The six members of the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court cast their ballots for Donald Trump on the last day of the court term, then ran out of town to begin their standard three months’ long vacation.
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It has become a tradition for me to write a series of blogs at the end of the Supreme Court term reviewing the major cases decided during the court year. I’m still working on this project, but it is not ready yet. Give me a few more days to digest the opinions the conservative supermajority dumped on the nation in the last few weeks. I find myself nearly overwhelmed by their blatant attempt to rewrite the Constitution and change our lives in ways I view with disgust and disappointment. I find it difficult to concentrate.
At times like these I like to think of better moments in the history of our great nation. We celebrate tomorrow our Independence Day, noting the date, actually July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress declared “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States….”
“The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epoch in the History of America,” Massachusetts delegate John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3. Adams, often prescient, vividly described the parades, “illuminations” and festivities he believed would be regular events, staged each year to note the occasion. We wound up celebrating the Fourth of July, the date of the signing of the final form of the declaration. But whatever the date the principal of the event was the delegates’ belief that a nation should rest not on the arbitrary rule of a single man and his hand-picked advisors, but on the rule of law.
Relax with your family. Celebrate your nation. Read something about our history. You can even watch the film of 1776, the Broadway musical based on that sizzling summer of 1776 in Philadelphia, when our nation was born. And reflect on what we are making of the legacy of the brave men who met and wrote the Declaration of Independence.
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There is no sugar-coating it. President Joe Biden had a train wreck in his first 2024 debate with Former President Donald Trump. Fifty-one million watched. I wrote that I had concerns because Biden had seemed physically feeble during some appearances in the last year. Right as he walked out on the debate stage, I saw those signs, Biden walking slowly and speaking slowly and in a soft scratchy voice. I did not expect to see him ramble and become incoherent, but he did that more than once. At other times he was clear, combative, and effective, defending his administration and listing his accomplishments. But you could not fail to notice the other moments.
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Donald Trump is now the first president to be tried and convicted of a crime, a Manhattan jury finding him guilty of falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star. It is the third time a jury of his peers has found him guilty, the previous two cases involving civil lawsuits for sexual abuse and defamation.
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Last week The New York Times published a photograph it had acquired that showed an upside-down American flag flying on the pole at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. This incident occurred in January 2021, just days after former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The flag is associated with Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Alito says he had no involvement whatsoever in the flag flying. The flag, he said. was briefly placed by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs. Alito also claimed he did not participate in the decision to display the flag. Sounds to me like Alito is throwing his wife under the bus.
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As of February 2023, the social video app TikTok said it had approximately 150 active monthly million users in the United States. This number is projected to increase by over five percent year-over-year, reaching 170 million users in 2024. Extremely popular with younger digital audiences, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media apps in the United States. The United States has the largest TikTok audience of any country. And that scares the hell out of many, including the members of Congress.
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There is no doubt anymore. The conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court is dedicated to electing Donald Trump to a second term.
The Trump justices made that clear last week as they considered his extraordinary claim that a president has an absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. The idea seems absurd on its face. A fundamental principal of the United States is that it is a nation of law. The framers of the Constitution, having overthrown one monarch, had no desire to create a new one. There is no evidence in the historical record that they believed a president should be immune from criminal prosecution. Two lower courts carefully considered Trump’s claim and rejected it completely.
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