The US Supreme Court has ruled that former President Donald Trump may stand for election in every state across the country and that the penalty for insurrection against the US state is a matter for politicians in Congress, not the courts. Those politicians had already decided in 2021 by majorities in both House of Representatives and the US Senate that Trump was guilty of insurrection on January 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, causing the death and injury of several people. But the Biden administration failed to bring such a charge against Trump, and dragged its feet on other charges of election interference as well.
They effectively appeased Trumpism and the far right and are paying the price, as will the American people. And given that the United States remains the world’s pivotal state, so will the rest of the world.
In ruling thus, the Supreme Court went well beyond the immediacies of the Colorado court decision to bar Trump from the ballot in that state. The national court did not merely strike down the Colorado decision, it kicked the issue to the Congress, made it their job to decide the outcome, making it an overtly political decision they must know will never emerge from the current Congress of far right do nothings.
Trump now has a free pass, a virtual ‘get out of jail free’ card. The appetite for democracy, constitutional norms, and checks and balances among US elites is dying. It only just made it through on January 6, 2021.
Will it scrape through in January 2025?
A majority corrupt right wing court, with liberal accomplices
The US Supreme Court that just ruled has three justices appointed by Trump (Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh), two appointed by George W. Bush in the wake of the contested election of 2000 (Alito, Roberts), and the controversial Clarence Thomas whose wife (Ginni Thomas) played a key role in Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election. The standing of the Supreme Court has fallen through the floor due to well documented levels of corruption. Supreme Court justices are subject to no independently-policed ethical code of conduct, and cannot easily be removed from their position.
Previously, when Trump had asked the SC to rule on whether as president he was exempt from all laws, the SC decided it was a matter for the courts but sent the case to an appeals court. When the latter ruled against Trump in the starkest terms, the SC decided to take the case but not until the end of April, causing further delay in a key year. This delay virtually guarantees there will be no trials as such for months, as the SC’s ruling may not be available until the summer. Trump may get what he’s wanted all along: to drag out proceedings until after the election which, should he win, he would undoubtedly dismiss as the workings of the ‘deep state’ against a man of the people.
The SC has, therefore, presented Trump and the GOP immunity from laws and constitutional norms. Those Trump-inspired insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 are free to run for future office – and a large number of them have been sitting in the House and Senate since then in any case.
The Republican party – a full-fledged far right party – is now above the law.
After ‘Super Tuesday’, and the suspension by Nikki Haley of her campaign, Trump is guaranteed to win the Republican party nomination for the presidential election in November. More, he leads in several national opinion polls against his Democratic incumbent, President Joe Biden.
We are in the position that, should Trump emerge victorious in November, the leader of the so-called free world faces the prospect of governing from prison, were the justice system to take its normal course. But there is nothing normal about our times.
Biden administration on the ropes
Joseph Biden reportedly decided to come out of retirement and run against Trump in 2020 after pro-Trump neo-Nazis and white supremacists rioted in Charlottesville in 2017, killing a counter-protestor. Biden wanted to fight for the ‘soul’ of America, be its saviour in time of national need. Instead, he may well be the lead actor in a tragedy – the saviour who paves the way for Trump II, a newly-emboldened and revived leader swearing vengeance on his opponents and a dictatorship to boot. Close the borders, deport millions of immigrants, burn down regulation of oil and gas, free the corporations.
Racist divide-and-rule coupled with complete freedom for corporations, whose executives continue to back Trump and the far right GOP.
Biden has coupled his disastrous appeasement of Trump and the GOP with an equally disastrous foreign policy. He now faces a political backlash related to his administration’s military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel’s horrific war on Gaza. Biden is alienating, according to reliable polls, two key constituencies that may render him a one-term president: Arab and Muslim Americans, and younger voters.
Though a tiny percentage of the US electorate, Muslim Americans could be the margin in key states that swings the election for Trump, even if they stay home. This is especially the case in states such as Michigan but also Georgia and Pennsylvania. Arab and Muslim American voters overwhelmingly supported Biden against the Islamophobic Trump in 2020.
Younger voters, a far larger section of the Democratic party’s voter base, are also vexed by Biden’s Israel-Gaza policies and opposition to a ceasefire.
Americans’ choice: Anger vs fear, not democracy vs dictatorship
So what does all this boil down to in this critical election year? What are the options for voters? In the end, it would appear that Americans must decide if their anger and frustrations with the Biden administration outweigh their fear of a Trump second term.
I suspect that the Biden administration is (if increasingly anxiously) satisfied that Trump is their opponent for the White House. Indeed, that was always the plan. Fear of Trump may ultimately, in the privacy of the voting booth, drive voters into Democrats’ arms.
How fitting might that be: Trump who used fear so skilfully in 2016 is the unwitting author of his own downfall.
But Biden’s strategy of appeasement may well backfire.
Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City, University of London, a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a columnist at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, and author of several books including Foundations of the American Century. He is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and powers of the US Foreign Policy Establishment.
