The Week Ahead, and Some Thoughts

I hope you are having a relaxing and restorative Sunday. It’s a beautiful day here in New York City—the first non-smoky, non-heat oppressive day in a while—so I’ll keep this relatively brief.

Federal court blocks Arkansas censorship law

In a highly watched case, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction on the state of Arkansas from enforcing a law that would impose criminal sanctions upon librarians and booksellers for providing what it deemed “harmful” materials to minors. The law is part of a wider effort by the right to impose bans or restrict access to educational and reading materials that it considers offensive or “woke.”

Opponents of the law, assisted by the ACLU, argued that fear of criminal prosecution would have a chilling effect on libraries, forcing them to steer far clear of the potential penalties and no longer carry a number of titles deemed controversial.

The law was set to go into effect in a matter of days on August 1, but now its future is far from assured. That’s because a “preliminary injunction” means the plaintiffs have shown likely success on the merits and that the balance of harms of having the law go forward weighs in their favor.

Trump’s lawsuit against CNN dismissed

The ex-president had filed what felt like a frivolous lawsuit against CNN, despite its $475 million ask for damages, claiming that the network’s use of the term the “Big Lie” to describe Trump’s stolen election claims unfairly compared him to Hitler and others in the Nazi regime. That “Big Lie” was about Jews ruining the economy and secretly running the country, and it stoked hatred and fear that led ultimately to the Holocaust.

The term comes from the quote, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” and is typically attributed to Joseph Goebbels, who was Hitler’s minister of propaganda. (Cool side note: George Takei, with our team’s editorial help, was the first or among the first to use the phrase “Big Lie” in a widely-shared tweet about Trump’s stolen election claims, so this ruling feels very personal and satisfying.)

Judge Raag Singhal, who is a Trump appointee, threw the case out. While he added his own unnecessary take that CNN’s statements were “repugnant,” he found as a matter of law that they were not defamatory. Reviewing the instances cited by Trump where CNN opinion and news allegedly defamed him, Singhal found that “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people.” He added, “No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”

Justice Samuel Alito claims he’s untouchable

Justice Alito is back in the news with yet another piece in the Wall Street Journal, in which he declared in an interview, “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” referencing Democrats’ recent efforts to require stronger ethical rules for SCOTUS. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

So, that is dead to rights wrong based on the plain text of the Constitution:

Clause 2 Supreme Court Jurisdiction

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

It’s fair to ask Alito what the framers meant by “under such Regulations as the Congress shall make” if not the power to “regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Democrats in the House were quickly blasted his statement. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter, “Dear Justice Alito: You’re on the Supreme Court in part because Congress expanded the Court to 9 Justices. Congress can impeach Justices and can in many cases strip the Court of jurisdiction. Congress has always regulated you and will continue to do so. You are not above the law.”

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), famous for her whiteboard takedowns, took Justice Alito on as well and added a sharp personal jab. “This view is more than controversial; it’s incorrect,” Porter tweeted. “This is coming from a justice who tried to hide the fact that he accepted luxury vacations on private jets. As a government official, I welcome the American people holding me accountable—why doesn’t Justice Alito?”

Trump moves to disqualify Fani Willis…again

In yet another Hail Mary pass, Trump filed another motion to try and get District Attorney Fani Willis off the case in Fulton County, Georgia. That case is soon likely to result in over a dozen indictments, including against the former president.

The new motion once again seeks to quash the special grand jury report by claiming it was “targeting” Trump and therefore was unconstitutional. But Trump already lost bigly on a similar motion, with the Georgia Supreme Court smacking him down on his last disqualification attempt. So the only likely thing he gains here is additional time. A hearing on the motion is now set for August 10, which means it is unlikely that charges will come out of Fulton County before that hearing date.

Putting it together

Earlier this year, I predicted that this would become the Summer of Justice and Accountability. The GOP had passed all manner of oppressive laws in their spring state legislative sessions, and the grand juries were separately wrapping up their investigations of Trump and his cohorts. It now seems likely we will see additional charges in D.C. and Fulton County before the month of August is up. Indeed, an indictment over the January 6 coup attempt could come any day now.

The various court victories, even from Trump-appointed judges and federal courts in the South, suggest that our judicial system continues to hold against the battering that Trump and the GOP are delivering daily, at least when it comes to the rule of law and the proper functioning of our democracy. Even at the very top, with at least two corrupt Supreme Court justices brazenly defending their right to be free from accountability, there are now serious movements to curtail their power, including a Democratic bill around judicial ethics that would apply to SCOTUS. That is why Justice Alito is breaking with tradition, once again, to grant interviews in order to lay claim to powers and immunities that he and his fellow right-wingers simply do not have.

We are seeing elsewhere in the world, especially in Israel, the critical importance of keeping our judicial system free from politicization. The judiciary remains a vital and sometimes final backstop against both executive and legislative excesses. And while the Supreme Court has been seriously compromised and is now doing significant damage to our personal rights and liberties, the broader weight of the judicial system continues to stand firm against Trumpian attacks. As we approach the 2024 election cycle, that judicial stalwartness and independence, especially when it comes to determining who will hold power after a free and fair election, will grow more critical.

We are going to get a crash course in the coming months in what happens when our laws and our politics collide head on, particularly as the most serious federal and state charges issue against Trump and his cronies for their attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Nothing could be more important than seeing the rule of law affirmed here, because a failure to hold Trump accountable would certainly encourage other anti-democratic forces to follow his lead.

This, then, is the moment we must stop them.

Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your Sunday.

Jay