Is there a legal way to remove the judges?
None that’s even remotely likely. It’s either impeachment or constitutional amendment to change how Article III judges can be removed.
My only comfort is that a few Trump-appointed judges dropped legal turds on him, but yeah, the legal precedent they will set in neglecting, oppressing, and abusing people for their own good or something will take decades to reverse. More than that, the trauma they inflict will take many families entire generations to recover from, if ever.
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That Mike Duffey guy sending out the emails to stop the funding replaced a career OMB employee because the career guy was worried the order violated a law
The emails also show that some Pentagon officials were concerned that withholding the aid from Ukraine, which relied on the money to defend itself against Russian aggression, was ill-advised policy and potentially unlawful. Mark Sandy, a career budget official who testified before the House Intelligence Committee during last month’s impeachment hearings, told lawmakers he was concerned that withholding the aid Congress had approved could be a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. The 1974 law restricts how a president can suspend congressionally approved funds. Sandy testified that two budget officials resigned in part because of frustration over the freeze, a sentiment that was shared within the Pentagon, according to the emails.
Sandy was removed from his position and replaced by Duffey, who proceeded to sign documents implementing the hold on aid during the summer.
So within 90 minutes of a perfect—definitely no quid pro quo—call, two people resigned and a third was fired and replaced by a random hatchet-man to make sure Ukraine received nothing.
That law has an interesting history, too:
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?
Why was the ICA necessary?
Congress passed the ICA in response to President Nixon’s executive overreach – his Administration refused to release Congressionally appropriated funds for certain programs he opposed. While the U.S. Constitution broadly grants Congress the power of the purse, the President – through the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and executive agencies – is responsible for the actual spending of funds. The ICA created a process the President must follow if he or she seeks to delay or cancel funding that Congress has provided.
All Trump had to do was notify Congress they were delaying the funds and everything would have been legal but instead they got fucking trapped by a law passed to push back against Nixon.
Rescissions
Put simply, if the President wants to spend less money than Congress provided for a particular purpose, he or she must first secure a law providing Congressional approval to rescind the funding in question. The ICA requires that the President send a special message to Congress identifying the amount of the proposed rescission; the reasons for it; and the budgetary, economic, and programmatic effects of the rescission. Upon transmission of such special message, the President may withhold certain funding in the affected accounts for up to 45 legislative session days. If a law approving the rescission is not enacted within the 45 days, any withheld funds must be made available for obligation.
A 2018 Government Accountability Office legal opinion holds that if the President proposes a rescission, he or she must make the affected funds available to be prudently obligated before the funds expire, even if the 45-day clock is still running. This means, for example, that the President cannot strategically time a rescission request for late in the fiscal year and withhold the funding until it expires, thus achieving a rescission without Congressional approval.
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How do you suggest Democrats respond when Republicans go on the offensive on these issues?
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When a clearly unconstitutional abortion law gets put on the ballot in a reddish/purple state the D candidates running for Senate should _______
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When the Republican controlled legislature in North Carolina proposed a bathroom bill, the Dems should _______
If you assume that staying quiet about these issues is good politics (I don’t think it is, but I’ll grant the premise for the sake of discussion), aren’t the Republicans smart enough to figure that out and keep forcing these issues to the fore, even if Dems don’t want to talk about them?
Rudy is so Jewish he first thinks they go to church.
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We’ve got the pro choice thing down. Just keep hammering that it’s a woman’s choice and it’s about freedom and the courts have already decided and we respect that. The key thing is to keep the answer brief and move on to a subject that has more united appeal asap.
The bathrooom bill you let the corporations and the activists take as much as possible (let’s not kid ourselves almost all of society went nuts about the bathroom bill… the didn’t need anything from the politicians but their votes against it). If asked directly about it you say something about people being free to use the bathroom of the gender they have chosen, and that if anyone is abusing that right that’s a police matter.
That last part is important because there are people with personality disorders and right wing tendencies claiming to be trans people out there and abusing people. They are actively doing this to inflame the passions of people who are uncomfortable around the trans community.
You really just have to avoid playing into their divide and conquer strategy. Act like that’s what it is, because that’s what it is. This is them intentionally stirring people up to divide people who should all be in our core constituency. We shouldn’t be helping them by saying goofy shit like we support government paid trans abortions (is that even a thing???)
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https://mobile.twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1208849002776727554
https://mobile.twitter.com/IfNotNowOrg/status/1208807874702524416
Cool rhetoric:
Meanwhile,
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abortion clinics are closing down all across the country
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desperately needed family planning services aren’t being received in the US or internationally because of global gag rules and the Hyde Amendment
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Republicans are still winning campaigns and ramming judges down our throats based on overturning Roe.
No offense, but I’m pretty sure that only a cis dude could look at the actual state of abortion access in this country (as opposed to just assuming that the continued existence of Roe means that everything is ok) and think that the line you want to take has been effective. The right may exist on paper, but for millions of people in the US there is no practical way to exercise it. And “moving on ASAP” whenever the Rs bring it up is a big part of the reason why this state of play exists.
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Going soft on abortion rights would be suicidal for the Dems.
Just to clarify, I’m not saying that abortion rights needs to be the be all, end all, but I think that the Dems need to have a viable strategy that allows them to play a bit of offense on the issue instead of clinging to Roe for dear life while getting clobbered by Republicans who come loaded for bear with TRAP laws and bad faith stories about Planned Parenthood getting rich from selling baby parts.
Is BS advocating going soft on abortion? I hear BS arguing that we have limited space to occupy and should be strategic. You can only afford to go all in on a few things. If you think one of those has to be abortion then I am sympathetic. But I also am open to suggestions for how to accomplish this aim in conjunction with other goals that rely on the front-facing objective to be something else.
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Pretending that everything is legal and fine and abortion is too divisive to campaign on is hogwash as Bigol pointed out. 80% of Americans think it should be legal in some form and the other 20% are not ever voting D.
The gender gap is ~20% right now, women are a key constituency for the Dems.You tell them “sorry, it’s too hard to fight for your rights,” you’re going to lose and you deserve to lose
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It has always amazed me how abortion has been twisted into a partisan issue by religious fundies when it’s really and truly not partisan at all. There are lots of pro life Dems and pro choice Reps
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Who is saying that ITT?