I agree with much of what you say, but I was confused because the judge blocking the executive order isn’t the same as trying to make the administration do a thing; it’s more like telling the people at the NIH “ignore what that guy just said, business as usual (for now, at least)”. If that’s the case, I’m unclear on why things are still blocked up at the NIH. Because of this, I took the radical step of reading the linked article.

In many ways, it didn’t help; I suppose it makes sense that one of the harms of someone willfully breaking the rules is that it becomes harder to discern what those rules actually are (were?). However, one of the lawyers quoted in the article suggests that the NIH officials who are currently carrying out the blocked order may be in contempt of court. This makes sense to me, based on the understanding I outlined above. But wait, there’s more.

After the block continued to be de facto in place despite being blocked de jure, the judge issued another ruling to try to force the Trump administration to rescind the order. This is concerning because as you highlight, this Judge has no recourse to enforce this judgement. Whereas before, the blocking of the order was the Judge speaking to the NIH officials, those top officials have seemingly gone “no, we’re not listening to you, we’re listening to him”. As I have said, they may be in contempt of court by doing this, but that’s not relevant when we’re looking at urgently ensuring that years of research isn’t ruined by this. By issuing a new ruling to try to force Trump to rescind the order, the judge has been forced to step outside of normal procedure in a way where they’re doomed to fail; it’s fairly obvious that Trump will go “no, make me”, and then fuck knows what the judge is going to do.

I think the judge knows this too, but what the fuck can they do (in their role as a judge) in this situation? Oh man, it’s so fucked.

I’m more likely to have conversations. I tended to lurk pretty deep in threads on Reddit, or on niche hobby communities, but that vibe is much more available here.

There seems to be more good faith discussions here. I see more people apologising, or responding well to being called out. I realise this is largely a function of size of the site, and thus this nice energy is likely fleeting, but I am heartened by it nonetheless; people like us will always exist, and there will always be a place for us (even if we need to make it ourselves).