June, is, in a manner of speaking, Supreme Court of the United States, aka SCOTUS, Month. As is customary, the High Court is finishing its judicial year with a flourish, rendering historic and/or landmark decisions. Yesterday, SCOTUS dealt a blow to the far right. In an unanticipated twist, a Trump-heavy Court, including two of his three appointees weighed in to deliver a blow to those who would blow up democracy as we know it, and make it easier for state legislatures to invalidate elections. That was the gambit the former president attempted to pull off after the 2020 Election, culminating in the events of January 6, including an insurrection at the Capitol, and a move by a contingent of GOP Congressmen to refuse to certify election results.
Trump along with his associates and supporters continue to enthusiastically argue that he did nothing wrong. Not on January 6, not when he took and refused to relinquish classified documents, and not when he claimed to brandish Top Secret documents before a group of people, none of whom had clearance to see secret or classified documents. It is all, according to them, a witch hunt, conducted by Democrats, the liberal left, and of course, the (enemy of the people) media.
As the 2024 Campaign Season begins to take shape, Trump has seemingly secured the frontrunner role in the bid to obtain the GOP Nomination. While current polls show him with over 50% of GOP support, and a lead of 20 points or more points over his closest challenger, while his competitors not named DeSantis are looking up at double digits. There’s still a lot of time, of course. Especially, as Mr. Trump is juggling a couple of felony indictments, with more to come. Yet, if past is prologue, it is logical to impute that Trump’s support, at least among the Republican base, is solid.
Yesterday’s ruling by SCOTUS squarely rejected the fringe legal theory that Trump supporters hoped could be used to ignore, and if necessary denounce and reject election outcomes.
While I wholeheartedly submit, that was a positive development, there are other developments of note.
Congress last year passed a law clarifying that as VP Pence concluded, no, the vice president cannot throw out electoral votes the president doesn’t like.
Special Counsel Jack Smith appears to be refocused on the Trump supporters who signed false certificates to the federal government, asserting they were the rightful elections for Trump in seven battleground states won by Joe Biden.
Of the current SCOTUS’s nine Justices, six are of the conservative bent, and three were appointed by Donald Trump. In yesterday’s ruling, three conservative members, including the Chief Justice, and two members appointed by Trump, joined the three liberals in an effort to disabuse one and all, of the idea that for hundreds of years, Americans have been misinterpreting the word “legislature.”
The reliable right was comfortable with the notion that the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause stipulates that federal “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature.” Under the independent state legislature theory, now debunked by SCOTUS, that means that state legislatures alone oversee federal elections and therefore are unaccountable to state courts.
The case serving as the basis for this ruling – Moore v. Harper – had to do with a 2022 North Carolina congressional map rejected by the State’s Supreme Court. Had SCOTUS agreed that state legislatures were immune from State Courts on these questions, it would have validated the idea pushed by Trump in 2020 that state legislatures could ignore election results and install their own personal electors.
One might argue, the Court (not to mention the country) did not want to see a repeat of 2020. SCOTUS could have declined to hear the case. Instead, they chose to act like grownups and ruled accordingly. Meanwhile, Trump will do, as Trump does; he’ll ignore the facts on the ground, and persist, as he always does, that his actions were perfect. Even though Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all rejected the madness in 2020, Trump and the voters who love him will persevere. Because, as we all know, today, and every day, Trump still believes Pence could, and should have overturned the election.
On Monday, CNN broke a story with Trump, on tape, rustling papers he said were an Iran battle plan. His loyal adherents, who believe everything he says, even when what he says contradicts what he said, before he said what he’s saying at the time. It would be cute…if it weren’t so existentially threatening.
As CNN’s David Chalian put it yesterday on “Inside Politics,” “We have to be able to see the reality that two things are true at the same time. This can be a dangerous, reckless, perhaps criminal bit of behavior by a former president of the United States, and it may not actually damage him politically – may not – inside the context of a Republican nomination race.
Here's to praying that, as was true in 2020, winning a GOP primary/the GOP nomination require appealing to a different set of voters than winning the White House. “Order In The Court: The Quest To Save American Democracy!”
I’m done; holla back!
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A new post is published each Wednesday. For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/27/politics/trump-elections-supreme-court-what-matters/index.html
http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2023/06/order-in-court-quest-to-save-american.html
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