- CA bans face-masks for law-enforcement
- White House issues executive order requiring face-mask use for all federal law enforcement
- Both are placed on hold pending litigation, allowing the status quo (face-masks) to continue
- Litigation eventually winds up at the Supreme Court
- Supreme Court once again confirms White House can do whatever the hell it wants, Constitution be damned.
I really hate this timeline. Like, a lot.
If people actually took the time to read the opinions [0], they'd realize...
1. Many of the 'allow the administration to continue' rulings are overriding stays, rather than actual decisions. Those cases are still pending in the courts and will eventually end up back at the Supreme Court.
2. Of the actual Supreme Court decisions, the news typically gives the most dumbed-down, hot take version.
3. Even to people without a legal background, much of the decision or dissent is written in plain English, attempts to lay out the rationale, and can be read by anyone with a secondary education.
Just FWIW, giving up wasn't my point at all. I'm just not particularly optimistic that putting anything in front of the current SCOTUS bench will result in a lot of welcome rulings. That doesn't mean we don't seek legal remedies; it just means we need to plan for them to not work out and act accordingly. I'm heartened by the amount of work people are putting in at the state level and getting appropriately creative with bending the rules — for instance, the recent effort to redefine corporate powers at the state level in order to obviate _Citizens United_.
https://www.csg.org/2024/09/25/military-101-orders/
What section of US law they're activated/deployed under determines whether or not they can legally be used in an internal law enforcement capacity.
And generally speaking, federalized forces (either active or NG) cannot ever be used as law enforcement.
Hence why, despite the posturing and marketing of 'sending the military in', this administration is specifically using federalized military forces only in non-law enforcement capacities (and then encouraging the freed up state/local law enforcement to focus on law enforcement).
This is civil war. In a civil war there is no Uncle Sam. Just human beings from different states and of different political persuasions who need to decide what they do with their firepower, and whose orders they obey.
Meanwhile tank man had a shopping bag.
Deploying Guards would also be a good way to start building some institutional momentum for defending our country - preempting following illegal orders (like what happened in CA), sussing out traitors in the chain of command, and mitigating the dynamic where much of traditional state law enforcement is sympathetic to the destructionists.