The Supreme Court Needs To Answer For Santino, Also American Democracy
Why Democrats shouldn't fear fighting for things
Donald Trump’s mobbed-up Department of Justice tried to indict six Democratic members of Congress who dared suggest that military personnel’s duty was to the Constitution not a mad MAGA king. Trump’s personal consigliere posing as the attorney general, Pam Bondi, testified before Congress last week and didn’t answer questions so much as play the dozens with Democrats (and Thomas Massie).
The Trump administration has openly committed war crimes and regularly ignores judicial rulings it doesn’t like. None of the thugs in Trump’s orbit operates as if they actually fear any legal accountability. This is all the predictable result of the Supreme Court’s infamous 2024 ruling granting broad immunity to the president for any “official acts” committed while in office.
There are a lot of constitutional “oopsies” where the founders didn’t foresee someone like Trump — specifically, the tribal nature of political parties that makes co-equal branches of government active enablers of a corrupt president. However, Trump had already served (poorly) as president and attempted a coup. The Supreme Court wasn’t dealing with hypotheticals about a president who had no restraints on his power but his own “morality.”
“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed the three non-MAGA justices’ dissents as mere hyperbole that “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today.”
Roberts lectured the ladies further:
Virtually every President is criticized for insufficiently enforcing some aspect of federal law (such as drug, gun, immigration, or environmental laws). An enterprising prosecutor in a new administration may assert that a previous President violated that broad statute.
Without immunity, such types of prosecutions of ex-Presidents could quickly become routine. The enfeebling of the Presidency and our Government that would result from such a cycle of factional strife is exactly what the Framers intended to avoid. Ignoring those risks, the dissents are instead content to leave the preservation of our system of separated powers up to the good faith of prosecutors.
If the Dred Scott decision was so egregious, it accelerated the start of the Civil War, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is possibly even worse. Yet, the justices who gave Trump these insane protections won’t have to answer to angry voters at the ballot box. They’re not on the ballot this year or any other year. They are more untouchable than Trump.
The Supreme Court as an institution has inflicted untold damage on the nation, but it has zero accountability. That’s not how a democracy should work. We should not exist at the mercy of robed masters. This is why I think Democrats, going into the midterms, should talk about serious reforms for the Supreme Court, which is too corrupt and stupid to exist in its current form. (All respect to Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, but they only make the court 33 percent less corrupt and stupid. The math isn’t good.)
When I mentioned this on social media, author Catherine Prendergast quickly responded with to my post with a rhetorical cold water bath:
Democrats can’t talk about this right now. They’re winning elections. Let them win, then talk.
When HRC told you you would lose the court for a generation, she was right. We can talk about fixing that when Dems have full control of Presidency and both houses of Congress.
This is an incredibly annoying attitude. For one, it suggests that Democrats should fear openly calling out the Supreme Court for its corruption and fascism enabling, as if that would cost them elections. Instead, we’ll just sneak up on them. The Supreme Court won’t see it coming. Now, obviously Michael Corleone in The Godfather couldn’t run around giving speeches about how he planned to wipe out the heads of the rival mob families, but the element of surprise is more critical when planning gangland slayings. This is politics, which is slightly less-murderous if not as honorable. Voters appreciate knowing what you plan to do when you gain power.
I’ve grown really tired of the “Hillary Told You So” posts. I voted for Clinton multiple times. It had become a habit. I fully agreed with her remarks in a Wisconsin speech she gave the end of March 2016.
“The Court shapes virtually every aspect of life in the United States — from whether you can marry the person you love, to whether you can get healthcare, to whether your classmates can carry guns around this campus,” Clinton said. “If we’re serious about fighting for progressive causes, we need to focus on the Court: who sits on it, how we choose them, and how much we let politics — partisan politics — dominate that process.”
However, I doubt Clinton would argue that the Supreme Court’s current level of corruption is a reasonable consequence of losing elections. There’s no way Republicans would just shrug and tell their constituents, “You should have vote for McCain” if Barack Obama had appointed openly compromised justices who routinely ignored precedent, ruled through the shadow docket, and gave Obama god emperor powers.
Another Bluesky user borrowed John Roberts’ lectern and wrote:
Cool. I'd like to see journalists recognize that the Dems are the minority party and can't do anything about changing or expanding the SCOTUS right now.
Let's get Dems in a supermajority in both houses, THEN talk about dealing with SCOTUS, which Hillary WARNED US would be shot for a generation.
It’s true that Democrats right now are as powerless as Underdog without his super energy pill, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t talk about what they’ll do once they’ve popped the magic pill. Underdog never shut up about it — probably because he was an addict. (This show as a little weird.)
The Supreme Court actively empowered a lawless president, and it’s not going to stop, even if Democrats regain control of the House. The Senate is still a significant reach for Democrats, but it wouldn’t hurt if Democrats were united in not letting Trump or President Vance replace Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, or — god help us — Sonia Sotomayor with some 20-year-old Turning Point USA law student. I want to see an active strategy for dealing with the Supreme Court that’s not backward looking. It’s been 10 years since Mitch McConnell blocked Obama from replacing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. This accelerated a judicial arms race that Democrats are losing.
Republicans have managed to scare off Democrats whenever citizens dared protest the unaccountable Supreme Court. This is a mistake. The Supreme Court has record low approval but it deserves to be even lower. Democratic candidates should spend every day reminding voters that the Supreme Court is directly responsible for Trump’s reign of terror. This is family business we need to settle.
My entire voting life (and I cast my first ballot in 1982) is Democrats being afraid-of Reagan, of Gingrich, of the Tea Party, of MAGA. Afraid of offending people who hate them. When the odd fighter *does* emerge, they're labeled extreme and divisive when no one seems to care about the GOP literally pissing on the Constitution to get what they want (and I am honestly unsure what that is right now besides a nationwide house fire). The first Dem candidate who says, first, no, this administration and it's enablers ARE NOT IMMUNE AND I WILL ENSURE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM IS PROSECUTED and then take steps to ensure SCOTUS is neutered in it's ability to cause further harm has my vote, now and forever. Still waiting, though.
These doomers seem to believe Democrats have zero power right now and can just sit there silent waiting for voters to reward them (presumably for “kitchen table issues”, meaning the only thing people talk about in their kitchens is the price of butter, not a lawless demented child rapist using unlimited power and zero accountability to kill citizens in the streets).
It doesn’t occur to them that even in the minority you can use your media access and war chests to spread a message that outrages voters and even changes their minds. Yes most voters want borders controlled and in principle they want deportation of people who are here illegally. But turns out most of them don’t want workers pulled from jobs, kids yanked from school, neighbors taken away, and when they see this done violently and with no due process (which means whoops, a lot of mistakes that don’t go corrected! Sorry, the guy you voted for just deported your sister, good luck getting her back from El Salvador! But at least the black lady with the annoying laugh isn't there to make you feel inferior!). And believe it or not, you can affect what people talk about in their kitchens, by changing the media conversation.
“But the media is hostile to us” you say. Guess we should give up, right? Or maybe consider this—why does the media like Trump I’m the first place, compared to a normal Republican who controls his bowels? Because the media REALLY likes viewership, and Trump knows how to give it to them. Learn to deliver must-watch soundbites, not overly lawyered mush, get your message out so it can’t be ignored, change some minds, and get the public outraged about this illegitimate Court and the fascists it protects. Stop being weak.