r/politics • u/harsh2k5 • 1d ago

Soft Paywall The Trump Administration Just Violated Another Court Order | It gets worse: The order found that the administration was covertly withholding millions in FEMA funds from blue states.

https://newrepublic.com/post/193650/trump-administration-just-violated-another-court-order
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u/travio Washington 1d ago

Lock them up! The courts need to use contempt against these people. Put them in jail until they comply.

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u/Melancholy_Rainbows Montana 1d ago

Unfortunately, criminal contempt is going to be tricky, even if the courts have the balls.

First, it’s enforced by the Federal Marshals, who are under the control of Trump’s DoJ. Although it may be possible to deputize someone else to enforce it, it’s dicey.

Second, criminal contempt can be pardoned by the President.

Civil contempt might work, though, although it obviously wouldn’t be as satisfying.

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u/gumgajua Canada 1d ago

The more I hear about how your government truly works, the more I'm not so sure the FF's were against the idea of having a king, because Trump sure does seem like it.

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u/trampolinebears 1d ago

Imagine if your prime minister started doing blatantly illegal things, while retaining the confidence of a majority of MPs. And imagine if the governor general was a supporter of the PM, so they wouldn't try to have them removed. You'd have a dictator.

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u/Hector_P_Catt 1d ago

At least in Canada, the cops don't directly report to the government. The RCMP would have no problem arresting a PM if they were pulling blatantly illegal stuff.

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u/Giancolaa1 1d ago

You say that, meanwhile Ford makes blatantly illegal bribes and uses his position to gain wealth through shady deals, I don’t see any real investigations starting again the Premier. I can’t imagine them doing much if they align with what the prime minister is doing. Those who would have an issue would have been forced out by this point and replaced with more loyal goons.

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u/trampolinebears 1d ago

The RCMP reports to a cabinet minister, I think that counts as directly reporting to the government. The difference is one of government culture, not government organization.

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u/CircumventingTheBan_ 22h ago

And is in fact identical to the situation with the Marshals. They are under the DOJ, so they report directly to the US Attorney General, who is themself subordinate directly to the President. So still one chair removed as well.

But yes, the main point is that this is not a unique weakness of US democracy. It turns out any form of government only works so long as the people in it want it to. Ever been in a group project that nobody wants to do? How did that go? It's like that.

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u/Admqui 1d ago

Imagine it? Lord Protector would like a word.

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u/Thunderbridge 23h ago

The king can remove the governor-general. If they ignore that though, yea, then you've got a crisis that only revolution can solve

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u/Melancholy_Rainbows Montana 1d ago

I think they assumed that each branch would jealously guard their powers. Humans don’t usually cede power once they have it, but Congressional Republicans seem to be too happy to do just that.

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u/theVoidWatches Pennsylvania 1d ago

Yup. They also warned against political parties, in part because they knew it would make this kind of coordination possible. Of course, they promptly formed political parties anyway.

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u/ABHOR_pod 1d ago

In a one party state they'd be the party elites instead of one of 535 legislators.

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u/tapdancingtoes 1d ago

Jefferson tried to warn us.

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u/Grubsex 1d ago

He said things about a certain tree that were true.

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u/HotmailsInYourArea 1d ago

🎶 Are you, are you, coming to the tree? 🎶🔥

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u/snail-the-sage 1d ago

I'm curious to what you are referring.

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u/yosemighty_sam 1d ago

Jefferson was and still is one of the biggest voices against too much executive power. As I recall he wanted the chief executive to be more of a chief diplomat, and warned that giving any individual too much power would inevitably lead to tyranny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Ove4_JsCM

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u/Dwayne_Gertzky 23h ago

Trying to understand Jefferson’s personal politics through my modern political lense always interests me.

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u/RoboOverlord 1d ago

https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/

This, they are referring to this, but they are afraid reddit will ban them for posting it. So here is a scholarly article, with the actual hand written words so you can judge for yourself.

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u/snail-the-sage 1d ago

The idea was that Congress and the SC would protect their own powers by exercising their control over the other branches of government.

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u/RBuilds916 1d ago

Basically the checks and balances only work when most of the people are acting honestly. If enough people in congress wanted this to stop, it would be stopped. There has been a trend for quite some time of the president's powers expanding. Combine that with enough people in key positions being complicit and more interested in consolidating power than in any moral principle and you get the mess we are in. A system is only as good as the people operating it.

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u/SparksAndSpyro 1d ago

None of this would be a problem if voters did their job. They didn’t. It’s kinda pointless to complain about the system when the very thing the system is supposed to serve—the voters—is rotten.

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u/CircumventingTheBan_ 22h ago

Don't you have a governor general that can dismiss your prime minister? And I seem to remember them proroguing your parliament back in like 2007 or 8 to keep the minority conservative government in power against a coalition of liberals and progressives.

I'm not trying to talk shit, I promise. I just think it's incredibly g dangerous for other nations to feel smugly secure in your democracy while watching ours die. We were that smug last year, too. Things change quick, be vigilant.

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u/BoltTusk 1d ago

I mean even back in they day, some called George Washington “King George IV”