On Monday, the last judge’s shoe falls on Donald Trump’s efforts to block the presidential election in 2020 when the US Supreme Court rejected his third and final Supreme Court challenge. As America moves to a Biden presidency, the court ruling illustrates why the judiciary is our country’s strongest bulwark against authoritarianism. Indeed, during the greatest threat to our democracy in modern history, the American court system was our last line of defense, proving, as Andrew Jackson once wrote: ‘All the rights protected to citizens under the Constitution are worthless. not … guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous judiciary. ”
When Donald Trump left office as a one-time president in January, he nevertheless made a huge impact on the American court system. In four years, Trump has appointed 226 judges to the federal bank, including 54 in the appellate court. The latter number is just one judge less than what Barack Obama appointed to that court during his entire eight years as president. Of the country’s 13 federal appeals courts, Trump has managed to turn three from liberal to conservative majorities. His three Supreme Court justices have meanwhile been the most appointed in a single term since Richard Nixon. Trump’s mark on the US judiciary will indeed be long-lasting and deep.
‘Trump’s Judges’ let him down. Now he’s really deep.
That’s why it was so important that Trump’s false, unsubstantiated allegation that his election was ‘stolen’ – the ‘Big Lie’ as many called it, was unequivocally, even contemptuously, rejected by the courts. In doing so, the US judiciary saved our democracy. It may sound hyperbolic, but in an era that was so politically unstable that members of the American right wing wanted to kidnap a governor, broke into the American Capitol and believed that the Democratic Party was led by satanic worshiping cannibals, the judiciary proves that our only institution that is immune to the virulent hyperpartism that infects this country. It has managed to maintain the legitimacy of both political parties, but only barely.
But here’s the really interesting thing: the peaceful transfer of power is assured, despite Trump’s influence on the judiciary. Klink mal? Imagine if the courts, like Congress and the media, were divided along partisan lines – with democratic appointments ruling against Trump’s election challenges and Republican appointments. Imagine that no Trump appointments heard the case. The right wing, already on fire with conspiracy theories, would have viewed the whole process as a sham. Worse, a partisan rift would have instilled an even deeper feeling in all Americans that the country possesses no objective arbitrator – that the truth was just what our respective political leaders regard it.
Mass uprising, at least, or a Trump coup, at worst, would have been the result. The riot at Capitol on January 6 was the match ready to catch fire.
We were spared these results only because of the dual nature of court decisions and because Trump-appointed judges heard important cases: in more than 60 lawsuits after the election, there were a total of 86 judges – including 38 Republican appointments and eight elected by Trump himself. – reject the election challenges. Even the Supreme Court, with one-third of the judges appointed by Trump, ruled against him. Not one Trump appointment in any court has voted to support his fraud claims.
This clear rejection had powerful consequences. This forced several of Trump’s high-ranking supporters to finally concede that the election was not in fact stolen. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for weeks refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory. He first called himself a ‘presidential elect’ after state voters officially voted, following the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a Trump challenge. Even William Barr, Trump’s psychopathic head of the Department of Justice, finally admitted in early December, after massively rejecting election challenges, that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Reversals like these further delegitimized the “Stop the Steal” movement and poured cold water on pro-Trump groups to get ready for its assault claims. (According to the FBI, right-wing militias have planned armed protests in all 50 capitals. They never materialized.)
While many Trump supporters still believe he won the election – according to a January poll, more than 70 percent of Republicans believed Trump received more votes than Biden – when confronted with the fact that even Trump-appointed judges rejected the fraud claims, their charges of a Democratic conspiracy became much harder to sell. Two unconvincing statements end up in my news feed: one was that the courts were trapped in the deep state; the other was that the judges were ‘paid’. This is ridiculous, of course. Trump-appointed judges could have been scarce or thorough in their reprimands.
“A incumbent president who did not prevail in his re-election bid has asked federal court to set aside the general vote,” wrote Brett H. Ludwig, a Trump-appointed judge in Wisconsin. Ludwig calls Trump’s election challenge ‘bizarre’ and adds: ‘This court gave the plaintiff a chance to state his case, and he lost the earnings.’ Steven Grimberg, a Georgia judge appointed by Trump in Georgia, wrote: “Stopping the certification at literally the eleventh hour will cause confusion and possible denial, in my opinion, with no factual or legal basis.”
Statements like these have helped preserve our democracy, because virtually every other American institution that has been able to scrutinize Trump’s prospective seizure of power has been either co – opted by Trump or to the point of near impotence. The media was propagated by the Democrats as ‘fake news’. The intelligence agencies are led by “Obama owners” and have stockpiles of Trump-hating members of the “Deep State.” Most Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have publicly supported the false fraud claims. It was even unclear how the military would respond to a power attack, as Trump filled key leadership positions with accomplices. (Congress hearings on the January 6 riots revealed that it took the Pentagon more than three hours to approve Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund’s request for assistance from the DC National Guard. the top military, including the brother of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, pushed back against the request, Sund testified.
On February 13, the U.S. Senate had the opportunity to fulfill its duty as a check on misconduct by the executive. The House of Representatives had sent the second indictment against President Trump to the upper chamber days before. This historic second indictment accuses Trump of ‘inciting rebellion’ for the riot in Capitol. House leaders have argued that Trump “encouraged and cultivated” violence to stop a free and fair presidential election. Rep. Liz Cheney calls Trump’s actions “the greatest betrayal of the presidential oath in the history of the United States.” The Senate voted 57-43 to convict, but it was 10 votes that were ashamed of the two-thirds super-majority needed to do so.
The vote was by no means a release – seven Republicans and two independents joined the majority, making it the largest two-party system in U.S. history to condemn – but a conviction would have been an unmistakable deterrent to future presidents who would use such autocratic tactics. On top of that, the acquittal encouraged him, like the one after Trump’s first indictment. On February 17, after weeks of silence, the former president was back in the media and made the same foolish allegations that more than 60 court cases had already been shot down. In an interview with Newsmax, Trump repeated his misleading refrain: “It was a stolen, solid, knee-jerk election.”
But fortunately the president was not the deciding factor in this case. The courts were. And unlike the voters, the judges are united in their opinions. As Judge Stephanos Bibas of the Third Circuit wrote in response to a challenge from the president who appointed him: ‘The charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then evidence. We have not here. ”
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