The court decides

The Constitution of the United States clearly lays out the process for its amendment, and that process does not include an arbitrary decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. But that is what Americans witnessed on July 1, when the radical 6-3 majority on the high court added language to the Constitution that did not exist for the first 248 years of this country’s history.
It’s as if we had a new Constitutional Convention, made up of six members of the right-wing Federalists Society, who overruled the considered opinion of our nation’s founders and placed themselves in the unprecedented role of revising the language of the Constitution to meet their political objective of helping the most dangerous candidate in American history to achieve the power of a quasi-emperor.
The decision in Trump vs. the United States, was astonishing in its utter dishonesty. Let’s remember that this is a court majority that for years has touted their supposed fealty to the original text of the Constitution. Yet, their July 1 ruling granting Donald Trump broad immunity against criminal prosecution for official acts has no basis whatsoever in the language of the Constitution, in the historical record of the original Constitutional Convention, in the writings of the Federalist Papers, in previous court decisions, or in federal statute.
Indeed, the language of the Constitution makes it clear that the founders specifically intended its words to bind the President to the rule of law. It establishes impeachment as the process for removing a corrupt President, specifically for crimes such as treason, bribery, or other “high crimes and misdemeanors,” crimes which will no longer be crimes at all for the President as long as they are undertaken as part of his Article II duties. What’s more, the Constitution specifically states that should a President be removed through impeachment, he or she could still be subject to criminal prosecution, clearly spelling out the intent of the founders. Further, the Constitution specifically provides immunity to members of Congress for their statements on the floor of their respective bodies, but offers no mention of immunity of any kind for the President.
The high court ignored all of that, resting their decision entirely on their partisan motivations and their stated desire to see a future president, unencumbered by fealty to the law, take “bold and decisive action,” a statement that peppers John Roberts’ majority decision. It reads like a clarion call to their would-be dictator, Donald Trump, to do exactly what he has promised to do should he regain the White House: kill or prosecute his perceived enemies in politics and the media, replace thousands of qualified and experienced federal workers with political hacks, overturn legal, environmental, and workplace safety protections that Americans have long taken for granted, and erect vast internment camps for residents and workers in this country who lack legal documentation.
Donald Trump makes no bones about it. He is running to seek revenge and the Supreme Court has made it clear they intend to be there to facilitate his rampage.
What’s worse, this court has made it clear that the immunity they granted Trump is for Trump or future Republican presidents alone. The recklessly partisan court majority gave itself the sole authority to determine if any illegal act by a future President enjoys the immunity they have just invented from whole cloth. Only a fool would believe that the current court would not play politics with its immunity protection.
What this decision makes clear is that the American people can rely only on the integrity and the humility of the individuals they elect to the presidency to ensure that we don’t fall into strongman rule, like Russia under Vladimir Putin. This makes the current candidacy of Donald Trump all the more fraught, since we know he was willing to violate the law the last time, both to exercise power and to hold onto it even after his election defeat. As we have learned from many former Trump staffers, the former president, who hopes to be president again, had to be repeatedly restrained by White House legal counsel who advised that many of his impulses were illegal and could subject him to future prosecution.
With a Supreme Court that has now signaled it is standing by to cover him, it is very easy to believe that Trump would be emboldened to take even more extreme action than during his first term, to violate the rights of Americans and, ultimately, to hold onto power. While the Constitution currently limits a President to two terms, those are just words on parchment, which the high court has now shown unequivocally, it feels free to ignore or invent at their pleasure.
During his 2005 confirmation hearings, John Roberts told members of the Senate that he believed in judicial modesty, that justices were simply umpires, there to call balls and strikes — to interpret the laws and the Constitution, not rewrite them. He’s clearly changed his mind. The radical court majority no longer see themselves as umpires. On July 1, 2024, they declared themselves American kingmakers.