I wasn't worried that the Supreme Court would let Trump implement his Postal Service plan. And it didn't.
It would have been unpopular.
The Supreme Court protects Trump from himself.
To be fair, sometimes the court acts like the one we imagined in high school civics: an honest, fair-minded interpreter of the Constitution. Maybe that is even true most of the time. Those are the cases where there is no particular partisan interest. This year, for instance, a 9-0 decision held that a defendant who lived in San Francisco, and was investigated there, could not be tried there if the underlying crime of giving false documents to police took place in Seattle. The Constitution says you're tried where the crime was committed, and there's no Democratic or Republican position on trial venue. The court played it straight.
But on issues with a partisan interest, the court finds a way to vote that interest. Tea leaves, sheep entrails, and the Constitution can be read to meet the need of the moment. The six Republican-appointed justices gave Trump immunity from prosecution. They allowed race-based gerrymandering as long as jurisdictions assert the racial component is incidental (wink-wink) to helping elect Republicans; southern states immediately gerrymandered out of existence districts with Black representatives. They ended Roe v. Wade, letting Trump fulfill his promise to the GOP's anti-abortion wing.
Yet the court says NO to Trump when he tries to do unpopular things. His effort to end birthright citizenship would put everyone's citizenship status in doubt. The current rule is simple and enforceable: born in the USA, you're a citizen; and we have good evidence of where people are born. Even so, as Trump's own claim that Obama's hospital and state records were false shows, an intransigent accuser can turn citizenship into a controversy. Under Trump's proposed rule, a parent's legal status and a father's paternity would all be subject to challenge. Neither hospitals nor state vital-records offices were ready to implement Trump's executive order. So the court said no. Chaos avoided; Trump protected.
That's also why the justices voted to stop Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, a case where I filed an amicus curiae brief. The tariffs were unpopular, and the GOP Congress didn't dare defy Trump, so the court did what Congress feared to do.
Trump's plan to make the U.S. Postal Service the enforcer of voting eligibility, rolled out less than seven weeks before the election, would have forced mail-voting jurisdictions to build backup in-person systems overnight, unfunded. Trump may have imagined disenfranchised Democrats; the chaos would have hit red and blue states alike. County clerks across America would have erupted. Even unengaged voters would have noticed the chaos, and that it was Trump's doing. The implication was unmistakable: Trump was messing with the election to steal it. And what a mess!
The court made a wise political decision: this was a bad idea, badly planned, impossible to implement, and bad for Trump and Republicans alike.
I almost hoped Trump would get his way. Give him rope. Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to make people vote for change; 1932's bank failures, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the 2008 financial collapse were all clarifying moments. Voters shake things up. People realize it is a new era. Republican officeholders might stop fearing being "primaried" by a Trump-endorsed challenger. Congress might start doing its job.
But I only almost wanted it. The trouble with chaos is that we never know how it resolves. Even amid anger at Trump, the votes that would be cast and get counted might come out exactly as Trump is trying to arrange. The lesson the world might learn is not that Trump is dangerous. It might be that democracy is easy to subvert if you control who votes and whose vote gets counted.
The Supreme Court ran interference for Trump. Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, voted their partisan id. Four wiser Republicans said no.
The result is a win-win-win for the GOP:
-- The court majority gets to look independent of Trump. See! We aren't his toadies!
-- Trump avoids a political setback.
-- And Trump gets to fulminate at rallies about how much better things would have gone had he gotten his way.
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3 comments:
Alito and Thomas are very much maga toadies.
Chaos is opportunity for those prepared to seize the moment. Chaos gives you room to maneuver IF you know where you are headed. Project 2025 is the blueprint and the marching orders. By some accounts the US is halfway through the plan at the moment. Reversing course through disorder will be exceedingly difficult, as there are no plans for where to go. The only call for action is vote Democratic! Okay I will for for the Democrat, then what?
"......sometimes the court acts like the one we imagined in high school civics: an honest, fair-minded interpreter of the Constitution".
The famously apolitical and traditionalist Warren court, for instance? Funny how supposed procedural assessments are informed by substantive social and political preferences.
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