SCOTUS Gives Trump Immunity for "Official Acts"
Does that mean Independence Day should be cancelled this year?
https://www.vvng.com/breaking-city-of-victorville-4th-of-july-fireworks-show-cancelled/
I think we might as well cancel Independence Day celebrations this year, since the current Supreme Court has dangerously put us on a path to tyranny.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress, citing the separate and equal station to which “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” declared themselves independent from the tyranny of the King of Great Britain in his idiosyncratic acts and multiple failures to respect the laws that governed the colonies.
I believe the Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election was an effort to establish tyranny and abolish democracy.
Does Trump want to be our King George as part of his “official acts”?
I cannot remember when I last read the Declaration of Independence but I just did, and I was surprised at how much of it is a lengthy list of the “repeated injuries and usurpations” by the “present King of Great Britain” especially his failures to abide by the laws of the land.
Writing for the majority of the current Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said a president “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.” Three justices strongly dissented.
Justice Sotomayor wrote, referring to the majority of the court, that their ruling “reshapes the institution of the presidency” and “makes a mockery of the principle” that “no man is above the law.” She was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”
As a nation, we have already been on shaky ground in celebrating “Independence Day” as a holiday that is about freedom. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
His words were and still are (perhaps even more so on this fateful day in 2024) an indictment of our failure to live up to the promises of freedom and independence.
I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
The nation has made some progress in making freedom and democracy available to all, but we have a long way to go.
With this ruling, the Supreme Court threatens even that modest progress.
I know I will not be celebrating Independence Day this year.