Bring back Dwight Eisenhower
Supreme Court's new term ... Judicial culture war ... Motions for Trump's immunity determinations ... Cognitive decline on the election trail ... Judges waiting to muddle the election results ... Election countdown ... Plans for a new Supreme Court ... Our US legal correspondent Roger Fitch reports from Washington
"[Trump] was a particularly unattractive version of his titanically arrogant, spectacularly dishonest and shockingly ill-informed self, claiming that Democrats were slaughtering newborns, that Harris was a Marxist, that he'd championed the Affordable Care Act, that the Jan. 6 rioters were veritable peaceniks and that as soon as he turns his gilded hand to the war between Russia and Ukraine ... it will magically end" - NYT's Frank Bruni on the Harris-Trump debate
"[N]o one in the Republican party dare say the emperor is naked and demented" - Salon
"[T]he press ... is the weak slat under the bed of democracy" - AJ Liebling
The countdown to the presidential election has begun, and the media, clinging to the safer narrative, have given the candidates the full horse race spin. Although Trump's cognitive decline should be topic one, his rallies are often reported in facile headlines and articles that ignore, paper-over or polish the incoherent rants of the half-mad Republican candidate.
The ex-president, now a convicted felon, has moved beyond personality disorder, egomania and malignant narcissism, into new realms of fantasy beliefs, yet his craziness is scrubbed up by the media.
At the 11th hour, in the midst of media "sane-washing", Trump's mental fitness is finally being addressed, even by the timid NY Times.
As a Salon columnist remarked, the former president "was always hobbled with severe personality disorders and a lifelong aversion to learning, but this is different. He's losing words, forgetting basic details (like who he's running against) and droning on about stuff that only makes sense in his fractured brain".
≈ ≈ ≈
"[I]f the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having ... practically resigned their Government into the hands of that ... tribunal" - Abraham Lincoln
"Judicial activism is a great threat to the rule of law because unaccountable federal judges are usurping democracy, ignoring the constitution and separation of powers, and imposing their personal opinions on the public ... We oppose stealth nominations to the federal bench ..." - Republican Party platform (2008)
From the Washington Post
The supreme court is back in town for a new term, and it won't be pretty. For one thing, CJ Roberts seems to be joining the court's MAGA wing. With its partisan Republican majority, the court could open a new front for Project 2025 and its patrons, the Heritage Foundation and Leonard Leo, and for Leo's causes.
Contrived, retrograde cases, none too absurd to consider, will be filed before sympathetic lower-court judges, i.e, "movement" Republican lawyers groomed by the conservative legal organisation Federalist Society, "unaccountable federal judges" who were Trump's "stealth nominations" to the federal bench.
Some pernicious lower court decisions are unavoidable, due to twisted precedents issued by the Trumped SCOTUS.
The court's 2022 Bruen jurisprudence compelled an all-Democrat 9th circuit panel to find states can't ban guns in banks; in Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that carrying of switchblades must be allowed.
The Loper case from last term, overruling Chevron, caused a new wave of attacks on administrative law, some of them among relists for this term.
The Nation previewed some of this term's pending cases, including the extraordinary death penalty appeal in Glossip v Oklahoma. That appeal, now argued, involves the dogged determination of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to force an execution opposed by both prosecutor and state attorney general.
Gorsuch: keen supporter of the death penalty
Fortunately for Richard Glossip, Neil Gorsuch was absent. Justice Gorsuch - a keen supporter of the death penalty despite his Oxford Phil D extolling the sanctity of human life - recused; as a 10th Circuit judge, he heard a previous appeal of the case.
The 2024 term could in fact turn into a culture war. More contentious cases here.
Finally, as this is a presidential election year, majority mischief could include supreme court attempts to muddle the election and tip it to the Republican candidate, as happened once before. Slate and Lawfare have more.
Meanwhile, legislation has been introduced in the Senate to add six more justices to the court and require two-thirds majorities for overturning Acts of congress.
≈ ≈ ≈
"The fact the defendant is engaged in a political campaign is not going to allow him any greater or lesser latitude than any defendant in a criminal case." – Judge Tanya Chutkan
Donald Trump remains on trial in Washington DC for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election.
Judge Chutkan: sorting the official from the unofficial acts
After the supreme court's astonishing July decision that presidents have criminal immunity for "official" acts, Trump's case was remanded to Judge Chutkan, and in August, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment. More here.
The new indictment is tailored to Trump's private acts as a candidate, separate from the official "core" presidential acts newly-immunised in Trump v US; Chutkan must determine which charges are triable, i.e, did not involve official acts.
This month, the Special Prosecutor filed his "bombshell immunity brief", i.e, Motion for Immunity Determinations, including new details in the factual proffer of evidence to be offered. More here and here.
The Intercept and Just Security have identified the individuals whose names appear in the proffer.
Trump is intent on striking out the charges involving the potentially-lethal plot against his vice president, Mike Pence.
Some seemed surprised by Smith's disclosure of Republican Party villainy, but it was nothing new for those who study US history. Republicans have meddled in US elections for years, well before Bush v Gore (2000), when conservatives on the court intervened in a presidential election, stopped a Florida recount, and awarded the presidency to George Bush.
Three partisan operatives involved in the 2000 skulduggery are now on the court: CJ Roberts and Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett.
Before Florida, Republican treachery usually involved interference in US foreign policy through back channel communications with other nations, e.g, North Vietnam (1968), Iran (1980) and Russia (2016); the Putin-related contacts have continued through three elections. As Thom Hartmann commented:
"[T]he simple reality about the modern GOP - the simple context for Trump's indictment - is that the last Republican president who wasn't a criminal and didn't commit treason by conspiring with foreign governments to acquire or hold power was Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956."
Eisenhower: the last non-crooked Republican in the White House
What if Trump actually wins? Rolling Stone paints the possibilities. The presidential candidate is already threatening to jail everyone who has opposed him, even lawyers and donors.
Just Security has provided a chronology of twelve times when Trump, as president, targeted perceived enemies for prosecution.
Win or lose, Trump could still weasel out of his $454 million civil fraud judgment, if recent oral argument before a New York appeals court is any indication.
