Donald Trump just overrode the Supreme Court. He did so in Trumpian fashion by mischaracterizing their 9-0 opinion, in the matter of the return of the Maryland man wrongfully deported to an El Salvadoran prison due to “administrative error.” Trump claimed that the court sided with him (?) and that the court’s decision meant only that “the U.S. government would have to provide a plane if Bukele chose to return” Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States.
That is not what the court ruled. That is what Trump decided ex post facto that he wanted the ruling to be. So now we have a true dictatorship going on in this country, on April 14, 2025 — potentially. Depending upon what happens next. So what is the Chief Justice going to do about this? Talk about waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is the most important shoe drop in American history. We know what Trump’s state of mind is. He’s out of control. What is John Roberts’ state of mind? Here are three possibilities, feel free to chime in if you know more.
Delusion. If Roberts is driven primarily by delusion, it means that he thinks we are in ordinary time. He believes that the Constitution is eternal, that the relationship between the branches of government cannot evolve but little, and that at the end of the day Donald Trump is no different than Barack Obama, or Ronald Reagan, or Dwight Eisenhower.
A delusional Roberts assumes that Trump could never attempt to stay in office past the end of this term. Or deploy the military against civilians. Or send American citizens to the Salvadoran gulag.
A delusional Roberts believes that the attorney general and secretary of defense are loyal to the Constitution above all else and that lawyers for the government would never dare to mislead the court or openly defy a SCOTUS order.
A delusional Roberts judges that Trump’s challenges to executive power can be taken at the abstract, theoretical level and can be met with clever wordplay and subtle opinions.
Scared. On the other hand, perhaps Roberts is now driven primarily by fear.
Maybe he sees everything quite clearly and understands full well what time it is. And maybe this reality has shaken him to his core and left him without his nerve.
A scared Roberts would have no plan for resisting Trump. He would move blindly from crisis to crisis, each time hoping that the monster will be sated and decline to return for more.
A scared Roberts would view the liberal order as already lost and so would resign himself to hoping that the loss is only temporary and that, eventually, something like the old status quo might incorporate itself in the new reality. And so he would remain in turtle guard, supporting the rule of law with his most fervent thoughts and prayers—but little else.
Clever. But perhaps Roberts is more clever than people suppose.
Perhaps he sees reality for what it is and has made a series of cold-blooded calculations about the state of play. He understands what Trump is playing at and wishes that the forces of liberalism had a stronger hand—but realizes that they (he includes himself in this “they”) do not.
Further, he has taken the measure of his colleagues on the Court and understands just what sort of men and women they are. He trusts Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. He believes that Coney Barrett will ultimately be stalwart. He thinks that Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are essentially partisans, but holds out some hope that, in the final moment, he might be able to reach them.
He knows exactly what sort of men Thomas and Alito are.
Looking at these chess pieces, Roberts has been trying to find a way forward that does not rely on a divine intervention. If he is forced to fight a series of tactical retreats, then he is willing to do so, trading ground for time. Along the way he hopes that he can use the path of his retreat to bring Kavanaugh and Gorsuch around and convince them of the seriousness of the moment. Perhaps he can use the legal structure of his retreats to isolate Thomas and Alito.
Because he is clever, he understands that Trump cannot be bargained with or bought off. He also understands that this struggle will ultimately be decided by the People. Either they will tolerate authoritarianism or they will not.
And so he hopes to preserve the position of the Court in the public eye so that, when the forces of liberalism have some ground on which to stand, he can maximize the Court’s leverage with the People on behalf of the liberal order.
The problem with John Roberts, as with a great many politicians right now, (Chuck Schumer being another example) is that they are not the right people for this moment in history. If we had a truly great jurist leading the court, somebody like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thurgood Marshall, or John Marshall, considered the best Chief Justice ever to preside over the Supreme Court, we could rest a lot easier. Holmes and Thurgood Marshall were not Chief Justices but they were great judges and original thinkers and contributed massively to the law. John Roberts is more like a transactional custodian — at best — meaning that he can babysit the court from point A to point B. At worst, he has allowed this court to degenerate into a tool to serve Donald Trump. And that’s why Roberts, and we, find ourselves in this position today.
So it’s hard to know what Justice Roberts will do. But he needs to act soon and decisively. We have reached the point of no return here. And yes, I know, we have reached any number of points of no return with Trump. I know. Here’s a list of what some of the points of no return were proclaimed to be:
- When he incited a mob to violently attack the Capitol? And got away with it?
- Was it Inauguration Day when he pardoned the J6 rioters after a ceremony that featured a monkey gallery stocked with the nation’s billionaire oligarchs?
- Was it when ABC caved to Trump’s bogus lawsuit?
- When SCOTUS immunized him?
- When Congress failed to convict him?
- Or maybe it was way before that. When he came down the Golden escalator and the GOP began its long march of humiliation?
I suppose that we could argue that those points of no return are now academic. But this one today is the biggy: if the courts no longer matter and Trump can trump the Supreme Court whenever he feels like it, on a whim, then the democratic republic is gone. And we now live in an autocracy.
And all this rests on John Roberts’ insubstantial shoulders. He did his part to create this monster and now he either throws in his lot with Trump 100% and we have no judicial branch in this country, or he stands up for the rule of law and the Supreme Court, which is his job. That is how black and white this issue is now, is this Trumpmerica? Or do we still have a Constitution and a government with three branches and checks and balances? We’ve already seen Congress abdicate its responsiblity. Maybe now it will be the courts as well. And then there will be only Mad King Donald, fulfilling James Madison’s prophecy.
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist 47.
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Friends, if you can spare a few bucks to help us fight the madness, it would be appreciated. Who knows? Maybe septuagenarian bloggers will get kidnapped off the streets next. I rule nothing out these days. Not at the rate this roller coaster is plunging. Ursula
The loss of the rule of law is also the death knell for America as the trusted safe refuge of the world’s money.
If they can’t be bothered to save lives after an ‘administrative error’. and, worse, propose instituting ‘the error’ so they can deport/kill anyone, what’s to stop them doing the same with mere money?
If lives aren’t important why would money be?
And if the safety of your money, invested in, say, US Treasury Bonds can’t be assured, why would you put your money in the USA?
You wouldn’t and they won’t, that’s why so many overseas investors are pulling out of the USA, it’s why Bond yields are up, (in an effort to get someone, anyone, to invest in them.), at the same time as the dollar and Dow drop.
This has never happened before, when the USA was trusted, if the dollar or Dow dropped, the yield, (the interest paid on them), also dropped as demand rose for a safe haven. The interest paid on Bonds dropped the worse the Dow or dollar dropped in value. Bonds with a low return were worth buying if the return was better than the losses risked elsewhere in the alternatives. Nothing was less risky and more safe than US Bonds, even if the return was less at least you knew your money was safe, you couldn’t lose it.
That trust is gone, noone can be sure that the value of bonds can remain assured, because the people running the system can’t be trusted. Because they can’t be trusted they’ve undermined and even removed the trust in the safety of US Treasury bonds, which undermines the trust and value of the US economy. Now the USA is just like all those other ‘shithole countries’ , with untrustworthy and thus worthless economies.
How much lower can the US dollar drop in value compared to other countries? A lot.
Now might be a good time to invest in wheelbarrow futures. People are going to have to use something to carry all those dollars when they’ve dropped in value enough, just like in pre-Nazi Germany, Zimbabwe, or mid century Argentina.