Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

What’s wrong with the separation of powers in the USA? There’s plenty of situations where judges issue injunctions that are in effect until the case is resolved.

E.g.

Virginia governor illegally purged voters within a certain time window. Courts said "yeah that was illegal, you need to stop" VA attorney gen said "no I don't." And while the court of appeals agreed with the lower court "yeah simple violation of the law. Reinstate revoked registration." The VA supreme court was like "nah fam, let's let the governor do his thing and we can figure this all out after the election." And everyone kinda stopped talking about it.

As a poll worker I had multiple people who had voter ID cards come in last November but required filling out paperwork to re-register them and have them cast a provisional ballot. Feels like they were connected as I hadn't dealt with that in the near dozen elections I've worked prior.

Once the same party controls the Senate, House, Presidency and Supreme Court, the powers are no longer meaningfully separate. Which is now the case.

(state powers are still separate; I'm guessing we'll see action from state AGs against sudden Federal actions which have disadvantaged their state)

Also, as Musk has figured out, the simple power of fait accompli. If you don't comply with a court order, someone has to make you. All of whom are Federal employees. Who are on the OPM payroll. Which he controls.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/supreme-court-justices-milli...

Then you have the current administration making veiled threats against senators to ensure they vote as intended.

https://www.rawstory.com/morning-joe-today-2671089005/

This is why we need reinforcement of the governmental structures and guardrails. The good faith handshake approach is broken, as we can see through current events. It is not resilient against a malicious executive.

Also wanted to say thank you for your work as a poll worker.

From an outsider's perspective, it doesn't look like it's working very well for you.

I'm not just talking about Trump - the "separation of powers" seems like a recipe for government shutdowns, pork-barrel spending to buy support, a politicised justice system, and being unable to hold politicians to account for failing to deliver their promises.

IANAL, but I believe that a judge can only order an injunction if a suit is filed by somebody who can show they have been out will be harmed by the action. It'd be nice if judges could be proactive for procedural or Constitutional violations.

Three out of four of those are the direct will of the voters. And the fourth is the indirect will of the voters as expressed by their President.

I think insisting that they always be at odds with each other is unrealistic and goes against the fundamental idea that people have a right to form a government that represents them.

It's like insisting that someone who is appointed to run a given department (e.g., Education, Interior, or EPA), is required to promote more spending or expansion of that department. There's no requirement like that and the decision to pare things back and limit the scope of a department again falls in line with the will of the voters. There's no rule that government is only allowed to grow bigger.

> e.g., Virginia governor illegally purged voters within a certain time window. Courts said "yeah that was illegal, you need to stop" VA attorney gen said "no I don't." And while the court of appeals agreed with the lower court "yeah simple violation of the law. Reinstate revoked registration." The VA supreme court was like "nah fam, let's let the governor do his thing and we can figure this all out after the election." And everyone kinda stopped talking about it.

The fact that he won the case means that it was not an illegal purge. It was expressly legal. The SCOTUS agreed as well: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/30/g-s1-30644/supreme-court-virg...

You can't claim the result of a case is "illegal" simply because you don't agree with it. Or is the very act of appealing a ruling itself an illegal act because you do not immediately bend the knee to the first judge that sides with your opponents?

> As a poll worker I had multiple people who had voter ID cards come in last November but required filling out paperwork to re-register them and have them cast a provisional ballot. Feels like they were connected as I hadn't dealt with that in the near dozen elections I've worked prior.

Were they people who checked the box on their driver's license form explicitly stating that they are not a US citizen? Because those are the people who were removed from the voter rolls by that clean up.

Just because a body disagrees with your desired interpretation of the law does not mean its corrupt. I disagree with the liberal justices on just about every split decision, but I don't think they're on the take. They simply have a different philosophy of the law.

I challenge you to find any specific court case taking up by the SCOTUS where you think the outcome was the result of corruption.

> Then you have the current administration making veiled threats against senators to ensure they vote as intended.

I'm more concerned about the other direction where the (at the time) Senate majority leader expressly threatened the SCOTUS to vote a particular way or they will "you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price": https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/rare-rebuke-c...

The context of the Supreme Court choosing to reverse 50 years of precedent regarding abortion is pretty important there. Especially as the justices involved were going against their explicit answers from their confirmation hearings, that it was settled law. Schumer also did not threaten violence.

Sure, but then there's no longer meaningful separation of powers and you've converged on a UK-like system where a majority, no matter how narrow, conveys all the power - but with a politicised court (UK SC is still generally agreed to be nonpolitical).

It's a really serious problem for the US that lots of very important rights like, say, interracial marriage in Loving v Virginia, came about as court cases despite and often against the will of the voters.

The presidential immunity case is another good one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)

I think the first question to ask is, if the U.S. had a democratic president during the time of this judgement, would the vote granting presidential still have been 6-3 along party lines?

Perhaps if it had been a democrat president more of the liberal justices would have voted for it too, but that still indicates a corrupted court. It's just corrupted the other way.

There was additional appearance of corruption in that Alito refused to recuse himself even though he projected a clear bias towards the Jan. 6 riots by both flying a flag supporting the rioters [1].

It's nine un-elected people with no term limits who make up a third of our government. No matter who is in charge it's going to be a little corrupt I'd say.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/scotus-alito-flag-controversy-...

Your whole argument basically falls apart with this logic: "Republicans wanted to cheat to put a Republican in power, until they were stopped by a court of law, and when defeated, appealed to powerful Republicans, who voted along party lines to give more power to Republicans."

Have you heard of a gentleman by the name of Clarence Thomas? If you have, I'm sure you've heard about some of the gifts he's been given by people who had upcoming business before the court?

Alternatively: "Republicans wanted to clean up the voter rolls by removing self-declared non-citizens. Democrats wanted to cheat by allowing those non-citizens to vote so they went judge shopping till they found one that was willing to temporarily stop the effort. Republicans followed the process and appealed through the court system. And the final ruling by the highest court in the land agreed with the Republicans that the action was legal.".

So I'd argue the Democrats challenging the case are the ones that ended up on the illegal side.

Can you prove that the entire list of cleared votes, was indeed 100% of people who were ineligible to vote?

Judge shopping is the GOP's favorite passtime. I hate both parties but it's been the GOP's tactic for ages. Go read up on Donald Trump judge shopping until he got a stooge to clear him for possession of intelligence documents he was unable to keep. Bear in mind, that some of those documents were our intelligence files on Israel's nuclear weapons program. Why do you think the Saudis sponsored a fucking golf tour on Trump's courses once they had access to those documents?

It’s utterly disingenuous to say Trump won. They straight up cheated.

> Perhaps if it had been a democrat president more of the liberal justices would have voted for it too, but that still indicates a corrupted court. It's just corrupted the other way.

Eh? Biden, a Democrat, was President during the time of that judgement.

The primary benefactor of the outcome of the case is clearly Trump as he's the one with open Federal lawsuits, but the POTUS at the time was a Democrat and the 2024 election had not happened yet either. So whatever immunity power the court granted, it was granting on an ongoing basis to Biden.

> There was additional appearance of corruption in that Alito refused to recuse himself even though he projected a clear bias towards the Jan. 6 riots by both flying a flag supporting the rioters [1].

There's an incredibly blurry line between bias an opinion. Having an opinion is not grounds for recusal. If he was at the capital or somehow involved with a lower court interaction, that'd be a conflict.

> It's nine un-elected people with no term limits who make up a third of our government. No matter who is in charge it's going to be a little corrupt I'd say.

I really don't think they're corrupt at all. There's just this sad framing of "us v.s. them" that makes people think that the only way someone could disagree is they are corrupt. I don't see it like that though. I just see a core difference of opinion (and I happen to side with one side much more than the other).

Or put another way: there’s a subreddit called something like /r/EmpireDidNothingWrong that puts forth the idea that nothing the Empire did in the Star Wars universe was illegal. In fact it was quite legal, as Palpatine famously says “I’ll make it legal”.

A fictional example sure, but if you can’t make the leap here, well, then you’re the one being disingenuous.

Republicans didn’t want to clean up the voter rolls, as you allege. They wanted to tip the election to Trump by any means necessary. This is so obvious that you’re likely to tell me not to believe my own eyes.

I fail to see how this is a valid example of a corrupt decision.

And if you're going to start prosecuting Presidents for official acts, we definitely should start with the one that was executing US citizens via drone strikes without a trial.

> The context of the Supreme Court choosing to reverse 50 years of precedent regarding abortion is pretty important there. Especially as the justices involved were going against their explicit answers from their confirmation hearings, that it was settled law.

So a judge can never change their mind on anything? And once a ruling is decided, it's carved in stone forever?

By that bankrupt logic we'd be stuck with Plessy v. Ferguson.

> Schumer also did not threaten violence.

I'd love to hear what other consequences you think he was eluding to when he said they will "pay the price". It's clearly not at the ballot box as SCOTUS are appointed for life.

"...Justice Department and advocacy groups sued, contending that the state had in fact purged at least some eligible voters and that it did so in violation of a federal law that bars systematic removals from voting rolls in the 90 days prior to an election. Specifically, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act creates a “quiet period” within 90 days of a federal election.

"A federal district court agreed, ordering Virginia to restore the approximately 1,600 voter registrations that were cancelled. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that order. Virginia then appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the state to strike the voters purged in the 90 days prior to the election.

"The state contended that the lower courts “misinterpreted the NVRA.” They argued that the “quiet period” cannot apply to noncitizens, since they are already ineligible to vote. Even if the “quiet period” did apply here, the state argued, the program was sufficiently individualized, not systematic."

So where is the cheating? Is it "cheating" to use the courts to resolve legal disputes? Or to misinterpret the law? Were both of the lower courts in on the cheating?

Sorry, bad typing. The judgement was for the ex-president while Biden was in office and my point was that the spread might have been different if the case was against a Democrat.

I agree about your line between bias and opinion, and I might have my own biases telling me when an opinion is a bias. However the judge for life thing we have here is not good for anybody.

If you have the capacity (I understand it's not compatible with everyone's schedule or capacity) I would recommend looking into it in your area as they usually need help, and it is a paid gig. It's easy to sign up the next time you go to vote, just ask the poll workers for the signup sheet.

I try to make it fun and make food for my precinct. Usually some bbq fresh bread and some sides, then feed any of the county voting board members who check in on us as well.

Good luck out there!