David G. Savage | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ended its term divided into partisan blocs, with the Republican appointees ruling in favor of former President Trump’s claim of immunity while the three Democratic appointees voiced a bitter dissent.

It’s exactly the result many critics of the court might have expected, with politics driving the law. It’s also what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has tried hard to avoid—at least most of the time.

For much of this year, Roberts and the justices succeeded in defusing partisan splits with narrow or procedural rulings.

By a 9-0 vote, they threw out a Texas lawsuit seeking to block millions of American women from obtaining abortion pills. They denied gun rights to people who are under a domestic violence restraining order in a 8-1 decision.

But the chief justice did not seek to bridge the partisan divide in the case of Trump vs. United States. He passed up the chance for a narrow, consensus ruling offered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett that could have won over the court’s liberals.

A former Notre Dame law professor,

Barrett saw no need for a broad ruling on presidential immunity in Trump’s case.

“Properly conceived, the president’s constitutional protection from prosecution is narrow,” she wrote in a concurring opinion. “The Constitution does not insulate presidents from criminal liability for official acts.”

Yes, the president cannot be prosecuted for the exercise of his “core” constitutional powers, she said, agreeing with the conservative majority on that point.

But she said the indictment before the court focused on Trump’s effort overturn his election defeat by, for example, encouraging Republican state legislators to create false slates of electors claiming that Trump, not Biden, won in their state.

This is “private conduct,” Barrett said. “The president has no authority over state legislatures,” and the Constitution offers Trump “no protection from prosecution of acts taken in a private capacity.”

That was just the kind of middle-ground position that Roberts usually seeks. Instead, he dismissed it.

The court must uphold “enduring principles” involving the “separation of powers and the future of our Republic…We cannot afford to fixate exclusively, or even primarily, on present exigencies,” he said, referring to the case before the court.

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It wasn’t the first time Barrett split with Roberts this year in a high-profile case involving Trump. One week ago, Barrett disagreed with Roberts and said she would have upheld the obstruction charges against the Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 of 2021. She said Roberts did “textual backflips” to ignore what the law said.

Why did Roberts and the four conservatives on his right insist on a broad ruling on presidential immunity?

Unlike Barrett, all five have worked in Washington in Republican administrations and are attuned to how politics drives most investigations that involve presidents and their administrations.

Roberts and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh worked as White House lawyers for Republican presidents.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was in high school when his mother, Anne Gorsuch, was forced to resign as President Reagan’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. House Democrats had voted to hold her in contempt for refusing to turn over documents at the behest of the White House involving hazardous waste dumps.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. came to the court after tough confirmation hearings where they clashed with then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) More recently, they have been steady targets of Democrats for their undisclosed vacation trips paid for by billionaires. They were the most likely to vote for Trump’s broad claim of immunity.

Many Republicans, not just Trump’s supporters, saw the prosecutions of the former president through a political lens. Never before, they said, had a former president from one party been indicted for crimes by the administration of the party that replaced him.

Moreover, the Trump case took shape in the past year as the former president prepared to run against the Democratic president who ousted him.

In November 2022, Trump announced he would seek the presidency again. Biden said he too would run. Biden’s Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland then appointed Jack Smith, a hard-charging prosecutor, as a special counsel to pursue the investigation of Trump for his actions following the 2020 election.

Last August, Smith indicted Trump for conspiring to overturn his election loss, and he sought a fast-track jury trial for early this year. He also indicted Trump in Florida for mishandling secret and highly classified documents.

Meanwhile in New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, indicted Trump on 34 felony counts for false booking keeping entries intended to hide payments to a porn star. New York’s state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, sought and won a $355 million civil penalty against Trump for allegedly inflating his assets. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, indicted Trump and 18 others on state racketeering charges involving the 2020 election.

Democrats and progressive groups cheered the indictments as signs that Trump was finally being held to account in the courts for his misdeeds. They were not prepared for what happened when Trump’s case reached the Supreme Court.

In early December, the special counsel petitioned the justices to take up Trump’s claims immediately. It is of “imperative public importance” the case move promptly toward a trial, he said. Two weeks later, his appeal was turned down without comment.

In February, the U.S. appeals court in Washington said the case may move forward, but the Supreme Court put it on hold and scheduled arguments for the end of April on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity.

Those arguments and this week’s opinion made clear that Roberts and the conservative justices saw the issue through an entirely different prism than the liberals and Democrats.

“No president has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office,” Roberts said. Responding to the fierce dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, he said she was engaged in “fear mongering” which ignores the “more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself, with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors.” He foresaw “the enfeebling of the presidency” and “a cycle of factional strife.”

Roberts concluded by noting the newly declared immunity for presidents “applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.”

Which poses the greater danger to the nation: a president who can break the law knowing he is forever shielded from prosecution or a presidents under constant threat that they may face prosecution after leaving office by partisan opponents?

Georgetown law professor Irv Gornstein, director of its Supreme Court Institute, said that question explains much about the outcome.

“If you think that tit-for-tat prosecution of ex-presidents poses a greater risk to the presidency and democracy than Trump, you probably think that presumptive immunity for all official acts makes sense,” he said. “But if you think that Trump is the greater threat, as many Americans almost certainly do, you probably think the court cares more about Trump and his reelection prospects than it does about democracy and the rule of law.”

“When a sizable portion of the public has already lost confidence in the court, that is something the court ought to worry about,” he added.

Many critics on the left said the chief justice had made a colossal error of judgment that will overshadow his career.

Quinta Jurecic and Ben Wittes, writing in the Lawfare blog, called it a “decision of surpassing recklessness in dangerous times.”

The “court majority may flatter itself that it’s staying out of politics. But this is a fairy tale the justices are telling themselves—if they are, in fact, telling themselves this pleasant little tale,” the pair said. “In fact, they are handing a powerful immunity to an adjudged felon who may be about to assume the executive power of the United States.”

Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, a top Justice Department attorney under President George W. Bush, said in response that it will not be clear for some time whether the court made the right call. But he said the Democratic lawyers made a mistake by relying on the courts to stop Trump.

“It has been a fantasy for many years now to think that courts and prosecutors can purge the nation of a law-defiant populist demagogue,” he said. “Only politics, not law, can do that.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Michelle Baruchman and Caleb Groves | (TNS) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ATLANTA — Since the presidential debate in Atlanta last Thursday, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have faced a barrage of criticism about their performance.

For Biden, it’s been framed around his age, with polls showing many voters consider him too old to serve another term. For Trump, his responses led some to consider him too dangerous to retake command.

The focus on the candidates’ personalities and defects have meant that key topics important to voters in Georgia have flown under the radar.

After Patrick Delisle, a 55-year-old physical therapist from Cherokee County, watched the televised debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, he said neither candidate addressed some of the biggest issues he’s worried about, such as the economy and immigration.

“Both candidates, in my opinion, didn’t really answer questions a lot of times, but what did you expect from these two guys?” Delisle said.

Here are the issues that ranked highest in importance to Georgia voters, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll published ahead of the debate:

Inflation/cost of living

By far, the issues that reigned supreme on voters’ minds are those discussed at the kitchen table: gas prices, paying for groceries, housing. More than one-quarter of respondents, 26%, said inflation and cost of living will have the largest impact on their vote in November. The issue also ranked as the top concern when cutting across demographic lines, such as race, gender, age and income level.

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation rose globally. But since recovery efforts began, the U.S. has seen its inflation figures reduced as compared with other developed countries. Still, many voters believe their dollar is not going as far as it used to.

“I used to be able to save a ton more money,” said Carly Loggins, a 23-year-old real estate agent from Athens. “I’m not able to save hardly anything now. I just live paycheck to paycheck.”

Economy/jobs

Concern about the nation’s economy and growth of jobs was also high on the list, with 16% ranking it their chief priority, despite data suggesting the economy is improving.

It can feel like whiplash to get a fair picture of the economy. On one hand, the unemployment rate is at an all-time low; Georgia added 9,200 jobs in May alone, a better-than-average record. The nation’s stock indexes — while volatile at times — have reached record highs during the Biden administration.

But on the other, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in an effort to fight against inflation, increasing the cost of borrowing.

Preserving democracy

Aside from pocketbook worries, 15% of voters in the AJC poll said they’re concerned about “preserving democracy” in the upcoming election. About 1 in 5 voters who are 65 years or older listed it as the most important issue. But there is a partisan divide: 25% of Democrats said it was their top priority, compared with 4% of Republicans.

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In Georgia and in the District of Columbia, Trump faces criminal charges involving his efforts to overturn the election results in 2020. He’s also charged in Florida with mishandling classified documents after he left office. That’s on top of his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a New York trial stemming from payments his campaign made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

In the debate, Trump said the prosecutions against him are politically motivated. He also declined responsibility for his supporters breaching the U.S. Capitol while Congress counted electoral votes in hopes of reversing his reelection defeat.

But all the cases against Trump are in some jeopardy. The U.S. Supreme Court released a ruling Monday that held presidents are partially immune from prosecution.

Karen Williams, who lives in DeKalb County, said preserving voter rights was her top issue this election.

“I am very, very focused on the preservation of democracy and the preservation of freedom,” Williams said. “The Biden-Harris administration personifies that. The opposing candidate, not so much.”

Immigration

Whether it was health care, jobs or the opioid epidemic, the conversation throughout the debate seemed to drift back toward immigration. It’s an issue that resonates with Georgia voters: 13% listed it as their primary concern in the AJC poll.

Jake Shanahan, a 77-year-old retiree from Sandy Springs, said he has been disappointed in Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You look at the news, and he says it’s secure,” Shanahan said. “It’s obvious that, if what’s on TV is true, it’s not secure. I think he should take action to correct that.”

That issue, however, varied across demographic lines. Just over 1% of Black respondents said it was their highest concern, compared with 17% of white respondents. And along party lines, 24% of Republicans said immigration was their main focus, compared with 4% of Democrats.

Under the Biden presidency, unlawful border crossings have reached historic highs, although they dropped to a three-year low in June. His administration has expanded some pathways to come to the U.S. legally, including protections for unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens.

Meanwhile, when asked whether he would deport people who are in the country illegally, including those who are married to citizens, have jobs or have been in the U.S. for decades, Trump said: “We have to get a lot of these people out. We have to get them out fast.”

Abortion

Georgia was mentioned almost instantly during the presidential debate, with Biden highlighting the state’s abortion law that bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant.

It’s a subject that has remained on voters’ minds, with 8% of voters in the AJC poll indicating abortion would determine their presidential preference. Among age groups, abortion was the biggest concern for those between 18 and 29 years old, at 14%. It also ranked as a higher concern for women (12%) than men, (2%).

Shana Williams, a 39-year-old health care worker from Decatur, said neither candidate at Thursday’s debate addressed issues in a nuanced way. But she sided with Biden’s stance on abortion.

“I think that it’s each person’s right to choose. For example, I was on birth control when I got pregnant,” Williams said. “Some people think, ‘Oh, you’re getting an abortion because you’re irresponsible; just practice safe sex.’ That’s not necessarily the case.”

Trump took credit for the three U.S. Supreme Court justices he nominated who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed a nationwide right to abortion. The decision striking down Roe allowed states to set their own restrictions.

Staff writers Lautaro Grinspan, Zachary Hansen, Michael E. Kanell, Mark Niesse, Maya T. Prabhu, J. Scott Trubey and David Wickert contributed to this article.

©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.