Justice Alito’s USAID dissent is a map for Trump – Salon
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Excerpt:
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court disparaged Trump’s claim that presidents can do whatever they want, by ordering the administration to disburse $2 billion in USAID grants in compliance with lower court rulings. Although the narrow ruling has been widely applauded as at least a temporary victory for the rule of law, the victory is overshadowed by ominous signaling in the dissent.
In response to a one-paragraph ruling, Justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch wrote lengthy and strident dissents. Of the four justices, at least two are ethically compromised by their refusals to recuse from cases involving their own billionaire benefactors. Justices Alito and Thomas have also faced credible impeachment demands following their partisan embrace of Trump’s MAGA ethos.
They did not just dissent in the USAID ruling, they dissembled. They lied about both the court record and the district judge, and they drew a map to show Trump how to frustrate the case going forward.
The majority protected the legislature’s role
The Court’s 5-4 majority opinion, in which Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices to narrowly protect Congress’ power of the purse, holding that under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, since Congress had already appropriated the USAID and it was already signed into law, Trump could not legally freeze it. In other words, a president does not have the power to break, disregard or rewrite laws just because he disagrees with them.
