Don’t hold your breath
One day ahead of Super Tuesday, the speculation is that shortly after this posts we may see the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald “91 Counts” Trump’s Colorado ballot access case. Anyone who listened to the oral arguments knows not to hold their breath for the court to agree with the Colorado supremes (and others) that he’s committed crimes (Washington Post):
The high court took the unusual step Sunday of scheduling an opinion announcement for a day when it is not in session. The justices typically issue rulings from the bench, with the author of the majority opinion presenting a summary of the court’s decision. Instead, the court said opinions could be posted on its website Monday at 10 a.m.
Colorado’s top court ordered Trump, the Republican front-runner, off the ballot in December after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The state court put its ruling on hold while litigation continued, and the former president’s name will appear on the state’s primary ballot. (If he was ultimately ruled ineligible, the votes for him would not count.)
Trump appealed as Trump does. But he’s on the Colorado ballot tomorrow. Should he lose his SCOTUS appeal, his votes would not count.
Democrats are always “maximally crimey”
Ian Bassin and Dahlia Lithwick suggest that what the court does not say in its ruling is likely as important as what it does. The court is unlikely to render an opinion on whether Trump engaged in an insurrection, as Colorado found, nor on the presidential immunity appeal still outstanding. That does not mean the justices won’t be speaking volumes. “The real question is whether our media will be savvy enough to hear it,” the pair explain.
Consider how the press reported the Robert Mueller findings on Hillary Clinton’s email server or Special Counsel Robert Hur’s decision not to indict Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents (Slate).:
One might wonder why it is that when it’s Donald Trump openly committing crimes and evading responsibility, the default media narrative is that he didn’t commit crimes, yet when Democrats are found to have committed no crimes, the story becomes that they are still sufficiently crime-adjacent to be maximally crimey, The coverage of the Comey and Hur reports focused orders of magnitude more on their non-conclusion details than the decision not to press charges. Whereas our press largely fell for Attorney General Bill Barr and Donald Trump’s efforts to spin the Mueller report into an “exoneration” at the expense of the damning facts about obstruction of justice that were laid out in its pages.
The press casts doubt on the Democrat, perhaps to elide legal technical jargon that is less digestible, just not when it is the Republican. The simplified storylines became “But Her Emails” and “Biden So Old!”
Maybe this is all unfair. Maybe we can expect better. Maybe if the Supreme Court issues an opinion ruling for Trump on technicalities while still remaining silent on the lower court’s finding that he engaged in insurrection, we’ll see headlines and reporting capturing the dual nature of such a ruling, and the momentous implications of a court that seems to accept that he did what we know he did. But we’re not holding our breath.
Curated for your protection
Bassin, Lithwick and the rest of us saw what Trump did. The House Select Committee investigated Jan. 6 exhaustively and broadcast its findings to the world. “Hundreds of participants have been sentenced for participating in it,” many admitting they attacked the Capitol and police at Trump’s behest. “The only material question for the high court is whether he will be allowed to get away with it.”
Yet the Roberts Court’s conservative majority seems determined not just to let Trump get away with it, but to let themselves get away with not upholding their judicial oaths to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” MAGA Republicans elsewhere across the U.S. are working to ensure that, when we hold “free and fair” elections, Americans are merely going through the motions. Watch this morning to see if the U.S. Supreme Court has elected to do the same.
In a digital age when our attention is curated for us, don’t hold your breath for the press to make much of it if it does.
UPDATE: Court rules 9-0 that the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 is not self-executing (quick skim and reporting). Congress alone is the primary enforcement mechanism. Trump may stay on the Colorado and other state ballots. Court does not exonerate Trump for insurrection.
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