Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s latest gimmicky attack on the Supreme Court is called the “No Kings Act,” which would overturn SCOTUS’s recent immunity decision related to the prosecution of Donald Trump.
“The Founders were explicit — no man in America shall be a king. Yet, in their disastrous decision, the Supreme Court threw out centuries of precedent and anointed Trump and subsequent presidents as kings above the law,” Schumer says.
Now, I suppose, peddling some doomed law is an improvement on standing in front of the Supreme Court and threatening justices like a deranged demagogue, as Schumer did in 2020. Nevertheless, the court didn’t anoint anyone a king.
I’m skeptical of constitutionally-protected presidential immunity arguments, but the Supreme Court merely recognized “that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts that are within the ambit of their executive authority.” This position was largely upheld for a long time by the norms that Democrats blew up when they shredded due process with their trumped-up, sometimes fictitious, charges against the leading GOP presidential hopeful.
The remedy for presidential misconduct, by the way, is impeachment and removal. As much as he tries, Schumer does not have the power to dictate how the Judicial branch rules.
Here, though, is an example of how to create kings.
First, spend decades attacking the legitimacy of a court because it refuses to subscribe to the living-breathing theory of constitutional law — which is no kind of law, at all. Then, every time the court upholds limits on federal power or overturns some concocted “right,” engage in another round of hysterics to convince your constituents that democracy hangs in the balance when they don’t get their way.
Once you corrode trust in the system enough, you nullify the judiciary.
Or, just abdicate your constitutional responsibility of writing and passing legislation. Hand legislative powers to the president and an Executive Branch that is powered by massive unaccountable agencies that can write regulations without any democratic or judicial oversight.
So, for example, back in 2021, the Senate majority leader thought it would “be a good idea for President Biden to call a climate emergency.” Schumer’s colleague Jeff Merkley noted that an emergency declaration “unchains the president from waiting for Congress to act ” — which sounds semi-fascisty, considering the entire economy falls under the auspices of this fake crisis.
In other words, the leader of the world’s greatest deliberative lawmaking body was advocating that his ideological ally in the Executive Branch simply bypass Congress — which the Founders were “explicit” in tasking with the writing of laws — and declare a perpetual emergency and letting the president crow himself the climate czar. This time the title wouldn’t be figurative.
Schumer still cheers Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty for millions of non-citizens that was instituted without Congress and celebrates Biden’s unconstitutional student loan “forgiveness” diktats, which break existing contracts and transfers the responsibility of payments to taxpayers. Because Schumer’s loyalty is not to the Senate or Constitution.
Partisanship is nothing new. But once, not that long ago, senators exhibited some basic respect for the institution. That’s gone. And few people have done more to damage it than Schumer.
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