It’s Chief Justice Roberts’ chance to be apolitical and impartial: Democrats need to make him do it

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Joan McCarter

Senate Republicans are making it very clear: the John Bolton bombshell that Donald Trump personally told him he was withholding congressionally mandated funds for Ukraine for his own political gain is nothing new. They knew it all already and it doesn't make a difference, so what? So there's no reason at all they need to hear directly from Bolton.

There's one person though, that shouldn't be thinking "so what": Chief Justice John Roberts. After all, he is the chief justice of the United States. He is supposed to be the one guy ultimately in charge of the rule of law for the whole land. He, as law professors Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer and former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards argue, is the one person who could go over the Republicans' heads and order subpoenas from Bolton or any other witness who should testify. That's if Roberts doesn't want to go down in history as the chief justice who presided over the biggest sham of an impeachment trial for the most criminal president the nation's ever had. House impeachment managers need to put him to that test.

It's pretty simple. The House managers, Rep. Adam Schiff and team, can ask Roberts to issue the subpoenas. The lawyers explain that the impeachment rules in effect "specifically provide for the subpoenas of witnesses, going so far in Rule XXIV as to outline the specific language a subpoena must use—the 'form of subpoena to be issued on the application of the managers of the impeachment, or of the party impeached, or of his counsel.'" Furthermore, the rules provide that "the chief justice, as presiding officer, has the 'power to make and issue, by himself,' subpoenas." It would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to overturn his decision to subpoena witnesses or documents. Republicans don't have 67 votes.

So far, Roberts has simply sat in the presiding chair and done nothing except to respond to Susan Collins' vapors and tell both sides to be nice to each other. That's just the way he wants it, undoubtedly. But he has a job, one the framers of the Constitution laid out clearly.

"The framers' wisdom in giving this responsibility to a member of the judiciary expected to be apolitical and impartial has never been clearer," write Katyal, Geltzer, and Edwards. The House managers need to make him do that job.

Cartoon: G.O.P. jury duty

Posted on January 24, 2020 by BrianMcFadden

Mitch’s shady late night impeachment shenanigans should clue people in to the G.O.P.’s project to undermine democracy, but if the last twenty years haven’t, I don’t know what will.

Four Supreme Court justices give Trump a big gift, punt on hearing Obamacare case

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Joan McCarter

In case anyone is wondering if Chief Justice John Roberts will be assisting in having a fair and transparent impeachment trial of Donald Trump, look to what just happened at the Supreme Court on behalf of Trump: The justices denied a request by House Democrats and Democratic state attorneys general to expedite the Affordable Care Act case, a denial Trump's Department of Justice requested. It takes four justices to deny consideration of a case, and while we don’t know who those four were, it's a pretty safe bet that they looked to Roberts for guidance, if indeed he wasn't leading the conservatives in this.

They could still grant a hearing later in the year, and hear the case in the fall, when they could withhold a decision until next year, well after the election. Don't forget: Trump has argued that the entire law needs to be struck down on the specious grounds that the individual mandate penalty in the law was zeroed out by his tax scam of 2017. The Trump case has been panned by legal scholars left and right, but the extremely partisan Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed with an even more partisan federal district court judge that the mandate was unconstitutional. The 5th Circuit, however, played its own bit of politics in remanding the case to that judge to consider what parts of the law might still stand. Since that judge, Reed O'Connor, already ruled once that the entire law should be tossed, it's not going to be a huge surprise when he decides he was right all along.

But that will likely be months away, now that we're actually in an election year and no Republican wants to rely on Trump to come up with a replacement plan for Obamacare. That's exactly what he'd have to do, and they all know it. Health care is going to be one of the major issues—if not the issue—of the 2020 election. This case is still going to loom over it, with or without a Supreme Court decision, because Trump is arguing that the entire law be tossed. That includes protections for 130 million people with pre-existing conditions. It includes coverage for people up to age 26 on their parents’ plans. It includes no limits on what insurance has to cover in a person’s lifetime in the event of a medical catastrophe. It includes affordable premiums for millions of people who were previously uninsured. And it includes the Medicaid expansion that's covered more millions.

But for now, the denial of consideration takes the worst of the pressure off of Trump, which seems to be what Roberts and crew want most. So don't expect any heroics from Roberts on behalf of the country and Constitution during this impeachment trial.