Seriously. It’s like looking at a map of a battle and assuming the arrows are actual terrain features.

Their tattoos?

I know several people in this category: still employed by the government and subject to government ethics rules, unhireable by any company that still needs to follow that government agency’s rules about conflicts of interest.

It’s not moving from one company to another.

It’s moving from the government regulator to a company regulated by that former employer. The rules on government conflicts of interest still apply, and you can’t accept a paycheck from a regulated entity while you’re still technically employed at the regulator.

Fundamentally, you’re never going to be able to compete with the economies of scale of an assembly line with the same people putting together all the parts that were shipped to the same place. If the repairman has to keep an inventory of hundreds of parts for dozens of models, and drive around to where he only has time to diagnose and fix 2 appliances per day, while the factory worker can install a part for 100 appliances per day, there will always be a gap between the price of replacement versus the price of repair.

Plenty of short-lived stuff back then, too. Survivorship bias means that all the stuff that happened to survive to today is not necessarily representative of the typical thing that was manufactured back then.

It’s good to remember that Trump’s entire MO is to never concede.

It’s also true that there are internal factions fighting for power and influence, that often results in incoherent flip flopping. Constant external pressure on the administration intensifies the internet discord, and is also worth doing for that reason.

The biggest news out of this meeting is that Sen. Van Hollen reports that Abrego Garcia was transferred out of CECOT to another prison last week:

Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia said he had been “traumatized” by being at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, and fearful of detainees in other cell blocks “who called out to him and taunted him in various ways.”

Abrego Garcia said he was transferred last week to a different detention center with better conditions, but still had no ability to communicate with anyone outside the facility, the senator said.

The public pressure on this is working. The mere fact that Bukele felt the need to try to stage a photo op by the swimming pool of a luxury hotel means that he cares about appearances. Let’s keep the pressure on.

In today’s statements, Sen. Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia said he was transferred out of CECOT last week, to another prison. The Senator believes that the public pressure is influencing the actions of the Salvadorean government. The attention on this case is working, and is making a difference.

In the courtroom where his case is being heard in Maryland, protesters from the street can be heard. This shit makes a difference.

Let’s keep it up.

shows how you know this,

Ok, where to begin. I’m a lawyer with decades of experience, including with the occasional case that involves the government. I know how to read a case and follow the news from an informed perspective, and I recognize the individual traits/characteristics/background of the judges involved. There’s not one place to read it, but let’s try.

Here’s a litigation tracker that updates on all the big lawsuits trying to rein in Trump’s lawlessness:

https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/

CTRL+F “Abrego Garcia” for the rundown of Kilmar’s case. “Update 5” describes the appellate court’s decision not to stay the district court’s order to “facilitate and effectuate,” and contains a link to the opinion, which includes Judge Wilkinson’s concurrence that “facilitate” is a legal order but “effectuate” might exceed the court’s power to order the government to do specific things in foreign policy matters. The Supreme Court agreed that “facilitate” was a lawful order, but told the district court to make sure it doesn’t overstep by ordering “effectuation” in a way that infringes on the President’s constitutional powers.

Judge Wilkinson is a Reagan appointee who is widely regarded as a superstar in the Republican party, in Federalist Society circles. He was an influential thinker and jurist on conservative causes, and clerking for him as a first job out of law school is a marker of an up and coming conservative lawyer superstar. Many of those clerks went on to clerk for Scalia, Roberts, etc. Clerking for him remains a fairly prominent part of the pipeline for future Republican judges and politicians.

Yesterday, he wrote the majority opinion for the Fourth Circuit that makes very clear that the government’s position is “shocking” and a threat to “the foundation of our constitutional order.”

The work continues. This is just one case. All the other cases will have different results, but Trump isn’t going to win all of them, and each Trump loss draws blood, while his lack of focus means that he’ll continue to make unforced errors while opening new fronts to fight on: Gulf of Mexico, Greenland, Tariffs, picking a fight with the chair of the Federal Reserve, flip flopping on which federal programs or contracts to cut, all the different mistakes in administration, etc.

I’m not on board with doomerism or even accelerationism. I think there’s still a fight to be had in the legal arena, and I still think our side can win there. Watching how the cases are playing out confirms that the other side believes it, too. Otherwise, why would they be fighting this hard?

Alaska is just weird, and I wouldn’t attribute too much in national electoral trends to that specific state. It now has an instant runoff general election after a top-4 jungle primary, which makes the craziest candidates less viable. Sarah Palin is very much a Trumpist, but couldn’t win a statewide election in 2022 (enough Republicans in the state hate her that they voted for Begich first, then flipped to the Democrat or didn’t vote once Begich dropped out in the instant runoff).

It’d be hard to properly analyze a hypothetical about Murkowski running for reelection amidst a Trump attack campaign and an endorsement of a more Trumpist opponent, but I wouldn’t discount her chances even in that environment. Especially if she does succeed in forming a mini caucus with other Republican Senators that fight to preserve legislative power to check the Presidency.

It’s not just free weather reports, either. It’s weather reports at all! The paid services all rely on the public data with their own layers of analysis built on that foundation. If the foundation crumbles, the expensive stuff built on top of that will break, too.

Update: Sen Van Hollen stuck around and fought for it, and in the end was able to meet with him:

https://apnews.com/article/abrego-garcia-el-salvador-trump-deportation-van-hollen-senator-81cca0ac24a9a312be97c730679f8dd1

That’s why I’m in these threads saying it’s worth it to fight this out in every avenue. In the courts, in the legislatures, in the media, on social media, in the streets.

Trump claimed to be able to deport people without courts being able to review. The Supreme Court rejected that view, and now the Trump administration has to spend the effort defending its actions in court.

Under tough questioning by a judge in a case aggressively litigated by Kilmar’s family, Trump’s lawyers then acknowledged an administrative error was made and that Kilmar shouldn’t have been deported. They fired the first lawyer to concede it, but the Solicitor General conceded it, too, and the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump has to help get him back.

Sen. Van Hollen went to El Salvador to meet with him. Many comments online, especially here on Lemmy, openly commented that it was futile and that Kilmar was dead. But Sen Van Hollen doesn’t give up that easily, showed up in country and was turned away. Then he stayed and fought for access, and was able to meet with him and ensure that he was healthy and safe.

Meanwhile, the Reagan appointee on the appellate court, Judge Wilkinson, has published a scathing ruling that the Trump administration owes the courts and Kilmar Abrego Garcia much more. Note that his concurring opinion last time around essentially became adopted as the 9-0 Supreme Court opinion.

There’s cynicism all around, but most of what has already happened is the type of stuff that the cynical pessimists would’ve never expected to happen in this case.

The brazen lawlessness of the Trump administration is currently backfiring, and now things are escalating into full blown discovery into the ICE/DHS deportation decisions,

The message is that this fight is still worth fighting. Every little step matters.

And when we force these issues into the court for plainclothes arrests, arbitrary revocation of student visas or other authorizations to be in the country, we force the Trump administration to actually say what they’re doing, to be scrutinized and analyzed.

The lawsuits are bringing transparency and may still bring results, so quit with the doomerism. Even if we don’t win every fight, the struggle continues, and we force the other side to expend their resources and effort in a way that makes it harder for them to accomplish their agenda.

Donate to the nonprofits fighting for this stuff. Volunteer your time. This fight is worth fighting.

they can’t use the threat of a primary against her

She lost the 2010 primary during the height of the Tea Party movement, ran a campaign to have people vote for her as a write in candidate, and won as a write in.

In the end, the problem is that her vote doesn’t actually matter this cycle, at least not by itself. In order to flex any muscle she’d need to actually persuade some colleagues to stand up to Trump. At this point she’s more of a Republican Fetterman than a Republican Sinema/Manchin.

Ha I should be clear, in my normal day to day responsibilities I mainly sue over money, which tends not to involve political considerations at all. That being said, the arbitrary way that the Trump admin has canceled contracts, yanked grants, canceled things that others have had to rush in and fill the vacuum on (including spending their own money), I might very well end up with a politically charged case at some point.

And maybe there’s something to be said to committing some time or effort or money to public interest and public impact litigation for the types of cases not typically in my wheelhouse.

Exactly. I’m gonna do the lawful good thing on my end, and work my hardest to protect the actual institutions that still have power to provide some checks on the government currently in the hands of a wannabe dictator.

Authoritarianism only stays strong when people don’t do the most basic of things to oppose it.

Yeah, I subscribe to the Green Lantern/Tinkerbell theory of authoritarianism: the dictator only has power as long as people believe it. So skepticism of claims of power become self fulfilling, and belief in dictator power also becomes self fulfilling.

So don’t comply in advance. Make them work for every inch, even on things that seem inevitable. Every delay you cause to their agenda buys someone else a reprieve.

In reality, it will take all of us doing different things to resist, and hopefully, that collective effort over time will be enough. It will still suck in the meantime.

Exactly this.

I’m a licensed attorney and I sue the government from time to time. I still think I can do that.

I’ve always known that the courts have limited power to reign in the President, especially in the modern era where American political parties have strengthened to the point where there’s very little internal party resistance to the President’s agenda (contrast to earlier eras when a Speaker of the House might have tanked the same-party President’s agenda).

But the point of suing and getting the court orders is still important for the “lawful good” types to lay as much groundwork as possible for us to try our best to preserve the rule of law. If it gets frayed or bent in places, we still fight within that framework the best we can, knowing full well that in a vacuum where the law no longer constrains the powerful, that situation legitimizes any movement to do things in a “chaotic good” kind of way, from nonviolent civil disobedience to destructive acts to outright violence.

Those of us who are lawyers (and judges and even elected politicians) have our lane, at least for now, to try our best to maintain accountability within the law. If the law can’t keep up, then we should still be satisfied that we tried our best to keep it within that lawful framework, because losing on that front still has the silver lining of increasing the popular will and support for extra-legal options. If they sidestep the restrictions of the law, then they’ll find themselves outside the protections of the law. And maybe they have some confidence in their odds in a “might makes right” situation, but their current power structures still depend heavily on the law (even basic things like whether a dollar is legal tender or whether a piece of paper says you own something valuable).

No, even if tuition and books are free, financial aid still needs to help full time students have food to eat and have a place to live and ordinary day to day expenses. In many places, the aid on room and board is much more money than aid on tuition and fees.

And community colleges tend not to have their own dorms or anything like that, so it comes in the form of a monthly payment that helps the student pay their rent. That’s an incentive for fraud.