“…If You Can Keep It.”

emptywheel starts us off:

Let's just say US law would not constrain Trump.

What better exhibit to SCOTUS why he cannot keep getting stays of TROs than this East Wing?

What better way to corner right wingers who hope their funding challenges will just go away?

Because Trump has systematically removed all constraints within the Administration. The laws are still there. The people who enforce them, are gone. The inspectors general; the lawyers in the DOJ; Trump has removed them. It’s almost like he knew what he was doing, this time.

The “Saturday Night Massacre,” was the beginning of the end for Nixon. He fired the special prosecutor appointed to investigate him apart from the DOJ. The Republicans in Congress didn’t leap to impeach Nixon at that point, but his position became absolutely untenable. Not in the country at large, but in the Congress.

Trump’s position in the country is doomed. His only hope is a massive reversal in the economy, and an equally massive case of national amnesia and/or apathy. That’s all that will keep the supine Congress in office another three years. The country’s only hope is to elect enough opposition to Trump that he is impeached for his high crimes and misdemeanors, and removed from office. He is the first president since Nixon clearly deserving of the historical  punishment.

Bad as it is, the Roberts court didn’t do this. They’ve abetted the Congress, but the constitutional responsibility rests there. The Supreme Court can’t remove the President from office. The most it can do is what it did to Nixon: tell him to follow the law. (Which, yes, the Roberts Court has singularly failed to do.) Had Nixon refused the Burger Court’s order, he would have been impeached and removed from office. Now, thanks to Newt Gingrich, even impeachment is a purely partisan act, and an almost meaningless one. Trump knows he’s there for the duration. He knows no one will stop him. Not before January 2027, anyway.

The courts may yet act.

Miller asked McArthur why "disorderly conduct" at the protest was "comparable severity to an invasion or a rebellion," according to the report.

“Because violence is being used to thwart enforcement of federal law,” McArthur answered, adding that it went "well beyond the sort of everyday resistance that you see to federal law enforcement."

“But violence is used to thwart enforcement of federal law all the time. Right?" Miller asked. "I mean, like, the FBI goes to arrest somebody and he shoots at them or tries to run away, and that happens every day, right?"

That's a 9th circuit judge asking questions of the government, not a trial judge. The deference to the President is eroding, because Trump is eroding the regular order of government. The Supreme Court may decide what Trump is doing is what a POTUS can do, under any circumstances. But they’ve avoided real accountability for their decisions. Presidential immunity was their gravest crime, but the electorate put Trump back in office, not the Roberts court. Trump’s convictions, civil and criminal, didn’t deter the majority. His prosecutions didn’t disturb people more bothered by the price of eggs. His insults to the very idea of governance, even of political campaigns, didn’t slow him down. No, we can’t blame the Court or Congress for putting him back in office. We willfully ignored this danger. If the Court goes beyond “technical” rulings to absolutely making Trump a monarch, it loses its credibility, and that’s the only authority it has. (So far the Court has allowed Trump to fire government employees, close Congressionally established departments, and control government funding, assuming the people won’t be affected and won’t care or notice. “No Kings” has proven them wrong. What will pierce their bubble, remains to be seen.) The closest they’ve come is Kavanaugh’s insistence that American citizens would barely be inconvenienced by ICE raids because of the magical shield of citizenship. Emboldened, ICE has trumped up charges of assault, or simply detained citizens for days because… they can. If the circuit courts stop giving deference to the President because they see reality for what it is, for what’s in the record, how long can the Court deny that the Emperor is naked? Not long enough to avoid a Congress that will expunge the historical deterrent of “court packing” and take up its authority again. The Congress has changed the number, jurisdiction, and even power of the Court before. It’s high time they did it again. 

It’s true a Parliamentary system would have removed Trump as PM by now. But Trump would never have become PM in the first place. Nigel Farage forced Britain into Brexit; but Farage never had a hope of being PM. Trump is a product of reforms that eliminated the power of the political parties. Smoke filled rooms constrained minority power, especially along racial and gender lines; but it would never have allowed Trump to be elected dog catcher. We did this. In our zeal to replace one corrupt system, we created another.

We have met the enemy, and he is us. Walt Kelly said that during the McCarthy era. Funny how it’s still applicable.

The system we have is broken, but we, the people, have let it break. We are the sovereign. This is our responsibility, our burden. We can’t shunt it off on anyone else. We voted ourselves into this. We have to vote ourselves out of it again. There really isn’t any other solution.