All posts tagged "ketanji brown jackson"

Liberal justice gives ominous answer when asked 'What keeps you up at night?'

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave an ominous answer when asked at an Indianapolis Bar Association event on Thursday, "What keeps you up at night?"

According to CNN, Jackson responded, "I would say the state of our democracy," adding, "I am really very interested in getting people to focus and to invest and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government.”

Jackson did not go into detail about "what, specifically, concerned her about the state of democracy," CNN reported, "though she has recently written a series of scathing dissents critical of both President Donald Trump’s administration and the Supreme Court’s review of cases involving its policies."

Jackson wrote the dissent this week in the court's decision to allow Trump's mass firings to continue in the federal workforce. “For some reason, this court sees fit to step in now and release the president’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation," Jackson wrote. "In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”

Jackson also wrote a "scorching" dissent in last month's birthright citizenship decision, preventing lower courts from issuing injunctions that blocked Trump's policies.

“Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway,” Jackson wrote. “But this court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”

Jackson signed off, citing her “deep disillusionment.”

Read the CNN story here.

Trump has his fat little foot on Lady Liberty’s throat

It’s been another brutal week in a brutal country. There’s no sense candy-coating it.

Thanks to a loaded, radical-right Supreme Court that believes in monarchies, not democracy — a group of robed anti-Americans led around by the nose and on lavish vacations by the billionaires who own them — a convicted felon who regards the truth as his mortal enemy now has the power he needs to wage war on the citizens of this country he pillages for his gain.

We are well on our way to becoming the brutal authoritarian country you used to see on TV and say, "Damn, thank God I don't live there ..."

Things are going to keep getting worse until (and if) we can put a stop to it, good people. Could be it’s already too late: we are a full-blown authoritarian country.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson knows full well the trouble we’re in, and offered this clear-eyed dissent Friday against the high court limiting federal judges’ ability to halt the fascist Trump’s hateful executive orders nationwide:

“The court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”

AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT …

She wasn’t done:

“It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called ‘universal injunctions’ is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution — please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it.”

In other words, Trump, the convicted felon … the guy who lies as he breathes … can pretty much ignore any law he doesn’t like.

I really don’t know if after this ruling granting Trump a king’s unchecked powers we will make it to the midterms, which are an endless 17 months away. It isn’t hard to imagine Trump ginning up some crisis and then smothering us in executive orders to halt our elections.

And if you think I’m going too far here, I think you are the problem.

Democrats and/or the opposition to GOP fascism need to be articulating what is at stake right now and emulating Justice Jackson’s courage and conviction. Everybody needs to understand we have entered the beginning of the end of a country where the people used to have the power.

And this is going to get so much damn worse so damn fast …

In my piece last week, We just got a deafening message — ignore it at your peril I warned Democrats of all shapes and sizes that if we make it to the midterms “there is going to be some serious bloodletting at the polls in 2026.”

I added for emphasis: “There will be no such thing as a 'safe' seat anywhere, because America is not a safe country right now. People are scared.”

I concluded: “Nothing motivates voters more than fear and anger, and the politician who doesn’t understand that, better be prepared to find some real work.”

Well, what do you know, guys like Andrew Cuomo aren’t hearing this message. After getting smacked at the polls in New York City’s mayoral primary, word is out that he will stay in the race and run as an alternative to the guy who thrashed him, Zohran Mamdani.

Cuomo is doing this because he’s an arrogant, privileged punk given license and a long leash by the Democratic elite who are completely out of touch with the American voter.

Rather than congratulate Mamdani, and tell him he will do everything he can to help him get elected, Cuomo's going to fight him. This is why so many people argue there’s really not much difference in America’s two major parties these days, and why I take heart most people aren’t affiliated with either one of them.

That last part might be exactly what saves us ...

In closing, I want to take you back to an ancient time, one year ago today.

Back then, a decent, hardworking guy named Joe Biden was our president and he was getting relentlessly hammered by our press, Republicans, and a disenchanted electorate for his inability to completely correct the dreadful economy he inherited from the guy who had attacked the country four years earlier — a guy by the name of Donald Trump.

It was the No.1 issue on the board for the majority of American voters, whose hair was on fire about high prices and inflation.

Well, we know how that election turned out.

As I was guzzling coffee and rifling through several newspapers this morning, I came across this story shoehorned onto the bottom of Page 10 of my local paper here in Madison, Wisconsin:

Turns out, things have gotten worse for the America consumer, not better, but nobody is talking about it anymore, because King Crud and his Crooked Court have given us 20 others things to worry about instead, including our survival.

Our press is flailing, and chasing danger instead of warning us about it.

This is chaos by design, with the goal of unsteadying us, and pushing us all toward surrender. The morbidly obese orange moron has his fat little foot on Lady Liberty’s throat and wants us all to just up and quit.

Well, I’m too goddam mad for that, AND WILL NOT SUBMIT to this clown or his bought-off court.

I am raging and sounding the alarms. I am done looking for leaders where they are supposed to be, and perfectly happy to find ‘em right here in this space.

I say let’s be the answer, and kick some ass.

People. Not parties.

Enough Already.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

'Big time': CNN host declares 'enormous' victory for Trump in Supreme Court case

CNN's Paula Reid couldn't emphasize enough what a huge win the U.S. Supreme Court birthright citizenship decision was for the Trump administration.

On Friday, the court ruled 6-3 that universal injunctions were improper and exceeded the power of the federal courts. This means the lower courts must now "fight out" citizenship issues.

"This is enormous," Reid exclaimed. "This is as yet another huge win for President Trump from this conservative supermajority."

Reid said DOJ lawyers told her that "even though a lot of their policies were getting bogged down in the lower courts, that anything they could get in front of this high court, that they would ultimately win. They were playing a long game. And this decision right here, this is proof that this long game they've been playing for the past 6 or 7 months, they've won. And they've won big time."

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a lengthy dissent accusing the court of hastening the "demise" of government institutions with their ruling.

Watch the clip below via CNN or click here.

'Enabling our demise': Justice Jackson rips high court over citizenship decision

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the high court's conservative majority of hastening the "demise" of government institutions by handing President Donald Trump a huge victory in its decision on birthright citizenship.

In a 6-3 decision Friday, the court held that universal injunctions were improper and exceeded the power of the federal courts. In other words, lower courts must now "fight out" citizenship issues.

"Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway," Jackson wrote in a lengthy dissent. "But this Court's complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of governing institutions, enabling our collective demise."

Jackson continued, "At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot."

The conservative majority dismissed Jackson's condemnation, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing, "We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."

Read the dissent here.

Supreme Court liberal delivers blistering dissent after hit to its 'reputation'

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson berated her colleagues Friday for a ruling she claimed gave the impression that the Court was "overly sympathetic to corporate interests," The Daily Beast reported.

Jackson's takedown came after the conservative court voted 7-2 in favor of "allowing fuel producers to challenge California’s heightened emissions limits."

California set stricter standards for emissions than the federal government laid out in the Clean Air Act, the article stated. And, in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) moved toward phasing out the sale of gas-powered cars "in favor of zero-emission vehicles statewide by 2035."

The Supreme Court ruling now allows fossil fuel companies to challenge the California emissions law that Donald Trump called a “disaster for this country," according to the report.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined Jackson in the dissent.

“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens,” Jackson wrote. “I worry that the fuel industry’s gain comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.”

Jackson said she did not doubt the ruling would "aid future attempts by the fuel industry to attack the Clean Air Act.”

The Daily Beast's Paula Rodriguez wrote that the case "marks the latest of several to garner accusations that the conservative-majority court favors corporate interests." In 2024, the court overturned a 1984 decision known as the Chevron Defense, which also concerned the Clean Air Act. The court’s new ruling undid a policy that gave federal agencies precedence over courts in regulating their respective industries, earning praise from conservatives and condemnation from environmental activists."

Jackson's dissent continued, "Over time, such selectivity begets judicial overreach and erodes public trust in the impartiality of judicial decision making. Today’s ruling runs the risk of setting us down that path.”

Read The Daily Beast article here.

Hugely controversial Supreme Court ruling hands Trump and DOGE 'double win'

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of allowing DOGE to access sensitive Social Security information, according to CNN's Joan Biskupic.

In a 6-3 ruling Friday afternoon, the court lifted a block on DOGE's access that was imposed by a lower court.

"You know, the Social Security Administration has so much personal information on all of us; our Social Security numbers, our bank account numbers, all sorts of records, date of birth — and DOGE had said that it needed access to this material for part of its efforts to modernize government systems," Biskupic said.

With the three liberal justices dissenting, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, "This will hand DOGE staffers highly sensitive data of millions of Americans," Biskupic read.

In a separate 6-3 ruling, the justices paused a lower court order giving access to DOGE information to outlets that requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.

"There had been a watchdog group [that] was suing DOGE trying to get information about its people and its activities, and was seeking documents and discovery, and the Supreme Court has paused that effort," Biskupic said.

She added that the rulings were "a double win" for both Trump and DOGE.

Watch the clip below via CNN.

MAGA goes berserk as Ketanji Brown Jackson takes solo stance against Trump

MAGA acolytes have gone to war with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson over her sole dissent in Monday's decision to rescind legal protections to Venezuelan immigrants.

Jackson was the sole dissenter in Monday's court decision to rescind protections that stopped hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants being sent back to the country — although neither she nor the majority detailed their decisions.

MAGA supporters lit up social media with calls for Jackson to be ousted from the court. Many argued that Biden lacked proper mental capacity to appoint her to the court in 2022.

"Ketanji Brown Jackson should be removed from the Supreme Court… She was a DEI appointee by an invalid who had no idea what he was doing," wrote MAGA commentator Gunther Eagleman to his 1.5 million followers.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

Eric Daugherty with FloridaVoice News posted, "Kentanji Brown Jackson was the ONLY Supreme Court Justice to rule against Trump in today's alien parole decision, which was 8-UNQUALIFIED! She proves it every time."

Author Juanita Broaddrick wrote, "Ketanji Brown is not a legitimate Supreme Court Justice. She should be removed," while right-wing podcaster Jack Posobiec offered his thoughts on the matter:

"I will ask this again: Was Ketanji Brown Jackson a legally-nominated Supreme Court Justice if the person who appointed her lacked capacity? Only a President can sign a commission officially nominating a Supreme Court Justice Not a staffer, not an autopen, a president with full mental capacity."

Former West Virginia House member Derrick Evans called on Congress to "Impeach Kentanji Brown Jackson. Biden was not mentally capable of appointing her to the position. She needs to be removed from the Supreme Court."

While MAGA commentator Ian Jaeger commentator told his 300,000 followers, "Kentanji Brown Jackson is the only Justice to rule against President Trump canceling legal status for over 500,000 illegal immigrants that came in under President Biden’s 'parole' program. She’s totally unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court."

How Trump and Senate Republicans are circling the wagons to save Clarence Thomas

WASHINGTON — The cycle continues: Clarence Thomas has former President Donald Trump’s back, Trump has Senate Republicans in his back pocket and Senate Republicans, in turn, have Thomas’ back.

No matter how much financial dirt journalists and watchdog groups dig up on Thomas, and no matter how much Democrats single Thomas out for what they consider his shameful jurisprudence, his legend only continues to grow within conservative circles.

And those conservatives are striking back.

ALSO READ: How to survive Supreme Court stupidity without losing your mind

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and other Republicans on Capitol Hill say they have no plan to drop their blockade of Democrat’s proposed ethics reform package for the Supreme Court as long as Thomas’ gaggle of prominent detractors continue lambasting his for what reform organization Fix the Court tallies is more than $4 million in gifts from wealthy benefactors.

Last July, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the SCERT Act —Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 — which would force the court to adopt an ethics code, establish an enforcement mechanism and increase transparency. Just last month, Senate Republicans brought their blockade to the Senate floor where the GOP quashed the measure.

Supreme Court 2022, Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

“There's like a Clarence Thomas story every week. I'm sure next week it'll be something else. I mean, they're just hounding the poor guy. They want to hound him off the court,” Hawley told Raw Story before the Senate left town for senators' two-week long July Fourth recess.

“But none of them have been good headlines,” Raw Story pushed. “He admitted to... ”

“Well, of course not,” Hawley replied. “They’re like oppo research for the campaign. I mean, of course, they're not good headlines. They’ve been trying to discredit him. They tried to do this from the moment he got on the court.”

‘OK with felons’

Democrats aren’t surprised.

“Well, I think you have to understand that the little billionaire elite that put these people on the court is also heavily, heavily, heavily funding the Republican Senate political operation. So they have strings everywhere to pull,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story. “Do the math.”

Democrats are increasingly frustrated, though. And they don’t get the GOP’s blanket immunity from every unseemly accusation flying Thomas’ way, including that the upward of $4 million in gifts he accepted is “nearly 10 times the value of all gifts received by his fellow justices during the same time,” according to the Democratic majority on the Judiciary Committee.

“I think it's unacceptable. I’m stunned that he did not think this would undermine not just the view of his impartiality but will undermine the institution itself,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Raw Story.

But Booker says Democrats aren’t merely singling Thomas out, particularly with a Supreme Court that has regularly ruled in Trump’s interests. One such ruling dropped Monday, when the conservative majority led a 6-3 ruling that gave Trump (and future presidents) significant, if not absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.

“There's no way to objectively look at this other than showing that the highest court in the land is descending into some of the lowest examples of, I think, unethical behavior that points to horrendous influence of people who have issues, matters and, frankly, strong beliefs about which direction the court should go in,” Booker said.

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Other Democrats say the problem is the ethical standards — and lack thereof — on the right have been upended in this Trump-era.

“You have a Republican Party now that their presumptive nominee is a felon, so I guess that's, you know, where Republicans are now. They're OK with felons running for high public office,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told Raw Story.

While Raw Story tried to press Peters — who is chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — on the politics of the court ahead of November, Peters refused to go there.

“We have to have a court that is respected by the American people, and when things like this happen, people start losing respect for the court,” Peters said. “And the court’s power is based on the respect of the rule of law and the integrity of the justices. If you damage that, you damage the court.”

Some Republicans won’t go there, either.

Many point to the code of conduct Chief Justice John Roberts announced last fall. While it laid out some specific instances when justices need to recuse themselves — like, say, if a justice or their relative is tied to a case — it falls short of requiring recusal. And there’s no enforcement mechanism.

Still, that’s good enough for many of today’s Republicans.

“The Supreme Court has developed its own code of ethics, and I have not reviewed that,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Raw Story.

“Did you see that Clarence Thomas got $4 million in gifts?” Raw Story asked. “What do you make of that number?”

“I really haven't been focused on it,” Collins said as a “Senators Only” elevator closed on Raw Story.

‘Getting pressured’

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have been focused on it, yet they’re whistling a similar tune.

“I’m all for getting the Article III branch to update, modernize their disclosure requirements and ethics rules, but please spare me this,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story. “I’m trying not to call out the individual members, but believe me we’ve got a rap sheet on every single one, both sides. And they should really come together.”

For one, Tillis is thinking of the disclosure that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accepted four tickets to see Beyoncé, an estimated $3,700 value.

While $4,000 and $4 million are worlds apart, it’s still unseemly to Tillis and others. That’s why he’s hoping the court just adopts its own stout ethics standards already.

ALSO READ: Marjorie Taylor Greene buys condo in 'crime ridden hell hole'

“They’re vulnerable,” Tillis said. “And, quite frankly, I’d like for the new ethics standards to get done when we have a majority conservative Supreme Court, and they can’t say it’s just because they’re getting pressured.”

Other Senate Republicans seem to have also outsourced their thinking on the Supreme Court to the court.

“Look, I trust the chief justice,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) — who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — told Raw Story.

The American people generally don’t.

Back in 2009, 61 percent of Americans approved of a then divided Supreme Court, according to Gallup. These days, Gallup shows a mere 41 percent approval rating for the nation’s high court.

This is nothing new.

A decade ago, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) introduced the Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2013, which would “require the Supreme Court of the United States to promulgate a code of ethics.”

“It's extraordinary that there's not more outrage. This seems to be a pretty simple grift,” Murphy told Raw Story. “Maybe we have to wait until there's some scandal with a Democratic appointed judge before anybody on the right cares about it.”

Most Republicans raise constitutional doubts about Congress’ power to write ethics rules for a separate branch of government. Still, some, like Hawley of Missouri, agree with the thrust of Democrat’s ethics proposal.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). (Nash Greg/TNS)

“Don't get me wrong, it would be helpful to everybody, if they had firm rules that they don’t accept gifts,” Hawley said. “They shouldn’t take gifts. I’m opposed to the gifts. They shouldn't take tickets, cruises, planes — they shouldn't do it. That's my view. They haven't asked for my opinion, but that's my view.”

“We don't have power over them. They’ve got to do it, but I think they should. I think it'd be helpful if they would just say, ‘we're not gonna do that,’” Hawley told Raw Story. “I don't think they should own stock either. Just like I don’t think members of Congress should. It’d just be cleaner. Like, ‘we don’t own stock. We don't take gifts.’ That'd be better for everybody.”

Overall, Hawley remains dubious of Democrats.

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“I just think that they should just adopt their own ethics code and it ought to mirror, as much as possible, what Congress and the executive branch do,” Hawley said. “And honestly, if that were to happen, they'd still be attacking Justice Thomas.”

As of now, the left is promising to continue highlighting the lavish life Thomas lives at the expense of the wealthy donors who’ve taken him under their private wings, and they are showing no signs of letting up.

Progressives in the House of Representatives have been frustrated with their Senate counterparts for not doing more, like deploying filibuster reform to expand the size of the court.

And now, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for one, is angling to impeach Thomas and potentially his fellow conservative justices as soon as the U.S. House returns from recess.

Still, over in the Senate, most Democrats are resisting those calls from the party’s left wing. Instead, they’re promising to remain steady in their effort to expose this Supreme Court, so voters know the true choice facing the nation this November.

“You continue the investigation,” Whitehouse told Raw Story. “You continue the persistent pressure. Continue working with the judicial conference, which has been quite productive.”

Two Trump legal lifelines are tilting Election 2024 in Donald's favor

After showing a remarkable lack of interest in the underlying facts, the U.S. Supreme Court has kept an adjudicated insurrectionist — by definition unfit to be president — on the ballot.

During oral arguments, the Supreme Court — apart from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — asked almost no questions about the Colorado Supreme Court’s predicate finding that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection. The Colorado court determined that on January 6, 2021, following two months of frenzied attempts to overturn his election loss, Trump summoned supporters to Washington, D.C., goaded them with false and incendiary claims that their votes had been “stolen” and then prodded the frothing mob to storm the U.S. Capitol.

ALSO READ: 'What a piece of work': Marjorie Greene's 'childish' SOTU response trashed by Senate Dems

Just three weeks after oral arguments, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot remove insurrectionists from the presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Apart from the substance of the ruling, the partisanship of the Supreme Court’s timing is glaring: It took justices only three weeks to restore an insurrectionist to the ballot. But they apparently need months and months to rule on the question of presidential immunity — literally, a question of whether presidents are allowed to engage in wonton criminality, including the assassination of their rivals.

The Supreme Court’s orchestrated timing has now thrown Trump two major legal lifelines timed to influence the November general election in his favor.

A constitutional catastrophe

Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment is short, does not lack clarity and is not ambiguous. It bars anyone from federal office who “engaged in insurrection” after they swore an oath to support the Constitution.

The opening words, “No person shall…” make the section barring an insurrectionist mandatory, not optional.

The U.S. Supreme Court could have reversed or limited the Colorado Supreme Court’s determination that Trump had engaged in insurrection. But it didn’t, and Colorado’s ruling remains legally intact even if Trump’s regained his Colorado ballot access.

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Avoiding the shameful details of J6, alleged originalists on the Supreme Court got creative instead. Despite agreeing that Section 3 applies to candidates for president, and apparently agreeing that Trump engaged in insurrection, the high court ruled nonetheless that states could not enforce the insurrectionist ban without a separate act of Congress, lest “chaos” ensue in federal elections.

It's hard to appreciate how years of election chaos from an insurrectionist trying to overturn an election are preferable to a state supreme court- or the U.S. Supreme Court- enforcing the plain terms of the Constitution.

Congress, Supreme Court point at each other

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 majority decided that Section 3 isn’t self-executing, meaning it has no force or effect in the absence of additional congressional action. Building an off-ramp to keep Trump on the ballot, “conservative” jurists crafted a new legislative hurdle that has never been applied to the 14th Amendment.

Although Section 5 of the same amendment states, “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” that language does not give Congress the sole or exclusive right to act, and it does not bar state or Supreme Court enforcement of the 14th Amendment (or any other amendment). It also does not declare itself null and void, “unless and until Congress says otherwise.”

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The Supreme Court making up language to defer to Congress is even more farcical considering that GOP congressional leaders, for their part, left the question of Trump’s insurrection up to the courts.

Despite initially agreeing that Trump orchestrated the J6 capitol attack, GOP leadership voted to acquit Trump at his second impeachment trial in February 2021, claiming it should fall to the courts, not Congress, to hold him accountable.

As GOP operatives in Congress and on the Supreme Court pretend that responding to insurrection is someone else’s job, the Supreme Court has left it in the hands of Congress, fully aware that Congress won’t act.

This is how putative “originalists” effectively re-wrote the 14th Amendment to support their preferred outcome, and eviscerated Section 3, paving the way for future insurrectionists.

Federalists forget about federalism

The Supreme Court also ruled that, “States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency,” otherwise state-by-state chaos would result.

This from the same self-righteous lot that created life and death, state-by-state chaos under Dobbs, letting each state decide whether women — or zygotes — could live.

It also appears that a self-proclaimed federalist majority on the bench forgot the rules of federalism, under which states — not Congress — adopt statewide election laws. Under Article 1, Section 4, of the Constitution, states have the primary authority to set their own election rules, including the power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.”

Supreme Court 2022, Image via Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Under long-established election rules, election laws, including eligibility rules and who can appear on the ballot, have always varied greatly among the states. Changing that to aid Trump, by ending states’ authority to remove an insurrectionist from their ballot, is some porous federalism at work.

Specious timing

The speed with which the Supreme Court restored Trump to the Colorado ballot — just three weeks after oral argument — delivered Trump an immediate boost the day before Super Tuesday, when voters in 15 states were headed to the polls.

While it’s comforting to be reminded that the Supreme Court can move with alacrity when it wants to, such as when it decided the 2000 election for George W. Bush in a matter of days, the quick timing on Trump’s insurrection stands in stark contrast to the presidential immunity case, on which SCOTUS deliberately dragged its feet for months.

Jack Smith, U.S. Department of Justice special counsel in charge of prosecuting Trump’s handling of classified documents and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, asked the Supreme Court to decide Trump’s immunity claims in December. The Supreme Court refused, waiting instead for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to weigh in.

The D.C. Circuit weighed in with a unanimous and thorough decision rejecting Trump’s immunity claim, issued the first week in February.

The Supreme Court then waited nearly a month, and decided it would like to hear Trump’s immunity claim for itself, after all. Instead of setting the hearing quickly, it set the immunity hearing for late April.

A late April hearing on a case that has already been briefed to the hilt will likely result in a late June opinion; that opinion could again return the case to the appeals court to address any number of inquiries, which would prompt Trump to seek another interlocutory appeal — all just to push the trial date past the November 5 election.

As it stands, in rejecting Smith’s December request, and delaying the ruling until late June, likely pushing Trump’s trial start date into October, the Supreme Court gave Trump’s campaign the key gift of at least seven months of deferred justice.

Although no one expects the Supreme Court to countenance Trump’s claim that presidents can assassinate political rivals with impunity, the months-long delay is outrageous. It all but guarantees that Trump, who also faces three separate felony criminal trials this year, will not stand trial in federal court for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election during a period when it matters most to voters.

A partisan Supreme Court again shows its hand

It bears repeating that the high court moved swiftly to restore Trump to the Colorado ballot in the insurrectionist case, but on the immunity case — where they will either have to rule against Trump or admit they are in on the GOP coup — they deliberately delayed Trump’s trial until after it loses electoral relevance.

The Colorado decision keeps an adjudicated insurrectionist on the ballot, ignores federalist rules letting states set their own election laws, rewrites the 14th Amendment to require Congress to act before it can take effect and protects future insurrectionists by erasing Section 3 in the meantime.

Their other gift to Trump, their decision to slow walk the immunity ruling, is a gift of time, not substance, but it will have the same effect.

Even a Court this nakedly partisan cannot grant a president complete criminal immunity, but their careful delay all but assures that, for Trump, the question will become irrelevant.

Sabrina Haake is a 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack is free.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was 'throwing shade' at her colleagues in Trump hearing: expert

The Supreme Court looks poised to let former President Donald Trump back on the ballot after hearing a review of the Colorado decision banning him under the Fourteenth Amendment — but Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wants them to do it the right way.

New York University law professor and MSNBC legal commentator Melissa Murray explained to anchor Ari Melber that she wanted to put the actual purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment into their decision — and chided some of her colleagues for trying to take a lazy way out.

"Justice Jackson said if stopping insurrectionists in government is so important, then of course you would want to stop them from being the chief executive officer of the federal government, of running the whole government," said Melber, himself an attorney. "She sort of said, well, yes, but the historical emphasis at the time was on insurrectionist infiltration in the South at a local level. So it may be possible and not illogical that they didn't include the presidency."

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"Right," said former Trump lawyer Jim Schultz. "Because there wasn't really this risk — because of the national election, there wasn't a risk of someone who had been in the Confederacy and becoming a president. There was more of a risk at the congressional and local level of that happening. She focused on that. I think that's the cleaner way out, if you will, for the Supreme Court. Rather than some of the other issues, whether giving it to Congress and they end up on January 6th, the idea that, and the argument was this doesn't apply to candidate Trump, it would apply to him taking office but not becoming a candidate for president. And it's a good argument. I think it's a strong argument, but if they rely on that, we're right back in trying to define what an insurrectionist is on January 6th if we have a new Congress."

"I think that's exactly right," said Murray. "Justice Jackson was offering the court a clear off ramp that wouldn't engender clear down-the-road contingencies. But I also think she was throwing a lot of shade at her colleagues. She was the only one on the court delving into the scope and substance of the historical events that animated the Fourteenth Amendment."

"This is, on a court who seem to think that history and tradition is important, especially when withdrawing constitutional rights from women, is a put down from Justice Jackson to actually delve into the history animating the Fourteenth Amendment at a time when her colleagues were trying to get to a pragmatic way of doing it. They are selective and itinerant. They are outcome-driven. She might have been on board for the outcome but she was going to do the work."

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Melissa Murray says Justice Jackson was "throwing shade" at colleagueswww.youtube.com