SC Now 'Judicial Arm of Rep Party' 'Ludicrous' Trump Decision - TH: SC Doing Everything to Get Trump Back in Office

- Alternet, Carl Gibson, March 1, 2024. Ed.

The Supreme Court of the United States' (SCOTUS) recent decision to hear former President Donald Trump's argument for absolute broad presidential immunity later this spring has thoroughly tarnished the Court's reputation and credibility, according to Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf.

In a Friday essay for the Beast, Rothkopf made the case that the Court is actually the one branch of government that has been most thoroughly tainted by the far right — even more than Congress and the White House. He specified that the Court issuing a writ of certiorari (in which 4 justices agree to add a case to the SCOTUS' docket) on Trump's "ludicrous" and "anti-Constitutional" immunity bid should be viewed in the same context as other decisions by the Roberts Court that have overwhelmingly benefited the extreme right.

"Cases like Citizens United (granting the rich more influence in elections), Shelby County (undermining voting rights), Heller (expanding gun rights), Bruen (striking down sensible gun controls), Dobbs (overturning Roe v. Wade), and Students for Fair Admissions (gutting affirmative action) are just a few of the notable examples of their service to their benefactors and their political agenda," Rothkopf wrote.

"The Court’s decision to hear the Trump immunity case was outrageous, legally indefensible, and handled procedurally in a way that made it clear they were no longer acting as a court, but rather as the judicial arm of the Republican Party," he continued... SCOTUS granting cert to Trump means that a verdict in the former president's criminal trial in Wash., DC for alleged election interference may not come before the Nov. election. Even though it's only March, oral arguments won't happen until April 22, and the Court has until the end of its term in late June to issue a decision...
https://www.alternet.org/scotus-arm-republican-party/
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- The Supreme Court Is Doing Everything It Can to Get Trump Back in Office, Thom Hartmann, March 1, 2024. Ed.

This is one of the most naked partisan power grabs in the court’s history, particularly given that the future makeup of the court itself hangs on this election. At least 4 members of the most corrupt Supreme Court in American history have decided to help former President Donald Trump delay his trial for trying to overthrow the government of the US. Just like in 2000, when 5 Republicans on the court ignored former Vice President Al Gore’s probable (later found to be definite) win in Fla to put former President George W. Bush in the White House, today’s court is doing as much as they can to help Trump win this November.

In a hail-Mary attempt to push his trials beyond the election, hoping he’d win with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s help and could then pardon himself and gut the Department of Justice (DOJ), Trump’s attorneys filed a claim that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “official acts” and that all presidents have “absolute immunity” while in office and for the rest of their lives thereafter. Nobody took it seriously. Even the appeals court his bid first went to pointed out how absurd it was.

“Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival,” Judge Florence Pan, one of the appeals court judges, asked Trump’s lawyers, “[and not] be subject to criminal prosecution?” The answer from Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer was that Trump can’t be prosecuted unless he’s first impeached, which, as noted, is absurd on its face. Under this logic, President Joe Biden could today order Trump assassinated and dare Congress to impeach him for it.

But absurd is nothing new to the 6 bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court. As I laid out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, Republicans on the court have, for almost a century, taken the side of autocracy over democracy, billionaires over workers, and corporations over consumers and the environment. They tell us that corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights. They tell us when morbidly rich people or massive corporations bribe politicians that that’s merely their “First Amendment free speech” right. They repeatedly knocked down the rights of people living in Red states to vote. They make it harder for unions to function. They gutted Obamacare.

.. If Democrats make it through this election intact, expanding the size of the court and imposing a code of ethics on them must be the first order of business in 2025...
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/supreme-court-trump-in-office