Ok, so how would those checks and balances work if the president refuses to obey the courts? Who's going to enforce those court orders? I suppose you could say that the congress could impeach - but what if the majority of the House sides with the president? And if the House does manage to pass impeachment, it still takes 2/3 of Senators to convict - as we've seen that's a very high bar and very unlikely to happen. But let's continue the thought experiment and say that the Senate votes to convict - who's going to enforce the conviction and kick the President out of office?
Yes, if it keeps escalating. We're going to make bloody monday look like a kid scraped his knee. Depending on the escalation, we may even make the first Civil War look tame in comparison.
That's pretty much the fate of all dictators: a coup.
The president can take over command of state national guards from governors, however they are bound to defend the constitution just like the others and ought to obey unconstitutional attempts to give them orders.
I never said the checks and balances are working well... but the constitutional checks and balances not working well is a lesser problem than the executive branch just deciding that the president is also able to do the judiciary's job
It should be the trigger for country wide protests until the president is overthrown. It won't be of course. But it should.
Lots of things should have happened long before we got to this point. After Jan 6th he should never have been a contender for the nomination, but then he was and won it. And then the electorate at large should have chosen his opponent, but they didn't. And here we are. I'm not sure what would trigger nation wide protests that are large enough to have an effect - I suspect that in our spread-out country you'd need something like at least 20% of the population which would be about 65 million people. Most people are too apathetic to be bothered and by the time some final straw makes them care it'll likely be too late.
I didn't read too much into it, but apparently 11m people is the critical mass needed for a national protest that can't be ignored. So, it's more around 2-3%. Maybe more is needed, but at that point you will get a network effect of others joining in for the sake of joining in.
We're spread, but IIRC the 10 most populous metro contains half the population. It'd more be a matter in making sure each major hub has around 500k-1m people gathered. As a matter of scale, the Montgomery march was 256k.
>Most people are too apathetic to be bothered and by the time some final straw makes them care it'll likely be too late.
I suppose we'll see soon enough at this current rate.
Remember, Trump wants protests. He knows that even in a peaceful protest some fraction of "fuck-shit-up-contingent" will go around attacking people, destroying property, etc. And that gives him a justification to invoke advanced measures (Kelly, his DHS leader, specifically said that Trump had to be told multiple times he couldn't use the military on US citizens while Trump insisted that he did).
I think it's an open question at this point whether the military leadership would deny Trump's request.
Well, this EO just cleared up the confusion. The military will have to obey Trump (because his interpretation of the laws is the only interpretation that matters) and then the military will have to take on US citizens.
I saw somewhere that it often takes "just" 3.5% people taking to the streets to protest to overthrow a government, because for that to happen a much larger number needs to be supportive of the protests.
Even in the worst police state, the dictators power ultimately depends on enough of the people going along with it.
Americans could change this, if enough people cared beyond pressing like on facebook
