Archives for the month of: July, 2024
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Arkansas: Volunteers Collect Enough Signatures to Put Abortion on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
6

In the first post today, I wrote that people in Arkansas were trying to collect enough signatures to get a state referendum on abortion. They did it! Under the malign leadership of Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and a Republican legislature, the state government passed a highly restrictive abortion law.

The Arkansas Times writes:

They did it. They did it on a shoestring budget, with no organizational support from national groups. Just Arkansas women with clipboards, hustling.

With 100,000 signatures in hand and more still being counted, backers of the Arkansas Abortion Amendment say they’ve got the numbers they need to put reproductive rights on the November ballot. And so far 53 counties reached the qualifying minimum, more than the state’s required 50.

Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the Arkansas Abortion Amendment, will turn in petitions at the Arkansas Capitol today.

They’ll be bringing roughly 10,000 more than the 90,704 required to get on the ballot, although the number will certainly change as employees with the Arkansas Secretary of State’s office cull duplicates and weed out names of people who aren’t registered voters. There’s a cushion built into the calendar that gives volunteers another 30 days to collect more signatures to make up for any that are nixed by the state.

It’s easy to feel gloomy about politics in a red state that only seems to get redder. But today there is genuine cause to celebrate. It is only a first step in the process of restoring reproductive rights. But what a step! This is how you claw your state back from the tsk-tsking forced birthers who would gladly stand by while rape victims, pregnant children and women carrying non-viable pregnancies suffer unspeakably.

And they did it without glamorous celebrity endorsements or the financial muscle of major national groups. This effort was driven by smart and tireless Arkansas women who weren’t dissuaded by naysayers or the failure of national groups like Planned Parenthood or the American Civil Liberties Union to send them any cash.

On Friday morning Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, told supporters to celebrate a little bit, but be ready to work a lot between now and November:

We are grateful for and inspired by Arkansans, across all 75 counties, who signed the petition to put this amendment before voters in November. We believe that healthcare is personal and private. Bodily autonomy and the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship are values that transcend party politics, economics, and religion. Healthcare decisions, including decisions about reproductive health, should be made between patients and their healthcare team. 

Right now, Arkansas is the most dangerous place in the country to be pregnant. Not only does Arkansas have the highest maternal mortality rate in the nation, nearly half of Arkansas counties are maternity healthcare deserts, meaning they have no obstetric providers or options for delivery care. Arkansas deserves better than that.

This campaign is made up of Arkansas women and mothers, Arkansas healthcare professionals, and Arkansas faith leaders. We are grateful for their support. I want to recognize our 800+ courageous volunteers. Despite frequent harassment and intimidation, they worked tirelessly for months to ensure that we could reach interested signers in every corner of the state. Their relentless efforts, unwavering dedication, and unyielding passion inspires hope for a better Arkansas.

We are proud of our fellow Arkansans for rejecting the state’s extreme abortion ban and taking the first, important step towards protecting pregnant women now and in the future. We celebrate our accomplishments today, but on Monday we get back to work because women’s lives are at stake. The hardest job is ahead of us, and we will not fail. 

The Arkansas Times warns that anti-abortion groups will pull every trick in the book to smear and derail the referendum. Great thing about referenda is that they allow voters to speak out on issues where politicians don’t listen. That’s why every state referendum on school vouchers has failed.

Categories Arkansas, Courage, Elections, Gender, Health

Biden: “I’m Staying in the Race!”

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
99

Apparently some voters like to see an old guy defying the media and the pundits. The crowd in Wisconsin roared its approval when a “defiant” Biden said he was running. Maybe that’s why the new film “Thelma” is a big hit; it’s about a 93-year-old grandmother who gets scammed out of $10,000 and wreaks vengeance on the scammers. Filmed as an action movie, with high-speed races and and an explosion.

The New York Times, which leads the clamor to oust Biden, posted this story at 4:02 p.m. today.

President Biden just wrapped a brief but animated and defiant speech at a campaign event in Wisconsin, asserting that he would continue in the race and describing former President Donald J. Trump as a liar and threat to democracy.

“I’m staying in this race,” Mr. Biden told the crowd, to cheers. “I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out three-and-a-half years of work.” Mr. Biden’s speech in Wisconsin is the first of two appearances on Friday that will be closely watched as doubts among Democrats intensify about his ability to beat former President Donald J. Trump. ABC News will air an interview with Mr. Biden on Friday evening that will be recorded after the speech.

Categories Biden, Elections, Trump

Will Arkansas Citizens Demand Accountability for Voucher Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
5

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas, which has a Republican supermajority, passed a voucher plan that allows the state’s voucher schools to evade the accountability required of public schools.

Outraged citizens have been gathering signatures for a referendum that would subject voucher schools to the same accountability as public schools. Today is the deadline to submit signatures. We will know soon if the rebellion against voucher schools’ freedom from accountability succeeded.

The Arkansas Times reported.

Organizers are racing to try to meet the signature threshold for an ambitious ballot initiative that would dramatically reorient the state’s K-12 education priorities and hold private schools receiving public funds to the same standards as those for public schools.

They still need thousands of signatures and face an uphill climb to meet the threshold by the July 5 deadline. We won’t know until the bitter end whether or not the group manages to get over the hump (more than a thousand volunteers are working at events across the state over the next 24 hours).

But I think it’s worth taking a moment to examine the stakes. The Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment would force the legislature to make real commitments to areas of educational need with a proven track record of improving learning outcomes. And it would force accountability on the governor’s voucher scheme, which is funneling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money into the pockets of private school families via a program with a long history of catastrophic failure in improving learning outcomes when states actually take the trouble to fairly measure and transparently report results at the private schools.

At a time when Republicans have total control of state government and Gov. Sarah Huckabee haughtily rules as if she has an infallible and possibly divine mandate, the education amendment would be the most comprehensive and far-reaching progressive policy victory in Arkansas since Medicaid expansion passed more than a decade ago.

Legislating by direct democracy

The education amendment is somewhat unusual for a ballot initiative, which usually present relatively straightforward “up-or-down” questions on issues like the minimum wage, casinos, weed, etc. The ballot initiative currently collecting signatures to reverse the state’s abortion ban is like that. Yes, there are details — abortions are allowed up to 18 weeks and for certain exceptions such as rape, incest and saving the life of the mother — but the fundamental issue is a yes-or-no question about whether or not abortion should be legal.

If someone wants to quibble with the headline above and say that the abortion initiative would be the biggest win in terms of liberal priorities in the state, I wouldn’t argue much. But it’s different in kind. The education amendment lays out a very broad-reaching slate of priorities and then would force the Legislature to act. It doesn’t articulate just how lawmakers should go about implementing it. It just establishes certain areas that are an absolute priority — required by law — tying lawmakers hands. The ripple effects through every aspect of the budget would be massive. It would steer the state toward a massive policy project that state leaders don’t want to do. The Legislature has prioritized vouchers and tax cuts skewed toward the wealthy and ignored issues like access to pre-k. If the public votes for this constitutional amendment, it would mandate that the Legislature make new tradeoffs.

This is why Arkansas Republican lawmakers are not fans of direct democracy. The overwhelming majority of voters in the state are going to back the candidate with an “R” by their name. But that doesn’t mean they share their narrow ideological obsessions. They will happily vote for minimum wage increases by huge majorities even if their elected officials hate it. With the advent of one-party rule, the state’s government is not responsive to issues that voters care about that don’t align with doctrinaire right-wing dogma. That’s why you’re seeing more expansive efforts to legislate from the bottom up via ballot initiative. Pre-k is popular; vouchers are not.

Equal standards and transparency for public and private schools getting vouchers

The push to put the education amendment before voters comes in the first year of Arkansas LEARNS, the education overhaul backed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and passed by the Republican supermajority in the Legislature last year. Among the law’s most controversial provisions was the creation of a voucher program to help families cover the tuition and other costs of private schools. The program began this year and will be phased in until all K-12 students in the state are eligible to apply starting with the 2025-26 school year.

One curious feature of LEARNS is that the accountability measures it establishes for private schools accepting vouchers are not the same as those for public schools. The amendment would seek to reverse that, insisting on the same accreditation and testing for all schools receiving public funds, as well as public reporting by school of the results. This would allow citizens to see how well the voucher program is working as compared to public schools and help guide parents.

In the early days of voucher programs, advocates wanted to arrange apples-to-apples comparisons of student performance because they thought the voucher students would perform better. But once voucher programs scaled up to statewide efforts, the results were awful: Students who switched from public school to private school via voucher saw their test scores plummet to an unheard of degree — akin to the learning loss associated with a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina or the COVID pandemic.

You might think such empirical results would give voucher advocates pause, but instead they shifted gears to trying to keep the test results secret or making comparisons impossible. Like many other new voucher programs in red states sweeping the country, Arkansas allowed private schools receiving boatloads of public money to arrange their own standards and tests, with none of the results made public. What could go wrong?

The irony here is that voucher advocates were often the ones screaming loudly about the need for accountability via testing in public schools, and pointing to those very results to disparage the quality of education in public schools. So you wind up with this very strange two-step: Voucher advocates will say something like, “these public school standards have led to lots of kids being below grade level in reading, let’s try something new.” But the measurement of how many kids are at grade level in reading is itself something we know via the standards, assessment and reporting! If voucher advocates claim to want to improve on these metrics, why wouldn’t we measure and report them at private schools, too?

I’ll let you know what happens. Republicans are terrified of voucher referenda: They always lose. To the extent that the public learns that voucher schools are actually worse than public schools and that the primary beneficiaries of vouchers are private school families whose children never attended public schools, the more likely that the public will oppose vouchers. Sending public money to private schools has never won a state referendum.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Education Industry, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

John Thompson: Is AI a Boon or a Danger?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
16

John Thompson is a retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma. I admit that I steer clear of AI, in part because of my innate aversion to “thinking machines” replacing humans. I am biased towards people deciding for themselves, but as I watch the polling numbers in the race for President, I wonder if artificial intelligence might be more trustworthy than people who support a man with Trump’s long record of lying and cheating others.

John Thompson writes:

We live in a nation where reliable polling data reveals that 23% of respondents “strongly believe” or “somewhat believe” that the attacks on the World Trade Center were an “inside job.” Moreover, 1/3rd of polled adults believe that COVID-19 vaccines “caused thousands of sudden deaths,” and 1/3rd also believe the deworming medication Ivermectin was an “effective treatment for COVID-19.” Moreover, 63% of Americans “say they have not too much or no confidence at all in our political system.”

Such falsehoods were not nearly as common in the late 1990s when I first watched my high school students learn how to use digital media. But, I immediately warned my colleagues that we had to get out in front of the emerging technological threat. Of course, my advocacy for digital literacy, critical thinking, and digital ethics was ignored. 

But who knew that misuse of digital media would become so harmful? As Surgeon General Vivek Murthy now explains: 

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. 

As a special issue of the Progressive  reports, our  digital ecosystems, with their deepfakes and disinformation are distorting reality, and increasing “human tendencies toward cognitive biases and groupthink.”  It further explains that since 2019 the number of people “who cite social media as their number one source for news has increased by 50 percent.” Moreover:

Half of American adults report that they access their news from social media sometimes or often. For Americans under the age of thirty-four, social media is the number one source for news.

The Progressive further explains that young people “don’t necessarily trust what they read and watch.” They “know that private corporations manipulate political issues and other information to suit their agendas, but may not understand how algorithms select the content that they see.”

We in public education should apologize for failing to do our share of the job of educating youth for the 21st century. Then we should commit to plans for teaching digital literacy.

It seems likely that the mental distress suffered by young people could be a first driver toward healthy media systems. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information:

According to data from several cross-sectional, longitudinal, and empirical research, smartphone and social media use among teenagers relates to an increase in mental distress, self-harming behaviors, and suicidality. Clinicians can work with young people and their families to reduce the hazards of social media and smartphone usage by using open, nonjudgmental, and developmentally appropriate tactics, including education and practical problem-solving.

According to the Carnegie Council:

Social media presents a number of dangers that require urgent and immediate regulation, including online harassment; racist, bigoted and divisive content; terrorist and right-wing calls for radicalization; as well as unidentified use of social media for political advertising by foreign and domestic actors. To mitigate these societal ills, carefully crafted policy that balances civil liberties and the need for security must be implemented in line with the latest cybersecurity developments.

Reaching such a balance will require major investments – and fortitude – from the private sector and government. But it is unlikely that real regulatory change can occur without grassroots citizens’ movements that demand enforcement.

And we must quickly start to take action to prepare for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). In a New York Times commentary, Evgeny Morozov started with the statement by 350 technology executives, researchers and academics “warning of the existential dangers of artificial intelligence. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority.” He then cited a less-alarming position by the Biden administration which “has urged responsible A.I. innovation, stating that ‘in order to seize the opportunities’ it offers, we ‘must first manage its risks.’” 

Morozov then argued, “It is the rise of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., that worries the experts.” He predicted, “A.G.I. will dull the pain of our thorniest problems without fixing them,” and it “undermines civic virtues and amplifies trends we already dislike.”

Morozov later concluded that A.G.I. “may or may not prove an existential threat’ but it has an “antisocial bent.” He warned that A.G.I. often fails “to grasp the messy interplay of values, missions and traditions at the heart of institutions — an interplay that is rarely visible if you only scratch their data surface.”

I lack expertise in A.I. and A.G.I. but it seems clear that the dangers of data, driven by algorithms and other impersonal factors, must be controlled by persons committed to social values. It is essential that schools assume their duty for preparing youth for the 21st century, but they can only do so with a team effort. I suspect the same is true of the full range of interconnected social and political institutions. As Surgeon General Murthy concludes his warning to society about social media:

These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.

The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Freedom, Technology

“Democracy”: Jeff Bezos Is Betraying the Guiding Principles of The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
13

One of our readers uses the sobriquet Democracy. In response to posts about Jeff Bezos’ decision to put the Washington Post in the hands of Will Lewis, a Murdoch-trained publisher and editor, Democracy writes:

When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established a set of guiding principles for the newspaper and its employees.

The first was” to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”

The other principles included:

*  “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

*  “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”

*  “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”

*  “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”

I think it’s fair to say that there has been some genuine “slippage” under Jeff Bezos.

Categories Ethics, Media

Christiane Amanpour Interviews Heather Cox Richardson about Biden vs. Trump: A Must-See!

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
50

This is an excellent interview of Heather Cox Richardson by Christiane Amanpour. They discuss the infamous debate between Biden and Trump. Richardson explains brilliantly how the media has framed the debate as “disastrous” for Biden yet has failed to portray the danger posed by Trump. Trump, she says, is a threat to our democracy.

Whatever you do today, watch this discussion. Richardson’s historical insights are invaluable. She is succinct, clear, and compelling.

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Trump

This is How Democracy Ends: Trump Calls for Arrest and Conviction of His Political Enemies

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2024 //
123

The Supreme Court just ruled that the President has absolute immunity to do whatever he wants so long as it’s “official,” and Trump is giving the public a view of how he will use that power: to prosecute and jail his enemies, especially Liz Cheney. He could imprison them in Guantanamo and tried for treason by a military tribunal,

This is the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships, not in the USA. Right? In a Trump future, July 4 would be celebrated with a military parade of tanks and missiles. Do you think our men and women in the military can learn the goose step?

The New York Times reported:

Former President Donald J. Trump over the weekend escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking “televised military tribunals” and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.

Mr. Trump, using his account on Truth Social on Sunday, promoted two posts from other users of the site that called for the jailing of his perceived political enemies.

One post that he circulated on Sunday singled out Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who is a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s, and called for her to be prosecuted by a type of military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.

“Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason,” the post said. “Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.”

A separate post included photos of 15 former and current elected officials that said, in all-capital letters, “they should be going to jail on Monday not Steve Bannon!” Those officials included Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell — the top leaders in the Senate — and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.

The list in the second post also had members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including Ms. Cheney and the former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, another Republican, and the Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson, who chaired the committee.

In a statement, the Trump campaign did not address Mr. Trump’s posts, instead repeating allegations of misconduct by members of the committee, saying “Liz Cheney and the sham January 6th committee banned key witnesses, shielded important evidence, and destroyed documents” related to their investigation.

To think that this vile man might be re-elected ruins my day.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Insane, Trump

July 4, 2024: Democracy on the Brink

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2024 //
45

I was born in 1938 in Houston. I’m five years older than Joe Biden. I grew up during World War II, which is sometimes called “the last good war.” I remember the air raid sirens, the blackouts (everyone turned off the lights and pulled down the shades in case there was an attack by enemy aircraft), saving scraps of metal to be recycled into bullets. The oldest family photograph I have shows me, my older brother and older sister earnestly waving American flags. I was immersed in patriotism and love of country. My mother was an immigrant from Bessarabia who would not tolerate a bad word against the country that took in her family.

Patriotism is in my blood.

In my school days, we learned only the positive spin on American history. All the bad stuff was left out. As a college student and a graduate student and an adult, I learned about the dark side of our nation’s history. I learned about race massacres, lynchings, the brutal treatment of indigenous people, and the misuse of military power.

Yet, still I am a patriot. Still I believe in the promise of America and the importance of democracy. I know the disappointments and betrayals of the American Dream, yet still I am devoted to it.

That’s why it is so sickening to see Donald Trump, a man without principle, character or ethics, running for President. It is sickening to see a man so selfish and narcissistic wrap himself in the American flag. It is sickening to see a man who professes admiration, even love, for the world’s worst tyrants, running for President as his best hope for avoiding prison. And it is even more sickening to know that millions of people believe his lies.

In addition, there is the threat posed by a rogue Supreme Court. Six radical Republicans are making mincemeat of our Constitution. In their confirmation hearings, they pledged to uphold precedent and stare decisisis, but now in lifetime positions, they shred women’s rights, limit the power of government to protect public safety, and eviscerate the basic principle of the Constitution that “no one is above the law.” It turns out that the Presdent is above the law. According to the six radical Justices, he may imprison or assassinate his political rivals as part of his “official duties.” It can’t happen here, we like to think, but we are on the cusp of losing what we treasure.

This is not a happy Fourth of July. The threats to democracy are clear, present and ominous. It’s up to us to save it by voting and getting our family, friends, and neighbors to vote in November.

Here’s hoping we can celebrate a new burst of freedom and the rule of law in 2025.

Categories Character, Civics, Civil Rights, Education Reform

Seth Abramson: Why MAGA Wants Biden to Step Down

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2024 //
142

Seth Abramson is a veteran journalist. He writes here about why MAGA is trying to push Biden out of the race: He’s the best candidate against Trump.

He begins:

Let’s cut to the chase: President Joe Biden is not going to end his 2024 campaign over a single poor debate performance, any more than Donald Trump did in 2020 after a first-in-the-cycle debate performance that voters conclusively told pollsters was worse than the one yesterday by this sitting president.


President Biden will stay in the race not simply because he’s already the nominee; not simply because there’s no mechanism to force him to exit; not simply because major media’s and politicos’ hyperventilating response to his debate performance yesterday—about 40% of voters appear to think he won the debate, and only 5% said it changed their vote (a sentiment unlikely to survive beyond a day in any case)—fails to take into account that the president had a cold, is a lifelong stutterer, performed much better as the debate went along, told a fraction of the number of lies his rival did, and saw his intermittent “old man” optics repeatedly belied by his conspicuous command of facts, policy, and history (check the transcript of the debate if you doubt this); no, Joe Biden will not step away from the 2024 election cycle because it would hand the presidency, beyond any doubt, to a confirmed rapist, serial sexual assailant, active insurrectionist, convicted felon, pathological liar, malignant narcissistic sociopath, gleeful adulterer, career criminal, unrepentant con man, traitorous would-be U.S. dictator, misogynist, antisemite, racist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe, and budding war criminal.


Why would a Biden exit ensure a Trump victory?

Let us zoom through some reasons:


(1) Nobody now polls, or has ever polled, better against Trump than Biden. Rightly or not, it appears that at present American independents prefer one particular old white man to Donald Trump over any other option available to them. It is true now, and it was true in 2018 when Joe Biden first floated a presidential run and behind the scenes Trump and his team concluded that Biden was the biggest threat to his re-election. Team Trump thought so then—and turned out to be right—and it thinks so still. Why? Because all the polls say so. No poll has anyone else close to Trump, and Republicans are well aware of this.

(2) Biden has beat Trump before. Even if we ignore polls, we cannot ignore results. Joe Biden beat the pants off Trump in the popular vote and Electoral College in 2020, and the results weren’t that close. Biden picked up states Democrats thought they couldn’t get, more than doubled Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin over Trump, and did all this while, well, old. Was he less old in 2020 than today? Yes, of course. But he was still a stutterer who sometimes loses his train of thought, misspeaks, and underperforms in many debates and interviews. Nevertheless, voters decided that they liked him, trusted him, and believed he’d surrounded himself with great advisers. Which he did.


(3) Biden has had—unlike Trump—a successful presidency. Nonpartisan historians now universally rank President Biden in the Top 20 presidents ever. Yes, really; feel free to Google it. They do this because the Biden administration has gotten results, even when and as they have not been widely reported by the media. But the results are there even if you’re not a historian: inflation is easing, the economy is healthy, crime is down, COVID-19 is under control, we’re out of Afghanistan, NATO is stronger than ever, and the Executive Order the president just signed on the border has clearly had a major and immediate effect on reducing border crossings. Unemployment’s low and Biden has avoided any major scandals. Foreign leaders like him and trust him. By comparison, nonpartisan historians universally rank Donald Trump among the worst five presidents in American history due to his rank incompetence, deceit, corruption, and moral depravity. Why would the Democrats trade a Top 20 president for some as-yet unnamed pol who is untested on the national stage and has no POTUS track record?

Please open the link and finish reading.

Categories Biden, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Supreme Court Amended Our Constitution

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2024 //
18

Heather Cox Richardson brilliantly dissected the U.S. Supreme Court’s shocking decision about Presidential immunity. The Court abandoned the foundational principle of our country that “no one is above the law.” As she points out, even the justices reiterated that principle at their hearings. To read the sources, open the link or subscribe.

She wrote:

Today the United States Supreme Court overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law. 

It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

This is a profound change to our fundamental law—an amendment to the Constitution, as historian David Blight noted. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president has ever asserted that he is above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law. 

But this extraordinary power grab does not mean President Joe Biden can do as he wishes. As legal commentator Asha Rangappa pointed out, the court gave itself the power to determine which actions can be prosecuted and which cannot by making itself the final arbiter of what is “official” and what is not. Thus any action a president takes is subject to review by the Supreme Court, and it is reasonable to assume that this particular court would not give a Democrat the same leeway it would give Trump. 

There is no historical or legal precedent for this decision. The Declaration of Independence was a litany of complaints against King George III designed to explain why the colonists were declaring themselves free of kings; the Constitution did not provide immunity for the president, although it did for members of Congress in certain conditions, and it provided for the removal of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors”—what would those be if a president is immune from prosecution for his official acts? The framers worried about politicians’ overreach and carefully provided for oversight of leaders; the Supreme Court today smashed through that key guardrail. 

Presidential immunity is a brand new doctrine. In February 2021, explaining away his vote to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had also protected Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2019, said: “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

But it was not just McConnell who thought that way. At his confirmation hearing in 2005, now–Chief Justice John Roberts said: “I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.” 

In his 2006 confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito said: “There is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.” 

And in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate: “No one’s above the law in the United States, that’s a foundational principle…. We’re all equal before the law…. The foundation of our Constitution was that…the presidency would not be a monarchy…. [T]he president is not above the law, no one is above the law.”

Now they have changed that foundational principle for a man who, according to White House officials during his term, called for the execution of people who upset him and who has vowed to exact vengeance on those he now thinks have wronged him. Over the past weekend, Trump shared an image on social media saying that former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who sat on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, was guilty of treason and calling for “televised military tribunals” to try her. 

Today, observers illustrated what Trump’s newly declared immunity could mean. Political scientist Norm Ornstein pointed out that Trump could “order his handpicked FBI Director to arrest and jail his political opponents. He can order the IRS to put liens on the property of media companies who criticize him and jail reporters and editors.” Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that a president with such broad immunity could order the assassination of Supreme Court justices, and retired military leader Mark Hertling wrote that he was “trying to figure out how a commander can refuse an illegal order from someone who is issuing it as an official act.” 

Asha Rangappa wrote: “According to the Court, a President could literally provide the leader of a hostile adversary with intelligence needed to win a conflict in which we are involved, or even attack or invade the U.S., and not be prosecuted for treason, because negotiating with heads of state is an exclusive Art. II function. In case you were wondering.” Trump is currently under indictment for retaining classified documents. “The Court has handed Trump, if he wins this November, carte blanche to be a ‘dictator on day one,’ and the ability to use every lever of official power at his disposal for his personal ends without any recourse,” Rangappa wrote. “This election is now a clear-cut decision between democracy and autocracy. Vote accordingly.”

Trump’s lawyers are already challenging Trump’s conviction in the election interference case in which a jury found him guilty on 34 counts. Over Trump’s name on social media, a post said the decision was “BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE, AND CLEARS THE STENCH FROM THE BIDEN TRIALS AND HOAXES, ALL OF THEM, THAT HAVE BEEN USED AS AN UNFAIR ATTACK ON CROOKED JOE BIDEN’S POLITICAL OPPONENT, ME. MANY OF THESE FAKE CASES WILL NOW DISAPPEAR, OR WITHER INTO OBSCURITY. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife was deeply involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, also took a shot at the appointment of special counsels to investigate such events. Thomas was not the only Justice whose participation in this decision was likely covered by a requirement that he recuse himself: Alito has publicly expressed support for the attempt to keep Trump in office against the will of voters. Trump appointed three of the other justices granting him immunity—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—to the court.

In a dissent in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that because of the majority’s decision, “[t]he relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

“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. With fear for our democracy,” she wrote, “I dissent.” 

Today’s decision destroyed the principle on which this nation was founded, that all people in the United States of America should be equal before the law.

The name of the case is “Donald J. Trump v. United States.” 

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Trump
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