President Trump has had many humiliating weeks. But this one might just take the cake; and it’s not even over yet.
First, came reports that his niece has written a family exposé that promises to make Mommie Dearest look like a lullaby. The book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, by Mary L. Trump, is scheduled for release on July 28 – perfectly timed to spoil Trump’s Republican National Convention. Then came reports that his former national security adviser John Bolton has written a book chock full of old gossip. But his Attorney General William Barr not only made all of it seem relevant again, but turned the book into an instant blockbuster with ham-fisted attempts to block its publication.
(Both books reportedly provide receipts for what Trump shows us every day, namely that he’s an ignorant, backstabbing, craven, lying, self-centered shyster. I will have more to say on Monday. Hint: “Two Trump Tell-Alls: Boycott Bolton’s! But There’s Something About Mary’s…”)
Now comes “his” Supreme Court, giving Barack Obama cause to feel the thrill of victory while leaving Trump to wallow in this agony of defeat:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt President Donald Trump a major setback on his hardline immigration policies, blocking his bid to end a program that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants – often called ‘Dreamers’ – who entered the United States illegally as children.
The justices on a 5-4 vote upheld lower court rulings that found that Trump’s 2017 move to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, created in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, was unlawful.
(The New York Times, June 18, 2020)
I was so sure this would be the outcome, I mocked Trump’s efforts to prevent even more Dreamers from entering the United States in “DACA: Ain’t No Wall High Enough to Keep ‘Them’ from Getting to US,” September 16, 2017.
Incidentally, I didn’t even include among Trump’s week of setbacks continuing blowback from his bungling of the fight to combat Covid-19 and his craven reaction to the killing of George Floyd.
In any event, the real story is the way Chief Justice John Roberts is siding with liberals in so many controversial 5-4 Court decisions. Most notably, he did so
- last year when the Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to rig the 2020 census by including a plainly threatening “citizenship question”;
- last year when the Court rejected conservative efforts to strip federal regulators of long-held administrative authority to interpret their own regulations; and
- in 2012 when the Court upheld the constitutionality of the signature legislation of Obama’s presidency, Obamacare.
What’s more, as I noted in my June 2 commentary, I fully expect Roberts (and perhaps one or two other conservative justices) to join liberals in delivering another blow in coming days when the Court rules on
- Whether Trump can continue to defy state and congressional subpoenas for financial records, which he has spent his entire presidency trying to hide from duly authorized forensic audits.
Of course, that he was still recovering from the 6-3 gut-punch the Court delivered on Monday (re his support for employers firing LGBTQ employees) must have moved Trump to post this pathetic, congenitally narcissistic and self-pitying tweet:
Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
I shall leave it to Court reporters and legal historians to delve into the dynamics afoot. But I am convinced that Roberts is ruling with liberals as much to protect his own enduring judicial legacy as to limit the executive havoc Trump is wreaking during this dystopian interregnum. Obama’s legacy just happens to be a collateral beneficiary.
Related commentaries:
DACA… Obamacare… LGBTQ… Covid-19 thread…
George Floyd anti-racism protests thread…