Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts got us into this mess, now he has to get us out of it. He can, by affirming lower court decisions that blocked Trump’s executive orders and allowing the courts to use outside attorneys to enforce contempt charges if Trump refuses to do so. But will he continue to distort the Constitution to coddle Donald Trump?
Roberts played decisive roles in empowering Trump’s authoritarian presidency. He distorted the Constitution to give Trump unprecedented and far-reaching immunity from criminal prosecution and delayed his criminal trials until after the 2024 election. By contrast, it took the Roberts’s court just 16 days to decide Nixon wasn’t immune from prosecution and one day to make Republican George W. Bush President in his legal contest with Al Gore. Today, two years after Trump was indicted, no federal trial is scheduled and probably will never take place.
Roberts had to know his decisions would embolden Trump to break laws and wield a wrecking ball to America’s century-old institutions – such as using the FBI for retribution and hunting down immigrants instead of preventing and punishing serious crimes.
Roberts heard Trump promise his tax cuts, and Trump complied with a planned $4.5 trillion cut that would give half the benefits to the top 5 percent of taxpayers ( who were earning over $320,000/yr). Sadly, Trump will pay for the lost tax revenues with cuts of $880 billion, some of which are expected to hit Medicaid, which over 72 million Americans depend on. $2 trillion of his budget’s compulsory cuts are also likely to target Medicare, school lunches and other benefits for the needy. I wonder if Roberts regrets keeping Trump in the game.
Roberts, along with the other Trump appointees, put Trump back on the Colorado ballot, holding that that only Congress, and not the states, may bar a candidate who participated in an insurrection from running for president. Never mind that two Colorado courts reached factual findings that Trump was an insurrectionist and Robert’s Court ignored the Court’s own precedent that a state court’s factual findings must be accepted by federal courts unless they’re clearly erroneous. The justices noted but didn’t disagree with the two Colorado courts’ findings.
Certainly there’s wreckage that Roberts couldn’t have seen but should have worried about given Trump’s instability and sociopathic behavior. Had Roberts not delayed the criminal cases against him and giving him near-complete immunity, Trump could have lost the election and we would have avoided the following pernicious threats to America:
- Trump accelerated his plan to turn his back on America and join Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping in supplanting the US-dominated world order with one that gives the three of them the power and leverage to write the rules and bully other countries including the United States in diminishing America’s military might and status as a superpower:
- Trump paused all military aid to Ukraine and intelligence that helped it block incoming missiles and drones and monitor invading forces. He also terminated assistance that allowed Ukrainian strikes into Russia.
- Trump agreed with Putin that any peace deal would be negotiated by him and Putin and exclude Zelensky, and would prohibit Ukraine from joining NATO and regaining territory lost during the war.
- Trump also agreed that a peace deal would require the demilitarization of Ukraine and new elections, which Putin will undoubtedly rig to install a Putin-puppet government.
- Trump agreed with Putin that the security and protection of Europe will be funded and be the responsibility of Europe and not the United States.
- Another gift to Putin and Xi is a weakened American militarily. He diminished America’s global influence and military might by suspending all foreign aid. They both build critical allies around the world and spread America’s influence and military might, including the installation of military bases across the globe, which will make any confrontation against the Trump, Putin and Xi gang near-impossible.
- Trump also exposed and endangered many American operatives who monitor our adversaries like Russia and China. As a result, American allies no longer provide American intelligence agencies with information that helps prevent international aggression, such as cyber-attacks, against the United States
- All of this is enabling a Putin victory in Ukraine and giving him a pass to invade NATO members. And Xi is carefully weighing Trump’s decisions as he decides whether to invade Taiwan.
- The only thing Trump’s peace deal is missing is the gift-wrapping.
- Trump ordered a freeze on payments by all federal agencies’ financial assistance for education, health care, anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, disaster relief and more.
- Trump also disabled the National Labor Relations Board, which has been enforcing workers’ rights since 1935..
- Trump pardoned and freed hundreds of Capitol rioters whom he unbelievably called patriots. They included dozens of prisoners with prior convictions or pending charges for crimes including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child pornography and drug trafficking.
- His interim head of federal prosecutor’s astonishingly called for cash reparations to be paid to the January 6 defendants and demanded jail time for those responsible for bringing the charges in the first place
- Trump’s FBI will use his agents to implement Trump’s agenda of retribution and hunt down and deport a million immigrants and purge the FBI of any employee who refuses to cooperate. Crime will run rampant and his deportation of immigrants will create a labor shortage, stoke wage inflation and overall national inflation by as much as 9%.
- In a display of callousness, he’s shutting down the Title I program, which is meant to help educate children from low-income families, and the IDEA program, which provides funding to help meet the needs of children with disabilities.
- Trump and his deputy Elon Musk have fired thousands of federal employees without giving a reason, violating Supreme Court precedent that the president cannot fire employees of an agency created by Congress to perform quasi-legislative and judicial functions without a cause defined by Congress. Sadly, Roberts has hinted he would overturn a unanimous 1935 ruling, Humphrey’s Executor, which says that presidents can’t fire members of congressionally created independent agencies.
Roberts can now reverse Trump’s anti-American work. Since his second term began, more than a dozen judges have blocked Trump’s executive orders. The Roberts Court should affirm all those decisions.
The Supreme Court has long held that “a pardon cannot stop” courts from enforcing their orders by charging the offending party with civil contempt and can keep the charged party in jail until they obey the court’s order. And while the Justice Department traditionally enforces civil contempt charges, the courts may deputize outside attorneys to step in if the DOJ refuses to do so enforce they contempt order.
Also, Rule 42 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure states that criminal contempt charges should be prosecuted by the Executive branch “unless the interest of justice requires the appointment of another attorney.” That means if the government refuses to enforce a criminal contempt charge, the court could appoint a private attorney to prosecute the criminal contempt charges.
So the Roberts Court has an opportunity to mitigate the damage Trump has wreaked on our country. It should by affirm all lower court opinions blocking Trump’s executive orders and allow the courts to enlist outside attorneys to enforce contempt charges if the Executive branch refuses to do so.
