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Why federal courts are unlikely to save democracy from Trump’s and Musk’s attacks
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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politics
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The speed of change isn't the problem. A functional court system can strike down these executive orders as fast as Trump can sign them. It's not like he blinks and the world just changes around him.
The problem twofold:
One is that our founding fathers didn't properly balance the three branches of government. WIthout giving the Supreme Court a method of enforcement, they always have been little more than an advisory panel. It's only held up for 200 years because the Supreme Court gave themselves at least some of the power the founding fathers should have given in the first place and a gentleman's agreement not to rock the boat which somehow managed to hold for 200 years.
The second is that our founding fathers really didn't give any guidance about what to do if even one of the three branches of government goes rogue, let alone all three. They gave absolutely no guidance about what to do when that gentleman's agreement doesn't hold up. They gave absolutely no answer to the question of "I'll do what I want, what are you going to do about it?"
And here we are, being led by a man who is literally pissing on the Constitution and asking what anyone's going to do about it, and the answer he's getting is a whole lot of "Nothing."
The answer is violence.
Bro, they gave us the guidance. They fought a revolutionary war to be free from government tyranny. Trump and the oligarchs are leaving us no other option besides a new revolution.
Man, I don't want a new revolution. Take a pass on a new constitution. Freaking out at the change all around me. Pick up my guitar I don't play, also couldn't yesterday. Then I dust off my knees, but hey... we wont get fooled again.
Yeah, I don't know I just wrote the first sentence and the rest popped out.
Anyway, you're right, that is the guidance we were given. When the government fails the people, that government isn't the solution. There was never any reason for them to provide some legal framework to overthrow the elected government. But fuck, revolution is ugly. Hope my kids don't see it. But at some point it could wind up being our god damned duty to oppose this.
You keep talking in future tense...
The US has had many warnings over the past century of issues with its system of government. Each time they've ignored that and failed to fix the underlying issues. For example, Nixon and Agnew was a warning that the system was ill-equipped to deal with a corrupt president and corrupt vice-president. The opportunity was there at the time to strengthen the system and prevent precisely what Trump has done over the past 8+ years, but nobody did anything about it.
The founding fathers may be responsible for not envisioning how a gentleman's agreement would be abused, but the greater responsibility lies with those who came afterwards, saw how the system could fail, and did nothing.
We actually did the literal opposite of fix, and actually exacerbated the issue with the writing of the DOJ "memo" that everyone treats as law that states "a sitting president cannot be indicted." So everything that followed had to rely on a completely broken Congress.
That's not strictly true. The right wing noticed and has been working tirelessly to exploit it ever since.
Our constitution does have the method to be fixed, 27 times we've fixed it. They're called amendments. Honestly I would hazard to say that no political document anywhere is going to stand up to bad faith actors trying to subvert it. At the end of the day the the constitution is just a piece of parchment with some ink on it and only has the power we give it.
Germany as a nation began in 1871 when it went from being the Holy Roman Empire a loose collection of Germany states, to the nation of Germany and ~50 years later would collapse into Nazi Germany. Fascists don't care about the law, they use the perception of law to gain power.
I thought the guidance was the 2nd amendment?
you've had over 200 years to fix these problems
can't just blame those who built the base