politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Or what?
The FBI reports to Trump, and he put a toady in charge. Ditto for the DOJ. The Supreme Court has a tiny force of police who basically guard the buildings, but they don't go out and arrest people.
It's probably good that there aren't competing federal police forces, some of whom report to the executive branch and some who are on the judicial branch. OTOH, the courts need to be able to do something if they're being ignored.
Maybe it would work if the courts could tell the executive branch that until their orders were obeyed, the court wouldn't hear any other business brought by the government. Any federal prosecutor anywhere brought a case, and the courts would refuse to hear it until other matters were resolved. OTOH, with the way the republicans want to break the country, maybe they'd be happy to have the courts effectively shut down completely. But, if the courts started issuing default judgements because the government wasn't able to present their side, maybe that would work?
So that's kind of what's happening (very slowly)
The original law didn't have any teeth or punishments for failing to release everything by the deadline. However judges orders come with the threat of contempt, so if Acting AG blanche fails to produce the documents or a valid reason for redacting them he can be held in contempt. And this matters because the attorney general is required to approve things like Fisa warrant requests, media subpoenas, death penalty cases, official DOJ opinions.
Trump could fire him and appoint another, but they'd be hauled into court to face those same questions under that same threat of contempt.
That's a good start, but too often things happening slowly means that nothing happens in time. During Biden's 4 year term they started to investigate and eventually prosecute things that happened in Trump's first term. The clock just ran out though. Too many things were still being investigated when Trump took office again.