Luke Pickrell Checking in
Photo by David De Hart
Luke Pickrell
Last April, I wrote an article for Cosmonaut Magazine to motivate Marxist Unity Group’s Winning the Battle for Democracy resolution for the Democratic Socialist of America’s convention. I highlighted three then-recent headlines: the arrest of Jack Texiera for leaking Pentagon secrets on Discord, revelations of corruption involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and a judicial attack on the widely-used abortion pill mifepristone. As I explained in the article, each event was an opportunity to expose the undemocratic Constitution and pose the democratic republic as a concrete alternative and necessary stepping-stone to a classless society. None of these three headlines are resolved as the year ends, least of all the two concerning the judicial system and abortion access.
The 21-year-old Texiera is facing a maximum of 15 years in prison for Violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and “unauthorized removal and retention of classified information.” The Espionage Act was famously (infamously) leveraged against Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and faced 115 years in prison as a result. Ellsberg avoided doing time and went on to oppose nuclear weapons and support other whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. He died a few months after Texiera was arrested, on June 13, 2023. So far, there’s no indication that Texiera acted from a place of political conviction and moral duty like Ellsberg. Meanwhile, wars continue in Ukraine and Gaza, and the United States has its hands in both conflicts. Despite his public statements about the wonders of American ‘democracy,’ Joe Biden is using loopholes that allow the U.S. to fund Israel while circumventing Congress and public oversight.
The Supreme Court has rarely been out of the spotlight in the last eight months. In response to its overt corruption, the Court released a nonbinding code of conduct that fooled no one and solved nothing. Of course, an ‘ethical Court’ (whatever that means) would still be undemocratic because none of its members are elected. Federal judges and justices are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Due to the Senate's extreme malapportionment (each state gets two votes regardless of its population), four current judges, including Clarence Thomas, were confirmed by a Senate majority that represented a minority of the population.
In April, a federal judge in Texas ruled against the abortion pill mifepristone. Now, a woman named Kate Cox has fled Texas to get an abortion after the state Supreme Court ruled against her appeal for emergency services due to complications. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened Cox and said that any physician who helped her would face first degree felony charges. Despite the court’s denial, Cox has the support of the majority of the country, who believe a pregnant person should be able to obtain an abortion when necessary, no matter where she lives. Meanwhile, the fight over mifepristone continues, with the Supreme Court agreeing to hear arguments from the Biden administration asking to overturn a lower court’s ruling.
The precarity of abortion rights, despite nationwide majority support, must also be blamed on the Democratic Party’s defense of constitutional orthodoxy and their refusal to enshrine Roe v. Wade in law. When it came to the rights of future African-American freedmen, Abraham Lincoln simply ignored the Supreme Court. Facing opposition to the Court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg in 2020, Biden merely commissioned a study and put forward “disempowering reforms” like “jurisdiction stripping and a supermajority requirement for judicial review.” Instead of reckoning with the Constitution after each regressive Supreme Court ruling, the Democratic Party promises vague change and cynically tells its base to support “blue no matter who.” The Democrats are hypocrites who talk about the importance of democracy but refuse to say anything about the Constitution and never turn down an opportunity to “compromise.”
Such is the sorry state of our country as a new year approaches. Is anyone surprised that a recent Pew Poll described Americans as harboring an “unrelentingly negative” view of politics? For the first time in 30 years of Pew polling, America's opinion of the Supreme Court is more negative than positive. Still, a clear majority of Americans favor the malapportioned structure of the Senate. Almost 25 years ago, in The Velvet Coup, Daniel Lazare wrote that Americans are “no more inclined to tamper with [the constitutional system] than…the Mona Lisa” and lamented that they “persist in believing that [the Constitution] was made by a race of giants that was infinitely superior” to people like themselves. Is this still the case? Do we still view our Constitution as “something akin to ‘the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched’”?