Per @reuters Fulton County, Georgia posted the Trump felony charges before the grand jury may have officially returned the indictments. Just shows you what a banana republic we are living in right now. pic.twitter.com/hff3dIvgJR
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 14, 2023
New York State recently cited Colonial laws to disarm ‘dissidents’ while attempting to justify their post-Bruen gun control legislation.
They are saying the quiet part out loud.
-Firearms Policy Coalition
The United States is just waiting on divorce papers, the separation is already here.
In the part of this nation controlled by communists like Antifa and BLM a defense attorney can openly declare herself to be a member of Antifa and (during a civil suit between Antifa and longtime Antifa nemesis Andy Ngo) tell the jury that she will remember their faces long after the trial and that isn’t considered jury tampering, obstruction of justice or threatening a jury.
How is that any different from a defense attorney looking at the jury and saying: “I work for a powerful crime family and they know where each of you live.” ?
In the same part of this divided nation, by the same political ideology, a former president and front-running candidate for the presidency can be tried on felony charges (during the campaign, not the two years before the campaign) for saying that he believed the election was stolen and for employing the tactic, openly utilized by the Democrats, of challenging the electors.
What is free speech to the right is deemed a felony to the left.
What is legally challenging an election to the right is an insurrection to the left.
This isn’t about fair, or right, or justice. This is the playbook; the time-honored communist procedure. The obvious injustice and amazing lawlessness of their actions are intended to drive the opposition mad. This is why standing behind Trump is important, because he does exactly the same thing to them. Every time he wins, they lose their mind and that doesn’t matter whether it’s in an election or in court.
FPC Files For Injunction Against Washington “Large Capacity” Magazine Ban
Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that it has filed a motion for summary judgment in its Sullivan v. Ferguson lawsuit, which challenges Washington’s unconstitutional ban on common firearm magazines. The motion can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.
“There can be no serious dispute that the magazines Washington bans are ‘in common use’—there are hundreds of millions of them [] owned by tens of millions of Americans as private surveys and industry and government data all corroborate,” argues the motion. “Indeed, courts across the country have repeatedly found that these magazines are commonly owned and widely chosen by Americans for self-defense and other lawful purposes. That fact decides this case, and Plaintiffs are entitled to judgment in their favor.”
“There are few things more offensive than politicians arbitrarily preventing people from possessing the tools they deem necessary to protect their lives, loved ones, and communities,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, FPCAF’s General Counsel and Vice President of Legal, and FPC’s counsel in this case. “The magazines that Washington bans are constitutionally protected and it does not have the power to infringe on the rights of Washingtonians by banning them. We’re hopeful that the Court will see the error of Washington’s ways.”
FPC is joined in this lawsuit by the Second Amendment Foundation.
Kabuki Theater
Rep. Don Beyer (So nice when they provide pictures for PID)
Democrats demand 1,000% excise tax on ‘assault weapons,’ high-capacity magazines
Democrats failed to move the same idea when they controlled the House last year
More than two dozen House Democrats put forward legislation Friday that would slap “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines with a 1,000% excise tax, a change that would raise the price of a $500 weapon to $5,000 in a bid to reduce access to guns across the country.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and 24 other House Democrats introduced the legislation Friday. It’s the second time Democrats have put forward the idea.
Beyer and 37 Democrats proposed the same idea last year when Democrats controlled the House, but it never moved.
The text of Beyer’s new bill was not out as of the weekend, and it was unclear if any changes were made from his 2022 version. His bill from last year imposed the tax on any magazine or related device that can accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The same 1,000% tax would be imposed on any “semiautomatic assault weapon,” which last year’s bill defined as a semiautomatic rifle or pistol with a fixed magazine of 10 rounds or more or that have other various features.
Under that rule, a weapon that normally costs $2,000 would force customers to pay more than $20,000, a change Beyer argued last year could help “curb the epidemic of gun violence.”
“Congress must take action to stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities, which have taken a terrible toll in Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa and too many other places,” Beyer said then. “Again and again assault weapons designed for use on the battlefield have been used in mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, hospitals, churches, synagogues, malls, theaters, bars and so on.”
The National Rifle Association has argued gun control advocates invented the term “assault weapon” to “deliberately confuse the public and advance the political cause of gun control.” The NRA says the term “assault rifle” applies only to automatic weapons, while gun control advocates are looking to put controls on semi-automatic weapons.
Fully automatic weapons discharge rounds continuously while the trigger is pulled, and the NRA has said these weapons are used by the U.S. armed services but are not easily obtained by the public, unlike semi-automatic weapons that fire just a single round.
Beyer’s new bill was introduced a day after more than 100 Democrats told House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., they are “disappointed” that House GOP leaders haven’t moved any legislation this year to curb gun ownership in America.
“As Members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, we call on you to schedule votes on gun violence prevention legislation as soon as possible this year,” they wrote in a public letter to McCarthy.
“Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in America since 2020. Last year, 1,686 children were killed and another 4,485 were injured by gun violence,” the letter added. “Despite this preventable carnage, the House has yet to vote on even one gun violence prevention bill.”
Alan Dershowitz Issues Warning: “Looks Like Banana Republic Land”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said Friday the prosecution of former President Donald Trump “looks like banana republic land” following a NYT report that claimed President Joe Biden pressed for Trump’s indictment.
Alan said: “President Biden urged his attorney general to indict the man who he knew was going to be the leading opponent if against him.
“That begins to look like banana republic land. That’s what happens when people in power are afraid of the democratic process.
“What they do is they seek the indictment and prosecution of the people who are running against them.
“I have a constitutional right to vote against Donald Trump for the third time.
“I voted against him twice, I intend to vote against him again, but I want to have that right to vote against him and not have that right taken away from me by prosecutors and by the president, who wants to see him imprisoned.
“That’s just not the American way.
“This is a step in that direction(banana republic), and also placing the case in the District of Columbia, which is 95% anti-Trump, putting it in front of a judge with a history of anti-Trump.
“If the government thinks they have a strong case, they ought to join the defense and agree to move it to West Virginia or Virginia and put it in front of another judge who doesn’t have a long history of anti-Trump attitudes.
“So, I don’t believe he can get a fair trial in the District of Columbia.”
Everybody Keeps Indicting Trump, Without Regard for Consequences.
Having already said what I had to say about the most recent indictment of the former president (“Banana Republic, U.S.A.”), I thought perhaps readers might want to know what liberals are saying about it.
Trump’s surreal arraignment day in Washington augurs ominous days ahead
That’s the headline on an “analysis” by CNN reporter Stephen Collinson, and this might be the first time I’ve ever the verb “augur” used in a headline. “Portend,” maybe, but “augur”? No, can’t recall ever seeing that one, and it might help to know that Collinson is not American. He’s from England, where I suppose schoolboys at posh academies are taught to use references to the ancient Roman practice of augury, but I digress . . .
As former President Donald Trump left Washington after answering charges of trying to subvert democracy, it felt like all the previous trauma and divisions of his eight-year journey into the nation’s psyche were just the start.
America now faces the prospect of an ex-president repeatedly going on trial in an election year in which he’s the Republican front-runner and is promising a new White House term of retribution. He is responding with the same kind of extreme rhetoric that injected fury into his political base and erupted into violence after the last election. Ominous and tense days may be ahead.
Trump spent the afternoon at a federal courthouse within sight of the US Capitol that was ransacked by his supporters on January 6, 2021. He pleaded not guilty in the gravest of the three cases in which he has so far been indicted – on four charges arising from an alleged attempt to halt the “collecting, counting and certifying” of votes after the 2020 election.
Live video of Trump motorcading to an airport and sweeping into yet another city for yet another indictment on his branded jetliner has become part of a sudden new normal. But if the arraignment of a former president seems routine, it’s a measure of the historic chaos Trump has wrought since he bulldozed into politics in 2015.Wearing his classic dark suit and long red tie, Trump on Thursday rose to his full height in court and slowly and clearly elucidated the words “not guilty” in a hearing in which his fall from president to defendant was underscored when he had to wait silently for the judge to arrive. He was irked, sources familiar with his mindset told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, that the judge referred to him simply as “Mr. Trump,” rather than with the presidential title he still used at his clubs.
The 45th president and special counsel Jack Smith – who has also indicted him for the alleged mishandling of classified documents – shared several glances, before a proceeding that, unlike when he was president, means Trump’s fate is now out of his control.
The entire day was surreal, but given its historic implications – after Trump became the first ex-president formally charged in relation to alleged crimes committed in office – also sad.Thursday was a day when the country crossed a point of no return. For the first time, the United States formally charged one of its past leaders with trying to subvert its core political system and values.
It was Trump who forced the country over this dangerous threshold. A man whose life’s creed is to never be seen as a loser refused to accept defeat in a democratic election in 2020, then set off on a disastrous course because, as Smith’s indictment put it, “he was determined to stay in power.”
Trump is steering a stormy course to an unknown destination. If he wins back the White House, the already twice-impeached new president could trigger a new constitutional crisis by sweeping away the federal cases against him or even by pardoning himself. Any alternative Republican president could find themselves besieged by demands from Trump supporters for a pardon that, if granted, could overshadow their entire presidency. And if Trump is convicted, and loses a 2024 general election, he risks a long jail term, which would likely become fuel for him to incite his supporters to fresh protest. . . .
Well, enough of that. Notice how Collinson pretends that all of this was Trump’s fault, as if nobody else involved — Attorney General Merrick Garland or Special Counsel Jack Smith — had any choice or discretion in the matter. No, they had to indict Trump. Because Trump “forced the country over this dangerous threshold,” which I suppose is pretty much how the Roundheads explained themselves after they beheaded King Charles I: “We had no choice! He made us do it!” The Roundheads then set up a “Republic” far more tyrannical than anything Charles ever did, much the same as those later regicides in France imposed a tyranny more brutal and repressive than the monarchy of Louis XVI, and likewise the Bolsheviks were infinitely worse than Czar Nicholas.
One might notice a historical pattern here, and then — since we’re speaking of ominous auguries — contemplate America’s future once Our Leaders save us from Trump’s alleged threat to “subvert democracy.”
But these people seem to have no proper sense of history, no more than they have any sense of irony or self-awareness, which explains the latest entry in John Hoge’s “I’m Not Making This Up, You Know” files:
Energy Sec Granholm secretly consulted top CCP energy official before SPR releases
EXCLUSIVE: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm engaged in multiple conversations with the Chinese government’s top energy official days before the Biden administration announced it would tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to combat high gas prices in 2021.
Granholm’s previously-undisclosed talks with China National Energy Administration Chairman Zhang Jianhua — revealed in internal Energy Department calendars obtained by Americans for Public Trust (APT) and shared with Fox News Digital — reveal that the Biden administration likely discussed its plans to release oil from the SPR with China before its public announcement.
According to the calendars, Granholm spoke in one-on-one conversations with Jianhua, who is a longstanding senior member of the Chinese Communist Party, on Nov. 19, 2021, and two days later on Nov. 21, 2021. Then, on Nov. 23, 2021, the White House announced a release of 50 million barrels of oil from the SPR, the largest release of its kind in U.S. history at the time.
“Secretary Granholm’s multiple closed-door meetings with a CCP-connected energy official raise serious questions about the level of Chinese influence on the Biden administration’s energy agenda,” APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital.
“Instead of focusing on creating real energy independence for America, Granholm has been too busy parroting Chinese energy propaganda and insisting ‘we can all learn from what China is doing,’” Sutherland continued. “The public deserves to know the extent to which Chinese officials are attempting to infiltrate U.S. energy policy and security.”
In a statement, the DOE said the meeting was broadly part of the agency’s effort to combat climate change, but didn’t share what was discussed at the meeting.
Biden and Obama: The two Democratic presidents of the country’s only credit downgrades
Former President Barack Obama once explained how he would have arranged for a third term as president. He jokingly explained how it essentially involved having a puppet as president in which there would be a “frontman or frontwoman” with Obama directing them what to do while in “his basement in his sweats.” Three years into the Biden administration and these comments make Obama look like a soothsayer.
“If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a frontman or frontwoman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats, looking through the stuff, then deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking — I’d be fine with that,” Obama said to Stephen Colbert in 2020.
After the news of the Fitch downgrade, Obama’s joke now seems like an accurate description of the Biden presidency, mainly since only two presidents have overseen the country suffer credit downgrades: Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Biden’s was this past week with Fitch; Obama’s was with Standard & Poor in April 2011. Both downgrades occurred during each president’s third year in office. And, naturally, both presidents sought to blame Republicans each time. Blaming the GOP was a hallmark of the Obama legacy.
Obama’s downgrade in 2011 was the first time the United States was given a credit rating below AAA. S&P decided to lower the country’s rating to AA+ because the federal government failed to provide a credible plan to confront the soaring national debt at the time, CNN Money reported. S&P also blamed political gridlock, squabbling, and “dysfunctional policymaking” for the decrease.
“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the … plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics,” S&P declared at the time. “The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.”
Fast forward 12 years later, and Obama’s vice president in 2011, Joe Biden, is now in charge. Once again, a credit agency downgraded the nation’s rating to AA+ from AAA. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The Fitch decision was based on “a steady deterioration of governance over the last 20 years” — the majority of that time occurring during the Obama and Biden presidencies.
Additionally, Fitch explained other factors behind its decision, including “repeated debt limit standoffs and last minute resolutions” and a “high and growing general government debt burden.” Other reasons included the government lacking a “medium-term fiscal framework” and having a “complex budgeting process.”
One of the most essential factors in the Fitch decision was a scathing indictment of “Bidenomics.” For all the rampant celebratory propaganda Democrats have spread regarding the economy under the Biden administration, projections call for “weak 2024 GDP growth” and a mild recession at the end of this year and into the first quarter of 2024.
Fitch also predicted “GDP growth slowing to 1.2% this year” and an anticipated “growth of just 0.5% in 2024.” It’s “Bidenomics” at work. And it should be noted that Biden’s weak GDP growth prediction is similar to the underwhelming Obama economy in 2011, the time of the last credit downgrade, which resulted in a measly 1.5% GDP growth. This is why Democrats are trying to deflect from this reality and pin the blame on Donald Trump or things like January 6th. They want to hide the truth of the adverse outcomes they helped create.
It’s no coincidence that both credit downgrades happened under Democrats — especially Democrats who were part of the same presidential administration. Democratic policies have been hampering the country for quite some time. It’s as if their entire party is immune to accepting responsibility for their political actions, no matter how often they misled the public into believing the opposite. Democrats should look at themselves instead of blaming Republicans for their failures.
“We’re going to cheat, and if they say we cheated, we’re going to arrest them.”
The new motto of the communist Democrat fascist regime.
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) August 3, 2023
The Devon Archer transcript is out. Archer said that Ukrainian wanted Hunter Biden to help relieve pressure from the prosecutors looking into corruption. They wanted the Bidens to take the heat off. Biden later insisted on the firing of the prosecutor.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 3, 2023
and one more time:
Meet the Company Trying to Control Your Mind
There’s a group of people who control what you are allowed to see — the news you read, the videos you watch, the posts you engage with.
You haven’t heard of them. You don’t know their names, but they determine, through methods both direct and indirect, whether you are allowed to be exposed to particular messages. Their decisions can bankrupt companies, silence voices and fundamentally shift cultural norms. Who are these people and how do they do this?
Well, at the top level you have a network of global elites who have created a universal framework full of guidelines and ratings designed to enforce “approved” narratives and punish disapproved ones. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it isn’t a secret and we’re not guessing.
First, you have the World Economic Forum, the WEF, and their platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. Second, you have the World Federation of Advertisers, the WFA, who represent mega-corporations that control 90% of global advertising dollars. WFA members are a who’s who of global business and include some of our recent wokeified favorites like Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, Hershey, Procter & Gamble, Lego and Disney.
There is barely a billionaire Fortune 500 CEO, heavyweight philanthropist, government or woke nonprofit that isn’t associated with the WEF or the WFA.
In 2019, the WFA established the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. Within months, the WEF adopted GARM as part of its platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. GARM is a cross-industry alliance that brings these mega-corporations — the advertisers — together with Big Tech companies like Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram; Google-owned YouTube; the CCP’s TikTok; and even Snapchat and Pinterest.
This unholy alliance created something they call the Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework. Think of Brand Safety as a dog whistle for censorship. They say it themselves: The Brand Safety Floor means, “Content not appropriate for any advertising support.” In other words, if you publish content that violates these guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.
So, what have these global elites decided to put in their censorship framework? They started with things we can all universally agree on, like preventing the distribution of child pornography or the advocacy of graphic terrorist activity. But they don’t draw the line at what is objectively criminal, abusive or dangerous. They continue expanding the guidelines to include far more subjective parameters.
Law Professor Jonathan Turley is STUNNED by the Biden family influence peddling scheme following the Devon Archer testimony:
"What we now know, quite frankly, is that the President has been lying…I think this is shaping up to be one of the greatest corruption scandals in the… pic.twitter.com/Jgx922p4oF
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 31, 2023
Frequent private jet passenger, John Kerry, admits that destruction of the farming industry is essential to achieving 'Net Zero':
"Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world. And we can’t get to net zero—we don’t get this job done—unless agriculture is… pic.twitter.com/1nlzrDFr6A
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) July 30, 2023
BLUF
Maybe a few honest liberals might come out against this. But don’t hold your breath waiting on a major reaction from the Democratic establishment; unfortunately, this is the exact kind of thing they think the federal government should be doing. And that’s the truly scary part of this whole saga.
Leaked emails expose Biden White House’s attacks on the First Amendment
The “Twitter Files” reporting from last year exposed a disturbing collusion between Twitter executives and officials from the federal government to censor the public’s speech. But new revelations from Congress show that the Biden White House and Facebook have engaged in similar collusion.
On Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who leads the House Judiciary Committee, released internal Facebook emails that show the Big Tech platform was explicitly pressured by the Biden administration to take down specific posts that the president’s allies disliked.
The scariest poll you’ll see this summer.
In an identically worded poll five years ago, Democrats and Republicans favored free speech online by roughly 3 to 2 margins. Today, Republicans still favor the First Amendment by about that much. But Democrats have turned against it by even more.
Our society’s ‘top brains’ have gone mad — and dysfunctional politics is the result
“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?”
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.
There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.
It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.
It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.
It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”
Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.
It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).
All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society. But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy. Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.
It’s important to have an intellectual class.
Exactly how important is open to question — in his recent book “How Innovation Works,” Matt Ridley argues that most 19th- and 20th-century innovations actually came from tradespeople and industry, not academics doing abstract research — but important enough.
The COVID lockdown scolds killed people — but they still have no shame
There are dangers to an intelligentsia, though.
Communism and Nazism started as intellectual movements; so did such fads as eugenics and lobotomies.
The Tuskegee Experiment wasn’t the product of racist Klansmen but of the curiosity of credentialed public-health experts.
In a 1999 essay, Neal Stephenson wrote that “during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.”
It’s gotten worse.
Ideas can be dangerous; playing with them can be like gain-of-function research with viruses — if they escape into the general environment, disaster can ensue.
Guardrails like custom, religion and moral traditions made such disasters less likely, but we have spent basically my entire lifetime weakening those guardrails.
At the same time, our ruling class has become less diverse and more prone to groupthink.
A century ago, the people running our government, our economy, our academy and our media were varied.
Now they’re all members of the same class, educated usually at the same elite institutions, incestuously intermarried and driven by class solidarity.
As J.D. Tuccille recently wrote regarding the press’ supine attitude toward government censorship, today’s journalists “love Big Brother”: “Prominent reporters and powerful officials know each other, share attitudes, and trust each other.”
Agriculturalists know that in a monoculture, diseases spread rapidly because the entire crop is identical.
In a social and intellectual monoculture, groupthink ensures that bad ideas spread the same way.
This is especially so because our ruling class has substituted reputation for achievement.
One can be a successful CEO if the company does badly, so long as it pursues the right political goals.
Journalists, bureaucrats and political operatives routinely fail upward because they play to their peers.
The result is that any crazy idea can flourish if it’s stylish. And it’s gotten more dangerous, probably because social media allow so much self-herding behavior by elites.
Dissent is instantly ostracized before it even has a chance to be considered.
A decade ago, the crazy ideas I listed earlier would have been seen as beyond the pale of civilized political discussion. Now they’re all endorsed by leading American institutions.
That’s the hallmark of dysfunctional politics, and dysfunctional politics is what we have.
These overeducated morons don’t seem to realize that this is a two way street, that can turn into a two way range.
Tyranny of the minority: Liberal law profs urge Biden to defy the courts and the public
“I shall resist any illegal federal court order.”
When “the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution is egregiously wrong,” the president should refuse to follow it.
Those two statements were made roughly 60 years apart. The first is from segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D). The second was made by two liberal professors this month.
In one of the most chilling developments in our history, the left has come to embrace the authoritarian language and logic of segregationists in calling for defiance and radical measures against the Supreme Court.
In a recent open letter, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.” Thus, in light of the court’s bar on the use of race in college admissions, they argue that Biden should just continue to follow his own constitutional interpretation.
The use of the affirmative action case is ironic, since polls have consistently shown that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states, such as California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in college admissions. Polls further show that a majority support the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.
So despite referenda and polls showing majority support for barring race in admissions, academics are pushing to impose their own values, regardless of the views of the public or of the courts.
However, even if these measures were popular, it would not make them right. It is precisely what segregationists such as Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.) argued, that “all the people of the South are in favor of segregation. And Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain segregated schools.”
Tushnet and Belkin cite with approval Biden’s declaration that this is “not a normal Supreme Court.” Biden’s view of normalcy appears to be a court that agrees with his fluid view of constitutional law, by which he can forgive roughly a half of trillion dollars in loans or impose a national eviction moratorium without a vote of Congress.
Tushnet and Belkin know their audience. Biden has previously evinced little respect for the Constitution or the courts. Take the eviction case. In an earlier decision, a majority of justices had declared that Biden’s actions were unconstitutional, confirming what many of us had said for months.
Even after the majority declared it unconstitutional, Biden wanted to reissue the national moratorium. White House counsel and most scholars told him the move would be blatantly unconstitutional and defy the express ruling of the court. Instead, he consulted the only law professor willing to tell him what he wanted to hear and did it anyway. It was quickly again declared unconstitutional.
Other commentators and academics have gone from implied to open contempt for our constitutional norms.
Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks was celebrated for her appearance on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” after declaring that Americans are “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country.
MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has questioned the need for a Supreme Court.
In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
So the danger is now “constitutionalism,” as opposed to what Tushnet and Belkin call “popular constitutionalism.”
Many have called for the court to be packed with liberal appointees to bring it back to what Biden views as “normal.” Some of these calls before Biden’s Supreme Court commission echoed the same views as Tushnet and Belkin. Indeed, they cite Harvard professor Nikolas Bowie, who rejected the notion that “the constitutional interpretation held by a majority of Supreme Court justices should be ‘superior’ to the interpretations held by majorities of the other branches.”
The Framers saw the Supreme Court as playing a counter-majoritarian role when it is necessary to protect individual rights and constitutional norms. The alternative is what the Framers viewed as a tyranny of the majority, where popularity rather than principle prevails. For that reason, the Court has often stood with the least popular in our society and, since Marbury v. Madison, has had the final word on what the Constitution means.
Justice Robert Jackson once observed that he and his colleagues “are not final because we are infallible, we are infallible because we are final.”
That finality has been essential to the stability of our system for generations. While presidents such as Andrew Jackson taunted the court for its inability to enforce its rulings without an army, it has never needed one. Respect for the court is in our DNA. No matter our disagreements with a given decision, Americans will not tolerate defiance of the institution and the rule of law. That is why, despite the support for court packing by many law professors (including Tushnet, Belkin and Bowie), the public remains staunchly opposed to it.
What is most striking about these professors is how they continue to claim they are defenders of democracy, yet seek to use unilateral executive authority to defy the courts and, in cases like the tuition forgiveness and affirmative action, the majority of the public. They remain the privileged elite of academia, declaring their values as transcending both constitutional and democratic processes.
The problem is indeed “constitutionalism,” and their view of “popular constitutionalism” is a euphemism for “popular justice.”
Tushnet and Belkin show the release that comes with rejecting constitutionalism. They declare that it is not enough merely to pack the court: “The threat that MAGA justices pose is so extreme that reforms that do not require congressional approval are needed at this time, and advocates and experts should encourage President Biden to take immediate action to limit the damage.”
In other words, they are calling for Biden to declare himself the final arbiter of what the Constitution means and to exercise unilateral executive power without congressional approval. He is to become a government unto himself.
You are not incorrect if you noticed that their description of “popular constitutionalism” sounds exactly like dictatorship.
This is what Tushnet has advocated in “taking the Constitution away from the courts.” Once the courts are removed from constitutionalism, however, we will be left where we began centuries ago: with the fleeting satisfaction of popular justice.
