There are no checks and balances any more

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am an ordinary citizen, raised in the Chicagoland metropolitan area now living in Appalachia. I am not a DC pundit or constitutional lawyer who regularly appears on cable news to tout my expertise. I am just a voter and a patriot and I write this post as a marker of this moment in our history. Donald Trump will become president on 1/20/25 and he promises authoritarian rule and expensive lawsuits against anyone who opposes any of his ideas. 

The president-elect has been found liable by a jury for sexual abuse of a woman in a department store dressing room - he owes her millions in penalties for defaming her - he claimed he wouldn't ever assault a woman as ugly as she was but in a videotaped deposition, he thought a picture of E. Jean Carroll was a picture of his ex-wife, Marla Maples. He buried his first wife hastily on his golf course - her grave is overgrown and ignored by the groundskeepers, apparently. (WTAF?!) Trump is legally prevented from being involved in a charity in New York due to fraud conviction involving his own charity. He paid out millions to Trump University students he defrauded. He made money by refusing to pay contractors. He was, until SCOTUS and Judge Aileen Cannon got involved, charged with stealing classified documents and inciting violence on 1/6/21. Those trials ended abruptly without the legal issues being considered - Cannon, a jurist placed on the bench by Trump, claimed the special prosecutor was unconstitutional and dismissed the case against the man who placed her in her position of power. (There are rumors that she is on his list for SCOTUS, God help us everyone.) Republicans are fine with special counsels when they investigate Bill Clinton and Hunter Biden, but GOD FORBID that a president be held liable for stealing classified documents and storing them in his garish loo at Mar A Lago. 

SCOTUS' decision to take up Trump's immunity case and slow walk it for months meant that Trump will never be held accountable for his actions to incite the horrific violence we saw on 1/6/21, when he invited a mob to DC to "take back the government." And his base tried very hard to accomplish his wish. 

And in November, this man, a felon and a conman, won both the popular vote and the electoral college and will be sworn in as president next month. 

I am old enough to remember when Republicans and evangelicals got their knickers in a massive twist because Bill Clinton did not have the moral character to be president. And now character matters not at all because Republicans and white evangelicals LOVE Trump in ways that are nothing I've ever witnessed before for a politician. 

It is truly a terrifying moment to witness. And there are no guardrails. Trump's party - one of the two major political parties in America - has turned away from the rule of law and our constitution - preferring instead to seed the nation with a crop of lies, amplified by a rightwing media ecosystem that makes huge profits amplifying GOP lies. The harvest for disinformation is large and lucrative in America. 

I am horrified at the thought of what is to come. Trump promises to sue media outlets that print unflattering stories about him; his team threatens to primary every GOP senator who opposes his grotesquely incompetent and corrupt nominees for his cabinet. Sexual assault, alcoholism and a penchant for absurd conspiracy theories - like we need to abolish the polio vaccine to create better health conditions for Americans – seem to be required skills for anyone nominated to his cabinet. 

The batshit craziness of all of this is stunning in its ability to create a sense of horror in ordinary people like myself. 

I was an American Studies major in college and the curriculum emphasized American exceptionalism and checks and balances and separation of powers and in my cursory examinations of our founding documents, it always seemed the Founding Fathers, flawed though they were, were brilliant in devising a new system of government that allowed for checks and balances to limit the power of the executive branch.

Well we don't have that any more. We have an autocrat who is about to assume the presidency and there are no guardrails in existence any more to provide checks and balances to his power. The Republican Party's forty year war to own the judiciary has been successful. Six right-wing ideologues preside over the nation's highest court. Their rulings over the years have damaged voting rights; taken away employees' right to use class-action suits in wage-theft cases; enabled dark money to corrupt our politics, etc. In other words, the "originalists" have significantly tilted the balance of power further away from ordinary people. 

[Will slavery return? We will see. In North Carolina, NCGOP put up a candidate for governor who felt slavery was fine. In the words of NCGOP candidate Mark Robinson, allegedly posted on a porn site: “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few.” In Florida, school curriculum was revised to praise slavery for giving enslaved people special skills they could capitalize on - without mentioning that their owners were the ones who reaped the benefits of skilled labor in the people they owned. I feel like I am in the Upside Down world seen in "Stranger Things," where things SEEM somewhat familiar but in reality, they're just upside down and topsy-turvy and incomprehensibly corrupt and without sense at all.]

This summer, the John Roberts Court gave the president massive immunity to commit crimes as president under the guise of "official business." A president's conversations with anyone are off-limits to any kind of investigation - he can order the murder of an opponent with impunity because of the court's anti-constitutional reading of the constitution's system of checks and balances. Gorsuch promised a "ruling for the ages" and SCOTUS delivered that in spades. The only kind of president this ruling will impact is a corrupt president. Those acting within the boundaries of the constitution and the rule of law will not need the unconstitutional protections SCOTUS has granted to the executive branch. 

The rightwing ideologues - placed on SCOTUS by the Federalist Society, an extremist far-right organization – specifically for their political views, not their legal expertise - claim hat "(ii) Criminally prosecuting a President for official conduct undoubtedly poses a far greater threat of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch than simply seeking evidence in his possession." As Roberts wrote in his Trump v. United States ruling: 

"Taking into account these competing considerations, the Court concludes that the separation of powers principles explicated in the Court’s precedent necessitate at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility. Such an immunity is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive 4 TRUMP v. UNITED STATES Syllabus Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution."

I have no idea where such a notion comes from - no president up until now has needed "presumptive immunity" to make decisions and enact them. Reagan was involved in a plot to illegally sell arms for hostages; GW Bush started a war in Iraq without congressional approval and no evidence to support such a war. Republican presidents don't seem to mind the rule of law much anyway, even without the promise of SCOTUS-derived "presumptive immunity." 

Trump enters office as a man with unchecked powers. Fasten your seatbelts. It's not going to be pretty.