Overall, I agree with SCOTUS, there was not enough valid rationale to use a US law meant to mobilize national guard units against invasions and rebellions.
The dissent from Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch argue that federal law enforcement deserve to be protected by US troops while conducting their duties. While I can understand their concerns, it's a very bad concept to argue that you need to bring an army every time you're doing your job.
What do others think?
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I think that Trump didn’t construct a coherent argument for summoning them, and yeah - should have lost in the Supreme Court.
I think that the president should be able to call in the guard with consent or at request of the governor in order to restore local order due to crime or other. That is, I think, pretty noncontroversial.
I think that you can summon the national guard to enforce federal legislation when the state is refusing to comply with federal law, even if the governor does not agree. The precedent for this is how JFK & LBJ deployed the National guard to enforce integration law in the South.
I think if you had defiant cities and states refusing to comply with immigration law and that was the reason, there might be an argument.
But the problem is Trump tried to justify it on the former but his intent was sort of the later, or vice versa.
> I think that the president should be able to call in the guard with consent or at request of the governor in order to restore local order due to crime or other. That is, I think, pretty noncontroversial.
I think you're right that this is pretty uncontroversial.
> I think that you can summon the national guard to enforce federal legislation when the state is refusing to comply with federal law, even if the governor does not agree. The precedent for this is how JFK & LBJ deployed the National guard to enforce integration law in the South.
I think "refusing to comply" risks conflating "refusing to enforce" and "obstruction of federal enforcement". State officials aren't obligated to enforce federal law (as I understand it, IANAL) but they are not allowed to obstruct feds. JFK and LBJ were allowed to deploy the NG because the states were obstructing, not merely refusing to enforce. By contrast, Illinois/Chicago officials weren't obstructing, but they were not enforcing. I'm not trying to nitpick you, I just think this is an important distinction, and at least one other commenter made the mistake of confusing these two concepts, so it seems worth being explicit about this distinction.
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I’d second this. This was simply a legal cock up.
Hey mate! What is the Aussi take on immigration lately? Is there a right focused push to end it like here (in the US).
In advance of an answer, "good on ya mate" said in a pathetically American mid Atlantic accent.
Why didn't Trump's lawyer bring up the lack of immigration compliance? Is it too hard to prove?
Also, why hasn't SCOTUS ruled on sanctuary cities - why do certain cities get to cover for people breaking the law?
Immigration law is the exclusive purview of the Federal government and the States have no right nor obligation to enforce it. In fact the states can't be ordered to enforce it due to the anti-commandeering doctrine which precludes the Federal government from forcing states from using state resources to enforce any federal law.
A "sanctuary city" is simply one that chooses not to uses State and local resources to enforce federal law. Again this is their right under the anti-commandeering doctrine.
The Federal government is responsible for enforcement of Federal law, not sovereign State governments nor local governments.
Thank you!
Is there a federal law that requires the state to turn over suspected undocumented immigrants to the feds?
SCOTUS has ruled that police have no constitutional duty to protect individual people or to enforce the law in any particular case.
Discretionary enforcement of the law is universally accepted (much to my dismay, since laws on the book should be mandatorily enforced or removed entirely). Note, this is what allows the federal government to NOT arrest literally every single person who smokes pot - not to mention every business which is currently in violation of federal law.
A sanctuary city cannot legally "cover up" a crime that is occurring - but they have no obligation to assist in the arrest or the prosecution of any crime. This is basically what grants them quasi-legal status.
I will suggest that it is not "breaking the law" for towns issuing an order that town paid police officers should not have to spend town collected funds to enforce federal laws. It is the federal government's job to enforce immigration law - not my local cop.
Does that make sense or do you think I'm off base here.
Because they know its a terrible precedent to set. That enables an excessive power for the next guys.
Are you implying Trump cares about expanding executive power because he fears the next admin?
What is informing this opinion? Because to me, it looks like the opposite. To me, it looks like he's trying to push every boundary and pull any lever he can think of, with no coherent goal in mind, just playing with power for his own amusement.
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It basically sets the precedent for trigger hair martial law, no?
Like take Trump out of this, imagine any future Democrat or Republican president doing the following in this order:
issue a new controversial executive order, just imagine some terrible EO you disagree with
look for any non-complying states or cities
send in the troops to force compliance
use military as heavily armed police
potentially shoot anybody participating in the inevitable backlash (protesting, rioting, etc.)
I think that Democrats will quietly forget this the next time they want to claim that the "compromised Supreme Court" is in Trump's pocket. Just like they do every time SCOTUS rules in his favor, they conveniently forget all the times they rule against him.
This is also just a preliminary injunction, the case has not yet been heard on the merits. This sort of thing is fairly routine. We'll see what happens once the Court of Appeals actually hears arguments.
That it was a 6-3 decision is still pretty nuts, considering the dissenting argument was basically "violating the constitution is fine if federal officers claim they are in danger from their own citizens". We'll see what comes out of the actual ruling not just the injunction.
This is a gross mischaracterization of the dissenters; so much so that I don't see how anyone who actually read the opinions could come to that conclusion.
Alito and Thomas dissented on fairly narrow and technical grounds that the meaning of the phrase "regular forces" was not actually raised by any of the parties to the lawsuit but instead comes from an amicus brief filed by a non-party. When hearing appeals like this, they're generally supposed to only rely on the arguments made by the parties and the questions they are asked directly.
Gorsuch dissented on the grounds that he was uncomfortable giving a firm opinion on such "weighty questions" on a purely interlocutory basis, without the benefit of a full case involving oral arguments and consideration of the merits. Based purely on the arguments made by the parties, he would have narrowly granted a stay on the grounds that the parties had argued as if the deployment had a legal basis.
Reading the dissent literally and reading between the lines are two different things. Since Thomas and Alito are more than happy to go on at length about how they view the breadth of executive authority and how the judicial branch should defer to the President's read of situations re. the apparent need for "regular forces" to be deployed, personally I find their argument about the definition of "regular forces" to be a sidenote in a longer diatribe. Several sections of the dissent read more like a treatise on the unitary executive rather than a dissent from an opinion to refuse a grant of stay.
I think Gorsuch's dissent is fine, generally similar to Kavanagh but he happened to come down on the other side of the fence.
That’s a fair interpretation of the dissents. I read them today, and from a more liberal perspective what stood out to me is how much latitude they seem willing to give the executive branch to define what counts as an “emergency.” That’s what I find most problematic about their dissents.
For anyone who’s interested, here’s a link to the ruling if you want to read it, it’s a pretty easy read at only about 25 pages:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a443_ba7d.pdf
I don't agree with the dissents, but this isn't a problem with them, its a problem with all legislation enabling emergency powers for the President.
> its a problem with all legislation enabling emergency powers for the President.
I think it's both, and on top of that the abdication of Congressional responsibility to check the president. Creating legislation to grant emergency powers is a thing to be avoided to the extent possible, but we also want a SCOTUS and Congress who keep the definition of "emergency" as narrow as possible. Those 3 things act as individual checks on authoritarianism, and right now 2.5 of them are failing (SCOTUS occasionally checks executive power but only to a very limited degree).
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You think three SC judges view their positions as “violating the constitution” ?
If not, you think you’re better equipped to make that decision than they are?
I have no doubt that if this situation was exactly the same except with a Democrat as president that Thomas and Alito would go the opposite way of this. They have no consistency other than support Republicans and go against Democrats.
I think three supreme court justices view their partisan opinions as more important than the constitution, in this instance. Wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last; the woes of a partisan judiciary.
How is a 6-3 decision "nuts" and how in the world was the dissent "violating the Constitution?"
Do you honestly believe these 3 would vote the same way if it was a Democratic president?
Yeah. I believe the Court is ideologically driven, not party driven. There have been occasions where different members of the Conservative bloc dissent and concur. Alito and Thomas are the standard votes for Trump, but Gorsuch was surprising here. Canceling student loan debt is OBVIOUSLY up to Congress. No serious person actually believes the President can do that, yet you and/or others would be ecstatic if they ruled in his favor, wouldn't you? Shows that rationale isn't relevant if the decision agrees with them.
Guarantee if a Dem was to ask to gut the government, enforce immigration, curb universal injunctions, expand immunity, the Court would happily do so. A Rep would eventually get in anyway.
Can you quantify “all the times they rule against him” versus in his favor? What’s the threshold at which claims of bias are debunked?
I probably could, but I've got better things to do with my time than analyze every Supreme Court ruling for the last year or so to categorize them. Especially on Christmas Eve.
I don’t know whether Democrats will forget this, but I have a pretty good idea that if Trump hadn’t pulled the same crap in DC the family of a female guardsman wouldn’t be grieving this Christmas.
Or, maybe, and hear me out- if a sick fuck didn’t shoot her they wouldn’t be grieving.
Both can be true.
Yeah, I tend to believe that if it wasn't a national guardswoman in DC, it would have been someone, somewhere, sometime. This individual was clearly both unwell and highly motivated.
I don't support the measures Trump has taken concerning the National Guard, but I'm uncomfortable attributing responsibility to anyone other than the perpetrator here. I suspect this man was on a path to violence regardless. The person who killed her carries the blame here.
I'm happy to bitch about this administration in plenty of other contexts. Not here.
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Big accusations with zero proof.
Trump was literally convicted of 34 felonies. He's objectively a felon. There's not proof he is a practicing pedophile, but he was (by his own admission) close friends with multiple famed child sex traffickers, and he publicly bragged about creeping in the changing rooms of a kids' beauty pageant contest and he made public sexual comments about his underage daughter (he also has dozens of claims of sexual assault and one civil lawsuit). So no, it's not enough to convict him in a court, but also no moral person would vote for someone who is "merely" very likely a child diddler (any one of those things would have prevented a moral person from voting for them).
Which are on appeal and looking like all counts are going to be overturned, as they came from a kangaroo court.
Correct, not even the tiniest sliver of evidence
Whom he banned from his property and disavowed when he became aware of their inproprieties. Leftists always leave that part out.
This is patently false unless you use top tier mental gymnastics to jump from reality to that conclusion
Anyone can claim anything, that doesn't rise to guilt, beyond a reasonable doubt. That's why even carol couldn't get a conviction, and had to go the civil route, spinning a yarn about Trump assaulting her, while she wore a dress a decade before it was even designed/released. Even this ruling is under appeal in a venue more favorable to reality, and looking like it'll be overturned. Every attempt at lawfare against Trump is backfiring on leftists, and doing so in spectacular fashion.
Did you vote for biden or harris? How about clinton? Yeah, you have less than zero grounds to be casting stones about morality, especially from the lowest of the moral low grounds.
You can complain about the court all you want, but you claimed there was no proof that he is a felon when in fact he is.
I’m not claiming he should be convicted of child rape, but I don’t think we should elect presidents who are probably child rapists even if there isn’t enough proof to secure a conviction. On the other hand, there definitely is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump tried to overthrow the government, and for that he absolutely should go to prison (at the very least) for the rest of his life. Unfortunately SCOTUS invented a new rule that effectively allows presidents to use their powers to commit federal crimes, including treason.
I’m an independent, and I voted for some but not others. Most importantly, none of them were credibly implicated in pedophilia (much less overthrowing the government) when they were up for election. I absolutely have the moral high ground, but I don’t want to lord it over anyone—I would much rather you join or surpass me. I don’t want “my side” to have the moral high ground to defeat “the other side”—I would much, much prefer that both sides were competing for the moral high ground. Imagine if both sides were trying to make the country better, rather than one side making excuses for gerrymandering, Congressional insider trading, suppressing Epstein files, overthrowing the government, nominating pedophiles to lead the DOJ, etc.
Biden, undeniably, using your metric of evidence, took inappropriate showers with his daughter.
You have voted for child abusers and overt racists. You are at the lowest of the low of moral grounds, again, using your own metrics.
You have zero evidence of your claims, but instead present feelings about a person as evidence. I reject your premise in it's entirety and until you present actual, court admissible evidence, you will not be getting any more engagement from me.
You really do live in a fantasy reality. Matt Gaetz was exonerated by Biden's DOJ. You just continue to believe misinformation even after it's already debunked.
A pretty grotesque take.
It's pretty insane that you blame a terrorist attack on Trump.
I'm not blaming Trump for a terrorist attack. I'm blaming him for unnecessarily creating the circumstances that led directly to a young soldier's death.
Trump created the circumstances for a terrorist attack to occur? Are you listening to yourself right now?
Trump sent in the National Guard for no reason other than appearances. If he hadn’t done that, the young soldier would be with us today.
I mean, SCOTUS also ruled 9-0 against the Trump administration when it tried to suspend due process with no argument at all. So no, SCOTUS isn't completely in Trump's pocket, but they really weakened our democracy when they invented presidential criminal immunity (out of thin air) to protect Trump in the wake of his coup attempt.
They didn't really invent Presidential immunity, it had been largely assumed since before Nixon. And they actually mostly ruled against him on that; he had argued that Presidential immunity went a lot further than the Court ruled. He had argued for absolute immunity, even for actions committed outside of the presidency.
Civil immunity was assumed before Nixon (you can’t sue the president because his policies are bad for your business, for example)—never before was it assumed that presidents could (without legal recourse) use their powers office to commit crimes, especially crimes against our fundamental political system.
But yes, of course he argued for more than he got. I think the SCOTUS was trying to do the least it could do to keep him out of prison; I don’t think they were trying to maximize the powers of the president—at the time, Biden was in office and it was not obvious that Trump would win re-election.
So you think Obama should be arrested for murder?
Sure, charge him if there’s appropriate evidence.
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I mean, the wording of the ruling has a lot of language in it that indicates this is not a closed door and then kind of spells out the road that Trump should take for them to allow it.
PI rulings involve assessments of the merits at the time of the motion. You cannot secure a PI without a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.
That aside, did SCOTUS decide this correctly?
I think the end result is probably correct, but the process used to get there is questionable.
Thanks!
Keeping in mind this was a request to hear a motion for a TRO against the injunction from the lower court... I'm fine with what I'm seeing. The lower courts are no longer throwing around universal injunctions that were common a short time ago, and each of these nation guard cases are being argued based on impairment of ability to enforce federal law.
That being said, and counter to your 'bring an army' stance, there's the Economy Act. We've got military bases in every state, and they ought to be providing the real estate, logistics, food, external security for detention facilities - that's in the best interest of the country given the mission. At the same time, to avoid Posse Comitatus issues ICE, CBP, DHS should be handling 24/7 custody and in-building operations.
I can agree to your point if DHS, CBP, and ICE are handling the custody and enforcement duties as they are meant to. I'm not a fan of substituting domestic agencies with the military, to me it's not a long-term solution to anything. The military is meant for offense and defense actions, the idea of military policing is a short-term stop-gap solution that has often failed after the troops leave.
Well, I'm hoping for ... checks watch ... at least 11 more years of tough immigration enforcement. But realistically the current push to deport and discourage illegal immigration ought to be a short-term thing. What I don't want is a giant CBP/ICE hiring spree that's underutilized after.
So I do think we agree 80%+. Feds need to do their job. I'd like to see DoD and National Gaurd fill in absolutely as much as possible to extend all the Fed effectiveness without a hiring spree and I probably lean into that a little more than you do.
Would you want Biden to have been able to deploy the national guard to ensure compliance with legally questionable COVID compliance? I think not, and you would be right to have that position even though COVID was a veritable emergency. If we don’t want the military to be used for policies that we dislike, then we should probably avoid using them as a convenience force for the policies we do like.
Biden directly deployed DC, and indirectly had the governors of all 50 states and territories deploy guard for vaccine missions by making funding available via deployment. So, he did do that.
Do I support the idea of him using guard for that? Yup, if you're going to do something like that, do it in the most economical way possible.
All they did was uphold a TRO while the lower court makes its ruling. This is not an actual ruling on the deployment.
I’m ok with the ruling, and I think the most important takeaway for me is that this is proof that we don’t live in an authoritarian situation like the left constantly claims.
Anytime Trump has begun to push too far, the system of checks and balances and our constitutional basis prevent it from happening.
Aka, the system is working as designed.
I think the concern is more the frequency that Trump goes too far. Especially when Congress is unwilling to act as a check against the Executive. And if we're being honest, there is not an action that Trump could take that would damage his support among the base. At least not in any significant way.
While on the face I agree with you, I think it’s absolutely worth pointing out that it has been months of this appeals stay to get us here, and that you are implying that during the initial actions and the then slow walking of this decision by SCOTUS indeed could have been described as an “authoritarian” situation.
If a president is pushing too far, and is able to get away with it for the entirety of the action, then a check and balance fundamentally does not exist in that moment.
This is obviously a different situation but let’s say the tariffs are found to also be illegal by SCOTUS. The thousands of folks fired, businesses failing, and the damage done to multiple industries including our soy farm industry that now requires 12 billion in handouts, that would fundamentally just be an authoritarian move because the consequence or take back of the action occurred far after the actual on the ground consequences for everyone else.
If it takes SCOTUS months every time a president, any president, does something like this then it is a message that perhaps we shouldn’t allow the executive to go John Wayne cowboy and just do whatever it wants and hope to remedy it on the back end.
“Months”
Oh no, not months!
Yes, the system is slow, on purpose, but it does work.
As someone who is a big supporter of the 2A, my main response is: First time?
What exactly is your alternative?
maybe instead of "take the authoritarian action and dare the courts to stop you", it's "don't do it" or "punish him in some way other than 'now now, Donny, you can't do that!'"
“Don’t do it”
How are you going to stop Trump?
“Punish him”
How?
BTW, seeing the left lose their shit over this is hilarious, considering how many times Blue States have violated the 2A and dared the courts to overrule them. Knowing it’ll take months and in the meantime, people’s enumerated civil liberties are being infringed upon.
Kind of a false equivalence you think, right? "aww I have a waiting period for a gun" vs "we have boots on the ground on American soil"?
Nope, it’s using the courts to push shit that you know will get overturned.
And trying to blatantly violate enumerated civil liberties.
How are you going to stop Trump?
And how are you going to punish Trump?
Just out of curiosity, do you know about the active duty military shooting a US civilian in Detroit?
I don't have the power to do either and don't think I implied I did? You've taken this conversation down a weird whataboutism alleyway, and I'm going to leave you to it.
“To do either”
Then why mention it?
I asked what the alternative was, you answered and now are saying it’s actually not possible.
I'm saying that I would not personally be responsible for it; we have Congress and the legal system for that.
what a weird way to intentionally misread me, though.
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What action was Trump able to get away with?
Deploying troops to Chicago (in October) until he was forced to stop by the courts. The only consequence he is receiving for this action is being told "no", which just says "OK, you can do it again next time until we stop you".
So is it fair to say he wasn't able to "get away with it for the entirety of the action"?
I’m not so sure it’s been determined fully that he cannot do it. There’s a process to determine that. We are in that process.
You realize other presidents have deployed the national guard before, right?
Trump could do it in DC because of DC home rule. Now, the system is going to determine if he can elsewhere.
So no, at no time have we been under authoritarian rule. The left keeps pretending something exists when it doesn’t.
Does it ever get tiresome to keep pretending that there is an existential threat constantly breathing down your neck?
This completely sidesteps the entire point, and I’d like to think you know that. I agree with you, we don’t currently altogether live under authoritarian rule. Unless you remember that while not President, Trump ordered Congress not to pass a bipartisan bill in 2024 and they… then changed their tune not to pass it. Or when the Executive acts and deports people hours after getting orders that they cannot deport those specific individuals and Bondi says “well I just didn’t see them” hours later.
We can split hairs over whether we need to be in an absolute authoritarian rule for an admin to be authoritarian but at the end of the day you believe it has to be zero sum, and I don’t, and that’s okay.
The point of my reply, and your own statement, was that an action later deemed unconstitutional occurred. The people affected, their rights ignored, and the consequences of those actions all occurred because of an authoritarian action.
“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Was in 2019
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” Said multiple times during his first administration.
““When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total.” Said by Miller just this year.
We can argue whether in an absolute sense the admin is authoritarian, which I agree with you it is not.
But authoritarian actions absolutely are occurring by your own statement, that only months later are rectified.
I doubt for everyone in America saying “well SCOTUS stopped their attempts at authoritarian actions” really helps cement that the people acting are not themselves authoritarian.
> You realize other presidents have deployed the national guard before, right?
Straw man. No one is objecting to deploying the NG, the objection is to deploying the NG without the approval of the governor or evidence that state officials are obstructing federal officials or otherwise meeting the statutory requirements.
> So no, at no time have we been under authoritarian rule. The left keeps pretending something exists when it doesn’t.
Another straw man. The left isn't claiming that we are under authoritarian rule; it's warning that we are at risk of coming under authoritarian rule because one of our two checks on authoritarianism are failing consistently and the other is failing inconsistently.
Neither of my points are strawman arguments.
I understand the objection to NG. I am interested in the final outcome of this, because I could see it going either way.
Second, the left is absolutely arguing that we are under authoritarian rule. You are adjusting the point I made to conflict with your specific argument. Your specific argument is, we are under the potential threat of future authoritarian rule. To your specific point, I would say we are not a threat specifically because of the system of checks and balances that exist. I don’t think the checks are failing.
That’s obviously untrue. You are conflating “Trump is an authoritarian” with “we are living under an authoritarian system”.
No, my argument is that it’s silly to point to an event that hasn’t happened because an alarm was raised and responded to appropriately as evidence that the alarm was not needed in the first place and that those who raised it were overreacting.
Congress has done nothing to constrain the president, because the Republican Party is loyal to Trump and Trump will run challengers against anyone who defies him. SCOTUS has checked the president on occasion but also granted him massive powers to use the full force of the executive branch to commit crimes without fear of criminal prosecution.
It’s also very interesting to note that Trump’s authoritarianism has largely been curbed since the No Kings protests—he is much quieter about his claims that he has the power to suspend the due process or birthright citizenship amendments, he isn’t invading cities, he hasn’t had a dissident comedian fired, he has largely stopped publicly taking massive bribes from other countries, he doesn’t advertise private meetings in exchange for crypto investments, etc. It’s not perfect—he’s still working to rig the upcoming election and so on, but it seems like raw American patriotism has made him much less bold where our system of checks and balances has failed.
I'm certainly glad these backstops are in place, but It'd be great if they didn't actually need to be used so often.
It's kind of like, I lock my door at night, but it still wouldn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling to hear someone trying to get in at 3am, regardless of how confident I feel about the stability of the door.
By this logic we'd have to wait until we're in full blown authoritarianism before we even begin to talk about it. It's like Mike Johnson saying that the fact of the "No Kings" rallies proved that Trump isn't a king because, I guess, the military didn't come in and stop them.
If you want to be taken seriously, yeah, you can’t just pull accusations out of the air and then pretend it’s reality.
The left has been fantasizing about being part of “Le Resistance” for 10 years now.
There's also the equally valid takeaway that SCOTUS finally provided the checks and balances against the overreach of an authoritarian president which they've so far enabled beyond all expectation.
The problem is the damage that has already been done to disrupt people's lives, the money spent, and the significant diminished state of the civil contract our society used to have with our government.
The right would have lost their collective mind if this had been done under a Democrat president but there was little outrage here.
Just because the Supreme court ruled against him once doesn’t mean Trump isn’t an authoritarian. The fact that he tried to pull this shit proves that he is. I recall many people trying to claim Obama was an authoritarian, despite SCOTUS ruling against him on occasion.
Merely doing this to begin with isn’t authoritarian. Working to ensure the safety of citizens in a crime riddled city that is failing its residents, then arguing that you should have that power in front of the Supreme Court isn’t authoritarian.
I would agree with you if all the cases weren't happening against cities in blue states. There is absolutely more crime per capital, in a lot of cities, in Red states and in some cases entire red states have more crime than some of the blue state cities but I've yet to see him deploy national guard to Memphis, or Detroit, or New Orleans because these cities are in states that voted for him and are they also have the highest per capital crime in the country.
> Merely doing this to begin with isn’t authoritarian. Working to ensure the safety of citizens in a crime riddled city that is failing its residents, then arguing that you should have that power in front of the Supreme Court isn’t authoritarian.
It doesn't matter how noble his intentions are (although if you think Trump cares one iota about the safety of Chicagoans, and that this isn't really about expanding his power, I can get you a fantastic deal on a bridge), what matters is that he consistently does things that are obviously illegal until the courts constrain him (and until the courts constrain him, he will continue carrying out his illegal actions).
> I’m ok with the ruling, and I think the most important takeaway for me is that this is proof that we don’t live in an authoritarian situation like the left constantly claims.
Bad straw man. The left doesn't claim we are in an authoritarian situation, the left claims that we are in danger of entering into an authoritarian situation. Trump repeatedly, blatantly attacks the Constitution (and already tried to overthrow the government), and one of the two checks against authoritarianism--Congress--is failing consistently while the other--SCOTUS--fails inconsistently (e.g., in these really egregious cases, SCOTUS sometimes defends the Constitution and other times it invents out of ~thin air concepts like presidential criminal immunity which give the president a giant hammer with which to smash the Constitution).
Moreover, there's this thing that keeps happening where
experts raise an alarm
ignorant people dismiss the experts and tell the rest of society that they are overreacting
other people take the alarm seriously and take appropriate action to avert the disaster
the disaster does not come to pass
the ignorant people point to the averted disaster as proof that the experts were wrong and that everyone was overreacting
Off the top of my head, this happened with Y2K and the O-Zone crisis, and it feels like it's happening now with warnings of authoritarianism.
(I don't mean "ignorant" here in a disparaging sense, but rather in its literal sense of "people who speak authoritatively about a subject for which they lack knowledge or expertise")
Not a straw man. And yes, the left claims we are currently in an authoritarian situation.
Also, Y2K would have been a disaster if not for the work a ton of people did to make sure it wasn’t one. The ozone crisis led to a ban of certain type of aerosols that I believe did result in a reduction of the crisis.
You’re simply wrong pretty much across the board
No, this is simply incorrect. I suspect you are confusing “Trump wants to be a dictator” with “we are currently under authoritarian rule”. The former is a reasonable interpretation of left-wing claims, the latter is a made up straw man argument.
Yes, that’s precisely the point.
lol this is way too much snark for someone who got a hairs’ breadth from the point and still managed to miss it.
I can only laugh at the idea of you claiming it’s incorrect to say the left regularly makes the argument that we are in an authoritarian situation.
I’m sure we both know that if you had a real argument you would have made it instead of baseless assertions. 🤷♂️
I’ve already made my argument and my point.
You personally might not be arguing we are under authoritarian rule, but many, many on the left are, both prominent people in public and private.
So you can take the point I made and then try to force your counter-point into it and claim it’s a straw man, but it’s you who shifted the argument.
So again, if that’s the hill you want to die on, go ahead. I’ll just laugh at you and move on.
You’ve made no argument, only assertions about what “the left” claims.
You need to provide evidence that a majority are making the argument that we are currently under an authoritarian system (specifically one in which the executive has unchecked power, not merely one in which the executive is punitive). You haven’t provided any evidence that anyone has said anything to the effect that you have claimed.
Because there’s nothing you can do. You have neither evidence nor argument. So you feign superiority in desperate hope that it convinces a few gullible people on the Internet lol
But do you think it's good that Trump seems to push at the seams of the system of checks and balances whenever he gets an opportunity?
Or would you rather return to a time when the President works within the spirit of the law, rather than constantly try to push the boundaries?
I think the left has gone too far to try and challenge everything he’s done, so I think it’s a good thing to get some of these questions answered, in terms of what’s allowable and what is not.
You said “return to a time when the president works within the spirit of the law,” rather than try to push the boundary.”
When would that time be that you think we should return to?
At the very least pre-GW Bush.
But more importantly I want to see Congress claw back some of the power.
The top one being all the illegal military actions Presidents can engage in without approval or a declaration of war from Congress. The President should only be allowed to authorize nukes due to the extreme time sensitive nature of nuclear warfare.
I don't see how bombing Venezuelan boats (Trump), bombing Iran (Trump), drone striking people in Yemen (Obama), or going to war with Iraq (GWBush) without Congressional consent is anything other than authoritarian overreach. That is way too much power in the hands of one man.
All you would need is two more "Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch's" and what happens to those checks and balances then?
Yes, if we applied made-up scenarios, then those scenarios can lead to bad outcomes.
I recall Joe manchin serving a very important, similar function during the Biden administration.
The parent is talking about checks on executive power. Manchin was a swing Democrat, but he had nothing to do with checking Biden's power (Biden wasn't an aspiring tyrant).
Mansion absolutely served as a check against Biden‘s power. Biden, and the left during his administration, displayed clear evidence of being an inspiring tyrant. He literally Weaponized the federal government against his political enemies. The things the left accused Trump of doing are things they already tried.
lol no he didn’t. Even if you think Trump’s charges were a Biden administration conspiracy (no evidence of this) Manchin played no role in that.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3561908-five-times-joe-manchin-has-bucked-the-democrats/amp/
None of those demonstrate Manchin being a check on executive power, those are just cases of Manchin breaking with his party.
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This is a somewhat strange takeaway. Sure, argue the levees are holding and be grateful but it would seem to validate the authoritarian concerns.
Did you have these same concerns about authoritarianism when the left threatened to stack the court, add Puerto Rico as a state, and Biden literally weaponized the federal government against political opposition?
I highly doubt it.
To your point, it in no way validates authoritarian concerns. It would validate it if Trump just said “fuck it” and did whatever he wanted anyway.
I’m mostly curious if the left will take this into consideration when they say that Trump owns the Supreme Court.
I don't really understand how a rational outside observer can't look at the sheer amount of power the Supreme Court is giving Trump (or the Executive Branch in general), as well as the conservative rulings that have broken precedent, and not assume that's the case.
They basically gave Trump immunity from his crimes in office by eluding to "anything the president decides is a presidential duty is immune from recourse". Among dozens upon dozens of other precedent breaking rulings like overturning Roe.
The founding fathers are rolling in their graves for how much stress testing of the guard rails Trump is doing, and how much power congress/supreme court has shirked off to him.
My biggest indicator is that all the 2A/Libertarian/Conservative figures a decade or two ago would absolutely lose their minds at the idea of a President sending soldiers into cities on his own whim without any actual emergency going on (no, there is no crime emergency, crime is at historic lows).
Imagine Biden sending army into red states, the backlash would be historic.
Why are so many answers to toplevel questions a deflect to the left / Dems / etc?
Trump just needs to find every way possible to deny Chicago federal funds.
This over 300 Nat Guard? Daley and LBJ's response to Leftist trouble makers at the '68 Dem convention: 12,000 cops, 6,000 US Army troops, 6,000 National Guard. SCOTUS cases in response to that deployment: 0
The Constitution (nor the SCOTUS's ability to hear cases) does not cease to apply based on the number of forces.
Oh yeah? 24,000 vs 300. What changed? Between No Kings and ICE protests you had 250,000 protesters vs 8,000 in '68.
Article II enumerates among the President's duties "executing and enforcing laws". Established prerequisite for NG deployment is if the President is "unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States". The crux of this decision is SCOTUS does not see justification...yet. It's only a matter of time and possibly lives before that standard's met, while that fat bastard Pritzker lies, obstructs, flaunts legitimate authority and plays with public safety to pander to a deluded voter base
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/10/06/dhs-debunks-governor-pritzkers-harmful-lies-about-operation-midway-blitz-chicago