SCOTUS Grants Special Baby President More Powers For Him To Misuse

More bad decisions. And OK, a couple surprising bright spots. We're sure it won't last.

Remember when June meant fun? When it spelled the end of the school year and the beginning of three glorious months of no homework? When it spelled long days of sunshine, vacations, after-work beers enjoyed with friends at outdoor bars, lazy afternoons poolside, weekends at the beach, cookouts, freedom, excitement, possibility?

Then we entered the age of a Supreme Court stuffed with wingnut conspiracy theorists, corrupt sexual predators, drunks, or all three. So now June also spells one or two days a week when we learn what longstanding rights and rules and laws of our Republic this murder of ayatollahs will deign to allow us to continue enjoying, and which ones it will fire into the sun.

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Monday was one of those days. And the big SCOTUS decision was a doozy. In the usual 6-3 partisan split, the Court overturned a 90-year-old precedent that had kept presidents from firing heads of independent agencies and replacing them with their own cronies and lickspittles. UNLESS — and this was a separate 5-4 decision — unless the person the president wants to fire is a member of the Federal Reserve.

They may be brain-fried Fox News zombies, but the justices don’t want to see their retirement funds get vaporized any more than the rest of us. Poor Clarence Thomas might have to ask billionaires to pay for even more of his lifestyle.

The 6-3 decision, Trump v. Slaughter, overturns the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor decision that, in the words of Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern, established a “precedent that facilitated much of modern governance by granting many agencies meaningful independence from the president.” In other words, this is another step in the Court’s ongoing efforts to overturn most of the 20^th century.

Remember, the New Deal strove to give the country the tools to be fairer and more democratic, and conservatives hate that.

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Supreme Court Six Mulling Over Letting Trump Fire ERREBODY

Here’s Your One Chance, Clarence And Ginni Thomas, Don’t Let All These Billionaires Down

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In this particular case, Trump had fired a Democratic appointee to the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, just days after he took office last year. Slaughter sued on the grounds that congressional statute forbade his legal authority to do that. In other words, he needed a reason beyond ‘cause I wanna.

The SCOTUS conservatives decided that Congress writing statutes was an unforgivable infringement on their special boy’s right to do whatever the hell he wants to do. And Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a concurrence to the decision with these words in it:

Would Congress have delegated so much power, including legislative and judicial power, to independent agencies had it known that the President would come to control them?

The answer is “No, of course not, and that was the whole fucking point, you smug Lurch-looking jerk.” Congress wanted to keep these agencies as free from political interference — from either itself or the president — as possible. Especially if the president was a megalomaniac who wants to control every aspect of government from the nuclear codes down to the design of American passports.

The only exception? The Federal Reserve board, which sets interest rates and is key to the international view that the United States has a stable banking system where investors can park their money. Destabilize that, and financial markets might collapse, bringing down the world economy.

The justices are at least smart enough to know that is too much of a risk to put in Donald Trump’s hands. Even Brett Kavanaugh after an all-night marathon game of Quarters with his clerks still wouldn’t be that drunk. So they declared the Fed special and off-limits, based on history and tradition that they made up.

At least there were a couple of wins at the court as well. By a 5-4 vote, the justices shocked the hell out of us in Watson v. RNC. In that case, SCOTUS determined that when counting votes cast in an election, states can include mail-in ballots that were postmarked before but received after Election Day. John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberals in the majority on this one:

That’s a low, low, low bar. Sub-sub-sub-subterranean, if that’s possible.

The decision predictably sent President Boss Baby into a fury:

In fact, if you are looking for silver linings from SCOTUS Monday, know that Trump is also furious because the court declined to hear his appeal in the lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll over his sexual abuse of her. So that $5 million judgment still stands. Though if we were Carroll, we wouldn’t count on seeing a check anytime soon.

Naturally, Trump is promising to “continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me.” How, we don’t know, but it will probably involve impotent yelling.

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Clarence Thomas Led Astray On Judicial Ethics By Everyone Else, Just Ask Him

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The court also declined to hear an appeal from Alan Dershowitz in his $300 million libel lawsuit against CNN. We had forgotten about this one, probably because it stems from Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020 and we, along with the rest of the country, have lived several hundred lifetimes since then.

The Dersh served as one of Trump’s many lawyers during that trial. At one point, CNN had published a commentary calling bullshit on his argument. Dershowitz sued for $300 million, arguing that he had been defamed. Sure, otherwise he’d have a sparkling reputation.

From NBC News:

Having lost in lower courts, Dershowitz had asked the justices to revisit the landmark 1964 ruling The New York Times v. Sullivan, which said there must be evidence of “actual malice” on a news organization’s part in order for a public figure to pursue a defamation claim.

This was the big fear among legal scholars, that the courts would take this opportunity to revisit Sullivan. There were two votes to do so, from Gorsuch and, unsurprisingly, Clarence Thomas. The latter would probably love to sue every media outlet for noticing that billionaires with business before the Court also happen to constantly take him on cruises on their luxury superyachts and throw him expensive gifts that he conveniently keeps forgetting, in defiance of ethics rules and common sense, to report in his public financial filings. Because the billionaires love Clarence for his sparkling personality, you understand.

We hate June.

OPEN THREAD.

[SCOTUS / SCOTUS / NYT / NBC News]

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