SCOTUS betrays us again

The right-wing so-called "Justices" of the U.S. Supreme Court has let Elon Musk's DOGE marauders access the highly sensitive personal information held by the Social Security Administration.

The order, which lifts a preliminary injunction wisely granted by a district court (an injunction upheld by a divided Fourth Circuit), was unsigned but noted that Justices Kagan, Jackson, and Sotomayor did not join the majority. Indeed, the bulk of the text of the order is devoted to their objections; the actual reasons for the majority's decision are entirely absent.

This is not a formal decision of the Court: no trial has even occurred. However, you'd think that a Court majority that gave a shit about its own legitimacy in the public's eyes would have explained why it was throwing caution to the wind and giving a bunch of arrogant, reckless, and totally unsupervised Elon Musk zealots unlimited access to our data.

Consider the Court's own summary of what goes into deciding whether to stay a preliminary injunciton. (So we're all on the same page, the "stay applicant" here is the Trump Administration.)

When considering whether to grant a stay, this Court looks to four factors: “(1) whether the stay applicant has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies.” [citations omitted]

What makes the right-wing majority think the administration will succeed on the merits, in advance of a trial and in the absence of any evidence?

What irreparable injury will be inflicted if the DOGE pillagers have to wait a while? It's not like Social Security ion't working (setting aside, that is, the Trump Administration's own near-criminal mismanagement of it). Nor is the mission of DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, so urgent that it can't wait for a judge to review whether or not the administration's wrecking-ball approach to seeking "efficiency" actually passes legal and Constitutional muster.

Considering that "the other parties interested in the proceedings" include every damned citizen of the United States, not to mention lots of legal residents, staying the preliminary injunction — thus, again, permitting the lawless DOGE kids to access some of our most sensitive personal information — sure as hell will "substantially injure" the "other parties". The onus is on the SCOTUS right-wingers to say otherwise.

"Where the public interest lies" is in protecting our sensitive personal information from parties who have no damned business accessing it because they are in no legal jeopardy if they misuse their access. Again, the onus is on the SCOTUS right-wingers to explain why that's not the case.

But of course, those arrogant, dictator-friendly assholes in the right-wing majority on SCOTUS say nothing — literally not one word — to justify their aiding and abetting of Trump's autocratic power grab.

Why? Because they know no justification is possible — not if you believe in democracy and the rule of law, that is.

Which those arrogant, dictator-friendly assholes in the right-wing majority on SCOTUS emphatically do not.

To the regime's troops

Donald Trump, our domestic Dear Leader, is gutting the federal government without rhyme or reason. The one thing he can be counted on not to gut, though, are the security forces.

In the U.S. we're not accustomed to thinking in terms of "security forces". That term is reserved for other nations, covering the gamut of police, intelligence, and military personnel. In the U.S., when someone is arrested or federal property must be protected, we speak of the specific responsible agency: the FBI, the Park Service, ICE, etc.

However, those agencies and all the others operated by the federal government, like the CIA (which legally cannot operate domestically), the NSA, and the forces under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, can be thought of as the "security forces" of the U.S. government — and right now, they all answer to our domestic Dear Leader. He can behave like the tinpot dictators he so adores because when literal push comes to literal shove, he can call on hundreds of thousands of members of the security forces to do the dirty work.

So I address myself to you members of those security forces, because you are in a difficult moral position.

I'm sure you tell yourselves that your job is to follow orders from your superiors. So long as you do that, you say to yourselves, you aren't morally or even legally responsible for your actions.

That only gets you so far, though.

Admittedly, you almost certainly don't have enough information to judge whether the person you're hustling into your SUV off a quiet street is actually a criminal, or even a threat. You assume your bosses — the whole chain of command, in fact — are acting in good faith.

However, you do have enough agency — that is, enough free will and moral responsibility — to judge how valid that assumption of your superiors' good faith is.

You don't live under a rock. Can you defend the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, which even this administration admitted was an "administrative error"? Can you believe Trump's claim that his administration has no power to bring him back to the U.S., when this administration is paying El Salvador to hold prisoners there? Isn't it obvious that the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, would have Abrego Garcia back on a plane to the U.S. in a heartbeat if Trump asked?

Given that Trump lies so brazenly about his ability to get Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., how much confidence can you have that he acts in good faith about, well, anything? How confident can you be that Abrego Garcia is an isolated "error", that there aren't more innocent victims?

Remember, too, that Abrego Garcia has been ordered returned to the U.S. by the U.S. Supreme Court so he can be given due process, which neither he nor anyone else deported to that El Salvadoran prison has gotten. In leaving Abrego Garcia to rot in El Salvador, Trump is defying the Supreme Court.

If he doesn't consider himself bound by the orders of the Supreme Court, then what constrains him? "The law" doesn't constrain a ruler if he claims the right to say what the law is, which is what Trump has done.

How is he different from a dictator?

Your orders ultimately derive from Trump's wishes. How confident can you be that what you're doing is consistent with the actual law, much less with morality and true justice, when the man at the top no longer respects any of those things?

Trump has claimed power for himself that no man has ever claimed in this country's history, because claiming it would be unconstitutional.

You swore an oath to the Constitution, not to any one man. Whatever problems you hoped to alleviate by becoming a sworn peace officer or member of the military, can you in good conscience be part of a regime that no longer respects or abides by the Constitution?

A regime that tolerates no dissent and uses you to crush it?

A regime whose security forces, including you, abduct people off the street without identifying themselves?

A regime that uses you to deport legal residents without trial? (Those people wouldn't comply if they weren't being held at the point of your gun.)

Only you can decide whether this is a regime you can support.

Only you can decide whether you can do more good by resigning now, or by resisting from within for as long as the regime allows.

Only you can decide whether you will be able to look your children and grandchildren in the eye, and tell them that you fulfilled your Constitutional oath by following the orders of a man who betrayed his own, and know whether you're telling them the truth.

You cannot avoid making this decision every day you help to keep the regime in power.

If enough of you honor your oaths and your consciences, you can render a lawless, faithless president impotent to subvert the consitutional order further.

You are not solely responsible for restoring that constitutional order: we all have a part to play. But you will be singularly responsible if you help this lawless, faithless president to become a tyrant, ending our republic.