From Roger Fitch and our friends down under.....

L'état, c'est Trump

ROGER FITCH ESQ • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2020

Impeachment and acquittal ... Sham trial ... Dubious defence lawyers with incoherent arguments ... Constitutional nonsense ... A mess that John Roberts CJ helped create ... Torture lawyers still peddling their soiled wares ... Roger Fitch reports from the wasteland of Washington   

"When the President does it, that means it is not illegal" - Richard Nixon

"... if a president does something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment" - Alan Dershowitz 

After a trial in which all but house evidence was barred, the senate, by votes of 52-48 and 53-47 (67 were needed for conviction), acquitted president Trump, who avoided removal from office.

Some Republican senators conceded Democrats had proved Trump's misbehaviour, finding his actions "inappropriate" and "shameful", but not impeachable.

It only needed a gaggle of dubious defence lawyers to assert that right was left, and black was white, for the offender Trump to avoid punishment. It was, as predicted, "a show trial with a twist - a public ritual not of preordained condemnation but of preordained exoneration". 

Trump initially asked his Republican Party colleagues to simply dismiss the impeachment articles without trial. They declined, but what followed was even more unseemly: Republican bombast, and the first senate impeachment trial - there have been 16 since 1804 - without witnesses. 

There were pleadings: the house Democrats' trial memo (more here); Trump's six-page response; the Republicans' trial memo (discussed here, dissected, and adjudged fake law); and the Democrats' reply.

The Democrats' seven managers in the senate were members of the house, led by the House Intelligence Committee chair, Adam Schiff, a former prosecutor.

The Republican defence lawyers in Trump's senate team included Harvard prof and celebrity defence lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton's impeachment foes Ken Starr and Robert Ray, and Pam Bondi. 

When she was Florida's AG, Bondi famously decided not to pursue planned fraud charges against Trump University after receiving a timely, and illegal, "campaign contribution" from the now-dissolved Trump Foundation. 

Ms Bondi in action on Fox News

Rounding out Trump's legal side were an ethically-compromised potential witness, White House Counsel Pasquale ("Pat") Cipollone, White House lawyers Patrick Philbin and Michael Purpura (a specialist in subpoena-blocking and white collar criminal defence), and Trump's dodgy personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow.

Collectively, Trump's lawyers had appeared on the Republican propaganda network Fox News 350 times in the past year, and Maureen Dowd presciently predicted that the senate trial would be "facts vs Fox". Even so, no one realised the contagious nature of Trump's lies till his odd mob of lawyers took the field.

Chief Justice John Roberts presided, and bearing in mind that the tenth anniversary of Citizens United had occurred on the eve of the trial, some suggested the CJ had come face-to-face with a mess he helped create: unchecked corruption fuelled by secret, unlimited political contributions.

At the outset, the Republican senators blocked subpoenas for witnesses or documents: trial first, evidence later, or never, as it turned out. Despite the Republicans' Red Queen rules, the Democrat trial managers gamely laid out well-documented, incontrovertible statements of facts, while sledged by the defendant.

The Republican lawyers began an incoherent defence with a blizzard of lies and alternative facts, and attacked, rather than the evidence, the Democrats and their witnesses, imputing malign motives to both the managers and public servants who gave evidence in the house.  

Trump's lawyers daily tried out speculative new legal theories, constitutional nonsense unknown to legal scholars, recklessly perverting the history and practice of impeachment. It ended in Dershowitz asserting that everything a president does in seeking re-election that he finds helpful, is "in the public interest" and thus unimpeachable. 

No one thought it would come to this: with Louis Quatorze claims, the Republicans staked out Trump's constitutional right to cheat in the approaching presidential election, a formula to mask corruption. 

Louis XIV - an inspirational figure for Republicans 

Dershowitz's strategic argument seemed surreal to reality-grounded lawyers, and even the Republicans' sole witness in the house proceedings, Jonathan Turley, disagreed. Ridiculed as the Dershowitz Doctrine at the Trump-reviled CNN, the novel theory was soon gospel within the closed Republican loop, and must have thrilled the party's dark mass, das Trumpenvolk.

As impeachment post-mortems begin, there's concern about the foreseeable consequences of giving a lawless president the powers he craves. 

*   *   *

During the trial's often diversionary question-and-answer phase, the supercilious Patrick Philbin - a product of Boston's Roxbury Latin School (est.1645), Yale, Harvard Law and Cambridge - glibly fielded Dorothy Dixers from Republican senators. He later added his irritating voice to the closing arguments. 

But there is more to Patrick Philbin's CV: a history of meretricious and tainted legal advice for Republican administrations. While a few journalists noted Philbin's former work for the Office of Legal Counsel, no one seemed to recall that he left his unclean handprints all over the infamous OLC "torture memos" and George Bush's Guantánamo policies. 

Apparently no one remembered the opportune "legal" opinions that Philbin concocted for the "war on terror", nor his support for torture in meetings of the National Security Adviser's "Principals Committee". 

Before the first prisoners arrived at Guantánamo Bay, Philbin (with OLC lawyer John Yoo) advised that the Naval Base lay beyond US federal court jurisdiction, and he also made a baseless finding that the Bush-fabricated military commissions, later struck down by the supreme court, were valid. 

Philbin: flawed legal advice

Worst of all, Philbin joined OLC head Jay Bybee in the first Justice Department memo endorsing the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques", practices which no lawyer acting in good faith could regard as other than torture, or "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", clear violations of US statutes, caselaw, and/or international law. 

*   *   *

Legal professionals involved with Trump should be careful. After Watergate, 14 lawyers were disbarred or suspended, and 11 convicted of crimes. As before, unprincipled, partisan lawyers are coming to light, not only in the White House, but also in a Justice Department controlled  by Trump's highly political AG, Bill Barr.

Consider Assistant AG Brian Benczkowski. Like Philbin, he once defended the Bush administration's use of torture, justifying CIA "interrogations" in "Benczkowski letters" provided to the senate. 

Now head of DoJ's Criminal Division, Benczkowski (who has other ethics problems) was required to review the whistleblower complaint regarding the Trump phone call to Ukraine that ultimately led to impeachment. 

Just Security noted that Benczkowski ...

"... refused to even consider whether the July 25 phone call was evidence of bribery, honest services fraud, or other criminal violations. Instead, he narrowly focused on whether Trump's request for an investigation of Biden was an illegal solicitation of a campaign contribution from a foreign national ... [and] concluded that Trump did not violate campaign finance law … At every turn, lawyers at the top of the Justice Department - the National Security Division, the Office of Legal Counsel and the Criminal Division - protected Trump rather than act 'in the best interest of' their client, the United States."

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian....

Impeachment and other crimes

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2020

What about all the other impeachable offences? ... No immunity for impeachment crimes ... Trump remains unchastened ... Fair elections cauterised by the Supreme Court ... War criminals to the rescue ... Judgeships for ideologues and party hacks ... From Roger Fitch in Washington

"There is a mountain of well-known evidence in the public record ... that the current president is a racist, a coward, a bully, a liar, an ignoramus, a hypocrite, a narcissist, and a fool - in short a very bad guy. Yet by design, the Constitution entrusts an impeachment trial to the Senate, not to a jury selected for its impartiality ... If such Senators are capable of putting aside their longstanding views of the president's character to focus on whether he committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanours - as the Constitution assumes they are - then surely they are capable of the much easier task of setting aside any bad-guy inference that propensity evidence might engender." 

- Law Prof Michael Dorf dismissing the danger Trump could be convicted for the wrong reasons. 

There's gangster government in Washington, with a one-man mob taking over a major political party; even so, Donald Trump has received a setback. 

In December, the House of Reps finally confronted - albeit gingerly - the brazen criminality of the US president, a man whose "stench is slowly seeping into every corner of government". 

Remarkably, only two articles of impeachment were adopted, with the Democrat-controlled house impeaching Mr Trump for abuse of power (L'Affaire Ukrainienne) and obstruction of congress. 

There were so many impeachable offences to choose from, a veritable A-to-Z. The articles the house adopted didn't include the Mueller Report findings (e.g. an important obstruction incident), or Trump's response to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Flagrant personal corruption was also missing. 

In a letter to Speaker Pelosi, constitutional lawyers Bruce Fein and Louis Fisher joined Ralph Nader in listing 12 impeachable offences. Just Security noted Trump's pattern of soliciting foreign interference in US elections. The public interest organisation CREW concentrated on five crimes involved in the Ukraine extortion attempts, the basis for the "abuse of power" charge. 

The house impeachment was backed by a 658-page Judiciary Committee report, and also by legal scholars and historians.

The Judiciary Committee produced a memorandum on impeachment law, and one of its lawyer witnesses, Noah Feldman, later elaborated on his testimony, as well as on Donald Trump.

Just before the successful vote on the impeachment articles, Mr Trump sent a bizarre letter to Speaker Pelosi, abusing her and the Democrat House of Representatives for having the effrontery to seek his impeachment. The Washington Post fact-checker had a field-day with Trump's six-pages of persecution mania.  

As Dan Froomkin complained, it still wasn't enough to make the media question Trump's mental state (a few did), but the media did notice the shameful depths reached by Trump's Republican house supporters. 

Pelosi: effrontery

After the house vote and media impeachment post-mortems, the NY Times and Just Security published damning new details of the Ukraine shakedown, provoking renewed Democrat demands for witnesses at Trump's senate trial, at which there is now a tantalising prospect of John Bolton's testimony. 

It's some comfort that, even if he escapes conviction in the senate, the impeachment itself should prevent Trump later being pardoned for his crimes.

Trump meanwhile remains unchastened. He's stepped up fund-raisers, bringing along two of his pardoned war criminals, while glorifying another, the odious Eddie Gallagher: perhaps a war crimes exception to pardons is needed.

Historians note a curious resemblance between Trump's 2020 troubles and the attempted removal of another corrupt president, James Buchanan. That political controversy also played out before a divided congress, but with a Republican house and Democrat senate - in 1860. 

*   *   *

It shouldn't surprise us if an acquitted Trump wins re-election next November. US elections are badly damaged, and may never recover from the supreme court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v Holder rendering inoperable the most important enforcement section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 2019 Rucho case that made partisan gerrymanders non-justiciable under the federal constitution. 

To this must be added the court's 2010 Citizens United decision that lifted the limits on election spending, with horrifying consequences. 

The result is clear: in partisan-gerrymandered voting districts, elections are now turbocharged with dark money, and with no VRA pre-clearance provisions to prevent it, votes are suppressed and elections rigged, as a new house committee report confirms. 

Republicans are still dreaming up new ways to stop Democrat-disposed citizens - particularly students - from voting. Some states even have laws requiring Republicans to be first on the ballot.  

As the Guardian observed, America is a democracy, so why does it deny millions the vote, e.g. through purges?  

Republicans managed to purge 17 million voters from the US election rolls between 2016 and 2018. Now, emboldened by Husted, a 2018 supreme court decision upholding Ohio's voter registration purges, Republican-controlled states such as Georgia are openly eliminating hundreds of thousands of voter registrations ahead of the 2020 elections.

*   *   *

Trump judge Chad Readler

Aside from election issues (e.g. partisan gerrymandering, where the conservative supreme court majority has effectively abdicated its constitutional oversight), there may be more ideological frontiers crossed during this term of the court, where the docket looks more like a government agenda. 

Mischief could occur, whether it be inconsistent application of content-based first amendment rights, resurrection of long-dead conservative precedents, or newly-invented presidential privileges (respecting, for instance, presidential subpoenas and financial records). Linda Greenhouse commented on the Trump-infected matters here and here.

Lower courts are meanwhile still being packed. The most appalling Trump judges are the 43-plus placed on appellate courts with rubber-stamp, party-line senate approval and, for the first time in modern senate practice, an end to opposition input. Trump's appointments have now "flipped" three of the 12 circuits. 

There's a blog recording the disturbing court opinions (mostly dissents) of Trump's new judges, with an interactive tool to track the havoc they're wreaking. A recent example is the 5th circuit ruling partly upholding a Texas federal court's "off-the-wall" decision that the entire ACA (Obamacare) became unconstitutional when an individual tax it contained was removed. A Trump circuit judge made the difference.  

One of the new appeals judges is DoJ lawyer Chad Readler, an acting assistant AG who agreed to sign the Trump administration's shabby brief attacking the constitutionality of the ACA in the case above, after career Justice Department lawyers declined to do so. Readler now has a lifetime job on the 6th circuit bench.  

Judge Readler's judicial elevation is strangely reminiscent of those historically received by other politically-helpful assistant AGs: Jay Bybee, who was appointed by George Bush to the 9th circuit following his creative opinion that CIA torture was perfectly legal, and David J Barron, given a 1st circuit judgeship soon after deciding Barack Obama's due process-free drone assassinations of citizens were somehow lawful. 

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under

The triumph of tribal epistemology

ROGER FITCH ESQ • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2019

Roger Fitch examines where Congress is heading with its impeachment investigation ... Factoids and the Republican defence ... Picking-up where Mueller left off ... The impeachable provision of bribery ... False equivalence narratives from the media ... New distractions from Bill Barr ... And Trump sanctions war crimes 

"The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so."
- 19th century American humorist Josh Billings, anticipating Donald Trump supporters.

"A decades-long effort on the right has resulted in a parallel set of institutions meant to encourage tribal epistemology. They mimic the form of mainstream media, think tanks, and the academy, but without the restraint of transpartisan principles. They are designed to advance the interests of the right, to tell stories and produce facts that support the tribe ... Talk radio and the birth of Fox News in the 1990s were turning points. They eventually expanded to create an entire, complete-unto-itself conservative information universe ... capable of cranking out stories and facts (or "facts") in support of the conservative cause 24 hours a day, steadily shaping the worldview of their white suburban audience around a forever war with The Libs, who are always just on the verge of destroying America."
- David Roberts on Republican tribalism.

The recently-completed Mueller Report has been characterised as a film noir in which, "The investigators uncovered the plot, but the society is too rotten to do anything about it". 

Will impeachment face the same fate? Even if the US House of Representatives impeaches Trump, his rubber-stamp US Senate will block his removal from office - unless, perhaps, there's a secret senate ballot.

The House Intelligence Committee's impeachment inquiry picked up where Mueller left off, not yet addressing his findings on obstructions of justice (or new ones, see also here and here), and leaving for later the truth of Trump's written answers to Mueller's questions; more here. 

House Democrats have the advantage of two new DC district court decisions. One (opinion here) upholds the legality of the impeachment and the right to Mueller's grand jury materials (more developments here); the other confirms that former White House Counsel Don McGahn must testify - consequences here. 

The Intelligence Committee proceedings began with L'affaire Ukrainienne and concentrated on bribery, specifically mentioned in the constitution's Article II impeachment provisions. It's broader than the federal bribery statute, and is based on English common law at the time the constitution was adopted. This fact led to debate between Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and the legal website Lawfare over the interpretation of bribery by Blackstone et al.

House Republicans have responded with a disingenuous defence of failed or incomplete bribery, and deny that attempted bribery is impeachable. 

A dramatic breakthrough in the Intelligence Committee proceedings occurred when a genial but vengeful witness, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, rolled over, also implicating Trump, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo and Trump's budget director/acting chief of staff/all-around hatchet man, Mick Mulvaney. 

Newly-disclosed governmental emails confirm Mulvaney's and Pompeo's participation.

Double standards prevail among house Republicans, who have cast the proceedings as political and illegitimate. Thus Clinton impeachment prosecutor Ken Starr initially argued that Trump's official conduct didn't rise to the level of impeachable, a standard apparently met by Clinton's lying about consensual sex in a civil court deposition (after Sondland's testimony, Starr changed his mind). 

The pessimistic Paul Krugman sees the impeachment defence strategy as "a test of the depths to which the Republican party will sink". Perhaps, however, the Republican reaction is explained best in a thoughtful article in Vox, where David Roberts convincingly argues that the Republican response to Trump's pending impeachment represents the zenith of a decades-long campaign to subvert the perception of truth, a triumph of "tribal epistomology".

House Intelligence Committee: bribery under the microscope

The media are presenting the proceedings as a sort of wrestling match, with false equivalence narratives; there's a diversionary argument that public support is essential for removing Trump, implicitly reinforcing Republican claims that impeachment is purely political rather than - as impeachment historians point out - a constitutional remedy, independent of elections, for removing rotten rulers. Public support could, of course, influence wavering senate "jurors" facing re-election. 

Trump's personal strategy is to charge the mostly career public servants who are speaking out with "retrospective incompetence"; naturally, he wants to sack the intelligence Inspector General who, as legally required, gave congress the whistleblower's account of the president's Ukraine extortion attempt. 

Impeachment is now moving to the House Judiciary Committee, where further evidence will be taken and impeachment articles drafted and debated. Some useful testimony could still come from administration scoundrels, if the house Democrats will take the time to hear them. 

Whatever happens, predictions for American democracy are dire, post-Trump. New laws will be needed, such as those introduced after Watergate.

*   *   *

While impeachment looms, Trump's disbarrable AG, Bill Barr, has been cooking up new distractions, hoping the president's fabricated FBI conspiracy theories will ignite some Reichstag fire. 

Barr's narrative contradicts Trump's own acknowledgement to the Russians that he knew they interfered in the 2016 election - and that was OK. In house impeachment testimony, the Russian expert Dr Fiona Hill specifically rejected the Republicans' crackpot theories of Ukrainian interference in 2016. 

Fiona Hill, previously with the US National Security Council 

Impunity is meanwhile everywhere. In an action viewed as damaging the US military, Trump handed out pardons to convicted and accused US war criminals, though it's hard to see what votes he will get out of it, especially among service members, some of whom dobbed in their lawless officers and NCOs.  

Defence opposed the pardons, particularly that of Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, one of the most vicious convicted SEALs. Trump, responding to a Fox News beat-up, sought to completely exonerate Gallagher, while the Navy tried to expel him from the SEALs. In an extraordinary action, the president personally ordered Gallagher's retention in the unit, and sacked the Navy Secretary. 

What's next? Will Trump pardon the Blackwater mercenaries, convicted and sentenced in the shocking Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad?

Trump's sanctioning of war crimes begs the question, will he attempt to reintroduce torture, a practice he has condoned in the past. It's a timely subject, as a new film about the Senate Torture Report has put the notorious CIA torture program - implemented by George Bush - back in the news. 

Barack Obama effectively pardoned participants in the Bush administration program, with dilatory and cosmetic inquiries conducted while the statutes of limitations - except for murder - ran. We now know that, even had Obama's Justice Department prosecuted and jailed those involved, Mr Trump would have pardoned them, given them medals, and, as he actually has done in the appointment of CIA Director Gina Haspel, rewarded them.  

Trump has also successfully stonewalled the proposed ICC investigation into torture in Afghanistan and other Rome Statute countries where CIA torture occurred; the matter is now under appeal at the Hague. More here on the international efforts to hold accountable those countries implicated in CIA black site torture. 

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From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian...

arr, Barr, black sheep

ROGER FITCH ESQ • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2019

Impeachment ... Washington's cast of villains ... William Barr joined to Trump at the hip ... The politication of the Department of Justice ... The president's taxes ... His claims of immunity ... The odious consigliere Rudolph Giuliani ... 150 judicial appointments to do Republican Party bidding ... SCOTUS rallies to partisan causes ... Roger Fitch reports from a strife-torn nation  

Throughout US government departments, traditional political pillaging and looting is being carried out by a record number of industry lobbyists and special interest placemen, but the public service, the real Deep State, is rebelling.                                      

The central crime scene is the White House: America is being ransacked by a president who may ignore his own sacking at the next election, if he lasts that long.

Trump rarely acts alone, however.  The dramatis personae in this crime noir can be grouped as follows:

First, the president. Before he was elected, Donald Trump was mostly known as a serial bankrupt and shady businessman, and/or an entertainer thrown up by popular culture. After 1000 days in office, he's earned additional media epithets: rotten, vulgar, habitual criminal, international mobster, and (after George W Bush) worst president ever. 

Daily, his behaviour becomes more shameless, e.g, selecting his own resort for the next meeting of the G-7, a violation of both the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses in the Constitution, a move that so alarmed Trump's allies that he backed out of the deal. Meanwhile, "ghost-bookings" at Trump properties provide an easy and efficient medium for ingratiation, or as they say here, "paying to play".

Second, his family circle, e.g, son-in-law Jared Kushner, more here and here. 

Third, his cabinet. Especially conspicuous: Attorney General William Barr. Like John Mitchell, Ed Meese and the frightful Alberto Gonzales before him, Barr is seen as a duplicitous AG paired with a devious president, lending Justice Department aid to the partisan follies and vendettas of a Republican leader, in order to kneecap the Democrat opposition (as George Bush père's AG, Barr arranged the Iran-Contra pardons). 

Barr has meddled in Britain, Australia and Italy, to further Trump's 2016 election conspiracy theories; he's now gone so far as to start a criminal investigation with the DoJ effectively investigating itself for starting an investigation that led to the Mueller Report (co-incidentally, the grand jury evidence that formed the basis of that report has just been ordered released to congressional investigators). 

Curiously, Barr saw nothing worth investigating in the Biden-based Affaire Ukrainienne; his Justice Department found Trump's request for dirt on a political opponent was not a "thing of value", despite DoJ precedents to the contrary. 

The Justice Department is now fully politicised, intervening on Donald Trump's behalf in several lawsuits, though inconsistently, depending on who's opposing the president. 

Barr: a duplicitious meddler & fixer  

In the case of subpoenas by two house committees, DoJ argued that the subpoenas lack  a "legitimate legislative purpose" (i.e, aren't tied to pending legislation), and that congress should leave investigations of presidential conduct to prosecutors. 

Then, when NY State prosecutors subpoenaed Trump's tax returns in connection with the investigation of hush money payments, DoJ claimed that sitting presidents couldn't be investigated by a prosecutor, for any reason, an argument never before advanced, and ultimately rejected by the federal court where the matter was contested.

On appeal, Trump's lawyer asserted that his client couldn't be investigated or prosecuted even should he (in Trump's words) "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody".

As for personal subpoenas, under two Nixon cases - one involving a Judge Nixon - executive branch officials must comply with congressional subpoenas; the White House has no lawful means to prevent their testimony. Steve Vladeck has more on executive privilege and subpoenas.

The president has meanwhile lost a suit to block the congressional subpoena for tax returns held by his accountants, and independently-obtained tax documents have already exposed probable frauds by Trump.

New York now has a law allowing the state to provide tax returns to congress; the state has also amended double-jeopardy laws so that state prosecutions may be brought against those pardoned for federal crimes.

Trump's favourite impeachment lawyer being himself, it's no surprise he claims to be immune from any criminal process, while maintaining he can't be investigated by congress (reaction here and here). Yet history strongly supports impeachment for behaviour far less dire than Trump's. 

Last of the Trump cast: freelance mischief-makers like Rudolph Giuliani. Trump and his AG have flouted all Democrat subpoenas so far, but Giuliani is not even a government employee, and can certainly be forced to testify. One law professor noted that Trump's odious consigliere could be arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms through a congressional contempt process not requiring DoJ enforcement. The Democrat congress could also jail obstructive government officials through inherent contempt powers. 

Giuliani's (alleged) criminal associates were arrested at Dulles Airport as they sought to flee the country. They're charged in Manhattan federal court with campaign law violations involving Ukraine and one of them is already alleging executive privilege. Giuliani is himself said to be under criminal investigation. There's much more to this particular Ukraine scandal.

The constitution says bribery (a defined criminal offence) is impeachable. Trump's actions may also involve "honest services fraud". Even his stonewalling is impeachable. There are many other reasons. 

Trump could take down the Republican Party itself; as one journo colourfully put it, Republicans who circle the wagon now may do so around "a stick of lit dynamite". Will Trump have a  "Ceausescu moment" at one of his Nuremberg rallies? 

It's definitely worse than Watergate. 

Giuliani: required to testify

*   *   *

Appalling lower court judges are settling in, a cohort of 150 judicial appointments that Donald Trump's rubber-stamp senate has imposed on the creaky American republic. Many of them appear to be unabashed agents of Republican party policy; among other things, they are doing irreparable harm through election law subversions that keep their party in power.

The supreme court is now the bigger worry, with its feared support for heretofore unconstitutional manipulations of government and partisan rightwing causes; some even see an existential threat to US democracy. As the court begins to resemble those in Hungary, Poland and Turkey, the question arises whether it needs to be unpacked (more here) by appointing more justices, perhaps many more. 

In the term that began in October, cruelty is on the docket and civil rights on the chopping block. Five matters are the focus of attention; these and some others could change the course of history, including the final destruction of the Democrats' signature Voting Rights Act 1965, what's left of it. 

Of particular concern are three cases involving employment discrimination related to sexual preference and gender identification in which the Trump administration is defending the employers.

Other cases consider whether, consistent with the US constitution, a state can repeal the insanity defence in a criminal case, or allow non-unanimous juries, while the Espinosa case presents a grave threat to the constitution's first amendment separation of church and state

There will be more to come, perhaps even nullification of climate legislation, as an alarming new study suggests.

Already, the rogue Republican federal judge from Texas, Reed O'Connor, is teeing up a new case, likely to reach the supreme court, that brings together several strands of the Republican culture wars: a ruling that protections for transgender individuals in the ACA (Obamacare) violate "religious freedom".

It was Judge O'Connor who, in an "off-the-wall" decision, declared the ACA, all of it, unconstitutional, and it was also O'Connor who heavily damaged Native American adoptions by striking down the Indian Child Welfare Act.