“Good Morning Chief Justice Roberts, I see you put out the new signs”
We are, I think, in a supreme mess. A vindictive Chief Justice Roberts just settled a vendetta. As a Reagan Administration lawyer, Roberts opposed strengthening the Voting Rights Act. He penned memos arguing that letting someone sue a state for a ‘discriminatory effect’ was federal overreach, and interfered in states’ rights.
Despite his opposition to the amendment to the voting rights act, Congress in 1982 passed the bill in a bipartisan vote. Forty four years later he and five other conservative justices strike down that amendment as part of ten-year set of rulings undermining the law and Congresses’ intent. In effect stealing not only the Voting Rights Act, but the 15th Amendment, from the American people.
Congress clearly and resoundingly spoke on this major question in 1982. Now, the chief proponent of the Major Questions doctrine, says not good enough. If anything, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was, and is, an example of Congress clearly stating its will, the will of the people, on a major constitutional question. That is enforcing the 15th Amendment.
This ruling highlights why we are in trouble as a nation. To the conservative super majority, It’s not about the Constitution, it’s about settling personal and political vendettas. Dangerously, the Robert’s Court is a corrupt right wing political machine, rewriting the Constitution at will. The increasing use and misuse of the shadow docket, anonymous rulings, labored arguments that collapse under their own weight, the outright fabrication of history and data, all point to a debased and crooked Court. A Court where profiteering and acceptance of bribes by some justices is brazenly open.
I think the court will overturn birthright citizenship in part. It just opened the flood gate for gerrymandering districts to favor whites (sorry, I meant I Republicans) months before the mid-terms. I also believe when Trump seizes ballots this November the Court will permit it to do so. When Trump announces his intent to run for a third unconstitutional term the Court will invent a new doctrine to permit Trump to run again. Hopefully the gentleman with the scythe will come calling first.
This corrupt court and a dysfunctional Congress are all that stand before a tyrannical Trump and one party authoritarian rule. We are, therefore, in a heap of trouble, up a constitutional creek without a paddle. Now is the time to look to the future and decide how we, as a people, will respond.
Let’s begin with a very short quiz. True or false: Up to 1926 non-citizens in many States could vote in local, state, and national elections.
If you answered True, you are ………correct.
If you carefully read the original ratified constitution, you will note that it did not explicitly define who could vote. Or, for that matter even define citizen or citizenship. In fact, and practice, voting rights in the several states at our founding tended to be based on the big three: acquired wealth, gender, and race. These three qualifications defined who could and, consequently, who could not vote. While property qualifications pretty much disappeared in the early 19th century, gender and race defined who could vote, not citizenship, for many, many decades.
Some state constitutions merely asserted “white males” could vote with no mention of citizenship. As the country expanded westward voting by aliens was encouraged, for instance in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 “freehold aliens” could vote. Some states required aliens to take an oath that they were upstanding inhabitants and intended to become citizens. Becoming a naturalized citizenship was linked to race, however, in our early Republic.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that only “free white person of good character’ could become citizens after two years of residence, however, several following Acts raised the residency requirements first to five years, and then in 1798 the Alien and Sedition Act raised the residency requirement to 14 years. This last requirement did not last long and was in response to fears of dastardly French influences.
The Constitution of 1789, while never linking voting to citizenship, clearly stated, however, that the President, Representatives, and Senators must be citizens, and added an additional modifier for President, they must be a ‘natural born citizen.’ The absence of any express statement in the constitution linking citizenship to voting suggests that voting by non-citizens was such common practice that it was deemed a common law right, at least in the American colonies which, before the revolution, were generally governed by written charters.
Americans, it seems, before they were technically American, were better off than their fellow Englishmen in Great Britian in terms of suffrage. In Great Britian, voting in the 18th century was extremely restricted and it was not until a series of reforms in the 19th century did Great Britian enlarge the voting franchise.
For about 150 years then, many states permitted aliens, that is non-citizens, to vote. I think Scalia, were he alive, and other constitutional originalists would vomit at that thought.
Voting by non-citizens did ebb and flow over time, however. Wars resulted in contractions of voting rights by non-citizens, for instance the War of 1812 and the First World War saw pushback. The rise of nativist movements as waves of immigrants arrived provoked some pushback as well on non-citizen voting rights in the mid 19th century. This accelerated when immigrants from eastern or southern Europe — such as Greece or Italy — began arriving in huge numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[i]
Basically, folks from an earlier list of shithole countries or representing threatening religions, you know, the ever-dangerous Catholic or Jew. Claims of intellectual, genetic, and moral inferiority abounded. They couldn’t assimilate many claimed. Does that not sound familiar?
As we have seen, voting rights in America has a peculiar history and was (and is it seems) very much tied with gender and race, not citizenship. Citizenship was a variable state by state. Women gained the right to vote 105 years ago. African American men in 1870. Asian immigrants could not become U.S. citizens until 1952, and therefore ineligible to vote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did much to enforce and federalize and nationalize the right to vote. It did much to ensure all citizens, regardless of race or origin, were given equal opportunity to vote. That is no longer the case. While the reversals of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been articulated in terms of impacts on black and brown voters, the demise of the Act will have broader impacts on other communities: Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and other diaspora communities.
Trump’s new immigration policy is designed to impact the make-up of the next generation of voters. Afrikaners over Africans, whites over others. And, with the help of the Robert’s court, making it harder for everyday Americans of color to vote in states with long histories of denying black and brown people the right to vote. The attack on the Voting Rights Act is just one part of a broader, systemic attack on who is an American, who can become an American, and therefore, who has a voice in America’s present and future.
This November we are voting for more than just neutering Trump politically, we are fighting for whose America this is, and who will inherit America from us once we are gone. This is a generational vote, a vote for our kids, our grandkids, and our generations of unborn Americans.
Post Script: The Supreme Court recently invalidated Louisiana’s congressional district voting map because districts were gerrymandered by race. A normal grace period of a month was set aside by the Court to allow immediate action by Louisiana. Voting was already underway. The Louisiana governor is currently refusing to count over 30k mail-in votes already received.
[i] Texas permitted non-citizens to vote until 1921. Indiana as well. Kansas 1918. Oregon 1914. Virginia 1818. Pennsylvania 1838. See Ron Hayduk, Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States, 2006.
The Supreme Court last week gave a final, mortal blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Et tu Roberts. The Court’s majority opinion, penned by Justice Alito, argued that America has changed since the 1960s, that the racial animus predicating the denial of black and brown people from voting or having the chance to be represented in Congress, had magically evaporated.
The Louisiana congressional district map, which was at the heart of this recent case, was therefore unconstitutional, according to six of the justices. Voting districts, per the Court could be gerrymandered to reflect political favoritism toward a political party but not race. To add insult to injury, the Court then granted Louisiana the immediate ability to change the map. Normally, there is a month’s long grace period giving the losing side an opportunity to prepare arguments in lower courts before the ruling comes into effect.
The central premise that America has changed is facile and flawed and misguided. Yes, America has become a more pluralistic society, black and brown representation did increase since the late 1960s. However, in many deep south states with large black and brown populations, white’s continue to be overrepresented in state houses and the House of Representatives. It ignores repeated and continual attempts to disenfranchise black and brown voters through ostensibly race neutral laws.
On another level, the racial animus towards black and brown folks is as strong as ever. Take Trump’s words that immigrants from ‘shit hole’ countries are polluting American blood, or that Haitians eat folks’ pets, or that Somalis are low IQ, or that non-white immigrants are destroying western civilization. I don’t think these thoughts are outliers in MAGA world, or for that matter in the minds of some of the Supreme Court justices.
A week before the riots in Charlottesville in August 2017, in which Heather Heyer was murdered and dozens more were injured when a white supremacist drove his car into peaceful protestors, I posted this essay. An essay about my community here in Louisa. Given the Court’s decision last week, I believe the essay deserves a repost. I repost it in its entirety below followed by a brief postscript:
Four ladies were sitting in a pie and coffee joint. In walk a priest, a rabbi, and an Imam. Naw, in walk my wife and I. What follows, disappointingly, is a true, but sad story. As we walk in the four women were playing bridge and conversationally engaged. As I ordered coffee and tea, a slice of rhubarb pie, and a muffin, at the counter my wife selected a table cattycorner from this bridge quartet, well within earshot, especially as they spoke in upturned voices.
Given the closeness of the tables, it was impossible not to be encompassed in the conversation, even as detached, unwilling silent witnesses. Eavesdropping into the conversation mid-way found us somewhere in a conversation about church business followed quickly by a lamentation that a friend, who apparently was pictured in a Ku Klux Klan photograph, was being unfairly associated with the racism. “Guilt by association” chuckled one woman slightly. It was like walking into a Kafka soliloquy. This tête-à-tête then veered onto the hot local subject of the removal of a confederate statue from a nearby university town. All expressed bitterness, with one speaking out loud for their little group, that it was a disgrace, that you “can’t change history.”
She’s right, but apparently, she can’t fathom or acknowledge that the South’s history is more than about white heritage. Then, in a deeply submerged psychological association, the statue controversy was instantaneously linked to the public schools — think 1954 and Brown v. Board of Education declaring racial segregation unconstitutional – when one exclaimed in the next breath to mutual concord, that “We provide them with a free education” and if ‘they don’t take advantage of that, it isn’t our problem.’ Oh, that set me off. We and them. WE and THEM! That basically sums it up. At that point my wife shot me that ‘not now’ look with a little Mona Lisa smirk, part threat, part calm down. I mumbled aloud about walking into a ‘daughters of the confederacy’ meeting.
My back was to this bridge playing klavern and I was facing out the pie shop’s picture window taking in the Mayberry-like main street, named of course Main Street. Across the street was the antebellum circuit courthouse, a little red brick jail stood off to the left of the courthouse. A statue of a confederate soldier stands a silent vigil; his gaze forever fixed towards the northeast watching over the town square and all who approach. Sheriff Andy Taylor or Atticus Finch may walk by if you close your eyes for a second. This American circuit courthouse was a facilitator of slavery and racial oppression. No doubt, slaves seized from indebted planters were most likely sold just yards away. Wills that directed the selling off or gifting of slaves, breaking up families, were filed in that courthouse. I wondered too about the little jail and imagined whether slave traders, with their coffles of slaves heading down from Alexandria to Richmond, and then on to New Orleans, would bed down their walking inventory in the local jail overnight for a small fee.
I am not sure the irony of their conversation juxtaposed so close to slavery’s ghosts was apparent to these card players. Nonetheless, the carefree and unguarded manner the conversation played out in a public space underscored, I think, the impulsive racist bigotry that pervades many American towns. It is as natural as breathing it seems. The fact that they spoke in raised voices like it was 1859 or 1955 leads me to believe these women intuitively assumed, that because my wife and I are white, we automatically subscribe to their philosophy.
Shamefully, I sat mute, halfway between cowardice and rage, sipping tepid tea, but felt my anger and words would not change what has been etched in these women’s minds since before their mothers’ mothers were even born. Their banter was wide ranging and not all about race. At some point one commented about CNN “yapping on” about the “Russia thing,” “brain washing of liberals,” and what to do about North Korea. On North Korea, at least, there was disagreement. While it isn’t fair to put all the white folks in this corner of the South into a box and label it “toxic bigots, handle with care” racism’s complexities remains deep in this part of the woods and the women playing bridge no doubt have already infested their children and grandchildren with their septic views of race, supremacy, and obligation. At least the muffin was good, but the conversation left a bitter, sad after taste.
On reflection, “WE and THEM” is at the heart of America’s political divide. It always has been. At its core is the fundamental question about “whose America is this?” America belongs to the descendants of African captives forced into generational slavery, the new African citizen, the fifth generation Mexican American, the Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt, the Shia Muslim from Syria, the offspring of Puritan New Englanders, the Chinese Americans whose ancestors helped build America’s western railroads, native Americans. And yes, even the fearful daughters of the confederacy who indifferently sip the tepid tears of those lost to slavery while playing bridge, should have equal access to a piece of the American pie.
Post Script: The Supreme Court made another decision antithetical to American democracy and misjudges the residual racial animus and antipathy still much alive in this country. This decision highlights the need for every vote this November. A democratic majority in the House and Senate will put a dead stop to Trump’s rule by decree. The Senate will ensure no more supreme court justices appointed by Trump are confirmed should any retire or die during the last two years of Trump’s term.
Nature has a way of recharging and humbling you at the same time. I find it is an antidote to modernity and algorithm driven lifestyles. Mother Nature has no human designed algorithm, and I escaped to the forests of the Appalachia mountains for a brief interlude, a temporary fugitive, from the monetization of my body.
The morning was cool and the weather unsure. Clouds, hail, snow, rain, and sun raked over the ridge line and dove into the hollow. The mountain side trail down to the river and falls was well-trodden, gnarly roots and sharp stones could catch an unwary foot. It was clear from the incline the mountain was going to levy a toll on my body on the way back up. One and half miles back to the start of the trail, with an elevation gain of nearly a thousand feet.
The falls were a disappointment; the clear mountain stream on the other hand offered lichen and moss-covered rocks, gentle drops and translucent pools. The photography gods smiled upon me that morning, but the trail nymphs and spirits of the forest hiding behind oak trees and under pink and white petals of Trilliums would soon have their laughs.
A mile into the hike up the mountain side, after some 800 feet of elevation gain, my legs were spent, my lungs on fire. My body of three score and two years screamed to my brain, which thinks itself 25, “stop, please stop.” My only thought was that if I die, I hoped my body is found before a black bear fresh from its winter sleep drags it into the hollow.
My soul left my body at the last switchback and only returned when I arrived at the BBQ Exchange in Gordonsville. It appeared in the form of a pulled pork sandwich and a cold Dr. Pepper. Such was my interlude.
Gardens have been used as metaphor for ages and even has a starring role in many religions. Many early modern political commentators invoked gardens, for instance, that democracy was a garden that needed tending to thrive. And we know some gardens harbor snakes.
Tending my garden is a year’s long endeavor, but spring is my favorite time. It’s a time of renewal and growth, bumblebee queens seek the brilliant yellow dandelion flowers — a critical food source – while perennials begin to poke their heads up. Weeds start to reappear as well, like the dreaded bindweed. You must get them early, ripping them out root and all, before the flowers turn to seeds. However, as any gardener who has dealt with bindweed knows, it is a war of attrition.
A noxious bindweed has invaded our government, and Congress is an untended garden, overrun with weeds and invasive species of autocracy, blocking out America’s native species of the rule of law, equal rights, and the doctrine of coequal branches of government. It is time to weed Congress and relocate some of the slithering critters lurking in dark crevices. Voting YES to redistrict Virginia’s congressional districts is one way. Time is essential as the last day to vote is Tuesday, April 21.
I am imagining by now most registered voters in Virginian have voted in the referendum to draw new congressional district maps. Tuesday is your last day to vote, so, if you have not yet voted, do so. A YES vote is one for sanity and restoring our national social contract. Ensuring that Congress stands up to and reins in a corrupt and malevolent president. The current House of Representatives is a disaster. For those in Central Virginia’s 5thCongressional District, this November we will have the opportunity to vote out Rep. John McGuire, a Trump vassal.
If the disastrous war of choice against the Iranian people is not convincing enough, Trump’s self-appointment and deification as God’s prophet and latter-day Jesus, should get you across the finish line and vote YES.
Redistricting Virginia is not my preferred course of action, but if I am to ever have a voice in Congress again, I feel strongly, redistricting is my only option at this time. I acknowledge the paradox of gerrymandering Virginia to elect more Democrats while arguing that democracy is in trouble. I get it. Trump’s direct order to Republican governed states to redistrict crossed a line, however. Many states obeyed Trump. An eye for an eye, right? Virginia Republicans have only themselves and Trump to blame. You thought you “owned the libs.” But when you whack a hornets’ nest often enough…… You get my point. If you are angry at what the Democrats are doing in Virginia, write Trump at the White House and tell him he screwed you.
You can tell this referendum has got the MAGA folks up in arms, almost literally. Vote NO signs are more plentiful than dandelions in Louisa County. When I was up in Northern Virginia a few weeks ago, there was a small rally at the intersection of Routes 29 and 50 in Fairfax at 9 AM on a weekday. They were animated. We need to respond with similar commitment and get the YES vote out.
In addition, the Republicans on-line and streaming ad campaign is desperate. The latest version is a video that portrays Governor Spanberger as an arsonist burning down a barn; replete with sinister narration claiming the redistricting is a ruse to take away guns, impose higher taxes, and give welfare to illegal immigrants. That last claim about welfare is usually made by a “Virginia Farmer” in a dead pan pitch. That is rich, given the billions of tax dollars flowing into farmers’ pockets to offset rising costs to operate farms due to Trump’s tariffs and his war against Iran. They sense they are losing, I think.
Let’s work together and start tending the garden of democracy once again. If you have not voted yet, please do so, and vote YES.
In the year 1188 AD, both England and France imposed an income tax to help pay for the third Crusade. It was called the Saladin Tax. It was a first. It was 10 percent. Saladin was the general, the Sultan, who recaptured Jerusalem the year before, expelling Christan forces who ruled Jerusalem since the first crusade when a Christian army captured the holy city in 1099, butchering most inhabitants.
Saladin captured the imagination of the West. They even invented a European origin story for him; he was featured in western literature, to include in Dante’s inferno. In 1920 when the French General Henri-Joseph-Eugene entered Damascus after the victorious allies divided up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves – Mandates they called them – he visited Saladin’s tomb and allegedly said, “Mr. Sultan, we’ve returned to the Orient.”
They drew new maps and new countries. Syria and Lebanon came under French rule, Palestine and Transjordan went to the British empire. Europe certainly did return and managed through their imperial hubris, ignorance, and contempt for the peoples of the region, set the stage for over a century of regional and global conflicts and wars over this land. To include Trump’s war with Iran
God, it seems, gets the both the blame and the glory. Depending on who wins the day.
To listen to Secretary of Defense Hegseth, Trump’s war with Iran is a crusade. He uses Christian imagery to portray American forces as soldiers of Christ. His prayers ask that God and Christ guide American bombs, bullets, and missiles to kill evil enemies. Onward Christian soldiers wearing God as his armor. He stated that there would be no quarter. The crusaders in Jerusalem in 1099 offered no quarter. Man, woman, child, struck down by sword and axes guided by Jesus and God.
That notion of chivalry and God died on the fields of Flander, the Somme, and Ypres hundreds of years later.
Unfortunately, Hegseth is not an outlier in Trump’s world. The White House increasingly compares Trump to Jesus, betrayed, and arrested. At a recent private Easter event, Trump’s spiritual advisor Pastor Paula White-Cain compared the experiences of Christ’s crucifixion to Trump’s legal troubles, you know sexually assaulting a woman in a department store dressing room or paying off a porn star to keep silent about an affair. Although I think she must have forgotten about these secular trials. I too see Trump and Jesus in the same thought, every time he opens his mouth or posts on Truth Social, I say, “Jesus Christ, what the fuck did that idiot just say.”
It is not new in our history for American leaders to invoke God, especially after great tragedies or wars or other calamities. America’s sense of its exceptionalism is deeply rooted in God. That shiny city on a hill. It is new, however, for an American president to lay claim to divinity. The Beatles were crucified, pun intended, when they claimed they were more popular than Jesus during a radio interview.
Trump is deliberately, cynically I think, erasing the line between him and Jesus. Many of his adherents are in lock step with him, nonetheless. For Trump to claim divine rule requires not only breaking down, but utterly demolishing, the wall between state and church.
Our country has a long history of keeping religion out of state and keeping the state out of religion. For good reason as we can see by Trump’s insane comparison to Jesus. The Constitution does not mention “God.” Not even the oath of office for president mentions God. When asked why God did not appear in the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton famously quipped, “We forgot” or “We don’t need any foreign help.” Whether these were apocryphal response, I don’t know, but they have a ring of authenticity.
In 1777, while a Delegate to Virginia’s General Assembly, Thomas Jefferson submitted a statute for Religious Freedom. It was shelved given opposition from the still powerful Anglican Church members. That bill lay dormant of over a decade and was resurrected by James Madison in 1785 after Patrick Henry submitted a bill a year earlier calling for a tax to pay ministers of the Christian religion.
In response to Henry’s bill, Madison wrote a Memorial and Remonstrance against the assessment. In it he warned that the state should not support any religion. That belief in God was between a man and his creator, that the state had no business interfering with such relationship. He warned that once you support Christian ministers, what will stop a particular sect within Christianity from assuming dominance over the others. Henry’s bill did not pass.
Virginia’s Baptists supported Madison’s Remonstrance and the Religious Freedom bill. They had suffered heavily from Anglican Church violence in the 18th Century, especially during the Virginia’s Great Awakening in the 1740s. Itinerant Baptist ministers were whipped or jailed and driven out of counties. Sadly, many Baptists today who support destroying the barrier between church and state have forgotten that history.
He was right. In Texas, which provides tax dollars to both secular and religious charter schools, Islamic charter schools requesting public funding are being denied funding, claims leveled about terrorism. Bashing Muslims has become sport in Texas amongst those Republicans running for office. A proposed public school reading list contains the bible, but not the Koran.
In addition to the Remonstrance, Madison also resubmitted Jefferson’s decade old bill to Virginia’s General Assembly. It passed. Both Madison’s Remonstrance and Jefferson’s bill for Religious Freedom should be required reading. Both argue that God doesn’t need the State:
“That Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitation, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness….” Adding, “not to propagating it by coercion …but extend it by its influence on reason alone.”
What became the first amendment to the constitution, written by Madison, were born in Madison’s Remonstrance and Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom (1786). It clearly articulates that the government could not establish a state religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof. A careful balance.
In 1802, President Jefferson, in a famous letter to the ‘Danbury Baptists,’ wrote that the 1st Amendment built a “wall of separation between Church and State.” While Jefferson had no direct hand in the writing of the Constitution — he was the American Ambassador to France during the constitutional convention, and was not in Congress when the propositions were submitted by Madison which became the Bill of Rights — he and Madison regularly corresponded, explaining their thoughts and ideas of government and the constitution.
This separation of church and state, this wall, has informed the liberal American experiment that in a healthy democracy the role of religion and the role of government are better kept distant and respectful.
That arrangement worked spectacularly. Religion thrives in America because of this wall of separation. It is a paradox then that America aims to finish off a despotic theocratic state in Iran while planting the very seeds of a despotic right wing white nationalist Christian theocratic state in America.
MAGA voices like Gladden Pappin – who claims the Pope will appoint Melania as queen – and Rod Dreher want American to go back to the Middle Ages, where the church held power, where the Bible was the law of the land. They hate and despise the enlightenment and liberal ideals of democracy, human rights, and the freedom to enjoy a personal relationship with God, without government surveillance and dictate.
The conspicuous and dangerous allusions to Trump, God, and Christ in prosecuting Trump’s war against Iran are anathema to America’s founding ideals and over 250 years of history. God help us all.
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v. Barbara whether Trump’s Executive Order stripping birthright citizenship from children of non-citizens was constitutional. Every lower court hearing cases regarding the Order ruled that it was unquestionably unconstitutional. The arguments before the justices of our country’s highest court should have taken on the patina of well worn rituals and procedures. However, it was far from normal.
Last year, at an initial hearing before the Court, a majority of justices kept an injunction on the order in place, staying the implementation of Trump’s Order indefinitely. The vote was 6-3. Not shocking, given a radical core of conservative justices seem hell bent on overturning everything that smacks of small “l” liberal governance. The Court could have left the appeals court in ruling in place, basically saying that the lower court’s ruling was sound. They did not. Instead, a least four justices voted to hear the case.
Yesterday, in an unprecedented move, Trump attended the oral arguments. His attendance, for all intents and purposes, was a direct attack on the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution. Trump did not stay for all of the arguments, leaving after the first hour. His message sent, I think.
Most of the justices, it seemed, were skeptical of the government’s argument that birthright citizenship should be limited. The government’s argument hinged on the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and the word “domicile” in the seminal 1898 Supreme Court ruling United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Their arguments rehashes of earlier losing arguments. This should be a slam dunk case, but it isn’t.
In a previous post, I predicted with despair that Trump and the government would prevail. I thought perhaps I was wrong, and was heartened when the justices in a 6-3 vote kept the injunction in place. That signaled the government would most likely not prevail in court. Yet, I worried that at least four justices wanted to hear the case.
This case should not be a nail biter. It has been settled law for 128 years. But with today’s Court consisting of a super majority of conservatives with a hard-core troika of ultra radical conservative justices, anything is possible.
Enter Trump. No sitting president has ever attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court. It is unseemly, and I think, an assault on the doctrine of the separation of powers. His presence was like a dog pissing on a tree, marking its territory. Trump was marking his Order and signaling to everyone, ‘do not rule against me and my Order.’ It was designed, I argue, to intimidate the justices that are on the fence, so to speak. That is Barrett and Gorsuch. Like the Godfather movie, Trump was the decapitated horse’s head laying at the foot of the bed. A warning of bloody consequences.
I would not be surprised that folks acting on Trump’s orders engage in a campaign of intimidation, influence, and ever terror against Barrett and Gorsuch in the coming weeks. He will use similar tactics that he has already used on his other perceived enemies. His no holds barred attack on the Chair of the Federal Reserve is just one very recent example. DOJ investigations, insinuations of wrongdoing, grand juries, threats of impeachment against other federal judges. This will get nasty.
Even though many of the justices seemed skeptical in whole or in part of the government’s arguments; to include the Chief Justice Roberts, the majority opinion is far from settled. The final vote is in doubt in my mind. Congress abdicated to Trump. Will the Supreme Court do so as well? Surrendering the Judicial Branch to Trump, so that he can hang its stuffed head next to all the gold and gild bling in the Oval Office. That is to be seen.
Small town America. Louisa residents rallied at the county courthouse April 28, 2026. A good showing in a deeply red rural county on a crisp spring day. A spirited and exuberant assembly of the young, the old, veterans, …. A diversity of voices. There were two Trump counterprotestors, one of whom loudly claimed that Trump was “his King.”
Virginias farmers are once again being sacrificed on Trump’s altar of stupidity and foolishness. His Noble Great Mightiness’s war has already cost the lives of thousands in the Middle East, 13 of which are American service men and women. In treasure every week, the war costs American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. Americans are also paying at the gas pumps and in grocery stores. The defense department just presented a $200 billion reapers bill to Congress.
Virginia’s farmers will pay additional costs as well. Not only in the rising costs of fuel and fertilizer but in sons and daughters. Rural Americans are overrepresented in our armed forces. Close to 45 percent of those in uniform come from counties like Louisa.
Didn’t Trump know it’s planting season. Virginia farmers must decide what to plant this year. Corn or soy or both. Decisions about spending capital on new equipment must be made as well. The soil must be tilled, the land prepped for seed. Yet, uncertainty abounds because of the war. The confused and contradictory messages coming from the administration are unhelpful as to the war’s objectives, and most importantly, its end point. The feeds the uncertainty for farmers across Virginia and the nation. It seems that while Iran is losing the war militarily, it is winning the war politically, strategically. Hope and hubris are not war plans.
While this administration postures and dithers and twirls about like whirling dervishers, the supply of nitrates for fertilizer remains plugged up in the Persian Gulf, unable to make the passage through the Strait of Hormuz, that strategic strait of water on Iran’s southern shores. Fertilizer prices have jumped as a result, on average about 20 percent. It will take months to fix the fertilizer supply chain disruption caused by Trump’s chaotic war.
Even if the war should end today, perhaps it’s too late for the farmers who need to make purchases now, or bet wrong earlier. Soy doesn’t need nitrated based fertilizers, corn does. Farmers may not take the risk of planting corn and go with soy instead. That, however, will create a surplus of soy, thus lowering the price per bushel. Can’t win either way.
That’s not all, because of this questionable war of choice, Trump cancelled his state visit with Xi of China. China is the largest importer of soy in the world and last year not one American grown soybean was bought by China in retaliation for Trump’s punitive, and in some instances illegal, tariffs. Virginia farmers lost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in exports because of Trump’s actions. Virginia exports over a billion dollars’ worth of farm products to China. Not anymore. The announcement of the cancelled meeting caused the price of soy to drop.
It’s pain at the gas pumps. We’ve all been to the gas station and noted the rise of gas and diesel prices. Not fun paying $3.99 a gallon for gas and over $5 for diesel. They won’t be going down anytime soon. Not with the Strait of Hormuz closed for the indefinite future and Trump threatening to put boots on Iranian ground.
I did some research on what it cost in gas or diesel to plant and grow corn and soy, from seed to market. Purdue University has some pretty good charts and tables that show the costs at each step of farming those crops. There are at least 14 phases, I learned, taken in sequence to prepare the ground, plant the seeds, weed the fields, harvest the crops, and get them to market. Most require tractors or combines or other farm vehicles.
Basically, according to these Purdue University tables, to plant 300 acres or corn and 300 acres of soy, a farmer would use approximately 3655 gallons of fuel. Broken down per acre, that would be $5.94 gallons per acre. Of course there are variables like soil conditions, age of equipment, etc, that determine individual costs. Diesel now cost about $5.59 per gallon (I didn’t deduct the taxes farmers are exempted from). That comes out to almost $20,000 in diesel costs. In prewar prices, it comes out to almost $13,000. That’s a seven-thousand-dollar war tax on Virginia farmers. Yes, it is a war tax.
Did not Trump, his Noble Great Mightiness, this genius of all things, not see this coming? And his equally impressive “We negotiate with bombs” Secretary of War, did he not see the potential consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz? Fools, the lot of them.
Because of Trump’s strategic failures, Virginia’s farmers are left with footing the bill for higher fertilizer costs, collapsing soy markets, and staggeringly high fuel costs at a critical time in the planting season.
How long can Virginia’s farmers survive with this type of love from Trump? Blind obedience he demands. ‘Suck it up,’ he says; ‘be patriotic,’ he says; ‘it’s only temporary pain,’ he says. Last year Trump authorized the payment of $30 billion in farmer bailouts because of his tariff fiasco. This year he is already demanding that Congress pass a farm bill, immediately. He’s turning farmers into bailout junkies.
Another bailout is coming, a bribe to his “Farmers for Trump” tribe. He thinks he can buy their silence and acquiescence. He’s right it appears, but some are starting to see the light, it seems. Not only is he bankrupting hard working farmers, he’s also sending many of their sons and daughters into harms way. His uber patriotic sons and daughters never deigned to serve. Hell, they wouldn’t be caught dead in uniform. Barron isn’t running down to the recruiting station. No, he was just named to the board of directors of a new company. Another Nepo baby enriching himself and missing the wars, while our kids fight the wars.
Are we still a democracy? I think that is a good question and not one asked hyperbolically or in the ‘sky is falling’ moment of hysteria or panic. Serious people are asking that question and the answers may not be to your liking. I struggle that I even have to ask that question, but one must in today’s America. A demagogue rules America by fiat and edict. Two reports offer a snap shot of the health of America’s democracy. You be the judge.
This past November the Charles F. Kettering Foundation published a report on Americans attitudes towards democracy. This report was done in conjunction with Gallup, a respected polling organization.
Their conclusion was, that overall, Americans were committed to democracy, but with clearly defined differences in how one’s age defines how one perceives democracy as an ideal and how one’s economic circumstances impact perceptions of democracy’s effectiveness in solving problems.
If you are over 65 democracy is super. A robust 80 percent are strongly committed to democracy. If you are under 29 not so much. Only about 53 percent say that democracy is the best form of government. Economics also played a role in how one perceived democracy is performing. If you are ‘living comfortably’ about a third gave democracy a thumbs up. Those who say it is ‘very difficult to get by’ only 12 percent give democracy a thumbs up. For those that ‘feel disconnected from their communities’ or question their status in society are likely to question democracy’s ‘value and performance.’
In another report recently released, researchers at a Swedish University published a report on the global health of democracy. Their tenth annual report. According to the V-DEM Institute website, the report is an analysis of “….the largest global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025. The report involves over four thousand scholars and other country experts and measures over 600 different attributes of democracy.” Go to the this link to read the report: https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf)
It does not look good for the world, much less the United States. Devoting an entire section of the annual report, the authors addressed democratic backsliding in the United States. They conclude that the United States is no longer a liberal (small l liberal) democracy, primarily because of the unprecedented and rapid concentration and accumulation of power in the presidency and the dismantling of our constitutional checks and balances. I think they are right. They also conclude that America’s fall from democracy to autocracy was done in record time. Faster than both Turkey’s and Hungary’s slip into the autocratic abyss. In a rank ordered list of 179 countries for strength of democratic values and norms, America has slipped to 51st. Yeah, make America great again.
So, it appears most Americans still believe in the great experiment called democracy, but, paradoxically, a majority do not believe democracy is working in America.
Given the K-shaped economy, where wealth inequality continues to grow rapidly in America, it is no surprise that Americans tend to be skeptical of democracy, but strangely unskeptical of unrestrained capitalism. Democracy doesn’t make one unequal, capitalism does. One should not conflate an economic system (capitalism) with a political system (democracy). That’s not to say, however, that they are mutually exclusive; one should try to understand them as interacting spheres of power. Our democratic decline is a reflection of America’s broken political economy.
The Kettering Foundation report does to some extent explain why many Americans, it seems, are indifferent to the collapse of American democracy. The V-DEM institute report shows the result of that indifference in hard numbers, at least at the federal level.
Where are we then as a country? And where do we go from here?
At a federal level, yes, I think we are no longer a democracy. Our system has collapsed. Trump’s war in Iran is an example of our spectacular fall from a constitutional system of checks and balances to complete and utter deference to Trump by Congress. Only an absolute monarch takes their country to war without consulting the people. That is exactly what Trump did, and Congress cowered like the spineless shits they are.
The courts are still functioning as defined but has no ability to enforce its decisions. These court decisions are theoretically enforced by the executive department, a department that in many instances has given the Court’s the middle finger. As such, Trump’s threat to take over the mid-term elections and challenge the results should be taken at full face value.
At the state level, at least in Virginia, we still are a democracy. Some states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida are authoritarian regimes, by my estimates. Wrecking the barriers that separate church and state, restricting women’s rights, demanding schools teach white heritage and not real history, imposing voting barriers such as a de facto poll taxes (getting a passport for instance, which costs a couple hundred dollars), restricting and banning books, to list a few.
The question then becomes not only about democracy, but whether our social contract as a united country can survive, or is it in terminal decline? Is it possible for America to remain a federation of united states, some liberal democracies while others theocratic autocracies? A king like president punishing states and rewarding others?
Fundamentally, and I acknowledge this, our perceived health of our democracy seems to be defined by where one is standing in the political spectrum. Some think Trump hasn’t gone far enough while others think he is gone way to far; many others just want to pay for gas and feed their family. It’s complex, it’s fluid, it’s uncertain. Our crisis of democracy, I think is a crisis of identity. It’s about whose America this is and whether democracy is the solution, or as some argue, the problem?
