7d ago

Judge orders Trump administration to explain why order to restore Voice of America wasn’t followed

www.denverpost.com

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia gave the administration until Aug. 13 to explain how it will get VOA working again. The outlet that dates back to World War II has been largely dark since March.

Lamberth said the administration needs to show what it is doing with the $260 million Congress appropriated for VOA’s operations this year.

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Because they will face literally zero consequences for not following judicial orders.
There are technically mechanisms for courts to enforce their orders, starting with the US Marshalls, but continuing to judges having the power to deputize anyone to go enforce their orders including with force.
For lots of reasons they're reluctant to do such things. For most of American history they haven't needed to, because everyone was working cooperatively and respecting institutions even if they disagreed with the outcomes.
So I'm guessing Trump, MAGA, and a lot of Republicans have mistaken the absence of direct enforcement by the courts for the inability to directly enforce.
We'll see if some judge or justice gets fed up enough with Republican shenanigans and starts with civil and criminal contempt findings with fines and jail time escalating to issuing warrants and calling up Marshalls or deputizing officers...
At some point I do expect things to go "too far" for the remaining pre-MAGA Republicans to keep going along. I could be mistaken.
- The US Marshalls are executive branch.
  That does not take the ability away from courts to deputize as they need to to see orders carried out.
  
  They definitely are but they're also the group I'd expect to be most likely to honor a lawful court order even if someone in their chain of command didn't want them to.
  One way we're a bit lucky even today is that it takes time to train high level law enforcement people (so not ICE) and we're only 6 months into Trump 2 (ugh).
  That is even more the case for the high echelons of career (not appointed) law enforcement like FBI and Marshalls.
Start arresting people
"Official acts", what are you gonna do about it?
You know I feel there is no talk about legitimacy and the lack of it in the executive. At our core we have a simple system. Congress creates the law and the judicial adjuticates it and the executive implements the law. All the branches are bound by law and if the executive ignores it, then it becomes illegitimate in its role.
- Legitimacy is not earned through merit but maintained through a monopoly on violence. To truly delegitimize a branch, there must be a credible threat of violence that can surpass its capacity to enforce authority. Whether that authority is legitimate becomes irrelevant if it’s unchallenged. There is no debate with a failed state
  
  to be america the government has to follow the constitution. Power which can involve violence allows keeping power but legitamacy is divorced from it. For example china is not legitimately part of imperial china as there was a revolution and that was left behind. Similarly russia is not part of its imperial past. The US is not legitamately part of the first nations or the british empire as those ties were cut. Power over a region does not grant legitimacy for a particular historical era.
Fuck you thats why
Or what?
I'm old enough to remember when people were freaking out over Voice Of America because they hadn't heard of it before and they thought that Trump had created it to be his Ministry of Truth.

12 comments