conservative

Sometimes it seems as though the only thing that stands between a functioning democracy and a full-on Trump autocracy is a thin, black-robed line.

Although the Supreme Court, in general, and conservative appellate courts, in particular, have bowed and granted President Trump permission to do pretty much anything he wants, they haven’t thoroughly capitulated to his endless grasping for ever more power. (The way invertebrate congressional Republicans have.)

At the lower-court level, judges have repeatedly ruled in ways intended to check Trump, most notably when it comes to violating civil and constitutional rights in pursuit of his indiscriminate immigration dragnet.

The tendency to slow-walk his administration’s response to those rulings — and ignore others that Trump thinks he can safely snub — only contribute to the perception of presidential lawlessness and a sense that our judicial system is being strained to something approaching a breaking point.

Go ahead, if you’d like, and dismiss those concerns as just so much overwrought hand-wringing, or the mindless anti-Trump blathering of your friendly political columnist. A new survey of legal experts — including federal judges, top-tier lawyers and scores of professors from some of the country’s leading law schools — finds widespread concern about the brittle state of our legal system.

And it’s not just the fears of a lot of shaggy-thinking liberals.

“The nation is strong as is its commitment to the rule of law,” said one appellate judge, a Republican appointee. “The current president presents the greatest threat in decades.”

The survey was conducted by Bright Line Watch, a nonpartisan academic group that monitors the health and resilience of American democracy, in conjunction with the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA’s School of Law.

Conducted between mid-February and early March, the poll anonymously surveyed 21 federal judges, 113 lawyers, 193 law professors, 652 political scientists and a nationally representative sample of 2,750 Americans.

What leapt out to UCLA’s Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, was that “across the ideological spectrum and across judges, lawyers and law professors, there was considerable agreement that the rule of law in the U.S. is under tremendous stress.” That consensus, he said, suggests “a real risk to democracy.”

Most legal experts agreed that Trump is using executive power excessively, with a majority doubting the conservative-leaning Supreme Court would handle cases involving the Trump administration impartially. The experts also expressed concern about politicized law enforcement — Trump seeking to persecute his perceived enemies — executive branch overreach, and the failure of Congress or the Supreme Court to do more to rein in the rogue president.

Eight in 10 of those surveyed said federal officials fail to comply with court orders somewhat or very often, and nearly 9 in 10 said political appointees in Trump’s Justice Department mislead federal judges somewhat or very often.

Talk about contempt of court — not to mention our vital system of checks and balances.

There was, unsurprisingly, a split among conservatives and liberals who took part in the survey. (The study defined legal conservatives as those saying the Supreme Court should base rulings on its understanding of what the Constitution meant as originally written. Liberals, who made up most of the respondents, were defined as those saying the court should base its rulings on what the Constitution means in current times.)

Conservatives, for instance, were more likely than liberals to see former President Biden as a greater threat to the rule of law than Trump. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to see evidence of Trump politicizing the Justice Department.

There were also differences between legal experts — those most intimately involved in the judicial system — and the public at large. The experts were more concerned about Trump’s excesses and threats to the rule of law, which, Hasen said, stands to reason.

The legal system is not something most people encounter daily in the same way they do, say, gasoline prices or the cost of groceries. “Yet,” Hasen said, “it’s one of these background things that really matters.”

Why?

Hasen put it this way: “Imagine that a person had a dispute with their neighbor and it ended up in small claims court before a judge and the judge made the decision not based on the merits of the case but based on whether he was friends with one of the parties, or didn’t like people who were similar to one of the parties.”

Now imagine that kind of corrupted, perverted system of justice writ large.

If, for instance, “people know that the government can successfully seek retribution from people who criticize it, people will be less likely to criticize the government,” Hasen said, leaving the country worse off by muzzling those who would hold their elected leaders to account.

Or if, say, rioters overran the U.S. Capitol and tried to steal an election and, instead of being punished, received cash payouts from the federal government, what incentive would there be to follow the law?

Happily — and who couldn’t use a bit of good cheer right about now — all is not lost.

People “can demand that their elected representatives take steps to assure that the rule of law will be followed,” Hasen said, and can insist “that the government [not] play favorites or seek retribution against perceived enemies.”

That’s the power people have, come election time. That’s why voting matters.

There are lots of things riding on the outcome in November, not least the sanctity and integrity of our legal system.

Bear that in mind when you cast your ballot.

Notwithstanding the California Republican party’s well-intentioned anointment of Sen. Pete Wilson as its gubernatorial nominee, it is no secret that he continues to have an uncomfortable relationship with the conservative wing that dominates it.

As we move closer toward the general election, conservatives across the state, and particularly in vote-rich Orange County, are now asking the question, “What would a Gov. Wilson offer to conservatives?” Some have already answered that question, and for them, the answer is: not much.

This could spell disaster in November, especially if the slickly packaged former mayor of San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein, wins the Democratic Party nomination over liberal Establishment candidate Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

Last March, the California Republican Assembly, the largest volunteer, grass-roots Republican organization in the state, adopted a vote of no-confidence in the senator. Pro-life and pro-family organizations–an integral part of winning Republican coalitions–are openly hostile to his candidacy. The conservative Young Americans for Freedom has already gone on record against him. In a futile but symbolic gesture, YAF even put up one of its own, Jeff Greene, to challenge the senator in the June primary.

So far, these are but chinks in the formidable Wilson campaign armor. Though most state conservative leaders are publicly backing Wilson, many are clearly wondering what happened to the Reagan Revolution in California. How is it that the one-time, anti-Reagan moderate mayor from San Diego might now become head of the party in the very state that produced “The Gipper”? (This frustration explains, in part, the enthusiasm among conservatives for the “renegade” primary campaign of “charter” Reaganite Bay Buchanan for state treasurer against the incumbent, Tom Hayes, who was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian.)

Conservative Republicans have always been suspicious of the “progressive” mayor of San Diego. To begin with, they have never quite forgiven then-Mayor Wilson for campaigning for President Ford against favorite son Ronald Reagan in the 1976 New Hampshire presidential primary. These suspicions contributed to Wilson coming in a poor fourth in the Republican primary for governor two years later. By 1982 he learned a lesson. He then campaigned in the U.S. Senate Republican primary against several Ronald Reagan conservatives, including Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. and Robert K. Dornan. While Goldwater was preoccupied with trading off his father’s name and latecomer Dornan was in search of campaign funds, Wilson preemptively blitzed the airwaves with commercials tightly wrapping himself around support for President Reagan. Fellow candidate and “first daughter” Maureen Reagan was particularly galled. So were others. But it worked, and Wilson won what was clearly the make-or-break election of his statewide political future.

Once in the Senate, Pete Wilson went on to very smartly, and sincerely, carry the banner of many issues important to conservatives. From his berth on the Senate Armed Services Committee he defended the Reagan military buildup, railed against the Soviet threat and became an ardent spokesman for the Strategic Defense Initiative. He helped protect California’s defense industry, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and even got Mayor Feinstein to support home-porting the nuclear-powered battleship Missouri in liberal San Francisco. Wilson strongly backed the freedom fighters in Nicaragua and Afghanistan and was up front in his defense of Oliver L. North.

Occasionally, but never reliably, Wilson has voted with conservatives on key social and family-oriented issues. For these things and more, Wilson avoided a primary challenge from the right and deservedly received virtually unqualified conservative support for his 1988 reelection.

The problem now facing gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson is that those defense and foreign policy issues so essential to his overall appeal to conservatives are no longer available to balance out his generally moderate-to-liberal campaign positions on many social, domestic and environmental issues. Unfortunately, the messages from his campaign and the press seem only to highlight the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-prayer in school, anti-growth, higher transportation taxes, costly mass transit, and other big-government elements of his platform (including the creation of another costly government Cabinet department to deal with the environment).

As a result, his yeoman efforts on behalf of the speedy-trial initiative seem pale. To many conservatives, the Pete Wilson of 1990 sounds a lot like the Pete Wilson of 1978.

Unlike Sen. Wilson’s 1982 race against Jerry Brown or his 1988 reelection against Leo T. McCarthy, this year every conservative vote will matter–a lot. So, too, will the crossover votes of conservative Democrats who today keep many Republicans in office. We cannot afford to have any one of them sit at home or cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate.

What is of added danger to Wilson is that conservative Democrats are being told that Feinstein is a candidate they can finally support. Who’s kidding whom? A conservative Democrat mayor from San Francisco is about as believable as Dana Rohrabacher being appointed head of the National Endowment for the Arts. Yet the liberal Southern California media persist in mislabeling the Lady from Babylon by the Bay largely because of her “traitorous” support for the death penalty. Look for a finely tuned “come home” message from the Feinstein campaign to conservative Democrats in November.

When the media are not calling her a conservative, they frequently remark that on substantive issues there is little difference between Feinstein and Wilson. Strike another blow to a proven Republican campaign axiom: Fail to differentiate yourself from your Democrat opponent and you lose.

Wilson’s recent campaign commercials do not help. He emphasizes his environmental record, support for mass transit and the need to control those nasty developers. At best it seems an ill-timed ad for the primary season. At worst it emphasizes management, not leadership, and is not conservative on either count. Better he should first shore up his traditional Republican credentials.

The senator should probably not count on the evils of a Democratic-controlled reapportionment process to give him an added loyalty boost, either. Voters have shown either an inability to understand the issue or often view it in partisan terms. But if a state commission on reapportionment is created by the voters on June 5, the argument that a Republican governor is needed to keep the Democrat Legislature honest will be moot.

Finally, the precedent exists for an electorally significant percentage of the conservative vote to be cast in protest for a third-party candidate. That occurred in the Zschau-Cranston race. Despite a strong Republican Party sales effort aimed at ensuring conservative backing for the former moderate Rep. Ed Zschau, including four trips to California by President Reagan (two in Orange County alone), the word went out to the fall-on-your-sword conservatives to cast a protest vote for the pro-life American Independent Party candidate Ed Vallen. Vallen received nearly double the normal statewide and Orange County AIP vote that year (1.5%). Zschau lost to Alan Cranston by only 1.4%. While there are important differences between the seasoned Wilson with proven statewide electability and newcomer Zschau, the point is that a small electoral shift could prove fatal to him in a close race.

Despite what some political pollsters and self-appointed media opinion makers would have us believe, the successful Reagan electoral coalition has not dispersed. Nor have their beliefs in traditional family values, small government, low taxes, free enterprise and equal opportunity for that chance at the American dream taken a back seat to child care, global warming and acid rain.

Pete Wilson, known for waging smart, well-financed campaigns, has some reassuring to do on the right. To win in November, he has to count on every conservative vote in Orange County–and it is not clear yet that he is going to get them.

Author Oliver Eagleton says British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is fighting for his job because he tried to turn the Labour Party into the ‘new Conservative Party’ and ‘occupy that centre ground’. Dozens of lawmakers are calling for Starmer’s resignation after devastating local elections.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour Party suffered significant losses in local elections, despite his huge majority in parliament.

He’s rejecting calls to resign – but faces new challenges from both the left and right.

So, why is the local vote so important?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Peter Geoghegan – Editor of the investigative news site, Democracy for Sale

Lesley Riddoch – Podcaster, journalist and author of: ‘Blossom: What Scotland Needs to Flourish’

Tim Bale – Professor of politics, Queen Mary University of London

WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center says it’s the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department and faces possible charges over its past use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The civil rights group made the announcement on Tuesday, saying President Trump’s administration appears to be preparing legal action against it or some of its employees.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

The SPLC previously paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, Fair said. It was used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

He said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.

The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The SPLC regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.

The SPLC came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The SPLC included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the SPLC, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the SPLC had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.

House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”

Binkley and Richer write for the Associated Press.