July 6, 2024
Fifty years
after Nixon was driven out of the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed
with the Watergate war criminal that presidents can commit any crime they want.
“When the
president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Richard Nixon told his
British television interviewer David Frost in 1977. Nixon was referring to the
notorious Huston Plan, a 1970 scheme to crush the Black liberation and anti-war
movements.
On July 1, six
Supreme Court “justices”–three of whom were appointed by Trump–declared that
presidents can’t be prosecuted for their “official acts.” This includes Trump’s
illegal conspiracy that tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which
he lost by 7 million votes.
The whole world
saw Trump inciting a mob on Jan. 6, 2021, to attack the Capitol, where Congress
was conducting the official tally of the Electoral College votes. For 3 hours
and 19 minutes, troops were kept from rescuing members of Congress and allowing
the electoral vote count to continue.
Among those who
held back assistance was Gen. Charles Flynn, whose brother–retired General Mike
Flynn–was Trump’s first national security advisor.
According to
then Vice President Mike Pence, himself a vicious reactionary, Trump ordered
Pence to toss out the electoral votes of states that Trump lost. Pence even
feared being kidnapped by members of the Secret Service.
These “official
acts”–really dangerous crimes–were proclaimed exempt from prosecution by six
enemies of poor and working people in black robes. These “Supreme” judges
should be considered co-conspirators of Trump.
If presidential
actions are untouchable, why did President Gerald Ford pardon the disgraced
Richard Nixon?
Responding to
this awful ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the president is now a
king above the law.” Sotomayor was joined in her scathing dissent by two other
women Supreme Court judges, Ketanji Onyika Brown and Elena Kagan.
“When the
president uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning,
he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” wrote Sotomayor.
Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a
political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune.
Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Abolish the
Supreme Court!
This horrible
decision, written by so-called Chief Justice John Roberts, shouldn’t surprise
anybody. The communist leader and labor organizer Vince Copeland described the
Supreme Court as the most undemocratic feature of the federal government in
“Market Elections: How Democracy Serves the Rich.”
Its members are
appointed by the president, confirmed by the U.S. House of Lords–also known as
the Senate–and can serve for life, like a pope. Two years ago, a majority of
the Court outlawed reproductive rights.
In the 1857 Dred
Scott case, Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Black people “had no rights
that the white man was bound to respect.” It took a civil war to repudiate
Taney.
In its 1896
Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, the high court upheld segregation, a decision that
was the law of the land for 58 years.
The Supreme
Court has thrown out state laws banning child labor and blessed injunctions
against strikes. Countless legal lynchings were given the green light,
including the execution of Troy Davis in 2011.
In the 2013
Shelby v. Holder decision, Roberts and four other Supreme Court judges gutted
the Voting Rights Act. This spit on those who were beaten in 1965 by George
Wallace’s state troopers in Selma, Alabama.
The Selma march
forced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which wouldn’t have been
necessary if the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been enforced.
In 2022, the
Court declared that the right to abortion no longer exists.
John Roberts
succeeded super bigot William Rehnquist as Chief Justice. Roberts had also
clerked for Rehnquist.
Rehnquist was a
racist thug who tried to stop Black and Mexican people from voting in Phoenix
in the early 1960s. In 2000, Rehnquist led a Supreme Court that split 5-4 to
stop the vote counting in Florida and make George W. Bush president.
The July 1
decision protecting Trump follows a long series of “sovereign immunity” cases
in which the Supreme Court has thrown out lawsuits against city and state
governments. These cases often involved police brutality and killings.
Free Leonard
Peltier!
Genocide Joe
Biden, whose bombs are killing thousands in Gaza, also denounced the Supreme
Court’s decision.
Mr. President,
if you are so interested in justice, why don’t you pardon 79-year-old Leonard
Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement? The political prisoner, who
has been imprisoned for 48 years, has just been denied parole.
The Supreme
Court has just confirmed what revolutionary socialists and communists have
always said: the United States is a dictatorship of the rich. Whoever is
elected president in November, poor and working people will have to struggle.
Only an upsurge
of the working class and oppressed people can stop Biden’s war against
Palestine and all the Trumps.
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