Despite us being over three months into Trump 2.0, I still periodically still find it breathtaking how much unhinged cartoon villain bullshit they can cram into any given exercise of power. This story for example touches on the way the Klepto Kaiser is using the Department of Justice as his personal legal team to further the objectives of his donors, Trump's attempts to seize power for the presidency from other government bodies, and Downmarket Mussolini's fake "national emergency" scheme to do blatantly illegal shit because Pam Bondi thinks it walks.

This week the Department of Justice filed complaints or lawsuits against four states, New York, Vermont, Hawaii, and Michigan, to stop them from enforcing their own state climate laws and mechanisms to hold the fossil fuel companies killing us all, financially accountable for their crimes against humanity.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-phony-energy-emergency

Trump's 'Phony Energy Emergency' Used by DOJ to Target State Climate Laws

"On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed complaints against New York and Vermont over their climate superfund laws, which empower states to seek financial compensation from fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate mitigation. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of human-caused global heating.

Separately, the DOJ also sued Hawaii and Michigan "to prevent each state from suing fossil fuel companies in state court to seek damages for alleged climate change harms."

As the article mentions, Bondi's maneuvers here stem from Trump's April 8th sweeping executive order in which the president claims the authority to erase any law at any level of government that might impede the fossil fuel companies that put Trump into power; because he also declared a fake national energy emergency. Like most of Der Leader's executive orders, the dictate is vague and broad enough to essentially empower Trump to bulldoze anyone or anything he doesn't agree with, which is pretty much all climate or fossil fuel extraction legislation or regulations. The order is also almost certainly illegal; whatever that actually means in a burgeoning fascist dictatorship where the regime is openly ignoring a number of court orders as we speak.

It's hard to really drill down here and find the greater problem with all of this because virtually everything about this executive order is itself an existential crisis. The planet is literally on fire, climate crisis is real, and billions of (mostly poor) people's lives hang in the balance; the last thing anyone needs is for Trump to empower extractivist mass murder companies to rip more fossil fuels we shouldn't even be burning out of the ground because they're greedy, and Trump wants to pretend he can drive gas prices down and create an American economic utopia by drilling more oil as the world turns to ash. Secondly, to our great shame Trump was elected President of the United States, but he was not made King of the realm and he does not have the power to override the authority of every State government in America on a whim; nor should any president have that authority, as winger fascist "states rights" debate bros have been reminding us all for six decades. If Trump wants to dismantle state climate laws and regulations, his Big Oil donors are going to have to take it through the courts just like everyone else; and yet here's Trump trying to bully their way across the finish line on the cusp of being sued by Hawaii, with one signature.

In my mind however the most shameful and egregious part of all this is the way Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice to fight the legal battles of extractivist corporations and donors who helped him become president. Not only does it make clear the reality that Trump perceives the Justice Department as the president's own private cadre of lawyers who exist to prosecute his grievances and manipulate the law to further his fascist objectives, but it's also a pretty clear example of quid pro quo and bribery. The message here is if you donate enough money to Trump, you get Trump's lawyers to work for you and those lawyers happen to be the literal Department of Justice; and there's not a lotta wiggle room to argue otherwise, quite frankly. Obviously none of this is how either the Justice Department or presidential power is supposed to work, but as usual the Klepto Kaiser and his bootlicking Attorney General, Pam Bondi, don't seem to care.

#Fascism #ClimateCrisis #Trump #PamBondi #DoJ #Hawaii #Michigan #Vermont #NewYork #ClimateSuperfund #BigOil #FossilFuels #Extractivism #Capitalism #Bribery #ExxonMobil #Chevron #BP #Shell