Not a Constitutional crisis but a Supreme Court crisis

I finished the book The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan. Yeah, I read it in about a week. In 1940 at the start of the London Blitz the Bethnal Green Library was hit by a bomb and damaged. The library moved its undamaged books and shelves to the nearby Bethnal Green Underground station and reopened. This was a logical move because the Underground stations were already being used as bomb shelters whenever the civil defense sirens went off. This part of the story is true. All the rest is well researched fiction. The main characters of story are three women. Juliet was engaged to Victor, but he was reported as an army deserter at Dunkirk. Since her parents weren’t all that loving she escapes to London and gets the job as deputy librarian at the Bethnal Green Library. The head librarian isn’t too thrilled to hire a woman (this is 1940) but a lot of men are a part of the war effort. She has ideas for programs at the library. He isn’t interested. The student intern says do them anyway and the boss will pretend he doesn’t see. At the rooming house she meets Sebastian, nephew to the landlady. He was injured and sent home from the front and now works for the war effort. He’s not looking for a life partner (yeah, we know where this is going). That student intern is Katie, about to go to college and able to do that because so many men are at war. Her boyfriend Christopher is at the front and she gets word that he went missing and presumed dead. Shortly after that she realizes she is pregnant (glad she works at a library and can look these things up as sex ed was rather Victorian). At the time an unmarried woman brings shame to herself and her parents. And her parents are desperate to maintain their respectability. The third main character is Sofie. She is Jewish, originally from Berlin, and got to London on a visa to fill a job as a domestic. Her boss is quite demanding. She is trying to find out what happened to her sister, who wasn’t able to flee with her. Some residents of Bethnal Green don’t like her because she has a German accent. Through her story I learned that the Isle of Man was used as a detention center during the war and life there was rather pleasant. As in several of the Underground stations during the Blitz the people who slept in the Bethnal Green station developed into a community. In this station the library went a long way to make that happen. This community becomes important to the story. Another big part of this story is romance. Juliet is torn between Victor and Sebastian. Katie still longs after Christopher. And Sofie has Mac, a fellow Jew whose contacts started the search for Sofie’s sister. Though this story has a wartime setting (spoiler alert) every thread has a happy ending. At times I felt a bit annoyed with all that cheery news. Even so, I enjoyed the book. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia about the Supreme Court’s somewhat vague decisions on immigration cases and the nasty guy who seems determined to ignore those decisions. The discussion focused on two rulings by the Supreme. The first said that deportees must have due process, but the case went through the wrong forum, so start over. Frost called this ruling “frustrating.” The second case is the one involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The lower court was specific in their language saying the government must get him out of that El Salvador prison and return him to the US. The Supreme Court decision said the same thing but in a weaker manner. And the government is taking advantage of that weak language to do nothing. Kelly said to Frost:

It sounds as though they are issuing rulings that are so carefully worded that they tiptoe up to wishy-washy. ... Listening to you, it sounds like you see this more as a Supreme Court crisis right now than a constitutional crisis.

A constitutional crisis would be the nasty guy openly declaring he would not follow court rulings. But he doesn’t need to say that because the rulings are so weak. He doesn’t need to ignore court rulings when he can get away with this misbehavior. Frost said:

President Trump said, if the Supreme Court orders him returned, I will do it. And then the Supreme Court issues a weak order that I think suggests it's now afraid of the constitutional crisis that would come if the Trump administration were to ignore its rulings.

Frost is suggesting the Supremes water down their ruling to avoid open defiance and a constitutional crisis. Which to me sounds like a democracy crisis – that and their ruling giving the nasty guy immunity for official acts. Every year the US State Department produces a report on the human rights in countries around the world. These reports are carefully read by both authoritarians and activists. Graham Smith of NPR explained a State Department memo demanding significant changes to this year’s report. Congress uses these human rights reports to determine how to spend taxpayer money overseas in security assistance, weapons, or other aid. When Marco Rubio was a Florida senator he praised the report for shining light on failures to respect citizen rights. Now as Secretary of State he is responsible for the reports. The law says the report must document internationally recognized human rights. But the memo instructs editors to delete references to more than 20 rights, to bring the report in line with executive orders.

Gone are violations against the right to peacefully assemble, the right to a fair public trial, to privacy. The directive eliminates everything that's not separately listed in the language of the law.

The report on El Salvador is no longer cited for terrible prison conditions. Sections in reports for other countries no longer mention government corruption. Gone are sections on the sexual exploitation of children and women, the denial of rights of political minorities, and violence and discrimination of LGBTQ people, religions or ethnic groups, Indigenous people, and internally displaced people. I’m sure there are many more things to be deleted. From Paul O'Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA:

What you've just read me out is a list of civil and political rights that are essential. So what this is is a signal that the United States is no longer going to uphold those rights that guarantee civic and political freedoms, the ability to speak, to express yourself, to gather, to protest, to organize. ... Any constraints or pretensions around protecting vulnerable populations writ large seems to be going away.

From Christopher LeMon, who served at State under President Biden:

You can't overstate the value in the real world of the annual State Department human rights reports being credible and impartial. You also can't overstate the damage it will do to that credibility if the Trump administration's edits are seen to diminish not just the scope of what are defined as human rights, but also if those edits are seen to play favorites.

O’Brien is worried that the deletions aren’t just about how the US views rights in other countries, they are also about how the administration views rights in the US. I’ll work through several browser tabs to clear them out before movie night and rehearsal nights and the corresponding days of collecting more stories in browser tabs. I’ve mentioned that many Republicans got a fierce public response when holding town hall meetings with constituents. They were so bad (from the view of the member of Congress) that Republican leadership suggested stop doing them. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa did one anyway. He was met with a lot of jeers, demands he do his job, and to actually act on the oath of office he took.

Grassley continued to act powerless, pointing to the fact that the “only tool” for Congress to discipline the president is impeachment. “And you missed that opportunity in his first administration. You had two opportunities for that. That was probably one of the only reasons we're having this situation now,” the attendee responded.

Alex Samuels of Kos reported that the Associated Press had been banned from White House press briefings because it refused to use the nasty guy’s name for the Gulf of Mexico. A US District Judge ordered the administration to let the AP back in. The AP remains locked out.

This isn’t just petty—it’s calculated. The strategy’s clear: Bully the press into compliance, and if that doesn’t work, slam the door shut. Outlets that hold the line—like the AP—get punished. Ones that cozy up to Trump, like The Washington Post, get a pat on the head and a few flattering social media posts.

The nasty guy has also ranted against CBS News and “60 Minutes” because of stories he didn’t like. He has also ranted against ABC News and NBC News because he claims they gave Harris preferential treatment during last year’s campaign. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that since the administration has sidelined legitimate media organizations from the White House press briefings, those briefings “have turned into a playground for pro-MAGA outlets.” They aren’t interested in providing a clear picture of the administration. Instead, they amplify the conservative falsehoods and bigotry. An article by Sharon Lerner of ProPublica posted on Kos reported the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants, coal mines, and companies that make petrochemicals, cement, glass, iron and steel, and other polluters from having to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The data guides policy decisions and is submitted to the international body that tallies global greenhouse gas pollution. The data allows for accountability, to record which region or factory is emitting how much gas. The “government can’t curb the country’s emissions without knowing where they are coming from.” It also makes climate policy more difficult and would be devastating for the world’s ability to limit climate change.

“The bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters, just letting them off the hook entirely,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Cleetus derided the choice to stop documenting emissions as ostrich-like. “Not tracking the data doesn’t make the climate crisis any less real,” she said. “This is just putting our heads in the sand.”

A couple weeks ago Kos of Kos again looked at how the nasty guy could get a third term, in spite of the 22nd Amendment saying “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.” I highlighted the key word to this possible scheme. One possible route would be to be elected Speaker of the House. The Constitution does not say this has to be a member of the House. Then the people actually elected to president and vice president resign, and the nasty guy steps back in. But how likely are two people, who just went through a grueling national campaign, willingly give up the chance to be president? Especially for him. Other routes are to be appointed President Pro Tempore of the Senate (and three people would have to step aside) or Secretary of State (four people...). There is another route, the one he tried in 2021.

But it does say a lot about Trump that rather than focus on the job at hand, he’s obsessing over a third term. He wants power for the sake of power itself, jealous of despots like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Of course, he’s going to indulge in these sorts of fantasies.