SCOTUS once again says NO!
It’s particularly amusing when the Supreme Court of the United States uses a Trump lie against him. On Friday they reaffirmed their earlier decision that Trump can’t kidnap human beings off the street and send them to a brutal foreign prison.
In a 7-2 decision SCOTUS wrote “The government said it’s ‘unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador. This means that detainees’ interests are particularly weighty.”
In other words, since Trump said (and later unsurprisingly contradicted himself) that he is powerless to free Kilmer Abrego Garcia from prison in El Salvador, it renders any future similar actions against anyone else especially dangerous. What if a mistake is made and they accidentally deported an innocent person? Wouldn’t that be a double tragedy? Wouldn’t that be a grave injustice, one never to be risked again? Of course it would be.
More to the point, since the Trump “administration” confessed that the deportation of Garcia was a mistake (and later contradicted that as well), future such mistakes would be unacceptable and cannot be risked. And of course, such an action violates due process of law, which is the overarching larger point.
So once again Trump has been told NO!, a word Trump doesn’t like to hear. His two brainless SCOTUS shills, Alito and Thomas, were the two who said yes, but it wasn’t enough.
This is what happens in MAGAland when the MAGAs in question are not elected officials. I think SCOTUS is fairly representative of how the rest of Trump’s cultists in Congress would behave if they were appointed for life instead of having to run for reelection every two or six years.
In other words, Trump blew it. Because he is a poor negotiator, he doesn’t (ironically) understand the nuances involved in, ahem, the Art of the Deal. By defying them Trump is undermining his credibility with SCOTUS, what for him could have been an essential ally.
Had Trump slowly worked his way through the court system and obtained small concessions along the way, Trump might eventually achieve what he’s trying to claim by force. But his open defiance of SCOTUS rulings threatens their power base, and they are not about to let that go. Alito and Thomas don’t mind being Trump stooges, but the remaining seven most emphatically do.
Of course, that may be a loss Trump is too impatient and immature to avoid. Trump’s overall message is clear. He wants to send a chilling warning that anyone can be deported or put in a concentration camp at will.
Trump also wants to jail dissenters. Because former FBI director James Comey posted (and later deleted) a message written in rocks and seashells on the beach that said, “8647,” Trump’s AG Pam Bondi wants him prosecuted.
So it remains to be seen who ultimately will win this battle. I don’t know if I’m being naive by suggesting that democracy hangs in the balance, not because it might, but because I’m not entirely sure that democracy in the United States isn’t already a thing of the past.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.