In a Truth Social post this week, TFG signaled to the public that reality has set in at Mar a Lago.  Not only is there now a special prosecutor hot on his trail, his announcement a few weeks ago that he’s running for president again went over like a fart in church.  These facts emphasize that not only is his ability to take back the White House is in serious jeopardy, his chances of even being nominated are greatly diminished.  Only his rabid supporters are still behind him, and Republicans in Congress are desperately trying to help him get elected to extract pardons for themselves for their participation in the insurrection before and after January 6th.  All of this is as obvious as pink ballet slippers on a bull rider.

At this point, TFG’s only chance of avoiding criminal prosecution for any number of crimes is to actually be the occupant of the Oval Office.  Since the chance of him winning in 2024 are very slim to nada, reality has set in; this is why he’s gone full Daniel Ortega, calling for “…the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” repeating his lies about non-existent massive fraud in 2020.  Knowing that he can’t win in 2024, he’s doubled down on negating the lawful outcome of Biden’s win and calling for  “installing” himself as president by suspending the Constitution and all federal election law.  Left with little else, he’s Fat Elvis, playing his hits from 2020 for his decrepit fan base trying to stay relevant and keeping the spotlight on himself.  He’s even taken an assist from Elon Musk who is leading the field for first prize in Worst Investment of 2022 after his purchase, and subsequent trashing, of Twitter.  Musk has threatened the release of the “Twitter Files” which reveal supposed “free speech suppression” by former management by refusing to allow conspiracy theories about “Hunter’s laptop” during the 2020 election on the platform.  Hard to tell what Musk is trying to do besides setting a world record for destroying $44 billion of wealth in the shortest amount of time.

TFGland is in full frenzy about now with every resident frantically trying to stay out of jail.  Like all other radical movements, this one will soon collapse.  The sooner the better.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t have said it better.  Trump’s and McConnell’s packing of the SCOTUS has now successfully destroyed all hope of the judicial branch protecting our Constitution and the rights it enshrines for all Americans.  Yesterday, the court inexplicably allowed Texas’ game playing with legislation to, as Sotomayor accurately described it,

“…the Court’s dangerous departure from its precedents, which establish that federal courts can and should issue relief when a State enacts a law that chills the exercise of a constitutional right and aims to evade judicial review.” and “…the Court effectively invites other States to refine S.B. 8’s model for nullifying federal rights.”

The court left the law in effect, denying a Constitutionally protected personal right for all women in Texas to control what happens to their own bodies.  Gorsuch’s ruling was so badly constructed by his concocted rationalizations that states have now been provided a roadmap for nullifying any Constitutional right they don’t like.

With the court’s ruling, it’s time to now to test this rewriting of US law by turning the tables by legislating private enforcement against other constitutional rights.  How about a law against individual gun ownership?  Example: anyone caught carrying a firearm, whether licensed or not, can be sued by any individual with a minimum $10,000 award to the plaintiff.  How about a law that bans wearing of MAGA hats?  How about personal enforcement by lawsuits against those who discriminate against minorities like LGBTQ individuals, African Americans, and other racial minorities?  The list is endless where states can simply nullify any federally protected individual right by delegating enforcement of laws against those rights to individuals.  Vigilantism can now displace our entire constitutional judicial system and over 200 years of case law that protects it.

The US is inexorably sliding into a post-democracy era where governments are ineffective at protecting personal rights, allowing one class of Americans to force their belief system onto everyone else.  With compromise no longer possible in our political system, aided by the complete disassembly of our court system, the exclusive right to make policy will fall to the party in control.  Texas is the perfect example of this warping of our political system where the governor, aided by the courts and a single party controlled legislature, is now simply a dictator, nullifying local government’s efforts to protect its own citizens through his arbitrary orders while hiding in the governor’s mansion.  He’s now protected not only by non-existence of corruption laws, but by the SCOTUS itself.

Our only hope of blunting this nullification of individual rights is for states like California, New York, Delaware, and others to take advantage of this activist court’s new legislation from the bench by hitting the very people trying to take away our rights by taking away theirs.  How about a law that allows individuals to sue Fox News every time Tucker Carlson tells a lie?  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Let’s hit ’em where it hurts.

Millions of Americans have known for decades that our government was broken, but I don’t think any of us realized just how badly is was broken.  The Trump infestation of the WH has exposed the manifest weaknesses in our system of government which cynical career politicians have exploited for personal and ideological gain.  When the Framers established our Constitution and supporting laws, the assumption was that that those who governed would uphold the public trust; if an elected official betrayed that trust, they provided a provision for impeachment and removal from office.  They didn’t envision a time that the majority of representatives would be abjectly corrupt.  We’re there.

The most shocking feature of the Trump regime is the amount of damage one president can inflict with virtually zero accountability.  In three short years, Trump took over the Republican party, the Congress, the courts, and even the Justice Department.  He has pardoned criminals, unilaterally withdrawn from longstanding treaties, started trade wars, attacked countries, disbanded entire agencies that blinded us to massive threats like the Coronavirus pandemic, has undone decades of environmental, education, employment, and safety regulations, wrecked dozens of alliances, sidled up to murderous dictators, and ceased funding global efforts that support healthcare, security, and human rights.  He illegally extorted a foreign leader for to damage a political opponent.  He is actively trying to whip up a scandal in the Obama administration which is invented from whole cloth with zero basis in fact.  He personally profits from his presidency on a daily basis, and makes public policy to advantage himself and his family.

Worse, anyone who gets in his way is either fired, slandered, or both.  He’s now fired an FBI director, two Attorneys General, and five Inspectors General.  He continues attempts to illegally out the whistleblower in the Ukrainian extortion effort.  His current AG is violating the public trust and the law by covering up major crimes and participating in smearing Trump’s political opponents by initiating “investigations” of non-existent crime. As he does this, he willfully ignores the tsunami of actual crimes being committed by Trump and his cronies.

How did we get here?  In a word, corruption.  The US is no longer a functioning democracy and the majority of our elected representatives no longer actually represent Americans.  Over the last 4 decades the money has gotten so big for congressmen and senators that making money has taken over from representation.  To avoid responsibility, congress has steadily ceded authority to the president.  For example, Article 1 of the Constitution specifically authorizes the CONGRESS to determine international trade policy, but for years that authority has been delegated to the president under “expedited” rules.   Trump has run wild with that authority, starting and inflaming global trade wars while the Congress (especially the Senate) just sits there doing nothing.  The Constitution also assigns authority to declare wars on other nations, but through legislation has also delegated that to the president, leading to never ending war and deadly attacks on other countries without so much as a “Go to hell” to the Congress.  It goes on and on, from selling off federal land to private interests to unwinding decades of environmental protections to shutting down agencies and engaging in abject corruption which lines the president’s and his children’s pockets with zero oversight.  Add all that to a now hands-off anything political judiciary and we don’t even remotely resemble the federal structure envisioned by the Framers.

The Framers designed a system of checks and balances to prevent rule by one branch and corruption.  Over the years all three branches have altered that design and what we now have is a zombie version of the federal system.  Add a profoundly corrupt president with evil enablers and you get what we see today, a president unilaterally wrecking the US government, the economy, the healthcare system, the federal safety net, anti-corruption legislation, international treaties, global alliances, and even the rule of law.

The system is broken.  Even when we rid ourselves of the Trump infestation, massive damage will have been done chances are remote that anyone left in authority will have incentive to fix it.  Yeah, it ain’t pretty.

Yesterday, the Brookings Institution issued a position paper authored by Norman Eisen, Richard Painter, and Laurence Tribe called THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE: ITS TEXT, MEANING, AND APPLICATION TO DONALD J. TRUMP.  Here are the brief bios on the authors as published by Brookings:

“Norman L. Eisen, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011 and ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. He is the chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007. He is the vice chair of CREW. Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University.”

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