Tag Archives: austria

United States

It is becoming increasingly clear that the only thing standing between Trump and unfettered power is the American judicial system.

His spineless acolytes in the Republican Party control both houses of Congress and the geriatric Democratic Party appears to be sinking under a sea of Executive Orders.

The courts, however, have acted. So far they have ordered the administration to lift its funding freeze on USAID and the salaries of thousands of federal employees.

The question now is: What will Trump do? Legally, he should abide by the court’s ruling and—if he is determined to get his way—appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, where, he hopes, the 6-3 conservative majority will rule in his favour.

But that is not Trump’s way, and Supreme Court support is not a given.

The signs are that Trump will simply ignore the court rulings and either carry on and appeal or—even more likely—carry on and not bother to appeal. If he takes either approach Donald Trump will have created a major constitutional crisis.

The power of the judicial system relies on the two other branches of government respecting and accepting the court’s  judgements. It is called checks and balances and THE RULE OF LAW.

There is nothing in the US constitution which gives enforcement powers to the judiciary—except the legal principle of contempt of court.  If Donald Trump ignores court rulings then he can be held in contempt and detained or fined until such time as he “purges the contempt.”

This is not a criminal law. It is not a civil law. It is the only weapon that the courts have to enforce their judgements. It was used against Trump in 2022 when he was fined $10,000 a day for failing to provide subpoenaed documents in his fraud trial.

The same law could also be applied to Elon Musk and his DOGE team.

A person cannot be pardoned for contempt of court. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity does not apply to contempt of court. So, where is the brave judge willing to take on Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the MAGA  crowd?

Germany

As Germany’s federal election approaches the two front runners—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) are battling for the young men’s vote.

Increasingly it is the 18-30-year-old men who are playing the kingmaker’s role in Western democracies. And they are swinging further and further to the right.

In the 2024 British general election, young men played a vital role in winning five parliamentary seats for Reform. 12.9 percent of men aged 18 to 30 voted Reform compared to just 5.9 percent of the women.

In the States it was disgruntled young men who dunnit for Trump. Sixty percent of the young male vote opted for Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey. Trump attracted only 20 percent of the women in the same age group.

Trump was especially popular with poorly educated young white men, but he also won half of the young male Latino vote and a third of the African-American young men.

In Germany the young male vote played a major role in the AfD winning 16 percent of the vote in the European elections and 31 percent of the vote in elections in Saxony and Brandenburg.