Just slightly over a year ago, I said here that the courts would be too slow to be of any help in dealing with this coup.
And that is proving to be the case.
Today’s example of this is:
This is actually one of the most important ones, because it deals with what is probably the coup’s most-likely-to-succeed tactic for injecting absolute chaos into this fall’s election: ordering the Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on the federal government’s approved list.
It is, bluntly, a total dog’s breakfast of an executive order; the federal government doesn’t have the authority to do anything it orders.
And how did a court address this?
By refusing to do anything, of course.
What? You expected something else?
The judge specifically “declined” to do anything because the order has not yet been carried out and thus no harm has been done yet.
Never mind that the harms that it will cause are obvious and inevitable.
Also never mind that the federal government doesn’t have the authority to do any of it, and is specifically prohibited from doing some of it.
No harm done yet = no action from the court.
At least they didn’t just punt it for “standing“; this way when a harm is actually done, the case is already ongoing and can be resumed more quickly than a new one could be started. Maybe.
But it’s still a terrible decision, supported by a stupid premise and intentionally ignoring not just the current situation but the entire point of injunctions.
So, yes, the courts will be too slow.
But they will also be too sympathetic, captured, mendacious and foolish.
