On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States turned the idea that “all men are created equal,” that the United States was to be land of law not kings, on its head, according to historian Heather Cox Richardson.
The Court ruled that a president might have immunity if “illegal acts” occurred during undefined official duties.
“Richard Nixon would have had a pass,” John Dean, Nixon’s White House Counsel, said on a call with reporters on Monday.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the ruling a “five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance” in her dissent.
Richardson, a level-headed historian, told her community in a Facebook Live video that we have five months to ensure that the decisions of this Supreme Court and the election in November 2024 are not America’s “end story.”
That a president can commit crimes as part of official duties is antithetical to our democracy. It is antithetical to our country. It is antithetical to our history…
Two of the justices on the court are openly associated with the attempt to overthrow the government, and that is Samuel Alito, who, who, with his wife through the distress flags, and Clarence Thomas, whose wife was actively texting with the people trying to overthrow the government. Neither one of them recused themselves…For this immunity, two of them are people who were probably in on it…
I cannot emphasize enough what a disaster this is for American democracy…
If you think about it, the Constitution starts with the words we the people we have five months to say to the other people who will be voting in November, that it’s now or never… It is up to us, we the people, to make sure that [this decision] doesn’t become …America’s end story. And we have five months.
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com