SHAME ON THE SUPREME COURT!
Starting in 2024, the court began expanding the power of the presidency. On July 1, it ruled that a president has immunity from both former and future official acts, however wrong they might be. Almost a year later, the court limited the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions to block presidential policies. In subsequent decisions, the court continually ruled in favor of presidential authority, allowing the executive to cancel monies authorized by Congress, fire governmental employees, even to the point of reducing a department’s effectiveness to act. The most recent case was the demolition of the Department of Education.
Most of the right-wing justices, three of them appointed by Trump, define themselves as “Originalists.” They argue that the original Constitution should be the model for what follows after. This belief actually goes against what the Founding Fathers wanted, since they included the power to amend as Article V of the document –- the only exceptions being that the slave trade could not be halted until 1808 and that no state should be deprived of having two Senators. The current “Originalists” overturned Roe v. Wade in part on the grounds that the right to privacy did not exist in the original Constitution. Neither did votes for women, although of course slavery did. The irony or wrong-headedness of these rulings seems to have escaped them.
What these recent decisions have done is create what some have called an “Imperial Presidency.” I would call it a “Monarchial Presidency.” The entire Constitution, as well as the Declaration of Independence, was written to free Americans from a monarchy. Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution states that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” –- that is, a government that is not a monarchy. The current Supreme Court has failed to do that.
A common symbol for the separation of powers in the U.S. government is that of a three-legged stool. One leg for the executive, one for the legislature, and one for the courts. We now have a “one-legged stool,” since the spineless Republican-dominated Congress has done everything the president wants and so has the Supreme Court. A “one-legged stool” will not hold –- instead it represents authoritarianism. Only popular demonstrations and rebellions can overthrow that. There’s a reason that the recent June 14th march was called “No Kings.” 5,000,000 Americans marched then; I hope even more will join together on this Labor Day in September..