Is the Supreme Court the Great Autocracy Enabler?

   

Is the Supreme Court the Great Autocracy Enabler?

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

"Give us back the Statue of Liberty… We're going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: 'Give us back the Statue of Liberty.' We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So, it will be just fine here at home.” Raphael Glucksmann, center-left member of the French Parliament.

"Holy crap… The DOJ is arguing that the President can unilaterally deport anyone he wants without ANY statutory authority, just on his inherent authority as President over national security. That is a terrifying claim to make and has never been recognized before in US history." Aaron Reichlin-Melnick , a senior fellow at American Immigration Council

In 2010, by effectively removing the cap on the mega-wealthy using money through SuperPACs, the Supreme Court, in Citizens United v FEC, unleased big, mostly rightwing money to dominate the political spectrum forevermore. After a spate of cases lifting several protections for free and fair elections, the Court ruled in a 6–3 decision (Trump vs United States), on July1st, that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutionally designated area of control. That may have been enough to inspire Trump to be a “dictator for a day,” but his autocratic leanings only accelerated. Piece by piece, Trump’s executive orders and the action of federal agencies under his direct control have attempted to repeal and rewrite the Constitution to his liking. Trump’s white Christian national base is lapping it up, as the disapproval levels for the Democratic Party are far worse than polls apply to Trump himself.

White Christian nationalism is sitting in the catbird seat right now, as Democrats turn on each other, further denigrating their political power. Christianity might soon be declared the national religion (bowing only to the 1st Amendment by allowing other faiths to have a right to exist and practice… for now), just as Trump declared English to be the only official language or, after hundreds of years being known as the Gulf of Mexico, Trump unilaterally changed it to the “Gulf of America.” But this notion of the state itself being justified by a national designated religion, where God directs and sanctions government, has an awful autocratic history that we should not ignore. Inspired by the statue “THE PURITAN,” a memorial statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens that sits in Boston Commons, LA Times art critic (on March 17th), Christopher Knight, reminds us of the ugly history just here in the United States:

“Puritans said religion and government don’t mix, based on the repression their combative sect experienced in Europe. But they couldn’t help themselves. In New England, they meddled, manipulated and even murdered. (Fanaticism is like that. It’s hard to back off when you’ve decided you’re speaking for God.) Not until the whole thing collapsed a hundred years on did space open for a fledgling radical experiment in democratic government, which became the United States. Religious freedom got protected by law, but the Puritans missed out.

“Chapin — with lawyer and future colonial governor John Winthrop, savvy business entrepreneur William Pynchon and other British-born Puritans — left England in the 1620s as part of the Great Migration. In 1636, a small band traveled deep into the Connecticut River Valley and established rural towns through a covenant with the Pocumtuck Indians. Pynchon named one town Springfield, after his Essex birthplace, east of London. Further up the river, Chapin named Chicopee, a Nipmuc word for evergreen red cedar… Trouble followed. Religious trouble.

“On Oct. 16, 1650, a 158-page volume written by Pynchon, “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption,” had the dubious distinction of being the first book in American history ordered to be burned by a local government. Pynchon was a devout Puritan, but his sober dismantling of a foundational element of the faith, with which he disagreed, caused an uproar. The arcane theological dispute concerned the precise meaning of Jesus’ suffering during crucifixion, which Pynchon wrote was not the true source of sinners’ redemption — the larger example of the prophet’s life was…

“While I doubt that any Trump appointees identify as neo-Puritans, twice as many Republicans (67%) as Democrats (32%) think U.S. laws should be influenced by the giant locked book Saint-Gaudens tucked under his statue’s arm, according to a March 2024 Pew Research Center study. As religious affiliation in America continues its steady 21st century decline, the politics behind those White House appointments get reactionary: To retain power, the small Christian nationalist MAGA sect must be served.

“Still, Pew also found that a slim majority of U.S. adults say they have heard or read ‘nothing at all’ about fanatical Christian nationalism. As the Trump administration gets into high gear, expect that to change pretty fast. When it does, ‘banned in Mar-a-Lago’ may well become the new standard for authoritarian moral outrage.” We often used “God” as an excuse to kill Native Americans and take their land.

As Canadian representatives meet their European counterparts, the topic is how to unify to resist Trump’s America from bullying “allies” into economic and political submission. Trump is busy on his side of the Atlantic asserting and attempting to expand his presidential powers. For example, “President Donald Trump claimed without evidence early Monday that his predecessor’s pardons for members of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol are invalid because then-President Joe Biden didn’t use a real pen.

“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social online platform.” NBC News, March 17th. He has also sued mainstream media, excluded traditional members of the press from White House briefings and seeks for the Supreme Court to reverse their 1964 Times vs Sullivan ruling protecting the press against most defamation claims. Meanwhile Trump is planning a meeting with war criminal Vladimir Putin to divide Ukrainian assets, without any Ukrainian involvement, once peace is secured. The March 17th Newsweek reports: “The U.S. is withdrawing from an international group investigating those responsible for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including President Vladimir Putin…”

For those envisioning a constitutional crisis, wait no longer: “President Donald Trump's administration made a calculated decision to ignore a judge's directive to turn around two flights containing hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members… The verbal order from the chief judge of the Washington, D.C., District Court, James Boasberg, explicitly told the government to turn around any aircraft that had already departed the country if it was still in the air… Finding the deportations would cause irreparable harm, Boasberg barred the Trump administration from deporting ‘all non-citizens who are subject to the [Alien Enemies Act of 1798] proclamation’ for at least 14 days, imposing a temporary restraining order or TRO.” ABC News, March 17th.

Trump is blasting away any guardrails on his power, minimizing any right to “due process” so as to imbue himself with a unilateral right to deport non-citizens on his own determination. Excuses on the above-noted deportation flight: the Court had no jurisdiction for flights over international waters and the order was only verbal. This represents Trump’s most flagrant throwing down the gauntlet against the entire federal judicial system. Neither excuse has legal validity. Trump has already crushed the GOP Congress from exercising their legislative prerogatives… and now it’s time to cut the federal judiciary down to size. So, will the Supreme Court affirm its own evisceration? If so, will they attend the coronation?

I’m Peter Dekom, I would like to remind Americans that our form of democracy stands for majority rule within the guidelines protecting basic rights as well as the rights of minorities.