A Better Way To Respond To The Supreme Court's Intolerable Immunity Decision
A Better Way To Respond To The Supreme Court's Intolerable Immunity Decision
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
If you’re about my age or older, and a subscriber to this newsletter, you’re familiar with this uncanny sensation of living through a moment when history turns. It’s happened every few months or years since Bush v. Gore: First, Bush v. Gore itself. Then 9/11. The Bush torture regime. The collapse of the false case for the war in Iraq. The global financial crisis. The election of Barack Obama. Then of Donald Trump, with control of the Supreme Court again on the line. COVID-19. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Dobbs. And now this: The Supreme Court’s whole-cloth fabrication of criminal immunity for presidents, just as the incumbent’s path to re-election is closing, and his challenger flaunts dictatorial ambition undisguised.
Of all these hinge-point moments, the latter is the grimmest and most ominous.
Yes, it means Donald Trump won’t face a real criminal trial for trying to overthrow the government in 2020 before the 2024 election, or possibly ever. But it also means much more than that. It means the Supreme Court’s six Republican appointees have lined up behind Samuel Alito, who was recently caught on a live mic explaining his view of power in America as factional, because “one side or the other is going to win.” They’ve chosen their side, with the party that brought them to power. They have chosen to embody the warning Brett Kavanaugh screamed at Senate Democrats before Senate Republicans confirmed him to the high court for life: “What goes around comes around.”
We can infer this not simply because they invented “official acts immunity” to protect President Trump from prosecution, but through the wider context. They did it knowing he’s a criminal, after he was convicted of 34 felonies in state court, because he pleaded with them to, and because he has promised to abuse powers in ways that will require him to enjoy immunity from criminal law after a second term. They know all this about him and decided to provide him a roadmap to dictatorship anyhow. They want him to be president again, this time fully unconstrained. And the real tell is they did it despite certain obvious ways it conflicts with their other, radical holdings.
Joe Biden should want to expose those contradictions, and he can.