Over the past month and a half, I've encountered a lot of Very Serious PeopleTM in my life, and on my TV, who seem to think that the best way to counteract Trump's fascist regime as it tears everything apart and starts trying to disappear political prisoners, is to "not take the bait" and wait for the courts to handle it. "We are still a nation of laws" these folks have assured me, even though I've spent the past four decades watching US presidents break the law in ways that are more acceptable to Pig Empire society than Trump does. Throughout that time, my question has always been "well what are you gonna do when he just ignores the law? I mean it's not like you can send the local sheriff to evict him from the White House, and the GOP is extremely unlikely to help their inept opposition to impeach him." To the degree that I've been able to actually ask that question in person, I have yet to receive a reasonable reply; which is unfortunate, because completely ignoring the courts appears to be precisely what Downmarket Mussolini and his merry gang of shitposting nazi freaks are doing:
Trump Officials Are Pretending A Judge Didn't Bar His Anti-Diversity Orders
"In at least one case, the senior executive says, a U.S. official told the international organization that they knew about the court injunction and what it meant, but that the senior ranks of the Trump administration had explicitly instructed staff to enforce Trump’s executive orders, to ignore the court’s injunction, and to pressure partner organizations if need be. This official also said that if the nonprofit’s leaders didn’t sign the new paperwork, they’d risk having their funding quickly terminated by the Trump administration, per the senior executive.
“The Trump administration is daring the courts in the United States to do something about this, and thus far, I don’t think most people in America understand that what’s at risk is the fundamental basis that there is fairness and justice and rule of law in the United States,” says the senior executive. “And whatever you think of DEI, we should all agree that running the government based on the rule of law is a requirement. The playbook that is being used in the U.S. is not new; we’ve seen it in country after country where there’s been an increase in authoritarianism. To see it in the modern United States itself is what’s new and disturbing.”
The other two sources, one of whom is a Trump appointee, tell Rolling Stone that the directive to comply with Trump’s DEI orders, despite what the judge said, has gone out to an array of nonprofit organizations and partners around the world."
This is kind of a messy article that spends a lot of words going over the timeline of the Trump administration's attempts to play dumb about what the judge's injunction actually blocks in terms of Trump's anti-diversity executive orders, but the key takeaway isn't that complex. Trump has knowingly, and directly ordered his administration to ignore the injunction and continue enforcing his anti-diversity orders both inside the government and towards outside contractors and partners. This is not speculative, several sources inside the Trump administration have confirmed that the regime knows what the injunction means, and government employees are being ordered to simply ignore the ruling. Borrowing a page from noted genocidal racist U.S. president Andrew Jackson, Trump has effectively declared "Adam Abelson has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
Should this come as a surprise to anyone in the American establishment "opposition?" Well, probably not, because as the article notes Trump and his minions have more or less been actively broadcasting their intentions to ignore court orders designed to block their fascist agenda:
"The episode is part of a broader pattern in which the second Trump administration has operated under the impression that judges’ orders and rulings don’t much matter. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly argued that Trump can ignore judges’ orders, asserting: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Trump, for his part, has threatened to “look at” judges who rule against Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Over Presidents Day weekend, Trump admitted he thinks he can break any law he wants to — so long as he can loosely define doing so as part of his mission to “save” the country."
Folks, like I've been telling you for a while, the cavalry ain't coming. If a GOP-controlled government won't impeach him, and the regime won't obey court orders, nothing short of an uprising is stopping these nazis anytime soon; no matter HOW much that scares an "opposition" establishment that hates people power.
While repeatedly losing in court has been an early theme of the Trump regime's project to install a fascist dictatorship in America, I don't think it's safe for anyone to assume the crux of the danger we're facing rests solely on to what degree the Swine Emperor and his cronies are willing to simply ignore court orders. Lost in the reality that so far the Supreme Court has held the line against the Trump administration on the question of due process for migrants the regime wants to deport, is the fact that this 6-3 fascist-high bench is the same body that granted president Trump virtual immunity from prosecution for "official acts" undertaken as president, without even bothering to define what an official act is.
That 6-3 fascist majority means the Supreme Court, which is dominated by Federalist Society appointees hand-picked by far right megadonor Leonard Leo, is very closely aligned ideologically with the Christian Zionist fundie fascist wing of the Trump cult, as exemplified by folks like Marco Rubio, and the Heritage Foundation. They might not agree with everything the more openly white nationalist and authoritarian elements in the Trump regime want to do, but guys like Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas are more or less in lockstep with the vast majority of reactionary right wing objectives Trump and his minions are trying to accomplish here. In practice that means that while the 'conservative" justices on the Supreme Court are prepared to align with the law and block some portions of the Trump regime's agenda, they are just as likely to piss on decades of legal precedent and make some bullshit up to advance that agenda; particularly when it aligns with the agenda of the Federalist Society and its donors.
A good example of what that looks like can be found in the recent unsigned shadow docket stay the Supreme Court issued allowing the Trump regime to effectively "fire" two executive branch officials working for consumer and labor protection agencies, while their formal cases against the government make their way through the courts. A ruling might I add that was issued despite the fact that the agencies involved operate independently of the US executive branch, and there is a clear SCOTUS precedent against removing members of independent boards "without good cause."
The Supreme Court Makes Sure the Law Does Not Get in the Way of Trump’s Takeover
"On Thursday night, the Supreme Court’s six Republican-appointed justices allowed President Donald Trump to remove two executive branch officials: Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board. In doing so, the court refused to enforce a major precedent. The decision indicated that, despite recent rebukes, the court is willing to disregard longstanding precedent for Trump to proceed with his overhaul of the federal government.
Before the court’s actions, a unanimous 1935 Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey’s Executor insulated both Wilcox and Harris, as members of independent boards, from removal without good cause. On Thursday, the GOP-appointees effectively cabined—or overturned—Humphrey’s Executor, in a glib order; they discarded the precedent that undergirds the modern executive branch in the same way they might toss out an old shirt they no longer feel like wearing.
The court offered a few justifications. First and foremost, it nodded at the Unitary Executive Theory. The theory rests on the idea that the Constitution vests all the executive authority in the president, and therefore it’s unconstitutional to place limits on how the president uses that authority. This theory was crafted by conservative lawyers in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Republicans seemed to have a lock on the presidency but couldn’t get control of Congress and therefore needed a justification for the president to act unilaterally. The Roberts court has spent the last 15 years embedding the theory into constitutional law—even though many academics argue it is an inaccurate and opportunistic reading of the Constitution and the nation’s history."
If the truth be told, the extraordinary lengths the Trump regime has undertaken to fire the National Labor Relations Board's Gwynne Wilcox in particular is an epic tale of authoritarian cracker fuckery in its own right, but we don't have the space to get into it here. The principle point to take away from this story is that a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS isn't trying to thwart parts of Trump's agenda because they care about the law; they're doing it to retain legitimacy so they can play Calvinball for the American right whenever Trump's agenda aligns with Leonard Leo's, using the Unitary Executive Theory. This in turn means that Americans cannot count on SCOTUS to stop Trump's illegal fascist activities, even if the regime decides to obey a given court order.