They have as much authority as they can get away with claiming. Since the president is brazenly defying laws, courts, and the constitution, there’s no reason states shouldn’t push for more autonomy, even if that autonomy may be legally contentious.

But really that’s beside the point. If the state government is too afraid to take a meaningful stand on this, they should focus their attention on other pressing issues instead of passing meaningless laws that make people feel better without materially changing anything.

unless they are mobilized by the president.

So is this purely performative or is there some case where this would somehow be relevant?

Loud cars. So fucking lame.

The state government needs to start putting together a plan to protect us from abduction.

This is exactly what I’m referring to, yes. If people withdraw their support, the regime always collapses. However, things usually have to get bad for people to feel motivated enough to do this.

He has near full control of the executive branch, which is perhaps the most powerful force in our society. But it is not the only force. We have seen resistance from the judiciary, from universities, from law firms, from businesses, from unions, and of course from ordinary people. Right now most of this resistance has been fairly weak and disorganized. But I expect it to grow in strength as the ineffectiveness of his governance becomes more apparent and his popularity drops.

That’s not to say we should be complacent. Most people here are relatively educated and radicalized to see where things could be headed if Trump is not stopped. Everyone reading this should be thinking about how they can safely resist and especially who they can connect to and cooperate with to make this resistance stronger and more effective.

I didn’t say anything about elections.

Bullshit. Every leader, even a dictator, needs public support.

The deeper they get their claws in, the less support they need. But Trump doesn’t have them in that deep yet.

This is what so many liberals and “moderates” fail to understand about our political system. You can’t just create a quasi-caste system where a tiny number of people have near complete economic power over their “lessers” and expect that type of mentality and relationship not to spill over into politics. This idea that we can have democratic government and an oligarchic economy is a complete fantasy.

So the question is: do your prefer oligarchy in both or democracy in both? For me it’s an easy answer.

Lol that is not within the control of a random individual judge.

Good for him. It’s time to escalate this. However I am afraid the Supreme Court will pacify lower judges who try to act.

Probably didn’t develop fully yet. Eggplants are picked before they fully ripen. They could also be aborted seeds that will never grow too.

At least 40 in the past century. But also I consider threats of violence (especially implicit ones) to be a distinct tactic from actual violence both in terms of effectiveness and ethics.

40ish is a pretty good number.

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/01/can-nonviolent-struggle-defeat-a-dictator-this-database-emphatically-says-yes/

Depends on what you mean by peaceful. Plenty of violent, authoritarian dictators have been overthrown by largely nonviolent collective action.

Interesting. It always amazes me that all across the world politicians lie, victimize, and manipulate their people, and we can all see it in other countries. Yet in every country, so many people think “but not our leaders, they are different, they are better!” It’s quite sad.

We should never respect those who enforce that respect through violence.

Is it respect or fear? To me those are different.