Impeaching the Over 200-Year-Old American Justice System.
Bari, Puglia, Italy, March 19th, 2025.
Salaroche

Since the Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 Supreme Court ruling of July 1st, 2024, all Presidents of the United States have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any “official acts” they may perform while in office, while the term “official acts” remains undetermined with any specificity.

As a result, as the situation stands today, the current authoritarian convicted-criminal-in-chief can feel free to trample as much as he wishes over the American rule of law knowing that nobody has any exact legal authority to come after him for doing so.

Just halfway into the third month of his second presidency, he already feels free to publicly demand that the judge who tried to halt the unlawful deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador this past weekend be impeached for doing so (see here).

In case you’re wondering what such presidential retaliation is meant to do, the answer is very simple: To intimidate any and all judges that might consider issuing any injunctions against any of Trump’s authoritarian mandates. In other words, he's telling all judges that “if you stand against me, I’ll come after you with all the might of the Executive”.

In response to Trump’s threats against the judge in the deportations case, Chief Justice Roberts stated that “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” (see here)

In all honesty, however, I don’t have much confidence that, when push comes to shove, those Maga Justices will stand on the side of the American people, but that remains to be seen.

Still, there's a few questions that arise from this situation like, a) what will happen when Trump refuses to obey a ruling issued by the Supreme Court against any of his mandates? b) Would the Maga Justices even dare to rule against Trump knowing that he might disregard their ruling? And c), on whose side would the GOP leadership stand if there were ever any such confrontation between the Judicial and the Executive?

Some guys like me have been warning that the November 5th elections signaled a clear paradigm shift in the American system of governance, both as it pertains to domestic and foreign policies. The way things are going, it seems that by this time next year the United States might no longer be recognizable as the nation where Democratic principles of justice and fairness used to be upheld above any other political tendencies.

Those days may soon be dead and gone unless something meaningful happens, but thus far it seems that the Democrats don’t have either the means nor the guts to resist the authoritarian onslaught, so, the responsibility to save the American Democratic System may eventually have to fall in the hands of the American people.

Trouble is, the deeper and wider the authoritarian power-grab gets, the fewer Judicial and Legislative ways to survive American Democracy will have, and the more the American people will be pushed toward an armed confrontation as the only means of last recourse. There’s no rosy prognosis for any of this.

ALL of us Americans stand to lose in this national tragedy, even those of us who live abroad. And the rest of the world can consider itself mere collateral damage for the ignorance and irresponsibility of a few tens of millions of Americans whose blatant political immaturity blindly made them fall for the authoritarian demagoguery of a convicted criminal, insurrectionist, sexual offender, consummated conman.

For the moment, it seems that, after all, there is plenty of truth in the saying that all countries get the government they deserve, but there may still be ways to reverse course and save as much as possible of the America we had all enjoyed up to January 20th.

Salaroche