But clearly some people do have to comply, otherwise the subpoenas would be invitations, right? I'm confused about who has to comply, and for who a subpoena is optional.
Subpoenas of administration officials complicate this because the primary vehicle Congress has for enforcing contempt citations is a referral to the DOJ, which is part of the administration; a civil referral is, I think? its own kind of civil suit, which is time-consuming and complicated, and it's likely that the House majority will keep their powder dry on referrals about administration officials until they have a really good case.
But random civilians aren't so fortunate, and can effectively be compelled to testify, and it's likely that Congress would not have much trouble getting their subpoena enforced.
Surely someone needs to feature this possibility in a movie somehow!
Most famous are Michael Heseltine, or Oliver Cromwell a couple of years before the UK's brief experiment with republican dictatorship.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/10/day-of-brex...
"Disciplinary usage"
"In accordance with the House Rules, on the rare occasion that a member becomes unruly, the Sergeant at Arms, upon order of the Speaker, lifts the mace from its pedestal and presents it before the offenders, thereby restoring order. There have been at least six instances where the Mace was used to quell disorder."
"During President Donald Trump's 2019 State of the Union speech, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wore a brooch styled after the Mace, presumably as a symbol of her authority as speaker."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_of_the_United_States_Hous...
Weird, seems like a flaw in the checks-n-balances, a lot like the "American Rule" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...) for paying attorney's fees.
What it is not is a flaw on checks and balances between the branches of government.
That does not follow. In Germany, for example, the winner is entitled to costs up to the statutory hourly rate. Which is the minimum rate lawyers may bill. If you choose a lawyer that bills twenty times as much, your opponent pays only a twentieth.
The cost of the "best lawyers" doesn't (always/just) mean paying one lawyer an exorbitant amount, it means paying a large team of in-house lawyers, or large legal firm, to spend thousands or tens of thousands of man hours on a case.
Whereas, just blowing off a House subpoena is actually not that big a thing; like, they can still go to court and argue that they shouldn't have had to honor it in the first place. It's a whole different level of plausible deniability.
I did end up in a small clickhole looking for regular schmoes (i.e. not high-level government officials or political operatives) who've been held in contempt of congress and taken it to court. There apparently hasn't been one in decades (so presumably people just comply), except very recently, one of your favourite litigants - backpage.com!
It doesn't seem to happen nowadays, but the authority is there. Interestingly, the normal judiciary protections do not seem to necessarily apply. Legislative procedures is becoming an increasingly interesting area of research for me.
I believe that is not true.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/14/capi...
The Sgt. at Arms sits on the board of the US Capitol Police (USCP) and has the authority to request mutual aid from the USCP chief of police.
The USCP does arrest individuals on a semi-frequent basis and places them in holding cells at its headquarters building on D Street Northeast. They can also be held at the DC Department of Corrections' Central Detention Facility on D Street Southeast under USCP authority, just as if they were arrested by any other law enforcement agency in DC.
tl;dr: The House has approximately 2,200 officers and at least a hundred beds at its disposal.