Political expert George Will breaks down what he calls "profound constitutional rebuke" that the Trump White House suffered just before the holiday season.
Revising his "own judicial history," having ruled in favor of Trump's power overreaches in the past, which Will dismisses as legalized "thuggery" by Trump. Will feels it is extraordinary that Justice Kavanaugh reverses himself from a polar opposite decision by Kavanaugh just a few months earlier.
Kavanaugh, Will feels, seems determined to distance himself from the same machinery which he himself helped to build. He feels that Kavanaugh now expressed his "newfound clarity as if it were ancient wisdom."
Will then sums it up, suggesting that the Trump White House, which feels entitled to be all-powerful with their incessant, relentless power grabs, were handed a stunning and sobering Supreme Court loss. They had to end 2025 "not with a coronation of executive power, but with a rebuke" before adding that the "significance here cannot be overstated."
The Court, Will says, delivered what quite possibly might be the most consequential opinion of this second Trump era. Will says, "They have shattered the presumption that the president's invocation of an emergency acts as a solvent upon the rule of law."
Trump announced recently that he was withdrawing National Guard forces from American cities, although he claimed that they would be back if crime escalates. In fact, he failed to mention that he was forced to withdraw, because the Supreme Court deemed these actions, and the exaggerated response to constant , manufactured fake emergencies unconstitutional.
Let's hope that this might be a permanent trend. We shall see.
Of course, this is surely not over. After all, Will reminds us, the Trump administration does have what he describes as "one final draconian instrument." That would be the Insurrection Act.
However, they have avoided it to this point. Most likely, Will states, this is because they recognize that "the political price of deploying the American military against American citizens would be ruinous. Yet, should they choose to cross that Rubicon, the Supreme Court has now made it abundantly clear that a legal confrontation will ensure. The court has refused to prejudge whether domestic military policing violates the Posse Comitatus Act. ensuring that any such move remains legally perilous."
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court's recent turn against Trump is not a full and total rebuke of his administration's relentless grab for power. Rather, Will points out, it is more like permission for what some might refer to as "authoritarianism light." Yes, the Supreme Court seems to be saying that Trump can grab more power than any president before him. However, Will points out, they "drawn a line in the sand against the full dissolution of the constitutional order."
So it is a triumph of sorts, preserving some measure of our traditional democracy. It's not what it was before Trump, of course. But it also does not give him carte blanche to literally become the full-fledged dictator that he seems to want to be. Thank goodness for small favors, eh?
Still, if there as ever an administration that has shown a willingness to push the envelope to the extreme, this would be the one. Maybe they will push the Insurrection Act, and maybe we will see more power grabs regardless of this Supreme Court rebuke. I doubt that such a scenario would even really be all that shocking for most people, given Trump's history.
We shall see.
Thought that this commentary was interesting and enlightening, and thus worth sharing.
Take a look:
The Supreme Court’s "Hidden Warning" to Donald Trump | George Will
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