Reader TTS

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was supposedly asked about the chosen form of government for the new nation by a lady who encountered him in the

street, “What have we got?” The reply was, famously, “A republic — if you can keep it.” It’s still a good question; the answer in 2020 is increasingly disputed. America remains a republic,

sure, but its democratic core, its commitment to equal justice under the law, its once-laudable progress towards ensuring the rights of minorities and women, its tradition of reason and

science, and its guarantee of freedom of thought and assembly, are all under siege by the authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump and Senate Republicans. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

the Supreme Court’s most progressive justice, comes at a particularly dangerous time. Whoever replaces her will wield enormous power over what American government and American society

becomes in the 21st century. Right now, the signs are not encouraging. The US has become politically tribal: Republicans v. Democrats; Covid-19 deniers v. mask wearers; pro-police v. Black

Lives Matter; pro-life v. pro-choice; pro-gun v. pro gun control; and on and on, ad nauseam. But the division isn’t 50-50: America is governed by a minority. Donald Trump got three million

fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016, but thanks to the Electoral College, an invention of the Founding Fathers who feared direct democracy, he became president. The 47 Democrats in the

US Senate got 15 million more votes than the 53 Republicans, yet Republicans rule. Conservative Roman Catholics appointed by Republican presidents (John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence

Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh), aided by Neil Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic, then became a conservative Anglican, dominate the Supreme Court. While it’s hardly necessary that the high court

reflect the demographic or religious make-up of the country, this is astonishingly unrepresentative. If Donald Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist of appeals court judges is anything to go by,

he’s likely to appoint another Catholic right-winger, perhaps Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame University law professor or Barbara Lagoa, a Latina from Florida, a state Trump must win

if he is to prevail in November. And if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gets his way, this is the court which could decide a contested presidential election. All presidents choose

supreme court justices with an eye to their politics — it’s often called  “judicial philosophy,” which sounds more respectable. There’s no way Barack Obama would have nominated a justice

likely to overturn Roe v. Wade; Donald Trump won’t nominate anyone likely to uphold it. But senior court appointments have rarely been so nakedly self-serving as under Trump and McConnell.

The Majority Leader piously refused to even hold hearings for Obama’s choice to replace Antonin Scalia, who dropped dead in February 2016, 11 months before Americans went to the polls, on

the grounds that it was “too close” to the presidential election. McConnell has no such scruples in 2020, a mere month and half before polling day. The senate used to confirm judges by huge

bipartisan majorities: in 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed by a senate vote of 78-22; Ruth Bader Ginsburg won confirmation in 1993 by a vote of 96-3. The vote this time will be

much, much closer and entirely dependent on party politics and election strategising. Two pro-choice Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have said they

will not vote for Trump’s nominee before November 3rd, and Collins may well lose her bid for re-election, largely because of her vote for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was credibly accused

of assault by three women. All it would take to scuttle or delay Trump’s pick is for two other Republicans to join them. Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator to vote to remove Trump from

office, has declared he will support Trump’s choice. It’s possible that a couple of Republican senators in tough re-election fights could defect, but even Democrats admit their chances of

stopping Trump’s appointment are slim. The confirmation of right-wing judges has been Mitch McConnell’s mission in government. More than 400 bills addressing everything from post office

funding to Covid-19 relief to stopping foreign interference in American elections sit in limbo while Republicans put almost entirely white Christian men on the bench, in a nation that looks,

thinks, acts and worships less and less like them. A number of these new legal figures have been rated “unqualified” by the American Bar Association, or are so reactionary they would not

agree that landmark decisions such as the desegregation of American schools was a binding legal precedent, or that the Civil Rights Act was good law. The Republicans have been smart: they

know that their party is increasingly small and embattled. Only 25 per cent of Americans identify as members of the GOP. As South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said in 2012, “We are not

generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Yet by stacking the courts with judges whose allegiance is to the Never-Never America of the 1950s when white men

were manly, white women were ladies (and mothers), black people knew their place, immigrants were out of sight and out of mind, and Jesus was Lord, they hope to hang onto power as the

country becomes younger, browner, less religious, more feminist, and more tolerant. Donald Trump could lose this election yet all his ugly traits, from white supremacy to xenophobia to

science denial could enrobe America in a debilitating miasma for decades. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a champion for the rights of women, from equal pay to control of one’s own body. She was the

first woman to be tenured at Columbia University School of Law, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project, the second woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

As a lawyer, she litigated and won cases that enabled women to sit on juries for the first time, to get credit cards in their own names, to receive the same benefits as men when serving in

the military and equal pay for equal work. The woman who takes her place will have a completely different, in many ways opposite, world view, yet given that Trump’s top candidates are all

under 55, will have benefitted from the rights Ginsburg helped win for them. It won’t make any difference: this is what the American Right has been waiting for, the opportunity to create an

enduring 6-3 conservative majority on the high court, a chance to outlaw abortion, destroy Barack Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act, roll back environmental regulations, reverse protection

for LGBTQ citizens, immigrants and minorities, and kick down the wall between Church and State. Even if Donald Trump isn’t re-elected — maybe especially if he isn’t re-elected — the Right

will have ensured that it has ultimate control in the interpretation of the law. Presidents come and presidents go, but Supreme Court rulings shape the country for generations.