Trump Guts and Dismantles

And Justice Jackson speaks out

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is making news by expressing concern about our democracy, and she wants people to know about it. She is the newest member of the court, and is getting rebuked for speaking in public about the court. “She’s breaking the fourth wall, speaking beyond the court,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University. “She is alarmed at what the court is doing and is sounding that in a different register, one that is less concerned with the appearance of collegiality and more concerned with how the court appears to the public.”

Jackson said the majority imperiled the rule of law, creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a stinging rebuke after Jackson wrote a second dissenting opinion to the case about birthright citizenship: “Justice Jackson, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.”

This makes me wonder if what Jackson is doing could be very important. I am by nature a rule-follower, and always thought the justices of the Supreme Court were to follow the court rules and not speak personally; this historically that has been the case from my observations. They are supposed to be legal “brains” who interpret the law, not individuals with opinions. I am excited that she is speaking out.

We need this kind of rule breaking right now.

“I’m not afraid to use my voice,” she said about when she writes a dissent for a case. When asked by the moderator, what keeps you up at night, Jackson replied:

“I would say the state of our democracy. I am really very interested in getting people focussed and invested in what is happening in our country and in our government.”

In a supposed effort to cut the budget, Trump is gutting emergency relief capabilities at a time when global warming is increasing the events in the US. OUr government is no long agile in preparing for or responding to weather emergencies. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and he has dramatically scaled-down the Federal Emergency Management Agency which would shift the costs of disaster response and recovery to the states. The administration has already revoked $3.6 billion in grants from FEMA. Kristi Noem, homeland security director said:

FEMA, for one, “has been slow to respond at the federal level. It’s even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said last week at a meeting convened by the president to recommend changes to the agency. “That is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency. We owe it to all the American people to deliver the most efficient and the most effective disaster response.”

After the Texas floods last week, thousands of calls for help have gone unanswered.

Why dismantle something so crucial before you have anything in place? This is the chaos the Trump administration is creating. Break it, then maybe figure out a way to fix it. Or maybe not, people can fend for themselves. Last year, the US had 27 disaseters that cost $1 billion each.

Another area that Trump is messing with that has huge long-term consequences is education. Trump has frozen billions of dollars in federal funds to universities. According to the NY Times Katrin Bennehold, Trump’s “ideological war against universities could have much broader effects on the technological supremacy America has enjoyed for decades and on science itself.” Foreign countries are “wooing” university scholars and researchers, offering them “scientific refuge” or, as one French minister put it, “a light in the darkness.” If the US becomes less of a powerful force in scientific research, it will be a setback to the world, Bennehold reports.

Terror and the presence of troops in Los Angeles are showing no signs of slowing, according to the Guardian. Is Trump deliberately setting up a situation of conflict? Is this something we will see repeatedly leading up to the mid-terms? Ever since my friend Ann Telnaes said to me after I showed hope for the midterms, “if we have mid-term elections,” I worry.

I hope you have a good Sunday. Stay strong and stay involved. I have hope!

Thanks for being here, see you tomorrow.