Roberts and his extremist compatriots on the Court face one serious problem: Trump also wants the justices to endorse his campaign against the authority and independence of the judiciary, potentially rendering the Court into a shameless stooge. As a result, the cost of the Supreme Court continuing to do Trump’s bidding may be to undermine the judicial power and authority that Republicans devoted so much effort to obtain.
Public Notice
Nobody said they were smart.
While much has been made of the delays in prosecuting Trump under Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, the players that actually ensured Trump would not be held accountable for his assault on the nation’s democracy were the rightwing jurists on the nation’s highest court who effectively crippled Jack Smith’s prosecution through a combination of calculated delay and a ruling that undermined the rule of law.
First, the Court delayed its immunity ruling for months, and thereby held the Trump prosecution in abeyance. Trump’s initial assertion of immunity in October 2023 was rejected by the trial court in December of that year; but proceedings in the case remained entirely stayed until Trump’s immunity claim was heard and decided by higher courts, a process the Supreme Court chose to drag out, despite a plea from the prosecutor for expedited review.
[...]
Second, when the ruling belatedly arrived, it was an early Christmas gift for The Donald. Authored by Roberts, the decision not only made it a practical impossibility for Trump to be tried before the election, but also granted him a far broader ambit of immunity than his lawyers had initially even thought of asking for.
Roberts declared that a president enjoys “absolute” or “qualified” immunity from criminal prosecution for any action taken in his “official” capacity.
[...]
Roberts’s immunity ruling not only gutted much of Smith’s case against Trump, it also sent a clear message: If Trump won the election, he could freely engage in even more egregious crimes, secure in the assurance that he would never face criminal accountability.
[...]
Trump has followed the model of dictators and ruled by decree, issuing barrages of “executive orders” in which he has asserted the right to run roughshod not only over fundamental rights, but also to violate to separation of powers.
With help from Elon Musk’s DOGE team, Trump is crippling institutions and programs whose existence is legally mandated and funded by Congress. [...] Trump is also using extortionate threats to force private persons, institutions (including universities and law firms), and states and localities to bend to his will.
[...]
As soon as judges began issuing rulings limiting Trump’s assaults on the Constitution, he and his cronies began threatening to impeach judges for ruling against Trump.
In response, Roberts released a statement solemnly declaring that "for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision."
This was not the first time Roberts responded to Trump’s dismissals of judicial authority and legitimacy. In 2019, Roberts rebuked Trump’s attack on an “Obama judge” for enforcing the nation’s asylum laws by stating, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
We laughed and laughed.
Roberts’s 2025 statement has already proven to be as ineffective as his 2019 one was. Rather than signaling any intention to back down, Trump shot back by declaring, "If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!"
[...]
As Trumpers have racked up losses in the lower courts, they’ve begun demanding that Roberts and company immediately step in to give Trump license to continue forward with his power grab.
For example, the Court is now considering an “emergency” Trump challenge to a ruling staying his illegal effort to cancel millions of education grants because they are purportedly infected with “DEI” (that is, civil rights). Trump has also sought immediate Supreme Court review of whether trial judges properly issued nationwide injunctions against his patently illegal effort to erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution. And he just asked the Court to allow him to continue to send Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, on the dubious pretext they are wartime enemies.
While it’s unclear what the Court will do in those cases, Trump has good reason to believe a majority of justices will be sympathetic to his dictatorial cause.
Their own corruption is very much a factor.
[A] majority of the Court may end up ruling that Trump is not only free to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and Federal Trade Commission (as he has already done), but he could also take over direct control of the Federal Reserve Board and personally set interest rates.
[...]
[T]he Court’s own hard-fought seizure of power from the elected branches of government could well be out the window if Roberts and his colleagues accede to Trump’s current demands and give up any pretense of judicial adherence to the rule of law.
After all, how can the rightwing justices who control the Supreme Court expect a future president — particularly a Democratic one — to accept rulings limiting the exercise of their power from a Court that served as the judicial stooge of an aspiring dictator?
You had me until that last paragraph. They can always expect a future Democratic president (which may never happen again due to Republican cheating and corruption) to accept legal rulings. Dems do that.
No comments:
Post a Comment