A Shameless Stooge -- What Trump Looks For in a Judge

 

Remember when that old comedian Mitch McConnell voted against convicting Trump for his January 6 coup attempt and explained his vote as logical, because there was no need for Congress to act: "We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one." We didn't know that was a laugh-line. We know it now.

In July of 2024, Chief Justice John Roberts, in his notorious "presidential immunity" ruling, declared that a president, any president, enjoys “absolute” or “qualified” immunity from criminal prosecution for any action taken in his “official” capacity. An appellate judge who heard the immunity argument ahead of the Supreme Court summed up the Trump position with a hypothetical: Absolute immunity means that Trump could well avoid criminal consequences for using SEAL Team Six to murder opponents. 

The Roberts Court swallowed that hypothetical like a guppy.

Roberts and the other court conservatives guaranteed our current constitutional crisis: Trump won. He's indulging himself with power-grabs and entrepreneurial corruption, secure in the assurance that he will never face criminal accountability. (Goddamn! What a country to pull that off!) As Justice Sotomayor put it in her dissent, the Court made the president into a "king above the law.” 

So far the balance of judges who've ruled on Trump 2.0 have not been stooges. Quit the contrary. There are courageous men and women wearing the robes, and we have historically respected their independence (if cussing them sometimes/always anyway), and thanked Gawd that the judiciary was there to protect us from tyranny.

But of course the district court judges are only the bottom rung of the judicial ladder, and we know it always ends with Roberts and his conservatives. They've already proven themselves stooges. Will they stooge again?

To bluff and bluster and keep those and other judges in line, Trump has called for impeachment (with maybe hanging thrown in) of federal judges who rule against him. His mean girl spokesblond proclaims that judges are usurping the powers and prerogatives of the popularly elected president, essentially unleashing the dogs to harass, to stalk, to hunt. Trump dares to skirt. Is there any doubt that he's lied and defied the court in that abduction case of immigrants with tattoos? This is a constitutional crisis of the highest order. Will the system hold? Will the Roberts Court repent?

There's a General Election coming up. Time is actually short. Just eight months to find Democratic candidates at all levels. The filing period for '26 candidates in both parties is the first two weeks of December 2025.