Tag Archives: politics

The Supremes Vote, Again

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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.

“[W]here, say some, is the King of America?” the patriot Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. “[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Yet four of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court, during oral argument in Trump v. United States, seemed willing to put a crown on Trump’s head. The mere thought is appalling. Justice Samuel Alito, let’s call him the “anti-patriot,” stands Paine’s words on their head:

JUSTICE ALITO: If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?

In other words, let’s give the president the right to do whatever he pleases and hope he doesn’t rather than rely on the judicial system to treat him fairly under the law. Keep in mind that no president has been charged with a criminal offense in the 235 years since the Constitution was ratified. In every case where incumbents lost their reelection bids, they all left without incident. Until Donald Trump, who continues to falsely contend that he won the 2020 election.

That this comes from a member of the highest court in the land is shocking, until one considers that the source is the same justice who didn’t hesitate to take from American women the right to control their own bodies and enact instead his own Catholic dogma. Alito wrote the Dobbs opinion, overturning the precedent of Roe v. Wade that had stood for fifty years. Then he headed to Rome to take a victory lap.

The Usual Suspects

Joining Alito are the usual suspects. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Gini actively crusaded to overturn the 2020 election and, in her role as lobbyist, was paid a hefty sum to do so, sat on the case in spite of his obvious conflict of interest.

The right-wing judges ignored the details of this case and looked instead to writing rules, something they usually argue should not be done. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who sits in the chair Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell stole from Merrick Garland, said, “I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who likes beer, likes women, and had some major debts disappear in a manner that has never been explained, prompted Trump’s lawyer to add another requirement to holding a former president accountable. Not only must there first be impeachment and conviction in Congress, but the criminal statute in question must also clearly specify in so many words that it applies to the president. None  do, underscoring the absurdity of Kavanaugh’s proposition.

With four votes seemingly willing to give Trump a way out, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts appear to be the swing votes.

The three liberal justices did what they could to demonstrate the drastic implications for the American Republic if the Trump position is upheld:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.

JUSTICE KAGAN: If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: …if it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.

JUSTICE KAGAN: … he ordered the military to stage a coup, and you’re saying that’s an official act?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: I think that would depend…

JUSTICE KAGAN: That’s immune?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: I think it would depend on the circumstances, whether it was an official act.

Justice Barrett, appeared troubled by the sweep of Mr. Trump’s arguments. Returning to “Justice Kagan’s example of a president who orders a coup,” Justice Barrett repeated what she understood to be Mr. Sauer’s position, “You’re saying that he couldn’t be prosecuted for that, even after a conviction and impeachment proceeding, if there was not a statute that expressly referenced the president and made it criminal for the president?” Sauer confirmed.

They’ve Already Done the Deed

The simple fact that this hearing took place was a victory for Trump. The Court should have denied review and let the lower court decision stand. The conservatives not only showed their hand by granting this review, they demonstrated their bias by setting the hearing at the end of the argument schedule for the court term.

When some states denied Trump access to their ballots, citing provisions of the Constiutution baring office to insurrectionists, Trump asked for an expedited appeal. The court granted that appeal, and quickly ruled that the states could not deny him ballot access, in spite of the clear language in the Constitution that gives the state’s the right to make that decision.

In this case prosecutors asked that Trump’s appeal on the immunity issue be heard on an expedited basis. The Court denied that request and took its time to schedule a hearing. The court will issue its ruling sometime between now and early July. The slow speed with which the Court has handled this matter almost guarantees that the criminal federal cases pending against Trump will NOT be tried before the election. That delay deprives voters of a valuable piece of information, if a jury of his peers finds Trump guilty of a crime.

More Delay Likely

Based on the questioning during the oral argument, it appears a majority of the conservative justices will draw a distinction between “private” and “official” activities of the president to allow for a qualified immunity. Even though no constitutional provision, law, or precedent case does so. I expect the conservative majority will find the distinction to be a determining factor on the issue of immunity. The court is unlikely to define the distinction itself, instead returning the case to Judge Tanya Chutkan, of the Federal District Court in Washington, for further proceedings.

Judge Chutkan’s eventual determination on immunity, probably on a count-by-count basis, could then be appealed. This makes it unlikely Trump will come to trial until 2025. By then, Trump could once again be president and in a position to order all federal cases pending against him be dropped. Or to pardon himself, ending matters.

The Supreme Court has once again placed its vote in a presidential election. It has voted for authoritarianism over democracy. For the sake of democracy, voters must overrule it in November.

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Prayer Trumps Policy

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(Speaker Mike Johnson leads GOP Members of Congress in prayer on the House floor – CSPAN)

Critical assistance for Ukraine, which was approved by the Senate, is languishing in the House. The same is true for assistance for Israel. The impending budget crisis which threatened to shut down the government was punted down the field again with an agreement that keeps operations going until the end of the fiscal year in September but threatens to come back in full force two months before the election.

Instead of tackling these tricky policy issues, the House has taken a two-week vacation, the Presidents’ Day recess.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican from Louisiana, is not laying in the sun. But he’s not doing the nation’s business either. The speaker and his leadership team went to Miami for a retreat and, according to a Politico story based on multiple first-hand accounts, Johnson’s presentation there “took on a surprisingly religious tone.”

Quoting people who were in the room, the Political story says, “Rather than outlining a specific plan to hold and grow the majority, these people said, Johnson effectively delivered a sermon.” Portraying Johnson as just a pious Christian causes the public to overlook the way he manipulates Christianity to exert power. “I’m not at church,” one told Politico.

Two people quoted by Politico said that Johnson “attempted to rally the group by discussing moral decline in America — focusing on declining church membership and the nation’s shrinking religious identity.” According to them, Johnson “contended that when one doesn’t have God in their life, the government or ‘state’ will become their guide, referring back to Bible verses.”

Like everybody else in America, Johnson is entitled to his religious views. And he is entitled to express those views in appropriate settings. But the House floor is not the proper venue. More disturbingly, Johnson has taught classes miseducating Americans about church-state separation and perpetuated the myth that the United States, which has no national religion by Constitutional design, is a “Christian nation.“

Those same Republicans advocate adherence to the views of the framers of the Constitution. And while it is true a majority would have identified themselves as Christian, they explicitly considered, and rejected, the idea of declaring Christianity, or any other religion, as the offical religion of the new nation.

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”  begins the great First Amendment. Its langugae, and its prominent position as the first item in the Bill of Rights, make its meaning clear. In his sermon-like speeches, Johnson cherry-picks statements of the founders and distorts the historic background of the Religion Clause.

Johnson would be best served by reflecting on another quote from President James Madison written in 1822: “We are teaching the World the great truth, that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson, that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”

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Credibility

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***** THERE IS AN UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM 3/27/2024 *****

If you are a journalist, at the end of the day, that’s what you have standing behind you. You either have credibility, or you don’t. And in the 21st century, it is often a debatable subject. The debate has turned into an insurrection at NBC, following the announcement that the company has hired Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), as a political news contributor.

NBC News senior vp politics Carrie Budoff Brown wrote her staff, “I’m pleased to announce Ronna McDaniel is joining us as an NBC News political analyst. She will contribute her expert insight and analysis on American politics and the 2024 election across all NBC News platforms.”

Fifty years ago, at the start of my career, communicators fell into two categories, journalists, and public relations professionals, including “spokesmen” (yes, always men). Moving between those two worlds was almost unheard of, and especially the move from pr to the newsroom, viewed with great suspicion. There were some notable exceptions. Diane Sawyer and Ron Nessen come to mind. But they were few and far between. Very few and very far.

Traditionally, no one was paid to be an interview subject or panel guest on a broadcast newscast. That era ended with the arrival of 60 Minutes, the CBS News magazine program. Before 60 Minutes, news divisions lost money and were tolerated by their financial overseers because of government rules requiring broadcast license holders to devote a certain amount of airtime to news and public affairs. 60 Minutes made tons of money and bent the rules to at times “reimburse” in-demand sources for their time and trouble.

Today, with the multiplicity of media platforms, and so much bandwidth to be filled, there is tremendous demand for talking heads. Programmers want to lock in popular guests to be exclusive or at least up-first on their platforms. The result has been the emergence of a third category, the “Paid contributor” or “Paid Analyst.” McDaniel is reportedly being paid $300,000 to fill her role for NBC.

There is plenty of precedent. McDaniel’s predecessor at the RNC, Reince Prebus, was hired as an analyst by CBS after he left the Trump administration. NBC unit MSNBC, a self-styled left wing “anti-Fox,” counts former RNC chair Michael Steele and former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki as journalists with their own programs. ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos worked in the Clinton administration. And right-wing Fox is like the retirement home of former Republican politicians.

The problem here is McDaniel herself. There is certainly a perception, well justified in my opinion, that McDaniel pursued her role with particular relish. She supported the Republican candidate Trump through all his lying, election denying, insurrection and violence encouraging actions and in so doing went beyond the line, blurred though it may be, in the modern media world.

When the news of her hiring broke, McDaniel was already scheduled to be a guest on “Meet the Press.” Moderator Kristen Welker made it clear that the interview was set up before NBC News announced McDaniel had been hired. The interview was not impressive. McDaniel kept avoiding the questions. And Welker proved incapable of pulling much of significance out of her.

What followed was much more interesting. Chuck Todd, the former moderator of the show, blasted NBC News for hiring McDaniel during a panel discussion. He told Welker, “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don’t know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.”

“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” Todd continued, “because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. … So, when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News’ credibility you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘What does she bring NBC News?’”

Many more of NBC’s on-air talent have since piled on. Joe Scarborough, himself once a Republican Congressman and co-MSNBC host and wife (how’s that for a title?) Mika Brzezinski opined on “Morning Joe”, “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Scarborough said with Brzezinski adding, “We hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.” They then played a reel of McDaniel’s various comments questioning the outcome of the 2020 election.

Lawrence O’Donnell added perspective, “There is an easy way to avoid the controversy NBC News has stumbled into. Don’t hire anyone close to the crimes. That’s what happened to the Nixon gang. … None of the people who were involved in hiring Ronna Romney McDaniel were old enough to live through any of that history. Some of them were not born yet.”

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “What we’ve … said to election deniers is not just that they can do that on our airwaves, but they can do that as one of us, a badge-carrying employee of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.”

Jen Psaki, “This isn’t about red versus blue. This is about truth versus lies. Service to the country versus service to one man committed to toppling our democratic system. That is the type of experience that Ronna McDaniel brings to the table.”

And in a social media post former Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, tweeted, “Ronna facilitated Trump’s corrupt fake elector plot & his effort to pressure MI officials not to certify the legitimate election outcome. She spread his lies & called 1/6 ‘legitimate political discourse.’ That’s not ‘taking one for the team.’ It’s enabling criminality & depravity.”

The question remains. Is Ronna McDaniel going to be a source of valuable information about politics? That is something she will have to demonstrate over time. If NBC gives her that time.

***** RONNA FIRED ***** UPDATE 3/27/2024 *****

And now we know. NBC will not give her time. None. Zip.

Making for what may be the shortest resume entry of all time, NBC gave up on Ronna McDaniel, reversing her appointment as a political analyst on the company’s various platforms. From Friday to Tuesday makes for a four day career. “After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor,” NBCUniversal News Group Chair Cesar Conde wrote in a message to employees.

But while the four day saga may never rate an entry on McDaniel’s Curriculum Vitae, it may well rate a big payday for her bank account.

Various online publications, including Politico, citing unnamed sources, say McDaniel’s contract with NBC carried a two-year term at $300,000 per. The Wall Street Journal says three years at nearly a million. It’s about the same on a yearly basis. I’ll go with the smaller number for this analysis. Creative Artists Agency reportedly negotiated it. CAA is one of the talent industry’s powerhouse firms and certainly knows something about writing an employment agreement.

It seems unlikely CAA agreed to an “out” clause for NBC beyond the usual boilerplate about fraud or “moral turpitude.” That could leave NBC on the hook for the full term of the contract.

Let’s see. $300,000 per year, for two years, that’s $600,000 total. McDaniel made one appearance, rounding up let’s call it a 20-minute interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” That’s about $30,000 per minute. That ought to take a little of the sting out of it for Ms. McDaniel.

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Civility? I Think Not.

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(Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Coney speak on, “How to Disagree Agreeably,” Feb. 23, 2024, National Governor’s Association, NGA via YouTube.)

See Update Below

My mother was always an optimist. She was sure that, given time, people could rationalize if not eliminate their disputes. In her vision, people of different races, different religions, and different economic positions could learn to live side by side and she was always correcting me if my big mouth strayed too far from civil discourse.

I thought of her when I read about an unexpected show of unity amid today’s polarized political climate. Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor made a passionate joint appeal for greater civility and respect within the nation’s highest court. Despite their vastly different judicial philosophies and ideological leanings, the two justices found common ground in their concern over the increasingly caustic tone that has pervaded the court’s proceedings in recent years.

Speaking at a legal conference in Washington D.C., Justices Barrett and Sotomayor took the stage together. Justice Sotomayor, a liberal icon appointed by President Barack Obama, opened the remarks by highlighting the court’s critical role as a neutral arbiter of the law and the importance of maintaining judicial independence free from partisan rancor.

“The Supreme Court is not a political body, though our rulings inevitably have political implications,” Justice Sotomayor stated firmly. “We are entrusted with interpreting the Constitution and upholding the rule of law, even when it may be unpopular or inconvenient for those in power.”

Justice Barrett, a conservative jurist nominated by Donald Trump, echoed her colleague’s sentiments, calling for a return to civility and open-minded discourse, even in the face of profound disagreements. “While we may vehemently disagree on particular issues, we must never lose sight of our shared commitment to justice, fairness, and the principles enshrined in our Constitution,” Justice Barrett implored. “Resorting to personal attacks and demonizing those with differing viewpoints is antithetical to the court’s mission and undermines public faith in our institutions.”

The two justices then took turns recounting examples from their tenure on the Court where heated exchanges and thinly veiled insults had marred oral arguments and formal opinions. They expressed regret over such lapses in decorum, vowing to lead by example in promoting a culture of mutual respect and collegiality.

“We may be ideological opposites, but Justice Sotomayor and I have found common ground in our reverence for the law and our commitment to upholding the dignity of this noble institution,” Justice Barrett remarked, glancing warmly at her colleague.

Unfortunately, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Even if these two women share a common goal of cooling down the rhetoric on the Court, there is little evidence the five men who join Barrett on the conservative side of the bench agree The rushed and controversial confirmation of Barrett at the end of the Trump administration left Sotomayor on the losing side of subsequent dramatic reversals of policy by the Supremes. She has assumed the role of “The Great Dissenter,” a title court watchers once used to refer to Justice John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911) due to his many dissents in cases that restricted civil liberties,

Even between the women there is difficulty with the civility proposal. Barrett had recently, and hypocritically, used “cooling down” language to criticize Sotomayor and the other liberal justices. Yet in a unanimous decision rejecting state efforts to remove Donald Trump from 2024 ballots, the liberals had concurred only in the judgment, criticizing the court’s reach. Barrett agreed with the outcome but took issue with the tone of the dissent. “Writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up,” she wrote.

Today Sotomayor was driven to issue a dissent in United States v. Texas. In this case the Supreme Court, voting 6-3 along the usual conservative-liberal lines, allowed a Texas state law to go into effect immediately, without waiting for the adjudication of challenges to its constitutionality filed in federal court. The law allows Texas law enforcement authorities to arrest and remove to Mexico noncitizens who enter, attempt to enter, or reside in Texas, while instructing state courts to disregard any ongoing federal immigration proceedings. As the Governor of Texas declared, the law embodies Texas’s view that its constitutional authority “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.” Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the “Supremacy Clause,” be damned.

Sotomayor writes, “The Court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos, when the only court to consider the law concluded that it is likely unconstitutional.” She also takes a shot at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (footnote 5), which she says, “recently has developed a troubling habit of leaving ‘administrative’ stays in place for weeks if not months.” “This Court,” she continues, “makes the same mistake.”

Civility? I think not.

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Update March 20 5PM

The Fifth Circuit apparently got the message after being cited by the Supreme Court yesterday (see above). Overnight the court put a stay in place to keep the Texas law from going into effect. It also scheduled an emergency hearing on the request for a stay pending adjudication in the district court. A decision could be issued at any time.

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Let the Games Begin

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Let there be no doubt. The 2024 State of the Union address kicked off the 2024 campaign for president. And it promises to be a raucous race.

I’ve watched many a state of the union in my day. But I’ve never seen one like the third state of the union of President Joe Biden. This was without a doubt a campaign speech. An in-your-face speech directed at the Republicans in Congress, the Republicans at home, and the Republican’s all-but-anointed candidate for president, Donnie Trump. Yes, my friends, it’s deja vu all over again.

The speech was also directed at Democrats, particularly those who have been wavering in the last few months under a constant barrage of anti-Biden rhetoric from Trump and his MAGA acolytates in government and throughout the conservative media. If you paid any attention to the MAGA house organs of 91-tear old Rupert Murdoch, like the New York Post and the Fox Channel, you’d think the 81-year-old Biden was ready for the grave and the only hope for the nation was the 77-year-old Trump.

I can report that Mr. Biden made it through about an hour and a half of fiery and combative engagement with his critics. It is recommended viewing, and you can find it here. Clearly frustrated by the criticism, he used his platform, throwing out the conventions of the traditional speech to defend his record and attack Trump, who will be his opponent in this 2024 rerun of 2020. He never used Trump’s name, choosing instead to repeatedly refer to “my predecessor” and to denounce Trump’s record and plans for a second term. And he made sure the Republicans in the chamber were equal targets of his rage. He even saved some for the Supreme Court.

  • On the border, which undocumented migrants have been breeching in search of asylum, Biden was able to report that bipartisan legislation which would greatly tighten border security was on the brink of passage when Trump torpedoed it. Why? Because Trump would rather the border crisis remain a campaign issue than see it alleviated giving Biden a “win”.
  • On Trump’s continuing desire to repeal the popular Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, Biden promised, “We stopped you fifty times before and we will stop you again.”
  • On a women’s right to choose, Biden contrasted his policy with Trump’s gleefully taking credit for the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, denying women the right to choose that had been recognized as law for fifty laws. With many members of the Court scowling from the front row, Biden criticized their 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. That decision had led to Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, now pending before the Supreme Court. Alliance, seeks to invalidate the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the drug mifepristone, also known as RU 486. This is a pill which can be used to end a pregnancy during its first ten weeks. It is also widely used in treating miscarriages which occur in about 15% of pregnancies. Dobbs also led to a federal court decision in Alabama making in vitro fertilization (IVF) illegal in that state. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports about four million births per year in the U.S., meaning 1 to 2 percent of all U.S. births annually, are via IVF. With the Supremes looking on in distress Biden said, “Here are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors, and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need,” said Biden. “Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again in 2024.”
  • On foreign policy Biden pushed hard for continued aid to Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel. And he attacked Russia’s Putin, who Trump has frequently praised. Trump said he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO-member countries he views as not spending enough on their own defense.
  • On Social Security and Medicare Biden accused the Republicans of planning to cut payments. Trump talked about that again two days after Biden’s speech. Biden promised to defend them. And Biden defended his plans to increase taxes on profitable corporations and the top wage earners in the nation, while pledging people earning less than $400,000 a year will not see an increase.
  • And Biden attacked Trump over topics including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and his leadership, or lack thereof, during the Covid pandemic.

The Republican response was made at first by the usual gang of idiots. Members of Congress heckled Biden from the cheap seats. Then the party of Lincoln, who was turning over in his grave, turned to unknown Senator Katie Britt of Alabama. Britt’s major contribution to the argument was to tell a story of a sex trafficker, with the clear implication that the case was a typical result of Biden border policy. The problem was that fact checkers quickly discovered the incident occurred between 2004 and 2008, when Biden was not in the White House in any capacity.

What the Republicans should have done is just have Trump himself give the response. The Republican party is already a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation. Instead, Donnie was limited to making mean comments from the sidelines, also known as his own social media platform, Truth Social. Truth Social crashed at the start of Biden’s speech and didn’t recover until near the end. Trump posted a couple of new conspiracy theories about the Bidens and a chart attacking the bipartisan immigration bill which only revealed Trump’s lies and proved that the bill would have promoted border security and efficiency.

Trump let us know exactly what kind of a campaign we can expect from him at his first campaign appearance post State-of-the-Union. At one point, Mr. Trump slurred his words and pretended to stutter in a mocking imitation of President Biden, who has dealt with a stutter since childhood.

Trump at Georgia Rally, March 9, 2024

That’s the work of a backyard bully. a pathetic and small man. Not a man fit for public office.

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The Supremes Vote

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One thing is clear about this year’s election for president. The Supreme Court intends to cast its vote. The Court, driven by the conservative majority, rushed to hand Donald Trump a victory the day before Super Tuesday, the day fifteen states, including Colorado, hold primary elections. It even went as far as to announce on a Sunday that it would be handing down a ruling the next day. And it leaked the subject so loudly every story that night predicted it would be a decision in Trump v. Anderson.

In Trump v. Anderson, all nine justices agreed that states lack the power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against presidential candidates. All nine justices ruled in favor of Trump on this question. I’d like to pat myself on the back here because I predicted this outcome not long ago. I’d like to, but I won’t, because nearly every other court watcher made the same prediction.

The case centered around whether former President Trump could be barred from the ballot using a rarely invoked provision of the 14th Amendment. The Colorado Supreme Court had previously ordered the exclusion of Trump from the Republican primary ballot in the state. This U.S. Supreme Court decision reverses that ruling.

The key issue was whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which addresses insurrection and rebellion, applied to Trump’s eligibility to run for president again. The Court held that Congress, rather than individual states, is responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates. In legalize, it is not self-executing. Therefore, Trump can appear on presidential ballots this year, putting an end to efforts to ban him under this constitutional provision.

As I predicted, the Court would not sit by while some states denied Trump access to the ballot while others permitted his name to appear. Maine and Illinois had followed Colorado in removing him. A dozen other states had ruled in Trump’s favor.

The ruling warned of the dangers of a “patchwork” of decisions around the country that could send elections into chaos if state officials had the freedom to determine who could appear on the ballot for president. “The result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct,” the ruling said.

Minutes after the ruling, Trump hailed the decision in an all-capital letters post on his social media site, writing, “Big win for America!!!”

But was this a win for the Supreme Court? I think not.

In making its ruling, the Court cited Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which reads, “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” They read section 5 as requiring congressional action to implement section 3. But textualism be damned, the language does not say that. And does not put the power to enforce solely in the hands of Congress. The five conservative judges are simply making it up.

They should have just stopped there. Instead, they tossed their historic deference to the states overboard. Colorado was ruling on a state election. And a primary election at that. They also never reviewed Colorado’s judgment finding that Trump had engaged in an insurrection. As a matter of litigation history, that finding of fact, supported by extensive evidence, remains valid. What they did was in effect to destroy section 3 of the thirteenth amendment. Insurrectionists are now free to try to overthrow the government one year and, if you fail, you can always run for election next year.

That the three liberal justices objected to what they branded, “overreach,” is no surprise. What did surprise is that Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with that assessment. Barrett, the sixth member of the conservative majority, was Trump’s third and final nominee to the Court.

In her short concurring opinion, Barrett did everything a good conservative textualist is not supposed to do, acknowledging that the Court was playing politics rather than interpreting the law. “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,” Barrett wrote. “For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

I think not. What Americans should take home is that the Court remains highly politicized and that textualism, originalism, or whatever the conservatives call it, is a farce.

Meanwhile, what five of the six conservative judges have done here is to throw fourteenth amendment law under the bus. The fourteenth amendment forms the constitutional framework for civil rights and prohibits the states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law and from denying anyone equal protection under the law. Many of these lawsuits are filed at the state level. Absent explicit federal legislation, there is no telling how future civil rights and equal protection cases will fare.

The campaigning by the Court, or at least the conservative majority, continues unabated. It hurried to decide this “disqualification” case, rendering its opinion just sixty days after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled. That allowed Trump his “victory lap” the day before a major election.

At the same time the Court is dragging its feet deciding Trump’s absurd position that a president has “total immunity” from prosecution after he leaves office. Both the United States District Court and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has unanimously rejected that argument. Judge Tanya Chutkan, the trial judge in the case, wrote “neither the Constitution nor American history supported the contention that a former president enjoyed total immunity from prosecution.” The late President Richard Nixon’s acceptance of a pardon following his resignation is a case in point.

The Supremes have refused to expedite Trump’s appeal in the immunity case, despite a request by the Special Counsel. It will not even hold an oral argument until the week of April 22. Meanwhile, it stayed trial proceedings by the district court until it rules. The justices are obviously playing along with Trump’s strategy of delay, delay, delay. Most observers think it unlikely Trump will be tried on felony charges from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection before the election.

Should Trump regain the White House, one of his first orders of business will undoubtably be to order “his” Justice Department to dismiss the federal cases against him.

Who said justice delayed is justice denied? I can name six names.

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Mike the Misinformed

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Republicans scraped the bottom of the barrel last October when they elected the little-known Mike Johnson of Louisiana Speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line to the Presidency of the United States. Johnson emerged as the fourth Republican nominee in what had become a clown show of political infighting after the Republican caucus threw out Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Johnson’s election required fifteen votes.

McCarthy was voted out of the job in an extraordinary showdown, a first in U.S. history, forced by a gang of hard-right conservative Republicans. The vote threw the House and its Republican leadership into chaos. McCarthy’s crime was to have reached a bipartisan agreement with Democrats to fund the government for a brief period to prevent a shutdown.

Johnson may be relatively unknown, but in this era where everything is recorded, he has amassed a formidable public record putting him on the hard right of the party, and the nation. Johnson is an ally of former president Donald Trump. He opposed certifying the 2020 election. He is anti-abortion and supports LGBTQ restrictions.

His pro-Trump position won Mike the support of the chaos caucus, consisting of Republican House members such as Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, and Andy Harris of Maryland. That’s the group that toppled Kevin McCarthy.

The inexperienced Johnson figured he could retain the support of the ultra-right Republican members and steer the body to a budget bill. He was misinformed. Johnson couldn’t pass a budget and made the same deal as McCarthy, a continuing resolution to fund the government through the Christmas holiday recess. Coming back to work in January Johnson failed again and the result was the third continuing resolution of this congress, signed on January 19. This extension is “laddered”, having different expiration dates for various parts. But another shutdown looms on March 8.

What is Johnson doing? He sent the House home for a two-week vacation.

The budget is the most important task the House of Representatives faces. The Constitution requires that all spending bills originate in that body. (Article I, Section 9, Clause 7) But there is a lengthy list of issues pending on which the House must act.

We need only turn on the evening news to be aware of the border crisis, with tens of thousands of would-be immigrants arriving at the southern border claiming asylum. It is the source of hundreds of hours of programming on the Fox Channel. And it is the lead Republican election issue, with Donnie Trump leading the party faithful into decrying the so-called Biden Border Crisis.

In fact, the immigration problem has stymied Washington for decades and both parties are to blame. Compromises have been reached but have failed to clear both houses of Congress in the same session. Most recently, legislation tightening border security but failing to revise the outdated asylum process, which dates to 1948, or to provide a path to citizenship for immigrants already in the country was submitted in the Senate. Those were key Democratic demands. But the Democrats sacrificed them all to attract enough Republic support to pass the bill. Then Donald Trump opened his mouth.

Trump, it seems, doesn’t want to eliminate the immigration crisis. Trump wants to keep the crisis going so he can use it as a campaign issue. Mike Johnson, originally believing the new law could pass, turned out to have been misinformed again. Once Trump indicated his opposition, Republican support for border security disappeared in both houses. So now it’s the Trump Border Crisis.

What is Johnson doing? He sent the House home for a two-week vacation.

On foreign affairs Johnson had good reason to believe he could get his Republican faithful to support the kind of robust policy Republicans have traditionally shown for democratic governments fighting against repression and Russian dominance. Think again.

The Senate passed foreign assistance legislation to aid Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Ukraine is running out of ammunition two-years after the Russian invasion. Israel is battling Hamas storm troopers who invaded their country on October 7. And Taiwan faces the growing threat of a Chinese invasion across the 110 mile straight separating it from the mainland. But if Johnson thought he could rally support from his members, he was once again misinformed.

Trump is the guy pulling Johnson’s strings. And Trump is impressed by the dictator class. He prefers Putin to democracy. We can all imagine Ronald Reagan turning over in his grave. Meanwhile the chaos caucus is lost back somewhere at the beginning of the twentieth century, opposing American “entanglements” overseas. Those of us who have studied history know how that came out.

What is Johnson doing? With Ukraine running out of artillery shells, Johnson sent the House home for a two-week vacation.

There is one item on the Republican agenda which is still moving forward. That is the investigation into Hunter Biden and the impeachment investigation into President Biden. James Comer of Kentucky continues to claim he has evidence, which he has never revealed, that supports the charges against the Bidens. Comer’s principal witness, Alexander Smirnov, has been indicted for lying about the Biden’s to the FBI. Reports allege Smirnov has been linked to a Russian intelligence operation to influence the 2024 election. The fact the FBI has determined Smirnov’s testimony is not only worthless but actually part of a Russian disinformation campaign directed against President Biden has not deterred Comer. The time-wasting investigation continues.

We would ask Johnson if, considering this news, he intends to continue the House impeachment investigation. But we will have to wait until the Speaker returns. He is on vacation.

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