The Supreme Court has been ducking the question of the legality of the recent firings by reversing, on the shadow docket, any lower court injunctions that stay the firings. When the cases eventually percolate again on the merits, Roberts and Co. may well find that it is illegal for the president to fire so-and-so... right as the administration changes parties.
Sure, it's nakedly transparent. And yes, it amounts to setting the rule-of-law on fire while plugging your ears and repeating “I know you are but what am I.” But dang if it isn't brazenly effective politicking.
But Trump tried to fire Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and the Supreme Court killed her case in the shadow docket.
https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/the-fed-can-sta...
But effectively it decides the case because nobody is going to stick around through a long trial after the injunction is canceled.
Which basically makes The Supreme Courts shadow docket a fairly arbitrary justice system that doesn’t generate precedent and many courts ignore past the immediate case.
All this power grabbing is setting himself up for what? In 3.5 years he is out the door and an election will be held with presumably Vance as the POTUS nom.
If you play the tape out and, as expected, the GOP is massacred at mid-terms, and Dems get in their pick in at the next election I would expect all this to be undone.
What is the point?
And I reject any argument that Trump will take the POTUS position for a third term. It won't happen.
Because if history is any indication, he's on a straight path every single dictator and strongman walked before becoming one. He has set on fire every single US institution and the rule of law. He is the law now.
It doesn't end well. Maybe it won't be him, but his son, who knows. But there is no good outcome out of it. Zero. He's not loosing another election.
You're naive if you say it absolutely won't happen.
This scenario has played out again and again throughout history when dictators install themselves, existing rules and legality be damned.
I mean, surely not. No-one is going to vote for that. They'll presumably be able to find _someone_ who's less of a weirdo nobody.
A lot of what they're doing is difficult to reverse. Article III appointments, gerrymandering, SCOTUS decisions, the replacement of the federal workforce, selling off federal property, approving resource extraction, economic damage, ...
After all is said and done we’ll have a right leaning government but with most of the day to day insanities and drama removed. But still far more right wing than we would have tolerated 10 years ago.
Either that or without Trump the Trump coalition implodes.
Or a puppet president is elected with Trump able to bully them into what he wants. But not sure his health lasts for that.
I wouldn't presume that very strongly; the last two sitting VPs to be nominated to succeed the President they served under were Nixon and George H. W. Bush.
> If you play the tape out and, as expected, the GOP is massacred at mid-terms, and Dems get in their pick in at the next election I would expect all this to be undone.
I think you haven't thought through the manners in which a military occupation targeted on a partisan basis can, alone or in coordination with other chicanery, selectively impact the operation if elections, and how any uncertainty produced is resolved by the fact that the existing House is the ultimate judge of elections to the next House.
IOW, your mistake is asssumign business as usual despite all the flashing red lights and klaxons going off about how the business of government is not operating as usual.
treetalker•5mo ago
Be. Executed. Be faithfully executed. That's why the president is the chief executive, not the chief enactor.
Not exactly the constitutional scholar Obama was. But, in light of the recent "executive order to make flag-burning a criminal offense", perhaps this is a pertinent and revealing Freudian slip.