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Sen. Dan Sullivan often frames federal issues around protecting “the rule of law.” At no time since Reconstruction has the rule of law been under such attack as right now.
A convicted felon who has also been found civilly liable for rape is the Republican nominee for president.
That in itself would be appalling, but if the legislative and judicial branches of government were capable of performing their constitutional duties, then the rule of law would be safe. Tragically, the Supreme Court has demonstrated two horrifying realities in recent decisions:
1. It is unbound by either the letter of the law or decades of precedent, and will instead write law based on the extremist beliefs of Republican appointees.
2. The court will act as a legal shield for Donald Trump, providing him sweeping immunity for nearly any crime.
Prior to Donald Trump’s term as president, the Supreme Court’s membership was somewhat evenly balanced with appointees from Democratic and Republican presidents. More importantly, at least a slim majority of the court believed in following both the letter of the law and legal precedent. Trump’s appointees — radicals who wish to impose a bizarre combination of religion and unlimited corporate power — upended more than two centuries of law with sweeping, radical decisions reinterpreting laws based on their personal religious views or the financial agendas of billionaires and corporations.
Make no mistake, the Trump court’s rulings eliminate individual Americans’ constitutional rights, and invent unprecedented and unlimited power for CEOs and elite politicians.
One of the justices who dissented from the court’s recent ruling to exempt the president from all laws correctly noted: “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
The court claims to rule based on “originalism,” but of course this is a lie: America’s original purpose was to protect individual rights from the abuses of a king. In giving the president and corporations unfettered power, Trump’s court has declared war on democracy and on Constitutional rights, and is attempting to kill the American project of individual rights.
Trump is a single person, and I doubt we will see again the extraordinary combination of lies and criminality that he embodies. The threat of Trump’s court stretches far beyond the lifespan of this single aging con artist, threatening our rights, our economy and America itself.
Many of us, including myself, have served and put our own lives on the line to defend freedom. We did not enlist to protect the rights of a king or a president who imagines himself to be above the law. We did not serve to advance the interest of corporations who would usurp and trash the rights of actual Americans. We enlisted to defend freedom as articulated in our Constitution — what Sen. Sullivan has described as the rule of law.
The rule of law is under attack today. It’s under attack by a convicted felon and the radicals he has already had seated on America’s highest court.
Kevin McGee is a Vietnam veteran, past president of the Anchorage NAACP Branch 1000, the current Equity Officer and on the Board of Directors of the ACLU Alaska. He lives in East Anchorage.
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