The Supreme Court's extremists are paving the way for Trump's dictatorship

The six far-right radicals are part of Project 2025. In fact, they were installed by the same man who's been instrumental to that blueprint for authoritarianism.

After the Supreme Court’s appalling and dangerous ruling on Donald Trump’s immunity claim yesterday, no one can say the court’s six conservatives, rather than being even remotely independent and impartial, are not deeply involved in the right-wing scheme, years in the making, to radically transform our government into a right-wing, theocratic-based, autocracy.

That much many of us have deduced for a while, but I’m not sure it was clear just how deeply the six extremists are directly in cahoots with Donald Trump, the extremists in the GOP, and those who have crafted Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 800-plus page plan, written with other far-right think tanks.

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Project 2025 spans many areas of politics, culture and American life, but the thrust of Project 2025, which Trump’s own aides and former officials helped draft, is the Unitary Executive Theory, a far-right idea that was on the fringes for years, and which gives the president enormous powers, equal to those of a monarch, not to be questioned on authority.

The court yesterday gave Trump “absolute immunity” and "presumptive immunity”—frightening terms—for any crimes, no matter how grave, committed as “official acts.”

And who decides what is an official act? The six conservatives on the court do—and only they do.

In a way, their decision wasn’t just giving more power to the president; it was giving more power to them. In remanding the case back down and ordering a hearing by Judge Chutkin, the district court judge in Washington, DC who is presiding over the January 6th case, to determine what “official acts” and “unofficial acts’ are in the case, they also wrote that anything she decides can be appealed—back to them. They will then decide if she is right, or overrule her. And that’s how it would be moving forward, for any president and any crimes in the future.

Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, which expressed alarm and “fear for our democracy,” made clear that the majority was making the president—and that means Trump if he’s elected again—”a king.” His actions in his “official” capacity cannot be questioned, and no evidence of any crime that might be deemed to have been committed in the vague “unofficial” capacity can be admitted if it comes from any meeting with aides or others, which would be considered “official” actions and thus off limits. That makes it almost impossible to prove crimes.

For the January 6th case, it means Trump’s meetings with Justice Department officials and his attempts to make a lower level DOJ official who was a plotter of the fake electors scheme his attorney general cannot be part of the evidence, nor can his meetings with Mike Pence.

For the future, it means, as Sotomayor put it:

When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. 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.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he might one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.

Leonard Leo, founder of the Federalist Society, which installed all six conservative justices via Republican presidents, a right-wing Catholic who is hell-bent on theocratic authoritarianism, “funded 60 of over 80 Project 2025 initial advisory groups, including over half the Advisory Board in 2022,“ per StoptheCoup2025.org, which has done enormous work at exposing Project 2025.

After the oral arguments in the immunity case at the Supreme Court back in April, I wrote a piece, “The conservative justices sounded a lot like Trump. Is that a coincidence?” As I observed regarding Trump’s claim that he had absolute immunity:

It could be a “chicken or egg” question: Did the conservative justices on the Supreme Court echo Donald Trump’s arguments (which he’s made for months and they’ve surely heard) on why a former president should have immunity from prosecution, or did Trump have knowledge of what they would say—which gave him the confidence to make his seemingly outlandish claims?

This was speculation, as there is no direct evidence, but it seemed as if Trump or people close to him were speaking to the justices or people close to them. Looking back now after yesterday’s decision came down mirroring Project 2025’s goals, and looking at Leo’s involvement in both Project 2025 and crafting the Supreme Court, that speculation seems even more on point. It’s hard to believe all of these players aren’t all in communication, part of the vast right-wing scheme to reshape the Constitution and support an authoritarian government.

And the decision was tailor-made not only to absolve Trump of past crimes, but to give him carte blanche to engage in what, previously, were unconstitutional actions should he win the 2024 election—and to use his power to promote brutal actions that undermine our lives.

As I noted yesterday on my radio program, there is one thing we can all do to stop this: Re-elect Joe Biden—who has made it clear he’s not dropping out of the race—and pressure him to expand the Supreme Court, something he’s not been keen on in the past.

Everyone should pressure their Democratic representatives, especially those who support court expansion, and urge them to tell the president they have his back, they will fight for him, push back against calls for him to leave the race—and that he must promise to expand the Supreme Court.

It’s time for the president to take bold action—and I was glad to see him speak last night condemning the court, but that’s just the beginning—and Democrats must pressure him now to go further and expand the court in a second term.