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The O. Zone: Why we need more on Israel, SCOTUS reform from Harris at DNC
Nearly eight years ago on this site, I asked young voters to “think about [Donald] Trump picking the next Supreme Court justice, who will likely be the deciding factor in whether [President Barack] Obama’s Clean Power Plan is ultimately adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”
I was asking millennials not to throw their votes away on a third-party green candidate the way such misguided activism arguably kept climate leader Al Gore out of the White House in 2000. Turns out I came up woefully short in terms of the level of alarmism necessary for the moment.
Trump, a little over a month after I wrote that column, beat Hillary Clinton in the antiquated Electoral College while losing the popular vote. His two biggest accomplishments in four tumultuous years in the White House wound up being massive tax cuts for billionaires and the confirmation of no fewer than three radical, right-wing Supreme Court justices.
Those Trump justices – rightly dubbed his “kangaroo Supreme Court” by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin at the Democratic National Convention on Monday – did indeed torpedo the EPA’s ability to regulate the worst impacts of climate change via the Clean Power Plan. But they also gutted five decades of precedence that allowed women to exercise their own reproductive rights.
And to further cement the crushing, anti-environment agenda of Trump’s court, funded by his billionaire industrialist buddies – the same ones flying right-wing justices around on their private planes – they went on to crap on the Clean Water Act and undercut the power of scientific experts in government.
But if Gen Z voters now think that no more damage can be done and it’s OK to vote third-party or sit this one out because of President Joe Biden’s military backing of Israel as its right-wing coalition government disproportionately kills thousands of Palestinians with American bombs in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, young voters are kidding themselves again.
Things can get a whole lot worse if Trump, an unapologetic backer of religious extremists here at home and around the world – but especially in Israel and the Middle East — returns to the White House. Just check out his Project 2025 plan, drafted by Trump’s administration stooges, to further gut environmental regulations, round up migrants and control women and minorities.
Watch the Centre for Climate Reporting takedown of Trump toady Russell Vought, who, despite Trump’s repeated and obviously spurious attempts to distance himself from the fascist playbook, confirms the former president’s full backing.
I wrote this on Nov. 15, 2016, after Trump beat Clinton: “So, this may be what it felt like to live in Bavaria during the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in the 1920s, if not Berlin in the 1930s when Adolf Hitler abolished all opposition, consolidated the power of the Nazi Party and took over as chancellor, riding a wave of extreme nationalism and antisemitism to the dictatorship of a Depression-wracked nation.”
Project 2025 confirms that I was in no way being hyperbolic, and Trump himself has promised be a dictator on day 1 and to terminate the constitution. Trump managed to wreck decades of environmental and healthcare law, while simultaneously sucking up to murderous dictators, and his court is by no means done stripping away our basic freedoms and empowering criminal presidents to essentially act with absolute impunity. Laugh at the “Mass Deportation Now” signs at last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee at your own peril.
In two days of watching the inspirational DNC in Chicago, the two things I have not heard enough of, and hopefully will over the next two days, is meaningful discussion of Biden’s plan for Supreme Court reform and substantive talk about not just a ceasefire in Gaza but also a recalculation of military support for a regime that likely is committing war crimes there.
Biden deserves enormous credit for getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan – an undeclared war that went on way too long and arguably should never have been engaged at the scale it was in the wake of 9/11 given the architect of those attacks was found and killed in Pakistan. Similarly, Israel has obviously way overreacted to the horrific attack by Hamas with its actions in Gaza.
I hope that Vice President Kamala Harris takes those concerns seriously here in the U.S., because blind support for Israel should not include the anti-democratic, right-wing regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. As I wrote on the recent 80th anniversary of D-Day: “The real enemy on both sides is religious extremism and the anti-democratic, authoritarian forces at play in both Israel and surrounding Arab nations. It is possible to be both anti-Netanyahu and anti-Hamas without being either anti-Palestinian or antisemitic.”
Biden, whom I called on to step down four days before he did so, also deserves enormous credit for the ambitious agenda he got passed with razor-thin margins in Congress, including the largest investment of any nation ever in climate-change mitigation and infrastructure. His standing up of NATO when Russia attacked Ukraine was brilliant, and I sincerely hope he stays on in an elder-statesmen, advisory capacity for Harris and the nation if she’s able to defeat Trump.
I also hope Harris takes Biden’s Supreme Court reforms and runs with them, even expands on them to include not just enforceable ethics rules and term limits but also possible court expansion.
A Harris for President July 29 email blast on SCOTUS reform gives me some hope:
“In the course of our Nation’s history, trust in the Supreme Court of the United States has been critical to achieving equal justice under law. President Biden and I strongly believe that the American people must have confidence in the Supreme Court. Yet today, there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent.
“That is why President Biden and I are calling on Congress to pass important reforms – from imposing term limits for Justices’ active service, to requiring Justices to comply with binding ethics rules just like every other federal judge. And finally, in our democracy, no one should be above the law. So we must also ensure that no former President has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House. These popular reforms will help to restore confidence in the Court, strengthen our democracy, and ensure no one is above the law.”
I want to hear more of that over the next two days of the DNC. Our future as a pluralistic, multi-religious democracy hangs in the balance.
Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams.
David O. Williams
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