Choking on smoke and other toxic GOP fumes

This past week more than 128 million Americans in 18 states were under air quality alerts due to the heavy smoke from Canadian forest fires. Those fires are spread over nine and half million acres. They raised public health risks. They damaged the economy as businesses and airports closed. But it is not just humans that suffered. The forests are habitat for millions of creatures. And, they are a major source of carbon capture for the whole planet. 

Fires like these, their increased frequency, size and duration are the result of climate change. 

Photo credit: Amr Alfiky / Reuters

Back in the early 2000’s, the United States Congress was making progress on environmental legislation that would have protected our planet. Democrats and Republicans were working together.  But as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told me in a WCPT-AM interview, all that stopped almost overnight when the US Supreme Court gutted campaign finance laws and unleashed the era of unlimited dark money into politics. Suddenly vast sums of cash pulled Republicans into the oil and gas lobbying business, and any hope of then meaningfully addressing climate change was lost.

The Supreme Court went on to make other horrible decisions. Gutting voting rights, closing the door to partisan gerrymandering cases, eroding the government’s regulatory powers, weakening the Clean Water Act, ripping from women the right to make their own medical decisions. The court’s rulings were not just bad. Increasingly, they appeared to be partisan. 

The US Supreme Court is less trusted than the Chicago City Council

But here’s the thing. Americans may be slow to figure out what’s going on, but eventually we get it, and we act. Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” 

Now, having exhausted the possibility that the current Supreme Court is actually an independent body capable of legitimate jurisprudence, Americans have made up their minds. According to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 62-percent of Americans say they have not very much or no confidence in the Supreme Court. Can you imagine? The Supreme Court is less trusted than the Chicago City Council!

Speaking of Illinois, our guy, Mr. Lincoln, said that “the people are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts; not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert it.”

Turns out, it’s a good idea to treat a political court like it’s a political court

Maybe that’s why Chief Justice John Roberts this week sided with the people and told Alabama its racially drawn political maps were illegal. I read the decision. You could almost feel John Roberts’ sweat in his careful prose. You could certainly feel his fear in the section where he lashed out at his fellow Justice, Clarence Thomas, whose contempt for the guardrails of stare decisis the Chief now sees a direct threat to the court itself. It is not lost on Roberts that Congress may act to expand the court, to force it to be bound by ethics laws, and maybe even to revisit Marbury v Madison.  Roberts does not want to be remembered as the Chief Justice whose outrageous court required Congressional correction.

The decision in Allen v Milligan means that districts in several states in the south will be redrawn. Overnight the Cook Political Report revised its predictions in ways that now favor Dems to regain control of the house.

There can be absolutely no doubt on this point: the anger of ordinary Americans over the cumulative outrages of this court, more than any reverence for the rule of law, led to this decision. The GOP’s current House majority exists only because Justice Roberts and his court refused to consider this case almost a year before the last election. Their action forced citizens in Alabama and elsewhere to vote in illegal districts. 

What changed? Not the law. Not the facts. Only this: Americans have run out of patience with this imperial, partisan, and dangerous court. 

The MAGA House is next, but they are slower learners

It is a lesson House Republicans are about to learn. Twice Donald Trump was impeached. Twice they put party over country and attempted undermine the institutions of democracy in order to protect the autocrat in the White House. 

Now Mr. Trump stands indicted by a grand jury of violations of the espionage act. Republicans can take the off ramp and pretend they had no idea how bad Mr. Trump really was. They can be shocked. They can be sad. And the rest of us will welcome them back to reality.

But it looks like they will miss this third opportunity to do the right thing. They will once again put party of country. They will try to pull everyone and everything down, down, down to even the playing field for a man already so low. 

Mike Pence says that faith in the rule of law requires that American government not prosecute Donald Trump. Speaker McCarthy calls the indictment a weaponization of power. 

They would do better to consult with Justice Roberts, whose tactical backtracking is at least an acknowledgment that America has made up its mind. 

Our democracy will emerge from this great test stronger, more united, and more diverse. And someday, even in Florida, children will read books about these dark days and be in awe of the ordinary Americans who stood up to the cruel and lawless autocrats who so nearly destroyed everything