this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
396 points (100.0% liked)

politics

23643 readers
2890 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The Trump administration has not fully complied with a court order pausing the freezing of foreign assistance grants and contracts, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali last week ordered the administration to allow the disbursement of U.S. foreign assistance after hearing claims from federal contractors challenging an executive order signed by President Donald Trump pausing nearly all foreign assistance.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 136 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Bring specific people into court, and hold them in contempt.

If they refuse to appear, assume judgement, and seize assets.

You don't need a fucking army if you can force all their assets to be frozen. Worked for Russia, worked in the Red Scare, and it'll work now.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Trump may be "off limits" according to SCOTUS but the people that carry out his illegal orders are not.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is the point. Anyone not complying with the actual court orders should get contempt. Trump can't pardon them out of shit.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

President does have the power to pardon someone for a federal contempt charge. So we'll get into a wierd situation of perpetual pardons and contempts at some point. We can only pray that that level of recursion breaks the simulation and we can all leave this hell cape.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That may not be the case. I have read that the President's pardon abilities only cover criminal offenses, and contempt of court that stems from ignoring a ruling is considered a civil offense.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Pdf link warning: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10186

This is something I had found the other week that led me to beleive that he probably could

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Are PDF links especially perilous? I thought most PDF viewers that are JS-capable disable it by default?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I guess nowadays, it's not the biggest deal but it's just an old internet habit was to not break people's browsers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Ah right! Been a little while but I remember. Thank you

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Remember, he is only immune for official acts. And the courts reserved the right to determine if an act is official. I think they could easily say that openly defying the courts ruling is not an official act. They will wait for something bigger I suspect, but the supreme court judges love power just as much as trump. They are probably excited by the prospect of expanding thier power by giving trump the boot.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Contempt needs to happen, like tomorrow. The longer these folks feel above any law the worse our chances of recovery from this get.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Dude, you no longer have a functioning legal system

You are calling for antibiotics for a patient with no inmune system... trying to jump start a car with a siezed engine

If anything could work (and I'm not sure it would at this point) is a general, nation wide strike

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not true at all, and not sure why you think that suddenly all parts of the constitution stopped working. Your train of thought is why all these people online are furiously typing and shitting their pants at the same time instead of actually doing something.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Show me proof any part of your courts can or have held trump accountable?

any!... just one example

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Surely you can't be that dense, or intentionally ignorant.

The courts don't work by enforcing anything first. Theyre just now getting to the first TROs expiring Monday. Stop panicking and whining and be productive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Sure bud... keep repeating that to yourself while your country burns around you

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If this were civil, that would maybe be a thing.

This is.. well its fundamentally different. We've undergone a coup. This kind of circle-jerking "But He's Not Following The Law" by NBC, is well, masturbatory, and intentionally obscures what has happened.

NBC is part of the problem, not the solution. Being in contempt of courts when courts and law have no.. why pretend like they do?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not about civility. Doomers are saying there isn't anything the other equal branches of government can do, but there is. This is one of those things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "civil" in this context.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I do. This is not a civil matter. This is 1/3 of the government apparatus fucking with the other two, and the judicial has all the power in this country to compel every citizen to comply.

Is Chase holding Elon's money? Guess what happens if they don't comply with a federal court order.

What state does he hold property in?

Does he have stocks? Of course he does. All of these can be seized on paper alone without the Executive branch being involved at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I'm even more convinced than before you have not a fucking clue what the fuck you are talking about or what civil means in this context.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

On paper the judicial branch can uphold checks and balances ... and should ... but if no one executes it things are moot...

On paper Trump IS an insurrectionist and should never have been allowed to delay his criminal cases and should be locked up now for treason... but here we are, no one dared to properly stop him.

The courts can deny the legality of Trump's orders all they want, if they don't bring a force to reel him or others in things will proceed according to King Trump's will... Besides, Trump decreed only he and and an AG can declare what is law now, so ...yeah...

Look at one of the institutions (forgot which it was) that Musk planted himself in ... a police/security force was keeping legally appointed people out of the building while said police should have forced Musk out for illegally interfering with government offices.

It will never matter if they eventually do arrest a "Peter from accounting" who gave Musk passwords to some computer somewhere but let Trump and Musk themselves do whatever they want.

On paper, by repeatedly trashing the constitution Trump should already have been stopped in 2025 alone, but everyone seems intent on just riding it out and is already afraid to personally get in Trump's crosshairs.

On paper the military is bound by oath to protect the constitution, but Trump quickly replaces anyone there who as much as frowns at his executive orders...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Banks and private asset organizations are not the federal government.

If you're trolling, fuck off.

If you're just stupid, educate yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Correct me if I’m stupid, I thought asset seizures need to go through the Department of Treasury, no? Like they can refuse to honor the FDIC, other things if banks don’t unfreeze?

This also all seems to go through the whole “if they comply”. Usually the DOJ enforces things, no?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Nope. They can apply at any banking institutions which are governed by state as well. Is that bank incorporated in any of the 23 states currently suing the Trump admin?

Is Danny Smith the head of said bank?

Any and all of the individuals involved in not complying with a court order can be held in contempt and have assets frozen for defying a lawful order of the court.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Your comment about state authority make me just a little more hopeful…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

On the other hand, Trump is already flaunting his ability to choke state resistance by withholding federal funding.

Outrageously unconstitutional but he already isn't following the courts anyway. I wonder if there's any way for states to work around that, since most blue states are net negative on federal funds.

Just stop paying up because he won't comply with the freeze? Then use those funds to paper over the deficit?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Just stop paying up because he won’t comply with the freeze?

In order to "just stop paying up" the states would have to convince their citizens and businesses to stop paying their Federal income taxes and payroll taxes, because that money goes directly to the Federal government without passing through the states' control first.

As far as I can tell, the only part of the Federal budget revenue that flows through the states and therefore might be able to be blocked is small enough to fit in the "misc/other" slice on a pie chart.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Good point. But at the same time the states control a lot of bureaucracy around day-to-day civilian operations and vital records.

If the state doesn't send birth and death certificates to the IRS, taxing gets a lot harder. They control the registration of corporate entities, and while I'm not an expert on corporate law, I assume they could cause problems restricting access to those.

There's probably some creative, outside the box economic resistance as well that I don't know enough to guess at. For example, taxes/tolls/fines targeting government vehicles? Cutting or up-charging state power/utilities to customs offices?