Column: Why the Supreme Court is one of the biggest threats to American democracy
BY HARRY LITMAN
AUG. 24, 2021 3 AM PT
In the popular imagination, successful coups require the participation of the military. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, in their latest book on the Trump presidency, “I Alone Can Fix It,” paint Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in heroic colors. During the runup to the 2020 election, Milley, worried about a “Reichstag moment,” resolved with his colleagues to thwart whatever the former president might try.
The truth is, the biggest threat to American democracy isn’t a military coup, as Milley’s laudable behavior tends to show. The more probable danger is much less dramatic and much more terrifying: a horrible decision from the final arbiter of our constitutional system — the Supreme Court of the United States.
A constitutional theory is gaining ground at the court that could theoretically have awarded the 2020 election to Donald Trump, despite his having been swamped at the polls. Its basis is an obscure and muddled argument that first surfaced when the Supreme Court stepped into the George W. Bush-Al Gore 2000 presidential contest and stopped a state-court ordered recount in Florida.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-08-24/american-coup-supreme-court-donald-trump-bush-vs-gore-william-rehnquist