Well-known members of the left-leaning press were miserable heading into the Fourth of July holiday this year because of the Supreme Court’s decision that federal workers can’t be forced to join or support the government union, and President Trump’s chance to nominate a second Supreme Court justice when Anthony Kennedy retires.
The ruling and Kennedy’s retirement had reporters and talking heads predicting the end of democracy, the failure of the country, and the beginning of fascism in America.
Here are 10 times journalists bemoaned the plight of America in the week heading into Independence Day.
1. “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has blatantly joined the corporate assault on workers and on our democracy itself.” — Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the liberal Nation magazine, July 3, after the ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
2. “Democrats need to win this election, not just for the good of the party but for the good of the country.” — Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, July 2.
3. “The overriding crisis facing our country is the presidency of Trump. He is wrecking the transatlantic alliance, endangering American democracy, encouraging a post-[Angela]Merkel Germany and seemingly enlisting the United States in a worldwide authoritarian movement: Russia, China, Poland, Hungary and Turkey.” — Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, July 2.
4. “[Trump] is attempting to weaken our institutions, our protocols and conventions, our faith in the truth, our sense of honor and our respect for the rule of law. And somehow, many Americans, even those disgusted by what they see, have resigned themselves to this new reality. … I guess this is how empires begin to fall.” — Liberal New York Times columnist Charles Blow, July 1.
5. “Fascism is at the doorstep … What would you be willing to actually put yourself on the line for? That moment is now. We are going to lose our democracy if we haven’t already.” — Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore on HBO’s “Real Time,” June 30.
6. “If the last few days hadn’t been dispiriting enough for those who believed the Supreme Court could still stand for reproductive freedom, equal rights for all Americans, a check on presidential power, a more humane criminal justice system and so much more, Wednesday afternoon [June 27] brought the coup de grace. Everyone knew it was coming sooner than later, but Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement … is still crushing. It sends a stark message to the tens of millions of Americans who have long turned to the court for the vindication of many of their most cherished rights and protections: Look somewhere else.” — New York Times editorial board, June 27.
7. “The backlash is coming. It is the deserved consequence of minority-rule [Republican-led] government protecting the rich over everybody else, corporations over workers, whites over nonwhites and despots over democracies. It will explode, God willing, at the ballot box and not in the streets.” — Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, June 29.
8. “The central drama of the Trump era is a struggle to defend American democracy against an authoritarian leader. The Republican Party’s comfort with the crude authoritarianism of its president, though, did not spring out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a party increasingly comfortable with, and reliant on, countermajoritarian power.” — New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, June 27.
9. “With Justice Kennedy on the bench, the thinking among liberals went, how bad could things get? Now that he’s [retiring], we’re about to find out.” — New York Times magazine writer Emily Bazelon, June 27.
10. “America’s decline is now beginning and we should make no mistake about this — the U.S.-led liberal global order is in peril, is in threat.” — MSNBC commentator and Republican-turned-Democratic strategist Steve Schmidt, June 26.
