Norms like obeying the law and not ignoring court orders.
Congress Turns To Stopgap As GOP Tries To Spin Dems’ Separation Of Powers Request As ‘Unreasonable’
In order to avoid a shutdown, Congress would have to pass legislation — either a bipartisan spending bill (though the likelihood of that happening and happening in time to avert a shutdown is slim to none) or a continuing resolution, a stopgap bill to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year — soon.
In recent days, Democrats in Congress began laying down their red line: in order to get their support on either plan, they’d need some sort of guarantee that Trump and Musk will stop withholding congressionally approved funding and spend federal funds the way they were appropriated.
“Let’s be clear, the Democrat demand is really simple,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told TPM, with a mocking emphasis on the word “demand” on Thursday. “It’s that the President commits to following the law. That’s it. It’s not a big deal.”
“The guardrails that we are asking for are really minimal. It’s just: spend the money as we all appropriated,” Coons, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, added during an elevator ride up to the Senate floor.
With the March 14 deadline to fund the government looming, Republican leadership...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Democratic senators press Trump nominees on whether officials can ever ignore judges' orders
Several of President Donald Trump’s nominees for senior Justice Department positions faced questions from Senate Democrats on Wednesday about whether it would ever be lawful for a president to defy a court order, with the nominees largely suggesting they couldn't fully answer without more specifics.
Later in the hearing, the Senate Democrats got a measure of support from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who issued a warning to the nominees against subverting the decisions of federal courts.
“Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court. Ever. Now, you can disagree with it. Within the bounds of legal ethics you can criticize it. You can appeal it, or you can resign,” Kennedy said, before implicitly criticizing the Biden administration. “For four years, I have watched people in this town — not all, not, not everybody — but many try to undermine the legitimacy of the federal judiciary and it triggered each and every time my gag reflex."
“Now all our judiciary has … is its legitimacy. It doesn’t have an army,” Kennedy added.
The issue has come to the fore early in the Trump administration amid Republican criticism of the number and breadth of judicial orders pausing Trump policies.
www.nbcnews.com
The obvious answer is trump has already broken the law and disregarded a court order. The kinds of things that are antecedents to a breakdown of democratic norms and therefore democracy itself.
Making a commitment to the constitutional order doesn't seem like a big ask. It seems like a no-brainer. But these days Repubs want to leave some wiggle room. You know, cuz there are laws the trump admin doesn't want to abide by, and hasn't. And if you are going to be trump's Solicitor General, like John Sauer, you need to be okay with that.
