Donald Trump just lost big time in court
It’s difficult to understate how consequential the President of the United States is to shaping the judiciary. With Republican presidents dominating most of the last four decades, we’re seeing the influence pretty clearly, as a number of crucial issues are on the chopping block. Of course, their conservative base tends to understand this and vote in large numbers for the GOP candidate for president, regardless of what their feelings might be for either the candidate or the GOP in general. They know it’s their only chance to turn the clock back on workers’ rights or reproductive rights and plan accordingly.
Of course, in the case of Donald Trump, however, things go a bit further. Among his few accomplishments as president was appointing a number of federal judges even more conservative than the ones appointed by President Reagan, but he expected many of these people to be like his cabinet – unflinchingly loyal to him in every way. Being an aspiring autocrat, he saw himself as the final word on everything.
Unfortunately for Trump, that’s not quite how it works as the Supreme Court rejected his suit to hide his tax returns and brought the issue back to the lower courts, where Judge Trevor McFadden struck down the case in a 45-page dissent where he acknowledged that Trump was on the wrong side of the law and gave Congress “great deference” on what they could ask for. While the media wants us to think that Donald Trump is magically getting away with it all, even after he resoundingly lost an election and just about every subsequent lawsuit, he can’t even prop himself up with his own people and it’s a matter of time before his tax returns are in the hands of Congress.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making