WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last night, the Supreme Court put what could be the final dagger in outgoing President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn last month’s election results. That is, it could be if President Trump had any inclination to accept defeat, which according to sources close to him is highly unlikely to ever happen.
The lawsuit brought by embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who himself is under federal criminal investigation — was fairly handily rejected. Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices, three of which were appointed by Trump himself — joined the majority opinion essentially rebuking Paxton for attempting to get around Article III of the Constitution, which gives each state individually the right to run their own elections.
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To say that Donald Trump was displeased by this news would be quite the understatement. This morning, Trump has spent much of his time on his Twitter feed raging into the digital ether, and still falsely claiming he was the victor, but only when “legal” votes are counted and “illegal” ones are not. Due to this historic nature of the lawsuit, constitutional scholars will likely be studying it, and the court’s decision to reject it, for years to come.
We asked one of resident constitutional scholar, Tom Thomas, to break down, into layman’s terms, exactly what the opinion issued by the seven justice majority means. Below are Mr. Thomas’ summations.
“For many years, it’s simply been assumed that the Constitution itself would take precedence over the emotions and feelings and ego of any president, regardless of their party,” Thomas explained to us, “but in the last four years, we’ve seen a real turn away from that paradigm, aided by the president’s allies in Congress. What the Supreme Court did last night was reaffirm for the other two branches that at least some people are still into the whole Constitutional Republic thing, and that checks and balances are still in place.”
Thomas says that he doesn’t see very many more legal avenues for Trump to explore staying in power, but that he also doesn’t see that as being much of an obstacle for Trump in his own mind.
“This man has spent four years ignoring the Constitution and breaking every norm and precedent he wanted to,” Thomas told us. “Anyone presuming he’ll just at some point take the hint and slink off? Is probably deluding themselves a tiny bit.”
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Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram, but not Twitter because Twitter is a cesspool.
