Time was when Labor Day was a celebratory moment in the calendar. It was the unofficial end of summer, the beginning of a new school year, and the celebration of the American Labor movement. Today, climate change has made people no longer able determine what season they are in; schools begin in some parts of the country in mid-August with school supplies being sold after July 4th; and the American Labor movement is a shell of what it once was. While employment is high and unemployment is relatively low, offices in center cities are reporting less than 50% capacity. Inflation is here and a recession is looming, although there has been some increased optimism that the economy may not be headed into the darkness that was feared when the summer began.
Meanwhile, the edginess of politics in America has become palatable. There was a time only a few years ago when the warning alerts that were sounded before Thanksgiving family dinners pertained to football rivalries and family secrets. Today everyone is warned to make sure to keep the conversation light and fluffy; talk football not politics. Today everyone is anxious about how they should speak on the telephone or body language on a zoom call for fear of insulting someone or having one’s words misinterpreted. Americans no longer tolerate alternative opinions and are unable to engage in substantive conversation about serious issues about which there are legitimate differences, fearing that someone will explode.
It is in this context that there are two political realities which have emerged over the past week that suggest how challenging politics has become. As the nation is now only 60 days away from the November mid-term election, there is an unwritten tradition that the government does not make any major decisions—including from the Justice Department--prior to the mid-terms. This theory is based on the notion that the incumbent party should not be seen as using the Government to gain an electoral advantage.
The specific relevancy of this “understanding” is that it could encumber and/or postpone further activity by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice in its pursuit and use of the documents seized by the FBI in its raid of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. While the maneuvering will resume following November 8, this is just another example of Donald Trump being treated fairly by Democrats—who respect the system, the law, and the tradition--in contradistinction to how Trump conducted himself and his Administration. (This “understanding” will not affect the activities of the January 6 Committee which is expected to hold another round of hearings in the early fall.)
Furthermore, the decision of District Judge Aileen Cannon to accept the former President’s argument that an outside legal expert (“a special master”) should be appointed to review documents seized by the FBI in their raid of Mar-a-Lago and to halt the Justice Department’s on-going investigations raises an array of legal questions. Many outside experts predict that there is real likelihood that this decision may be challenged by the Justice Department.
What is perhaps more significant is the extent to which Republicans, and in particular those supporting the legal philosophy of the Federalist Society, have taken over the federal judiciary. Just as Judge Cannon was a Trump appointee and an acknowledged long-time Federalist Society member, so too the Circuit Court of Appeals in Georgia before which a Justice Department appeal would be heard, currently has a 6-5 Republican majority. A similar challenge exists with the current 6-3 Republican tilt on the Supreme Court. To be clear, the issue is not that the Court’s members are Republicans or Democrats or appointed by Republican or Democratic Presidents—as there always have been splits in Courts--but that Court members today are more ideologically rigid and doctrinaire than ever before.
Assuming that the United States is still a functioning democratic society one hundred years from now, historians undoubtedly will look back on the first decades of the 21st Century as one of the ugliest periods in this country’s history. America has faced enormous challenges since 9/11--whose 21st anniversary will be memorialized on Sunday—but it is Donald Trump who has inspired, promoted, and perpetrated the near total rupture of American democracy. These recent events bring home the challenge that America faces as it approaches the fall equinox.
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