booly

they can't use the threat of a primary against her

She lost the 2010 primary during the height of the Tea Party movement, ran a campaign to have people vote for her as a write in candidate, and won as a write in.

In the end, the problem is that her vote doesn't actually matter this cycle, at least not by itself. In order to flex any muscle she'd need to actually persuade some colleagues to stand up to Trump. At this point she's more of a Republican Fetterman than a Republican Sinema/Manchin.

Ha I should be clear, in my normal day to day responsibilities I mainly sue over money, which tends not to involve political considerations at all. That being said, the arbitrary way that the Trump admin has canceled contracts, yanked grants, canceled things that others have had to rush in and fill the vacuum on (including spending their own money), I might very well end up with a politically charged case at some point.

And maybe there's something to be said to committing some time or effort or money to public interest and public impact litigation for the types of cases not typically in my wheelhouse.

Exactly. There's nobody waking up to this realization, as the Jewish community already consists of people who were already aware of this and people who continue to bury their heads in the sand.

The Jewish community is waking up to this administration using them

Is it, though? The conservatives still seem like they're on the Trump train, and the liberals were never on board with him in the first place.

I keep pushing back on this sentiment because I think it's wrong.

Even if it is inevitable that he will win in court, it's still worth fighting every step of the way:

• It ties up their resources, including chewing up loyalists who burn out trying to defend the indefensible. It's no coincidence that the second Trump term is filled with people who are simply less competent at their jobs, compared to the people in the first Trump term.
• It forces them to actually make statements and stake out positions about what they're doing. No amount of journalism or activism could've gotten the Trump administration to admit that they got it wrong by deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, because that was the work of opposing lawyers and a tough judge. And even though they fired the lawyer who first conceded that point, Trump's own Solicitor General admitted it, too, to the Supreme Court.
• If the administration tears down the rule of law, that will have unintended consequences that harm them as well. You know how Trump blinked when it became clear that his ill-conceived tariffs were going to hurt his friends, and destroy his own popularity among the people whose approval he most craves? That dynamic will play out multiple times as he undermines the rule of law.
• Practically speaking, his contempt for the rule of law undermines his popularity and support from many of those he actually draws power from. He wants the financial world, the business world, the press, the film/art/literature/culture world, religious institutions, and the sports world to admire him and support him. Each time he breaks something, he has to deal with the backlash among his own supporters.

I'm not going to comply in advance. I'm fighting every step of the way, because even if he beats me every time, his unforced errors as he does so will still jeopardize his power.

Exactly. I'm gonna do the lawful good thing on my end, and work my hardest to protect the actual institutions that still have power to provide some checks on the government currently in the hands of a wannabe dictator.

Authoritarianism only stays strong when people don't do the most basic of things to oppose it.

Yeah, I subscribe to the Green Lantern/Tinkerbell theory of authoritarianism: the dictator only has power as long as people believe it. So skepticism of claims of power become self fulfilling, and belief in dictator power also becomes self fulfilling.

So don't comply in advance. Make them work for every inch, even on things that seem inevitable. Every delay you cause to their agenda buys someone else a reprieve.

In reality, it will take all of us doing different things to resist, and hopefully, that collective effort over time will be enough. It will still suck in the meantime.

Exactly this.

I'm a licensed attorney and I sue the government from time to time. I still think I can do that.

I've always known that the courts have limited power to reign in the President, especially in the modern era where American political parties have strengthened to the point where there's very little internal party resistance to the President's agenda (contrast to earlier eras when a Speaker of the House might have tanked the same-party President's agenda).

But the point of suing and getting the court orders is still important for the "lawful good" types to lay as much groundwork as possible for us to try our best to preserve the rule of law. If it gets frayed or bent in places, we still fight within that framework the best we can, knowing full well that in a vacuum where the law no longer constrains the powerful, that situation legitimizes any movement to do things in a "chaotic good" kind of way, from nonviolent civil disobedience to destructive acts to outright violence.

Those of us who are lawyers (and judges and even elected politicians) have our lane, at least for now, to try our best to maintain accountability within the law. If the law can't keep up, then we should still be satisfied that we tried our best to keep it within that lawful framework, because losing on that front still has the silver lining of increasing the popular will and support for extra-legal options. If they sidestep the restrictions of the law, then they'll find themselves outside the protections of the law. And maybe they have some confidence in their odds in a "might makes right" situation, but their current power structures still depend heavily on the law (even basic things like whether a dollar is legal tender or whether a piece of paper says you own something valuable).

No, even if tuition and books are free, financial aid still needs to help full time students have food to eat and have a place to live and ordinary day to day expenses. In many places, the aid on room and board is much more money than aid on tuition and fees.

And community colleges tend not to have their own dorms or anything like that, so it comes in the form of a monthly payment that helps the student pay their rent. That's an incentive for fraud.

They got a lawful order from a court to turn around flights and just didn't. The order doesn't need to be at the end of an appeal to the Supreme Court before it has effect.

I know. That was on a collision course for a constitutional crisis then, and then the Supreme Court bailed out Trump by saying the order was invalid, right before the judge was going to hold contempt hearings.

Now we're gonna see possible contempt hearings on disobeying an order that was affirmed by the Supreme Court.

No, this is probably the first one.

The previous one where they disobeyed a court order (turning around planes to El Salvador, stopping new planes from taking off) they successfully appealed that court order to where the Supreme Court declared that order void.

This one (facilitate the return of a wrongfully deported man) is the first one where they've just outright refused, and are pretending they can't comply.

This is a big deal, and it's unprecedented, even for Trump. This is the red line, and we're going to see a full blown constitutional crisis this week if it doesn't get resolved.

Getting close. Over the weekend the Trump admin might have crossed the line in Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. They might try to weasel out of the Supreme Court's order by saying they're following it the best they can, but Trump is also the type of person who seems incapable of that nuance, and might basically force that showdown with the Supreme Court.