Presidential racism, Impeachment and the Clinton's retreat

 

Gordon L. Weil

Racism

President Trump is responsible for posts from the White House on his Truth Social. 

He has lowered communications on his site to the level of the street.  The presidency has been stripped of the respect it needs and deserves.

A racist post from the White House about former President Obama and his wife Michelle was uploaded to Truth Social.  Trump has refused any responsibility for it and would not apologize to the Obamas and the American public.

He allowed his in-house propagandist to excuse the post, then supported her obvious lie.  He insults our intelligence.

Both the post and his reaction are evidence that Trump is a racist. 

No rational person, much less a national leader, would allow such a post and refuse to apologize for it.  That raises the question of whether Trump can be considered a rational person.  

BTW, scientific theory, based on DNA, suggests that we may all descend from an African female, known as “mitochondrial eve.”    

Impeachment vote

Impeaching federal officials requires a majority of the House of Representatives.  If the Democrats take control of the House after this November’s elections, they might impeach Trump for a third time.  That goes a long way to explaining his efforts to maintain GOP House control.

If he were impeached, the Senate would almost certainly be unable to muster the two-thirds needed to convict him.  That would not deter Democrats who could seek to embarrass him, while forcing him to focus attention on his trial rather than on new initiatives.

For a person so clearly concerned about how others see him, a third impeachment would assure him a negative verdict in presidential history.  That could appeal to frustrated Democrats.

The outcome would also further devalue impeachment, which is fast becoming nothing more than a symbolic vote of no confidence in the president.   While impeachment may become part of the political woodwork, it will end up changing little.  With almost no possibility of the conviction of any president, perhaps politicizing impeachment is its best use.

Court delays

The Supreme Court has moved quickly to issue procedural orders allowing Trump to pursue many of his disputed actions until it renders final decisions.  The president gets months of leeway to act before there’s any risk that the Court will halt some of his policies.  Meanwhile, the district courts keep issuing adverse decisions for later Supreme Court review.

Trump’s use of emergency powers to justify raising tariffs has already been rejected in two courts’ detailed rulings. During a hearing, Supreme Court justices questioned his use of the law. 

But the Court has not issued its decision, allowing the tariffs to apply.   While there’s a broad expectation that the Court will rule against the president, its delay defies explanation.  It is undoubtedly giving Trump more time to prepare fallback measures if he loses.

The Court’s excuse might be that it has so many major cases that its decision-making must obviously slow down.   If so, that makes the case for enlarging the Court.

Years ago, the Court made 200 decisions a year.  Now, it barely reaches 70 rulings.  With more justices it could dole out the work to more hands.  It should then be possible to work somewhat faster.

Enlargement does not require court packing.  Instead, as I have previously proposed, Congress could create temporary slots.  Justices would be added to the usual nine and could move from a temporary seat to a permanent place as older justices left the Court.  This would be a temporary solution that could be made permanent after its effect was tested.

Temporary slots have been used for the Supreme Court and courts of appeal.  Right now, they are being used for federal district courts.

Clintons decide to testify

Bill and Hilary Clinton declined to testify before the House committee looking at the Epstein revelations.  As a result, the Republican-dominated committee geared up to find them in contempt of Congress.

Congress has no prosecutorial powers, so its contempt finding would go to the Justice Department for action.   Congress might score political points, believing that the Justice Department would not proceed to prosecution.

But with Trump allies controlling Congress and Trump himself directing the Justice Department, the Clintons could envisage being formally charged with contempt, leading to a trial.  So, they decided to head for cover by withdrawing their refusal to testify. 

Their decision reflected the political reality of dealing with a system dominated by your political opponent.  Trump is dedicated to partisanship, retribution and the destruction of his presidential predecessors.  His loyal, if unprincipled, appointees cater to his wishes.

In the end, as many others in the Epstein files may be finding, it may be better to accept a short-term hit to your political reputation than to face conviction of guilt by association – or worse. 

 

“Woke” may be here to stay, but Trump tries to roll back history

 

Gordon L. Weil

Donald Trump opposes “woke.” 

The dictionary says that “woke” is a word coined by African Americans to make themselves and others aware of social injustice and the need to deal with it.  Trump disagrees with that goal.

Diversity, equality and inclusion – DEI - recognizes that institutions have discriminated against women and non-whites.  He believes DEI now reserves job slots for them as unjustified compensation.

People who see themselves as displaced by DEI question the entire effort, claiming it rewards identity and not merit.  Rather than assuring that DEI should provide equal opportunity without setting aside preferential slots, they argue that DEI simply must go.  Trump agrees and leads the movement to stamp it out.  

But the notion of “woke” does not stop there for him.    It is obviously his view that the term “woke” is the same as “politically correct.”  That term embodies liberal positions that are justified and politically popular, but are not accepted by those whose vested interests may be affected.

For almost a century, in their responses to the Great Depression and the Second World War, the United States and Europe turned toward policies using the government to provide social and financial support to minorities and less fortunate people.  Environmental concerns and international cooperation to reduce conflict became parts of this evolution.

At its core Trump’s concept of “Make America Great Again” focuses on a return to values and practices that existed a century ago.  They are inaccurately labeled as “socialism,” because of the increased role of government. 

The practices and standards adopted in democracies, even including the opening of political participation to women and minorities, are thought to be the “woke” work of elites seeking control and are targeted for removal.

An automatic assumption is that leadership positions occupied by women or Blacks were attained by DEI and not by merit.  Upon taking office, Trump fired the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Black, and the heads of the Navy and Coast Guard, both women.  The new military chief, a white man, seems to have been selected based on his nickname, “Raising Kaine.”

When it comes to race and the nation’s struggles for equality, Trump minimizes slavery and the historic political and economic bias against Black people.  Elemental truths of American history are minimized or erased if they might provide a basis for policies to ensure equal opportunity.  Racial supremacists have emerged in fervent support of Trump’s effort.

As a result, the war on “woke” extends to changing exhibits at national parks and museums to minimize mentions of slavery and racism.  It penalizes academic institutions for offering places to members of groups who had previously been denied access.   It suppresses voting by members of minority groups who are denied representation.

But it goes much further.   Policies that are aimed at environmental improvement, especially air quality, are rejected.  The use of polluting coal for power generation and heating was being phased out until Trump’s undertook to keep it in business.  

Mileage standards for cars are weakened, and support for renewable energy is eliminated. Wind power is opposed by presidential whim.

Quitting the Paris agreement on environmental goals, the U.S. has isolated itself from the body of world opinion trying to reduce global warming.  Trump calls climate change a “hoax.”   Just as he has tried to rewrite American history, he attempts, by this unsubstantiated claim, to repeal scientific findings and the real experience of billions of people.

His war on the conventional wisdom of the world goes even further.  Disillusioned by the shortcomings of the United Nations, he prefers to weaken its ability to resolve conflicts.  Instead of trying to make it work, he lauds his own attempts to force peace settlements by using American political and military power.

His attitude toward the U.N. reflects his disdain for international cooperation.  He has made clear that the U.S., the essential pillar of the Western alliance, is uncomfortable with its commitment to NATO.  Though from a different starting point, he is becoming the ally of Russia’s Putin in promoting its decline.

He goes even further in aligning himself with Putin by opposing the EU.   Though formed with U.S. support to make new European wars impossible, Trump ignores that history and is only able to see European unification in trade terms, as a plot against the U.S.  Neither Trump nor Putin wants a strong rival in Europe, so, in essence, the EU becomes “woke.”

Rejecting history may appeal to MAGA supporters who believe they have lost influence and power.  But Trump’s efforts to repeal progress are likely to fail, because change is inevitable, even if he dislikes it.  As shown by the growing political opposition to his ending healthcare subsidies, most people are becoming accustomed to being “woke.”

Supreme Court revives its worst decision

 

Gordon L. Weil

 

The worst decision ever made by the U.S. Supreme Court was its 1857 ruling in the Dred Scott case.

The Court has just issued an obvious offspring of that decision. 

In Dred Scott, the Court majority decided that African residents, brought to the country as slaves or their descendants, were not citizens, even if they were free, because the founders of the U.S. had not considered them to be eligible for citizenship.  The decision said:

We think ... that they [Black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

This was racist originalism.  Africans were not citizens when the country was created, the Court found, and thus could not later be citizens.  In fact, the Constitution guarantees the rights of “persons” not only “citizens.”

There were two dissents.  One noted that African Americans were citizens and voted in five states when the U.S. was created under the Articles of Confederation.   Some states had ended slavery.   Thus, the majority was flat wrong.  The second dissenter found that U.S. federal law, which recognized that Blacks could be citizens, prevailed over a contrary Missouri statute.

Despite the passage of the Civil War constitutional amendments, many African Americans were denied their civil and voting rights until the 1960s.  The 1965 Voting Rights Act provided that the federal government could ensure states did not block full Black suffrage and could require federal advance approval of changes affecting minority voting in some locations.

The legacy of the Civil War was redeemed by this legislation.  But the current Supreme Court eliminated federal pre-approval of voting changes on the grounds that racial discrimination no longer exists.   It now appears poised to eliminate federal power over states to prevent discrimination, leaving it to the courts to deal with electoral bias case-by-case.

Because the Republican margin in the House of Representatives is extremely narrow, President Trump urged states under GOP control to modify district boundaries, usually done after the census every 10 years, to increase Republican majority districts before the 2026 elections.   His Department of Justice found the current Texas districts discriminate and sought change.

Texas redistricted to add five GOP seats.  Its action was challenged on the grounds that the redistricting was both partisan and intentionally discriminatory.   The Texas GOP replied that redistricting was purely for partisan purposes, which is legal, and to meet DOJ requirements.

A U.S. district court ruled that the redistricting was discriminatory.  In redrawing the lines, Texas intentionally reduced the possibility of seats going to Blacks.    To reach this conclusion, the court had conducted nine days of hearings, received testimony from 23 witnesses and collected thousands of exhibits.   It produced a record of more than 3,000 pages.

The Supreme Court is supposed to defer to the factual judgment of district courts unless they are clearly unreasonable.  Justice Elena Kagan, a dissenter, said that the district court’s work had been rejected over a single holiday weekend.  The majority simply overruled the district court, apparently ignoring its extensive record, and believed Texas.

The Court’s majority criticized the district court for not having shown deference to the Texas Legislature.  It also said the lower court should have produced an alternative map, accepting without questioning the DOJ claim that the current map was discriminatory.

This ruling may forecast the upcoming decision on federal review of state districting.  It is almost certain to strip the Voting Rights Act of any federal powers to prevent discrimination.  It will become an unenforceable law, possibly left only to individuals who believe they have suffered racial discrimination.

The Court majority asks people to believe that discrimination does not exist or is so rare that federal protection of voting rights is no longer necessary.   This finding must overcome any evidence that Blacks suffer from official bias, because they are black.  It must rely on the fact that most Blacks vote Democratic and color-blind partisan redistricting is legal.

The Civil War and the Voting Rights Act may have forced the country to allow Blacks to vote, but they did not prevent those in power from making Black votes meaningless.  The Court echoes Dred Scott’s message that they have “no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

 

 

Trump -- racist or opportunist?

Gordon L. Weil

Terry Moran, an ABC correspondent, recently wrote on his social media site that Stephen Miller, a Trump aide, is a “world class hater.”   What’s worse, he made a similar comment about President Trump.  That got him fired by ABC, which is going to great lengths to placate Trump.  Also, reporters should not express their personal views of people they cover.

Are Trump and his administration racist, sexist, or antisemitic, degrading some groups to favor the preferred club of white men?  In one form or another, this charge has been made against Trump ever since he began running in 2015.

One easy explanation is that Trump himself is not racist, but that he sends signals to biased voters that he sympathizes with them to gain their political support.  His attitude may encourage more open prejudice against Blacks, women, Jews and others.   But Trump usually avoids saying the wrong thing.

With one truly major error.  When he equated virulent, antisemitic rioters in Charlottesville with peaceful demonstrators, (“good people on both sides”), he either unmasked innate racism or carried too far his exploitation of the understated racism of his backers.

It Trump is not a racist, he would rank as an opportunist.  He exploits other people’s prejudice. He attacks anybody, and has his own distinctive style of discrimination when it comes to people he regards as an inferior opponent or a “loser.”   

The signal that he dismisses you comes when he gives you a demeaning nickname.  Clashing over the handling of the L.A. riots, Trump labelled California Gov. Gavin Newsom as “Gov. New Scum.”  Not only is this unacceptable in civil society, but such childish name-calling by a bully is yet another sign of what looks like a fifth-grader’s mentality.

After nationally recognized events revealed institutional racism, official agencies undertook programs to encourage diversity, inclusion and equity.  DEI became a way of ensuring that minorities that had been subject to discrimination would be encouraged to enter the mainstream life of the country.

This awareness of embedded racial discrimination came to be called “woke.” It applied to efforts to ensure and promote open access to equal treatment. 

But it went beyond open access to provide what looked to some like preferential access to jobs and other opportunities.  In such cases, it seemed to focus on their situation above the needs of most average people.  This gave rise to understandable opposition to woke, notably by the president.

Trump quickly exploited the concerns of those who saw woke as favoritism.  He asserts that, by recruiting minorities and women who have historically been the victims of discrimination, government has hired and promoted people of inadequate merit or competence.  If something goes wrong, he can blame it on incompetent DEI recipients.

Using federal funding flows, he punishes non-governmental entities, especially universities, for their DEI policies or alleged antisemitism.  The best way of rejecting DEI is to swiftly remove from positions of power anybody who is the member of a group that may have benefitted from equal access, regardless of their competence.

But even that is not enough.  Not all the history of a country is exemplary.  Slavery and Jim Crow racism in the U.S. is a matter of fact.  The exclusion of women from their rightful place in the professions and public life is also beyond debate.  Yet, Trump’s anti-woke policy demands rewriting history to downplay past injustice, reopening old wounds.

If Trump is not a racist, he has given racism and its supporters aid and comfort and allowed them to become more public without embarrassment.  He has undone decades of progress toward a more equal society and reversed it. If not done out of conviction, it is done for political gain.

He has also tried to distort and exploit discrimination.  The Gaza conflict raised strong opposition to Israel’s extreme measures in its over-retaliation for the horrendous and despicable Hamas attack.  Its actions, including starvation, seem aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the area.

Trump charges people with being antisemitic if they show sympathy for innocent Palestinians, who themselves have lived under Hamas control.  Opposition to Israeli official policy toward innocent Palestinians amounts to antisemitism.  When an incident occurs, he sharply criticizes the anti-Jewish attackers, but shows no sympathy for the Jewish victims.

If we are to believe that the U.S. is better off now resulting from the war against DEI, ask those who have suffered.

Do Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and women feel more comfortable in Trump’s supposedly merit-based society than they did before he returned to office?  

Can universities, heavily punished for the excessive outbursts of a few students, continue to produce world-class research? 

Is the government now more competent and unbiased than before he came to office? 

Where does it end?