Caffeinated Politics

It was perhaps the ugliest scene yet from the second term of the Donald Trump administration. As the Supreme Court prepared to hear oral arguments in one of the most unconstitutional cases in many terms, the originator of the undermining of the 14th Amendment left the White House and sat in a front row seat, as if to stare down the Justices. It was the first time in American history that a president felt he had such an oversized role in the judicial branch.

Following the oral presentation by his Solicitor General John Sauer, Trump left surely feeling rejected, grasping his presence was not worth a tinker’s damn in the minds of the Justices.

While this court case and his behavior are a major news story today, we need to consider this matter in the larger context of a nation that saw a sizable minority buy into pure, unadulterated racism and bigotry as Trump campaigned for the Oval Office in 2024. Today, Morning Joe correctly stated that Trump would have had a more productive morning had he stayed at the White House and read the 14th Amendment. If only.

It really concerns me that Trump took this occasion to sit at the Court to hear this case. (Though it was reported he often had his eyes closed.) Why I write of my concerns is due to a grim line running across a large swath of today’s political landscape that has sharpened and been purposed for the deliberate targeting of Brown communities. The sinister policies and actions that have followed are two-pronged. First, to be used as a cudgel to attack minorities in the nation, and second, to amass and wield power. But what Trump has reaped in the wake of his hate-filled sowing of divisions to his base is a bounty of mindless fear, mean-spirited and selfish resentments, and deep cultural and partisan divisions. This is, however, a victory for those who seek authoritarianism.

While I understand how Trump stoked the fears and resentments of people in 2024, I still must sincerely ask what happened to the basic decency and grace of that segment of our nation. We watched as Trump worked to reduce Mexicans and Latinos and others in the Brown communities, proud and hard-working people, to mere caricatures as criminals, drains on social resources, and threats to ‘real America’. The hate and racist policies that followed will be viewed in the same light as how Chinese people were mistreated after the railways of the nation were constructed in the West.

Trump is using the Richard Nixon playbook of “us” vs. “them”. Nixon willfully and gleefully exploited different segments and sections of the nation for the 1968 presidential campaign. While Trump is the ultimate non-Orthogonian (Nixon’s college creation of the strivers without polished shoes who wore shirtsleeves), he is using the same style of fostering deep divisions for partisan advantage.

What we know is that Trump has no built-in limits or qualms about using hate and fear-mongering. His visit to the Court was only the latest proof of that fact. The nation knows all too well the consequences of such behavior. Brown communities face racial profiling, deportation threats, and the constant message that they do not belong.

When Trump sat in the Supreme Court and tried to use his presence to intimidate the Court and cheapen the ideal of who counts as fully American in the eyes of the law and the public, it made the average person in this nation flinch. What I can write most clearly is that the pages of history teach us a truth that emerges over the many decades. Those who weaponize hatred eventually find themselves on the wrong side of it.

But what to do in the interregnum?

First, we need to react to each and every act that seeks to dehumanize the ‘other’ in our nation. Be they Brown, transgender, or gay, etc. We must stand up at once and denounce fearmongering. In their own way, the Court will render a decision by the start of July that will alert Trump that he would have been better off to have slept late and not wasted his trip to the Court.

Second, we must always stand up and define who we are as Americans. We must always proclaim that every person belongs to the story of this country.

Third, we must demand, again, that our leaders build power through hope, not hatred.

Let what happened today at the Court be a lesson that the majority of the nation heeds as we move forward.