Small men tend to punch down when their egos are damaged. Just a few months ago, the election of former president Donald Trump seemed likely. His confidence was high. But Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination changed all that. With Harris ahead in many polls, Trump is afraid he will lose … again.
So, he has returned to an old and tired tactic, using his bully pulpit to punch down on immigrants by vociferously and dangerously demonizing them, and the darker their skin, the more violent the rhetoric. We’ve all seen this movie before; this is the sequel nobody sought.
If he loses, Trump will not commit to accepting the election results. The campaign is expected to again file a series of court challenges that will likely land before a Supreme Court with three Trump-appointed justices. The court has a battered public reputation stemming from a series of ethics scandals and highly controversial rulings.
The Republican National Committee is already laying the groundwork for potential challenges to a Trump loss in 2024, having filed more than 100 election-related lawsuits that could come into play if their candidate loses again. Trump is trying to provide cover for an embattled Supreme Court to overturn an election with baseless rally stage rants about illegal voting by a parade of horribles — millions of ineligible, pet-eating, mentally unstable, terrorist, gang member, drug cartel-affiliated immigrants.
Ridiculous, yes, but it plays into his hope of overturning an election if he loses. That’s why Trump is attacking immigrants to stir up his base and lay the groundwork to again bring his Big Lie to the Supreme Court.
These attacks have been simmering for years, but they exploded onto the national stage when Trump, at the presidential debate, made unsubstantiated and false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That lie, and thousands more, are feeding hatred and endangering immigrants across the country.
Trump’s election lies have been harnessed in battleground states to pass a long list of laws reminiscent of Jim Crow that make it harder for targeted groups to vote — particularly Black and Brown communities.
“Election police” in Florida and Texas have found virtually no voter fraud but have managed to discourage whole communities from voting or engaging civically by investigating people, raiding homes and community nonprofits that register voters. For years, groups like the Heritage Foundation have searched for evidence of voter fraud by immigrants and others and found barely a trace. Yet, these election deniers continue to pursue anti-voter legislation to “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist.
This is the third cycle in a row Trump has scapegoated immigrants, and this time, he figures the best way to try to overturn the legitimate results of an election is to claim that millions of them voted illegally.
Many states aren’t buying it. Recently, top officials in the battleground states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin vowed to protect the legitimacy of our elections by taking local governments to court if they refuse to certify the presidential election. Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated election officials nationwide are working overtime to ensure that this election is the most well-administered and transparent ever. After all, the only way to counteract a lie is with the truth.
This brings us back to the Supreme Court, which stands to have the final word in any potential challenge to the 2024 presidential election. Legal ethics experts have emphasized that revelations that Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginny, repeated texts to Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, about the election being stolen in 2020, and that Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, flew flags now synonymous with the “Stop the Steal” movement outside their homes raise serious questions about the justices’ impartiality.
To avoid further damage to the court’s reputation, Justices Thomas and Alito must recuse themselves from any case seeking to overturn the presidential election due to conflicts stemming from the actions of their wives.
It will ultimately fall to Congress to pass binding ethics rules like the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. In the meantime, if challenges to the results of the 2024 election arrive at the Supreme Court, it will fall to the justices to save the reputation and legitimacy of the High Court. The world is watching to see if the court allows a small man’s punch to land.
