The Attorney General went out of her way to assure Cabinet members that the US Marshals would not be arresting them. So, well, that's great.

Congress needs to transition the US Marshals to the judiciary or expressly codify that the AG has no authority to direct their actions. Won't happen, but it's what Congress needs to do.

The people in executive pushing unitary executive power theory. And there is a chance Supreme Court will support them at that. With such theory your AG proposal not having authority doesn’t stand (in worst case it would be presidents authority).

> If we have a unitary executive, then the president is over the Supreme Court.

No, the Supreme Court is not part of the executive even under unitary executive theory.

OTOH, the US Marshals Service is part of the executive, and, under unitary executive theory, Congress attempting to dictate who within the executive branch can direct them must fail, as the President has absolute and unconditionally delegable authority within the executive.

Which is why fully moving the Marshals to a department within the judiciary would be desirable, though I think there's a significant ethical issue for the judiciary to contend with re: having to actually enforce its orders. At a sort of silly level, there's probably concern that "justice is blind" cannot mix with "justice needs to see where it's aiming if it's going to enforce anything." Judge Dredd and whatnot.

But, man, if the executive is fully on board with ignoring law, what is even the point of trying?

If we have that kind of unitary executive, that executive isn't going to care what 7 justices say. And then it's a whole new ballgame.

They always can say that the correct constitutional approach to those cases is to impeach Trump. And I'm not even sure it's exaggeration.

SCOTUS (and other courts) can deputize whoever they want pretty much. And this is what the states' National Guards are for (very scary thought)

The "states" national guard can be federalized at a moment's notice. The president need only give the order and put his signature on it. At that point, they report to the President and no one else.

This isn't theory, Alabama's was federalized some time when my dad was a kid. The president never rescinded the order.

> This isn't theory, Alabama's was federalized some time when my dad was a kid.

It was federalized and ordered to stand down after the governor had deployed it to prevent integration of a school under a federal court order. But Eisenhower didn't rely on that order alone, he also deployed the 101st Airborne to enforce the order (both the federalization of the guard and the deployment of the 101st Airborne were based on an invocation of the Insurrection Act.)

While there is a layer of legal theory around it, when it becomes an issue, it is really a question of whether the State -- both its government and the individual members of the guard -- are willing to engage in armed conflict with the federal government for whatever the dispute is at hand, more than any other consideration.

In addition to the National Guard, there's also the State Guard (or State Defense Force in some states), which cannot be federalized.

It isn't necessary in most cases. The male members of the state's forces can be conscripted at a moment's notice into the armed forces of the USA.

De jure doesn't matter when the law has been tossed aside.

The loyalties of the individuals, units, officers will choose sides on their own. I'm not holding my breath on the military being willing to enmass defect against an authoritarian though.

National Guard is by definition locally- (read state-) based.

Historically, that's an important consideration in military loyalty under contested scenarios.

Eh this isn't quite clear. National Guardsmen take an oath to the Constitution and to follow the orders of both the President and the Governor. Above all, their oath is to the Constitution.

Both SCOTUS and a Governor saying that their oath to the Constitution compels (or at least authorizes) a certain course of action would be convincing to some, I'm sure.

> Eh this isn't quite clear. National Guardsmen take an oath to the Constitution and to follow the orders of both the President and the Governor.

It's quite clear that the Constitution expressly gives the President command of state militia when called into federal service, and Congress the power to specify the conditions for that, and that the Congress has specified procedures for that in law which rest solely on a Presidential determination. Each of those is black and white in law and has been demonstrated in practice as well.

That's not to say that that constrains what can actually happen in a Constitutional crisis: that's what makes Constitutional crises possible -- the black and white rules are not self-enforcing and require human decisions to align with them, and humans are always free to decide to do something else.

I think the guardrails were designed to hold someone like Trump once; and then afterwards he was supposed to be convicted of his crimes, or at least never elected again. The guardrails are fundamentally held in place by hundreds of thousands of individuals making individual decisions. People who are asked to break the law can expect that in a few years they'll be vindicated, or at least fear that in a few years they would be punished for going along with the illegal orders.

I'm much more worried about the guardrails when people like that get re-elected: suddenly going along with the illegal action is by far the safest thing to do.

The "original sin" of the founders was accepting the slave states. That embedded the hypocrisy that freedom was only for some people. The constitution proofed against an individual trying to seize power pretty well. It's difficult for a random Army officer or religious leader to catapult himself into a dictator position. But what it does not and cannot prevent against is determined tyranny of the majority.

There were "actually good" founding fathers who were vehemently anti-slavery and even non racist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine being the most famous example. Unfortunately, they are kept as relative footnotes in history, due to their subversive economic messaging.

The intellectual foundations of Thomas Paine run through the thinking of Henry George and Andrew Yang, among many others. All listed figures are basically footnotes in the dustbin of history - and humanity will pay a dear cost for ignoring their voices.

SCOTUS' ruling on Trump's presidential immunity blew a massive hole in the guardrails.

> SCOTUS' ruling on Trump's presidential immunity blew a massive hole in the guardrails.

Not really; aside from the various limitations on it (full immunity only for a few core Constitutional functions, case-by-case immunity for other "official acts" depending on impact to function of the office, no immunity aside from that), criminal prosecution after leaving office is almost never the decisive constraint on Presidential action, and that's all the immunity applies to.

What blew a massive hole in the guardrails is the a faction fully supporting Trump being an authoritarian dictator unbound by law securing full control of the GOP, and the GOP securing a two-house Congressional majority. (It doesn't hurt that they also control a majority of state legislatures and a near majority of states both legislature and executive helps here, too.)

Yes, I agree that the Trump faction gaining control of the GOP is a huge problem and without it we'd be experiencing wannabe king Trump 1.0 instead of de-facto king 2.0.

But while technically you're correct, the implications of that ruling was that Trump could not be held accountable for the Jan6 attempted coup, giving him a huge boost to do whatever he wants with impunity. The significance was more psychological than technical. I don't believe we would see such bold power grabs by Trump if the SCOTUS had ruled against him.

Because it's clear the strategy now is 1) break all the rules; 2) let them sue; 3) if it ever makes it to SCOTUS our chances are decent, besides the fact that by the time it makes it through the courts to SCOTUS it will be too difficult to reverse what's been done. And in the meantime, use all the power of the Exec Branch to neutralize anyone who might oppose (legal firms, gov agencies, states, federal judges, etc.).

I'm very curious about the ambiguous "official acts" caveat in the decision.

It read like a consensus opinion that left room for the Supreme Court to put additional limits in place... if it came to that.

Indeed. There are dozens of other moments through the past ten years of Trumpism that the supposed guardrails were to prevent and did not, and in the wake of each one the custodians of those guardrails shrugged and went "oh well... I guess that's Trump."

Emoluments, tax returns, the porn star, lying under oath, J6, "fake news", losers and suckers, bone spurs, snubbing Carter, crowd size bullshit, grab em by the pussy, obvious nepotism, lock her up, separating families at the border, "very fine people on both sides", "stand back and stand by", sparring with Fauci, now jailing judges, deporting people off street corners, letting Musk gut government agencies, etc etc.

And that's just off the top of my head; I'm such others have catalogued many, many more of these that I'm forgetting, but yeah... good luck to anyone who can look at a list of these things and be like "ah yes but that was all in the comfortable past, surely the guardrails that failed on every one of those previous instances will somehow hold now. Hooray!"

> I'm such others have catalogued many, many more of these

One such catalog:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/lest-we-forget-the-horro...

I don't think this kind of middlebrow cynicism is helpful— "ah yes, well, all politicians have their scandals, just another day in government."

What other major US politicians in our lifetimes has had even a quarter of this and retained their office through it? Do you think after all this that Trump would go down for spying on political opponents (like Nixon in the 70s) or receiving sexual favours from an intern (like Clinton in the 90s)? It seems pretty clear to most observers that he would not, and that means the goalposts have shifted, perhaps quite considerably.

Therefore, it is a serious matter and worthy of thoughtful consideration about how to deal with in the present and safeguard against the future. Not something to be waved away with "just more burning".

> Do you think after all this that Trump would go down for spying on political opponents (like Nixon in the 70s) or receiving sexual favours from an intern (like Clinton in the 90s)?

Uh, Clinton factually did not "go down" for that, he was impeached and acquitted for things related to it, and served out his full two terms, and left office as the most popular outgoing President in the period that polling had been conducted up to that point.

Not just one person, congress and a lot of the judicial system. This isn't a one person problem. Not even close. Same way Nazis werent just a "one person" problem.