Robert Kagan:  We have a radical democracy. Will Trump voters destroy it?

For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.

How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establish a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.

Americans are going down this route today because too many no longer care enough whether the system the Founders created survives and are ceding the ground to those, led by Trump, who actively seek to overthrow what so many of them call “the regime.” This “regime” they are referring to is the unique political system established by the Founders based on the principles of universal equality and natural rights. That, plain and simple, is what this election is about. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin allegedly said of the government created by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This is the year we may choose not to keep it.

If the American system of government fails this year, it will not be because the institutions established by the Founders failed. It will not be because of new technologies or flaws in the Constitution. No system of government can protect against a determined tyrant. Only the people can. This year we will learn if they will. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/24/trump-tyranny-christian-nationalist-democracy/

Jamelle Bouie: This Whole King Trump Thing Is Getting Awfully Literal

Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.

More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) — but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former president’s reckoning with the criminal legal system of the United States.

In delaying the trial, the Supreme Court may well have denied the public its right to know whether a former president, now vying to be the next president, is guilty of trying to subvert the sacred process of presidential succession: the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another that is the essence of representative democracy. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.

Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/trump-immunity-supreme-court.html

Adam Serwer: The Republicans Who Want American Carnage

The protesters at Columbia and other college campuses around the United States are voicing opposition to U.S. support for Israel’s war against Hamas, which began in retaliation for a Hamas raid that killed some 1,200 Israelis last October. Since then, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, about 2 million displaced, and many driven to the brink of starvation. No sympathy for Hamas or anti-Semitism is necessary to believe, as I do, that Israel’s conduct here has been horrifically disproportionate; the U.S. government itself has acknowledged substantial evidence of human-rights violations by Israeli forces as well as by Hamas. There have been documented instances of anti-Semitic rhetoric and harassment surrounding the protests; a rabbi associated with Columbia University urged Jewish students to stay away, and the university’s president, Nemat Shafik, recommended that students not living on campus attend classes remotely for the time being. In the same way that the Israeli government’s conduct does not justify anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitic acts of some individuals associated with the protests do not justify brutalizing the protesters. As of this morning, the National Guard had not been called in, but hundreds of students participating in demonstrations across the country have been arrested.

If the campus authorities need to act to protect the safety of any of their students, including from threats, discrimination, and harassment, then they must. But the university is facing pressure from pro-Israel donors and elected officials to shut down the protests, less because they are dangerous than because these powerful figures find the protesters and their demands offensive.

Yet the kinds of mass violence and unrest that would justify deploying the National Guard are currently absent, and the use of state force against the protesters is likely to escalate tensions rather than quell them.

The New York Times reported that after Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, asked the NYPD to clear the protesters’ tent city located on a campus quad, the “decision to bring in the police also unleashed a wave of activism across a growing number of college campuses.” As for Columbia, NYPD Chief John Chell told the Columbia Spectator that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.” The arrests did not end the protest.

Cotton and Hawley are demanding that Biden use force against the protesters not just because they consistently advocate for state violence against those who support causes they oppose as a matter of principle, but also because any escalation in chaos would redound to their political benefit. They don’t want to solve any problems; they want to make them worse so that the public will warm to “solutions” that will continue to make them worse. They don’t want order, or safety, or peace. What they want is carnage. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/columbia-national-guard-tom-cotton/678163/

Molly Jong-Fast: Defendant Trump Is Not Helping Candidate Trump

The former president came off looking sad, old, and tired during his criminal trial—and it’s only just getting started.

Week one of Donald Trump’s hush money trial could have been mundane. It entailed what the legal world refers to as voir dire, during which the judge makes evidentiary judgments to determine which jurors can rule impartially on the case. Yet the first four days of the New York criminal proceedings, which continued with opening statements Monday, painted a rather surprising portrait of a man who could no longer outrun the wheels of justice. They pierced through Trump’s armor in ways both profound and absurd, shattering the public’s perception of a man who may have seemed legally invincible. I knew that this case, compared to those of the past, would prove harder for Teflon Don to repel. But even still, I didn’t think the coating would wear off quite this quickly.

Trump’s political impenetrability has always been rooted in his ability to puff himself up—much like a blowfish, covered in spikes that only the most loyal sycophants can avoid. He is notoriously allergic to apologizing, never owns up to his own mistakes, and often doubles down on the thing he’s done wrong. The one and only time Trump did deliver a proper mea culpa was shortly after the release of the Access Hollywood tape in 2016—but even then, he quickly pivoted to attacking Hillary and Bill Clinton. “I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people,” the former president said. “Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed, and intimidated his victims.”

It was an “apology” that we’d later come to understand as an example of classic Trump whataboutism. But such rhetorical games are not given any airtime in criminal court. And while the former president might not be treated like your standard defendant, there are certain rules and regulations that he simply can’t bend to his liking: In court, Trump is not allowed to drink Diet Coke; or play with his phone; or eat fast food; or control the thermostat (despite his lawyer’s plea to have it turned up “just one degree”). With Trump facing this harsh new habitat, it appears the only thing he can manage to do is fall asleep—which he did not once but multiple times last week, as Maggie Haberman wrote in The New York Times. “Nodding off is something that happens from time to time to various people in court proceedings, including jurors, but it conveys, for Mr. Trump, the kind of public vulnerability he has rigorously tried to avoid,” she reported. “The mundanity of the courtroom has all but swallowed Mr. Trump, who for decades has sought to project an image of bigness, one he rode from a reality-television studio set to the White House.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/defendant-trump-is-not-helping-candidate-trump

Adam Serwer: The Trumpification of the Supreme Court

Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it.

The conservative justices have, over the years, seen harbingers of tyranny in union organizing, environmental regulations, civil-rights laws, and universal-health-care plans. When confronted with a legal theory that establishes actual tyranny, they were simply intrigued. As long as Donald Trump is the standard-bearer for the Republicans, every institution they control will contort itself in his image in an effort to protect him.

This case—even more than the Colorado ballot-eligibility case—unites the right-wing justices’ political and ideological interests with Trump’s own. One way or another, they will have to choose between Trumpism and democracy. They’ve given the public little reason to believe that they will choose any differently than the majority of their colleagues in the Republican Party.
 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/trump-presidential-inmunity-supreme-court/678193/

Charles Sykes: The Choice Republicans Face

Like Alexander Hamilton, we live in an age of fierce loyalties that make crossing party lines extraordinarily difficult. If anything, it is even harder now, especially for Republicans living with social pressures, media echo chambers, and a cult-like party culture compassed round, in the words of John Milton. Many public figures in the GOP have shown that they cannot break free of partisanship even in the face of rank criminality.

For example: Former Attorney General Bill Barr and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu acknowledge Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and his culpability in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But both men have said they would vote for Trump. Sununu has said that he would do so even if Trump is convicted of multiple felonies, suggesting that his crimes would be less important than his political differences with the Democrats. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he would not endorse Trump, but he has also ruled out voting for Joe Biden.

Even former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who declared that Trump “is wholly unfit to be president of the United States in every way you think,” cannot bring himself to support the Democratic incumbent. We’re still waiting for Nikki Haley to say how she will vote in November.

So far, only Liz Cheney seems to be taking a position that rhymes with Hamilton’s choice two centuries ago. “There are some conservatives who are trying to make this claim that somehow Biden is a bigger risk than Trump,” she said. “My view is: I disagree with a lot of Joe Biden’s policies. We can survive bad policies. We cannot survive torching the Constitution.” Alexander Hamilton would, I think, approve. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/04/the-choice-republicans-face/678221/
 

Bess Levin: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Argues Presidents Must Be Allowed to Commit Federal Crimes or Democracy as We Know It Will Be Over

On Thursday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for and against Donald Trump’s claims of absolute presidential immunity. The good news is that the Court appeared unlikely to just completely rule in his favor, agree that he should not face prosecution for anything he did in office, and kill the federal election case against him. The bad news is that, unsurprisingly, they’re not just going to tell him to fuck off, as some justices suggested that presidents should receive some immunity—a move that would potentially limit Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s case and delay a trial until after the November election. The insane news? That conservative justice Samuel Alito literally tried to argue that we should allow presidents to commit crimes without fear of prosecution in order to save democracy.

That's right: Speaking to Michael Dreeben, and attorney representing the special counsel, Alito began by stating: “I’m sure you would agree with me that a stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully, if that candidate is the incumbent?” Then, having started with a premise that all reasonable people would agree with, he went in with this:

If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?

If your brain hurts from trying to follow that, what Alito is saying here is that presidents need to know that they’ll never be prosecuted for any crimes they might commit in office, or democracy will collapse, because future officeholders might, say, try to overturn a free and fair election in order to stay in power and avoid criminal charges. And if that sounds completely absurd to you, you’re not alone. Responding to Alito’s hypothetical, Dreeben said, “I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito.”

Alito’s desire to literally let presidents do anything they want could, of course, lead to terrible outcomes, which liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor unfortunately had to point out.

Anyway, it’s obviously good news that the Court is unlikely to endorse Trump (and, seemingly, Alito’s) claim that presidents should enjoy absolute immunity for anything they do in office, but it’s really, really quite bad that the likely outcome of the proceedings will still be a huge win for the ex-president. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/supreme-court-justice-samuel-alito-argues-presidents-must-be-allowed-to-commit-federal-crimes-or-democracy-as-we-know-it-will-be-over

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American, April 30, 2024

This morning, Time magazine published a cover story by Eric Cortellessa about what Trump is planning for a second term. Based on two interviews with Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors, the story lays out Trump’s conviction that he was “too nice” in his first term and that he would not make such a mistake again.

Cortellessa writes that Trump intends to establish “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”

He plans to use the military to round up, put in camps, and deport more than 11 million people. He is willing to permit Republican-dominated states to monitor pregnancies and prosecute people who violate abortion bans. He will shape the laws by refusing to release funds appropriated by Congress (as he did in 2019 to try to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Hunter Biden). He would like to bring the Department of Justice under his own control, pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and ending the U.S. system of an independent judiciary. In a second Trump presidency, the U.S. might not come to the aid of a European or Asian ally that Trump thinks isn’t paying enough for its own defense. Trump would, Cortelessa wrote, “gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

To that list, former political director of the AFL-CIO Michael Podhorzer added on social media that if Trump wins, “he could replace [Supreme Court justices Clarence] Thomas, [Samuel] Alito, and 40+ federal judges over 75 with young zealots.”

“I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?” Cortellessa wrote. No, Trump said. “I think a lot of people like it.”

Time included the full transcripts and a piece fact-checking Trump’s assertions. The transcripts reflect the former president’s scattershot language that makes little logical sense but conveys impressions by repeating key phrases and advancing a narrative of grievance. The fact-checking reveals that narrative is based largely on fantasy. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-30-2024

LA Times Editorial: Sending armed troops to quash peaceful campus protests is a dangerous idea

On Wednesday during a visit to Columbia University, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) warned that if the wave of protests against Israel’s U.S.-funded war in Gaza on college campuses, including UCLA and USC, is not contained quickly, “there is an appropriate time for the National Guard. We have to bring order to these campuses.”

How troubling that the man who is the third in line to the presidency seems to think that it’s OK to silence largely peaceful student protests by sending in armed troops.

It’s a terrible idea, with a deadly history in the U.S. It was the Ohio National Guard that killed four unarmed students and wounded nine others at a rally against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in 1970. Since then, there have been uncountable examples of armed responses to nonviolent activities ending with innocent people getting hurt or killed.

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have called on President Biden to deploy the National Guard to quash pro-Palestinian protests. Republican state lawmakers in New York want Gov. Kathy Hochul to deploy the National Guard to Columbia University. And more than two dozen Republican senators signed a letter urging the Biden administration to “restore order to campuses” by using federal law enforcement, prosecution and deportation against “the outbreak of anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs.”

Never mind that they are unfairly assigning racist motives to thousands of people protesting the killing of more than 34,000 Palestinian people, most of them women and children. It’s clear that these Republican politicians are less concerned with the wave of antiwar protests than using them for their own political ends. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-04-26/la-campus-protests-gaza-speaker-johnson-national-guard