By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
Readers of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” know that the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” is 42. It’s also the number that removed all doubt, if it wasn’t clear after their Roe decision, that the radical right members of our Supreme Court have taken that body far beyond claims of “legislating from the bench” that conservatives liked to toss at more liberal courts.
Title 42 is the policy imposed during Trump’s “presidency” which suspended the legal asylum system at the height of the pandemic. It sped the process for expelling migrants without a hearing, to mitigate, in theory, the spread of the virus. We won’t argue the effectiveness of Title 42; certainly won’t disagree that our asylum and immigration policies need fixing. But, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had ended various other protective requirements as the pandemic wound down, and because the legislative language of 42 was specifically about the pandemic, the Biden administration, via the CDC, ordered its end. Border states objected, and took it to court; not based upon pandemic protection, but upon immigration issues.
Acknowledging it was no longer being used for pandemic purposes, a U.S. District Court allowed Title 42 to expire. On appeal, the Supreme Court, 5-4, ordered the policy continued; not bothering to pretend their decision had anything to do with the pandemic. Saying, in effect, if Congress won’t fix immigration, we will. Which isn’t the Court’s job, even if Congress is unable to do its. Legislation coming from the Sacred Six (Neil Gorsuch, to his credit, joined the dissent) is hard-right, agenda-driven arrogance with no Constitutional recourse, other than impeachment or expanding the court; neither of which is likely. It doesn’t take much thought to see where the Court is headed: black-robed, autocratic law-making. But it did provide an oh-so-clever lead-in to this column. We agree on that.
If there’s no recourse to the Court’s regressive, anti-constitutional authoritarianism, there are practical responses to the coming legislative dysfunction now that Republicans have the majority in the House of Representatives. Namely, after witnessing, for two years, the predictably awful nonstop “investigations” and nonstart actual work, finally voting them back home. If their uselessness isn’t obvious by then, well … let’s not think about that.
Head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna “No-middle-name” McDaniel, says their first priority ought to be Hunter Biden’s laptop. Because of course. Starting, maybe, with whether it exists and, if so, how Rudy got it (Snopes: tinyurl.com/laptopRudy). But that won’t be the focus. Per the craziest of their crazies (e.g., MTG, Gaetz, Boebert, Gosar, Jordan …), to whom the term “far right” ought never be applied, because they’re anything but conservative, “accountability” means pursuing every QAnon hallucination they hold dear. But no accountability for them; their published legislative agenda includes gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics, to which the Jan. 6 committee had referred Jim Jordan and others for ignoring subpoenas, and which would, if truth mattered, investigate mega-liar Rep.-elect George Santos, whom they will swear-in without a blink as soon as they can elect a speaker (Public Citizen: tinyurl.com/noethics4u).
If they really cared about accountability, they could start with the derelict manner in which Trump and the man he went to, Jared, handled the pandemic. “Absolutely not” was Kushner’s response when asked by Dr. Deborah Birx if Biden’s transition team should be read into Trump’s pandemic status. Which tells you everything about the MAGA mindset, then and now: concern only for vengeance, power and scoring political points; not a thought to the wellbeing of the American people. Willingness — and not just from covid — to see them die. There’s an excellent argument to be made — and it has been — that their deliberate downplaying and lying fulfills a legal definition of criminality. Murder, even (YouTube: tinyurl.com/crime4u).
There are, however, several less controversial crimes, easier to convict, committed by the former “president.” The secret government documents he stole and lied about top the list. And the finally-released tax forms show, at the very least, how brazenly he’d lied about them: that he was under audit; that he’d given millions to charity and paid millions in taxes; and (no tax expert, I) the many questionable deductions he’d claimed, including the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. His role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection is clear, but convincing a jury of intent beyond doubt might be tough.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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