Wednesday Morning Rant

When it comes to finding out who is in charge in the United States, there are two ways to try to arrive at the conclusion. One is to read and understand the Constitution about where power comes from and who does what. That's pretty easy to do and not difficult to understand. There are also plenty of adjunct materials to explain it, from "Schoolhouse Rock" all the way up to postgraduate courses in major universities.

But it doesn't seem to matter much, because that is isn't how things actually work. There is a tried and true method to ascertain how things work, and that's simply to look around. How does something happen. Who says yes or no? Who gets listened to - grudgingly or not - when he says yes or no? Regardless of what's written down where and how things technically work, you can always just see how things unfold to find out who is in charge.

Headlines help to tell the story.

CNN, January 9, 2025: READ: Supreme Court ruling allowing Trump to be sentenced on Friday
Associated Press, February 21, 2025: The Supreme Court won’t allow Trump to immediately fire head of whistleblower office
Reuters, February 27, 2025: US Supreme Court allows Trump's freeze of foreign aid funding temporarily
Associated Press, March 04, 2025: Trump increasingly asks the Supreme Court to overrule judges blocking key parts of his agenda
PBS News, March 05, 2025: Divided Supreme Court upholds order requiring Trump administration to release $2 billion in foreign aid
Reuters, March 28, 2025: Trump asks US Supreme Court to intervene in deportations fight
LA Times, April 08, 2025: Supreme Court OKs Trump’s mass firing of new federal workers, blocking S.F. judge’s rehire order
Associated Press, April 09, 2025: Supreme Court allows Trump to deport Venezuelans under Alien Enemies Act, after judges’ review
The New Yorker, April 15, 2025: Will the Supreme Court Stop Donald Trump?
Associated Press, April 17, 2025: Supreme Court keeps hold on Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship but sets May arguments
New York Times, April 22, 2025: Justices Seem Set to Allow Opt-Outs From L.G.B.T.Q. Stories in Schools
ABC News, May 05, 2025: Supreme Court allows Trump to implement transgender military service ban for now

"Supreme Court Allows." "Supreme Court won't allow." "Trump asks Supreme Court." "Will the Supreme Court?" There's a trend coming hot and heavy this year, isn't there? But lest you think this is distinctly a Trump thing, it does of course precede him. For example, on the topic of firearms. "Supreme Court expands gun rights, with nation divided" and "Supreme Court allows the carrying of firearms in public in major victory for gun rights groups," are headlines from a few years ago. For as long as most can remember, members of the government - elected, or (in a whole 'nother problem) unelected - make rules and the Supreme Court decides whether those rules are real or not.

The rest of the government does whatever it does, and the Supreme Court decides whatever the hell it pleases. Justified or not, based in law or not, Constitutional or not, the Supreme Court chooses what happens. You go hat in hand to the Court to beg permission, to beg for approval, to beg for disapproval. They listen to the river of supplicants and rule the land from their bench. It has long been this way, but what has changed in the Trump 2.0 era is how much the tone and word choice have shifted.

They used to couch it in different language. "Supreme Court upholds" or "Supreme court considers" or "Supreme Court reverses" used to carry the day. Nobody is pretending any longer. Now it's been distilled to its essence. "Supreme court allows" and "Supreme Court forbids." Go beg the Court for what you want. The shift has been as subtle as a brick through the window and now it's out in the open in headline after headline.

Throw away your Constitution and your law books and your treatises on the theory of American Government. None of them matter. All of them are fiction. We are ruled from the Bench, and the Bench does whatever it pleases.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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