The TrumpRepubloFascists and the Supreme Court"
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August 2018)
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"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO." (S. Jonas, July 2025)
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"First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." Pastor Martin Niemoller (c. 1946)
Introductory Comment:
"Only in America can a white man be convicted 34 times, adjudicated as a rapist, impeached twice, accused of molesting children, refuse to put his hand on the Bible when being sworn into office, never attend church, lie with reckless abandon, have sex with porn stars, be a serial adulterer, threatened to commit genocide, disrespect the pope, blasphemously depict himself as Christ, and still be compared to Jesus. (And be elected President of the United States.)" Bishop Talbert Swan.
How can that happen? Easy for Trump. A long time ago he mastered the ultimate Republican Electoral Strategy: Racism, Sexism and Xenophobia.
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As I have written on multiple occasions, it has been clear from the time of the 2024 election campaign that Trump, in league with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 (about which I have written on multiple occasions), would, were he to be re-elected, attempt to achieve the "Second American Revolution." It is that revolution of which the Heritage Foundation and its leader, Kevin Roberts, have been so fond (and have made no attempt to hide their fondness for it), e.g.: "We are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
No one knows this better than the P2025/Ruling-Class/Destroyers-of-Constitutional-Democracy Engineers who put in place this totally inadequate, intellectually, and incredibly personally insecure, person, who happens to be an amazing promoter of the RSX (Racism-Sexism-Xenophobia) Doctrine which the Republican Party now runs on. If you don't think that they have already developed an elaborate plan for staying in power after their current figurehead leaves the scene, you've got another think coming. Several most recent decisions of the Supreme Court (which we shall get to go below) have furthered the march towards achieving that aim.
Over time, revolutions have had several ends, and several means of achieving them. This one clearly aims (without the use of force, if possible, but hey, you never know) at overturning U.S. Constitutional Democracy, and its principal feature. Which feature is the Separation of the principal Powers of any government: the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. This governmental structure was a brand new one for the World when in the late 18th century, it made its appearance in the brand-new U.S. Constitutional Democracy. All predecessor governments had all powers ultimately concentrated in one central governmental locus, be it an Emperor, a King, or in smaller jurisdictions, a Duke or other level of nobility. The central element of British rule which those colonists who were in revolt against it fought to replace, was that all powers were concentrated in the hands of the King, George III, and his designated rulers-in-the-Colonies.
In the century before the American Revolution the French poltical philosopher Montesquieu (he went by only one name) and the English scholar John Locke came up with the idea of the separation-of-powers as a governmental principle. The designers of the U.S. Constitution (having one of those was a new idea too) came up with the idea of incorporating that design as its central structural feature. If there was one objective that all of the revolutionaries agreed upon, it was that in their new nation there was to be no king (or equivalent) and that the three principal powers/functions of government were to be separated into three co-equal branches. The three principal functions of government as they defined them were the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial, a la Montesquieu.
They ensconced this primary principle in the Constitution by giving each branch ofgovernment a separate "Article" in it. They did not have to say, "there is separation of powers." It was right there in the text. And as it happened (and this was no coincidence) the First Article is for the Legislative Branch, the Second for the Executive Branch, and the Third for the Judicial Branch. Articles Four through Seven essentially deal with various matters of housekeeping, with a few exceptions such as in Article VI, that the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land, and, almost as an afterthought, but it is there, in writing, that there shall be no religious test for office.
It bears repeating that the constitution of the Constitution makes it abundantly clear, to repeat, that the Separation of Powers is the primary governing principle that it was to put in place. And it is the overturning of that primary principle which is the primary goal of the P2025 and its text, and the Heritage Foundation and its representatives, like Russell Vought, now head of the very powerful Federal Office of Management and Budget, and various other senior government actors, like Stephen Miller. (By the way, this Vought [phew] is not related to the builders of one of my favorite World War II fighter-planes, the Chance-Vought, "gull-winged," F4U Corsair),
I and many others (e.g., see the new book Regime Change) have been writing on the threats to Constitutional Democracy that have been central to what I call TrumpRepubloFascism for quite some time. But since the very beginning of the Second Trump Administration, they have been being implemented. For example, consider the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with its popular name, DOGE. (As I have said more than once if that name brings to mind the Doge's Palace in Venice, think also of the Bridge of Sighs that leads out of its back wall to a prison that few who were confined to it ever left alive.) These events and many others have been leading to what might be termed "The End of the Republic." As it happens, it is several end-of-term decisions by the Supreme Court which have brought that threat ever-closer.
Here is a quick summary:
They "essentially gutted what remained of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, prompting Republicans in a number of Southern states to redraw congressional maps to diminish or eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Black members of Congress."
They struck down any of the remaining limits of political spending. (Pop quiz: Can you think of an even darker modifier for the term "dark money?")
They said, in a 6-3 decision (!!!) that the words in Clause One of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution actually mean what they say: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Three Justices (Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, who have an odd idea of what the word "justice" actually means) said that they don't agree with that interpretation, while a fourth, Kavanaugh, said that Congress could amend the Constitutional provision by statute. (I must say that it is amazing that a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court could actually get through law school without taking the introductory course in Constitutional Law in which one of the first things that one learns is that the Constitution can be altered only by going through the amendment process that is specified in Article V and is very complex. Or if he did take that Course, he missed the 14th and its plain language.
Finally, in this set of decisions, they "overturned a 91-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies at will. The decision represents a significant win for the Trump administration and a major expansion of the President's control over parts of the government once seen as a check on his powers. Thus, in a 6-3 ruling, the court found that President Trump's March 2025 firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause was lawful.
(As it happens, in a matter that has apparently not gotten onto the Court's calendar yet, the Trump Administration began the destruction of the Civil Service Act of 1883 as amended in Day one, with the actions of DOGE [mentioned briefly above]. Many formerly permanent government workers have been fired without cause, a practice which is continuing unabated by Vought at the Office of Management and Budget.)
And so, all together, these actions, by the Supreme court and the various Trumpist sectors of the Federal government, are all driving the structure, and subsequent function(s), of the Federal government in the direction of unitary control by the Executive Branch. To repeat, the objective here is to destroy the Central Principle of the Constitution, which is the Separation of Powers: The Legislative, symbolically dealt with first, in Article I, then the Executive in Article II, then the Judicial, in Article III. (One can be fairly certain that Trump has never read the Constitution and, if he has done, he didn't understand it, or if he did, he certainly has no care or intention to follow its requirements for governing at the Federal level.)
Finally (and I will be dealing with these matters at some length in future columns) it is obvious that the TrumpRepublicans know that based on the results of the primaries so far, and Trump's polling numbers, if the 2026 Federal elections are held in accordance with the law, they will lose the House and possibly the Senate. And so, what to do? Well (as is too well known) try to fix them (the elections, that is), of course, by such means as attacking mail-in voting rights (recently upheld by the Supreme Court. But Trump is threatening to use his control of the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with mail-in voting generally. For now, the matter remains in the Courts.
As noted, how the TrumpRepubloFascists are planning/attempting to interfere with 2026 elections, which they know that as of now are predicted to go against them to a greater or lesser degree, is a topic to which I will be returning, of course.