It feels like all US government intuitions are falling apart
Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that the entire case should be thrown out because the appointment of the special counsel who brought the case, Jack Smith, had violated the Constitution. Her decision is sure to be appealed.
It feels like all US government intuitions are falling apart
The last few months/weeks have been making it a lot clearer for a lot of people just how little of our federal government actually exists as a coherent body governed by identifiable rules. I can...
The last few months/weeks have been making it a lot clearer for a lot of people just how little of our federal government actually exists as a coherent body governed by identifiable rules. I can make fun of liberals for talking about Trump upending "norms" or whatever, but it really is norms all the way down. The only reason we didn't have a presidential criminal immunity ruling before last month was because nobody wanted to charge a president with a crime. The only reason Congress is able to pass most laws is because the Court doesn't stop them with one of their many, many, many completely discretionary vetoes ("erm, that's not interstate commerce, how dare you!"). The only reason we have an administrative state is because, until a few weeks ago, the other branches were happy to let the administrative state deal with all the headache of defining and enforcing rules. The only reason the Court has judicial review as a power is because the other branches have (completely informally) let it happen and gone along with what it says for 200 years.
Some countries solve these problems by writing these things called constitutions, so that it is clear how the government is supposed to behave. The US never bothered with that, in large part because we couldn't have gotten the states to sign on to the Constitution if it had created a functioning federal government. Instead, all that was ever actually holding it together was a shared implicit understanding between/among the branches about how they would behave. This allowed it to very fluidly adapt whenever there was political will for that to happen, because no formal rules ever needed to be rewritten, since they didn't exist to begin with. But it also allowed it to stagnate without recourse for decades at a time as soon as that political will disappeared. And more importantly right now, it also means that, as soon as enough people in government stopped believing those rules existed, or should exist, they literally did stop existing -- immediately -- and all that was left was the very easy task of formalizing that already-completed process.
The U.S. Constitution was one of the earliest written constitutions. It was, in many ways, a good effort for the time. But it was written well before the modern social welfare and regulatory...
The U.S. Constitution was one of the earliest written constitutions. It was, in many ways, a good effort for the time. But it was written well before the modern social welfare and regulatory states.
The reality though is that inherent in all constitutions is a certain degree of norms and trust. You can only codify so much. Legislative branches don’t have a military or police force that can enforce decisions against a head of state/government, they rely on the norms of not trying a self-coup, of the military and law enforcement disobeying unlawful orders, and of popular will to resist. Ditto for judicial branches.
For sure, they didn't really know what they were doing from a modern perspective and it shows in a lot of places. History certainly hasn't been kind to very many of the Federalist Papers'...
For sure, they didn't really know what they were doing from a modern perspective and it shows in a lot of places. History certainly hasn't been kind to very many of the Federalist Papers' assumptions about how people in government behave. How could they have known? But the idea of creating a functioning federal government was floating around at the time. Many important people did want that. They just couldn't get away with it, since this was being sold to many of the states as a very loose, voluntary union, an idea that wouldn't (and couldn't) be upset for the better part of a century. You're definitely right that every constitution does, at some point, need to just throw its hands up and hope for the best. You can only codify so much. Then again, while, yeah, nobody would have thought about creating a welfare state back then, it really isn't that hard to codify the idea that your federal legislature should be allowed to federally legislate. It really isn't that hard to say that the Court has judicial review. These were ideas that already existed in the world, the federalists were writing about them, and they nonetheless had to be retconned in later to make the government fucking work, without any formal process consecrating them.
A lot of Americans, even (maybe especially) those tuned into politics, have some sense of the federal government being a rigorously structured institution whose powers are systematically governed by some set of rules, whether they believe that's good or bad. But that's not exactly real most of the time, and to the extent it is, it's opt-in. That's naive in general, if you study government, of course, but it's particularly so in the US, where the powers we tend to associate with the three branches were mostly made up afterward in response to particular situations. Our shared cultural concept of the federal state as a governing body that regularly impacts citizens' lives is historically specific and exceedingly recent. Most Americans' shared assumptions about what the state fundamentally is are assumptions that have only even kinda held since the Civil War, and have only reaaaally held since the New Deal. And, crucially, none of those assumptions were ever codified anywhere. They were, usually, the product of the historically-specific, transient whims of the Supreme Court.
I dunno. Post-Dobbs, many woke up to some of the absurdities of the Supreme Court in particular, yet you still see a lot of unchecked assumptions about how things have to work. The thing is that the structure and nature of the American state are orders of magnitude less fixed than we like to imagine. I think a lot of the reaction to Loper Bright and Trump, for example, was rooted not just in the decisions themselves, but in the violent annihilation of the illusion that any of this shit existed outside our heads. Surely there's some reason this can't happen. A lot of articles suggest the Court made some logical error in one or both of these cases, or the rulings are otherwise invalid, somehow. That happened after Dobbs, too. On the one hand, it should be laughable, but it's also understandable why it's so tempting to give that kind of idea some weight. The idea that the courts can do anything isn't the takeaway, either. It's that to speak about what the state "can" or "cannot" do or be is arguably a category error. In most of the ways that matter, the federal government as we know it is four or five court cases in a trench coat, and, in all of the ways that matter, it's Vibes.
I wouldn't say it was that so much as the US was one of the first nations to adopt a written Constitution. However, it was never updated to reflect the realities of trans-continental transport....
The US never bothered with that, in large part because we couldn't have gotten the states to sign on to the Constitution if it had created a functioning federal government.
I wouldn't say it was that so much as the US was one of the first nations to adopt a written Constitution. However, it was never updated to reflect the realities of trans-continental transport. The speed of movement means that duties that previously made sense for the states now are only sensible for the federal government.
stagnate without recourse for decades at a time as soon as that political will disappeared
Is the current gap between the most recent amendment and now the longest the Constitution has gone without revision? Without looking it up, I'm pretty sure it is.
They were, yeah, but many of the drafters of the thing wanted to give the Court judicial review, many of the drafters of the thing wanted to give Congress legislative authority exceeding taxation...
I wouldn't say it was that so much as the US was one of the first nations to adopt a written Constitution.
They were, yeah, but many of the drafters of the thing wanted to give the Court judicial review, many of the drafters of the thing wanted to give Congress legislative authority exceeding taxation and regulating interstate commerce, etc. As a case study, it cannot be stressed enough that Congress can only pass most laws because the Court developed a body of law outlining a variety of mutually inconsistent and equally absurd definitions of what the Constitution means when it says "interstate commerce". They eventually settled in the 20th century on "literally fucking anything" (lightly paraphrasing), before subsequently rolling that back to "literally anything, unless it's 'non-economic'", where "non-economic" is wholly undefined, decided on a case-by-case basis according to vibes, and used in practice as an arbitrary judicial veto. Without this, the only lawmaking power Congress has is to collect money (and, implicitly, disburse it).
This wasn't a mistake! The problem wasn't that nobody knew the legislature might need to legislate! In middle school, you learn about the Articles of Confederation, and how they had an exceptionally weak federal government as a compromise to get the states and the antifederalists to sign them, and how they didn't work and were replaced with the Constitution, which provided for a stronger federal government. That's true, it was stronger, but the same legitimacy concerns existed when they drafted the Constitution. It still had to make compromises along the same faultlines, even if it moved the needle by adding the "collect money" power above. The Constitution still left a Congress that couldn't regulate much of anything, even though many of those drafting it knew that was important. Ditto for the other branches' powers.
Much of the early history of the Constitution is one of compromising on whether the federal government would be a real thing or a mere formality. Over the centuries, whenever this question was raised, it would tend to be answered with "yes, it's a real thing, not a mere formality", to address increasingly complex economic and social realities. But those answers came almost exclusively as informal historical developments and ambiguous, easily overturnable court rulings, because it's a question that deliberately went unanswered in the text of the Constitution itself. And now we're here.
It's long been my opinion that the two developments that necessitated a federal government far beyond what the founders imagined were the transcontinental railroad and, later, vastly accelerated...
increasingly complex economic and social realities
It's long been my opinion that the two developments that necessitated a federal government far beyond what the founders imagined were the transcontinental railroad and, later, vastly accelerated by the interstate highway system.
What previously could've been 50 laboratories in participatory democracy suddenly faced the problem that any state that raised its standard of living too rapidly now faces a risk of being swamped by internal migration, thanks to U-Haul. Even accepting that the migrants are a net economic positive, it would risk people bidding up real estate or overwhelming whatever state government program it was that attracted everyone there (or they did plan for it and it overwhelms other government services for the first few years until equilibrium is reestablished).
What the fuck. Sorry. I am just flabbergasted. Like, I do understand that prosecution does need to follow rules and standards set along, but throwing out the whole case here seems insane. I...
What the fuck.
Sorry. I am just flabbergasted. Like, I do understand that prosecution does need to follow rules and standards set along, but throwing out the whole case here seems insane. I haven’t really looked into how the appointment of the special counsel technically violates the constitution, but this feels ridiculous.
What does this mean for the case going forwards?
Like, I get that Trump was president, but I don’t see how this case (on the merits of it) any different than the case of the guy who leaked classified documents on discord for clout to his friends (who I guess apparently hasn’t been sentenced yet, looks like that’s scheduled for September). (Except that it is actually much more severe in this case, as the documents were willfully retained after being requested back, there were a ridiculous number of documents, and debatably shared/shown to foreign nationals).
That judge was appointed by Trump and apparently has been stalling the whole case for a while now. I don't know that much about US law or the constitution, but it feels like BS to me. A judge...
That judge was appointed by Trump and apparently has been stalling the whole case for a while now.
I don't know that much about US law or the constitution, but it feels like BS to me. A judge Canon quote from one of the articles:
"In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny"
Sounds too much like the whole "its a witch hunt" narrative.
Clarence Thomas laid out this option for her in a recent Supreme Court concurrence that none of the other justices signed onto. This will be appealed but we have lost any chance of questioning...
Clarence Thomas laid out this option for her in a recent Supreme Court concurrence that none of the other justices signed onto. This will be appealed but we have lost any chance of questioning witnesses about these crimes before the election.
Because they are. That's what happens when everyone in all the process, in all the departments, in all the everything, stops acting in good faith. When they all start looking for the angle, the...
Because they are.
That's what happens when everyone in all the process, in all the departments, in all the everything, stops acting in good faith. When they all start looking for the angle, the edge, the line, the secret sauce that allows them and theirs to succeed, especially if while doing so they also stomp hard on The Other for a twofer.
But remember, it's fine. We're not in trouble. The country is just going to happily submit to authoritarianism, and everyone will comply when boots start kicking in doors and hauling people out. And it's clearly alarmism to point it out.
Apparently you have to wait until the boot has shattered the doorjam before it's okay to point out they've gone too far. Up until then, you're just being dramatic.
It feels like "judges don't get to try cases involving the person who appointed them" would be a reasonable ethical standard, if our judiciary had reasonable ethical standards.
It feels like "judges don't get to try cases involving the person who appointed them" would be a reasonable ethical standard, if our judiciary had reasonable ethical standards.
It’s “in your face” how corrupt this is. she was appointed by Trump. Should have recused she slow walked the case for months waits a full year to decide that the special counsel is invalid. If...
It’s “in your face” how corrupt this is.
she was appointed by Trump. Should have recused
she slow walked the case for months
waits a full year to decide that the special counsel is invalid. If this was true (and it can’t be if we really have checks and balances), she could have dismissed the case at the beginning.
This is part of a comment I saw on lemmy which encapsulates what most people probably feel:
Honestly for a long time I was really hopeful that the fact that he was doing it out in the open and everyone could see that he was abusing the hell out of every little loophole he could find, and creating some new ones, would mean that we'd start closing those loopholes when he was out of office and we might even see an era of reform.
He's been out of office for 4 years and all the courts have managed to do is LEGALIZE HIS MISCONDUCT!
Does anyone know what happens with an appeals here? If the prosecution were to successfully appeal, would the case go back to Cannon, or would they draw a new judge?
Does anyone know what happens with an appeals here? If the prosecution were to successfully appeal, would the case go back to Cannon, or would they draw a new judge?
That would be up to the judges that oversee the appeal. They could demand it back to Cannon, they could to someone else. The DOJ can request a different judge in their appeal if it gets remanded.
That would be up to the judges that oversee the appeal. They could demand it back to Cannon, they could to someone else. The DOJ can request a different judge in their appeal if it gets remanded.
The problem is that is just more stalling tactics. So it'll take time to go to appeals and get a decision. Assuming the decision gets overturned, it'll take time for either the appeals to assign a...
The problem is that is just more stalling tactics. So it'll take time to go to appeals and get a decision. Assuming the decision gets overturned, it'll take time for either the appeals to assign a new judge or for the DOJ to request one. If that gets approve, the new judge probably needs time to get acquainted with the case. At that point, we might be beyond the election, maybe even past the inauguration. And if Trump is president, we get another "Saturday Night Massacre." And that's it.
At the risk of falling in with the conspiracy theorists and the "Deep State," this is it right here. She is part of the "Deep State." And it's not even deep! There's not even a grand, shadowy conspiracy here. It's simply "I like Trump, you know it, I know it, we all know it. Case dismissed."
I hate posting out of emotion on Tildes. But, god, when does this stop?
Yeah in my opinion this is absolutely a case of blatant partisan corruption in the judiciary. I agree there. I guess I have been assuming for a while though that none of Trump’s legal embroilments...
Yeah in my opinion this is absolutely a case of blatant partisan corruption in the judiciary. I agree there. I guess I have been assuming for a while though that none of Trump’s legal embroilments will get resolved until after the election. This is why it is imperative he is defeated at the ballot box by an amount where it is impossible to overturn in the courts.
The only "deep state" that existed in the past 8 years was those adults in the room with Trump who kept him from unilaterally making decisions that would take us to war or harm the country. Ironic...
The only "deep state" that existed in the past 8 years was those adults in the room with Trump who kept him from unilaterally making decisions that would take us to war or harm the country.
Ironic point that the GOP playbook seems to be a giant game of "I know you are but what am my?" Trump was creating his deep state while in office. Cannon, as an appointee, is part of it.
That's not to say that this is a conspiracy. It's out and out croneyism.
This shouldn't be surprising. The MAGA GOP have thrived on appealing to peoples' ugliest natures. Of course, this is as banal and vulgar as Trump himself.
This shouldn't be surprising. The MAGA GOP have thrived on appealing to peoples' ugliest natures. Of course, this is as banal and vulgar as Trump himself.
I'm not even really sure what these people want. The naive assumption is something to do with Christian/Conservative/White/whatever national identity. But concretely, what are they going to gain...
I'm not even really sure what these people want. The naive assumption is something to do with Christian/Conservative/White/whatever national identity. But concretely, what are they going to gain from all of this (Trump being a dictator, throwing away legal precedent, the shenanigans in Congress, etc.). Most people just want to have enough money and agency to live the lives they want to live. I'm curious how all of this gives the people more power and wealth. I can see how a failed government makes the ultra-wealthy more powerful - they'll be the only functioning institutions left. But why do so many little people like what they're seeing?
Some people think they can ride this wave to their own benefit, there’s a long history of more moderate or centrist conservatives thinking they can control these sorts of movements so that they...
Some people think they can ride this wave to their own benefit, there’s a long history of more moderate or centrist conservatives thinking they can control these sorts of movements so that they get what they want (like tax cuts and less regulation). Some just want power and money and don’t care about anything else. Some are just true believers in the cause. And lastly, I think some already feel they are in too deep and there’s no safe way out, at least not without sacrificing their careers and reputations.
I don’t think many of them are really thinking long term here. Except maybe the true believers. If the others read more history and paid more attention they’d realize they will almost assuredly get eaten by the monster they’ve helped create and it will only get worse.
Obviously that’s mainly true of the “elite” side. I think the average people side of things, the backbone of the movement, just think things are bad now and Trump will fix it. I imagine the particulars of what’s wrong and how it will be fixed look pretty different to each individual. The Q-Anon people have a different idea of what all that means than the evangelicals do, than the GOP business people do, than the rural working class does, etc. And because Trump and Trumpism (and Fascism for that matter) is really all about aesthetics and projecting strength no one really has to worry too much about what the details are or how it’s going to happen. They get to just fill it in however they imagine it. In fact I bet many people don’t even bother to imagine it. It’s like that old meme
Step 1: Trump gets power.
Step 2:????
Step 3: Profit!
Honestly, everyone's assuming that she's doing all this as a favor for Trump because he appointed her but I wouldn't be at all surprised if her ultimate motivation is simply the fact that she...
Honestly, everyone's assuming that she's doing all this as a favor for Trump because he appointed her but I wouldn't be at all surprised if her ultimate motivation is simply the fact that she doesn't want to be the first federal judge in history to preside over the conviction of a former president. If Trump wins the election then he can drop the case, yes, but even if he loses and she delays long enough then one of the other cases could resolve before hers and then she's not setting a historical precedent of this magnitude. I mean, the average age of federal judges is 69 and she was 39 when Trump appointed her and she had been practicing law for literally the bare minimum of 12 years to receive an ABA qualification. That's a lot of pressure on someone who essentially has their whole career ahead of them.
If that were the case, she had an extremely easy way out of that, by recusing herself from the case. The fact that she didn't suggests this is probably not her motivation.
If that were the case, she had an extremely easy way out of that, by recusing herself from the case. The fact that she didn't suggests this is probably not her motivation.
Certain circles of the evangelical right believe America is slipping into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah; and that it is their duty to correct it. They believe that the folks living in sin...
Certain circles of the evangelical right believe America is slipping into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah; and that it is their duty to correct it. They believe that the folks living in sin (queers, loose women, non-Christians, and among some, race-mixers) are destined to eternal damnation in hell should they not repent or have an intervention. Some also believe that God will punish them for not doing more. They believe that extreme measures are necessary to save America from decadence (even if it comes from a sinner). In their mind, this is their last chance to do so, as they’ve seen America slipping for decades now.
Some desire chaos but I think most people are just trying to follow capital, power, or religion. Most people think that they are doing the right thing. They feel good from choosing a side and...
Some desire chaos but I think most people are just trying to follow capital, power, or religion. Most people think that they are doing the right thing. They feel good from choosing a side and choosing a party color. Politics is entertainment. Realpolitik has ceased to exist in the US maybe 20 or 30 years ago
It feels like all US government intuitions are falling apart
The last few months/weeks have been making it a lot clearer for a lot of people just how little of our federal government actually exists as a coherent body governed by identifiable rules. I can make fun of liberals for talking about Trump upending "norms" or whatever, but it really is norms all the way down. The only reason we didn't have a presidential criminal immunity ruling before last month was because nobody wanted to charge a president with a crime. The only reason Congress is able to pass most laws is because the Court doesn't stop them with one of their many, many, many completely discretionary vetoes ("erm, that's not interstate commerce, how dare you!"). The only reason we have an administrative state is because, until a few weeks ago, the other branches were happy to let the administrative state deal with all the headache of defining and enforcing rules. The only reason the Court has judicial review as a power is because the other branches have (completely informally) let it happen and gone along with what it says for 200 years.
Some countries solve these problems by writing these things called constitutions, so that it is clear how the government is supposed to behave. The US never bothered with that, in large part because we couldn't have gotten the states to sign on to the Constitution if it had created a functioning federal government. Instead, all that was ever actually holding it together was a shared implicit understanding between/among the branches about how they would behave. This allowed it to very fluidly adapt whenever there was political will for that to happen, because no formal rules ever needed to be rewritten, since they didn't exist to begin with. But it also allowed it to stagnate without recourse for decades at a time as soon as that political will disappeared. And more importantly right now, it also means that, as soon as enough people in government stopped believing those rules existed, or should exist, they literally did stop existing -- immediately -- and all that was left was the very easy task of formalizing that already-completed process.
The U.S. Constitution was one of the earliest written constitutions. It was, in many ways, a good effort for the time. But it was written well before the modern social welfare and regulatory states.
The reality though is that inherent in all constitutions is a certain degree of norms and trust. You can only codify so much. Legislative branches don’t have a military or police force that can enforce decisions against a head of state/government, they rely on the norms of not trying a self-coup, of the military and law enforcement disobeying unlawful orders, and of popular will to resist. Ditto for judicial branches.
For sure, they didn't really know what they were doing from a modern perspective and it shows in a lot of places. History certainly hasn't been kind to very many of the Federalist Papers' assumptions about how people in government behave. How could they have known? But the idea of creating a functioning federal government was floating around at the time. Many important people did want that. They just couldn't get away with it, since this was being sold to many of the states as a very loose, voluntary union, an idea that wouldn't (and couldn't) be upset for the better part of a century. You're definitely right that every constitution does, at some point, need to just throw its hands up and hope for the best. You can only codify so much. Then again, while, yeah, nobody would have thought about creating a welfare state back then, it really isn't that hard to codify the idea that your federal legislature should be allowed to federally legislate. It really isn't that hard to say that the Court has judicial review. These were ideas that already existed in the world, the federalists were writing about them, and they nonetheless had to be retconned in later to make the government fucking work, without any formal process consecrating them.
A lot of Americans, even (maybe especially) those tuned into politics, have some sense of the federal government being a rigorously structured institution whose powers are systematically governed by some set of rules, whether they believe that's good or bad. But that's not exactly real most of the time, and to the extent it is, it's opt-in. That's naive in general, if you study government, of course, but it's particularly so in the US, where the powers we tend to associate with the three branches were mostly made up afterward in response to particular situations. Our shared cultural concept of the federal state as a governing body that regularly impacts citizens' lives is historically specific and exceedingly recent. Most Americans' shared assumptions about what the state fundamentally is are assumptions that have only even kinda held since the Civil War, and have only reaaaally held since the New Deal. And, crucially, none of those assumptions were ever codified anywhere. They were, usually, the product of the historically-specific, transient whims of the Supreme Court.
I dunno. Post-Dobbs, many woke up to some of the absurdities of the Supreme Court in particular, yet you still see a lot of unchecked assumptions about how things have to work. The thing is that the structure and nature of the American state are orders of magnitude less fixed than we like to imagine. I think a lot of the reaction to Loper Bright and Trump, for example, was rooted not just in the decisions themselves, but in the violent annihilation of the illusion that any of this shit existed outside our heads. Surely there's some reason this can't happen. A lot of articles suggest the Court made some logical error in one or both of these cases, or the rulings are otherwise invalid, somehow. That happened after Dobbs, too. On the one hand, it should be laughable, but it's also understandable why it's so tempting to give that kind of idea some weight. The idea that the courts can do anything isn't the takeaway, either. It's that to speak about what the state "can" or "cannot" do or be is arguably a category error. In most of the ways that matter, the federal government as we know it is four or five court cases in a trench coat, and, in all of the ways that matter, it's Vibes.
I wouldn't say it was that so much as the US was one of the first nations to adopt a written Constitution. However, it was never updated to reflect the realities of trans-continental transport. The speed of movement means that duties that previously made sense for the states now are only sensible for the federal government.
Is the current gap between the most recent amendment and now the longest the Constitution has gone without revision? Without looking it up, I'm pretty sure it is.
They were, yeah, but many of the drafters of the thing wanted to give the Court judicial review, many of the drafters of the thing wanted to give Congress legislative authority exceeding taxation and regulating interstate commerce, etc. As a case study, it cannot be stressed enough that Congress can only pass most laws because the Court developed a body of law outlining a variety of mutually inconsistent and equally absurd definitions of what the Constitution means when it says "interstate commerce". They eventually settled in the 20th century on "literally fucking anything" (lightly paraphrasing), before subsequently rolling that back to "literally anything, unless it's 'non-economic'", where "non-economic" is wholly undefined, decided on a case-by-case basis according to vibes, and used in practice as an arbitrary judicial veto. Without this, the only lawmaking power Congress has is to collect money (and, implicitly, disburse it).
This wasn't a mistake! The problem wasn't that nobody knew the legislature might need to legislate! In middle school, you learn about the Articles of Confederation, and how they had an exceptionally weak federal government as a compromise to get the states and the antifederalists to sign them, and how they didn't work and were replaced with the Constitution, which provided for a stronger federal government. That's true, it was stronger, but the same legitimacy concerns existed when they drafted the Constitution. It still had to make compromises along the same faultlines, even if it moved the needle by adding the "collect money" power above. The Constitution still left a Congress that couldn't regulate much of anything, even though many of those drafting it knew that was important. Ditto for the other branches' powers.
Much of the early history of the Constitution is one of compromising on whether the federal government would be a real thing or a mere formality. Over the centuries, whenever this question was raised, it would tend to be answered with "yes, it's a real thing, not a mere formality", to address increasingly complex economic and social realities. But those answers came almost exclusively as informal historical developments and ambiguous, easily overturnable court rulings, because it's a question that deliberately went unanswered in the text of the Constitution itself. And now we're here.
It's long been my opinion that the two developments that necessitated a federal government far beyond what the founders imagined were the transcontinental railroad and, later, vastly accelerated by the interstate highway system.
What previously could've been 50 laboratories in participatory democracy suddenly faced the problem that any state that raised its standard of living too rapidly now faces a risk of being swamped by internal migration, thanks to U-Haul. Even accepting that the migrants are a net economic positive, it would risk people bidding up real estate or overwhelming whatever state government program it was that attracted everyone there (or they did plan for it and it overwhelms other government services for the first few years until equilibrium is reestablished).
What the fuck.
Sorry. I am just flabbergasted. Like, I do understand that prosecution does need to follow rules and standards set along, but throwing out the whole case here seems insane. I haven’t really looked into how the appointment of the special counsel technically violates the constitution, but this feels ridiculous.
What does this mean for the case going forwards?
Like, I get that Trump was president, but I don’t see how this case (on the merits of it) any different than the case of the guy who leaked classified documents on discord for clout to his friends (who I guess apparently hasn’t been sentenced yet, looks like that’s scheduled for September). (Except that it is actually much more severe in this case, as the documents were willfully retained after being requested back, there were a ridiculous number of documents, and debatably shared/shown to foreign nationals).
That judge was appointed by Trump and apparently has been stalling the whole case for a while now.
I don't know that much about US law or the constitution, but it feels like BS to me. A judge Canon quote from one of the articles:
Sounds too much like the whole "its a witch hunt" narrative.
Clarence Thomas laid out this option for her in a recent Supreme Court concurrence that none of the other justices signed onto. This will be appealed but we have lost any chance of questioning witnesses about these crimes before the election.
The good news is that the appeal means it's no longer in her hands. Eventually is better than never, even if it's still crap.
Because they are.
That's what happens when everyone in all the process, in all the departments, in all the everything, stops acting in good faith. When they all start looking for the angle, the edge, the line, the secret sauce that allows them and theirs to succeed, especially if while doing so they also stomp hard on The Other for a twofer.
But remember, it's fine. We're not in trouble. The country is just going to happily submit to authoritarianism, and everyone will comply when boots start kicking in doors and hauling people out. And it's clearly alarmism to point it out.
Apparently you have to wait until the boot has shattered the doorjam before it's okay to point out they've gone too far. Up until then, you're just being dramatic.
All hail, King Trump
FTFY.
I'll be over here, quietly rocking back and forth.
It feels like "judges don't get to try cases involving the person who appointed them" would be a reasonable ethical standard, if our judiciary had reasonable ethical standards.
It’s “in your face” how corrupt this is.
This is part of a comment I saw on lemmy which encapsulates what most people probably feel:
Does anyone know what happens with an appeals here? If the prosecution were to successfully appeal, would the case go back to Cannon, or would they draw a new judge?
That would be up to the judges that oversee the appeal. They could demand it back to Cannon, they could to someone else. The DOJ can request a different judge in their appeal if it gets remanded.
The problem is that is just more stalling tactics. So it'll take time to go to appeals and get a decision. Assuming the decision gets overturned, it'll take time for either the appeals to assign a new judge or for the DOJ to request one. If that gets approve, the new judge probably needs time to get acquainted with the case. At that point, we might be beyond the election, maybe even past the inauguration. And if Trump is president, we get another "Saturday Night Massacre." And that's it.
At the risk of falling in with the conspiracy theorists and the "Deep State," this is it right here. She is part of the "Deep State." And it's not even deep! There's not even a grand, shadowy conspiracy here. It's simply "I like Trump, you know it, I know it, we all know it. Case dismissed."
I hate posting out of emotion on Tildes. But, god, when does this stop?
Yeah in my opinion this is absolutely a case of blatant partisan corruption in the judiciary. I agree there. I guess I have been assuming for a while though that none of Trump’s legal embroilments will get resolved until after the election. This is why it is imperative he is defeated at the ballot box by an amount where it is impossible to overturn in the courts.
The only "deep state" that existed in the past 8 years was those adults in the room with Trump who kept him from unilaterally making decisions that would take us to war or harm the country.
Ironic point that the GOP playbook seems to be a giant game of "I know you are but what am my?" Trump was creating his deep state while in office. Cannon, as an appointee, is part of it.
That's not to say that this is a conspiracy. It's out and out croneyism.
The Deep State isn't deep, as it turns out. It is as shallow as Trump's ego.
This shouldn't be surprising. The MAGA GOP have thrived on appealing to peoples' ugliest natures. Of course, this is as banal and vulgar as Trump himself.
I'm not even really sure what these people want. The naive assumption is something to do with Christian/Conservative/White/whatever national identity. But concretely, what are they going to gain from all of this (Trump being a dictator, throwing away legal precedent, the shenanigans in Congress, etc.). Most people just want to have enough money and agency to live the lives they want to live. I'm curious how all of this gives the people more power and wealth. I can see how a failed government makes the ultra-wealthy more powerful - they'll be the only functioning institutions left. But why do so many little people like what they're seeing?
Some people think they can ride this wave to their own benefit, there’s a long history of more moderate or centrist conservatives thinking they can control these sorts of movements so that they get what they want (like tax cuts and less regulation). Some just want power and money and don’t care about anything else. Some are just true believers in the cause. And lastly, I think some already feel they are in too deep and there’s no safe way out, at least not without sacrificing their careers and reputations.
I don’t think many of them are really thinking long term here. Except maybe the true believers. If the others read more history and paid more attention they’d realize they will almost assuredly get eaten by the monster they’ve helped create and it will only get worse.
Obviously that’s mainly true of the “elite” side. I think the average people side of things, the backbone of the movement, just think things are bad now and Trump will fix it. I imagine the particulars of what’s wrong and how it will be fixed look pretty different to each individual. The Q-Anon people have a different idea of what all that means than the evangelicals do, than the GOP business people do, than the rural working class does, etc. And because Trump and Trumpism (and Fascism for that matter) is really all about aesthetics and projecting strength no one really has to worry too much about what the details are or how it’s going to happen. They get to just fill it in however they imagine it. In fact I bet many people don’t even bother to imagine it. It’s like that old meme
Step 1: Trump gets power.
Step 2:????
Step 3: Profit!
Honestly, everyone's assuming that she's doing all this as a favor for Trump because he appointed her but I wouldn't be at all surprised if her ultimate motivation is simply the fact that she doesn't want to be the first federal judge in history to preside over the conviction of a former president. If Trump wins the election then he can drop the case, yes, but even if he loses and she delays long enough then one of the other cases could resolve before hers and then she's not setting a historical precedent of this magnitude. I mean, the average age of federal judges is 69 and she was 39 when Trump appointed her and she had been practicing law for literally the bare minimum of 12 years to receive an ABA qualification. That's a lot of pressure on someone who essentially has their whole career ahead of them.
If that were the case, she had an extremely easy way out of that, by recusing herself from the case. The fact that she didn't suggests this is probably not her motivation.
Certain circles of the evangelical right believe America is slipping into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah; and that it is their duty to correct it. They believe that the folks living in sin (queers, loose women, non-Christians, and among some, race-mixers) are destined to eternal damnation in hell should they not repent or have an intervention. Some also believe that God will punish them for not doing more. They believe that extreme measures are necessary to save America from decadence (even if it comes from a sinner). In their mind, this is their last chance to do so, as they’ve seen America slipping for decades now.
Some desire chaos but I think most people are just trying to follow capital, power, or religion. Most people think that they are doing the right thing. They feel good from choosing a side and choosing a party color. Politics is entertainment. Realpolitik has ceased to exist in the US maybe 20 or 30 years ago