The good:
... District court judges have overturned or blocked
executive orders ending birthright citizenship, punishing law firms and
universities, eviscerating election laws, slashing the federal workforce
and freezing funds. Upwards of 650 lawsuits challenging executive
orders have been brought – 10 times more than in the first year of the
Biden presidency – and plaintiffs have won more than twice as often as
the administration.
The jurists are losing
their patience with the Trump administration, which many have criticized
for noncompliance. They have rebuked the government in
uncharacteristically sharp language – “deliberately ignorant”, “chilling
harm of blizzard proportion”, “an assault on constitutional rights”. In
at least 95 cases since August, the New York Times reports, judges have
demanded that officials explain why they should not be held in civil
contempt, a rarely-invoked penalty designed to force aimed at forcing
compliance with the law.
Immigration has been at the center of this battle between law and disorder.
“The
court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United
States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt – again and
again and again – to force the United States government to comply with
court orders,” Patrick Schiltz, a federal district court judge in
Minneapolis, declared.
Schiltz
threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt – that
means jail time. He is hardly a firebrand – with a reputation as a
conservative, he was appointed to the bench by George W Bush. Overall,
political affiliation has played no part in these cases. Judges
appointed by other Republican presidents, from Reagan to Trump, have
been similarly scathing in their opinions overturning Trump’s executive
orders. [snip]
These district court decisions are not, of
course, the final word. The administration can appeal to the court of
appeals, where it has been more likely to prevail, and ultimately to the
supreme court, whose Republican appointees have voted, often as a bloc,
to uphold Trump’s actions.
Nonetheless, at a
moment when the guardrails of democracy have proven to be made of papier
mache – when, day after day, the president displays his contempt for
democracy and Congress takes a 14-month siesta – these judges are the
rare exception. They are doing the work that the constitution demands,
and like their counterparts in the Brown v Board of Education era, they
are preserving the rule of law, often at risk to themselves and their
families. In these dark days, that’s cause for celebration. (our emphasis)
They're one of the last remaining speed bumps slowing the Malignant Fascist's rush to undo 250 years of American democracy (such as it was). We need the ultimate speed bump -- elections -- to really stop the rush.
The bad:
A California sheriff running for governor
has seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special
election from county election officials, saying he’s investigating a
ballot count discrepancy.
County elections officials have
disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a
Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called
Bianco’s move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in
elections.
Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office
had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local
citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special
election on redistricting.
In
the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional
district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The
measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes.
Bianco seized ballots in Riverside County, the inland California
county of 2.5 million people where he has twice been elected sheriff. He
called the effort “a fact-finding mission.”
“This investigation
is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the
total votes reported,” he said Friday. Bianco is one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a
crowded June primary that includes more than half a dozen Democrats.
California runs a top-two primary system that puts all candidates on the
same ballot, regardless of party, and sends the two candidates who get
the most voters onto the November general election. [snip]
“I have a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County,” he said.
The
effort came as President Donald Trump has repeatedly disputed the
results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud.
His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump’s rhetoric on voting in their states.
Bonta
has repeatedly sent letters to Bianco’s office over the last two months
saying his staff is not qualified to conduct a recount. In one of the
letters, Bonta wrote that the ballot seizure was “unacceptable” and
“sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our
elections.”
The letters said Bianco seized nearly 1,000 boxes of
ballots and elections materials from the county’s elections office with a
warrant in February. At issue, Bianco said, is a discrepancy a citizen
group reported between the handwritten ballot intake logs and the number
of votes reported to the state.
Bianco
said the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes — a
difference elections officials have refuted at county meetings, saying
the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by
about 100 votes. They argue the handwritten rolls, which were not
relied on to check the count, were being kept by temporary elections
workers who had worked long days and may have made mistakes.
Bianco
said Friday that the count had started and stopped, but would now
resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by a judge.
Another voter fraud conspiracy crackpot who's trying to screw up the results of the special election that authorized redistricting to counter the Malignant Fascist's redistricting ploys in red states. Guess he didn't want to wait for Kash "No Credit" Patel's FBI to carry out a raid a la Fulton County, GA. But we question who the Democratic Attorney General is reduced to sending letters (!) to this crank because we were under the impression the AG is the top law enforcement officer in the state, not some crazy cowf*ckeer with a badge. Is it possible for you to grow some balls, sir?
The ugly:
House
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said President Donald Trump could get
“somebody killed” after the president accused Democrats of being the
country’s “greatest enemy” after Iran.
On Sunday, the president posted, “Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!” Trump also said Saturday
that “Radical Left Democrats have hurt so many people with their
vicious and uncaring ways” and that “Fascist Democrats will never
protect America.”
In
an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Jeffries replied, “Donald
Trump should keep his reckless mouth shut before he gets somebody
killed.”
In
recent years, targeted political violence has escalated, and political
leaders in both parties have tried to tackle the growing crisis.
A January report from the U.S. Capitol Police
found that threats toward members of Congress, their families, staff
and the Capitol complex surged in 2025, with over 5,000 more incidents
reported than the previous year.
The
report came after multiple political figures were killed or targeted
last year. In September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed
while speaking on a college campus. Just weeks before, former Minnesota
State Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband were assassinated in
their home. And in April last year, a man threw multiple incendiary
devices into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion as Gov. Josh Shapiro
and his family were asleep inside... (our emphasis)
Every accusation is a confession, as they say, and as for who's the enemy of America, look at who's destroying democracy, maneuvering to be a dictator, cozying up to America's long-time adversary Russia, weakening our economy, undercutting our national security, and who's setting Americans up against each other, etc., etc.
