The judicial branch doesn’t enforce laws, it interprets them.
And that’s another potential problem. Even if judges rule that the Trump-GOP is breaking laws, who’s to then enforce the law? Trump’s DoJ? Jared Kushner, Czar of Everything? A redneck Governor or Sheriff? Even if “law enforcement” just stalls for a day or two instead of flagrantly disobeying, that might damage balloting enough to swing the election.
Eggs-ZACK-ly! We’re headed there, if not already there.
I didn’t say they will openly agree with Trump and I doubt they would. I said they might choose to look the other way.
They can decline to hear the case. They can remand it back to a lower court for a rehearing. They can declare it’s a political issue they don’t want to rule on. They can say the plaintiffs didn’t have proper standing. They can say lower courts didn’t have proper jurisdiction. They can say they need to gather facts. They can say they don’t want to issue a major decision like this in the final year of a president’s term of office. They can issue a decision on November 4 saying that Trump is wrong, that mail-in ballots are legal, and issue an injunction against interfering with them.
You’re focusing too much on the question of whether it would be legal. You should instead be asking the question of whether he can get away with it.
I’m pretty sure he could not possibly care less who becomes president if it is not him. There are two kinds of people in his mind: himself and people who don’t count for shit.
Sure, there are legal loopholes galore for him to try to evade the election results. I’m not so sure others would cooperate in such schemes.
As an appeals court, they don’t gather facts.
There’s a lot that’s incorrect/misinformed above, and I’m not going to deal with all of it, but several of them involve the Supreme Court refusing the case, in which the lower court decision would stand. The most likely cases to be brought would be states and individuals saying “Trump can’t do this”.
I’ve written several treatments of how he might try to end-run around what’s legal and how constitutional law comes into it. It seems like you’ve elected not to read them, so I can’t help you there.
They ARE in specially-marked envelopes. Also specially-sized, for the most part.
And yeah, you could put yours in an extra large envelope (and pay the postage yourself), but the address would still be a giveaway.
Yes, you addressed it. But your addressing neglects to take into account the fact that executive orders only direct the actions of executive branch departments. Of which the USPS is not one.
You may recall that he already ordered Megan Brennan to double parcel post rates for Amazon. In May 2018, the Washington Post reported that President Trump personally pushed her to double the rates on Amazon and other firms.* She ignored him.
*So I overstated. Sue me.
My question about your question is, is the question worth asking and discussing? Not talking about you specifically here, but I find that a lot of people who ask this question have the answer “literally anything and everything,” and don’t want discussion about it. Any point opposed is immediately sneered at and shut down as naive. I don’t know why they do it; I guess they either want to leave armed revolution as the only option or want everyone to cower in fear and nihilism the way they are.
So (again, generally, not specifically for this post at this time), is there a point to the question, or is it just an excuse to lament?
Thank God we have Megan Brennan there as Postmaster General to uphold the law and tell the President no.
Oh, wait, Megan Brennan has retired. Trump has appointed Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. He’ll be starting Monday.
The Washington Post has mentioned him as well. In an article with the headline “Top Republican fundraiser and Trump ally named postmaster general, giving president new influence over Postal Service”
But I’m sure Mr DeJoy will put aside any partisan loyalties and be just as willing to stand up to Donald Trump as Ms Brennan was.
This. Is. Just. Fucking. Great. We can be assured that their will be shenanigans.
If DeJoy can’t pull it off, or the people he directs refuse to break the law, Trump will claim a fraudulent vote because of mail in ballots. No way he will step down gracefully - umm… stating the obvious.
Please state the mechanism by which you think the Postmaster General could seize mailed-in ballots. Tell us exactly how you think he might do this.
Tampering with a ballot carries a 5 year prison penalty. On the other hand there’s no law that allows them to open up mail containing absentee ballots. Trump would potentially be asking thousands of postal workers to risk actual jail time, with no guarantee that Trump could win the election and pardon all of them. That scenario is a paranoid fever-dream.
How exactly do you see this going down? What is the mechanism, what is the chain of events?
I think for a lot of people, the imagined chain of events is exactly the same no matter what you ask about:
- Trump does whatever he wants.
- Hue and cry is raised.
- His loyalists in Congress, the courts, and Fox News defend and protect him.
- Nothing happens.
- The end.
I have my own opinions about this, but that’s a little out of range for this thread, and I’ve said it before.
How many times do you want to hear this?
Trump issues an executive order saying that mail-in ballots cause voter fraud and he is therefore prohibiting them.
The Republican majority in the Senate and the Supreme Court decline to take any actions.
Trump tells the Postmaster General, the Assistant Postmaster General, and the other members of the Board of Governors - all of whom he has appointed - that he wants them to carry out his executive order.
The Postmaster General, the Assistant Postmaster General, and the other members of the Board of Governors decide to carry out his executive order.
They issue the appropriate directives to post office employees. Post office employees now have to decide if they will follow the directives that were issued by their legally appointed supervisors or refuse to obey those directives.
Mail-in ballots, which are easily distinguishable from other mail, are all processed by post office employees. In compliance with the orders they were given by their bosses, post office employees separate out the mail-in ballots from other mail and do not deliver them to their destinations.
I’ll admit I don’t have any specific idea where they’ll end up. Being held in some kind of storage while a decision is made about their status? Being returned to their senders? Being destroyed? Disappearing? I don’t really see this as a major issue once we’ve passed the step where they don’t get delivered to be counted.
I understand that you don’t see this chain of events as possible. But I do. I’m not saying it’s based on the law. But I don’t feel it needs to be. All it takes is for one person to issue an order of dubious legality. And for other people to be willing to put aside any concerns about the dubiousness of the legality and pretend that the order is legally valid.
And for people at the bottom of the chain to accept the argument “Listen, just do your job. Your boss gave you an order, you follow it. You don’t worry about why your boss gave the order. That’s his responsibility, not yours. Like I said, just do your job.”
If DeJoy and the other directors of the post office decide to accept Trump’s authority even though they are not legally required to and issue the orders, then any postal employees who refuse to follow those orders will be committing insubordination and can lose their jobs. Do you really think they’re going to do that because some anonymous guy on the internet is telling them that it’s an unlawful order?
Aren’t there state laws against the actions you are describing? Wouldn’t the postal employees risk going to jail for following those directives?
Yes, a federal crime, a phrase that normally strikes fear into wrongdoers’ hearts or at least causes them a moment’s pause. Except when they remember that the federal “Justice” Department, headed by Trump loyalist Bill “Jeff Sessions wasn’t compliant enough” Barr decides if and when to prosecute for federal crimes. :smack:
He wouldn’t be asking them to risk much if anything if [del]his puppet-covered right hand[/del] Barr signaled an unwillingness to prosecute.
Maybe to wherever the Santa Claus letters go? It doesn’t matter as long as the election happens and they’re not counted.
Who is going to arrest them?
Uh, local and state police? Who arrests people now for breaking state laws?
I don’t know how many times you need to hear how the government works. But here we go.
He can do that. I’ve never pretended otherwise.
And they should not. Congress has no legislative responsibility here. The Supreme Court cannot act until an appeal has been brought to it.
What would probably happen here is that suit would be brought in federal court, and because the order is plainly illegal, an injunction would be issued. If you remember how the Muslim travel ban went down, the injunction was issued within 48 hours, and it took 18 months to get all the way to the Supreme Court.
They do not do this because the injunction prevents them from doing so. But moreover because Trump does not have direct executive authority over the post office. It is an independent agency. For a comparable situation, see the Federal Reserve. Trump appointed Jerome Powell, but he does not control Jerome Powell (and he has very publicly tried to get Powell to manipulate interest rates). The Post Office is independent like that.
They will not do this, because the injunction prevents them from doing so.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. I am saying the possibility extremely remote because of the number of people who would have to put themselves at hazard of 5 years imprisonment for tampering with ballots.
No, I think they’ll do that because they all received training in the law as part of their jobs, and they understand that they are governed by federal court injunctions.
After going to all this effort to address these individual points, I can’t tell you how rude I find it for you to wave it off as “some anonymous guy on the internet”, and this is the last time I’m taking that bait. Let’s look this thread up next November to see if Trump won the election because he stole all the mail.