Researcher in the U.S. trying to stay informed and help others stay informed. I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/
I only recently began using ghost, and am slowly figuring things out. Apologies for any formatting issues.
It also seems to put local law enforcement in a position to be accused of interfering with federal policy if they don’t comply.
Totally unrelated, my conservative state’s corrupt AG is suing my city for their alleged “sanctuary city policy” and the case goes before a judge tomorrow.
WWMD The wealthy white man defense is a pretty air tight legal argument. Fits in nicely with the narcissist’s prayer.
I didn’t do it, but if I did it wasn’t a big deal. And if it was, you deserved it.
The impression of a constitutional crisis is misleading. That impression was initially created by overreaching district judges selected by plaintiffs, who obtained temporary victories and leveraged those victories in the media. If there is a crisis, it does not arise from the actions of the administration but instead from a slew of highly aggressive judicial decisions that have transgressed traditional legal limits on the relationship between the judiciary and the executive branch — limits the courts respected during the Biden administration. — Adrian Vermeule, professor, Harvard Law School
The administration always talks about ivy league elitists that hate America, but they never mention this guy for some reason.
Legal scholars are usually very knowledgeable about the law, but not always great lawyers in the courtroom (hence the judge basically rolling her eyes at the argument).
Adrian Vermeule is a right wing constitutional law professor/legal scholar. He will never show up in court, but he is definitely influencing their legal argument.
NYT actually just released an article today asking legal experts their opinion on what’s happening now. Of course Vermeule somehow managed to put the blame on the courts and not the administration.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/opinion/trump-constitution-rule-of-law.html
The impression of a constitutional crisis is misleading. That impression was initially created by overreaching district judges selected by plaintiffs, who obtained temporary victories and leveraged those victories in the media. If there is a crisis, it does not arise from the actions of the administration but instead from a slew of highly aggressive judicial decisions that have transgressed traditional legal limits on the relationship between the judiciary and the executive branch — limits the courts respected during the Biden administration. — Adrian Vermeule, professor, Harvard Law School
I always consider buying a hand cranked FM radio for Hurricane season, but always talk myself out of it. I think you just inspired me to finally just do it.
Have you heard anything about what might have caused the drop in power?
It was a failure of the interconnection between France and Spain after a sudden drop in power, but no reports of what caused the drop yet.
Have you heard any theories about what it could have been that caused the drop?.
??? That seems like kind of a bizarre takeaway, but just to be clear, this is far from over. We are in no way in the safe zone. Not even a little bit, DO NOT get complacent.
Adrian Vermeule, the Harvard Law professor, who is behind their legal argument has been writing about executive authority and Carl Schmitt (the legal architect of the Nazi agenda) for several years.
Unchecked executive authority is what allowed Hitler to legally carry out genocide. This is a very dangerous group of people.
It’s just very funny that a group of ivy league and silicon valley billionaires have been spending the last few months trying to rally the public and get them on their side by somehow claiming that anyone opposed to their actions is an out of touch elitist.
Meanwhile, the legal theory for the constitutional interpretation that is the basis of their entire power grab (judges can’t overrule a president’s order, we don’t have to have a warrant if we break down your door claiming we’re looking for gang members bc executive authority overrules individual liberty) is so highly technical and obscure, that it is actually a pretty flimsy argument and definitely out of touch with most American’s interpretation of the constitution (we the people did not want to be ruled by a king, so you can pry our liberty from our cold dead hands).
Someone like justice Alito (who also coincidentally happens to be an ivy league graduate) would probably still support Vermeule’s interpretation, so a weak argument is no guarantee of protection. What often seems to make or break the argument, is public knowledge and opinion, which can then lead to public pressure due to justices hoping to preserve their legacy in history.
You already have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to make the argument in the first place, but it would be next to impossible to make the public aware of this interpretation, and view it as anything other than an attempt to create a loophole allowing for the King to invade your home and seize your property, while taking away your right to defend yourself.
Usually that just creates a power vacuum, and there’s already plenty of fascist already standing in line ready to continue this BS. The first mandate for leadership was written over 40 years ago, but many of the original ideas remain in project 2025.
The people currently running the Heritage Foundation are not the original members. The founding members are all dead, and the people sitting in the White House are just continuing their legacy.
They have infected the entire system. The country is septic because of these people, and hacking off a limb just because you can see it’s the origin of infection, will not solve the problem. It will just leave you minus one limb and unnecessarily distracted while you try to stop the bleeding.
If we survive this as a country, we have to treat a systemic infection. To treat it and keep it from coming back, we will need to demand accountability from the people that were supposed to stop the infection from spreading in the first place. That means holding them accountable now or voting to actually replace them when it’s time.
Governors and AG up for election between 2025 and 2028.
33 of the 100 Senate seats are up for election on Nov 3, 2026 as well as representatives from all 435 congressional districts across each of the 50 U.S. states.
If a group of billionaires could pressure the Supreme Court to overturn something that the majority of Americans agreed we didn’t need to overturn, then the majority of Americans can pressure the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United so that it can no longer benefit the same group of billionaires.
This is very funny to me:
In a hearing on April 23, US District Judge Beryl Howell, who is overseeing Perkins Coie’s case, appeared incredulous at the government’s arguments. She subjected Richard Lawson, a Justice Department lawyer, to a barrage of often sarcastic questions about the scope of the executive order, brushing aside some of his positions as “hyper-technical legal arguments that may have no merit.”
On the docket, meanwhile, the administration is outgunned.
The two lawyers representing the government are Chad Mizelle, US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, who worked in the first Trump administration and at a pair of elite law firms, and Lawson, who joined the Justice Department after a stint at a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller.
Most of their legal arguments rely on constitutional interpretation of unchecked executive authority. This is actually the argument of a very prominent legal scholar and professor of constitutional law at Harvard.
While they’ve been calling everyone around them bureaucratic elitists, they’ve now jumped into the game very confidently but totally dependent on this argument only to have a judge essentially say, this may make for a good publication on legal theory but essentially has no basis in reality 🤣
Exactly, I think it’s funny that the law firms that didn’t back down also retained two major clients (Boeing and Amazon) that you would expect to be automatically on team Trump, and that career DOJ lawyers just said, this is dumb fuck this I’m retiring rather than being humiliated trying to argue this dog shit in court.
The thing about bullies is they will take whatever you’re willing to give, but they usually can’t win a fight without psychological intimidation and large numbers backing them up.
I mean they already are. They’ve been doing this since March.
The only reason we know is because one of the many employees within ICE who have been leaking information to the press in the hopes we would pressure congress to do their jobs, also leaked this.
If you know anyone in the conservative camp that’s still blissfully unaware/not pissed yet, loop them in. Their voices are the most important when it comes to giving Congress one last try while they’re still collecting paychecks paid for by our tax dollars.
If it comes down to us fighting we will have to join together anyway if we stand any chance. The next civil war will not be left vs right, it will be Americans refusing to follow orders vs. corporate billionaires controlling both public and private military (Blackwater, Palantir, etc.).
Many people find comfort in authoritarian personalities.
It’s also possible if you’re just willing to stop paying attention, and believe the people in power are doing what’s best for you. Trust them 😉
I’m not sure what you mean?
Do you mean a patriarchal hierchy? It may be pretty obvious to you in 2025, but if that’s what you mean, you can probably thank Judith Herman for that.
Herman was the first person to really focus on trauma as a psychological concept, and to distinguish between trauma following an acute event vs trauma that develops after repeated traumatic events.
Acute trauma results in PTSD. Repeated/inescapable trauma such as domestic violence, repeated sexual assault, or even living under an authoritarian regime, often results in the development of complex PTSD.
Both cPTSD and PTSD result in an overactive nervous system, that can be easily triggered by a traumatic memory. However, when trauma is chronic or inescapable, often the person experiencing the trauma will develop coping skills that are necessary to survive while continuing to go about daily life as though everything is normal.
For example, think of people in Ukraine right now. There are often times when people wake up in the middle of the night and rush into a subway as a makeshift bomb shelter, hiding there until the bombs stop dropping and it’s “safe” to come out.
They may come out to find casualties and destruction, only to then go get ready for work and continue living their 9-5 lives like they did before the war. Going about life as though everything is normal is a form of dissociation, but it’s a necessary coping skill during times of war or high stress.
The current head of the Heritage Foundation, pulling the strings of Trump’s administration is quoted as saying “Put them in trauma,” regarding the plan to overwhelm the U.S. with so much chaos that eventually people just give up and completely dissociate from the trauma going on around them. They want complacency. They want you to just give in, and trust that what they’re doing is for the best, even though everything inside of you is telling you it’s wrong. The leader/authority figure always knows best.
Masses of people everywhere are dissociating right now, and convincing themselves that maybe if they play along, they will be safe. Maybe things will eventually work themselves out. That’s not how it works. Complacency is victory for the people in power.
The first post I made in this community was based on Herman’s work for a reason. Understanding how to cope and survive repeated trauma that is often out of our control, without just fully dissociating or checking out is key to fighting back.
How to reason through solving a problem or fixing something. Not necessarily being successful, but just the process of thinking about possible things to try or steps to take.
There are some within ice who were reshuffled as punishment for Jan 6 investigations when Trump took over. They have been leaking information about what was going on to the press, and facing threats from the administration
I’m guessing we wouldn’t even know about this memo if not for people like this. I bring this up bc it’s important to keep in mind that if Congress will not act (which it seems like they won’t) we will be relying on the agents who are not loyalists, refusing to carry out orders.
If public opinion does not support agents who take a stand and refuse orders (not the loyalists, fuck them without a doubt) and have been leaking information like this memo, Trump will have ammunition that he can use to kill dissent and show other ice employees it’s in their best interest to carry out orders because the public is not on their side.
This is likely why he’s trying to reshuffle as many agents and even city police to get involved in immigration policy.
I voted for the current sheriff of my parish. First time I was ever passionate about voting for a sheriff because she was also a former police corruption monitor. She is now being taken to court by our state AG this Wednesday to force her to adopt federal immigration policy in her own jurisdiction.
If the judge agrees with the AG, which sadly, she probably will, the sheriff and local police will also be under legal orders to carry this shit out or face termination/possible jail time for interfering with immigration policy.
I am hopeful if it does, but the memo is saying they can just do this. So it will take this actually being enforced and someone’s (or multiple people’s) rights being violated for this to end up before the supreme court.
I think it’s no coincidence there was such a high profile arrest of that judge in Wisconsin just before this happened.
There are federal agents that have been reshuffled to ICE as punishment for the Jan 6 investigations, and have been accused of leaking information to the press.
I originally just thought the termination of civil rights offices would mainly be to use polygraphs on these employees and refuse due process rights because so many were trying to warn people of what this administration is doing.
I wasn’t expecting something like this memo so soon.
There are definitely plenty of loyalists carrying this shit out, but I believe the administration may be intentionally trying to reshuffle as many federal employees as possible (and now city police to ICE) to increase civil unrest and increase the chances the public will turn on the same people leaking information.
If Congress won’t do their job, it will come down to these people willing to refuse orders and face termination if not arrest. The only reason I bring this up, is that if this happens we should keep in mind that there have been people inside ICE trying to warn the country about this stuff for a long time.
If we are too quick to dismiss all of them as loyalists, the administration will be able to downplay any dissent when orders are refused, and possibly convince others who are on the fence that it’s in their best interest to comply bc the public is not on their side.
I hope so. If the Senate and representatives won’t take a stand (which seems they won’t), it will be up to police, federal agents, and military leaders taking a stand and refusing orders, probably being terminated if not jailed/court martialed, and public support for them.
An angry group of civilians would not stand much of a chance against an entire military/police force.
In addition to the entire military/national guard, state police, you also have Palantir and blackwater now on the side of the government
Or JD Vance could just retweet him to make his own legal arguments