Category: Fuck Fascists

From Palmer Report:

Donald Trump and his henchmen have a clear strategy for now: do as many outrageous and/or illegal things as possible all at once, in the hope of wearing everyone down. They've certainly proven to be good at creating chaos. But one thing they're not any good at is figuring out how to get away with their dirty work cleanly.

There are two ways to get away with corruption. One is to simply do it in secret and try to keep anyone from finding out. But Trump henchman Elon Musk is unhinged enough to go on Twitter and brag about his every illegal move. The other way to get away with corruption is to frame your criminal intent within something that sounds legally reasonable. But Trump's people don't appear capable of this either.

Of all the court rulings that have come down over the past three weeks with regard to the Trump administration, every single one of them has gone against Trump. It's almost difficult to lose that consistently. It means Trump's people haven't figured out how to manufacture even a pseudo-reasonable argument for any of their actions. That's a special combination of arrogance and incompetence.

In the short term, this spate of court rulings against Trump is huge. There's a reason every new President manages to achieve most of their accomplishments in the first hundred days. It's when the new administration has a head start, momentum, and a temporary free pass from the media which doesn't want to be seen as stepping on the (supposed) mandate from the voters. But after those first few months, the forces opposing the new President have seen the game plan and figured out how to rally against it. That's when a President's initially aggressive agenda devolves into a slow-crawl trench war.

Accordingly, Trump and his people are trying to move as quickly as they possibly can with their corrupt agenda. They're not behaving like they have four years of open road ahead of them. They're behaving as if they fear their momentum could run out at any moment. That's why it's so important that these court rulings are slowing down Trump and his people and forcing them to play defense. It's an unmistakable victory for us in the short term.

Of course this kind of victory for us merely leads to the next round of the battle. Musk and even JD Vance are already publicly floating the idea that the Trump regime can just ignore these court rulings and do whatever it wants. There's a reason they're saying this so loudly: they want you to believe it. They want you to think "Oh no, they're going to get away with whatever they want, no point in continuing to fight them." And they really want you to go around saying that the fight is hopeless, because that demotivates everyone else on our side who wants to keep fighting.

But in reality, Trump and his people do not have a magic wand. If Musk truly is unhinged enough to defy a federal court order, the courts will hold him in contempt and ultimately haul him in to answer for it. And while this is being billed as a "constitutional crisis" that'll doom us all, what it would really do is further stall the Trump regime's momentum. It's much harder to keep trying to take over government agencies if you're tied up in court fighting for your own freedom. If Musk wants to go that route, fine.

The more likely outcome is that the Trump regime tries appealing all of these rulings, only to be shot down in most instances by the appeals court, before trying its luck with the Supreme Court. There's a prevailing narrative that this Supreme Court will, of course, side with Trump no matter what. But that's an overly simplistic take.

In reality this Supreme Court keeps showing us that it cares far more about establishing its own all-powerful position than it does about an interloper like Donald Trump. Even when the Supreme Court ruled that a President can't be prosecuted for official actions, the Supreme Court retained its own ability to determine what is or isn't an official action. Trump will likely be deceased from dementia in a year. This Supreme Court wants to carve out its position of power for a generation.

That's why Musk and Vance are being so foolish by publicly declaring that the President doesn't have to obey the courts. It would be one thing for this Supreme Court to side with Trump on policy issues. But if the argument is that the President is immune from the courts, the Supreme Court almost has to rule against him in order to retain its own power. Then again, this Supreme Court is as inconsistent as it is corrupt, so who knows?

The point is that we're winning an important battle right now by using the courts to slow down Trump and his henchmen. It keeps them from being able to race through their agenda. It slows them down enough for us to catch up, see what they're trying to do, and game plan against it. Winning this battle merely leads us to the next battle we have to fight and win, but so be it. It's better than the alternative.