The Supreme Court says the president is above the law
In a 6 to 3 ruling on Monday, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court granted the President of the United States broad authority to violate the law in a wide range of circumstances. The president is entitled to “absolute immunity” when carrying out “core constitutional powers,” says the Court, and has “presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.” The president can still be prosecuted for “unofficial” acts, but critically, official acts cannot be used as evidence in those cases.
In the near term, this ruling likely brings a sledgehammer down on the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result. The Court did not lay out in much detail which aspects of Trump’s case can still be prosecuted. That will be left up to District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been overseeing the case. But the Court explicitly ruled that Trump has absolute immunity with regard to his interactions with members of the Justice Department who told him that his claims about a stolen election were bogus. It also grants him presumed immunity for his attempts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to illegally block the certification of the election. While the Court did not totally strike down any and all prosecutions of Trump, they have initiated another delay that will almost certainly mean that no verdict will be reached before Election Day.
Earlier today, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said he would not oppose a motion by Trump to have his conviction for falsifying business documents thrown out. The hearing on the President's sentencing has been delayed until at least September 18.
But the implications of this ruling are much more drastic. In effect, the Supreme Court has given all presidents carte blanche to break the law with impunity so long as it can be construed as acting in an official capacity. In a furious dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor laid out some situations where the president could easily use official acts to commit abuses of power:
When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Art by David Alvarado, from Issue 5 of Current Affairs Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2017
Given some of the things Trump has threatened to do in a second term, we should frankly be scared to death. He has promised to prosecute his political opponents, deport people he deems “socialists and communists,” use the Insurrection Act to crush political dissent, and send troops to round up millions of undocumented immigrants and put them into internment camps. But with complete legal immunity for anything done in an “official” capacity, there is so much more he could get away with.
“Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every quality, good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is formed on such an abject levelling system?—It has no fixed character. To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and accidents.”
STORY THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
Corporations that celebrated Pride Month are not your friends
Pride Month is always a good time. But one of its most undeniably annoying components is the way that the corporations that spend the rest of the year screwing us use it each year to effortlessly gain good press. Unlike increasing your employees’ pay or ethically sourcing your products, a few platitudes about “inclusion” cost nothing.
Most people recognize the cynicism of “corporate Pride.” It’s been a meme for years. At this point, it's obvious how twisted it is that a weapons contractor like Lockheed Martin sponsors Pride events. And it’s hard to take too much joy from the fact that Walmart sells Pride-themed merch when it pays the employees who stock that merch so little that they qualify for welfare and fires them when they try to unionize.
But while most of us understand that these companies were still bad despite their “allyship,” it was easy to view “corporate Pride” as something goofy and ineffective but altogether harmless. But a new investigation by Popular Information found that at least 25 corporations that publicly wave the rainbow flag have also donated large sums of money to help elect rabidly anti-gay and anti-trans politicians.
The consulting firm Deloitte, which has an entire Twitter page dedicated to its LGBTQ employees and received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s “Corporate Equality Index,” donated nearly $700,000 to “vehemently anti-LGBTQ federal and state politicians” since November 2022 through its corporate PACs. These include donations to:
51 different Republican members of Congress with uniformly anti-LGBTQ voting records
13 state legislators in Tennessee and Louisiana that sponsored anti-LGBTQ legislation.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who has signed several discriminatory bills, including one banning drag performances.
The Republican Governors Association, which is filled with members who have signed similarly discriminatory bills.
Deloitte is just one of more than two dozen other companies that claim to support LGBTQ rights while financially supporting politicians who want to take them away. Another of the worst offenders is AT&T, which claims to be “an original corporate ally” of the LGBTQ community and urges others to join them in the “fight to make LGBTQ rights equal nationwide.” It turns out that AT&T donated nearly $1.3 million to politicians who are fighting against those rights. Among them is Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, who has signed a slew of discriminatory bills, including Alabama’s own “Don’t Say Gay” law and another banning trans people from using their preferred bathrooms on state campuses.
Among other companies who put their money the opposite of where their mouths are: Comcast, Walmart, United Health, CVS, and Pfizer. Here is the complete list:
If you’re looking for a way to celebrate next Pride Month, boycotting these companies may be a good start.(Graphic: Popular Information)
And after last year, when conservatives launched boycotts against Target and Bud Light for selling LGBTQ-friendly merchandise, many companies displayed how fickle their commitments to the cause were by reeling back their Pride support this year. We’ve always known that these companies were not truly allies in the fight for gay rights. But these latest revelations show that many are willing to actively support the enemies of equality if they can get a tax break or anti-union legislation out of the deal.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, "What's going on with our politicians?")
❧ After Biden’s train-wreck of a debate performance, it’s abundantly clear that he is not the guy to head the Democratic ticket entering this pivotal election. According to the latest CBS News/YouGov poll, just 27 percent of voters said Biden “has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president” and nearly half of Democratic voters said he should step aside. Democratic donors are demanding their money back. And some of Biden’s strongest soldiers in the media—the editorial board of the New York Times,“Morning Joe”Scarborough, James Carville, Biden’s former White House photographer, and even the loyal Jons over at Pod Save America—have all called upon the president to throw in the towel in favor of someone who, preferably, has a brain that functions past 4 p.m. (This is not an exaggeration.)
How has Team Biden responded to these pleas? In short, by screaming, take a hike, Jack! Deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty sent out an email blasting the “bedwetting brigade calling for Joe Biden to ‘drop out.’” (Notably, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign who coined the “bedwetting” metaphor in 2015, and we all know how that went.) The email even obliquely called out the poor Pod Save America boys—a group of former Obama staffers who, until now, have been nothing but reverent toward Biden—referring to them as “some self-important Podcasters.”
Over the weekend, Biden’s family gathered at Camp David for a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz (Now seems like a good time for that), and reportedly tried to cast the blame for Joe’s debate fiasco on his staffers. Even the first lady Jill Biden’s photoshoot in Vogue contained an obvious jab at Biden’s critics. On the cover is the quote, “We will decide our future,” as if to imply that the public is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong when it has opinions about whether her husband gets to be president.
We’ve talked about the contempt displayed by the Democratic establishment towards its voters before, but this is in another galaxy. While we wouldn’t expect them to be openly self-flagellating, the degree of arrogance and dismissivenesson display is rather stunning. The people urging Biden to drop out right now are clearly not doing so in bad faith. They are terrified, with good reason, that the candidate they’ve backed is going to hand the election to Trump. If the Biden campaign truly believes, as they keep saying, that losing to Trump will bring about the end of democracy, then they need to start acting like it.
In other news…
After the Supreme Court gave Trump near-total immunity from criminal prosecution, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has vowed to file articles of impeachment against justices, saying, “The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control.” (Common Dreams)
Last week, the Supreme Court ended the “Chevron doctrine.” The ruling is extremely consequential, as the precedent had been cited to uphold more than 18,000 federal regulations. Judd Legum writes for Popular Information: “[Ending Chevron] is fundamentally a power grab. Instead of deferring to the expertise of agencies to implement statutes in the face of inevitable ambiguities, the Supreme Court has empowered itself, and other federal courts, to do the job.”
Last week, the Supreme Court also ruled that they had the final say over environmental regulations instead of the Environmental Protection Agency. In that very same ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch mistakenly referred to nitrogen oxides (toxic chemicals that the EPA was attempting to regulate) with “nitrous oxide” (the laughing gas you are given at the dentist). But who needs experts, right? (The New Republic)
As a heat wave bears down on California and Oregon, the Biden administration proposed a set of regulations—the first of their kind—that would require employers to monitor their workers and provide rest areas and water for them when the temperature exceeds 80F. The rule could apply to as many as 35 million laborers around the country. (New York Times)
AROUND THE STATES
❧ California Democrats have introduced some truly repulsive ballot measures on crime for this November. In response to a wave of media panic about shoplifting—something that isn’t actually a crisis, by the way—Governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow lawmakers want to make retail theft a felony if someone does it repeatedly within three years, creating a “three-strike” policy. The proposal has only been slightly altered from one advanced by a coalition of cops and retail companies like Walmart and Target back in April. In other states, this kind of “three-strike” policy has led to draconian punishments for minor property crimes, like the case of the Louisiana man who was sentenced to life in prison for stealing hedge clippers in 2020. If voters pass Newsom’s version, wildly disproportionate sentences for petty crimes are sure to start popping up in California too.
Meanwhile, the California Democrats alsowant to make it a felony to possess fentanyl, something that would only result in more punitive sentences and expand the prison population, and which ignores expert advice that criminalization is not an effective way to end overdoses. If they get their way, and these measures appear on the ballot, it’ll all be up to the voters this fall. Let’s hope they have better sense than their elected officials.
With liberals like these, who needs conservatives?
In the fall of 2023, Stephen Prager took a deep dive into the governorship of Gavin Newsom and determined that he is far less progressive than he is often portrayed. Now that he’s being considered as a replacement for Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, we must remain clear-eyed about his record.
Leonard Peltier,an indigenous activist who has been in jail since 1979 for the murder of two FBI agents, has been denied parole. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and his case has been marred by gross prosecutorial misconduct and violations of due process. But Peltier, who is now 79, likely won’t have another chance at freedom until 2026. (The Guardian)
After a new legal settlement with the state of Massachusetts, Uber and Lyft will have to pay their drivers at least $32.50 an hour there. However, the drivers will still be considered “independent contractors,” so the gain in pay is offset by the lack of many rights and benefits pertaining to actual employees. (The Verge)
Nevada has become the latest state with a ballot measure on abortion rights this November, after activists collected more than 127,000 signatures. (Nevada Current)
Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore has announced plans for an ambitious light-rail system called the “Red Line” in Baltimore. (Baltimore Banner)
Forty-four states lack universal air conditioning in their prisons. Meanwhile, nearly 13,000 prisoners have died during summer months over the last two decades. Although not all of those deaths are due to heatwaves, the number of extreme heat-related deaths is severely undercounted. (Capital B)
California may soon be patrolled by militarized police Cybertrucks! (Popular Science)
Art by J. Longo from Issue 48 of Current Affairs Magazine, May/June 2024
In Wired, Kelly Clancy explores the SimCity game franchise and how it quietly shaped urban designers into libertarians.
THIS WEEK IN SHAMELESSNESS
Just weeks after single-handedly killing a bill that would have introduced congestion pricing—a move that left a massive funding hole in New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority budget— Governor Kathy Hochul was seen at a Pride celebration wearing this shirt:
As Armand Domalewski put it on Twitter, “This is like if OJ wore a shirt of his wife.”
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ France held the first round of its snap elections this weekend and the far-right National Rally Party, led by Marine Le Pen, came in first place with 33 percent of the vote. Now, the only thing stopping this party—one founded by literal Nazi collaborators and admirers—from ruling France is a tenuous alliance between the rump center and the insurgent left.
As a reminder, the only reason these elections occurred at all is because of a gambit by President Emmanuel Macron, who called them in an effort to improve his ailing political fortunes after NR’s big wins in the European Parliament last month. That risky play has now clearly backfired. Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition commanded a dismal 20 percent of the vote and landed in third place overall. In second, with 28 percent, was Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front, which, despite being hastily thrown together to contest these elections, has created a compelling “legislative contract” to increase wages, address housing costs, and roll back Macron’s increase of the retirement age.
The election will now go to a runoff on Sunday, where only the candidates who won 12.5 percent or more of the vote in a given constituency move to the next round. Here is where the true test will come: The left has extended an offer to Macron to pool support by having its candidates drop out in constituencies where they finished behind the centrist. Thus far, Macron has not made a similar offer. Though, as Derek Davison points out for Foreign Exchanges, “Technically if Macron wanted to prevent [National Rally] from winning a parliamentary majority, he wouldn’t have dissolved parliament in the first place.”
Even in the best case scenario, the far-right will likely end up with the most seats and National Rally’s 28-year-old president Jordan Bardella is likely to become France’s next prime minister. A left-center alliance could be enough to stop National Rally from gaining an outright majority. But the fact that France is even close to the verge of being ruled by a party with candidates who wear Luftwaffe caps and celebrate the Holocaust is a horrifying travesty. And as John Mullen writes in CounterFire:
Even without a parliamentary majority, they would have power to appoint or dismiss hundreds of top civil servants in every field, control of the police, education and cultural sectors and so on. Their capacity to persecute Muslims, trade unionists, LGBT people and others would be terrifying, and green initiatives and safeguards would be thrown on the rubbish heap.
Likely France’s next prime minister, Jordan Bardella. Would you believe that a guy who looks like this is accused of having secretly run a racist Twitter account? (Photo: Frederick Florin, Agence France-Presse, via Le Monde)
❧ India is getting a new, stricter criminal code. As the Economic Timesof Mumbai reports, the new legislative framework is being sold as a step forward for the country, replacing “colonial-era laws [that] had been hanging around like an albatross around the neck of the Indian legal fraternity even 75 years after Independence.”
The new code has three main parts: the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which defines a wide range of crimes and their punishments, replacing the Indian Penal Code of 1860; the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), which deals with how evidence can be collected and used in court, replacing the Indian Evidence Act of 1872; and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which covers procedures for arrests and prosecutions, replacing the Code of Criminal Procedure from 1882.
Despite the veneer of progress, these laws are actually harsher than their colonial predecessors in many ways. As R. Sivaraman writes for The Hindu, the BNSS expands the span of time Indian police can hold suspects in custody while an investigation is ongoing, something they could previously do for a maximum of 15 days after arrest, but can now pursue for as many as 90 days depending on the offense. Sivaraman warns that the provision gives ample time for police to “take undue advantage over the arrested persons and indulge in extra-judicial measures” like extracting a confession by torture. Meanwhile, the BNS contains disturbingly vague prohibitions against “acts endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India,” which Amnesty International warns could be used to suppress political dissent as “sedition.” Another of the new laws gives police, rather than judges, the power to decide whether a criminal case should proceed to trial, something Indian Supreme Courtlawyers Nipun Saxena and Sidharth Luta have condemned in recent interviews.
There’s also a question mark over the democratic legitimacy of the new laws. As the Economic Times notes, quoting Union Law Secretary P.K. Malholtra, the laws were passed “in a hurry and at a time when 25% of the members of Lok Sabha were suspended and had no opportunity to participate in the debate.” Now, members of the opposition parties are raising objections—even as Home Minister Amit Shah urges them not to “do politics” over the new laws. It’s a worrying sign that, even though Modi’s government lost its outright majority in the recent election, India’s battle with authoritarianism is far from over.
We don’t mean to shame anyone for their tastes and proclivities, here at Current Affairs. If you want to lust after Nigel Farage, by all means do. But please, don’t feel the need to tell us about it. We’re trying to eat lunch here. (Headline: The Spectator)
In other news…
According to the most recent data from the International Labor Organization (ILO), 23.5 percent of young people worldwide are “NEET”—Not in Education, Employment, or Training—as a result of the “dismal labor prospects” available to them. But remember, global capitalism is going just great! (MoneyWise)
Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, claims that his longtime rival Luis Arce staged the recent coup attempt against himself in order to gain public sympathy. (Associated Press)
The United Kingdom is attempting to obstruct the International Criminal Court case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Middle East Eye)
28,000 Samsung workers in South Korea—roughly 22 percent of the company’s total workforce—plan to stage a three-day strike if their demands for higher pay and vacation days aren’t met. (Yonhap News Agency)
In Iran, moderate reform candidate Masoud Pezeshkian leads in the presidential elections—but the race is very close, and headed for a runoff. (Al Jazeera)
The Chinese Communist Party will soon reach 100 million members, making it the second-largest political party in the world, behind only the Indian BJP. But despite a modest increase in female members, its Politburo is currently all-male, the first time in 20 years that’s been the case. (South China Morning Post)
The Australian Labor Party has suspended Fatima Payman, the Senator for Western Australia, from its caucus. Her offense? Crossing the Senate floor to vote with the Green Party in favor of Palestinian statehood, something the vast majority of the world supports. (Sydney Morning Herald)
In a depressing step backward, the Greek government has introduced a six-day work week. (Truthout)
CAT FACT OF THE WEEK
Alley cats actually have MUCH better morals than either Biden or Trump!
As you might remember, Joe Biden fired off one of his trademark Old Guy Zingers in the recent presidential debate, saying that Donald Trump has “the morals of an alley cat.” He’s apparently very fond of this weird insult that sounds like it came from the 1920s, because he said it again at a campaign event in North Carolina last week. But as Anthony Grant writes for the New York Sun, this is an unfair and demeaning comparison—for the humble alley cat, that is:
Scratches from fights they started? Matted fur and fleas? It all comes with the territory when, like many a political animal, you’ve got no choice but to defend it. We know that President Biden likes dogs — particularly, it seems, ones that bite. That’s fine, America loves dogs. But we also love our cats, inclusive of those from the alley. Cats are furry and fine. Lay off the kitties, Mr. President, the worst of them is more morally irreproachable than your politicians.
Indeed, an alley cat has never bankrolled a genocide in the Middle East, nor spent its time devising new ways to torment immigrants. The worst they’ve ever done is strew garbage around, wake people up by howling in the night, and kill a lot of birds. But compared to the misdeeds of humans (who also happen to kill a lot of birds, in addition to all the war and genocide and stuff), that’s nothing. If an alley cat were on the ballot this November, we might all be a lot better off.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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