#posse comitatus

[buckmyluv]

goddamn for all its flaws, the west wing was perhaps one of the best-acted shows and (often) among the best-written

fucking POSSE COMITATUS

martin sheen’s president bartlet is some mix of:

- furious that he’s being forced into this choice with sharif

- aggrieved that it’s all being treated like a foregone conclusion

- devastated that this last (or maybe only) piece of humanity has to be ripped away from him

and he plays it with this casual demeanor as if he can deny reality. every response and question he brings to the sit room is like him playing the part, a figurative sidelong glance and a smirk like “look at these guys” to the audience

surely, this is the most absurd meeting i’ve ever sat in, he says

knowing this choice is one he was (probably) always going to have to make, given the state of the world

and perhaps it’s just that he couldn’t (didn’t have to) confront it until now

but every decision he’s made has been of this magnitude

[ok and then obviously CJ AND SIMON]

[DEBBIE FIDERER]

what a fucking episode

[ausetkmt]

Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans

Former President Donald Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up people living in the United States without legal permission on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a COVID-19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — although this time, he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

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He plans to scour the country for immigrants living here without legal permission and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due-process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

In a public reference to his plans, Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September, “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”

The constellation of Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of immigrants living in the country without legal permission would be banned from the U.S. or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Trump is eyeing.

In a second Trump presidency, the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests would be canceled. U.S. consular officials abroad will be directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants to block people the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes. People who were granted temporary protected status because they are from certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the United States, would have that status revoked.

Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.

And Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to parents living in the country without legal permission — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

In interviews with The New York Times, several Trump advisers gave the most expansive and detailed description yet of Trump’s immigration agenda in a potential second term. In particular, Trump’s campaign referred questions for this article to Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s first-term immigration policies who remains close to him and is expected to serve in a senior role in a second administration.

All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Miller contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them, he portrayed the Trump team’s daunting array of tactics as a “blitz” designed to overwhelm immigrant rights lawyers.

“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error. Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”

Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy group that repeatedly fought the Trump administration, said the Trump team’s plans relied on “xenophobic demagoguery” that appeals to his hardest-core political base.

“Americans should understand these policy proposals are an authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life — tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike,” Schulte said.

The Tools to Exploit

Since Trump left office, the political environment on immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more capable now of exploiting that environment if he is reelected than he was when he first won election as an outsider.

The ebbing of the COVID-19 pandemic and resumption of travel flows have helped stir a global migrant crisis, with millions of Venezuelans and Central Americans fleeing turmoil and Africans arriving in Latin American countries before continuing their journey north. Amid the record numbers of migrants at the southern border and beyond it in cities like New York and Chicago, voters are frustrated, and even some Democrats are calling for tougher action against immigrants and pressuring the White House to better manage the crisis.

Trump and his advisers see the opening and now know better how to seize it. The aides Trump relied upon in the chaotic early days of his first term were sometimes at odds and lacked experience in how to manipulate the levers of federal power. By the end of his first term, Cabinet officials and lawyers who sought to restrain some of his actions — like his Homeland Security secretary and chief of staff, John Kelly — had been fired, and those who stuck with him had learned much.

In a second term, Trump plans to install a team that will not restrain him.

Since much of Trump’s first-term immigration crackdown was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted in his favor: His four years of judicial appointments left behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges to his first-term policies.

The fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals provides an illustration.

DACA is an Obama-era program that shields from deportation and grants work permits to people who were brought unlawfully to the United States as children. Trump tried to end it, but the Supreme Court blocked him on procedural grounds in June 2020.

Miller said Trump would try again to end DACA. And the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court that blocked the last attempt no longer exists: A few months after the DACA ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Trump replaced her with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Trump’s rhetoric has more than kept up with his increasingly extreme agenda on immigration.

His stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants — pushing for a border wall and calling Mexicans rapists — fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. As president, he privately mused about developing a militarized border like Israel’s, asked whether migrants crossing the border could be shot in the legs and wanted a proposed border wall topped with flesh-piercing spikes and painted black to burn migrants’ skin.

As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.”

Trump had similarly vowed to carry out mass deportations when running for office in 2016, but the government only managed several hundred thousand removals per year under his presidency, on par with other recent administrations. If they get another opportunity, Trump and his team are determined to achieve annual numbers in the millions.

Keeping People Out

Trump’s immigration plan is to pick up where he left off and then go much further. He would not only revive some of the policies that were criticized as draconian during his presidency, many of which the Biden White House ended, but also expand and toughen them.

One example centers on expanding first-term policies aimed at keeping people out of the country. Trump plans to suspend the nation’s refugee program and once again categorically ban visitors from troubled countries, reinstating a version of his ban on travel from several mostly Muslim-majority countries, which President Joe Biden called discriminatory and ended on his first day in office.

Trump would also use coercive diplomacy to induce other nations to help, including by making cooperation a condition of any other bilateral engagement, Miller said. For example, a second Trump administration would seek to reestablish an agreement with Mexico that asylum-seekers remain there while their claims are processed. (It is not clear that Mexico would agree; a Mexican court has said that deal violated human rights.)

Trump would also push to revive “safe third country” agreements with several nations in Central America and try to expand them to Africa, Asia and South America. Under such deals, countries agree to take would-be asylum-seekers from specific other nations and let them apply for asylum there instead.

While such arrangements have traditionally only covered migrants who had previously passed through a third country, federal law does not require that limit, and a second Trump administration would seek to make those deals without it, in part as a deterrent to migrants making what the Trump team views as illegitimate asylum claims.

At the same time, Miller said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would invoke the public health emergency powers law known as Title 42 to again refuse to hear any asylum claims by people arriving at the southern border. The Trump administration had internally discussed that idea early in Trump’s term, but some Cabinet secretaries pushed back, arguing that there was no public health emergency that would legally justify it. The administration ultimately implemented it during the coronavirus pandemic.

Saying the idea has since gained acceptance in practice — Biden initially kept the policy — Miller said Trump would invoke Title 42, citing “severe strains of the flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like RSV and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration being a public health threat and conveying a variety of communicable diseases.”

Trump and his aides have not yet said whether they would reenact one of the most contentious deterrents to unauthorized immigration that he pursued as president: separating children from their parents, which led to trauma among migrants and difficulties in reuniting families. When pressed, Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out reviving the policy. After an outcry over the practice, Trump ended it in 2018, and a judge later blocked the government from putting it back into effect.

Mass Deportations

Soon after Trump announced his 2024 campaign for president last November, he met with Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants.

In an interview, Homan recalled that in that meeting, he “agreed to come back” in a second term and would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

Trump advisers’ vision of abrupt mass deportations would be a recipe for social and economic turmoil, disrupting the housing market and major industries including agriculture and the service sector.

Miller cast such disruption in a favorable light.

“Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” he said. “Americans will also celebrate the fact that our nation’s laws are now being applied equally and that one select group is no longer magically exempt.”

One planned step to overcome the legal and logistical hurdles would be to significantly expand a form of fast-track deportations known as “expedited removal.” It denies immigrants living in the country without legal permission the usual hearings and opportunity to file appeals, which can take months or years — especially when people are not in custody — and has led to a large backlog. A 1996 law says people can be subject to expedited removal for up to two years after arriving, but to date, the executive branch has used it more cautiously, swiftly expelling people picked up near the border soon after crossing.

The Trump administration tried to expand the use of expedited removal, but a court blocked it, and then the Biden team canceled the expansion. It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will rule that it is constitutional to use the law against people who have been living for a significant period in the United States and express fear of persecution if sent home.

Trump has also said he would invoke an archaic law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process. That law allows for summary deportation of people from countries with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.”

The Supreme Court has upheld past uses of that law in wartime. But its text seems to require a link to the actions of a foreign government, so it is not clear whether the justices will allow a president to stretch it to encompass drug cartel activity.

More broadly, Miller said a new Trump administration would shift from the ICE practice of arresting specific people to carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of immigrants living in the country without legal permission all at once.

To make the process of finding and deporting immigrants already living inside the country without legal permission “radically more quick and efficient,” he said, the Trump team would bring in “the right kinds of attorneys and the right kinds of policy thinkers” willing to carry out such ideas.

And because of the magnitude of arrests and deportations being contemplated, they plan to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants as their cases progress and they wait to be flown to other countries.

Miller said the new camps would likely be built “on open land in Texas near the border.” He said the military would construct them under the authority and control of the Department of Homeland Security. While he cautioned that there were no specific blueprints yet, he said the camps would look professional and similar to other facilities for migrants that have been built near the border.

Such camps could also enable the government to speed up the pace and volume of deportations of people who have lived in the United States without legal permission for years and so are not subject to fast-track removal. If pursuing a long-shot effort to win permission to remain in the country would mean staying locked up in the interim, some may give up and voluntarily accept removal without going through the full process.

The use of these camps, he said, would likely be focused more on single adults because the government cannot indefinitely hold children under a long-standing court order known as the Flores settlement. So any families brought to the facilities would have to be moved in and out more quickly, Miller said.

The Trump administration tried to overturn the Flores settlement, but the Supreme Court did not resolve the matter before Trump’s term ended. Miller said the Trump team would try again.

To increase the number of agents available for ICE sweeps, Miller said, officials from other federal law enforcement agencies would be temporarily reassigned, and state National Guard troops and local police officers, at least from willing Republican-led states, would be deputized for immigration control efforts.

While a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act generally forbids the use of the armed forces for law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act at the border, enabling the use of federal troops to apprehend migrants, Miller said.

“Bottom line,” he said, “President Trump will do whatever it takes.”

[socialjusticeinamerica]

There are tens of thousands of them, these figures cited are much too low. Further these groups often overlap; III%ers, Patriot Prayer, Proud Bois, Boogaloos, Klan, Atom Wagfen, Aryan Nation, Posse Comitatus, Sovereign Citizens, Hutaree, Idaho/Pensylvania/Texas, New York Light Foot Militias, Ohio Defense Force, Michigan/Montana/Missouri Militias, Army of God, and many, many more.

[odinsblog]

What is the Posse Comitatus Act?

I’ve said it before and I will keep on saying it: If it was wrong when Trump did it, then it’s still wrong when Biden does it.

Title 42 was wrong when Trump enacted it, and Title 42 was wrong when Biden sued to continue using it to target Haitian and Mexican refugees and asylum seekers. And now Biden is sending U.S. troops to the border to “assist” the Border Patrol.

Stop sending troops to the border, and start sending lawyers, asylum judges and pop-up courts. Refugees and asylum seekers have a right to seek legal asylum.

Wrong is wrong. Preferential, race-based asylum and refugee policies that favor European immigrants above all others doesn’t magically stop being racist just because “our team” is doing it. Seeking asylum is legal. For everyone.

“Stop sending troops, start sending lawyers, asylum judges and pop-up courts. Refugees and asylum seekers have a right to seek legal asylum.”

Joe Biden is fundamentally altering how, when, where and who can legally, and more easily, seek refuge on American soil. This is wrong.

I am desperately waiting for all of the, “Oh, don’t worry we’ll pull him left after the election” liberals to start speaking up. Suddenly they’re all on mute.

[awellreadmannequin]

I’m pretty sure Chevreuse is less a doughnuts and shooting your dog cop and more of a bugging your dacha and arranging your disappearance cop. Like, you show her brooklyn 99 and tinker tailor soldier spy and ask which one is more representative of her work, she’d say the latter for sure. She’s giving NKVD more than NYPD, ya know? Girlie’s a soldier who does law enforcement and not a cop who larps as an operator. Fontaine clearly does not have an equivalent to the Posse Comitatus Act because there’s no way Chevreuse would be like that if it did.

[hybridmindthoughtsreloaded]

Agenda 47

Agenda 47 would turn America into an unconstitutional authoritarian police state with the President as dictator. It would effectively shred the United States Constitution into pieces.

1: Make homelessness and Urban Camping illegal. Violators would be rounded up by Government agents, charged with a crime, and put into FEMA camps away from society. Effectively killing the 8th amendment of the United States Constitution.

2: Death penalty for Human traffickers and drug dealers. This would operate the same way China operates for these crimes. Anyone accused and arrested for these crimes would have a swift trial and if convicted be swiftly executed. Effectively adopting the justice system of a Communist Dictatorship.

3: Using Executive Orders on day one to end natural born citizenship in America. Effectively killing the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution.

4: Implement an unconstitutional Nationwide "Stop and Frisk" policy and deployment of federal assets, including the National Guard, if local law enforcement refuses to comply with this order. Effectively violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and killing the 4th amendment of the United States Constitution.

5: Strictly enforcing existing gun laws and implement nation wide "Red Flag" gun laws that violate the 2nd amendment of the United States Constitution.

This is Trumps Agenda 47. This is the future the Right-Wing wants for America. This agenda is not hidden, its displayed proudly on Donald Trumps own website for everyone to see. This is the future your children will live in if you don't take a stand against this and fight for our rights, fight for the Constitution, fight for the freedom of future generations.

[caniscryptid]

Aftermath of shootout between Posse Comitatus members and the US Marshals. Medina, North Dakota, 1983

[youre-fired-s-seaborn]

absolutely obsessed with sam and toby’s b-plot in posse comitatus. they really said we’re going to give you an episode that is so emotionally fraught and full of earth-shattering decisions and tragedy but sam and toby?? those mad lads are going to send the motorcade down the street. just to fuck with traffic a lil. you love to see it

[reasoningdaily]

The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted by Congress in September, 1850, received the signature of Howell Cobb, of Georgia, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, of William R. King, of Alabama, as President of the Senate, and was “approved,” September 18th, of that year, by Millard Fillmore, Acting President of the United States.

The authorship of the Bill is generally ascribed to James M. Mason, Senator from Virginia. Before proceeding to the principal object of this tract, it is proper to give a synopsis of the Act itself, which was well called, by the New York Evening Post, “An Act for the Encouragement of Kidnapping.”

SYNOPSIS OF THE LAW

Section 1. United States Commissioners “authorized and required to exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred by this act.”

Section. 2. Commissioners for the Territories to be appointed by the Superior Court of the same.

Section. 3. United States Circuit Courts, and Superior Courts of Territories, required to enlarge the number of Commissioners, “with a view to afford reasonable facilities to reclaim fugitives from labor,”.

Section. 4. Commissioners put on the same footing with Judges of the United States Courts, with regard to enforcing the Law and its penalties.

Section. 5. United States Marshals and deputy marshals, who may refuse to act under the Law, to be fined One Thousand dollars, to the use of the claimant. If a fugitive escape from the custody of the Marshal, the Marshal to be liable for his full value. Commissioners authorized to appoint special officers, and to call out the posse comitatus.

Section. 6. The claimant of any fugitive slave, or his attorney, “may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person,” either by procuring a warrant from some judge or commissioner, “or by seizing and arresting such fugitive, where the same can be done without process;” to take such fugitive before such judge or commissioner, “whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner,” and, if satisfied of the identity of the prisoner, to grant a certificate to said claimant to “remove such fugitive person back to the State or Territory from whence he or she may have escaped,”—using “such reasonable force or restraint as may be necessary under the circumstances of the case.” “In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence.” All molestation of the claimant, in the removal of his slave, “by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever,” to be prevented.

Section. 7. Any person obstructing the arrest of a fugitive, or attempting his or her rescue, or aiding him or her to escape, or harboring and concealing a fugitive, knowing him to be such, shall be subject to a fine of not exceeding one thousand dollars, and to be imprisoned not exceeding six months, and shall also “forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost.”

Section. 8. Marshals, deputies, clerks, and special officers to receive usual fees; Commissioners to receive ten dollars, if fugitive is given up to claimant; otherwise, five dollars; to be paid by claimant.

Section. 9. If claimant make affidavit that he fears a rescue of such fugitive from his possession, the officer making the arrest to retain him in custody, and “to remove him to the State whence he fled.” Said officer “to employ so many persons as he may deem necessary.” All, while so employed, be paid out of the Treasury of the United States.

Section. 10. [This Section provides an additional and wholly distinct method for the capture of a fugitive; and, it may be added, one of the loosest and most extraordinary that ever appeared on the pages of Statute book.] Any person, from whom one held to service or labor has escaped, upon making “satisfactory proof” of such escape before any court of record, or judge thereof in vacation—a record of matter so proved shall be made by such court, or judge, and also a description of the person escaping, “with such convenient certainty as may be;”—a copy of which record, duly attested, “being produced in any other State, Territory, or District,” and “being exhibited to any judge, commissioner, or other officer authorized,”. “shall be held and taken to be full and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service or labor of the person escaping is due to the party in such record mentioned;” when, on satisfactory proof of identity, “he or she shall be delivered up to the claimant.” “Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as requiring the production of a transcript of such record as evidence as aforesaid; but in its absence, the claim shall be heard and determined upon other satisfactory proofs competent in law.”

[stetson-sarsaparilla]

Strange to see that NYC is deploying armed National Guard to subway stations, I feel like that has to violate posse comitatus somehow.

[tobiasdrake]

"The PATRIOT Act should cover the red tape. The U.S. Military is hereby seizing control of all Stark Industries assets."

*blinkblink* ...the counterterrorism bill permitting expanded surveillance of civilians and imposing harsher penalties for committing acts of terrorism? I'm not sure I understand how that applies. Sometimes people just write things, I swear.

What you're looking for is the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era bill that allows the government to order private corporations to manufacture particular products in times of crisis. The bill entered public knowledge due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as both Trump and Biden have used the DPA to mass-produce PPE.

When Ross tells Pepper that the government's ordering Stark Industries to mass-produce Liberator drones for war with Wakanda, he's invoking the Defense Production Act. Not the PATRIOT Act.

Of course, Ross can't do that. Only the President can invoke the Defense Production Act. And also it doesn't technically involve seizing of assets. It's a stern order given to the company, with penalties imposed for violating it.

But Ross doesn't even understand posse comitatus so we can't really expect him to know how the Defense Production Act works, I suppose.

[twwpress]

Weekly Press Briefing #48: May 21st - May 27th

Welcome back to the Weekly Press Briefing, where we bring you highlights from The West Wing fandom each week, including new fics, ongoing challenges, and more! This briefing covers all things posted from May 21 - May 27, 2023! Did we miss something? Let us know; you can find our contact info at the bottom of this briefing!

Challenges/Prompts:

The following is a roundup of open challenges/prompts. Do you have a challenge or event you’d like us to promote? Be sure to get in touch with us! Contact info is at the bottom of this briefing.

The Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda Josh/Donna prompt fest (hosted by @jessbakescakes and @thefinestmuffin) is open for claiming; fics reveal on June 24th. Details here.

@jessbakescakes is hosting a West Wing Rewatch running for the next 14 weeks. Details in this thread.

Photos/Videos:

Here’s what was posted from May 21 - May 27.

Dule Hill posted promoting his upcoming appearance on PBS’s Memorial Day Concert at 8/7c on Sunday May 28th. 

Josh Malina posted a photo of himself with Seth Rudetsky during an appearance on Sirius XM.

Josh Malina posted videos from a Ham4Ham that he participated in: 1 | 2

Mary McCormack posted a photo of her daughter in celebration of her graduation.

Melissa Fitzgerald posted a photo of her playbill from the audience of Leopoldstadt and a photo of herself with Josh Malina after the show. 

Rob Lowe posted a video of himself with his dog. 

Rob Lowe posted a BTS photo of himself with his brother Chad Lowe behind the scenes on the set of 911 Lonestar.

Peter James Smith posted a photo of himself and Ramon de Ocampo (who played Otto) at a play reading.

Donna Moss Daily: May 21 | May 22 | May 23 | May 24 | May 25 | May 26 | May 27

Daily Josh Lyman: May 21 | May 22 | May 23 | May 24 | May 25 | May 26 | May 27

No Context BWhit: May 21 | May 22 | May 23 | May 25 | May 26 | May 27

 Edits/Artwork:

#ABBEYBARTLET: just take your time, wherever you go. by @livsbenson [VIDEO EDIT]

This Week in Canon:

Welcome to This Week in Canon, where we revisit moments in The West Wing that occurred on these dates during the show’s run.

Season 3, Episode 21: Posse Comitatus aired on May 22, 2002.

Editors’ Choice:

This week we’re recommending fics set during or after the Gaza story arc and the events of S5E21 Gaza and S5E22 Memorial Day. As always, be sure to check tags, ratings, and archive warnings before reading. These episodes contain sensitive and potentially triggering content, so some of the fics here do as well. Please take care of yourselves!

Fallout by IDreamOfAJ [archived by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist] | Rated M | C. J. Cregg/Toby Ziegler | Complete | "Toby, why are you here?"

Whence Gaza Mourns by MAHC [archived by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist] | Rated M | Abbey Bartlet/Jed Bartlet | Complete | Post-ep for Gaza and Memorial Day

 She Will Be Fine by Emilys_List | Rated T | Jed Bartlet (No Pairings Listed) | Complete | A phone call between fathers.

 all we know is don't let go by mikaylawrites for defendingtheearth | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete | Donna nods, but a tear slips down her cheek. Josh reaches for her, wishing he weren’t wearing gloves so she could feel his skin on hers. She grabs his hand with both of hers, clutching onto him with surprising force until the anesthesiologist puts her under and her grip slackens. He watches her eyes close, unable to tear his gaze from her face.

The last thing he wants to do is let go of her hand, but one of the nurses gently tells him he has to leave. They guide him out of the room, and the moment the door closes behind him, Josh knows.

He’s in love with Donna.

In which the events of the Gaza arc bring Josh and Donna together rather than drive them apart (and Donna’s mental health gets the attention it deserves).

 let my love fix you up (when you're coming undone) by JessBakesCakes for hufflepuffhermione | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete | The Gaza Arc reimagined: what if Sam flew to Germany to make sure his friends didn't miss their third chance?

 we've been living on a fault line by sam_writes_fics for hufflepuffhermione | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete | “Are you two close?” Kate asks. “I mean, you must be, to some extent. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have flown all the way there.”

“Uh, yeah. We’re…” he gets the busy tone again. “We’ve been working together for a while.”

Kate tilts her head. “She works for you, doesn’t she?”

“Only technically,” he offers back, staring at the zero bars lighting up on his cell phone.

// 6x02: Josh spends five days at Camp David, and every night all he thinks about is Donna.

Fics:

Presenting your weekly roundup of fics posted in the tag for The West Wing on Archive of Our Own.

Josh/Donna

Errors and Omissions by Chinesepapercut | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | In Progress

Help Me Hold On To You by Shinyrosa | Rated M | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete

Domestic Days by spooky_spacegirl | Rated G | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | In Progress

Only One (For Me) by TemperanceCain for thefinestmuffins | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete

As the Dust Settles by spooky_spacegirl | Rated G | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete

C.J./Danny

all I need's a whisper in a world that only shouts by Luppiters | Rated G | Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg | In Progress

your love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep  by Luppiters | Rated G | Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg | In Progress

Off the Record by  onekisstotakewithme for daylight_angel, miabicicletta, Luppiters, hondagirll | Rated T | Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg | In Progress

 Leo/Sam

Here in the Darkness by JessamineHughes | Not Rated | Leo McGarry/Sam Seaborn | Complete

Beckhurst by JessamineHughes | Not Rated | Leo McGarry/Sam Seaborn | Complete

 Other Pairings/Gen Fic

On the Road (To the White House) by Mabis | Rated G | Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn | Complete

it started off with a kiss... now it ended up like this by imawkwardlysoc | Rated G | Sam Seaborn/Original Female Character | In Progress

Multiple Pairings

Not Quite the Parent Trap by eowyn_of_rohan | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss, Ainsley Hayes/Sam Seaborn | In Progress

Golden State by miabicicletta for Luppiters, onekisstotakewithme, hondagirll, ballroompink, stars_inthe_sky | Rated M | Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg, Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | In Progress

Operation in the Desert by mlea7675 | Rated T | Abbey Bartlet/Jed Bartlet, Helen Santos/Matt Santos, Josh Lyman/Donna Moss, Ainsley Hayes/Sam Seaborn, Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg, C. J. Cregg/Toby Ziegler, Will Bailey/Kate Harper, Zoey Bartlet/Charlie Young, Leo McGarry/Annabeth Schott | In Progress

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xx, What’s next?

[onekisstotakewithme]

seeing the opening with the press corps in "posse comitatus" is a reminder of everything I love about CJ and her press corps.

The banter, the dissemination of information, the symbiotic relationship <33

[lightdancer1]

In all the discussions over reparations, the omission of the Freedman's Bureau is a good look at how much the people who discuss what was and wasn't done actually know or prefer to neglect:

Before going to Rutherford B. Hayes and the Compromise of 1877, and with it the Posse Comitatus Act, a look at two other aspects of reality for Black people in the postwar South. The first is why one of those HBCUs has the name 'Howard,' after General Oliver O. Howard. The Northern Leonidas Polk without the treachery, he was a very devout Christian and a very moral man but a better person with prayers than he was battlefield leadership. His leadership of the Freedmen's Bureau was the first of many organizations in US history dedicated to reducing poverty and actually helping people in need. This is the closest the US government ever came to actually providing reparations and its omission from the writings of white supremacists is more to be expected than those of hoteps disappointed the US government doesn't give them the power to dismantle without a fight what they'd have to fight to get and which they refuse to do for the same reason the other 101st Chairborne do.

It had very real limitations, but it was also the thing that both actually existed and was one of the main faces of the military occupation the South hated so much.