Six Supreme Court judges declare the U.S. a dictatorship

Fifty years after Nixon was driven out of the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the Watergate war criminal that presidents can commit any crime they want.

“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Richard Nixon told his British television interviewer David Frost in 1977. Nixon was referring to the notorious Huston Plan, a 1970 scheme to crush the Black liberation and anti-war movements.

On July 1, six Supreme Court “justices” — three of whom were appointed by Trump — declared that presidents can’t be prosecuted for their “official acts.” This includes Trump’s illegal conspiracy that tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost by 7 million votes.

The whole world saw Trump inciting a mob on Jan. 6, 2021, to attack the Capitol, where Congress was conducting the official tally of the Electoral College votes. For 3 hours and 19 minutes, troops were kept from rescuing members of Congress and allowing the electoral vote count to continue.

Among those who held back assistance was Gen. Charles Flynn, whose brother — retired General Mike Flynn — was Trump’s first national security advisor.

According to then Vice President Mike Pence, himself a vicious reactionary, Trump ordered Pence to toss out the electoral votes of states that Trump lost. Pence even feared being kidnapped by members of the Secret Service.

These “official acts” — really dangerous crimes — were proclaimed exempt from prosecution by six enemies of poor and working people in black robes. These “Supreme” judges should be considered co-conspirators of Trump.

If presidential actions are untouchable, why did President Gerald Ford pardon the disgraced Richard Nixon?

Responding to this awful ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the president is now a king above the law.” Sotomayor was joined in her scathing dissent by two other women Supreme Court judges, Ketanji Onyika Brown and Elena Kagan.

“When the president uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” wrote Sotomayor.

“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.” 

Abolish the Supreme Court!

This horrible decision, written by so-called Chief Justice John Roberts, shouldn’t surprise anybody. The communist leader and labor organizer Vince Copeland described the Supreme Court as the most undemocratic feature of the federal government in “Market Elections: How Democracy Serves the Rich.”

Its members are appointed by the president, confirmed by the U.S. House of Lords — also known as the Senate — and can serve for life, like a pope. Two years ago, a majority of the Court outlawed reproductive rights.

In the 1857 Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Black people “had no rights that the white man was bound to respect.” It took a civil war to repudiate Taney.

In its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, the high court upheld segregation, a decision that was the law of the land for 58 years.

The Supreme Court has thrown out state laws banning child labor and blessed injunctions against strikes. Countless legal lynchings were given the green light, including the execution of Troy Davis in 2011.

In the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, Roberts and four other Supreme Court judges gutted the Voting Rights Act. This spit on those who were beaten in 1965 by George Wallace’s state troopers in Selma, Alabama.

The Selma march forced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which wouldn’t have been necessary if the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been enforced.

In 2022, the Court declared that the right to abortion no longer exists.

John Roberts succeeded super bigot William Rehnquist as Chief Justice. Roberts had also clerked for Rehnquist.

Rehnquist was a racist thug who tried to stop Black and Mexican people from voting in Phoenix in the early 1960s. In 2000, Rehnquist led a Supreme Court that split 5-4 to stop the vote counting in Florida and make George W. Bush president.

The July 1 decision protecting Trump follows a long series of “sovereign immunity” cases in which the Supreme Court has thrown out lawsuits against city and state governments. These cases often involved police brutality and killings.

Free Leonard Peltier!

Genocide Joe Biden, whose bombs are killing thousands in Gaza, also denounced the Supreme Court’s decision.

Mr. President, if you are so interested in justice, why don’t you pardon 79-year-old Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement? The political prisoner, who has been imprisoned for 48 years, has just been denied parole.

The Supreme Court has just confirmed what revolutionary socialists and communists have always said: the United States is a dictatorship of the rich. Whoever is elected president in November, poor and working people will have to struggle.

Only an upsurge of the working class and oppressed people can stop Biden’s war against Palestine and all the Trumps.