The justices said no action should be taken to pursue the deportations of any alleged Venezuelan gang members in Texas under the rarely used wartime law.
The justices said no action should be taken to pursue the deportations of any alleged Venezuelan gang members in Texas under the rarely used wartime law.
I agree. That’s why I wrote that SCOTUS ruling to uphold the stay is reassuring.
I appreciate the optimism, but I really don’t think they’re going to listen to this one. SCOTUS rulings without clearly defined and severe consequences for both the administration and members of the administration are effectively toothless. Without those being up-front and the court prepared to act upon immediately, Trump’s administration is free to ignore the ruling and carry out their plans while the court spends time fighting amongst itself internally about how to respond. By the time they come up with something and act on it, it’s too late and likely too much of a slap on the wrist to be an effective deterrent.
I italicized the word “might” in my last comment for a reason, unfortunately. The Supreme Court can be a threat to the Trump administration, but they need to be organized, unified, ready to act, and unwilling to pull punches. If they’re going to be effective, they have to be prepared and willing to respond to and immediately shut down the “shock and awe” tactic being used. No waiting, no delaying, no debating. That’s what the administration is counting on to get away with their bullshit: the courts not being fast enough to stop them while also not being harsh enough to actually punish the individuals in its leadership with personal consequences.
On a darker note, if the SCOTUS ever does get their shit together and do that, it’s probably going to lead to another January 6. I can’t see Trump accept being blocked by the court and punished without crying to his cult about “an attempted coup by the Supreme Court.”
All they did was uphold the injunction from the lower court. Boasberg would be the one to hold them in contempt for violating the injunction. They have no more room to appeal.
That’s kind of the problem I’m getting at.
If the Supreme Court isn’t stepping in and threatening real, immediate consequences laid out by themselves, Trump and friends are pretty much free to ignore it. They don’t respect lower courts, and they’re insulated from consequences handed out by lower courts anyway.
If Boasberg wants to hold them in contempt, what can actually be done? Consequences applied to them as a collective mean nothing (they’ll just ignore them again), so the only thing that can actually scare them is seeing personal consequences like asset seizure or jail time.
Suppose they are threatened with jail time, though. They have a complicit SCOTUS sitting between them and Boasberg. All Trump, Vance, or whoever would have to do is appeal it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court would either take four years to decide whether that punishment is warranted/justified/allowed, say the lower court doesn’t have the authority to punish an individual member of the administration for the actions of the entire administration, or any other manner of bullshit excuse.
The punishment has to come from the Supreme Court, and it has to be something that the administration is actually scared of. Anything other than that is all bark and no bite.