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This week we answer reader questions, reflect on the rule of law, and feature succinct headlines and powerful dissent.
Reader Question: Much has been written about the Supreme Court's loss of credibility, but what will actually change? Unless Congress acts (and I don't see that happening anytime soon), some Supreme Court justices will continue to act as if they're not accountable. What are your thoughts on this?
Answer: Our constitutional system breaks down when one branch of government becomes complicit in the power-grabbing, corruption, and civil rights violations of other branches. The prospect of an authoritarian president on the Supreme Court, aided and abetted by Christian nationalists, should terrify Americans. Democrats need to make the credibility of the Supreme Court a top priority in the election and commit to Supreme Court reform, even if it means abolishing the filibuster.
A reader question: If former President Donald Trump is re-elected, is it possible that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. will step down and Trump will appoint very young justices who will make it very difficult for him to govern Congress?
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Answer: The two justices, who enjoy their positions of virtually unlimited power, may resist resigning. Trump will want to find younger versions of them. They will want to hang on to the end. Meanwhile, we will have 200 or so Eileen Cannon Judges on the lower courts, corrupting the rest of the federal bench. If that's not enough to drive Democrats to the polls, I don't know what will.
A reader asks: Justices Alito and Thomas have shown themselves corrupt, so does Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. care about his legacy?
A: Honestly, I have thought that for a while. Either he is very interested in dismantling voting rights (starting with Shelby County v. Holder) and doesn't care about anything else, or he is weak and incompetent and has no influence over his colleagues. It's also possible that he is so detached from reality that he doesn't understand the seriousness of the issue.
A reader asks: Could jurors in President Trump's hush money trial be given the option to vote for misdemeanors?
Answer: This is a great question. The statute of limitations for misdemeanors has passed. New York district attorneys can only try felonies, which have a 5-year statute of limitations. Trump would have to waive the statute of limitations for misdemeanors to present them as an option (a “lesser blanket offense”). Most defendants would seize the opportunity to entice the jury with a compromise offer and remove the risk of prison. But Trump has not agreed to giving the jury the option for misdemeanors, because he cannot imagine convicting anyone of anything. Trump's ego may destroy him again.
Reader question: Do you have any suggestions for the type of punishment Judge Juan Merchan should impose if Trump is convicted?
Answer: First-time offenders often do not receive any prison time, but given the seriousness of the crime (i.e., its impact on a national election), the defendant's contemptuous attitude, the civil judgments (including the sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll), and the habitual threats of violence, a sentence of around six months is entirely justified.
A reader asks: Why do so many people today not understand what a bad role model Donald Trump is? Didn't their parents ever teach them to be polite to others, or that the way you treat others says a lot about your character? What happened to the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you)?
Answer: Unfortunately, some people want a fierce figure as their champion. They confuse rudeness with strength and bravado with confidence. Trump charms his supporters with his aura of power, his willingness to crush opponents, and his indifference to standards of behavior. His supporters love him because of his personality, not in spite of it. When his outlandish attendance projections are upset or boos rain down at a Libertarian Party rally, he suffers not only personal humiliation but also political damage.
Reader Question: How do we get this across to Fox News and One America News viewers? I was surprised at the number of people asking why President Biden is so unpopular. If you watch Fox News or OAN, you'll see that all they hear is that Biden is the worst, weakest, dumbest, most socialist president, etc.
A: They may not reach viewers who are unwilling or able to get information in other ways (such as by watching the debates themselves or reading major newspapers), but Democrats need to win over voters who are still open to other sources of information, as well as voters who don't listen to the news at all, the latter of whom may not pay attention until September.
Reader Question: How would a VP Harris affect things? Pro or con? Given Biden's age, I'm surprised this hasn't been given more attention.
Answer: Voters don't just vote for the vice president, they vote for the top candidate. Harris has her critics, but she's done a great job of engaging with women and young voters on issues like abortion and guns. This could make a big difference in close battleground states.
A jury will decide Trump's fate in a New York business fraud case. What a contrast between New York courts and federal courts. Judge Eileen Cannon has put a freeze on Trump's Espionage Act case. The Supreme Court is plagued by the worst ethics scandal in its history. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to delay absolute immunity rulings, reinforcing the impression that the entire court is corrupt. The dire need for federal court reform has never been clearer.
Here's the Daily Beast's headline: “Trumpworld Claims 25,000 Attended His Rally. Aerial Footage Shows Elsewhere.” The headline is concise, informative, and, above all, it exposes and debunks Trump's lies. The first paragraph is just as powerful: “Trumpworld is once again out of touch with reality, this time over how to count, specifically how many people attended Donald Trump's rally in the Bronx on Thursday.”
Trump constantly lies about crowds, polls, past elections, his accomplishments, etc. in order to create a false image of power and invincibility. Too often, right-wing media presents Trump's lies as simply one version (or the only version!) of reality, as they did when reports emerged that the crowd size at his New Jersey rally was clearly exaggerated.
Not buying into Trump's delusions of grandeur is key to avoiding the false pretenses of equivalence and normalcy on which the MAGA movement relies.
Justice Elena Kagan's dissent in the recent racially biased redistricting case, Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP Conference, is a compelling rebuke to the near-death of the Voting Rights Act brought about by Alito's ethically compromised majority opinion. Given Alito's identification with white Christian nationalists, the majority opinion is not surprising. But Justice Kagan does not accept that this is a sincere application of the Constitution.
The majority cherry-picks the evidence to suit its tastes, ignores or downplays inconvenient evidence, discounts the commission's judgments regarding witness credibility, and commits a series of errors regarding expert opinion. The majority declares that it knows more than the district court does about how the First District was created in South Carolina's mapping lab. But the evidence speaks for itself. Page after page, the majority opinion betrays its distance from and unfamiliarity with the events and evidence central to the case.
As with all too many extreme departures from precedent, the majority overturned the law solely because of six votes. “To be fair, we've been through this before, but in dissent,” Kagan continues. “Just seven years ago, this Court decided another racial gerrymandering case that bears a striking resemblance to this one. In Cooper v. Harris, the Court rejected the state's request for an alternative map requirement, but the dissent vehemently disagreed.”
She also accuses the majority of disadvantaging African-American voters.
In every respect, the majority today stacks the playing field against the plaintiffs. They must lose, they say, because the state had a “possible” case that it did not consider race, even though the opposite case was more plausible. And they say the plaintiffs failed to present certain forms of evidence that they did not know were relevant, and that this Court recently told them they did not need. It doesn't matter that the plaintiffs presented extensive evidence, including expert statistical analysis, that the state's redistricting plan was the product of racial selection. It doesn't matter that the state offered little more than a clumsy and contrived denial in response. It doesn't matter that three judges whose findings of fact should be respected found those denials implausible and failed to undermine the plaintiffs' evidence. When racial classification in voting is at issue, the majority says, any question must be resolved in the state's favor. Otherwise, God bless us, “the state must be able to determine the race of the state, and we must be able to determine the race of the state, and we must be able to determine the race of the state, and we must be able to determine the race of the state, and we must be able to determine the race of the state.”[ed]”Unpleasant and humiliating” behaviour.
The evisceration of voting rights that Roberts began in Shelby County v. Holder has predictably begun an all-out attack on minority voting power and power. Until a new majority corrects Roberts's grave errors (as the Warren Court did in overturning Plessy v. Ferguson), white Republicans will continue to enjoy an unfair advantage in voting rights. In the meantime, at least Kagan has the nerve to call out the majority's bad behavior.
We'll be hosting an online chat next week so please send us your questions. Questions submitted after next Wednesday will appear in our next mailbag newsletter.
