Explainer

When my guy does something I like, I do cheer. When their guy does something I dislike, I’ll boo.

But what happens when my guy does something I like, but which I would boo if their guy did?

I worry about this.

In addition, I look at how I would react if something my guy is doing today, were to be done by their guy tomorrow. I need to be willing to accept both theirs and mine doing this thing.

I was extremely upset when Joe Biden’s masters were ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Is my guy ignoring court rulings?

One of the things to understand is how our Constitutional Republic works. We, The People, have rights. Our state has rights derived from The People of the state.

The federal government and the state government have power. They have power by existing.

The federal Constitution grants authority to the federal government to do certain things, and only those things.

Consider the following, a squad of cops breaks down your door, throws you in irons, transports you to the jail and locks the cage.

Under our Constitution, the cops only have the authority to do so if they have a warrant. If they don’t have that warrant, they do not have the authority to detain you. Did they have the power to do so? Obviously, they did because they did detain you, and they did throw you in jail.

The Supreme Court was not granted any authority under our Constitution. Our Constitution established a Supreme Court, but they didn’t explicitly give the Supreme Court any Authority.

With —Marbury V. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) the Supreme Court took the authority to arbitrate what was and what was not Constitutional.

We, as a country, have accepted this.

When we look at the courts, they have significant authority, they do not always have the power to enforce their authority.

When the judge looks down from his bench and orders a person into jail, it is Law Enforcement that executes that order. In some cases, the court employs those people. In federal court, the enforcement power rests in the executive branch, such as the federal marshals, who report to DoJ.

So, in the cases I’m looking at, the court has the authority but lacks the power.

Tren de Aragua(TdA)

What is due process as it relates to TdA?

We start with what due process do you have? You are stopped while walking down the street and the cop demands your papers.

You do not have to produce papers when a cop demands them (IANAL). In some states, you might have to identify yourself, but that does not require you to provide papers.

If you have followed your state’s laws regarding providing identification, what next?

Go watch some YouTube videos and reach out to a lawyer in your state. I have nothing to say because I just don’t know.

As a citizen, you have the right to a jury of your peers. You have the right to due process. You have the right to legal representation.

They do not have the authority to just disappear you into a cell.

You will get your day in court. If you are not found guilty, you will be released. It can be expensive, but you don’t get thrown into a cage without due process.

But what if you are here illegally?

If you are an illegal alien, then they only need to prove that you are here illegally. Once they prove that, you can be deported.

The question arises, who do they have to prove legality to? To a judge? To some nameless official? To their drinking buddies? Who?

In the case of TdA and other gangs, like MS-13, they self identify as belonging to those gangs. As part of those gangs, they are not welcome in the United States. Because they are not wanted, they do not have visa or green cards. Since they are not here legally, they can be deported.

But what if they do have a visa or green card?

Simple, those can be revoked. Being a member of such a gang is enough of a reason for the State Department to revoke a visa and/or a green card.

Once they are deported, it becomes the responsibility of the receiving country to deal with those deported.

Well, we decided to fly TdA members to El Salvador. There is an interesting law in El Salvador. According to one source, TdA are by definition criminals in El Salvador.

Under El Salvadorian law, any member of TdA can be arrested and jailed.

When these deportees arrived in El Salvador, the El Salvadorian officials determined if they were indeed members of TdA.

Since they were in El Salvador, they are, by definition, criminals. Thus, they can be jailed.

They were then in processed and get to stay in the comfort of El Salvador super max prison.

Was due process served? Yes. Could it have been abused? Yes. Will it be abused when the democrats regain power? Yes, it will.

How do I know that it will be abused by democrats? Because they did so over the last four years.

This is the current version of section §922(g). The word “felon” does not appear. All definitions are included within the list.

As you read on, notice that we have gone from actually crossing state lines to “affecting commerce”. This is a huge power grab by the federal government. The Constitution authorizes them to regulate interstate commerce.

The power grab is that they now claim the can regulate anything that might affect interstate commerce.
This is not how it started.

This does not seem to include as much as the current law does.

In October 1968, the law changed

Here we see that they have explicitly excluded misdemeanors with possible imprisonment of less than two years. The old version was greater than one year.

Read that last line carefully. In November 1968, a person who was a “prohibited person” could no receive any firearm or ammunition which had been shipped in interstate or foreign commerce. They could still keep and bear arms. They could not buy or be given guns that crossed state lines.

This means that it was perfectly legal for a prohibited person to keep all the firearms they owned before becoming prohibited and they could manufacture firearms for their use. All legal.

It also meant, that if they were to buy direct from a manufacturer, that would be legal. For example, if they lived in New Hampshire, they could go to the Sig Store and purchase a gun manufactured by Sig in NH.

Section (h) was rewritten to reference section (g) for who was prohibited. We also see that it is no longer receiving a firearm that is a crime, it is in possessing.

We still see that the limitation is on firearms that cross state lines. We see this in many federal laws. They will reference something crossing state lines being regulated. This is because that is all the Constitution authorizes the federal government to regulate.

These changes were part of “Firearms Owners’ Protection Act”. I just love it when something that is about protecting my rights adds more limits on rights. Yeah, I know, bad people.

In 1996, §§ 921-922 were amended to add definitions and text to prohibit who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence..

In 1998, in an “Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations” bill, they changed the definition of an illegal alien.

Conclusion

1) reading lawsuits is easy compared to reading “Public Laws”. They write bills like patch files. Instead of showing us the new version with strike through and underline to show removed and new text, they say things like (I) by inserting “transfer of a firearm to or” before “receipt”; and (II) by striking “(g) or (n)” and inserting “(d), (g), or (n) (as applicable)”.

I read that stuff all the time, but I have tools that make it easy to see the changes.

2) The law expands little by little, infringing more and more. What starts with something that feels reasonable ends with something that is totally unconstitutional.

I am NOT a Lawyer. That being said, I do analyze large systems all the time. And as my mentor used to say, “The justice system is just a system.”

History of the case:

January 20, 2025: EO 14,169 was signed by President Trump. “It is the policy of the United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President”

This is the long-term goal. No more foreign aid that is at odds with the President’s foreign policy.

for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy…immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries

Stop all foreign aid payments until we have reviewed it for alignment with current foreign policy. Don’t enter into any new contracts while paused.

To you and I, this seems like a logical and reasonable situation. There was a short fuse put on the order of 90 days. Each agency had only 90 days to evaluate the situation and report.

Within the EO, there is an allowance for the Secretary of State to issue waivers. If some entity had a need, and it aligned with our foreign policy, they could get a waiver now to receive funds.

February 10, 2025: Plaintiffs/Respondents (Bad guys) challenged the pause. The alleged violations of the APA and the Constitution.

February 13, 2025: The District court (inferior to the circuit courts which are inferior to the Supreme Court) granted relief. The court did not give the government (good guys) an opportunity to file an opposition brief.

The court said that a pause wasn’t arbitrary or capricious, the government had not considered that aid recipients might be butt hurt.

Having issued the TRO, the State Department started issuing payments again. The difference was that before issuing a payment, they were evaluating how that “aid” aligned with our foreign policy.

The order, however, allowed the agency defendants to “take action to enforce the terms of particular contracts, including with respect to expirations, modifications, or terminations pursuant to contractual provisions.”

The government obeyed the rules as set out by the court. The plaintiffs (still the bad guys) did not see the faucet of cash open, so went whining back to the court claiming that the government was violating the court’s order.

February 24, 2025: One of the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion to enforce the court’s order.

February 25, 2025: The court held another hearing. The court did not give the state time to file a written response to the emergency motion. The court then granted the motion from the bench. (Not a written order, yet)

The court did not address multiple issues the state brought up.

Instead, the court ordered the state to pay all invoices and letters of credit drawdown by 2359 on the 26th.

This amounted to around $2billion. The order ignored due dates, standard accounting practices of verification, and other aspects of the contract.

When I send out an invoice, my clients have a certain amount of time to pay the invoice. Normally, 30 days.

Government contracts often have longer delays built in. IIRC our contracts with the government had 90 day due dates.

What the court ordered was that the government had to pay invoices received by January 24th even if the invoice wasn’t due for many days.

After this hearing and new order, the government filed for an emergency stay pending appeal to the D.C. Circuit court.

The motion asked for an administrative stay by 1300 on the 26th. If not an administrative stay, the government wanted a ruling by 1600. These time frames are very fast, but the government was given about 36 hours to issue 2 Billion Dollars.

February 26, 2025: The Circuit court asked the plaintiffs (bad guys, still) to file a response by 1300. This is the deadline the state put forth for an administrative stay.

The circuit court didn’t issue the stay, nor did they rule on the motions. Instead, they dragged their feet. With time running out, the government appealed to the Supreme Court.

Just before the midnight deadline, Chief Justice Roberts issued an administrative stay. The Court then asked for a response by 1200 on February 28th.

February 28, 2025: Everybody got their briefings in. The state by normal rules can reply to the response.

March 3, 2025: The state filed their reply to the response to the motion.

March 5, 2025: The application was referred to the Court. An opinion was later issued.

Analysis

There is so much going on and so many moving parts, it is easy to get lost without picking up the minutia.

What we wanted was for the Supreme Court to roll up a newspaper and swat the inferior courts across the snoot a few dozen times. They didn’t.

The district court’s order was labeled a TRO, it was acting as a Preliminary Injunction, and the modified order granted relief that before the adversarial part of the case took place.

Said differently, the plaintiffs want the money to flow. The government says that they have paused spending. The plaintiffs seek the relief of having the money flow. The court’s original order said, “The money must flow.” The government started spending. The plaintiffs claimed that it wasn’t fast enough. The court “modified” their original order and said, “let the money flow”.

Thus, the court actually granted the relief the plaintiffs wanted.

What the Supreme Court’s opinion said was: The application is denied

This is the takeaway. The government has to start the money flowing again.

But here are the important parts that aren’t being noticed in some of the postings I’ve seen (all).

This is an order to the inferior court to change their order and correct deficiencies.

What the government (good guys) were asking for was time to present their case. The inferior district court stripped them of that right. They were not allowed to respond in writing. They were not given time to make appeals safely. In addition, they were ordered to do things which they cannot recover from.

If they pay some of these bills, there is no clawback available to the government. We know that the entities receiving that money will disperse it so fast heads will spin.

I don’t know what Barrett was thinking, but she sided with the denial of the application. I don’t trust Chief Justice Roberts to take risks. He much prefers the safer path, the more limited opinions. It always surprises me when he does join with
Thomas and the rest of that team.

But, in my opinion, the big takeaway is that the inferior court has to consider feasibility. They have to make sure that their order is clear.

The other part of this is that this should take the case out of the TRO state and into the Preliminary Injunction state. While a case is in the TRO state, there are limits in what can be appealed.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case.

It is difficult to actually conceive of how long the battle for our Second Amendment rights has been going on. It started in 1792 and has continued through tomorrow.

In the founding era, there were a number of racist and religious exceptions. These were designed to keep arms out of the hands of Negros, mixed race people, Indians, certain religions, and other deplorable. By the 1870s, all of these exceptions were found to be unconstitutional, leaving very few infringements that would survive constitutional muster.

At this time, temporarily denying the right to people that have been adjudicated violent in a court of law is the only one I know of. See: —Marbury V. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)

In the early 1900s, New York City decided to ignore the Constitution and passed the Sullivan Act. The Sullivan Act was designed to disarm those that would stand up to the corrupt bosses who controlled the city. They used a permitting system.

They claimed that this was constitutional because some people did get permits and everybody could beg for permission from the government for that permission slip. This continued until 2022, with the Bruen decision, the corrupt NYC permitting scheme was shutdown. For all of 10 seconds.

The Bruen response bill attempted to create a statewide “sensitive” places replacement.

After the Sullivan Act, the infringers decided to ban handguns, machine guns, and short shotguns. They did this by placing a tax on these guns that was so outrageous that The People could no longer afford them.

They did not accomplish this. What they got instead was a functional ban on Short Barreled Rifles, Short Barreled Shotguns, Machine guns, and Silencers. By 1936, this was the accepted law of the land.

Using a saying that had not yet been published, in the late 1960s the infringers took advantage of a crisis to stop mail order gun sales. The GCA of 1968 created FFLs and required in person sales of firearms.

The claim was that those FFLs wouldn’t sell to bad people.

When bad things kept happening, they tried more gun control. Mostly permitting schemes that made it nearly impossible for The People to get permission.

Using another crisis, they got the Brady Act passed. Thank goodness, the NRA was fighting for some level of a win. The original intention was to create a system where buyers would have to get permission from the government for any gun purchase.

This was in the form of a “background check” with no limit on how long it took or how intrusive it might be. The NRA got the NICS system for us. Along with a “not denied is proceed”. It put the onus on the government to complete the check rapidly.

In 1986, we got a win with a poison pill. This was the Firearms Owner Protection Act. This was designed to protect firearm owners from being persecuted by the ATF.

There was a time when describing the internal workings of a machine gun was being construed by the ATF as manufacturing a machine gun. Selling a gun or two could get you sent to prison for not having an FFL. It was bad. There are stories of ATF agents hanging around gun shows seeking people to arrest or FFLs to bust for trivial things.

The bad part of the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act was the Hughes Amendment. The infringers had realized that the NFA had outlived its usefulness.

In 1934, the $200 surcharge for transferring a machinegun was unreachable for most of The People. When a M3 machinegun was selling for under 30 dollars, $200 was nearly impossible. An ad for a Colt M16 shows a price of $236.00 plus $5.00 for shipping. By the mid-1980s, the price was around $1800.

At $1800, a $200 surcharge wasn’t as bad.

One of the problems that started happening after 1986, when the NFA was closed to new machineguns, was a price boost of $200 every time a NFA item changed hands.

Consider buying a silencer today. The can costs $500 + $200. If you want to sell the can, you would like to get $700, to recover your costs. Now, this doesn’t work. Given the choice of a used can for $700 + $200 tax or a new can for $500 + $200 tax, you buy new. Thus keeping the costs of silencer’s down.

After 1986, there were no new machineguns. This means that every transfer increases the cost of that gun by at least $200.

At this point, the infringers moved to stop the sale of all firearms. The method they decided on was to sue firearm retailers and manufacturers out of business.

What they did was they found a bloody victim and then sued the FFL that sold the gun. They knew they would not win the case, but the cost of litigation was punishment enough.

In 2005, bipartisan legislation was passed to stop this lawfare. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was designed to protect entities in the lawful commerce in arms from frivolous lawsuits.

And it worked.

Until Sandy Hook.

They sued Remington Arms because they owned Bushmaster who manufactured the rifle that the asshole used to murder children and teachers.

What they claimed was that Bushmaster produced ads that caused the asshole to decide to murder his mother. Steal her keys to the safe. Open the safe. Steal the AR-15 within. To drive the car he stole from his mother to the school. And there murder children and teachers.

It was all the fault of the manly man ads that Bushmaster used to sell guns.

The lower state court dismissed the case based on the PLCAA. It was appealed up to the Connecticut Supreme Court. They decided the case could move forward. That was appealed to the Supreme Court, who denied cert.

Remington was bleeding money, and this case didn’t help. They went bankrupt. The hull of the company had no assets and no people. The insurance companies were on the hook for the money involved in the suit.

They settled. No gun people were involved in that disaster. It was a purely money motivated decision.

Which brings us to this case. Sorry for this long history.

Mexico was approached by the usual suspects. They filed in Massachusetts claiming that all the gun manufacturers were causing horrible things in Mexico.

The argument goes something like this:

The Cartels get guns from an illegal gun dealer. That illegal gun dealer purchased that gun from an illegal gun smuggler. The illegal gun smuggler purchased the gun from a straw purchaser. The straw committed felonies when they filled out the 4473 and when they sold the gun. The FFL knows that some of the guns he sells are being sold to straw purchasers. The distributor knows that the retailer knows that he is selling some guns to straw purchasers. The manufacturer knows that they are selling to distributors that know that the FFL is selling some guns to straw purchasers.

Therefore, the gun manufacture is guilty of adding and abetting murder in Mexico.

Yeah, it is that bad.

The lawyer for the petitioners (good guys) gave his opening statement explaining this. He then stated that the path between crime and manufacture had too many intermediate steps to make them responsible. This is known as “proximate cause analysis”.

He didn’t say anything about PLCAA.

Thomas started the questioning. The conservatives asked the right types of questions.

Then Sotomayor stepped up to the plate. And asked good questions. Not great, but good.

After Gorsuch and Barrette, Kagan asked questions. Again, not great, but good.

Then the surprise of the day.

Jackson started asking questions. And her leading question was, “Why wasn’t this stopped by PLCAA?”

It was a Good question.

I’m looking forward to reading the court’s opinion. At this point, I am finding myself thinking that this maybe a 9-0 opinion.

Transcript of oral arguments in 23-1141

When I was in elementary school, the principal still had a paddle hanging on the wall behind him. The principal was the person that hired and fired teachers and all other staff at the school. They had significant power.

To quote Stan Lee, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Most principals did use their power responsibly. They used the power of the paddle to control their schools. They used the power to hire and fire to control their staff. And they did not abuse that power.

Unfortunately, when there are positions with great power, that power attracts people who are interested in power.

There was abuse. There were principals that abused the power of the paddle, taking it over that line. There were principals that hired and fired at a whim. Being a teacher had no stability.

The answer that was put into place was to remove the power of the paddle and the power to fire from principals.

Today, teachers are one of the most protected professions in the country. In my state, it is illegal for anybody to speak negatively of a teacher at a board meeting. You cannot say that a teacher is a bad teacher.

The only way that I could make that statement was to say my kids have Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mr. Kilroy as teachers. Mr. Kilroy and Mrs. Smith do a fantastic job.

I had to leave “but Mrs. Jones sucks as a teacher” out. To say anything negative was forbidden.

Our president was given the job as chief executive. He was given the job of commander in chief. He is in charge of the executive branch.

This is stated in our Constitution, under Article II.

He delegates power to different people to oversee the executive branch.

Unfortunately, like those principles of times past, the power to fire somebody at will was abused by some.

To deal with that abuse, Congress stepped in and usurped the power and responsibility of the president. They did this by passing unconstitutional laws, which have not yet been struck down.

Our first highlight is almost constitutional. Where it fails is “for a term of 5 years”. Congress does not have the authority to set term limits for appointees. Appointees serve at the pleasure of the president.

Prior to Trump, this was never an issue. All such appointees tendered their resignation when a new administration came into office. Nobody had to be fired.

The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. is unconstitutional. Why? Because every person in the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the president.

When congress put limits on when the Special Counsel could be fired, they overstepped their authority as granted by The People through Our Constitution.

Simple.

Challenges

Dellinger was fired. He was fired because the president did not trust him. Or because the gentleman wore bow ties instead of real ties. It doesn’t matter. He serves at the pleasure of The President.

When he was fired, he ran to the courts and asked the court to unfire him.

The court granted an “Administrative Stay”, stopping the firing. Now administrative stay is in quotes in all the paperwork by the state (good guys) filed and here because it is a made up term.

Courts can grant injunctions, temporary or otherwise. Superior courts can issue stays against inferior courts. Courts can issue administrative stays against themselves or inferior courts.

The common example is when an inferior court grants an injunction or final judgment, and they know the decision will be appealed. Rather than give the parties whiplash, they put an administrative stay on their order go give the parties time to appeal.

If the superior court does not issue a stay, then the administrative stay expires and the order or judgment goes into effect.

In this case, the plaintiff (bad guy) claims that he was fired in violation of 5 U.S.C. §1211(b). The Administrative Procedures Act.

He was. The state (good guys) did not offer any reason when the fired about Dellinger about “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” Thus, they did not meet the requirements of the APA regarding Dellinger.

I do not believe that the state attempted to justify the firing under the APA. Instead, the state made a Constitutional Challenge.

Otherwise known as a Civil Rights case.

This triggers a bunch of legal stuff I am not confident in my knowledge about. I.e. I don’t know what I don’t know.

I do know that the challenge should be addressed via the Winter factors.

The most important of which is the likelihood of success on the merits. Followed by irreparable harm, balance of equities, and public interest.

The Supreme Court has ruled that any denial of a Constitutionally protected right is irreparable harm. They have also stated that violation of a Constitutionally protected right balances to the person harmed. And that the public has no interest in enforcing an unconstitutional law.

In other words, if the challenger is likely to win on the merits, they win on all four Winter factors.

The Order

(“ultra vires” means “beyond legal power or authority”)

This is the judge saying that the President broke the law when he fired Dellinger.

The judge reasoned:

My interpretation of the judge’s reason is: Since Congress created this position in the executive branch, they get to decide the limits on what the President can do regarding this position, regardless of what the Constitution says.

Conclusion

Social media is all a fuss about Trump losing. This isn’t over. This case took 3 weeks to go from filed to final judgment. It has already been appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court.

This is being done on an expedited basis. If the Circuit court does not issue a stay on this, the state (good guys) will appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay pending the appeal.

It is my belief that a stay will be granted by the D.C. Circuit court or by the Supreme Court. This will stop the delay tactics that the left loves to use. If they want this done, they will have to push to get it done as quickly as possible.

This case started in the United States District Court (D.D.C.) This is the court that covers Washington, D.C.

Two cases were brought AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. United States Department of State and Global Health Council v. Trump. Docket Number: 25-cv-400 and 25-cv-402.

The two cases were filed in the same court at nearly the same time.

After the district court issued their TRO, the Trump administration appealed to the D.C. Circuit court.

The state’s motion is better than I expected. My expectation was that this was going to be a full throated attack based on Article II standing and authorizations.

The state goes on to point out that the court’s order requires them to pay all invoices and drawn-down requests even if those payments are not due, have not had normal vetting done (was the work done), have not been checked against the statement of work, or that these bills are legitimate in any way.

The state also points out that there is no court record (it is not in the record) of the bills that the plaintiffs (bad guys) want paid.

Of note, the state (the good guys), are pushing that this is a constitutional issue.

When a case is appealed at the district level, it is appealed to the Circuit court. It is very unusual to skip directly to the Supreme Court. This was done.

The state did appeal to the Circuit court. They were intending on dorking around to force the state to either pay the $2 billion or to directly violate the district court’s order. When the state filed with the Supreme Court, they informed the Circuit Court, which then issued their opinion.

There is a guideline in the court system that says that TROs cannot be appealed. This does not stop the state (as bad guys) from appealing TROs that go against them. This happened in —Marbury V. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).

The Circuit court was unwilling because the state (good guys) didn’t appeal the TRO when it was not as intrusive. The Circuit claims that this means the TRO can’t be appealed. They cited to Dellinger v. Bessent which is another case where the rogue inferior court decided that they could order the president around.

Before the midnight deadline, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay.

I was surprised there was not more yelling about a single judge (Justice) doing this. But that could be because even the leftest understood that screaming about a single justice stopping a single judge might undermine their position.

An administrative stay is issued before any briefings on the merits have taken place. They are issued when there is a possibility of a whip-lash situation. We saw this in the Duncan case out of California.

The district court issued a final judgment saying that California’s ban on magazines was unconstitutional. This happened before Bruen. This led to what is known as “freedom week” when millions of magazines flooded into California. The state appealed to the Ninth Circus, which then put a stay on the judgment, stopping freedom week.

When the same judge found that California’s magazine ban was still unconstitutional, post Bruen, he issued his final judgment and then put a 30-day administrative stay on his judgment.

The state did appeal. The Ninth Circus did issue a stay. There was no Freedom Week II.

The Chief Justice has ordered the parties to have all briefings in by noon today. The Supreme Court will then issue their order regarding vacating or staying the TRO. That will likely happen on Monday.

Question of the week?

Are you tired of winning yet? Is this what you voted for?

People have a difficult time making hard choices.

The Trolley Problem brings is one of the ways that we explore ethical choices. The general premises are that there are five people that will die if you do nothing. There is one person, who is currently safe, who can be sacrificed to save the five.

Do you do nothing and let five people die, or do you throw the switch and kill the one?

What if we change the problem statement a little, what if the one was a child? What if the one was a woman? What if the one was a “person of color”? What if it was your wife?

Now take that same list of changes and insert it into the five. What if one of the five was a child, a woman, a person of color, your wife?

Ok. How about if your daughter was the one and your son was one of the five?

The problem hasn’t changed, but the emotional stress is greatly increased.

Politicians know this. They use it to their advantage.

The term is “Emotional Blackmail.”

Consider the following dilemma, you can choose to pay more in taxes or the school system’s proposed budget is capped at a half million increase rather than the 3.5 million increase they were asking for.

For me, that’s an easy choice. Cap at a 0.5 million increase. At which point the emotional blackmail begins.

“If you don’t give use the extra three million dollars, we will have to fire teachers.”

Is that really the only choice?

That is the question I posed a teacher. What other things in the budget can be cut, before we have to fire teachers.

Now, I’ve been told that I’m against teachers. That I oppose her. Why? Because I don’t want to cut teachers?

For her, there are only two choices, pay or cut teachers. If I don’t want to pay more in taxes, I must hate teachers and want them fired.

So I asked her about programs in the budget that could be cut instead. In our first iteration, there were no programs she was willing to cut.

The problem she has is that every cut is equally bad. Every choice is equally bad. Since all the choices are bad, the only option is to get the 3 million dollars out of the stone of taxpayers.

We had a similar issue at a family level years ago. We had a 16k windfall. We all agreed we would put that money into the homestead. The problem was that nobody could agree on what we should do.

Should we get new siding for the house? Should we replace one of the vehicles? Should we pay off a loan?

It wasn’t even that simple, there were about a dozen different projects or expenses we were considering.

By default, humans will spiral rather than make a hard decision.

I had to listen to people tell me that project A was more important than project B, but B was more important than C. And C was more important than A.

It was a circle. Everything was more important than everything else.

The first process was having everybody create an ordered list of by importance.

They couldn’t do it. They all had situations where they had multiple things with equal importance. Or worse still, some couldn’t do it because they couldn’t choose.

The method that did work was creating binary choices.

We lay out a grid, in that grid we compare every item to every other item, asking if item row was more important than the item in the column.

Once that grid is filled out, we can create an ordered list. Once we had ordered lists, we could present and come to an agreement as to what our priorities were.

From this table, we can create an ordered list

1. Roof
2. Foundation
3. Gutters
4. Siding
5. Paint
6. Truck
7. Car
8. Computer

The problem we have with our school budget is that every program is equally important. In the end, they will likely fire teachers and programs.

Dellinger was fired. He went to the District Court the same day and demanded that he be reinstated, claiming the President didn’t have the authority to fire him. He did this at the end of the day on Friday. The judge in the case issued the TRO the same day.

The government appealed to the Circuit court, which kicked it back down because the case was in an interlocutory state. I.e., there wasn’t a final judgment in the case. If this status were to continue, this district court would have the ability to block the president’s authority to fire for the course of the case.

For rogue inferior courts and people like Dellinger, this is a win. All they need to do is drag out the case for as long as they can. Stopping The People’s agenda.

The TRO will expire on the 26th. The District Court will be hearing arguments for a Preliminary Injunction on the 26th. We can expect the District Court to issue their order on the 26th.

Given the activist tendencies of this judge, he is likely to grant the Preliminary Injunction.

If the Preliminary Injunction is issued, the President’s ability to fire anybody will be on hold until this case is fully resolved.

Any other challenges to being fired will be filed in DC District Court. They will all be assigned to this judge. This judge will then put them under the same PI until final judgment.

The Court has said that they will not issue an opinion until there is a Preliminary Injunction. This is still a live issue before the Supreme Court.

The two most liberal justices, Sotomayor and Jackson, would just have denied the vacatur.

Justice and Gorsuch would have issued an opinion, rather than waiting for the PI.

I won’t quote Gorsuch, but I love how his dissent is “When the plain text of the Constitution is implicated, it is the plaintiff’s burden to prove a tradition firmly based on this Nation’s historical regulations”. Gorsuch then cites numerous cases from the founding through until now which show a tradition of the courts not having the authority to reinstate fired federal employees.

When fired federal employees have sued for relief, they have been granted back pay, but never have they been reinstated.

I will quote the slap down of the rogue inferior district court:

We’ve talked about the process of litigation in a civil suit.

A complaint is filed. In the complaint, the plaintiffs state what they are challenging, why they believe the law supports them, what harm they are suffering, and what relief they seek.

The facts in this case are that on Friday, February 7, 2025, Trump “fired” Dellinger. Dellinger was “Special Counsel”. Being a legal eagle, Dellinger filed suit in federal district court to stop Trump from firing him. Before the government could even respond to the filing, the court held a hearing.

The court issued an “administrative stay” on Trump’s action. This is a made up term. A Court can issue injunctions, a TRO is a type of injunction, and they can issue judgments. They can also stay injunctions and judgments. They can’t “stay” things outside the court system.

So “administrative stay” is actually a TRO but using language to hide the fact.

The court’s order required the government to “recognize Dellinger as Special Counsel” and to let him back into the office. It also required the acting Special Counsel to be removed from the position.

That TRO ran through February 13th.

This is exactly right. The Winter factors order the courts to first look at the likelihood of success on the merits. The inferior courts are required to do so. If the district court judge and called this a “TRO” he would have had to use the Winter factors.

By using a made up term for TRO, the judge attempted to avoid the clear instructions of the Supreme Court on how to decide if an injunction should be issued.

To put this in perspective, Winter factors are to court cases what the four rules of gun safety are to gun culture. If somebody doesn’t fallow the four rules, they are at best ignorant, at worse willfully dangerous to themselves and others.

For the court to ignore Winter factors falls into the same category as pointing a loaded pistol at your junk and seeing how fast you can take up the slack in your trigger.

Katsas, the Circuit Judge writing above, says that the Winter factors were not used. The District judge did a shit job. Then went on to say that this case was not ripe to be heard. That Trump needed to wait until a TRO or a preliminary injunction was issued.

This is bogus.

Any time a Constitutional protected right or authority is delayed, irreparable harm has been done. A right delayed is a right denied.

The district judge has gone rogue.

The Trump administration was having none of this. They reached out to the Supreme Court, via their emergency docket, 24A790 to vacate the district court’s order.

So what authority did The People grant the President?

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. Article II, § 1, U.S. Constitution.

He is the boss of the executive branch. There doesn’t seem to be much limiting him. The limits are for Treaties, appointments of Ambassadors, public Ministers and Consuls, Supreme Court justices, and all other Officers of the United States.

Dellinger is an officer of the United States.

The Constitution does not explicitly lay out that the President can fire anybody. On the other hand, it has long been recognized that the authority to hire comes with the authority to fire.

What is the argument of Dellinger as to why SCOTUS should not vacate the order? That it would be granting an exception to the general rule that TRO’s can’t be appealed.

Amazing, the state seems to appeal any TRO that goes against them. But now TRO’s can’t be appealed?

Dellinger has not shown he has been harmed, much less irreparably harmed. It is unlikely that he will succeed on the merits of his case. Yet, he wants to let an inferior court stop the President while the case winds its way through the halls of (in)justice.

A hearing was held on Friday. I expect the judge to issue an order regarding the Preliminary Injunction on Monday.

The TRO expired on Friday, so the judge will either issue an order regarding the case. If she is going to go rogue, she will want to have that done on Monday to stop the President from doing his duty. If she wants to respect the constitution, she will issue an order denying the preliminary injunction.

In my businesses, I sometimes had a bookkeeper. She would receive the bills, make entries in the books, then bring me checks to sign to pay those bills.

I could also tell her to issue a check to somebody or some business. It was never her job to tell me not to pay that person, nor to verify if that entity was supposed to get the money. It was my job to make sure that when I told her to pay an entity, that entity should be paid, and how much.

She was supposed to tell me “no”, only if it would run afoul of the law or if we didn’t have the cash for it. If it meant we would be short later, she still did it.

The Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) is that bookkeeper for the Federal Government. They are tasked with making payments. They are not tasked with verifying that the payment should be made.

The decision to make a payment comes from other entities within the bureaucracy.

These payment files are checked against a list of “don’t pay”. If the recipient of the payment is on any of those lists, the payment is held. The agency that sent the payment file is responsible for determining if the payment is proper.

In the best of worlds, this would mean that no payments went to bad actors.

Now consider the case of the President issuing an Executive Order stopping payments to purple people eaters. There are dozens of agencies that send money to purple people eaters. All of those agencies are responsible for stopping payment files from going through to pay purple people eaters.

The BFS receives a payment file to send a payment to a PPE. If that PPE is not on the do not pay list, they will send the payment to that PPE. If the PPE is on a no pay list, the payment is held and the agency is informed.

If that agency sends back “pay it”, the BFS pays it. And the PPE gets money, regardless of what the President ordered.

When the bureaucracy is working with the President, every agency would have heard the “stop payments to PPEs” and would have done so. Any payment files that were already sent might be called back or stopped. If the BFS flags a payment as going to a PPE, everybody says “good job”.

If the bureaucracy is at odds with the President, they ignore the EO and do whatever the hell they want. If BFS flags any payments, they just order them paid.

If some agencies are attempting to obey the President, there can still be others that are not.

Worse, in many cases, contracts are let and budgeted. Some low level GS-2 with TDS can order a payment on a contract they control, and it just gets paid. Even if all of his bosses have told him “no”.

The President has ordered that no more payments to PPEs be made. To make this happen, he can either send people who are willing to obey him to every agency and every desk where somebody can send a payment to a PPE.

Or, he can send a few people to the BFS, and they can analyze each payment file as it comes in, check to see if it is a PPE payment.

Watching the bookkeepers doesn’t mean that the bookkeepers are doing something “wrong”, it is just the proper chock point in the flow of money.

The argument being made by these former treasury officials is that “career officials” are non-partisan and can be trusted to do the right thing.

For decades, BFS has been staffed by nonpartisan career employees led by nonpartisan career official…

There appears to be a claim without evidence that these workers are nonpartisan. At least they left off the “nonpartisan” when describing the fiscal assistant secretary, their boss.

They claim that all these nonpartisan career employees have undergone a security screening. Screening is one of those weasel words we see people use when they want the reader to think one thing when it isn’t true.

When I purchase a firearm, I fill out a 4473 and a “background check” is performed. This is a type of “security screening”. Having undergone a “thorough security screening” does not mean that this person has a clearance. If they had clearances, the brief would have said they have clearances.

This is intended to make it seem that the DOGE team’s actual clearances are not as thorough or complete as the BFS security screening. The reality is that any real clearance is likely better than the screenings these people got.

There is more, I’ll leave you with Grok’s explanation, it isn’t bad.