It is one of the great ironies of the American government that the Senate is one of the least democratic institutions in the country. This has become increasingly the case as the filibuster, which is an old racist tool that was ostensibly implemented in order to encourage bipartisanship, has instead become a way to thwart the majority. Even more significantly, as blue states become more populous and red states become less populous, people in red states are increasingly over-represented. For example, the fewer than six hundred thousand people who live in Wyoming have the same representation as the almost 40 million people in California.
Similarly, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has become the most anti-Constitutional institution in this country’s. The corrupt, illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court, under the auspices of Chief Justice John Roberts, continues its onslaught against the separation of powers and the co-equal branches of government in an effort to create an imperial presidency or a Unitarian executive. The evidence strongly suggests that the goal is to make Donald Trump so powerful that he’s beyond the reach of Congress or, indeed, of the judiciary.
Much like the Republicans in Congress, the corrupt, legitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court is ceding its power to Donald and the executive branch he leads. It’s gobsmacking and I wonder what the goal is here. Because we know none of this would be happening if a Democrat were in power. Maybe bought-and-paid for Republican justices finally saw their opportunity with a weak feckless Republican party willing to go along.
I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a legal scholar of any kind. I’m certainly not a constitutional scholar, so I’m just coming at this as a layperson. While the corrupt, illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court is bending over backwards to give more and more power to Donald, while they seem content to put this one man above the law, despite his vast criminality, do they not see what’s going on in the meantime?
Do they not see that the Trump regime is systematically dismantling the American government as we know it? It is systematically going after what used to be, what we used to stand for, the rights, like the right to due process, that we used to have. And yet it seems almost every day we get more evidence that this corrupt, illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court is not done giving Donald and the Executive branch yet more power.
On Friday, those justices gave the go-ahead for the executive branch to decision not to cancel out money Congress had already appropriated. That’s illegal and unconstitutional, entirely contrary to the Impoundment Control Act which prohibits such executive infringements on Congressional power. According to a shadow docket ruling, which the corrupt, illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court did not have the guts to sign, they do not see it that way.
Of course, the liberal minority disagreed. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “In a few weeks time, when we return to our regular docket, we’ll decide cases of far less import with far more process and reflection.” She went on to explain, as if such a thing should be necessary, that in government of co-equal branches, no one branch always gets its way. The branches work together or against each other, they can be in tension or in in harmony, depending on what is at stake. But what the corrupt, illegitimate super-majority did with this ruling was a desecration of the separation of powers.
A president’s displeasure with a decision made by Congress— that is within Congress’s constitutional right to make—is, Kagan continued, “part of the price of living under a Constitution that gives Congress the power to make spending decisions through the enactment of enactment of appropriations laws. It is merely a frustration of any president must bear.”
Not anymore, according to the corrupt, illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court. Not anymore. They want Donald Trump to have all the power. They want Congress to be weakened to the point of uselessness. They even want the judiciary to be merely an accomplice to executive overreach. They still have tremendous power, but it is in service to undermining our founding document, the one they of all people are supposed to defend and uphold.
That’s how far down this particular slippery slope we are.
Let’s dive in.
Good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of Mary Trump Live. It is great to be here with you.
There is a lot going on today, considering it’s just Monday. Donald met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two released a so-called plan to end the war in Gaza which is something neither one of them has any interest in doing.
As usual, Donald spent a lot of time bragging about his fictional accomplishments. He sucked up to Netanyahu and, because he can’t help himself, made a complete fool of himself. He claimed that peace is on the horizon.
Things that have been going on for hundreds of years and thousands of years. We’re going to at least, we’re at a minimum very, very close and I think we’re beyond very close, and I want to thank Bibi for really getting in there and doing a job. We’ve worked well together as we have with many other countries, both of us with many other countries, which is the only way this whole situation gets solved. And I’m not just talking about Gaza. Gaza is one thing, but we’re talking about much beyond Gaza, the whole deal, everything getting solved. It’s called peace in the Middle East.
Yes, we are beyond close, whatever that means and it’s going to be the whole deal, whatever that means. But he doesn’t need to explain himself, does he? We’ve been here before: Donald claims we’re “this close” to peace, and then Netanyahu turns around and unleashes more attacks in Gaza.
Netanyahu has no respect for Donald just as Putin does not. And Netanyahu isn’t interested in compromise any more than Putin is. They both see Donald as a useful idiot and are willing to play along if he gives them what they want, as long Donald is giving them what they want.
Donald then went on to make absolutely ridiculous claims about starting an international oversight committee. He would, reluctantly, agree to be in charge of this entity because he commands the respect of all of the world leaders:
My plan calls for the creation of a new international oversight body, the Board of Peace. We call it the Board of Peace—sort of a beautiful name, the Board of Peace-which will be headed, not at my request, believe me, I’m very busy; but we have to make sure this works. The leaders of the Arab world and Israel and everybody involved asked me to do this. So it’d be headed by a gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump of the United States. That’s what I want some extra work to do, but it’s so important that I’m willing to do it and it’ll be quite the board working. Everybody wants to be on it now. I don’t know if that had anything to do. They named me and everybody else wanted to be on it. I guess they figured, well, he’s a soft touch. He’ll be easy to deal with.
He’ll be easy to manipulate. And not doubt he’ll have to cut down on his golf time. I have no idea what the point of this thing “Board of Peace” is. Perhaps it’s just another way to suck up to Donald without actually conceding anything. He’s so thirsty and so deluded that he actually thinks this means something.
In much more important news, a government shutdown, which would be entirely the responsibility of Donald and the Republican Party is looming, but Donald doesn’t seem to care and I have some questions about that.
But first, let’s talk about this impending shutdown. Part of the reason this is happening is because Donald doesn’t understand how the Senate or the filibuster work. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate. There are 45 Democrats and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats—effectively, 47 Democratic votes. But there’s this pesky thing called the filibuster. In order to bring a bill to the floor for an up and down vote, 60 Senators need to vote for what is called Cloture—at which point on fifty votes are required to get the bill passed. At that point, the Republicans have all the votes they need.
We were in the exact same situation back in March. The Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats yet 10 of them, including every single democratic leader, voted with the Republicans, and got nothing in return. They voted to keep the government open so Donald and the Trump regime could continue to dismantle our agencies and the civil service; could destroy institutional memory and our standing in the world; could continue to undermine every single advance we’ve made in medical and scientific research. Well done Democrats. Well done. And here we are again: no compromises have been made and no agreements have been reached.
Republicans have given up absolutely nothing to make it worth the Democrats’ while to help them. As I have said many times, shutting this government down would be much less dangerous then allowing it to remain open.
I don’t think Donald understands this. He met with Schumer and Jeffries today and refused to make any concessions. I understand Democrats want to make sure that people keep getting their paychecks and Social Security benefits and continue to provide basic and essential services but, at what cost? Allowing the government to stay open on the Republican’s terms is to normalize all the horrors they’re committing.
A shut down will be “a shock to the system.” Why? Because that’s what Republicans want. They want to take away basic and essential services from the American people under the guise of saving money, which they will then use to fund tax cuts for corporations and the obscenely wealthy.
Despite the fact that the Republicans control every single branch of government—the executive branch, both houses of Congress, and the judiciary—they are making a pitch that somehow this is all down to the evil Democrats.
This would be an excellent opportunity for Democrats to understand that they have the power to win the messaging war because no reasonably informed person could believe that a government shutdown is the fault the party out of power. If Democrats can’t make this a winning message, if Democrats can’t use a Republican-engineered government shutdown to make that case, I think we’re in trouble.
Hopefully, Democrats will stick to their guns and stand back and watch the Republicans flail and flounder while making it very clear that the last thing they give a shit about is the well-being of the American people.
The Epstein scandal isn’t going away even though Donald is trying mightily to distract us, and the impending shut-down might be part of that attempt. Because if the government shuts down, the House won’t bring the petition to release the Epstein files to the floor for a vote.
Along those lines, Axios reported that House Democrats accused Speaker Mike Johnson of delaying the swearing in of newly-elected Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva because she would provide the 218th vote needed to pass the petition.
The Republican majority in the House is razor thin and now it’s one seat smaller. With Grijalva’s election, Thomas Massey, the Republican leading the charge to have the Epstein files released, will have enough votes.
Johnson cancelled votes this week, delaying budget negotiations as well as Grijalva’s swearing in. As Speaker of the House, Johnson is the second or third most powerful person in the United States government, and he’s abusing that power to prevent the House of Representatives from doing its job all in service to protection Donald.
NBC news reports that the Supreme Court convened for its annual long conference at which the justices sift through appeals that accumulated over the summer recess. One appeal up for review is Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn part of her 2022 conviction. Maxwell’s lawyers say Jeffrey’s Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida should have shielded Maxwell from one of her New York charges. Thus far, the DOJ has urged the court to reject this appeal saying there’s no evidence the Florida deal applied outside that district.
Maxwell is serving a 20 year sentence for three counts tied to her role in Epstein’s crimes. At the moment, the DOJ is on the right side of issue. But will Donald’s DOJ change its recommendation in order to give Maxwell a sweetheart deal in exchange for her silence? We know that in meetings with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell claimed that Donald had no involvement at all in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes as if she a reliable source of information. We’ll see how this unfolds, but if the Supreme Court agrees to take up this appeal, well, that’s another warning.
