We'll see how quickly the courts catch on to the fact that his administration has zero intent on keeping their word even if they agreed to do something.
I think the courts assume that both parties do what they say they'll do / are honest participants in the process. But that does advantage those who are happy to use the process to just do what they want in the meantime.
Of course what consequences could there be? SCOTUS already decided that the POTUS is immune if it is an "official act". They did what they could to enable this kind of behavior. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, not sure how they forgot about that one.
> “The Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt,” Boasberg wrote in a 46-page ruling detailing his decision.
The title correctly states that Boasberg found cause to hold the government in criminal contempt. It correctly did not state that Boasberg did not hold the government in civil contempt, yet.
I don't think courts assume that. They assume that they can cause consequences to bad faith actors until they stop doing that. If they don't, they keep upping the consequences.
I fervently hope that the courts have thought through what levers they have available more thoroughly than the administration has.
A contempt order is a nothingburger if he's put no one in jail.
There are already court cases being discovered of Kilmar Garcia being issued domestic violence restraining order(s) at the behest of his wife who speaks the exact opposite about him. By the time the court gets around to actually holding anyone in contempt, the media and government will have already found a way to assassinate the character of any victims involved to the point all momentum will be lost.
An arrest warrant is a nothingburger if no one is arrested. Many people live forever on an open arrest warrant in another state, knowing if it is say a misdemeanor warrant there is 0% chance it will be enforced, it at most turns into a drinking joke.
I mean that it is a nothingburger. Maybe some day it will not be a nothingburger.
If I meant to say it will be a nothingburger for all infinity I would say 'ever.' My intent here is to portray it could indeed change to not being a nothingburger, which is why I used a past tense in my first quote.
I'll believe it when I see it. The administration has openly defied the supreme court by saying a 9-0 decision against them is actually the court affirming their choices and decision.
So far the courts have shown themselves to be toothless.
You’re free to that opinion. I’m just pointing out it’s wrong. (A flat Earther may similarly claim they’ll “believe it when they see it.”)
The administration hasn’t defied SCOTUS, because SCOTUS didn’t order anything. People lying about what a court says while following its orders to the letter is pretty common.
The fun will start when those found in contempt are then pardoned.
Contempt can be a civil charge which is not pardonable by the President. Civil contempt would be holding officials until XYZ is accomplished. Criminal contempt would be sentencing people for their actions.
I know it's a different case. They're following the same playbook. And the case is involving flights to El Salvador, which has a direct nexus. I am pointing out a pattern.
> "The next step would be for the Court, pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to request that the contempt be prosecuted by an attorney for the government," Boasberg wrote.
> If the Government "declines" or "the interest of justice requires," the Court will "appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt," he wrote.
He's already anticipating a corrupt DOJ trying to drop the case.
EDIT: Ignore me, as pointed out below I’m a hypocrite per my comment history where I have engaged in the past on political topics here against my better judgement. Sorry, I was having a bad day.
It’s a free country…post what you want and I’ll ignore what I want. :)
From the HN Guidelines...
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Can we please stop with all the political postings on here. It's really drowning out the interesting content. There are plenty of other avenues to discuss politics.
You believe random tech posts about programming languages, frameworks, and data stores are more interesting than a previously democratic superpower slipping into an authoritarian regime and how this impacts hundreds of millions people and the world order? I’m always curious about people who want to discuss and debate shiny things while the house is on fire.
Yes, I do. I can watch coverage of the administration on any of dozens of major news outlets. There are very few places to discuss programming languages, frameworks, and data stores.
Can you not click hide on posts you’re not interested in? This enables you to enjoy the content you’re after without diminishing those interested in these interesting, pressing topics (which we don’t have to argue specifically). It’s also faster and more efficient than writing a comment.
Hiding is fine, but flagging I argue is not, as you're controlling what others see vs just yourself (I only flag egregious or spam content, for example, and would vouch comments that violently disagree with me if I could). Certainly, focus on the content that interests you, that is why we are all here, but these are material political and human rights issues to many, and the posts are likely to continue until this administration changes over (or operates in a way that is perhaps not so newsworthy). I hope this subthread has been helpful, and if not, my apologies for the cycle consumption.
Perhaps a call for an LLM labeler to categorize posts to enable auto hiding by topic or interest with a browser extension or authenticated against your HN account. Shiny tech for some, human systems for others (with some overlap of course). I won't say we can all get along, but I will say I believe we can share the same firehose in a reasonable manner and self sort accordingly.
It is a violation of the rules so I flag these posts to assist the mods with policing the content of this site.
The amount of political content posted since Trump won the election has already greatly reduced my enjoyment of this site, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. As I said earlier, there are innumerable other places to discuss politics and such discussions really should be held somewhere else. The political discussions here aren't even high quality. They always devolve into a liberal circle-jerk as all arguments that run counter to that viewpoint are downvoted and flagged out of existence immediately. I greatly fear that this site will continue down the path of becoming yet another leftist politics echo chamber. I can't imagine anything more dull.
I wouldn't even mind if HN added some way to tag such posts and allow people like me to opt out of them.
It was on the front page when I posted this. Sorry, this is just a straw that broke the camel's back moment for me. I really do try not to complain about things like this. I just hate seeing another website I used to enjoy being ruined by constant off topic political postings. Reddit is already nearly ruined by it with the exception of a few niche subs. I hope HN can avoid a similar fate.
I think you're conflating two kinds of interest. Doing this leads to mistaken conclusions about HN.
Political interest and intellectual interest are not the same. There is overlap, of course [1], but there is also a huge amount of political and social material which is not primarily about intellectual curiosity. Most of that is off topic on HN (as the site guidelines say), even though much of it is far more important—as you say—than most anything on HN.
People who feel intensely always want us to change this, but if we changed it then HN would become a current affairs site [2] – and there are always people who feel intensely.
Valuable feedback, and I appreciate the time you took to provide it. I understand that asking "what does good look like in this regard?" is perhaps not helpful, as it seems mods are still attempting to ascertain that based on mod ops strategy and iterating on that strategy (shaping discourse through actions and weights against posts and comments) to achieve an idea of what is desired on HN wrt to intellectual curiosity. I'll look through the past comments you shared to better understand the conclusion I should be arriving at. Thanks again.
Should be interesting to see the DOJ's response. Considering the wagons have been circled since day one, we may see an independent prosecutor execute this referral. If so, discovery might have some fun details about the early days of the deportation campaign.
The administration has been flaunting the fact that judges can't easily police their bad faith actions ("oops, too late", "ms13 is an invading military"). Here Boasberg has found a low threshold for holding the administration accountable.
45 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadI think the courts assume that both parties do what they say they'll do / are honest participants in the process. But that does advantage those who are happy to use the process to just do what they want in the meantime.
Of course what consequences could there be? SCOTUS already decided that the POTUS is immune if it is an "official act". They did what they could to enable this kind of behavior. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, not sure how they forgot about that one.
(Also, title was editorialised. Nobody has been held in contempt.)
The title correctly states that Boasberg found cause to hold the government in criminal contempt. It correctly did not state that Boasberg did not hold the government in civil contempt, yet.
It originally said it found contempt. The court is threatening contempt. Important difference.
I fervently hope that the courts have thought through what levers they have available more thoroughly than the administration has.
There are already court cases being discovered of Kilmar Garcia being issued domestic violence restraining order(s) at the behest of his wife who speaks the exact opposite about him. By the time the court gets around to actually holding anyone in contempt, the media and government will have already found a way to assassinate the character of any victims involved to the point all momentum will be lost.
This is like saying an arrest warrant is a nothingburger because nobody has been arrested yet.
You changed “has been” to “is,” with the implication of ever.
If I meant to say it will be a nothingburger for all infinity I would say 'ever.' My intent here is to portray it could indeed change to not being a nothingburger, which is why I used a past tense in my first quote.
So far the courts have shown themselves to be toothless.
The administration hasn’t defied SCOTUS, because SCOTUS didn’t order anything. People lying about what a court says while following its orders to the letter is pretty common.
The fun will start when those found in contempt are then pardoned.
It seems if these things are ever punished it is after years and totally out of the media lime light.
Hopefully you will hunt down my account and remind me because I will have doubtlessly forgotten by then, and be entertained.
> "The next step would be for the Court, pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to request that the contempt be prosecuted by an attorney for the government," Boasberg wrote.
> If the Government "declines" or "the interest of justice requires," the Court will "appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt," he wrote.
He's already anticipating a corrupt DOJ trying to drop the case.
It’s a free country…post what you want and I’ll ignore what I want. :)
From the HN Guidelines...
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Can we please stop with all the political postings on here. It's really drowning out the interesting content. There are plenty of other avenues to discuss politics.
(no snark! genuinely intrigued!)
Perhaps a call for an LLM labeler to categorize posts to enable auto hiding by topic or interest with a browser extension or authenticated against your HN account. Shiny tech for some, human systems for others (with some overlap of course). I won't say we can all get along, but I will say I believe we can share the same firehose in a reasonable manner and self sort accordingly.
The amount of political content posted since Trump won the election has already greatly reduced my enjoyment of this site, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. As I said earlier, there are innumerable other places to discuss politics and such discussions really should be held somewhere else. The political discussions here aren't even high quality. They always devolve into a liberal circle-jerk as all arguments that run counter to that viewpoint are downvoted and flagged out of existence immediately. I greatly fear that this site will continue down the path of becoming yet another leftist politics echo chamber. I can't imagine anything more dull.
I wouldn't even mind if HN added some way to tag such posts and allow people like me to opt out of them.
Political interest and intellectual interest are not the same. There is overlap, of course [1], but there is also a huge amount of political and social material which is not primarily about intellectual curiosity. Most of that is off topic on HN (as the site guidelines say), even though much of it is far more important—as you say—than most anything on HN.
People who feel intensely always want us to change this, but if we changed it then HN would become a current affairs site [2] – and there are always people who feel intensely.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The administration has been flaunting the fact that judges can't easily police their bad faith actions ("oops, too late", "ms13 is an invading military"). Here Boasberg has found a low threshold for holding the administration accountable.
Discovery may find a lot of criminal records retention violations. Those will need to be prosecuted quickly after 2028.
I would be interested in hearing readers' opinions...