reflectivepundit

The Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling—A Warning that among the First Signposts of Vanishing Democracies are Courts Loyal to Authoritarian Populists

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The Supreme Court’s majority of six Justices—half of them appointed by Donald J. Trump—has done the bidding for the American Far-Right and its Dear Leader for years: From the repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision to today’s equally shocking decision that defies the U.S. Constitution and assures Trump that he will not be tried for directing the failed coup d’etat to overturn the legitimate election victory of Joe Biden.

This open Far-Right partisanship and loyalty to an out of control former and would-be president who does not cover his authoritarian/dictatorial ambitions poses an acute threat to American democracy whether Trump wins the November election or not.

And today’s opinion concerning former president Trump’s claim of immunity for his actions related to the January 6 insurgency is further proof that the current Supreme Court is not an independent institution of our government. Indeed, two of the justices in the majority, Thomas and Alito along with their respective wives have shown their support for far-right donors and for Trump’s efforts to overthrow our democracy in order to stay in power.

Every American should read this extraordinary majority opinion and the dissents, a strong warning signal that democracy dies in bright daylight.

While Chief Justice John Roberts claims in the majority opinion that “no man is above the law,” he and the rest of the far-right majority that distinguished between official and private  acts  deem conversations between the president and his vice-president and officials in the Department of Justice part of his official business—even though in Trump’s case the communication were part of efforts to overturning his lost election.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in her dissent, “Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.”

She ends her opinion with the warning, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Sotomayor is right. For the Supreme Court “the president is now a king above the law” as long as his criminal actions are deemed official ones by the highest Court.  

Scholars of democracy found that when populist authoritarian leaders come to power in liberal democracies, among their first efforts to gain full control is undermining the independence of courts by forcing sitting judges to retire and appointing loyalists.

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, this is a job he did in his first term. But there are plenty of other changes for which supporters of “illiberal democracy” are planning for the last several years.

How Trump Attacks and Violates the Rule of Law and Gets Away with it

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The year before coming to power in Germany the Nazis claimed falsely that Hitler had defeated President Hindenburg in the German parliament’s presidential election. As Sebastian Haffner, then a young German, wrote later, “Summoned as a witness before the highest German court, Adolf Hitler bellowed at the judges that he would one day come to power by strictly constitutional means and then heads would roll.” Hitler repeated his retribution threat at a following court session. But he was not charged with contempt and gone to jail as any other German would have at that time. Perhaps, the highest court feared Hitler’s heavily armed private army of storm troopers.

In the last several weeks, former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the Manhattan prosecutor responsible for Trump’s criminal indictment, the judge who presides during his current trial, and the jury that will come up with the verdict. When Trump violated the judge’s gag order repeatedly, he was held in contempt and threatened with jail. But while any other defendant attacking, as the judge said, the rule of law would have spent some time in jail, Mr. Trump did not. The former president does not have storm troopers like Hitler, but he and his sycophants are loose with references to violence. The latest came from Matt Gaetz whose online battle cry “Stand Back and Stand By” was a repeat of Trump’s 2020 command to the Proud Boys who—along with the Oath Keepers—were instrumental in the violent breach of the capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump’s promise that he would pardon on day one of his next presidency all imprisoned January 6 “hostages," among them the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper groups--domestic terrorists-- is another attack on the rule of law.

Trump and his MAGA followers are relentlessly attacking the Department of Justice, prosecutors, and judges. They must be thrilled about the support they receive from members of the US Supreme Court, whose ethics violations in the context and in support of illegal actions by Trump and leading GOP officials become ever more scandalous.

Not enough that Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, the two calling themselves “best friends,” was an active supporter of the coup attempt to deny Joe Biden the electoral college votes he legitimately won. We now learn that shortly after January 6 and merely days before Biden’s inauguration an up-side-down US flag—a symbol for “Stop the Steal” MAGA activists--was flown outside Justice Alito’s house.

That much for the once highly regarded Supreme Court that soon will decide whether former president Donald Trump enjoys unlimited immunity for criminal actions during and after his presidency.

Trump warns of “a bloodbath” in case he does not win this year’s election. And the news media yawns

By Brigitte L. Nacos

On Saturday (3/16), Donald Trump warned during a campaign stop in Ohio that there will be “a bloodbath” if he is not elected later this year. When I checked the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a bunch of well-regarded regional newspapers this morning, none of them carried the shocking warning on page one. The websites of Times and News, too, did not treat the former and perhaps next president’s outrageous threat as number one breaking news.

Instead, they paid more attention to the presidential candidates’ campaign donations, Trump supporters’ successful spread of disinformation, the election in Russia, arms smuggling to Yemen, and the Schumer-Netanyahu feud.

The Times headline “Trump Says Some Migrants are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He loses,” rated Trump’s old insult of “illegals”—he called them repeatedly “animals,” “rapist,” “criminals” and the likes—higher than his unprecedented “bloodbath” threat. And the story itself cited Trump’s new rhetorical low only in the third paragraph. Note, that the story was updated on Sunday morning.

Everybody should read and remember this explicit Trump warning issued this weekend: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

The Washington Post headlined its report, "Trump says some undocumented immigrants are 'not people' and relegated the bloodbath warning to the subtitle. It is only in the sixth paragraph that the reporters get to Trump's most outrageous remark and cited it: "Later in the rally, Trump warned it will be a bloodbath for the country, if he is not elected. The comment came as he was promising to hike tariffs on foreign-made cars, and it was not clear exactly what Trump was referring to with his admonition." 

What could not be clear, when a presidential candidate predicts a bloodbath for the country, if he is not elected? And why would the news report call Trump’s warning of something horrific to happen to America an admonition? It sounded more like a threat of civil war or a terrorism threat that goes and in hand with his frequent warning that this election year will be “the last battle.”

When I grew up in Germany and was an aspiring young journalist, I looked at American journalists and the high standards in their professional ethics rules with tremendous admiration. And I was not an exception. Many of my colleagues felt the same at the time, when German journalism found a new beginning after the dark years of the Nazi regime and looked to the Anglo-American press model.

Yes, technology has changed the whole media industry. But if the news organizations that are perceived to be the best in the country and the world cannot or do not want to recognize and priorities truly extraordinary news, the old press model that I once admired greatly is on its way out.

Supporting Israel—Yes, Supporting Netanyahu—No

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The U.S. government continues to support Israel’s fight against the terrorist entity Hamas and its mission to destroy the state of Israel. In response to Hamas’s unspeakable assault on and brutal killing spree against Israeli civilians on October 7, the United States along with other Western countries recognized and supported the right of Israel to defend its people and its very existence—including militarily. 

I agreed right after the attack. And I agree today. However, there are troubling caveats concerning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and extremists within his cabinet.   

In their private and public appeals President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been tireless in asking Netanyahu to change the IDF’s conduct of war to prevent or at least minimize the killing and suffering of Gazan civilians as required by international law.  

There are no signs that Netanyahu and his cronies in the cabinet give a damn about Washington’s plea. Nor do they respond to the outcries of fellow-Israelis whose family members are still held hostage somewhere in Gaza. The longer these children, women, and men are held by terrorists, the more likely it is that they will be killed or maimed.

After Biden called repeatedly for a two-state post-war solution, Netanyahu countered with the declaration that Gaza will remain under Israeli military control after the war ends.

The refusal to agree to a two-state solution and thus Palestinian self-rule has been part and parcel of Netanyahu’s and his extremist government’s open and hidden decisions. Among the most questionable policies was according to the New York Times the following:

“For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that a strong Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state.”

When the Israeli intelligence community got hold of Hamas’s detailed plan to invade Israel and kill citizens and IDF members months before the actual attack, higher ups called the plan “utopian” instead of hardening their defensive lines. They also ignored intelligence reports of military exercises on Gazan territory. Obviously, they were guided by their government’s conviction that Hamas was busy with governing and not with plotting big time terrorist violence. The money flow from Qatar into Gaza, blessed by Netanyahu, financed Hamas’s military hardware.  

These failures on the highest level of the government led to the death of more than 1,330 Israelis on October 7, hundreds of injured persons, and the captivity of  200 victims. It led to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas that killed and injured thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and displaced millions.

In the weeks and months before October 7, Netanyahu and his government were the targets of massive protests because of their efforts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court and make more room for their authoritarian designs. Since then, opinion polls show that the prime minister’s disapproval increased.

The war gives Netanyahu a protective shield. It should not.

GOP House Members Mock America’s Shooting Epidemic

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The first act of the new, albeit slim GOP majority in the US House of Representatives was a telling one: The leadership ordered the removal of metal detectors outside the House chamber that had been put up following the violent breach of Capitol Hill to protect members and staffers from copy-cat violence.

Just as many GOPer were and remain Covid-pandemic deniers, they seem equally untouched by the mass-shooting epidemic that kills increasing numbers of Americans, their own constituents among them.

In a macabre scene, Republican members of the House Natural Resources Committee repealed this week a rule adopted in 2021 by the same committee that prohibited lawmakers from carrying guns in the hearing room. But that was when the Democrats were in control. Several GOP members insisted on their need to defend themselves—and nobody stronger than gun-happy Loren Boebert of Colorado who declared, "With threats against members of Congress at an all-time high, now is not the time to be stripping members of our constitutional right to defend ourselves.”

It seems that guns are not potent enough for Second Amendment fanatics on the Hill.

Why else would several House members, among them disgraced Congressman George Santos, wear AR-15 assault rifle pins at their lapels along with their congressional pins—as they did the other day? This awful pin was a freebee distributed by Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde who owns a gun store, where he sells those pins.

A sad, promotional coup at a time, when mass shootings in the country occur all too often and many times involve AR-15s or similar assault weapons.

And then there are the grenades that GOP freshman Representative Cory Mills of Florida presented to his new colleagues in what he called the “mission-oriented congress.” In a letter that accompanied the gift, he assured that the grenades were inert and added,  

“I am honored to be a part of the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee. In that spirit, it is my pleasure to give you a 40mm grenade, made for a MK19 grenade launcher. These are manufactured in the Sunshine State and first developed in the Vietnam War.”

What kind of “mission” do GOP members have in mind?

Are the removed metal detectors, the vote against banning guns from hearing rooms, the display of AK-15 rifle pins and the handing out of grenades metaphors for the GOP House majority’s agenda?

If so, 2024 may not bode well for these political performance artists.  

On the Second Anniversary of January 6th: GOP Anarchists at the Gate

By Brigitte L. Nacos

This day, to years ago, a violent crowd of organized terrorist groups and fanatic MAGA and QAnon supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s clear and fair election victory. Among those who sympathize to this day with the violent mob and the White House cabal behind the failed coup to keep Trump in office are many of the current GOP Representatives-elect—those who refuse to vote for Kevin McCarthy to become Speaker of the House and others who support McCarthy.

While most mainstream media reporters and commentators call the anti-McCarthy GOPers “conservative” or “hard-line” Republicans, the truth is that they along with others in the pro-McCarthy crowd are anarchists or, as former GOP Speaker John Boehner once called them, “legislative terrorists.”

Indeed, like all terrorists, these nihilistic anarchists want to destroy the existing order—not improve or reform the political, economic, and social systems.

They do not want sit at the legitimate table of decision-makers. They want to destroy the table without an idea of how to build a better future for the vast majority of the people they claim to represent.

Interestingly, some of the most extreme congressional GOPers who share the disruptive ideas and actions of their anti-McCarthy colleagues chose another path to realize their power-hungry objectives: They opted to support McCarthy in exchange for influential positions in the GOP House majority in form of their desired committee assignments and influence on the leadership strata.

The most visible examples are Jim Jordan, Ohio, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia, who have been close to Kevin McCarthy since he has struggled to become Speaker.

Jordan, a founding member and first chair of the far-right congressional Freedom Caucus, has been for long a rhetorical bomb thrower and was, according to the Jan. 6^th select committee, a supporter of the coup attempt.

Last year, Taylor Greene was stripped of her committee seats because of her toxic rhetorical attacks and endorsement of violence against Democrats. More recently, she claimed that under her leadership the January 6^th attackers would have won and been armed. But whenever the new congress has a speaker, she will get the committee assignments of her choice.

Add to this McCarthy’s surrender to his GOP opponents by agreeing to all their demands that limits his power drastically and you see that the script for the next two years is written:

Whether the 21 or so members of the anti-McCarthy gang will prevail or not, the anarchist wing of the GOP will hold the balance of power for the next two years in the U.S. House of Representatives and inflict great harm to the legislative imperatives of the lower chamber.

The forces that drove the events before, during, and after January 6, 2021 are still at work and, yes, at the gate of congressional decision-making.

The Horror of Putin’s Nuclear Threat and Biden’s Armageddon Warning

By Brigitte L. Nacos

While many parts of the world suffer deadly or life-changing effects of all kinds of natural disasters--lethal storms, floods, draughts, and pandemics, there are plenty of man-made catastrophes—civil wars, deadly oppression of political dissenters, senseless mass shootings. But the probably most horrific threat today was described by President Joe Biden the other day as the most serious “prospect of Armageddon” since the Cuban Missile Crisis six decades ago. Biden’s assessment of President Vladimir Putin’s repeated warnings of using the nuclear option in Russia’s war against Ukraine should be taken as seriously as Putin’s nuclear threats.

This, then, is the time to remember that John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev found a way to end an existential crisis. Faced with an ultimatum and a blockade of Cuba by the U.S., the Soviet Union blinked. But Khrushchev’s agreement to remove the missiles from the island came with Kennedy’s promise to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. Obviously, Kennedy and his advisers understood that the Kremlin needed a face-saving give-and-take deal. Never mind that the missiles in Turkey were considered close to obsolete at the time.

Whether Putin’s nuclear threat is understood as the use of tactical weapons of mass destruction in the Ukrainian theater of war or as all-out nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West does not matter now. The potential of the deployment of any nuclear weapons calls for all sides—Russian, Ukrainian, and American leaders--to think and talk about ways to end the disastrous war for both the Russian and Ukrainian people.

It would be naïve to believe this to be an easy task. The Ukrainians, on a roll in the Eastern provinces that Russia forcefully annexed and progressing even in the South, are not in the mood for a cease fire and peace negotiations. Washington’s revelation that Ukraine was responsible for the recent assassination of the daughter of one of President Putin’s allies was probably meant to warn President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly to refrain from further hostile actions on Russian territory.

Putin, increasingly criticized openly by war hawks among his longtime allies because of the failure of the Russian military, cannot and will not accept defeat. Therefore, his nuclear threat cannot be ignored.

For all the support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, the Ukrainian people, and Ukrainian leaders, Washington, along with European allies, must take the lead in getting Russians and Ukrainians to the negotiating table.

If there is any chance for an agreement, the peaceful end of the Cuban Missile Crisis provides an example that President Zelensky must understand: Without a face-saving deal for Putin—perhaps Russia keeping the long-disputed Crimean Peninsula and access to the Black Sea—there will not be peace but more suffering on both sides.

The Evil Goal of a Supreme Court Justice: Make Liberals’ Lives Miserable

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Clarence Thomas, an intellectual lightweight, had according to one of his own clerks one overriding mission, when he entered the Supreme Court: “The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years,” he said, “and I'm going to make their lives miserable for 43 years." Last week, on two consecutive days, he accomplished that and some more: Within 24 dramatic hours, the highest court increased and decreased the authority of states significantly pointing in both cases to the U.S. Constitution as they (1) took away the states’ power to protect Americans’ lives by striking down modest gun-control measures and (2) gave states the control over women’s reproductive decisions by overruling the nearly 50-year-old Roe vs. Wade decision. The Court claimed to rely in both these contrary decisions on the US Constitution. Incredible.

Thomas, the most radical among his reactionary peers, left no doubt that he wants to make liberals even more miserable: He signaled in a concurrent opinion that he wants the SCOTUS majority to outlaw any birth control measures, consensual relation between gay persons, and, for sure, gay marriage. The three-judge minority dissented “in sorrow” as they put it. Many women share that sorrow.

In her column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd  describes the line-up of male characters who gained power during the years “by trading away something that meant little to them compared with their own stature: the rights of women." This road put Thomas, now the most influential Supreme Court Justice, into his current power position on the Court. All this began with his nomination by President George H.W. Bush. It was no secret that Thomas was an arch-conservative. But Bush disregarded the long pro-choice position of his family to please pro-life conservatives in his party and win African-American support for nominating a Black to the highest court. His son, George W. Bush, appointed Justice Samuel Alito, who has been a life-long Pro-Life fanatic. And in an unimaginable irony, it was left to Donald Trump to put three (!!!) super-conservatives onto the Court—of course, with the machinations of GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell who conned the Democrats and the American people. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Democrats more than once let him get away with—and much more.

During Thomas’s confirmation hearings, Joe Biden, then chairing the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, presided over the destruction of Anita Hill who testified—in the view of many women credibly--that her former boss Clearance Thomas had, as Dowd puts it, tormented her “with unwanted attention and dirty talk about the pornographic films he liked to watch.” In other words, the one-time sex-harasser and pornography addict is now part of the SCOTUS majority that dictates morality according to the standards of the Middle Ages from which Justice Samuel Alito draws repeatedly in his sub-standard opinion.

Several of the justices in the majority lied to the Senate’s Judiciary Committee and to individual Senators, among them Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, when asked about Roe vs. Wade. Perhaps that is not surprising, since they were appointed by the liar-in-chief Donald Trump. But it is nevertheless mind-boggling that among the highest and most influential guardians of our laws and the US Constitution here are several justices who swore to tell the truth in their confirmation hearings—and once they got on the Court--they lied!

If America wants to stop Thomas and his fellow radicals from making their lives more miserable, they need to be just as relentless advocates of their rights as Thomas and Co. are determined to take those rights away from them.

Protesting peaceful, relentlessly, and voting for local, state, and federal candidates committed to repeal SCOTUS decisions via contrary legislation are the right ways to fight back.

NATO and EU should enlist Ex-Chancellor Merkel as Peace-Maker

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As the Ukrainian military and civil defense units fight the invading Russian military effectively, Vladimir Putin’s decision to place his military’s nuclear forces on high alert heightens the threat of his use of nuclear weapons in the Ukrainian theater of war—and perhaps beyond. In this critical situation, all efforts must be made to find a peaceful solution. And the best person to enlist for what seems a mission impossible is in my view Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, She  speaks Russian fluently und knows Putin better than any other Western politician. Her ability to reason like the trained scientist she is would be a good basis of discussions with the usually rational but more recently highly emotional Russian leader.  

The unity displayed by NATO and EU and allies in other parts of the globe in their swift opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine must have come as an unprecedented shock to Putin. The Russian president must have underestimated how effective President Biden’s repair of the U.S.-European relationship has been. He reversed his predecessor’s efforts to destroy NATO as we know it and weaken the EU and thereby strengthened Western democracies so that they now can resist Russian expansionism forcefully without direct participation in the military hostilities.

Two weeks into this war, the Ukrainian military and civilian Territorial Defense Forces have stalled Russia’s plan to occupy its neighbor. The unprecedented sanctions against Russia have isolated the country cutting it mostly off the global markets. This has already resulted in hardship for the Russian public.

As Thomas Friedman writes in today’s New York Times, “Russia has no good way out [of this war]…” And that is the problem. Not only for Putin but for the Western alliance against him. Strongman do not want to accept defeat, cannot accept a loss. That’s bad enough, as we learned following the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., in a country in which the institutions of government still work as supposed. But in an autocracy with a sole ruler on top there are no built-in restrains. Thus, the danger of Putin’s end game that may include the deployment to weapons of mass destruction.

The frequent and long phone conversations between Putin and various Western leaders are signs that there may be room for actual negotiations. But that would need a most skilled negotiator.

Ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel would be the best possible choice!

The goal must be to find a solution that guarantees Ukraine’s independence but at the same time offers Putin a way out with the ability of justifying the war and its end result as something positive to his people  

The un-American former President and his Idol in Moscow

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Miffed about the lack of applause from Democrats during his 2018 State of the Union Address, then President Donald Trump complained,

“They [the Democrats] were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country that much.”

Un-American, treasonous, and unpatriotic. Serious charges against political opponents who sat on their hands during another Orwellian speech by the narcissistic liar-in-chief.

And now, after his idol Vladimir Putin has started his unholy war against neighboring Ukraine, the twice impeached former president showed once again that he is America’s most un-American and most unpatriotic actor. How else can one interpret Trump’s praise for strongman Putin whom he called a genius for invading a democratic country next to his Russian autocracy?

 What else can one make of Trump’s simultaneous attacks on the crisis-managing President Joe Biden who managed to pull all NATO countries together after his predecessor’s disastrous transatlantic politics. Worse, yet, the vast majority of Trump’s Republican Party is blindly following a self-obsessed emperor without clothes: no moral compass, no shame, no concern for the fate of this county and its long-time allies.

In Russia, Trump’s buddy Putin is for more than two decades in complete control because he achieved long ago what Trump and his party are trying to putting in place now: a rigged electoral system designed to return King Trump to the throne for another term and guarantee one party rule in Washington, D.C. and a bunch of states as well.

Imagine the unthinkable: Putin and Trump becoming ruling partners again—the would-be Czar and would-be King.

Perhaps, though, there may be a brewing threat to Putin’s power. The large number and the significant size of Russia’s peace movement in response to the war against Ukraine are not the norm in Putin’s Russia. Add to that the huge demonstrations in democracies around the globe. Even strongman like Orban and Erdogan are not siding with Putin.

The unexpected strong resistance by the Ukrainian military and by civilians does not bode well for Putin and his quest for the resurrection of a greater Russian empire. Surely not as long as NATO sticks to its coda that an attack on one member is an attack on all of NATO’s members.

The greatest problem right now may well be the uncertainty. Not only in Ukraine but in Europe and the whole world. Especially, in view of Putin’s explicit and implicit nuclear threats.