It’s what the courts have been doing, and it’s what John Roberts recently signaled he’d sign on for.

If you believe for half a second that our justice system is going to hold the line against Trump, I’ve got some sweet, sweet Martian beachfront property you might be interested in. Musk recently said he’s sending a ship there soon, so get in on the ground floor now!

I never fucking want to hear “Trump will never be able to do that, because that’s illegal!” from you people again. If there is nobody willing or able to enforce the law, the “law” becomes nothing more than a suggestion that can and will be ignored when inconvenient. And right now, nobody seems either willing or able to hold Trump to account for anything.

Is that when they send a letter ORDERING his compliance in all caps?

While you’re at it, take a look at this beachfront property I have for sale. On Mars. Elon Musk is planning on sending one of his rockets up there soon, so you’d better get in on the ground floor on this one!

Until Trump just ignores it.

They’ll do the same thing everybody else has been doing. Capitulate harder.

If they do actually try and start impeachment against a judge, do keep the pressure on the senate to vote no, but don’t preemptively doom about it. It just makes people defeatest and stop fighting

This would be a lot easier to do if Democrats hadn’t spent the past 2 months crumbling like a house of cards at every opportunity the minute they feel even a hint of pressure. We’ve collectively said numerous times that “THIS” is going to be where Democrats hold the line and take a stand, only to watch them step aside and not even attempt to resist every single time.

It’s like watching re-runs. You already know what the outcome is going to be, and if you see it enough times you can start reciting the script yourself.

Given that we’re seeing Democrats in both the House and Senate rolling over and playing dead, getting there may not be as difficult as one would expect. Last week, if you’d have said 10 democrats would join with Republicans to censure one of their own, or that Schumer would bail on his own party on a crucial vote at the last minute with no warning, people would have been skeptical. But here we are.

And remember, it’s 2/3 of all members present. If a couple of these cowards just stay home, they make the GOP’s efforts significantly easier. And I could easily see a few of these cowards sit it out.

Fetterman just took over Manchin’s position as Senate DINO. Schumer left his entire party high and dry at the last minute and out of nowhere to vote with Trump. That 2/3 vote may be a lot closer than you think.

The problem is that they’re not trying to hide it. They openly say this is how it’s going to work now.

Look at Columbia. They refused to cooperate. Then they got 400 million yanked out from under them. And then they fell right in line.

“Hey, could y’all do me a solid and just cede more power to me voluntarily? That’d be great!”

– Trump

Not even the slightest bit of resistance. Asked for nothing, got nothing. Just caved like a house of cards because of the “optics” around shutting down a bunch of government agencies that Trump is about to shut down anyway.

And the rest of our representatives are falling in line. Not even putting up a fight. Just rolling over and playing dead. Thanks, guys. Good to know that in our fight for democracy, we can rely on you to step aside and let Trump take a giant shit on it.

I guess when you take $400 million away in funding, it’s pretty easy to get them to fall in line.

Expect more of this going forward. Universities are about to get a lot more MAGA.

This will be ignored for one or both of the following:

• John Roberts has already signalled his support for the Unitary Executive Theory, which would basically give Trump the power to do exactly what he’s doing. Trump will likely immediately appeal this to the Supreme Court, where they will either rule in favor of Trump via the UET, or will simply stall the case for months without issuing a ruling, leaving the affected workers in legal limbo. Those workers still have families to feed and can’t wait months for a ruling that is unlikely to even go their way. Most of them will simply move on to other jobs in the interim, rendering the whole thing moot in practice as the end result will be the same: A whole bunch of federal workers losing their jobs.

• Trump will simply ignore the ruling, probably demanding that the judge be impeached and launching a smear campaign against him as well. With no actual enforcement mechanism, the judge’s only real response to Trump essentially telling him to go fuck himself is to issue another order “demanding” compliance, which has all the force of law of saying “pretty please”. Trump will basically challenge the judge and essentially say “What are you going to do about it?” and that’s the last we’ll hear about it as the judge isn’t going to openly admit that he has no way to force compliance or impose consequences for non-compliance, especially given SCOTUS’ previous rulings on Presidential immunity.

Look at it this way. Think of how many other judges have already ordered Trump to reinstate workers. Now look at how many of those workers have actually been reinstated. Look at how many other workers he keeps illegally firing despite those orders. That should tell you all you need to know regarding where this is going to go.

And doesn’t the man have like a zillion kids with multiple different women?

Imagine being one of Musk’s other children. You know, the ones who don’t get their attention from their father while this one random kid gets all of it.

Democrats will cave. This is 100% guaranteed. Democrats are worried about being blamed for a shutdown that they’re going to get blamed for anyway. They’re worried about being perceived as uncooperative with a party that has openly said that they have no desire to work with Democrats – unless, of course, they need Democrats to bail them out of one of their own messes. Then Democrats are expected to save the GOP from themselves even though all it leads to is Democrats getting blamed for GOP blunders anyway and the GOP going right back to shitting on them.

The only thing Schumer is even fighting for is the right “to offer amendments”. Amendments which would be completely ignored and voted down.

Our leadership has no spine. Yes, thousands of government workers would be impacted by a shutdown. Services would be interrupted. This is not a question. But at least with a shutdown, those services will be back and those workers will still have jobs when the government reopens. Vote in favor of this CR and Trump is just going to fire those workers and shutter those agencies anyway. Except this time, they won’t have a job to come back to.

Our Democrat leaders need to refuse to even cooperate on even the most mundane, basic procedural votes until DOGE is shuttered and their actions reversed. Filibuster everything. If the GOP are insistent on going down this path, let them do it completely on their own. Democrat senators should absolutely be held responsible for anything that happens if they voted in favor of even procedural votes that made their actions possible.

EDIT: And they caved, for the exact reason expected: Fear of being blamed for a shutdown. Didn’t even offer the slightest resistance.

How was this not followed up with “Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that his tariffs are a tax that other countries pay to the US, that US prices will not go up as a result of these tariffs, and in fact has once said he wanted to create the External Revenue Service just to handle all the huge checks that these governments are going to pay. What is your response to that?”

Now we all know this would either be answered by more GOP doublespeak or by the Senator pulling a temper tantrum, walking out, and claiming the reporter was hostile. But damn these people need to start asking the hard questions. Trump has these people tripping all over themselves trying to keep their bullshit straight. It’s not hard to get them in a position where they are making contradictory statements and they need to start being called out on it live and in real time.

Just like when Trump says that these tariffs are paid for by the affected government. One of these reporters needs to get Trump on record again saying that the foreign governments are the ones paying the tariffs. Then, follow up with “These countries have imposed retaliatory tariffs against US goods. Has the United States started writing checks to these governments to pay for the tariffs being imposed?” And when Trump gives the inevitable “No”, then ask “So what makes you think they’re the ones writing checks to us?”

And it needs to be done live and in real time so Trump doesn’t have the opportunity to edit it.

His entire trade war with Canada and Mexico started because he thought the current trade deal (The USMCA) was a horrible deal that should have never been signed.

He’s the one who signed it. The USMCA was his creation because he wanted NAFTA replaced.

I’ll just basically copy/paste my response to this from the other day.

I usually don’t like tooting my own horn, but I’m speaking as someone with 18 years of experience in the financial aspects of school food service. I was one of those middle-management bean counters working for large districts around the Northeast. It is the job of people like me to not only research possible grants and funding sources and ensure the district is getting the maximum benefit, but also to ensure that those benefits are used to their fullest potential to deliver meals to students. We are used to having to deal with fluctuations in what funding we receive and are expected to be able to plan accordingly. If we of all people are the ones saying there’s a problem, there’s a fucking problem. Like 9.5 on the Richter scale type of problem.

There’s a problem.

This will absolutely wreck school food service in many schools. Even before Trump ever set foot in the White House, school food service was often the red-headed stepchild of many school districts that operated on shoestring budgets and were almost always the first to get cuts whenever the school district needed to tighten its belt. These food aid programs in many districts were the only things keeping these programs anything resembling solvent in the first place. I cannot emphasize enough how reliant that our NSLP programs are on this funding.

At least right now, schools are still required to continue serving lunch under federal law. Of course, I’m sure that this will be rectified once Trump realizes that the NSLP exists and decides to cut that too because the program is using food grown in Canada to feed gay kids or something. What this is going to lead to is that NSLP programs are going to be cut to federally required minimums. And without these grants to pay for it, other school services will have to be cut. Teachers will have to be laid off. Other programs will have to be cut in order to pay for school food service. All of this and students will end up receiving less nutritious meals than they received before anyway. Again, that’s until Trump realizes the program even exists and just shuts it down entirely.

You know how we occasionally see those articles about students carrying huge lunch debts at school? Think that, except worse. And everywhere. The only option left for some of these districts is going to be to at least try to pass the costs on to students and their parents who are unlikely to be able to pay, leading to even more students with ridiculously high balances. These accounts are just going to default as these students either just leave the district or graduate, and most districts have no real method of enforcement outside of making demands to parents and just hoping parents don’t realize that those threats are toothless and unenforceable. And somebody has to pay for the food. Somebody has to pay the food service and custodial staff. Which means the district is going to be forced to pick up the tab. And you know how they’re going to do that? Laying off teachers. Cutting vital programs. Ending after-school programs. Continuing to use textbooks (and for that matter, a lot of other equipment and technology) that are years and decades out of date because the district can’t afford new ones.

Most people are going to think that it’s school lunch and no big deal. They’ll just serve a few less french fries or something. Nope. This is a much bigger deal than most people will realize and is going to cause a ripple/domino effect that is going to impact every level of service in the public school systems.

Think of it like a flat tire. If you hear someone got a flat, you think “No big deal”. Then you get a flat, and you realize…that problem that you thought was “no big deal” means that your entire car is not going anywhere until it’s fixed. Now imagine that problem occurring and you realize that they stopped selling tires.

Keep in mind that one of the purposes of these actions is to force these organizations to waste millions of dollars and months of time defending themselves. That’s money and time not being spent actually doing the job they’re supposed to be doing, and therefore giving a false impression that the entire organization is just a waste of taxpayer money since they’re not actually accomplishing anything and keep being subject to criminal investigations.

Basically, if the optics of shutting down an agency are too bad even for Trump’s standards, he’ll just drown them in litigation and render them ineffective instead. The end result is pretty much the same for all practical purposes.

Trump and Musk are going to respond to this effort by firing that person.