It’s almost as if our president is just winging it from moment to moment!
If the Washington times is reporting it it must be really bad.
lol really really bad
“Trump, Portland, and the National Guard walk into a courtroom…”
Trump’s “send the National Guard to Portland” plan is turning into a full-blown courtroom soap opera. One judge blocked him, he tried a loophole, another judge blocked that, and now the appeals court is throwing popcorn.
Legal Soap Opera: National Guard vs. Oregon
If you’ve lost track of this legal circus, here’s the short version of where we are.
Earlier this month, a federal judge told Trump he couldn’t send the Oregon National Guard into Portland. The judge said a president can’t just commandeer a state’s troops when the governor says no. Seems fair, right?
Trump’s response was basically, “Fine, I’ll call California.”
Within a day, he tried to send the California National Guard instead. The same judge saw that coming and issued another temporary restraining order, this time blocking him from using any state’s National Guard in Portland.
Yesterday, a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and paused that first order. That gave Trump’s lawyers an opening to ask for the second one to disappear too.
But here’s where it gets spicy. One of the judges, Susan Graber, filed a fiery dissent that basically said, “My colleagues have lost the plot.” She asked for an en banc review, which means the full 9th Circuit might take another look.
It’s the judicial version of calling in the whole family for an intervention.
Judge Sidney Thomas, who organizes these reviews, told both sides to file their next round of legal homework by tomorrow night. After that, all 29 active judges on the 9th Circuit will vote on whether the case deserves another hearing. If they say yes, 11 judges, including Chief Judge Mary Murguia, will take it from there.
For now, the pause means the Oregon National Guard can be used to protect federal buildings and personnel in Portland.
But the bigger issue is still hanging in the air: Can a president treat state troops like his personal security team when the state itself says no?
Stay tuned. This show has more plot twists than an entire season of The West Wing
Craziness afoot.
They will lose the en banc. It’s crazy that the 9th circuit has gotten to this point.
Who is they? Which side loses?
Trump
Her dissent is great:
"In the weeks preceding the President’s September 27 social media post proclaiming that Portland was ‘War ravaged’ and authorizing Secretary Hegseth to deploy federalized Oregon National Guard members, demonstrations in Portland were non-disruptive and small. Notwithstanding the turbulent events that had occurred several months earlier, the record contains no evidence whatsoever that, on September 27, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) was unable either to protect its Portland facility or to execute the immigration laws it is charged with enforcing.
"But, in the statute invoked here, Congress has authorized the President to call up the National Guard only to repel a foreign invasion, quell a rebellion, or overcome an inability to execute the laws. Consequently, no legal or factual justification supported the order to federalize and deploy the Oregon National Guard.
“Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd. But today’s decision is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions. I strenuously dissent.”
It prompted both the Trump judges to also add a footnote stating that they are not saying that Portland is a war zone.
The entire thing is just ridiculous. If there is no need for the president to give his reasonings as to why he’s sending troops, then why have any regulations at all? It makes no sense.
So that they can be used against a president of the other party.
Those DOGE guys are gonna lose it when they hear about this!
NEW Economist/YouGov
Net favorability of Donald Trump [at the start of his second term | now] among U.S. adult citizens by age
18-29: +5 | -39
30-44: -6 | -14
45-64: +12 | -10
65+: -4 | -10
What Americans think about Donald Trump's second term | YouGov
Really kind of fucked up that any sense of moral superiority I had over Gen Z lasted a grand total of two weeks
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1980742078423302239?s=19
Understood, sir
Lol
Writing in The Atlantic last week, the columnist David Brooks — the kind of Whiggish moderate conservative rendered politically homeless and functionally irrelevant by Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party — explained that he is very worried indeed.
With mounting horror, the veteran pundit recounted watching not only the growing authoritarianism of the current administration, but also the abject failure of America’s democratic institutions to rein it in, despite “drawing on thinkers going back to Cicero and Cato.” (Pop quiz for history buffs: Who here knows exactly how effective Cicero and Cato were at preventing tyranny?)
Already said that
But he says he’ll give it all to charity so it’s all good.
I’d love to get a quick peek into his diseased mind to see if he really believes 2020 was stolen from him or if his advanced narcissism allows him to actually think he’s telling the truth