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Most of the fascist coup is voluntary.
All of the checks and balances depended on people in positions of authority and power putting up a meaningful resistance; not just the virtue signal of an oath.
There's a lot of pressure to avoid telling your boss "No." It even begins in compulsory education. Do what you're told or suffer the consequences.
Exactly none of the US system of checks and balances includes expecting an employee of the executive branch to defy the head of the executive branch.
It works by the courts invalidating executive orders as illegal or unconstitutional, and the Congress refusing to fund or legislate at the executive's whims.
Our checks and balances are working fairly well, especially considering that the GOP hold majorities in every part of the federal government. The problem is just that Congress let the other two branches assume too much of its own authority.
Fucking what?
For real. Congress mandated, and courts ordered the release of the Epstein files and the DOJ went 'nah brah'. There is a massive constitutional crisis unfolding on multiple fronts and I just cant fucking believe how most Americans still have the freedom blinders on.
From a purely federalist standpoint the Epstein files are as irrelevant as any murder or rape. Child trafficking and sexual abuse are already illegal, and if the full unredacted Epstein files included conclusive proof that Trump raped a kindergartner to death it wouldn't change enough votes to matter.
Trump is exposing the very real flaws in the US system and the bundle of precedents whose existence dissuaded actual change during the imperial-esque exoansion of executive power during the cold war, but he hasn't broken the constitutional system. Congress still passes laws, those laws still go into effect, and the executive branch still largely obeys the adjudicated application of those laws by the courts.
We have very real problems and Trump is definitely trying to break the system so he doesn't end his life in prison, but it's not fucking broken yet. Although it is a system that's historically led to a bunch of terrible things, from Jim Crow and the Trail of Tears to the 80s AIDS epidemic and Anne Frank being sent back to Germany to die.
~I may have misremembered if Anne was one of the German Jews turned away while fleeing Germany, but it definitely happened to some of her peers.~
Congress passed a law, requiring release of the files, courts ordered their release, the administration just didn't comply. The fact that happened means the crisis is now.
That's not what happened. There was a release of Epstein files, just not as much as was intended by Congress
The next step would be for someone with standing to file a suit with the courts, who would then rule if the law passed by congress requires more than is done already given the external rules of the constitution and all the other laws congress has passed.
The executive branch applying laws in a way that Congress did not necessarily intend is not enough for a "constitutional crisis", wherin the federal system has broken down in a way that cannot be corrected without discarding the system.
There are other crisis, like SCOTUS presuming to interfere in the administration of elections or dictate whether or not Congress really meant it when they passed a law, but those have unexhausted and nonforclosed plausible remedies if Congress decides to actually try and fix them.
They responded to the July 2nd court ordered dealine, based on a lawsuit brought by journalist Katie Phang, by providing massive redactions and still millions of missing files, she sued based on the epstein files transparency act, Todd Blanche has even conceded the he is in violation of the act in their continued withholding of names and info. If congress can pass legislation and this kind of response is accepted, in the capital and in the courts, then the law doesn't mean much.
Did the courts issue an order that was neither stayed nor recalled which the executive hasn't conformed to?
Filing a lawsuit is exactly how laws are applied. And the system runs on temporary and final court orders that constrain or command executive action, that are often appealed and formally stayed pending appeal. Blanche or trump or god himself conceding to anything doesn't matter unless and until a court issues an order.
Laws are not self executing, and while their plodding reaction to contemptuous behavior is infuriating it is how the system has always worked.
I'm way more worried about ICE than I am the Epstein files. Not to say that lining those child-raping pedophiles against a firing squad isnt an important goal, but we can't jump to the neremberg trials when the Nazis still occupy France.
It was neither stayed or recalled before the deadline. I hope that you're right and the slow moving gears of justice catch up, but from where I sit the nation is losing ground on multiple fronts of unconstitutional fuckery, and if the citizenry responds 'wait and see' I fear that there's no real mechanism to stop them before the law and the bill of rights are mere window dressing for something much darker.
If we had a unicameral sovereign parliament we'd have devolved into a dictatorship almost a decade ago.
Our checks and balances aren't meant to keep the US from doing shitty things. They're meant to preserve the responsiveness of the government to the people. If enough of the people in enough of the country keep electing people who promise to do shitty things, shitty things will get done. That's democracy.