This is my third Paul Engelmayer post so I created a tag for him. To recap, he's a judge in the Southern District of New York, which is the federal district court for Manhattan. I've described his accomplishments previously. On Saturday he granted a temporary restraining order requested by several state Attorneys General:
enjoining the defendants [Donald Trump and Scott Bessent] during the pendency of this action from granting to political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department access to Treasury Department payment systems or any other data maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information ....
It's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order bars appointees and employees from outside the Treasury Department--the part I bolded modifies the preceding three categories of people. He then further clarified this statement by writing:
the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any ....
Again, it's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order only applies to people outside of Treasury, and to people inside of Treasury who haven't gone through all the vetting and training required to handle confidential information. And if these types of people have this particular confidential information, they should destroy it.
But we live in the dumbest timeline of the MAGA cinematic universe so stupidity ensued. DOGE's doofus overlord called for him to be impeached. Of course, Trump offered the opinion that Engelmayer is "crazy" for temporarily restraining an unelected, unconfirmed ketamine addict working at a fictional government department from having unfettered access to the United States' money supply.
And then there's this:
Tom Cotton and Adrian Vermeule got their undergraduate and law degrees at Harvard. JD Vance graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State and got his JD at Yale. All three of these guys can read and understand Engelmayer's order.
They know it doesn't bar Bessent from accessing Treasury systems unless he hasn't completed the required background checks and training, in which case it likely maintains the status quo--you can't do that job and access all the secret stuff until you've completed all the security requirements.
And they know this isn't judicial interference, it's a TRO. It's temporary. This means the requesting party showed they will suffer irreparable harm so the judge made the other party pause to maintain the status quo for a few days while we figure out what the hell is going on.
Most importantly, they know this is exactly what the judiciary is supposed to do--determine what the law says and whether any particular act conflicts with it. It's been this way for over 200 years, we learned that in high school.
These Ivy League schmucks need to watch more Schoolhouse Rock.
Or maybe they watched it and took the circus metaphor too far by staffing the endeavor with a bunch of clowns.
Maybe I'm the clown. Remember when I said elections have consequences?
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It's become clear that the tactics include bum-rushing the gates with EOs and unconstitutional acts, figuring that security will catch some but not all violators. Doubly difficult when *security* includes enablers and party-over-country turnstiles with legs.
engelmayyyerrrrrrr!
I didn't recall the last post linked here, so it may have predated my arrival in the GTB comments section. Goodlatte was my member of congress for 30 years (early in his career he swore he'd bow out after six terms). Now he's been replaced by an even more odious sycophant who sits comfortably in a safely gerrymandered seat.
vermuele's given first name is cornelius. robber baron-looking motherfucker.
So is someone shaming Tom Cotton for his loose knowledge of how "law" works? This is all pretty shitty. It will get better when Trump dies and the cowards can relax their sphincters for a spell, but I'm not sure how much.
In grosser news, I experienced increasing pain over the course of the day in my right eye, and it got increasingly red and bloodshot, and I couldn't find anything floating around in there so I figured I must have gotten pinkeye from one of my filthy zkids and I went to urgent care where a PA poked around in my eye with his fingers and a Qtip and some fluorescent dye and discovered that I had an eyelash growing INTO my eye, and every time I blinded or moved my eyeball it abraded my cornea. Armed with this miserable information, I bombed over to a nearby optometrist who ooohed and aaahed over my freakish eye hair and even had the student who was shadowing him and an assistant look through the magnifying lens so they could see my horrific growth. Then he plucked the sumbitch out of my inner eyelid with some tweezers, applied some antibiotic, charged me $20 and told me to put some eyedrops in there periodically for the next 48 hours.
reminiscent of the great gtb polyps incident
Masterful deployment of sumbitch, Z. And 20 bux seems reasonable.
But did you get a diablo sandwich afterwards?
for a minute there i thought we had a sentence of zed. i also thought the story was going to take us somewhere else, a far scarier place but fortunately not!
btw - yesterday an suv passed me too quickly for me to get a picture of its "zman" sticker on its back window. so, they're out there if you'd like to add one to your whip.
As a follow up to the eye issue - I got pink eye a couple years ago...from my dog because she loves to sit her ass on pillows. I now remove my pillows from my bed each morning.
You got dogass pinkeye?
I didn't do the story full justice (Buford T. Justice) Danimal. Before he yanked the hair he asked "How's your tolerance for pain?" After the yanking was over he admired the eyelash and held it aloft so the young ladies could see it while he gasped "Look at that monster!" I accepted the fact that I'm growing hair in weird places as I get older, but this is too much.
we are at that age. a fairly common find for me is a 1/2" ear hair that seemingly grows overnight. sadly, none on the noggin.
mark - taking the boy for his UF visit this friday...he's got the grades & gpa but getting into UF these days is no easy feat for in-staters.
Hey Danimal, question: Why so difficult for in-state kids to get into UF? You'd think bar would be raised for out-of-state applicants, if it's about academic credentials. Unless it's financial, and system chases out-of-state dollars. Or state system is big enough that they can be exclusive and funnel kids who come up juuuust short to other schools/campuses. I'll hang up and listen.
Yes, Z - dog ass pink eye. Not great, Bob.
As for UF, Dave - I don't know the specific reasons why it's so hard to get into for in staters but it definitely is. I was a very good student but I'd stand no chance of getting in if I was in high school these days.
myth or fact - who knows OBX Dave. folks here that are more plugged into the ed. system claim that the # of kids that can be accepted by county is capped. we are in one of the better counties for public ed., top 5 depending on which site you rely on, so it's competitive to begin with. on top of that, the added growth/population statewide has more and more folks applying to UF each year (67k in total in & out of state for next year; 60k for the current year). today's acceptance rate is about 1 in 4 when just a few years ago was 1 in 3.
you should have mark put in a good word for young declanimal. my nephew is a gator grad, too, and a us naval aviator. i'm sure his word is gold.
good ideas rob, and kind offer. might take you up on that! i've already penned a rec from mark.
I was told there would be no math
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