answer: Our constitutional system breaks down when one branch of government becomes complicit in the power-grabbing, corruption, and civil rights violations of another. The prospect of an authoritarian president being appointed to the Supreme Court with the aid and abetment of a Christian nationalist should terrify Americans. Democrats need to make the credibility of the Supreme Court a top priority in the election and pledge to work on reforming the Court, even if it means abolishing the filibuster.
Questions from readers: If former President Donald Trump is re-elected, can we foresee the possibility that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. will resign and Trump will appoint very young justices who will make it very difficult for Congress to govern?
answer: The two justices, who relish 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 this isn’t enough to drive Democrats to the polls, I don’t know what will.
Questions from readers: Alito and Thomas have shown their corruption. Does Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. care about his legacy?
answer: Honestly, I thought he did for a while. He either cares deeply about dismantling voting rights or Shelby County v. HolderHe doesn’t care about anything else or He is so weak and incompetent that he has no influence over his colleagues, and it is also possible that he is so detached from reality that he does not understand the seriousness of the problem.
Questions from readers: Could jurors in President Trump’s hush money trial be given the option to vote for a misdemeanor?
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 jurors with a compromise offer and remove the risk of prison. But Trump is inconceivable from convicting anyone on a misdemeanor. anythingThat’s why he did not agree to give the jury the option of a misdemeanor. Trump’s ego may once again be his downfall.
Questions from readers: If Trump is convicted, do you have any suggestions for what punishment Judge Juan Merchan should impose?
answerFirst-time offenders often receive no prison time, but given the seriousness of the crime (i.e., its impact on a national election), his contemptuous attitude, his civil convictions (including the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll), and his habitual threats of violence, a sentence of around six months would be entirely justified.
Questions from readers: Why are there so many people today who cannot see what a bad example 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)?
answerUnfortunately, some people seek out fierce figures as their champions. They mistake rudeness for strength and bravado for confidence. Trump charms his supporters with his aura of power, his willingness to crush his opponents, and his indifference to standards of behavior. They 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.
Questions from readers: 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, the weakest, the dumbest, the most socialist president, etc.
answer: They may not reach viewers who are unwilling or able to get information in other ways (e.g., by watching the debates themselves or reading the major newspapers), but Democrats need to attract 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!
Questions from readers: How will Vice President Harris affect the Democratic Party? Pros and cons? Given Biden’s age, it’s surprising that 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, which 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’s constant lies – about crowds, polls, past elections, his own accomplishments – are intended to create a false image of power and invincibility. Too often, the right The media simply presents his lies as one version (or the only version!) of reality, as they did when the obviously exaggerated crowd size at the New Jersey rally was widely reported.
Not buying into Trump’s delusions of grandeur is key to avoiding the false pretenses of equivalence and normalcy on which the MAGA movement depends.
Justice Elena Kagan’s dissenting opinion in the recent racial gerrymandering case; Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP Conventionoffers a compelling rebuke of the near-death of the Voting Rights Act brought about by Alito’s ethically compromised majority opinion — unsurprising given Alito’s identification with white Christian nationalism — but Kagan does not accept that this was 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 in too many cases of too great a departure 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 continued. “Just seven years ago, this Court decided another racial gerrymandering case, one that bears a striking resemblance to this one. Cooper v. HarrisThe court denied the state’s request for a replacement map, but the dissent was vehemently opposed.
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.”[ed]”Unpleasant and humiliating” behaviour.
Roberts started the erosion of voting rights. Shelby County v. Holder As expected, they launched an all-out attack on minority voting rights and power until a new Court majority could correct the grave errors of the Roberts Court (as the Warren Court had done). Plessy v Ferguson), white Republicans will continue to have an unfair advantage in voting rights, while at least Kagan has the nerve to call out the majority for its bad faith actions.
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