Originally published at: Russ Vought Is Talking A Big Game—But Even This Supreme Court Might Not Back It Up
A hallmark of the second Trump presidency is the White House’s insatiable, gradually progressing power grab. It has steadily crafted, through legal and illegal means, a once-unimaginably muscular presidency. In recent months, the administration has started to itch for more, jealously eyeing Congress’ greatest power and responsibility and coveting it for itself. These long-laid plans…
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Is it sanctions or tariffs that work? Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Indian goods imports only to have Indian refiners today say that they would “pause” imports of Russian oil. A lot of this oil going to India before the drop in oil prices was circumventing Western sanctions, allowing India to buy oil at large discounts. When Western sanctions countries refused to insure seaworthy tankers, less scrupulous companies, including Indian shipping companies, started using rust-bucket tankers, even in the Baltic and Mediterranean, creating massive danger to the environment. They were also helping Putin fund his war. Less noticed in today’s story is that the EU, formerly Russia’s top oil customer, had already shifted to a new floating sanctions-pricing regime and had banned almost 500 specific vessels in Russia’s “shadow fleet” of sanctions-violating tankers. The targeting of the EU is quite precise. I know Trump will take credit for the change of heart by India’s state oil refiners, but tariff rates, unlike sanctions, could change quickly. Third-country workarounds are also impossible for specified tankers. If Modi really wants to score points with the West, he could join the sanctions regime like e.g. South Korea and Japan, and call for Russia to end occupation of illegally annexed areas, and specifically Crimea and cities such as Mariupol on the coast of the Azov Sea.
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We don’t want a fucking King, especially one as venal and corrupt and flat out stupid as Trump and his henchmen like Vought. These people are a disease, a sickness, a plague that kills intelligence and understanding, that attacks and cripples intelligent thought and factual understanding of science and the world. And those out there in the electorate that support them are just as sick and diseased and dangerous. How many people will Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. slaughter with his ignorant, willfully ignorant, willfully destructive, deadly policies? These people are marching hard-working decent people to concentration camps now. How long before they come for you and you and you? They will. They always have.
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Russ Vought is evil, carrying out the evil agenda of DJT.
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That’s pretty clearly the goal: a king in all but name and then some.
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The textualists on the court only rule based on the text when they agree with it…
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Let’s make a quick fix to this sentence,
The Court has been openly hostile to Democrat executive branch agencies exerting statutorily authorized authority based on “doctrines” lacking any legal or factual basis.
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But experts, tallying up the obstacles he’ll have to overcome in the text of the relevant laws, their purpose and Supreme Court precedent, remain skeptical that the bluster isn’t more in service of keeping congressional Republicans in line than an expression of actual confidence in such a far-fetched legal argument.
“Frankly, I don’t think he gets a single vote,” David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown Law who has written extensively on rescissions, said of Vought’s odds at the Supreme Court.
Oh, look. The exact “huffing experts invent a savvy ulterior motive for brazen authoritarian lawlessness that makes it fit into a model of democratic political normalcy” that law and political science profs, journalists and market analysts have been doing for ten fucking years to assure themselves and others that the entire structure of democracy, rule of law and civil liberties are not actually being reduced to ash and slag after all.
For fuck’s sake. At a certain point, it stops looking like normalcy bias and self-soothing from people too deeply invested in farming the slope of the volcano to admit it’s erupting and run and starts looking like a form of active complicity.
But, pish-posh. I’m just a shrill alarmist.
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I disagree with your analysis which is based on Trump’s propaganda rather than facts. Europe and China are Putin’s biggest trading partners. Europe still does > $75 billion in trade with Putin and buys 38% of Russian exports. Europe funds the war machines and war crimes more than any other country. Europe should enforce a travel ban and impose trade bans on all Russian products, stop importing all Russian gas, coal and oil, and seize all Russian assets for Ukraine’s reparations if it cared.
The war has gone on long enough. Time for Europe to step up, send in ground troops, air and naval assaults to destroy Russian oil and gas fields. That will bring peace to Ukraine. As Ronald Reagan said, we need peace through strength.
Europe is complicit through its inaction and is mooching off the American taxpayer for trade and defense. It is time for Europe to grow a pair and stop making a Europe’s problems the world’s problems. The world needs free markets for global prosperity, not a binky and blankies for Europe’s babies.
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It looks like they’ll have another chance to rule against the text of the constitution:
(@marcelias.bsky.social on Bluesky )
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No, Russ Vought is evil and carrying out the agenda of the Koch network and the Heritage foundation in particular.
TMF is too stupid to have an agenda beyond short-term money grubbing and pussy grabbing. Vought and the Kochs are in it for the long game.
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And then some is right. George III did not have the powers and authority that Trump, Vought, and the rest are claiming for the U.S. president. Even he had to deal with a legislature, Parliament.
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Charles Koch is 89. He is the last surviving brother. His long game should be ending sometime soon.
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Bill Koch is still alive, at 85. He doesn’t seem to be all that interested in stirring the political pot. Charles, on the other hand, still is.
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Turning rescissions into a neat way to renege on bipartisan compromise
The word of Republicans means nothing.
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Oops. I thought he had moved on.
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Somebody might want to check Vought’s tax records if he’s so into “fuzzy” math and principles. Somehow I’m thinking no tax payer could “run out the clock” and not pay their taxes.
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This guy needs to be removed from the country.
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The network he set up, including the Heritage foundation will continue his legacy of sociopathy well into the future. We need to investigate that entire network as an un-American organization. Use the same techniques Koch’s father supported back in the '50s.
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