The Gift That Keeps on Giving
By Luke Pickrell
The Supreme Court is the gift that keeps on giving. But if those with the robes keep constitutional critics like me in business, they’re doing the same for Donald Trump.
On Friday, the Supremes handed the president a major win, ruling six-to-three that lower courts can’t issue nationwide blocks against executive orders, such as Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. By throwing out nationwide injunctions, the ruling effectively limits birthright citizenship to 22 states and the District of Columbia, two immigrant rights groups, and the four pregnant women who originally brought the lawsuits to federal court.
It’s now full steam ahead for the White House, which is expected to move quickly to implement other previously blocked orders, ranging from mass deportations to housing transgender women prisoners with men, and withholding funds from schools that promote diversity. Trump hailed the decision as a “monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law,” while his lawyers called the case “the ballgame” for his agenda.
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor and company argued that Trump has made a “solemn mockery” of the Constitution and that the Court is ushering in a “new legal regime” where all our rights are at risk. But the reality looks nothing like the idealized Constitution the liberal justices still cling to. Trump hasn’t desecrated the Constitution — he’s a product of it, just like the justices themselves. Furthermore, no new legal regime is required to endanger our rights; the old one is doing the job just fine.
While millions of Americans march against monarchy, the Supreme Court is determined to give the executive unlimited power. As The American Prospect writes, “As Trump moves toward outright dictatorship, the Roberts Court keeps enabling him.” Just last year, the decision in Trump v. United States prompted a dissenting Sotomayor to scold, “Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune.”
The framers’ system was designed to restrict the power of the majority and empower a wealthy minority. Friday’s decision throws another bucket of cold water on the already wet and shivering idea that the Constitution’s minoritarian checks will stop Trumpism. They won’t.
It's never been clearer that the principles of universal and equal rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence can’t be fulfilled under the current legal regime. To abolish Trump and the Supreme Court, we need a democratic constitution. After all, the goal is to put people like me out of a job.
"Trump hasn’t desecrated the Constitution — he’s a product of it." Very well put. This is the necessary rejoinder to liberal Democrats who insist that Trump is external to the US system. He's Putin's puppet, he's a fascist -- which, as everyone knows, Tom Hanks single-handedly vanquished in "Saving Private Ryan." He's un-American, etc. But the reality is the opposite. He's a product of a 238-year-old system in severe decay.