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Tag: supreme court decisions
Trump's Supreme Court States The Obvious: He Owns Them

Trump's Supreme Court States The Obvious: He Owns Them

Yesterday morning the Supreme Court ruled on the Colorado case striking Donald Trump from its election ballot because, as the Colorado Supreme Court held, he is an insurrectionist as defined under paragraph 3 of the 14th Amendment. As expected, they threw the case out, effectively deciding for Trump and against Colorado. The decision was interpreted as a huge win for Trump practically everywhere: “A massive victory for Trump” screamed CNN; “The U.S. Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a major victory,” chorused Reuters.

Donald Trump himself, like the megalomaniac he is, cruised over to his social media lie-factory and yelled from whatever rooftop it’s under, “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”

The vote on the court was 9-0, meaning that all nine justices voted for Trump’s position that a single state, Colorado, cannot throw a candidate off its ballot under the 14th Amendment. The decision for the court as a whole was unsigned, but there were two concurrences disagreeing with the decision on a somewhat less than subtle ground we’ll get to in a moment.

One of them, written by Justice Amy Comey Barrett of all people, uttered the quiet part out loud. She openly said what the whole court wouldn’t – that the case was so terrifying, they just pushed it off their desks. “In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”

She may as well have begun with “Oh, my goodness!”

You have to wonder what it would take to shock this Supreme Court into taking action -- maybe a decision by a court in a state like Alabama ruling that in some circumstances it’s okay to murder Black people in cold blood?

I guess what Justice Barrett said was a version of Bush v. Gore, another “politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election,” when the Supreme Court told the world they didn’t really mean it as they installed George W. Bush as president even though Al Gore was ahead in the vote count. Remember how, having injected themselves into the election, the Supreme Court said that’s not what they were doing by trying to limit the damage when it held that the case was not to set a precedent? That was like saying, “Oh, that body over there with democracy on its forehead? Whatever you do, don’t pay attention to that.” Barrett’s concurrence did something of the same thing. She said she agreed with the result of the decision – her favorite president gets to stay on the ballot – but not with the, uh, methodology of how the majority got there.

What the five justices in the majority did was this: they, and the rest of the court for that matter, utterly ignored the finding by the Colorado Supreme Court that Donald Trump had committed insurrection. How could they do that when the whole purpose of paragraph 3 of the 14th Amendment was to deal with the results of the insurrection which had just taken place, namely the Civil War? Well, the Supreme Court said it’s not our job to enforce the 14th Amendment. That’s up to Congress.

Which is like saying, oh, we’ll just leave that problem up to the snarling pack of rabid dogs over there. They’ll get together and do it for us.

To call this position taken by the court bullshit isn’t sufficient. It’s a gigantic, muciferous, glob of a lie. Besides dealing with the scourge of insurrection, the 14th Amendment was written after the Civil War to confer citizenship rights on former slaves and to ensure that the Southern states, which had treated them like property, afforded former slaves and every other citizen “equal protection under the laws.” Brown v. Board of Ed is just one example of when the Supreme Court enforced the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal rights under the law, and many, many other similar cases have addressed the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment without the help, if it could be called that, of Congress.

So, why is the court at this juncture pointing over there across First Street on Capitol Hill and saying, in effect, “it’s their problem"? Because they know the Congress can’t get itself together to keep the fucking government open by passing a budget, much less address the issue of the damn insurrection that took place right there in front of them and forced them from their offices and chambers and left five dead.

Donald Trump did that, and the three justices on the court appointed by him, along with the other three Republican justices in his thrall, will not be the ones who uphold the law in the Constitution which so clearly disqualifies him from holding a federal office. They’re scared of offending Trump and his violent followers. Why, if they did that, it might interrupt the vacation they’re planning this summer at one billionaire’s Adirondack camp or another billionaire’s salmon fishing stream.

I have become accustomed to reading these appeals court decisions. Hell, it has become a major part of my job. But I have trouble finding the words to describe what a profile in cowardice this Supreme Court decision is. If they use this decision as precedent and continue washing their hands of enforcing the 14th Amendment, it spells the end of equal enforcement of the laws in this country. To leave enforcement of basic rights up to the Congress is to disavow the responsibility the Supreme Court took upon itself in Marbury v. Madison to be the final arbiter of what the Constitution says and what the law means. Leaving those decisions up to the band of yahoos who are running things in the nation’s legislature is like asking the thieves who just robbed the bank to toss us a few pennies as they divide up their ill-gotten gains.

This decision negating the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment, raises the question of whether the three post-Civil War amendments -- ending slavery, conferring the right to vote, and ensuring equal protection of the laws without regard to race, creed, or national origin -- will have any force at all in the coming years. The Supreme Court already eviscerated the rights of Black people to vote with Shelby County v. Holder. What is next on the right-wing agenda? Allowing segregated schools? Enforced labor for immigrants seeking citizenship?

Steel yourselves. I’m afraid this is just the beginning.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

When Will Americans Push Back Against Tyranny Of The Minority?

When Will Americans Push Back Against Tyranny Of The Minority?

In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Even so, I’m willing to go on record as saying people predicting an impending civil war or the imminent breakup of the United States are quite mistaken.

For all the turmoil and bad feeling abroad in the land, not to mention on the Internet, the things that bind Americans together as a people are far stronger than the things that divide us. Which is the main reason I believe that a partisan Supreme Court’s efforts to impose what amounts to a “tyranny of the minority” upon the nation as a whole are destined to fail.

One way or another, people just aren’t going to have it.

Now my own sense of patriotism may differ from yours. If I never again hear that dreadful, chest-beating Lee Greenwood song, it will be too soon. I’ve come to dislike the unholy racket of July Fourth celebrations almost as much as my poor terrified dogs. (Even Martin, my orange tabby sleeping companion, came running in around midnight, slinking about two inches off the floor.) The infernal noise went on for another hour.

It doesn’t help that here in Arkansas the temperature’s always somewhere between 95 and 100 on Independence Day — the absolute worst time of year.

So, when do I experience patriotic zeal? Well, March Madness, the opening weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, never fails to inspire me with Woody Guthrie-style emotion. All those striving teams from all those far-flung American places. What a wonderful country!

It’s been a while, but I used to drive every summer from Arkansas to an old friend’s ranch outside Livingston, Montana— 26 hours each way, intoxicated by the beauty of the unfolding landscape. Nothing made me happier than stopping for a greasy truck-stop breakfast somewhere in western Nebraska. Have you seen the remote beauty of the Sand Hills? You should.

Having grown up in overcrowded New Jersey, I’ve always loved wide open spaces. Accompanied by a couple of slumbering basset hounds, I’d be singing to myself all the way:

This land is your land, this land is my land.

From California to the New York island.

This land was made for you and me.

One year, I rented a cassette tape of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove from a bookstore in Cody, Wyoming for the drive home. Pulling into Little Rock two days later with a couple of hours remaining, I was tempted to roll on to Memphis just to learn how the story ended.

But here’s the problem: The seven states I drove through--Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana—have a combined 14 U.S. Senators: thirteen conservative Republicans, and Montana Democrat Jon Tester.

Their combined populations add up to roughly 12 million, give or take.

California and New York alone have around 60 million citizens between them, and just four U.S. Senators, all Democrats.

The Founding Fathers couldn’t have anticipated that any more than they could AR-15 assault rifles. There are small states that lean Democratic, yes. But the power imbalance between what H.L. Mencken called “The Cow States” and the nation’s urban population has created sustained partisan gridlock in Washington. Add the undemocratic filibuster, and it becomes increasingly difficult to get anything useful done.

Hence the tyranny of the minority.”

“Our current system,” writes Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times, “favors geography over people and the interests of the minority over those of the majority.” The January 6 insurrection along with “the partisan lawmaking of the Supreme Court have thrown those counter-majoritarian features of the American system into sharp relief.”

By overturning Roe v. Wade, the court has created a crisis of legitimacy, Bouie adds, where “the fundamental rights of hundreds of millions of Americans are functionally overturned by an unelected tribunal whose pivotal members owe their seats to a president who won office through the mechanism of the Electoral College, having lost the majority of voters in both of his election campaigns.”

As I write, several Cow State Republican governors have found themselves unable to answer reporters’ questions about whether a ten-year-old girl in Ohio should be forced to deliver her rapist’s child. Children having children.

The tyranny of the minority, indeed.

Actually, there’s no real constituency anywhere in America for such a grotesque policy. But it’s amazing none of these politicians had thought up a sensible answer. They haven’t had to, partly because the Supreme Court’s Roe ruling was written by partisan hothouse flowers with little experience of the outside world.

So now the Supreme Court has announced its intention to delve into what’s called the “independent state legislature theory,” according to which GOP-dominated legislatures could override their own states’ voters in presidential elections—pretty much what soon-to-be-disbarred Trump lawyer John Eastman tried to pull off in 2020.

One way or another, the American people won’t let that happen.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Constitutional Right To Abortion

Supreme Court Strikes Down Constitutional Right To Abortion

Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Friday ended the right to abortion in a seismic ruling that shreds half a century of constitutional protections on one of the most divisive and bitterly fought issues in American political life.

The conservative-dominated court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision that enshrined a woman's right to an abortion, saying that individual states can now permit or restrict the procedure themselves.

"The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," the court said.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said "abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.

"The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion," he said.

Dissenting were the three liberals on the court.

The ruling will likely set into motion a cavalcade of new laws in roughly half of the 50 US states that will severely restrict or outright ban and criminalize abortions, forcing women to travel long distances to states that still permit the procedure.

The opinion shredded the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling by the nation's highest court that said women had the right to abortion based on the constitutional right to privacy over their own bodies.

Alito's opinion largely mirrors his draft opinion that was the subject of an extraordinary leak in early May, sparking demonstrations around the country and tightened security at the court in downtown Washington.

Barricades have been erected around the court to keep back the protesters gathered outside -- after an armed man was arrested on June 8 near the home of conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The court's ruling goes against an international trend of easing abortion laws, including in such countries as Ireland, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia where the Catholic Church continues to wield considerable influence.

Victory For Religious Right

It represents a victory of 50 years of struggle against abortion by the religious right but the anti-abortion camp is expected to continue to push for an outright nationwide ban.

The ruling was made possible by the nomination of three conservative justices to the court by former Republican president Donald Trump -- Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The case before the court was a Mississippi law that would restrict abortion to 15 weeks but during the hearing of the case in December several justices indicated they were prepared to go further.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 13 states have adopted so-called "trigger laws" that will ban abortion following the move by the Supreme Court.

Ten others have pre-1973 laws that could go into force or legislation that would ban abortion after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Women living in states with strict anti-abortion laws will either have to continue with their pregnancy, undergo a clandestine abortion or obtain abortion pills, or travel to another state where the procedure remains legal.

Several Democratic-ruled states, anticipating an influx, have taken steps to facilitate abortion and clinics have also shifted their resources.

Travel is expensive, however, and abortion rights groups say abortion restrictions will severely impact poor women, many of whom are Black or Hispanic.

The 'Great Cuckold' Who Inspired Alito's Contemptuous Opinion

The 'Great Cuckold' Who Inspired Alito's Contemptuous Opinion

Think about it this way: If Justice Samuel Alito gets his way, and the Trumpist Supreme Court majority voids Roe vs. Wade, many states will be forced to begin criminal investigations of women who suffer miscarriages. Don’t give me that crying act, sweetheart. In this state, abortion is murder.

After all, it’s not as if the police have anything better to do.

Exactly how the authorities are supposed to know who’s pregnant to begin with is a tricky question. Maybe doctors will be required to turn them in. Call them “mandatory reporters,” like teachers who encounter child abuse.

And what about those home pregnancy tests? Maybe they’ll need to be taken under official supervision. Perhaps pharmacists can be deputized.

Hippocratic Oath be damned.

In the spirit of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Republican state legislators are considering prosecuting women who travel, say, from Missouri to Illinois for legal abortions. Can we expect Texas to administer pregnancy tests at the Mexican border—going and coming? Otherwise, there could be as many gynecologists as cut-rate dentists in Juarez.

Look, if all this sounds like a bad joke, I wish it were. Most Americans believe that there’s a right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution. The very austere Justice Alito, however, assures us that’s not so. His draft opinion overturning Roe vs. Wade, the 50-year-old Supreme Court precedent granting American women reproductive freedom, astringently points out that the word “abortion” does not appear in the text.

Of course, neither do the words “cellphone” or “woman.” Women participated in the Constitution’s, pardon the expression, gestation not at all. They played no role in 18th century American political life—one of the many reasons Constitutional “originalism” makes so little sense. Slavery too.

The overall tone of Alito’s draft opinion was best described by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: "Alito’s writing reflects the current tone of right-wing discourse: grandiose and contemptuous, disingenuous and self-contradictory, with the necessary undertone of self-pity as justification."

In my view, turning government over to law school all-stars was never a good idea. Rationalizing the irrational is what they do. Indeed, I suspect Alito himself is as good a suspect as any for who leaked the fool thing to the media, placing maximum pressure on his colleagues to affirm it.

And speaking of irrationality, Alito’s 92-page opinion relies for much of its historical analysis on 17th century English jurist Matthew Hale, who pronounced the abortion of a “quick child” a “great crime.” (A “quick child” is a fetus whose mother can feel its movements, that is, five or six months along.) Polls show most Americans would agree, but more about that to come.

Among historians and legal scholars, Matthew Hale is notorious for having also decreed that a man can’t rape his wife, as a woman cedes property rights to her womb at marriage. He also presided over one of England’s most notorious witchcraft trials in 1662, sentencing two elderly widows to be hanged.

Some learned authority, no?

Hale's 17th century biographer John Aubrey wrote that the eminent jurist’s first wife “made a great cuckold of him,” but that’s neither here nor there, and I’m ashamed of myself for mentioning it. For whatever cause, he definitely had an attitude about women.

The main reason Americans think there’s a right to privacy is the Fourth Amendment, which affirms that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

Think about it: What could possibly be a person’s own damn business more than the decision of whether or not to bear a child? Do you really want the government to monitor your neighbor's intimate life? Your own? If you’re like most Americans, no, you pretty much don’t.

So often in the forefront, Oklahoma has already imprisoned a woman who had a miscarriage after taking illegal drugs—a Native American woman, naturally. It’s hard to imagine them investigating debutantes.

Regardless, polls have shown that the great majority agrees with Bill Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” More than two-thirds of respondents told a 2018 Gallup poll that they wouldn’t like to see Roe v. Wade reversed. Most favor little or no restriction on first trimester abortion, but feel quite differently about late term procedures—pretty much the standard courts have established in the decades since 1973.

Now minority leader Mitch McConnell tells reporters that a post-Alito Republican Senate “certainly could legislate in that area.” Which can only mean, Michael Tomasky deduces in The New Republic, “that Republicans are contemplating a federal law to make abortion illegal—everywhere.”

New York, California, everywhere.

And what then? President Biden vetoes it, the 2024 presidential turns on it, and the USA ruins a lot of women’s lives and tears itself to pieces.