Summary
The Democratic National Committee and two other party committees have sued Trump over Executive Order 14215, which claims authority to seize control of the Federal Elections Commission.
The lawsuit argues this violates federal law and threatens free elections.
The order also claims power over other agencies including the SEC, FTC, and NLRB.
Democrats contend this executive overreach contradicts constitutional principles and a century of Supreme Court precedent upholding Congress’s authority to insulate certain agencies from presidential control.
That’s not going to work.
What he’s REALLY BEEN doing is changing the power balance, which used to be Legislative, Executive, and Judicial with Judicial having final say in most things by ruling on their constitutionality, and elevating the Executive branch. He will ignore judicial rulings as they “don’t apply” to his office.
Because the Supreme Court of The United States of America said as much. The courts basically signed all their real power away in Trump v. America. What I’m sure will eventually be called the Trump Doctrine if the president does it, than it is not illegal. Trump can legally take control over the election process because he’s taking it as the president. So regardless of any other law whatever he does it legal.
That’s not going to work either. It’s a bad idea to openly defy judges, because they can easily drain your bank account.
You’ll note that even now, Trump lawyers claim they are doing their best to comply with court orders.
How did it work out of Andrew "the courts have made decision " Jackson?
Jackson probably never said that.
In any case, he wasn’t defying the court. He was passing the buck.
This case was between Samuel Worcester and the state of Georgia, and the SCOTUS ordered the state of Georgia to release Worcester. Jackson was not involved and didn’t want to be involved (hence the snarky “let THEM enforce it”, ie “keep me out of this”).
However, the SCOTUS never asked for Jackson’s help and ultimately didn’t need it.
Yeah I was reading up on it recently and it’s surprising that there were people tiptoeing around the Supreme courts decision, but at the end everyone did actually cave and either followed the ruling or it became a non issue.
Assuming the rule of law is respected
Judges can drain bank accounts of those who don’t respect rule of law. That’s kind of the point of draining their bank account.
I keep hearing arguments like this, and I’d love to be reassured by them, but they come after watching Trump receive 34 felony convictions with no actual punishment for those convictions, after which he was elected President of the United States of America. It also comes after watching a 4 year long failure to attach (or even try to attach) any consequences to him for Jan 06.
So, you’ll forgive me if I’ll wait until I hear about bank accounts being drained and that it has any measurable impact on the rate of progress at https://www.project2025.observer/ before I lull myself back into to believing Trump is in any way not untouchable.
There are a lot of things the system can do to stop something like this. So far it’s not doing very many of them.
He also received an $83 million judgment, which he already paid. And a $400 million fine, which he will pay.
Also, keep in mind that Trump cannot act alone. Even if he could shrug off a million dollar fine, his employees cannot. And judges will target his employees, until nobody is willing to break the law for him.
And when they do, I’ll applaud for them as loudly as anyone else.
Until then, as they say, it’s vaporware.
I don’t think Trump is going to lose any sleep over his employees getting millions of dollars in fines or jail time. He can just preemptively pardon them no questions asked if he could be bothered to remember they exist. Also nearly 50% of voting aged adults actually support Trump ignoring the courts so I don’t think there’s much anyone can do.
Does the judge have a computer with a button on it that says drain? What’s the process, and can that process be disrupted?
I’m being quite serious.
I answered this elsewhere, but the upshot is that banks treat court orders like checks drawn from your account. Once they are signed, there isn’t any good way to stop the funds from being withdrawn.
Ok now the judge is in jail for treason or has all their personal assets liquidated into the Sovereign Wealth fund. What next? A new judge is hand picked and installed, is he going to put his neck out like the last guy?
Jails are administered by judges. Put a judge in jail illegally, and another judge will immediately release them.
Ok, the judge gets swept up in a military tribunal or they just say anyone collaborating with this judge is also guilty of treason. This is all putting aside brownshirts straight up burning down their house and the FBI regrettably failing to catch the culprits.
You can’t arrest someone for treason without a warrant. And warrants are signed by judges.
The rest of your hypothetical describes kidnapping and arson. Kidnapping and arson are state crimes even if the perp is a federal employee. The brownshirts would be arrested by state/local police (who vastly outnumber federal agents btw) and tried in state courts.
You do know who appoints the judges, right?
And you think the federal government doesn’t have the resources to pull off those crimes without plausible deniability? Or that the right wing militias aren’t perfectly constructed to take their own initiative, fight and die for their dear leader anyway?
Who is the THEY doing the draining? Could they be fired? Could a Trump loyalist be placed there instead?
Not legally you say? What if someone didn’t care about doing it legally? What if they just fired the person and replaced them. How about that.
THEY is the judge.
Suppose you sued Bob, and Bob was dumb enough to openly defy the judge. The judge could write a court order that says “Bob owes Melatonin $1000” or “Bob owes the court $1000”.
For all practical purposes, that order works the same as a check signed by Bob. If it’s written to you, then you and your lawyer can take it to the bank. The bank teller will give you $1000 and deduct $1000 from Bob’s account. It doesn’t matter what Bob says or what Bob’s employees say. The bank teller doesn’t work for Bob.
The same is true if “Bob” is a DoJ lawyer or even the DoJ itself.
I would like to see how this works if the check is drawn off the president of the United States. I daresay, it’s going to be different, at least with this president.
The US has checking accounts just like everyone else. That’s how they write paychecks.
And if a bank can draw from the US account when presented with a federal employee’s paycheck, it can do the same when presented with a court order.