OMB freezes all DOMESTIC and foreign disbursements | OMB order rescinded (but maybe not?) - BUT - EO still stands (trying to get around stay?)
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superrific
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I have my doubts that even Trump wants to die on this hill. Yes, he will refuse to follow a court order he doesn't like at some point, but it works better when the position is popular. Telling the courts to fuck off when you are doing the least popular thing imaginable is dumb.
superrific
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If you listen carefully, she didn't say that Vought would be taking calls from organizations. Rather, he would be taking calls from other federal agencies. The actual beneficiaries have no input.
Trump will tell the courts to fuck off on this one. He wants complete control of the purse.
It is just a temporary pause anyway. So he will start the funding whenever he feels like it and after he can say it accomplished something - just like with Colombia.
If he acts sooner, it will be because of public pressure. It will have zero to do with anything a court says.
There is absolutely no remedy the court would have to enforce its order. If it holds the federal government in contempt, Trump will just laugh. If they try to imprison government officials, Trump won’t let them (and would pardon in any event). There is no way a court has the power to compel any spending by Trump.
ChileG
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You dumb libtards with your TDS don’t understand the great and powerful Trump. This is just how he negotiates.
What is he negotiating, with whom he is negotiating, and to what end he is negotiating isn’t clear, but don’t question him! Idiots!
ChapelHillSooner
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In Oklahoma when my parents were in school they would go on a break when the cotton was ready for picking. Both grew up on farms and were working in the fields at 6-7.
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Flashback:
The Bureaucrat Who Could Make Trump’s Authoritarian Dreams Real
Russ Vought has a plan to take presidential power to new heights.
The bureaucrat who could make Trump's authoritarian dreams real
Russ Vought has a plan to take presidential power to new heights.
www.motherjones.com
“… “What makes Vought especially dangerous is he combines ideological extremism with a familiarity and comfort with Washington’s political processes,” says Katherine Stewart, author of the forthcoming book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. “He knows how to undermine agencies, how to create new bureaucratic forces, how to block funding, and how to engage with other practical features of our political system.”
For the 920-page Mandate for Leadership policy playbook from Project 2025, Vought wrote a chapter that exults in the “enormous power” of the president and previews how a conservative administration would radically subjugate the federal government. He has also crafted a 180-day battle plan to arm an incoming president with hundreds of ready-to-go executive orders, regulations, and secretarial memos.
… Every president makes a mark on the civil service with the political appointees they select to lead government agencies. But Vought nurtures a far more expansive—and alarming—ambition: to institute a new governing paradigm predicated on unrestrained presidential authority. With Vought as the architect, Trump could take his “dictator” on “day one” aspirations beyond words, prosecuting political opponents while avoiding accountability for his own crimes.
… Vought and the rest of the Project 2025 administration-in-waiting plan to revive Schedule F—and take it beyond the budget office. Potentially, 50,000 federal workers could be affected, their expert roles open to partisan MAGA loyalists ideologically vetted to ensure little resistance to Trump’s project for an imperial presidency. “It’s going to be groundbreaking,” Vought told Heritage President Kevin Roberts on a podcast last year.
For Vought, politics is downstream from religion. He sees a strong presidency as a way to bring forth a Christian nation. Vought opposes abortion and has referred to transgender identity as a “contagion.” He has suggested migration policy should be rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, with immigrants tested on their readiness to “assimilate.” If Trump wins, Vought wants to infuse the next conservative administration with the values of Christian nationalism—the conviction that the United States is bound to the teachings of Christ, from which all else follows.
… As much as Trump has tried to distance himself from the initiative in recent months, Vought’s prominent role in it—and his clear ties to the campaign—tell a different story. In May, the Republican National Committee picked Vought to be the policy director of their official 2024 platform. In a secretly recorded interview, Vought—thinking he was talking to prospective donors—told the British nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting that Trump’s public disapproval of Project 2025 amounted to “graduate-level politics.”
He also left no room for doubt as to his motivation for helping Trump get back to the White House: “I want to be the person that crushes the deep state.”
… For some, his unflinching religious zeal might have proved disqualifying. But it was an asset to his former boss, Pence, an evangelical Christian who was now headed to the White House as Trump’s vice president. In the spring of 2017, with Pence’s endorsement, Trump tapped Vought to be deputy director of OMB, the epicenter of policy influence in the executive branch.
…
“A lot of what [Trump] wanted to do and how…was contrary to all the traditions, past practices, and sometimes the law,” Sally Katzen, who served at OMB during the Clinton administration, says. “Trump’s political appointees didn’t want to hear [that] from [civil servants]. It’s like in so many different agencies when Trump was president: The people who knew anything were shut out of the process.” Katzen says Trump’s people “didn’t like hearing ‘no, you can’t; no, you shouldn’t.’”
Vought has made this frustration public. He criticized recalcitrant political appointees as “unwilling to think creatively” and harbored special contempt for career civil servants who worried about violating the law. “The nature of the bureaucracy is that if it isn’t status quo, it must be impossible,” Vought said in 2019. “However, most of the time, when we actually dig into the ways to do what the president wants, we find a way to accomplish it.” He views his legacy at OMB as reining in the broken bureaucracy and “pioneering the type of government that is necessary for an America-first, populist administration.”
… These edge-of-the-envelope workarounds (or, as Vought put it, “innovative ways”) put OMB at the center of Trump’s first impeachment over the freezing of congressionally appropriated security assistance to Ukraine as part of a reelection bid to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating the Biden family. Vought helped provide a legal rationale for the hold, ignoring concerns from national security and Department of Defense officials and, ultimately, in violation of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (ICA) limiting the president’s authority to withhold funds appropriated by Congress.
When subpoenaed to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, Vought declined and called it a “sham process.” …”
superrific
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100% guarantee that the minute Trump tries to defy the Supreme Court, the Court will decide that presidential immunity doesn't apply -- and would probably put a limit on the pardon power too.
Above all, this Supreme Court cares about its power. Just like Trump. I don't think they are going to roll over so easily.
If you think he might yield to public pressure, wouldn't that apply to following the court order as well? I could see him refusing to accept a ruling that, for instance, states that not respecting a person's gender violates the 8th. But if the pressure could be enough to change his mind now, the court order will only add more pressure.
ChapelHillSooner
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If you are not careful, temporary pauses at this scale could cause permanent economic damage.
Or at least I am guessing that to be the case.
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Continued
“… Now, Vought and his colleagues at CRA have been making a case for a future Trump administration to exert even more control over the federal budget.
They claim the ICA, which Vought has characterized as “an albatross around a president’s neck,” is unconstitutional and should be overturned. In a second term, Trump has vowed to challenge the 50-year-old law and “squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy.”
By overriding spending decisions enacted by Congress, Trump would be more empowered to terminate agency programs he disagrees with.
… Vought sees himself and CRA as the tip of the spear in a counterrevolution against the left. Everything from the FBI to the Department of Education has been gripped by a “post-constitutional order” imposed by “a corrupt Marxist vanguard.” In this view, wokeism has ruined America, and it’s incumbent on them to correct course. That means going even more on the offensive on cultural battles—pushing anti-CRT model legislation for school districts in several states and urging Republican governors to circumvent federal immigration law by declaring an “invasion” at the southern border.
It also requires wielding budgetary austerity to defund and bring to heel agencies conservatives believe have gone rogue. “I love to cut spending wherever it is,” Vought told the New Yorker, “and I like to cut spending the most in the bureaucracy.” What excited him most, he said, was “cutting the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education.”
…
The document also offers a look into how Vought and his allies hope to manipulate federal agencies. When it comes to the FBI, the group would take away resources from counterintelligence and other areas “not salvageable due to a willful and repeated pattern of partisan lawfare waged against Americans.” At the same time, the budget proposed channeling more funding to the criminal investigative division to “thwart the increasing societal destruction caused by progressive policies at the state and local levels.”
In papers and legal memos, Vought and his associates have articulated a vast array of dubious maneuvers to remake American democracy, from ending the Department of Justice’s independence from the president to allowing federal troops to act as domestic law enforcement. Their plans to remove checks and balances and challenge long-established constraints on executive overreach, if realized, would unleash a Trump presidency battle-tested to turn gripe into policy. …”
“… Now, Vought and his colleagues at CRA have been making a case for a future Trump administration to exert even more control over the federal budget.
They claim the ICA, which Vought has characterized as “an albatross around a president’s neck,” is unconstitutional and should be overturned. In a second term, Trump has vowed to challenge the 50-year-old law and “squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy.”
By overriding spending decisions enacted by Congress, Trump would be more empowered to terminate agency programs he disagrees with.
… Vought sees himself and CRA as the tip of the spear in a counterrevolution against the left. Everything from the FBI to the Department of Education has been gripped by a “post-constitutional order” imposed by “a corrupt Marxist vanguard.” In this view, wokeism has ruined America, and it’s incumbent on them to correct course. That means going even more on the offensive on cultural battles—pushing anti-CRT model legislation for school districts in several states and urging Republican governors to circumvent federal immigration law by declaring an “invasion” at the southern border.
It also requires wielding budgetary austerity to defund and bring to heel agencies conservatives believe have gone rogue. “I love to cut spending wherever it is,” Vought told the New Yorker, “and I like to cut spending the most in the bureaucracy.” What excited him most, he said, was “cutting the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education.”
…
The document also offers a look into how Vought and his allies hope to manipulate federal agencies. When it comes to the FBI, the group would take away resources from counterintelligence and other areas “not salvageable due to a willful and repeated pattern of partisan lawfare waged against Americans.” At the same time, the budget proposed channeling more funding to the criminal investigative division to “thwart the increasing societal destruction caused by progressive policies at the state and local levels.”
In papers and legal memos, Vought and his associates have articulated a vast array of dubious maneuvers to remake American democracy, from ending the Department of Justice’s independence from the president to allowing federal troops to act as domestic law enforcement. Their plans to remove checks and balances and challenge long-established constraints on executive overreach, if realized, would unleash a Trump presidency battle-tested to turn gripe into policy. …”
CFordUNC
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I'm not sure how else to say this, because my general philosophy is to assume that all human beings have intrinsic worth in some form or fashion, but perhaps the country and world would be a better place if Russ Voight and Stephen Miller were to suddenly quit consuming diatomic oxygen molecules post haste?
I think there is a significant percentage of the MAGA base (and ultimately, pleasing them is what motivates him most of all) that is itching for a constitutional fight. I think Trump would think that a constitutional fight would improve his standing with the base -- that he would look like a "fighter" standing up to the deep state.
Far from creating pressure on Trump, I think a court order he could defy would give him PR he wants.
superrific
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Guess we will find out. It just seems to me that their style is to defy court orders on populist positions. Maybe he will refuse to renew ABC affiliates their licenses and defy a court order requiring him to do so. That could play well with the base. They are less likely to cheer him if he's fucking them over when defying the court.
But a license renewal doesn't need to be enforced. The court can just deem it renewed and refuse to enforce any penalties imposed by the executive.
Spending money needs to be enforced. So it is the ideal type of court order to flout.
CarolinaFever
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I guess we'll just get rid of the other branches of government and have a oligarchy now. Or maybe just have a civil war.
Now, let's see if that administrative stay is actually implemented. I remain dubious.
lawtig02
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Doesn't matter much for the people who need help today. Relief funding for WNC is on hold right now. Really sorry for my WNC neighbors who need help. Hope you can remember who did this.
superrific
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There are other types of orders that also need to be enforced. Treatment of prisoners or detainees, for instance. I don't think we disagree in principle here, just on whether this will be the test case. You might be right.