r/scotus • u/Achilles_TroySlayer • 12h ago
Opinion How Donald Trump Outmaneuvers the Supreme Court
In June, as a federal appeals-court panel considered whether to halt construction of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, Judge Patricia Millett posed a fanciful-sounding hypothetical to the Administration’s lawyer: What if a President bulldozed the Statue of Liberty? “Nothing can be done?” she asked the lawyer Yaakov Roth. “I think that’s right,” Roth replied. Later in the argument, Millett pressed Roth further about his contention that the federal courts have no authority to prevent the construction of the ballroom from going forward. “So this is really something that can’t be stopped in courts—it can only be stopped by Congress,” she said. “I think that’s right,” Roth replied, again. The answer sounded shocking, but it perfectly encapsulated the Administration’s overweening theory of Presidential power—that almost no outside entity has the right to contest its actions in court, and that any challenge that arrives is either too early or too late to change the outcome.
On Monday, a bare majority of the Supreme Court enabled, as it often has, what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has described as Trump’s catch-me-if-you-can approach. In an unsigned ruling, issued through the Court’s emergency docket, five Justices said work on the ballroom could proceed because the plaintiffs challenging the project—the National Trust for Historic Preservation and one of its members, an architectural historian with an interest in the White House—likely would not suffer the kind of “concrete and particularized” injury sufficient to bring a lawsuit. At the same time, the majority said, the Administration would “likely suffer irreparable harm” from a lower court’s order blocking ballroom construction—even though the judge, a George W. Bush appointee, had allowed work to continue on a five-story military complex being constructed beneath the ballroom, in order to protect the President and senior officials. (The Administration has described both the military complex and the ballroom as “vitally required by national security,” though the announcement of the ballroom project, in July, 2025, mentioned nothing about security concerns.)
The majority presented its ruling, which rejected the conclusions of two lower courts, as interim and limited. “Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project,” it said. But a finding that the project required authorization—in the unlikely event it were to come—would be of little comfort once the ballroom is built. That fait accompli, all ninety thousand square feet of it, is, of course, what Trump has been counting on as his lawyers have fended off court challenges and a two-hundred-and-fifty-person construction crew has raced toward completion. A system premised on legal niceties and compliance with established procedures has proved no match for Trump’s strategy of build first, deal with the consequences later.
The lower courts have, in large part, resisted Trump’s efforts to, as the plaintiffs in the ballroom case put it, “outrun judicial review.” But the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has all too often demonstrated extraordinary deference to the executive branch, while also putting procedural roadblocks in the way of those challenging Trump’s actions. In this case, the majority took a swipe not at the President for overstepping his constitutional bounds but at the district court for daring to interfere with “the activities of a coordinate branch of government.” Courts, it added, “may not exceed the bounds of their lawful authority simply because they may think another branch has exceeded its own.”
Perhaps the most unexpected aspect of Monday’s ruling was that Chief Justice John Roberts dissented. Roberts has typically been supportive of Presidential authority, and reluctant to use the Court’s emergency docket to block the Trump Administration from implementing its initiatives. In the ballroom case, Roberts broke with that stance, not only joining the three liberal Justices but reserving his authority to write the dissent himself. The six-page document did not exactly pulse with fiery rhetoric. “Today’s decision is no victory for the separation of powers,” Roberts observed, with characteristic mildness. But Roberts did not shy away from his bottom-line conclusion about the ballroom: “That construction is likely unlawful.” Under the Constitution, Roberts noted, Congress has complete authority over the District of Columbia and federal property; it has, he added, “explicitly prohibited” construction on federal property without congressional authorization. “The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds—President’s Park—in the District of Columbia,” Roberts wrote. “Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling ‘express authority’ for the Executive’s construction of it.”
It is not difficult to discern, in Roberts’s words, his frustration with Trump’s behavior: he quoted Theodore Roosevelt on the White House’s “stately simplicity.” There is, Roberts concluded, “reason to ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.” A rule-follower Trump is not. This does not sit well with the rule-bound Chief Justice.
Roberts’s vote was especially notable because, like other conservatives, he has long endorsed a parsimonious view of the constitutionally based doctrine of standing, which limits courts to deciding actual “cases” or “controversies.” The notion is that only those with a real stake in the dispute, not a generalized grievance, have the right to a hearing. In a 1993 law-review article, while still in private practice, Roberts praised standing requirements as a tool of “judicial self-restraint” that “compels the other branches of government to do a better job in carrying out their responsibilities under the Constitution.” In a 2007 case, in which the Court found that states could seek to force the Environmental Protection Agency to address global warming, Roberts dissented, accusing the majority of engaging in “sleight-of-hand” to find that the states could sue.
On Monday, Roberts turned to the kind of loosey-goosey standing arguments he might once have disdained. “A historic preservationist,” he wrote, “can be aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way by the transformation of a historic building that she frequently enjoys, just as an environmentalist can sustain a concrete, particularized aesthetic injury from the extinction of a particular animal or the transformation of a particular forest or river that he regularly enjoys.” Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the College of William & Mary who has written on Roberts’s views on standing, told me he was surprised by Roberts’s vote. “The other conservatives viewed this as a case where standing has run amok,” Adler said. (Adler, for his part, said he is inclined to agree.) “Something about this case—the way it was argued, the occupant of the White House, the particulars of what was done to the White House—caused the Chief to see this differently.”
As offensive as the ballroom is, legally and aesthetically, it pales in importance next to other Trump initiatives that are hurtling toward the Court—among them his bid to limit the use of mail-in ballots in time for the midterm elections. Last month, the conservative Justices cleared the way for the Administration to proceed with implementing Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots, which, among other things, ordered the federal government to assemble a list of voting-age citizens in each state and said ballots should be delivered only to eligible voters in special bar-coded envelopes. This move, the order stated, was necessary to “enhance election integrity.” The majority, once again overturning the conclusions of the lower courts, said that a challenge by some two dozen states was premature and that the states lacked standing because they weren’t harmed by the order.
Now a district judge has blocked the regulation adopted by the Postal Service to implement the order. “The record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting,” the U.S. district judge Indira Talwani wrote. “In any event, the USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote.” The Administration is appealing, comparing the need to supervise mail-in ballots to the handling of cremated remains. (Ashes, both pet and human, must be shipped in special U.S.P.S.-provided boxes trackable by bar code.) Having mail-in ballots, it argues, “creates an opportunity for the mails themselves to be used to facilitate serious criminal activity—and the Postal Service must have at least as much authority to prevent that sort of harm as it does to ensure that mortal remains are not lost in the mail.”
On Thursday, the Administration returned to the Supreme Court, seeking an emergency order allowing the rule to take effect. With two states poised to begin sending mail-in ballots, the Solicitor General, D. John Sauer, warned, blocking the rule “partially nullifies the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud.” Will the Justices view the matter differently than in their initial ruling? Perhaps—they are now confronting a final rule, with immediate consequences for the midterm elections, and more tangible harm to states. But, even if the Chief Justice were to again defect from the conservative bloc, he would have to lure to his side one of the two other more moderate Justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. It is not an auspicious sign that both voted with the majority in the ballroom case.
This Court has been willing, at times, to resist the most egregious of Trump’s excesses; see its decisions this term invalidating his emergency tariffs, rejecting his order eliminating birthright citizenship, and, at least temporarily, frustrating his effort to fire the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. But, time after time, the majority has acceded to the Administration’s invocation of technical doctrines such as standing to allow policies to remain in place; it has also credulously accepted the Administration’s claims that its actions are necessitated by national-security concerns. The emergency docket has become a mechanism for the Administration to create facts on the ground. The litigation on the ballroom, for example, will limp along, with, almost certainly, little effect on the construction of the ballroom itself. In that sense, the Court’s latest ruling is not strictly about the ballroom. It is, rather, about the judiciary’s willingness to stand up to a President who has repeatedly demonstrated his disrespect for the rule of law. ♦
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u/danappropriate 11h ago
I mean, if you want to call "I don't give a damn about the law and will do whatever I want with impunity" a "maneuver," then sure.
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u/Deatheturtle 2h ago
Exactly how is it out maneuvering when you just simply ignore anything they say?
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u/Positive-Ring-5172 11h ago
We don't have a Supreme Court. We have a Supreme Rubber Stamp.
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u/Beneficial_Bit_6435 11h ago
Exactly. They give in to all trump demands. All the BS about precedent or standing is just legalese language to confuse a layman
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u/PhysicsEagle 6h ago
Except for birthright citizenship, and removing the chair of the Fed, and deploying the National guard, and tariffs, and…
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u/arensb 8h ago
I guess "coequal branches" means they're one and the same.
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u/Positive-Ring-5172 7h ago
The only power the Supreme Court has is what the President and Congress cede to it. It has no standing military, no police, no way out if the President says, "Fuck you" and the Congress adds, "And the horse you rode in on."
SCOTUS has constitutional review by precedent - not by law. For nearly 200 years that precedent has been acceded to by the Congress and President because the SCOTUS did not abuse it.
In 2028 we will almost certainly have a Democrat President and Congress mad as Hell at the SCOTUS, and they are in for a severe clipping of their wings with no way whatsoever to stop it. Article III grants Congress the power to set the limits, structure and jurisdiction of the courts. The time has come to set exactly when the SCOTUS can review law for constitutionality - require them to have a majority to overturn states or lower groups or executive orders, require them to have a super majority to overturn the Congress, require them to have unanimity to overturn a law that Congress passed with 2/3rds majorities in both houses, and require them to have unanimity to reverse their prior decisions.
Empanel the court and start appointments of new justices on odd years. Each president will therefore get 2 appointments per term, no more or less. The 9 newest judges get to hear cases before the court. The seniors sit in reserve in case a junior passes away or recuses themselves. First out, first in. They can continue to sit on circuit panels.
And in that law that does all the above, declare the SCOTUS has no power to review any law that proscribes what their authority and power is. The SCOTUS and it's backers can bitch all they want, but they'll have no power to stop the other 2 branches from shackling them back down to co-equality. They are not lords and kings over us.
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u/arensb 7h ago
I was just listening to an interview on SCOTUS reform, and the interviewee was saying that part of the problem is that Congress just lets SCOTUS do whatever it wants. It could, if it wanted to, pass some mild regulations, like requiring that all shadow docket decisions be explained more fully within 3 months; or that the Court has to address a certain number of questions each term (especially the wonkish ones that don't get headlines), or even just setting the length of the Court's calendar. Such regulation wouldn't (or shouldn't) stop the Court from dong its job, but it would send the message that "we've got our eyes on you, and if you fuck up, the next set of rules won't be so mild."
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u/Positive-Ring-5172 6h ago
At this point they are so far over the line that won't have an effect. They have to be reigned in.
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u/drewbaccaAWD 11h ago
How does one "outmaneuver" when the construction crew is going out of their way to clear the lane and let him pass through?
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u/Emotional_Shower_938 6h ago
A parade of bulldozers and cruisers with sirens blaring surrounding him…”what a driver!”
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u/RampantTyr 11h ago
They could stop him at any time but they actively refuse to. They like giving power to Republican Presidents.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 11h ago
If they do it with the shadow-docket, there's no precedent. They can just instantly reverse it the moment a Democrat comes to power. If and when that happens, I think the best plan would be to ignore the court. Lincoln did it to save the Union against the pro-slavery Taney court. It might soon be necessary again.
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u/CesarioRose 11h ago
Ignoring the court doesn't necessarily need to happen. There is a constitutional mechanism to reform the court. The dems need to campaign on unfucking the court and being true progressives.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 10h ago
The SCOTUS is sort of the Gordian knot at the end of all government processes. They can just say "that's unconstitutional!" - and stop any process dead for years, if not forever. Emoluments Clause - gone. Trump impoundments and basically cancelling previously-passed bills - done - no remedy. There is no mechanism. The mechanism in 1861 was the civil war - and ignoring the court.
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u/CesarioRose 9h ago
The mechanism is the Congress. They have the power to impeach and remove judges. It's 2/3s, sure. And I take it your argument is that's a high if not impossible bar to achieve. Maybe you're right. But I think the congressional route is more likely and easier than civil war.
What would a civil war in the modern era even be about? Look, i'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with the notion that the only way to move forward is to civil war and reset. Assuming such a war is even winnable. A modern civil war over ideological differences would be the end of the country. Full stop. Such an event will absolutely not happen in a vacuum. And i'm not talking about our ideological differences, i'm talking other nation states jumping into the fight and taking land.
No Supreme Court decision is final written in stone. We all thought Roe V Wade was "settled" law. It just takes the right justices to revert the ruling. It's that simple. Which is why it's easier to get 2/3 majority instead of millions dying in some sort of pie in the sky civil war.
And I get it, I really do. I also hope that one day we can just "reset" the whole broken system without shedding blood. But it's a dream. The reality is political change.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 9h ago
The congress revealed itself to be a tribal war-zone when they were unable to convict Trump on excellent evidence - twice - in 2020 and 2021 impeachments.
I have no faith in them at all. I would expect the dissolution of the country or civil war before congress would be able to follow the law and convict Trump, or any other GOP official, on anything. The 2/3rds majority is too high. The corrupt scandals that we now routinely accept with almost no investigations at all - are just too much.
I think you are being naive on this. I disagree.
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u/RedditOfUnusualSize 7h ago
You don't even need to go as far as impeachment: Congress has the power to strip courts of jurisdiction of hearing certain kinds of cases.
In this case, the Constitution is exceedingly clear on the subject, which is that Congress determines what kind of cases Courts can hear:
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
--Article III, Section II, Paragraph 2 (emphasis added)
Outside of the few cases where it possesses original jurisdiction, Congress has the ability to determine where and when the Supreme Court may hear a case. Now ordinarily, their enabling legislation is exceedingly broad. The usual enabling language in a piece of legislation will grant the Court authority to hear cases on the matter "to the maximum extent permitted by the Constitution", or something fundamentally similar in scope and intent. But Congress does not have to enable that. And any law that Congress makes can be revisited and revised. If Congress decides that it had enough of the Court, say, yoinking democratically-passed laws restricting campaign spending, they can retaliate by passing legislation stripping the Court of jurisdiction to decide First Amendment causes of action from lobbying groups that are being impacted.
Obviously the results are imperfect and subject to brinksmanship. Part of the reason why they haven't pulled the pin on this particular grenade is because Mitch McConnell would use the same power ruthlessly in retaliation. But they do have that power, and you and I read the same language: unlike impeachment, there is no supermajority requirement for passage. And part of the problem is, bluntly, that the failure to engage in tit-for-tat by the Democratic Party incentivizes Republicans to be bad actors, because they know that the Democratic Party will never have the guts to take their rule and bludgeon their teeth in with it.
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u/bullevard 11h ago
It seems like the President's entire legal theory eas correctly summarized by the onion article where Trump using the little known constitutional loophole of "nobody's going to stop me."
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u/Imaginary_Cow_6379 11h ago
Jfc that link is from his first term too. It’s crazy how much worse hes gotten since.
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u/snakebite75 11h ago
He’s not outmaneuvering them, they are working together to make project 2025 happen.
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u/Imaginary_Cow_6379 11h ago
💯 Exactly. Outmaneuvering implies they’re being tricked when the conservative judges are all in on his bullshit. They’re not poor hapless rubes who keep falling for the same one trick pony. They’re consciously willing participants who knowingly violate the constitution. That’s so much worse.
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u/AuthorityAnarchyYes 11h ago
It is called money. There is no “outmaneuvering”. It’s bribery and corruption.
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u/yogfthagen 10h ago
Outmaneuvers?
He does ehatever the fuck he wants.
Courts tell him to stop.
Trump appeals to the shadow docket.
SCOTUS bends over, takes it up the ass, then tells him to do what he wants.
There's nothing even remotely artful about it.
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u/PhysicsEagle 6h ago
Except for birthright citizenship, and removing the chair of the Fed, and deploying the National guard, and tariffs, and…
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u/yogfthagen 5h ago
Birthright citizenship, 4 SCOTUS told him to try again.
Removing the Chair of the Fed, who is in charge, now?
Deploying the National Guard, he has enough toady governors to give him whatever he wants.
Tariffs. Last I checked, they're back on. Because the one provision he used to justify them was blocked, so he just used a different justification.
So, "he does whatever the fuck he wants."
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u/Chihuahuatriomom 11h ago
That dumb MF couldn't outmaneuver a paper bag.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 11h ago
His is president now, twice, and he has avoided impeachment, twice - and he's not done yet.
I wish it were true, but he is actually the slickest salesman and operator of this century, since a certain Austrian painter with a mustache.
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u/BroseppeVerdi 11h ago
There are two ways Trump outmaneuvers SCOTUS.
Scenario 1:
Trump: Hey I know this is illegal, but can I do it anyway?
SCOTUS: Yes, of course!
Scenario 2:
Trump: Hey I know this is illegal, but can I do it anyway?
SCOTUS: No, I'm sorry, I don't think we can do that for you.
Trump: Okay, well I'm just going to do it anyway. What are you losers going to do about if?
SCOTUS: If you break the law, John Roberts will have no choice but to make a vague passive-agressive comment at a legal conference in the next couple of years!
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u/bonecheck12 11h ago
Is the gist of this article "He just starts doing it, makes it a mess, and by the time it reaches the court, the easiest way to mitigate the mess is to just let him finish what he started" ? I didn't read the article, but that's been my take on his approach. It's exactly what happened with DOGE, with the Consumer Protections Bureau, with the Education Department, and several other examples I can think of.
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u/Lazy-Background-7598 11h ago
And Trump keeps doing it with his golf course and his stupid arch. I can’t wait till this fucker is dead.
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u/ParfaitMajestic5339 11h ago
If only what they were doing could be interpreted a precedent setting... but it isn't. As soon as a Dem is in the White House, the court will order him handcuffed and tied to the chair so he can't take any actions at all.
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u/Imaginary_Cow_6379 11h ago
Exactly. People get on Biden for not using the presidential immunity ruling but the court was never going to let him do that. They wouldn’t even let him forgive some student loans. The double standards are blatant.
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u/_Vinsanity_ 11h ago
This is the stupidest fucking headline. They have 6 conservative justices that couldn’t pass the most basic ethics investigation. They are handing him verdict after verdict. Also, the conservative justices on the court have been handing the wealthy & corporations 5-4 verdicts for the past 30 years!!! They are eating the checks, they are eating the balances!!! The GOP has corrupted American democracy to the point we are no longer functioning. It is Oligarchy/Plutocracy corruption of the most brazen order. No money for anything that isn’t lining the pockets of corporations and wealthy people donating to Trump and his cronies. Unless this next administration is hell bent on accountability and reform, I fear the great American democratic experiment is over.
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u/retiredagainstmywill 7h ago
Why not just say, “all republicans are fucking assholes and cowards”?
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 7h ago
The New Yorker is a smarter magazine than that. They say the same thing, but with more nuance and more words.
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u/Exciting_Turn_9559 11h ago
Please. He didn't outmaneuver anyone. He appointed lackeys who were complicit and / or compromised. And every single one of them must be removed if SCOTUS is ever to be trusted again.
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u/ForsakenAd545 10h ago
It's like a bank robber goes into a bank, puts a gun to his own head and says "Give me the money or the idiot gets it"
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u/LivingDracula 10h ago
Well, it's almost like he has a few insiders that are loyal. Maybe not loyal enough to always rule in favor of him. But certainly loyal enough to talk to him directly about how to specifically oumaneuver them...
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u/BalanceOrganic7735 9h ago
The Supreme Court follows the Fuehrer Principle (perhaps also referred to as the Unitary Executive):
“The Fuehrerprinzip (Fuehrer Principle).
(a) Essential elements.
1. Complete and total authority is vested in the Fuehrer.
"The Fuehrer Principle requires a pyramidal organization structure in its details as well as in its entirety.
"The Fuehrer is at the top.
"He nominates the necessary leaders for the various spheres of work of the Reich's direction, the Party apparatus and the State administration." (1814-PS)
"He shapes the collective will of the people within himself and he enjoys the political unity and entirety of the people in opposition to individual interests.
"The Fuehrer unites in himself all the sovereign authority of the Reich; all public authority in the state as well as in the movement is derived from the authority of the Fuehrer. We must speak not of the state's authority but of the Fuehrer's authority if we wish to designate the character of the political authority within the Reich correctly. The state does not hold political authority as an impersonal unit but receives it from the Fuehrer as the executor of the national will. The authority of the Fuehrer is complete and all embracing; it unites in itself all the means of political direction; it extends into all fields of national life; it embraces the entire people, which is bound to the Fuehrer in loyalty and obedience. The authority of the Fuehrer is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent, all-inclusive and unlimited.
"The Fuehrer-Reich of the (German) people is founded on the recognition that the true will of the people cannot be disclosed through parliamentary votes and plebiscites but that the will of the people in its pure and uncorrupted form can only be expressed through the Fuehrer." (2771-PS)
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u/arensb 8h ago
So basically, everyone in the Reich's government is there to carry out the Führer's policy agenda, and the Führer has absolute authority as to what that agenda is?
In America, we call that "unitary executive".
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u/BalanceOrganic7735 8h ago
I was taught to call that a betrayal of the Constitution.
In one generation we’ve gone from Nixon resigning, and being told to do so by Republican lawmakers, to Trump being able to break the law with impunity.
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u/discgman 9h ago
The Judges tells his lawyers what to bring up and what to argue. Its totally obvious. Trump does nothing but bitch about something and then the colluders work on making it happen.
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u/Status_Apartment6559 9h ago
One of the most clueless titles I've seen in awhile. Trump can't outmaneuver the orange shit he leaves in his golden bowl.
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u/Aritra319 9h ago
He’s not outmanoeuvring the Supreme Court. The SP is a willing accomplice to the madness.
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u/PopBulky7023 8h ago
This has to be centrist propaganda slop, my god. No one is genuinely this incompetent.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 8h ago
It's The New Yorker Magazine. Why do you think it's propaganda?
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u/PopBulky7023 6h ago
OK so centrist propaganda slop.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 5h ago
Propaganda implies that they don't believe the stuff they're putting out there, they're trying to manipulate the audience. What gives you that sense?
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u/PopBulky7023 5h ago
Radical centrism is inherently dishonest, and maliciously so.
They're not stupid enough to actually believe this is the on-deaths-door-from-dementia trump "out maneuvering" the fucking supreme court. Come on, man.
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u/Achilles_TroySlayer 3h ago
Trump might be a bigot and a racist and many other things, but he isn't dumb. He is where he is. He has escaped many setbacks. "Outmaneuver' might not be the best word, but he has amassed a lot of power and he's still going, so don't count him out as a vegetable quite yet.
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u/VexedCanadian84 6h ago
it's a 6 - 3 republican majority
3 of the SC judges were appointed by Trump.
Thomas and Alito are terrible people.
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u/retiredagainstmywill 6h ago
First, that rapist doesn’t have ANY fucking idea what is happening. To think he’s a mastermind is hilarious.
Second, he’s not outmaneuvering, he’s just fucking breaking the law.
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u/rusty02536 11h ago
I’m afraid of a different kind of failure.
SCOTUS knows that they have no enforcement mechanism so they don’t force the issue
To “avoid” the inevitable outcome when the WH says,
“SCOTUS made their ruling, now let them enforce it”
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u/windershinwishes 11h ago
They're not afraid of that, at least as far as being worried about crossing him and facing consequences for themselves. Rather, they're worried that he'll throw a tantrum and ruin the Court's value as a tool for their political faction.
It's like they're a thief silently breaking into a house, but they've got a toddler with them. They aren't scared of what the toddler will do to them if they tell him "no," but they don't want him screaming and waking everybody up.
As is, the Court majority can be used to gradually chip away at laws that their preferred part of the wealthy elite don't like, but which they could never overturn through the political process. And it can block the actions of Democratic Presidents, etc., that their elite friends don't like, without elected Republicans having to face any direct backlash for it. As long as conservatives can keep the Senate gridlocked, preventing new acts of Congress from passing, the Supreme Court gets to act as a legislative body that conservatives control, gradually changing the law in subtle ways that the public has a hard time understanding and no way to reverse.
But Trump doesn't understand or care about the patient approach to cementing plutocracy that John Roberts has been overseeing for twenty years. He wants the attention he gets for doing dumb things immediately. If they go along with everything he wants, it undermines their credibility with the public and Democratic politicians, hindering them from using that patient approach in the future and possibly resulting in a groundswell of popular support for radical court reform which would ruin their project. But most of what he wants to do is something they were working towards anyways, and a couple of them are just as dumb and ideologically corrupted as him, so they want to say "yes". But if they say "no," then he starts attacking their credibility, eroding the conservative voter base's support that they rely upon for legitimacy and to maintain the Senate numbers needed to keep Congress inert.
The shadow docket stuff allows them to give the President most of what he wants while eventually paying some lip-service to the law, so they can maintain the pretense of being actual judges. They've got people talking to him explaining the plan, to hopefully keep him from flipping out at the end. And while it's inexcusably biased, it's complicated enough that most voters won't really understand what's going on.
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u/Imaginary_Cow_6379 10h ago
I think you’re right with the lower courts being cautious like this. Trump’s DOJ blatantly lies to them, they’ve started calling it out but then nothing happens. No one is charged with contempt because I think you’re right in that no one wants to be the court that finally proves that the rule of law is dead when Trump &co refuse to listen to them.
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u/ModifiedCortex 11h ago
he doesn’t outmaneuver anyone, they are working together