The Elephant 🐘 In The Room

 Again, what ew said:

In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.

THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —

MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.

THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.

Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.

Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.

So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.

I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.

She's got a point:

And Democrats, on both sides of this fight, are not fighting that fight. I’ve seen none of the most powerful voices — not AOC, not Bernie, not Jasmine Crockett, not Tim Walz, not Pete Buttigieg — put out a video talking about the fight over impoundment, about the stakes of having elected representatives of both parties fight for funding for their own constituents.

Democrats who want a shutdown have done none of the messaging to those already hurt by Trump’s power grab work to make it a short term political win, to explain the tie between right wing capitulation to Trump and services shutting down. Instead, they’ve been fighting among themselves, mobilizing politically active Democrats.

I get the anger with Schumer — though I do think his concerns about the courts need to be taken very seriously.

But until Democrats stop thinking in terms of their own leadership in Congress but instead think exclusively about winning the political fight with people being hurt, not as Democrats, but as people opposed to fascism, they’re going to be looking for power in the wrong places.

As Sinead O’Connor famously said on SNL do long ago now: “Fight the real power.” There are 119 cases actively opposing Trump’s EO’s and actions. That’s not a small consideration.