[barmar]

So are we finally seeing a true constitutional crisis with Trump blatantly defying the ruling by SCOTUS that the administration must facilitate returning Abrego Garcia to the US?

I found Trump side-stepping a reporter's question about this totally disgusting. That's not how our laws work. They can't say "Well we made a mistake, but it's OK because he's a bad man." That's not for the administration to decide, it's what we have courts for. And a court years ago decided that he could stay in the US legally.

[shyams]

barmar, on 2025-April-16, 10:11, said:

So are we finally seeing a true constitutional crisis with Trump blatantly defying the ruling by SCOTUS that the administration must facilitate returning Abrego Garcia to the US?

I found Trump side-stepping a reporter's question about this totally disgusting. That's not how our laws work. They can't say "Well we made a mistake, but it's OK because he's a bad man." That's not for the administration to decide, it's what we have courts for. And a court years ago decided that he could stay in the US legally.

If I were to speculate, much of this relates to the the Supreme Court ruling about Presidential immunity etc. To me, it seems obvious that Trump is blatantly misusing his powers knowing fully well that he can fall back on that ruling and/or rely on SCOTUS to back him repeatedly when he does something illegal.

[hrothgar]

Judge Boasberg just upped the ante

He gave the government an opportunity to purge the contempt.
Barring this, he is bringing in a prosecutor

https://cdn.bsky.app...sm5rckcwv4@jpeg

I BELIEVE that he has the opportunity to chose a prosecutor if the government does not do so

[barmar]

shyams, on 2025-April-16, 10:28, said:

If I were to speculate, much of this relates to the the Supreme Court ruling about Presidential immunity etc. To me, it seems obvious that Trump is blatantly misusing his powers knowing fully well that he can fall back on that ruling and/or rely on SCOTUS to back him repeatedly when he does something illegal.

Possibly.

The solution the framers provided was impeachment. They were so trusting of the "honorable" men in Congress that they could not imagine someone so blatantly ignoring the Constitution and laws, and not being impeached and removed from office. We could have a despotic President, but what's the chance that so much of Congress would support him?

Now we know. But we've had a pretty good run, we almost made it to 250 years of democracy.

[kenberg]

Perhaps it is time for normal people, and I consider myself to be a normal person, to say "Hey, we have a problem". The Dow is dropping, we are in a trade war, people are losing jobs, others are uncertain of their jobs, when I talk to a preson that is planning to travel outside the US they are worried about how they will be treated, travel to the US is dropping sharply, etc etc.

Donald Trump emjoys exercising power, and he is strongly motivated by a need for revenge. How dare we to not reelect him in 2020?

Time to put lesser issues aside,. I have absolutely no problem understanding why Democrats have lost support. But this is worse.

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2025-April-17, 18:26, said:

The solution the framers provided was impeachment.

This is the key point.

The judiciary has no real enforcement power. Then again, it's not like the legislature has any real enforcement power either.
What if Trump were to actually get impeached and then simply refuse to accept this?

Might all boil down to what the military is willing to do.

Might have mentioned this before, but what I would really like to see is the Dems attempting to cut a deal with 4-5 Republicans in both the House and Senate and try to convince them to leave the GOP, recast themselves and independents, and then flip the House and the Senate. It's a whole lot better if we can get this done now than to wait for the 2026 midterms.

Even with this, I doubt that impeachment / removal would be possible, but you might be able to shut down the tariff nonsense and start chipping away at various emergency powers,

I don't see this happening but it sure would be nice...

[pilowsky]

Trump has announced that he is preparing a new method for establishing tariffs with China.
"We've commissioned a beautiful collection of wooden balls with painted numbers. They get spun around in a wooden cage until 2 or 3 fall into a slot, and that's the tariff on that country for that day."

[johnu]

Teenage German tourists handcuffed and deported from Hawaii over ‘suspicious’ hotel booking

Quote

Pohl and Lepère were interrogated in Honolulu International Airport for hours and allegedly subjected to body scans and strip searches before, finally, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents denied them entry to the country and said they would be deported, according to the outlet.

Quote

Officials became suspicious of potential illegal work intentions after learning the teens had not booked accommodation for their entire five-week stay in Hawaii, according to Beat of Hawaii.

These teenagers on a post high school world tour did not have hotel reservations for the entire 5 weeks of their vacation. Like a lot of young travelers, they planned to travel around and find some favorite locations if they wanted to stay longer at a given place. Basically they were detained and arrested because they may commit the crime of working in the US at a subminimum wage for 5 weeks.

I can't recommend that any foreigner visit the US for the next 45 months, and possibly the next 4 or 8 years after that.

[barmar]

johnu, on 2025-April-22, 18:55, said:

Basically they were detained and arrested because they may commit the crime of working in the US at a subminimum wage for 5 weeks.

They should count their blessings: they weren't sent to an El Salvador prison.

[WasWinM]

 barmar, on 2025-April-23, 15:28, said:

They should count their blessings: they weren't sent to an El Salvador prison.

Hello.
I’ve been frozen out as winstonm and had to go through customer service to get this new monicker to work.

[kenberg]

WasWinM, on 2025-April-24, 06:32, said:

Hello.
I've been frozen out as winstonm and had to go through customer service to get this new monicker to work.

I'm glad you thawed back in.
When I saw "WasWinM" I logged on to welcome a new participant. Well, welcome back to an old participant.

[pilowsky]

Now judges are getting arrested and the Attorney-General is gloating about it on Fox news.

Also,

NYT said:

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday said that federal authorities may once again seek reporters' phone records ...
An internal Justice Department memo from Ms. Bondi said that the change was necessary to safeguard "classified, privileged and other sensitive information"

Presumably they'll be particularly concerned about information the reporters are storing in bathrooms or on stages in public areas.

The irony of the Trump "administration" doing anything to safeguard sensitive information is breathtaking.