Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case
Judge Enters Contempt Order in Venezuelan Deportations Case
www.bloomberg.com
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
A federal judge found probable cause that the Trump administration acted with contempt of court in violating his order to immediately halt deportations of Venezuelans suspected of being gang members.
US District Judge James Boasberg issued an order Wednesday saying that officials acted in “willful disregard” of his verbal order on March 15 to turn around planes carrying Venezuelans now held in a notorious prison in El Salvador. Boasberg said at a court hearing on April 3 that “the government acted in bad faith throughout that day.”
It's not much, but this will be important as evidence should Congress ever find its spine and actually consider impeachment.
ETA: and waiting around for that unlikely possibly might be a fools errand.
I don't know if I can comfortably say "most likely," but I'm not optimistic about that possibility. Since Trump won, it's been my position that nobody's coming to save us working class peons. We will not get a group of Avengers striking from the outside or a lone Adam Jensen fighting from within.
In reality, it will take all of us doing different things to resist, and hopefully, that collective effort over time will be enough. It will still suck in the meantime.
I'm glad to see your original comment. There is a lot of pessimism going around and it feels like a guy spitting on a forest fire to try and put it out. But we won't get through this in one dramatic event. There's got to be a ton of this little stuff first. We've watched countless other judges just give in, but this one said, nah, do it right or don't do it. Every bit of resistance adds up. Authoritarianism only stays strong when people don't do the most basic of things to oppose it.
I'd like to see less people adding the statements of hopelessness to their comments though. These people have no divine right to run our countries, and we don't need to accept their injustice. We're each welcome to express our tolerance of their actions to the extent we feel comfortable doing. To some that will be just saying no to illegal or unjust things. Some people will discover direct action. Some will be the protection for those that can't or won't take a more aggressive position. But there is a role for everyone to take if we want to change what we have right now.
Even after something like John Brown's rebellion attempt, it took a long time for anything to come of that extreme event, but it had to start somewhere, and we can all be a spark of rebellion in our own social circles.
Agreed. Things definitely suck right now, but things aren't hopeless. Only when we stop resisting will the fascism begin to ossify, and all the people being brave enough to resist, in both little and big ways, matter.
Yeah, I subscribe to the Green Lantern/Tinkerbell theory of authoritarianism: the dictator only has power as long as people believe it. So skepticism of claims of power become self fulfilling, and belief in dictator power also becomes self fulfilling.
So don't comply in advance. Make them work for every inch, even on things that seem inevitable. Every delay you cause to their agenda buys someone else a reprieve.
Pessimism is indeed a cancer.
But so is false hope. Because countless people will just say "See, there is push back. It isn't that bad". We saw exactly that happen last week (and the week before (and the week before (...))) with the tariffs. trump did something stupid to destroy the economy and livelihood of the country, he backed off a bit, and everyone praised him while ignoring that he still made things worse.
And same here. Yes, it is great that any judges are willing to throw their careers away and make themselves a target of the fascists. But nothing will change if those rulings aren't enforced and all signs are that they won't be.
But it still gives people a way to just keep ignoring it because "I am valuing my mental health"
And what happens if Congress impeaches him?
It is the exact same problem. Laws that cannot/will not be enforced aren't laws.
If this, republican majority impeached him, then the senate would definitely convict. In that case Trump is no longer the president.
The past two times dems held the house, but not the senate, so Republicans in the senate prevented a conviction.
Impeachment means there is evidence of misconduct (at a significant level). Senate conviction means you're out as president.
I dunno. It's never happened in my lifetime, and certainly not with half of the legislative branch being complicit in the descent into fascism.
Like I said, I don't really have a lot of optimism in their ability to do what is required. On top of that, the enablers aren't gone just because Trump might be someday. Our collective work is only just beginning, and it starts with little actions like those of the judge in this case.