Not arguing your conclusion, but to answer the question regarding the question

Just appealing a ruling doesn't mean he doesn't have to follow the ruling. He still has to follow the ruling until a judge, any judge involved in the case, says that he doesn't have to follow the ruling as either a temporary stay of said ruling or a permanent judgement.

So if he doesn't do as ordered (and I agree that he won't) he is 100% in violation of the law AND the judge's orders.

But also he's immune to prosecution for official acts, so why should Trump give a shit about any of that?

The judge ordered the administration to report back by Sunday or Monday night with plans on how it would happen.

Actually two different judges in different states ruled this same way with the same requirement.

Nothing. They might throw some more peaceful protests. Woo.

This is an excellent point. Trump brought out 77.3 million votes for his coalition. Meanwhile, 75.0m voted Harris, and 3.0 million voted third party (mix of ideologies, not all would-be Harris votes). Add to that 90+ million non-voters, which probably has some fraction of the 6 or so million voters who voted for Biden in 2020 who didn't turn out for Harris. Convince 29k people in Wisconsin, 80k in Michigan, 120k in Pennsylvania, and like 45k in Nevada to turn out for Harris, and we're not having this conversation right now. We don't need all the cult to switch votes. Frankly, 1% swapping or 2% actually turning out is all we need. And people dooming about how set the Trumpers are seem to be working more to depress enthusiasm amongst Blue Team players than actually save democracy.

The ruling which states that SCOTUS itself is the final arbiter of what constitutes an "official act." So if (lol) there's ever a non-GOP president again, SCOTUS has the ability to take away Presidential Immunity whenever asked to rule on a relevant case. A neat trick that everyone seemed to forget during the Biden admin.

Best we have is Civil Contempt. It's different than criminal contempt, which can be pardoned by the President and must be enforced throught the executive or the Marshalls service. A judge can appoint anyone to enforce civil contempt rulings, including someone who doesn't report to the federal executive.

Lots of people's don't understand the difference between civil and criminal, and a automatically assume criminal is always stronger. But civil is a lot more flexible because civil and criminal have different goals and remedies.

Criminal penalties are punishment for committing crimes. People think of murder and theft, but by far the most common criminal convictions are traffic violations. You get caught speeding and you have to pay a pre-defined penalty or take a driver's ed class or whatever. For the most part, criminal convictions can result in fines, imprisonment, or execution.

Civil is different. Civil cases aren't seeking punishment - they're seeking relief. That is, in a Civil case, the Court can make you do something or stop doing that thing.

For an easy example that I run into pretty often in municipal government, I'll highlight the difference between Civil and criminal cases for the same offense: building a fence past your property line into the public right-of-way.

When I take someone to court in that case, I can go criminal or civil (or both).

If I take them to criminal court, the judge can make them pay a fine. But the judge can't make them remove the fence. We can issue separate citations every day and have 14 charges on the docket each week, but that's it. There are some billionaires in some areas who actually build illegal fences and just pay the $500/day in fines because money isn't an object to them.

But when I take them to civil court, the city isn't seeking punishment for what they've done - it's seeking relief. That is, instead of a fine, the judge can order that the fence be removed, and (and this is the big point) that if it ISN'T removed after the order the judge can appoint someone else to go on the property and forcefully remove it.

We actually have a case in my city where we're have a court-appointed third-party private firm preparing to tear down a large part of house that cost 9 figures because the owner is refusing to carry out the judge's order regarding their illegal construction. The judge didn't want to put the city in charge because the impact on property tax revenue of tearing down such an expensive piece of property might convince the city to turn a blind eye.

When an order isn't obeyed, a judge can appoint someone to carry out the ruling, and unlike in a federal criminal case which requires that the judge appoint the Marshall's Office, a civil ruling specifically doesn't have that restriction on the judge.

Sorry, but that attitude is exactly why they keep gaining ground. That argument is propaganda that JD Vance and Adrian Vermule (the modern Carl Schmitt who is fucking obsessed with the OG Carl Schmitt) have been trying to promote for quite some time.

First it was JD Vance claiming that judges don't have the authority to overrule a president's executive authority. It's not that JD Vance graduated from Yale without ever learning about checks and balances. It's that he went on TV, and used his position of authority to state a lie that this administration needs to be true. When judges kept overruling Trump and using the legal system to undo much of the shit that he did, it back peddled to well he's just going to take it to the supreme court anyway.

While that's true, it's turned into the Trump administration being bogged down with hundreds of lawsuits. While the supreme court is corrupt as fuck, it takes time for them to actually hear cases and make a decision. So claiming that judges and congress don't still act as speed bumps to Trump's evil plans is frankly bullshit.

If we can make it another year and prevent him from cancelling or rigging the elections, then we can take the house back and begin actually investigating some of this bullshit. This time next year the propaganda will be back to the standard: Your vote doesn't really count, or why bother voting because both sides are the same. Just ignore the fact that some people are willing to work very hard and dump millions into propaganda campaigns discouraging voting, and rigging the law to make sure voting is made as difficult as possible.