By making it extremely hard to gain standing, the Supreme Court has ruled that a president can blatantly act illegally and steal Congress’s power. The Court has deeply damaged a basic tenet of the Constitution by allowing a president to use governmental power in cases where he clearly has no such power. If the president wants to do something outside his core powers, he must have Congress authorize that power and spending. The Constitution is black and white on this, but most “Conservatives” on the Supreme Court don’t care.
With Supreme Court justices hiding their personal deliberations and keeping their notes secret for decades after their deaths or even destroyed, and with a heavy amount of rulings coming from the shadow docket where they don’t have to explain themselves…the Supreme Court has a transparency problem.
The Supreme Court keeps seeing blatantly unlawful action by the Trump administration, and then ending injunctions and allowing it to go forward anyways while the case works its way through the process. It looks like the Supreme Court is making up doctrines in order to enable lawlessness. The Supreme Court did not act like this toward Biden.
“Reuters identified 75 federal-judge rulings finding Trump’s government infringed on First-Amendment rights including freedoms of speech, religion, and the press.
The unprecedented pushback on constitutional grounds has included repeated findings that the administration chilled or squelched the speech of citizens and groups opposing the Republican’s agenda.”
Five of nine Supreme Court members, and five of six Republican Supreme Court members, were executive branch attorneys dedicated to finding ways to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress. As justices, they act with a bias against Congress and in favor of presidential power…at least as long as that president is doing Conservative things.
Presidential power breaks down when the president is not faithfully enacting the laws of Congress, which he is required to do by the Constitution!, and when the president acts corruptly, aiming to enrich himself and his friends and family rather than do what is best for the country.
Trump uses his power as president to change US policy specifically to punish businesses owned or run by people who didn’t support him politically and in favor of those who do support him or are related to him.
Parties can now coordinate with candidates by using money in ways that they were previously banned from doing.
Attempts to prevent corruption with campaign finance laws has failed. We may need to rethink it. Money has found a way to affect politics even with campaign finance laws. If anything, the restrictions have made the super wealthy more powerful!
Making campaign finance more complicated with more regulation makes it harder for the smaller players to legally take part. The super wealthy have the means to figure out ways around regulation.
Republican Supreme Court justices use the shadow docket to stop policies they don’t like, and to allow policies they do like. They are more partisan ideological actors than judges focused on the law.
The conservatives on the Supreme Court advanced the shadow docket as a prominent way to make impactful decisions while fighting with the Obama administration.They wanted to stop major Obama actions so that a final ruling wouldn’t come after the actions have already had a major impact. Yet, during the Trump administration, the shadow docket has often been used to allow Trump to go ahead with actions. The conservatives of the Supreme Court appear to be using the shadow docket to implement their political ideology, not execute sound and considered legal decisions.
“Trump appointees who defy the president’s will are showing the courage of their convictions, applying the law as they understand it rather than reflexively deferring to the politician who gave them their jobs. But Trump, who takes it for granted that justices vote the way they do for political reasons, neither understands nor appreciates judicial independence.”