I foresee two possible scenarios.  In one, Trump will continue to do whatever he wants.  Although his margin of victory was very narrow, he still proclaims that he “won big.”  This hubris has been compounded by the Supreme Court’s outrageous decision that a president is immune from prosecution for any acts performed while in office.  (The founding fathers would have denounced this decision, since they did not want “another king,” but rather that “law be the king,” as Thomas Paine wrote.)  Trump will continue to use Elon Musk to eliminate departments he wants gone and to fire whomever he wishes.  He will ignore court opinions condemning his actions.  So far, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate have completely supported him.   If this success continues, Trump may well serve a third term, as he has said he wants.  The rule of law will be overthrown as will the Constitution.  The United States of America will become a true dictatorship, with the army gunning down those who disagree with the government.  Police forces will act the same way.  The goal is to “Make America Great Again,” as the MAGA forces proclaim.  This means eliminating women, Blacks, gays, etc. from all public life and authority.  White men, especially old white men, will rule.  Recently, to give just one horrible example among many, Ira Hayes, one of the two soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima in the famous 1945 photograph, has been purged from the government website because he is Native American.

     However, I don’t think all this tyrannical success is a likely scenario.  Right now, members of Congress are on leave, going home to face their constituents.  There is already tremendous opposition to their and Trump’s corrupt and self-serving policies.  These politicians have been denounced and booed.  Some refuse to hold meetings or insist that all those who oppose them are Democrats.

     I don’t think these tactics are going to succeed.  Too many well-established and supported groups oppose them, from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to Indivisible, to people who oppose making abortion illegal.  To give just one example, states outlawing abortion have seen doctors and businesses leave their states and increasing numbers of women proclaiming their injuries.  I believe that opposition to dictatorial, high-handed policies is growing.  Recently, courts have ruled that the government can’t just ship immigrants to Central America, expel anyone who supports Palestinian rights, or deny funds for health care and research to both government bodies and universities.  As Trump’s government continues its outrageous policies, I believe that this opposition will grow. 

     Much rests inevitably on the Supreme Court.  Chief Justice Roberts just proclaimed that Trump’s desire to impeach the judge who ruled against his policy on immigrants is wrong.  The only legitimate way to change this decision is to go through the courts.  Will Americans support overturning our entire judicial system?  I don’t think so.

     Of course I might be wrong.  As a historian, this era reminds me most of the United States just before the Civil War.  Then, a large minority of the nation opposed basic liberties and rights.  It took a bloody war to stop them.  I don’t think this struggle will come to war in our own day.  Here’s hoping I’m correct.

In October of 2022, shortly after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, replacing it with the Dobbs Decision, I sat on a Brooklyn College panel  called “Abortion, the Supreme Court, and Really Bad History.”  I joined two colleagues, one from History, the other an anthropologist, to decry the decision.  Roe relied on a woman’s right to privacy; Dobbs gave states the power to regulate abortion.  (If you’d like to hear it, it’s on my website, bonnieanderson.com, under Videos.)  I discussed conditions when abortion was illegal, which the Court never mentioned.  About 1,000 American women died each year from illegal abortions and hospitals established Septic Abortion Wards to treat those with major infections from the practice.  As many feminists have remarked, making abortion illegal does not do away with abortions, it just does away with safe abortions.

     Instead the majority of the Court both cited every anti-abortion law ever passed and embraced “originalism,” a doctrine which maintains that what was originally in the Constitution should prevail.  This strikes me as ludicrous.  Women are not mentioned in the Constitution; do we not exist?  Slavery was countenanced in the Constitution, should that still exist?  The U.S. Constitution contains both the power to amend and Article 9 of the Bill of Rights which holds that if not mentioned “all other rights are retained by the people.”   These clauses prove that holding to the original document goes against its original authors’ beliefs.

     In addition, the current Supreme Court opposed a standard legal doctrine: “stare decisis,” “to stand by things decided.”  This precept holds that a long-maintained law should be upheld except under extraordinary circumstances.  One such circumstance occurred in 1954, when the Supreme Court overturned its previous decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, which legalized segregation in 1896, with Brown v. Board of Education, which ended it in the schools.  The current Court declared that ending Roe was a similar decision.  But it wasn’t.  The vote in Brown was unanimous; that in Dobbs was not.  Brown widened civil rights; Dobbs curtailed them.  In addition, the majority justices argued that they were not overturning stare decisis, but just “reinterpreting” it.  In his opinion, Justice Alito cited Matthew Hale, a seventeenth-century jurist considered misogynist in his own day.  In addition to condemning abortion, which in common law had always been legal before “quickening,” i.e. when the embryo moved inside the womb, Hale defended burning women as witches.  In his opinion, Justice Thomas also advocated ending same-sex marriage and contraception, but not interracial marriage, since he is a black man married to a white woman.

     What about today?  Generally, judges recuse themselves from sitting on cases in which they have a personal interest.  Thomas’s wife, Ginni, has strongly advocated and worked for the election overthrow of Jan. 6, 2021.  Thomas has often stated that he and his wife are “one person.”  The U.S. flag hung upside down – a symbol of Jan. 6 – for a number of days outside Judge Alito’s residence.  The Pine Tree flag, with its slogan, “Appeal To Heaven,” flew outside his summer home for a while.  Alito has argued that his wife “likes to fly flags,” and puts the blame on her and a neighbor who supposedly antagonized her.  Thomas also separates himself from his wife’s actions.  Both have refused to recuse themselves from imminent cases dealing with Jan. 6.  Chief Justice Roberts, who originally declared that his position was that of “umpire,” has refused to intervene.  But what would an umpire do if one team flew the flag of its opponent?

     Can anything be done?  Traditionally, Congress can override the Court.  But this Congress is so divided that that cannot happen now.  However, there is another remedy, which Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative from Maryland, has recommended.  He recently wrote that “The Constitution, and the federal laws under it, is the ‘supreme law of the land,’ and the recusal statute explicitly treats Supreme Court justices like other judges: ‘Any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.’” The only justices in the federal judiciary are the ones on the Supreme Court.  So the other justices could compel Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves.

     However, this is also unlikely.  What is needed is a decisive Democratic victory in November.  I’m hoping for a trifecta –- the Democrats winning the presidency, the senate, and the house.  At this time, the nation has split on the issue of abortion.  All the Southern states have banned it.  Most of the Northern states have not.  Remind you of anything?  These divisions over states’ rights preceded and helped to bring about the Civil War.  In this case, I don’t think there will be a Civil War.  Instead, I deeply believe that the Dobbs decision will insure a Democratic victory in 2024.