Brett Kavanaugh is the least of America&apos;s worries - Chicago Tribune
Brett Kavanaugh is the least of America's worries
Many of us are terrified that President Donald Trump gets to (likely successfully) put another justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Is Judge Brett Kavanaugh pro-choice? How does he feel about guns? The environment? Corporate power? Privacy?
At the cocktail parties I go to, where irked gay men wonder whether their marriages will be annulled, many people are missing a larger, more troubling Trump maneuver that's not unlike what's happening in Poland right now.
When certain components of its nationalist, right-wing agenda were blocked by Polish courts in 2005 and 2007, Poland's Law and Justice Party went back to the drawing board. Now re-elected, it passed laws that pushed those judges out. Once its leaders appoint their own judges, they can do what they want.
Trump wants to do whatever he wants as well. Nothing else matters, forget laws. Federal judges rule the government must reunite children, he doesn't care. He bullies people who get in his way, and if he can, he fires them. He's even talked about pardoning himself.
Rules and regulations (read: checks and balances) get in the way of progress, Trump and his Polish counterparts feel. And they can sell it: Our Electoral College system aside, millions of people vote for politicians who approach leadership this way, precisely after decades of listening to well-financed elected officials bicker instead of fixing things like rising rent, dirty water, old subway systems, astronomical medical bills, bad work environments, poor-performing schools, crumbling roads, an unfair criminal justice system, etc. Of course, leaders like Trump don't fix these problems, they just manipulate the people affected by them into thinking foreigners or immigrants (or whoever) are responsible.
For a democracy to function properly, judges have to strike down blatantly unconstitutional legislation; an executive that cannot (or in our case will not) be checked by the judicial branch will begin to do whatever it wants.
I'm very pro-choice. And if I have to stock up on Plan B morning-after pills before they become illegal, I will. But having to travel to Canada to proceed with an abortion is going to be a minor inconvenience compared to what's possible when a person like Trump also takes over the judicial branch. To those of us in blue states who can't imagine a civil war occurring in our country in our lifetime, what else will we have on our hands when Trump suspends elections and the Supreme Court doesn't stop him? Another night of turning to Stephen Colbert to laugh about it?
— Cyrus Dowlatshahi, New York City
Brett Kavanaugh is the least of America&apos;s worries - Chicago Tribune
Brett Kavanaugh is the least of America's worries
Many of us are terrified that President Donald Trump gets to (likely successfully) put another justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Is Judge Brett Kavanaugh pro-choice? How does he feel about guns? The environment? Corporate power? Privacy?
At the cocktail parties I go to, where irked gay men wonder whether their marriages will be annulled, many people are missing a larger, more troubling Trump maneuver that's not unlike what's happening in Poland right now.
When certain components of its nationalist, right-wing agenda were blocked by Polish courts in 2005 and 2007, Poland's Law and Justice Party went back to the drawing board. Now re-elected, it passed laws that pushed those judges out. Once its leaders appoint their own judges, they can do what they want.
Trump wants to do whatever he wants as well. Nothing else matters, forget laws. Federal judges rule the government must reunite children, he doesn't care. He bullies people who get in his way, and if he can, he fires them. He's even talked about pardoning himself.
Rules and regulations (read: checks and balances) get in the way of progress, Trump and his Polish counterparts feel. And they can sell it: Our Electoral College system aside, millions of people
 vote for politicians who approach leadership this way, precisely after decades of listening to well-financed elected officials bicker instead of fixing things like rising rent, dirty water, old subway systems, astronomical medical bills, bad work environments, poor-performing schools, crumbling roads, an unfair criminal justice system, etc. Of course, leaders like Trump don't fix these problems, they just manipulate the people affected by them into thinking foreigners or immigrants (or whoever) are responsible.
For a democracy to function properly, judges have to strike down blatantly unconstitutional legislation; an executive that cannot (or in our case will not) be checked by the judicial branch will begin to do whatever it wants.
I'm very pro-choice. And if I have to stock up on Plan B morning-after pills before they become illegal, I will. But having to travel to Canada to proceed with an abortion is going to be a minor inconvenience compared to what's possible when a person like Trump also takes over the judicial branch. To those of us in blue states who can't imagine a civil war occurring in our country in our lifetime, what else will we have on our hands when Trump suspends elections and the Supreme Court doesn't stop him? Another night of turning to Stephen Colbert to laugh about it?
— Cyrus Dowlatshahi, New York City