42 And In With The New

Readers of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” know that the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” is 42. It’s also the number that removed residual doubt that the radical right members of our Supreme Court have taken that body far beyond claims of “legislating from the bench” that conservatives liked to toss at more liberal courts, and about which they’ve gone mute.

Title 42 is the policy imposed during Trump’s “presidency” which suspended the legal asylum system at the height of the pandemic. It allowed expelling seekers without a hearing, to mitigate, purportedly, the spread of the virus. We won’t argue the effectiveness of Title 42; certainly won’t disagree that our asylum and immigration policies need fixing. But, because the CDC had ended various other protective requirements as the pandemic wound down, and because the legislative language justifying 42 was specific about the pandemic, the Biden administration, via the CDC, ordered its end.

Border states objected, and took it to court; not arguing pandemic protection: immigration issues. Correctly noting it was no longer being used as written, a US District Court agreed it should expire. On appeal, the Supreme Court, 5-4, ordered the policy continued; not bothering to pretend their decision had anything to do with the pandemic. Saying, in effect, if Congress won’t fix immigration, we will. Which isn’t the Court’s job, even if Congress won’t do its. That’s where the Court is headed: enrobed, autocratic law-making. But it provided an undeniably clever lead-in to this column. We agree on that.

If there’s no likely-to-happen recourse to the Court’s anti-Constitutional authoritarianism, there is to the coming legislative dysfunction, inevitable under Republican control in the House of Representatives. Namely, after witnessing their predictably kangaroid, non-stop “investigations” and non-start useful legislation, voting them out. If their uselessness isn’t obvious after two years of nothing but performative inaction, well... let’s not think about that.

Head of the RNC, Ronna “What-middle-name?” McDaniel says their first priority ought to be Hunter Biden’s laptop. Because what else is that important? Maybe they’d start with whether it even exists and, if so, how Rudy got it. But, to Ms. McDaniel’s disappointment, that won’t be number one. Per the caucus of their craziest, to whom the term “far right” is wrongly applied, because they’re anything but conservative, “accountability” means pursuing every Q-anon hallucination they hold dear.

But there’ll be no accountability for themselves: their published legislative intentions include gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics, to which the J6 Committee had referred Jim Jordan and others for ignoring subpoenas, and which would, if truth mattered, expel mega-liar George Santos, who was welcomed, instead, with partially open arms.

Serious accountability would start with the derelict manner in which Trump and the man he went to, Jared, handled the pandemic. “Absolutely not” was Kushner’s response when asked by Dr. Deborah Birx if Biden’s transition team should be read into Trump’s pandemic responses. This we’ve learned from a recent tranche of documentation released by the J6 Committee. It tells us everything about the MAGA mindset: no concern for the well-being of the American people as long as they achieve power and vengeance, and score political points for themselves. Willingness, if acting would give the other side a win, to accept deaths. And not only from Covid: poverty, back-alley abortion, forced birth, lack of healthcare, pollution, climate change.

There’s an excellent argument to be made – it has been – that their deliberate downplaying of and lying about Covid-19 fulfills a legal definition of criminality. Homicide, even. So says Glenn Kirshner, former federal prosecutor.

There are, however, several less controversial crimes, easier to convict, committed by the former “president.” The definition of “clear cut,” those secret government documents he stole and lied about top the list. And Trump’s finally-released tax forms show how brazenly he’d lied about them: that he was under audit (like the rest of his corrupt top-level appointees, his IRS head ignored the law – in this case, requiring annual tax audits of presidents); that he’d given millions to charity and paid millions in taxes; and (no tax expert, I) the many questionable deductions he’d claimed, including, brazenly, the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.

It’ll be a challenging couple of years, as the DOJ and state prosecutors in New York and Georgia decide about charging Trump for his cornucopia of crime, while House Republicans do everything they can to distract from it. Including, if the crazy caucus has its way, defunding the FBI and DOJ. They’ve already accomplished something, though: getting rid of metal detectors at the Capitol. When Joe shows up for the SOTU, they’ll be packing.