Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The Supreme Court used to use the shadow docket, where it gives a quick and binding decision without explanation, mostly for death penalty cases. For Trump, the court has done these more often, often giving Trump powers that seem unconstitutional, allowing him to take actions difficult to reverse even if he loses later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXFj-_HCq0Y
Trump administration lying in court and defying court orders. The U.S. is not a healthy democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9dZk9YwguE
“A divided Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Education Department to fire almost 40 percent of its workforce four months after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to begin closing down the department.
The justices, by an apparent 6-3 vote announced Monday, lifted an injunction a federal judge in Boston granted in May against the firings. That judge found that the staff cuts were so drastic they would prevent the department from carrying out duties mandated by Congress. He also said the mass firings appeared to be part of Trump’s plan to eliminate the Education Department entirely, despite a lack of congressional authorization to do so.
…
The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision, but all three liberal justices joined a 19-page dissent that accused the court’s conservative majority of favoring the Trump administration when considering emergency appeals.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
…
The majority stressed in that decision that the high court was not giving its legal blessing to any specific plan to downsize any particular agency. But now it appears to have done just that with the Education Department.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/supreme-court-education-department-ruling-00452134
The Constitution clearly puts the power of deciding to go to war in the hands of the Congress. The attack on Iran was a clear act of war. It was not authorized by Congress. The attack on Iran was unconstitutional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06f9bioCYRY
“The administration is using a process known as “rescission” to pursue the cuts, which allows the White House to ask Congress to claw back money it has already approved. The process has not been successfully used in over two decades, and the Senate rejected a rescission request in 2018, during Trump’s first term.
Lawmakers must approve the cuts within 45 days of the request — July 18 — or Trump is required by law to spend the money. The administration has said that this could be the first of several rescission requests.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/clocks-ticking-codifying-doge-cuts-174930140.html
“it’s perfectly legal for members of Congress to visit ICE detention facilities, even unannounced. And ICE’s attempt to circumvent that requirement threatens the constitutional system of checks and balances.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/19/ice-insists-that-congress-needs-its-permission-to-conduct-oversight/
“Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the law that governs presidential authority to order military strikes, there are three lawful ways for a commander-in-chief to order the bombing of another country. None of them appears to cover the strikes carried out on Saturday.
Here is the relevant section of the law (emphasis added): “The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
The first two options provided by the law are clearly not involved here, as Congress did not declare war against Iran and did not pass an authorization for the use of military force (as was done to allow the invasion of Iraq in 2002).
The third circumstance also does not apply to Trump’s attack on Iran, which was not carried out in response to an attack on American troops and did not respond to a crisis threatening American soil.”
…
“The War Powers Act should not be treated as a series of suggestions that can be discarded when they seem inconvenient. Indeed, limits on executive power are most essential at the moments when they are inconvenient—otherwise, they are meaningless. Trump’s attack on Iran was not just an assault on a suspected nuclear weapons program; it was yet another blow against the separation of powers and the fundamental structure of the American constitutional system.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/22/the-attack-on-iran-is-unlawful/
“Given that Congress wasn’t consulted about Trump’s weekend strikes on Iran either (more on that in a bit), the administration’s “we’re not at war” insistences allow it to pretend it’s not completely ignoring the Constitution.”
…
“Nevertheless, Republican Congressional leaders have cheered on Trump’s unconstitutional attack on Iran. Most rank-and-file Republicans have offered support as well, with a few notable exceptions like Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who got roasted by Trump on Truth Social for his trouble.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/23/just-dont-call-it-a-war/
“Let’s start with the role of the courts. The idea that the judicial branch owes special deference to the elected branches of government was thoroughly rejected by the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution. “As to the constitutionality of laws,” Luther Martin told the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on July 21, 1787, “that point will come before the judges in their proper official character. In this character they will have a negative on the laws.” Federal judges, Martin explained, “could declare an unconstitutional law void,” thereby overruling the actions of the elected branches. None of the delegates disagreed with that.
“This Constitution defines the extent of the powers of the general government,” Oliver Ellsworth told the Connecticut Ratification Convention on January 7, 1788. “If the general legislature should at any time overleap their limits, the judicial department is a constitutional check. If the United States go beyond their powers, if they make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void; and the judicial power, the national judges, who, to secure their impartiality, are to be made independent, will declare it to be void.”
James Madison, often called the “father of the Constitution,” made the same point in his June 8, 1789, speech to Congress introducing the Bill of Rights. The proper role of the courts, Madison said, was to act as “an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/30/what-j-d-vance-gets-wrong-about-judicial-deference-to-executive-power/
Trump repeatedly acts corruptly, and our institutions are not working properly to stop it.
The Congress should investigate and possibly impeach for such corruption, but the Speaker of the House dismisses it as false claims while saying that what the Biden crime family did was worse, even though those allegations are misleading bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQcWxiu9GwE