Russian ruling class set to vastly increase spending on military, domestic repression

Maxim Zotov

In late September, the Russian government submitted to the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) a draft federal budget for 2024-2026, which provides for a scale of defense spending that is unprecedented in the history of modern Russia. This year’s military spending has already outstripped all previous spending on the army since the restoration of capitalism in 1991, totaling 10.77 trillion rubles (approximately $110 billion). Next year’s spending on the army is expected to total a record 13.5 (approximately $140 billion) trillion rubles, which is up to 6.31 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP). This is 25 percent more than last year’s figures.

In this photo taken from video released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, a Russian Yars strategic ballistic missiles launcher rolls during a drills in Novosibirsk region, Russia. [AP Photo/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo ]

In addition to the spending on the armed forces, 3.5 trillion rubles (roughly $38 billion) are scheduled to be spent on “national security”. Together, the combined spending on warfare and increased repression will total 17 trillion rubles (roughly 175 billion dollars), which is 41 percent of budget spending or 8 percent of the country’s GDP.

Already, the Russian Oversight Committee (which is subordinate to Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development) has planned to spend nearly 60 billion rubles (about $620 million) to block Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and other ways to circumvent the growing internet censorship. And just recently, Roskomnadzor blocked Discord, a messenger popular with gamers in Russia.

The budget itself provides for total spending of almost 41.5 trillion rubles (about $428 billion). Of these, spending on defense and security is significantly more than the total spending on education and health care combined. Thus, the draft allocates 1.58 trillion rubles ($17 billion) or 0.7 percent of GDP for education and 1.86 trillion rubles ($20 billion) or 0.87% of GDP for health care.

This year’s spending on social welfare (pensions, various social benefits, etc.) is already among the lowest in the history of modern capitalist Russia (the lowest since 2011), but spending on these items will be cut even more next year. Total social spending is to fall by 16 percent — from 7.7 trillion rubles this year to 6.5 trillion in 2025.

Total budget revenues in 2025 will increase by 12 percent compared to this year, while expenditures will increase by 5 percent. It is assumed that the income coming into the budget will increase due to an increase in corporate income taxes from 20 to 25 percent. The cuts to social spending in the budget make clear that the ruling class as a whole will shift these expenses to the working class, further increasing their exploitation.

This budget has already been approved by the Economic Policy Committee of the State Duma and there is no suggestion that the entire State Duma will revise the spending on the army downward in any way. This was also the case last year, when only the Stalinist Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and Just Russia voted against the draft budget, saying it was not a “victory” budget. Both of these parties function as a “loyal opposition” to the Putin regime. They fear that the cutting of social spending so dramatically might have serious political consequences for the regime, but are saying nothing against the extraordinary amounts of money spent on the armed forces.

Nevertheless, Russia’s military spending still lags far behind the total U.S. military spending of roughly $1 trillion, which is more than the combined military spending of the next 11 countries on the list.

The Russian budget is being adopted against a backdrop of worldwide escalation of war and the threat of World War III. The expected authorization by the US for Ukraine to strike deep into the territory of Russia with high-precision missiles and the US-backed military rampage of Israel in the Middle East are part of an emerging new world war.

A large section of the US ruling class, led by the Democratic Party, is preoccupied with the escalation of the war with Russia, which it sees as an indispensable stepping stone to a war with China. The military crisis of the Zelensky regime’s war effort has only deepened their frenzy to bolster the war effort against Russia. They are also concerned that a potential second Trump presidency could result in a tactical shift of US war policies abroad.

However, both factions of the US establishment agree on the necessity of war with Iran and, above all, the need to prepare for war against China. The contradictions of the capitalist system in the centers of imperialism have been brought to the breaking point and the imperialist states see the way out of the situation only in a new redivision of the world, threatening the nuclear annihilation of mankind.

Therefore, the military budgets of all countries involved in one way or another in the conflicts will grow, and the economies will be transferred to the military rails. This is especially true for Russia, which is currently the most immediate target of imperialist aggression. While the Putin regime, which emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the USSR, is still trying to find a negotiated settlement with imperialism, it is at the same time preparing for a protracted military conflict with the imperialist powers. The budget underscores that the oligarchy is determined to make the working class pay for this, and is gearing up to violently suppress any opposition to war and austerity from below.

Gun Violence Lowers Academic Achievement Especially for Black Children

Algernon Austin

Photo by iStrfry , Marcus

In early September, the United States experienced its 24^th school shooting of the year. Since that incident at Apalachee High School in Georgia, there have been several additional school shootings. Gun violence in schools has increased in recent years (Figure 1), but sadly that is only a small slice of the gun violence that children experience. Because of gun-extremist politicians and a gun-extremist Supreme Court, more people — including criminals — have easy access to guns, and they are allowed to have guns in more places than ever before. As a result, school safety and the well-being of our children suffer.

While death and injury are the most immediate and severe consequences of gun violence, there are many other negative collateral consequences. One that scholars are coming to more fully appreciate is gun violence’s effect on academic achievement. In the Annual Review of Criminology, Patrick Sharkey summarizes the findings of a seminal study of children who were targets of a sniper attack on their school playground:

From one month to 14 months after the shootings, children who were on the playground when the attack took place exhibited more extensive symptoms of PTSD than children who were inside the school. For children inside the school when the attack occurred, symptoms of PTSD faded in the 14 months following the incident. For those on the playground, symptoms persisted over time. A majority of those on the playground continued to report fear of a recurrence, sleep disturbance, and jumpiness more than a year after the attack.

It is not difficult to imagine that the trauma of a school shooting can disrupt children’s ability to focus on schoolwork. A growing body of scholarship shows students’ academic achievement declines after school shootings. Marika Cabral and her colleagues use individual- and school-level data to study the effect of school shootings. They state:

Our results indicate that exposure to a shooting at school disrupts human capital accumulation in the near-term through increased absences, chronic absenteeism, and grade retention; harms educational outcomes in the medium-term through reductions in high school graduation, college attendance, and college graduation; and adversely impacts long-term labor market outcomes through reductions in employment and earnings at ages 24–26.

In short, school shootings are quite economically harmful to the children exposed to them.

But schools are not the only place where children are exposed to gun violence. It can occur anywhere in their neighborhood. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the simple correlation between exposure to violence — including gun violence — and academic achievement. Children exposed to more violent crime in a school district tend to have lower standardized test scores in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. Gerard Torrats-Espinosa’s more detailed analysis of these data found a statistically significant causal relationship between homicides (most homicides are committed with firearms) and boys’ academic achievement. Boys exposed to more homicides had lower scores on ELA and mathematics achievement tests.

Torrats-Espinosa also found a negative relationship with ELA test scores for Black and Hispanic students. His study is likely limited by the fact that it uses data at the school-district level. The crudeness of the data probably hides additional negative effects of gun violence in mathematics and for different sub-populations.

Figure 2

Violent Crime is Associated with Lower English Language Arts (ELA) Test Scores

Source: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, “Crime and Inequality in Academic Achievement Across School Districts in the United States,” Demography 57(1, February 2020): 123–145. Used with permission of Torrats-Espinosa.

Figure 3

Violent Crime is Associated with Lower Math Test Scores

Source: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, “Crime and Inequality in Academic Achievement Across School Districts in the United States,” Demography 57(1, February 2020): 123–145. Used with permission of Torrats-Espinosa.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post profiled Rashad Bates, a Black 14-year-old boy who has already lost five friends to gun violence. For a Black male, his situation is not so unusual. Gun violence occurs more in socially and economically disadvantaged communities. Black children are exposed to gun violence at a much greater rate than children of other races (Figure 4), which means that the negative academic impact of gun violence is felt most strongly in poor, Black communities.

There are several gun safety policies that would keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals and away from sensitive places, but gun-extremist politicians and a gun-extremist Supreme Court block the implementation of these policies. There are also effective community-based violence interruption programs as well as other initiatives that move at-risk individuals away from violence and toward productive employment – but these programs are not adequately funded. Ultimately, the problem of gun violence is a problem of political will. Broadly speaking, the public is overwhelmingly supportive of gun safety measures. Thus far, that has not been enough to convince political leaders and Supreme Court justices to enact policies that would lead to a substantial reduction in gun violence.

Canada's ruling elite embraces “Fortress Europe”-inspired anti-immigration policy

Hugo Maltais

The virulent anti-immigrant campaign of the Quebec political establishment and Canadian ruling class has taken another dangerous turn.

On a visit to France earlier this month, Quebec Premier and Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) leader François Legault called on the federal government to draw inspiration from Europe’s brutal anti-immigration policies to halve the number of asylum seekers in Quebec.

The expulsion of tens of thousands of refugee claimants to other provinces, as demanded by the Premier of Quebec, would constitute a form of mass deportation that would require the establishment on Canadian soil of an unprecedented state apparatus of control and surveillance.

Echoing the lie that has become the motto of the Quebec ruling class, Legault blamed the 160,000 asylum seekers in Quebec—which has a population of more than 9 million—for all the social problems wracking Canada’s only majority French-speaking province and portrayed them as a threat to the existence of the “Quebec nation:” “We have housing problems, we lack teachers and nurses. And more than a third, I think 40% of asylum seekers don’t speak French and settle in Montreal.”

It is estimated that more than 20,000 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe in the last decade. Here pictured refugees in the Mediterranean Sea in 2018 during a rescue operation mounted by the Sea-Watch NGO. [Photo by Tim Lüddemann / flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

He then called on Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government, which is responsible for processing asylum applications under Canada’s Constitution, to take its cue from “France among others” and “move” them into “waiting zones.”

Present in France, but also elsewhere in Europe, “waiting zones” are detention centres set up near airports, ports and train stations to imprison asylum seekers without trial as soon as they arrive, even before their asylum application process begins. In France, migrants can be detained in this way for up to 26 days, in contravention of international law and their fundamental rights. Similar large camps are to be found on Europe’s external borders, including in Greece.

With the support of the European Union’s border protection force, Frontex, European capitalism has created a “fortress Europe” aimed at preventing anyone fleeing persecution and poverty from reaching the continent. Among the methods employed are the use of illegal “pushbacks,” letting migrants drown at sea, and paying dictatorial regimes in North Africa to detain migrants in prison camps, in which slavery and other abuses are rife.

Asked to clarify his remarks by stunned journalists, Legault confirmed that he was asking the Trudeau government to adopt the anti-immigration policies of European countries and deport asylum seekers from Quebec against their will: “What we want is for half of the asylum seekers currently in Quebec to be transferred to other provinces.”

Asked whether such a measure would violate the Canadian constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Legault simply brushed the question aside, saying: “It’s up to the federal government to look at what’s being done elsewhere and find solutions.”

A demonstration in Montreal against the CAQ's Bill 21, chauvinist legislation which discriminates against religious minorities, especially Muslim women. . [Photo: McGill Students Union/Twitter ]

As Legault knows very well, “what is being done elsewhere” is a veritable war on immigrants involving forms of state-organized violence and reactionary policies not seen since the reign of authoritarian and fascist regimes over Europe in the 1930s.

The ruling classes—not only in Europe, but also in the United States and Canada—are seeking to turn immigrants into scapegoats for the ever-deepening social crisis caused by capitalism, and to use the manufactured furor over “illegal immigration” to justify a vast expansion of the repressive apparatus of the state.

The European Union and its member states have created militarized immigration infrastructure, squalid detention camps, and land and sea borders patrolled by heavily-armed security forces, and in North Africa violent militias that terrorize, brutalize and, in many cases, kill migrants seeking refuge.

It is estimated that more than 20,000 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe in the last decade, while European coastguards have attacked NGO ships attempting to rescue migrants. Dozens have drowned in the English Channel as a result of French and British policies, while Spanish border police have committed massacres by opening fire on groups of migrants.

In Italy, Greece, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, refugees are locked up in detention camps, in catastrophic conditions and at the mercy of the arbitrary violence of cruel guards. In England, refugees are imprisoned on disease-ridden prison ships.

Various governments have adopted laws and policies to facilitate mass deportations and send migrants back to their countries of origin ravaged by war, poverty and climate change.

The criminality of the European authorities is all the more appalling given that the vast majority of asylum-seekers are trying to escape from countries in North Africa and the Middle East that have been destroyed by the wars and interventions of European imperialism and its allies in Ottawa and Washington.

To normalize these violent measures of repression, the ruling classes demonize immigrants using language traditionally associated with the extreme right. Neo-fascist parties that systematically engage in anti-immigrant incitement, like the neo-Nazi AfD in Germany and the Francoist Vox party in Spain, have been welcomed into parliament, and in the case of Italy, where Giorgia Meloni is prime minister, into government. The far-right increasingly sets the tone for the debate in the political establishment, above all regarding immigration policy.

A self-professed admirer of Mussolini and head of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, Meloni was accorded a warm reception from Trudeau and his Liberal government on a visit to Canada earlier this year.

In France, the “president of the rich,” Emmanuel Macron, allied himself with Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) last year to push through a new immigration law that incorporated anti-immigrant measures long demanded by Le Pen. And he has just appointed a right-wing Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, who called in 2021 for a five-year moratorium on immigration to France.

Meanwhile in the US, the Republican presidential candidate and would-be dictator Donald Trump has made anti-immigrant agitation the focal point of his election campaign. In language reminiscent of the Nazi Party, he has declared that immigrants will “poison the blood of the nation,” referred to them as “animals” and promised, if elected, to use the military to expel more than 10 million migrants. He and his running mate J.D. Vance have used vile, totally unfounded rumours about Haitian immigrants in Ohio to incite hatred and violence.

Legault’s calls for the federal government to expel asylum-seekers to other provinces and jail them in flagrant disregard for international and Canadian law and the constitution’s Charter of Rights underscores that the ruling class in Quebec, and across Canada, is taking inspiration from these same far-right policies.

Since coming to power in 2018, the CAQ has intensified a turn by the entire political establishment towards far-right xenophobia and Quebec chauvinism. This has not stopped the Parti Québécois (PQ), under the leadership of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, from constantly attacking the CAQ from the right, labelling it as insufficiently “nationalist” and demanding even harsher measures against immigrants and immigration.

As in Europe, where the social democratic and pseudo-left parties actively participate in the anti-immigrant campaign (even when they are in power, like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain or the Left Party in Germany), there is no section of the ruling class in Canada prepared to defend the right of asylum and democratic rights in general.

Québec Solidaire (QS), a pseudo-left party that speaks for the affluent middle classes and shares the PQ’s reactionary program for Quebec independence, presents the ruling class’s anti-immigration campaign as a “legitimate debate.” QS covers up for the PQ’s turn to the far right by denying that its xenophobic comments on immigrants are racist or “intolerant.” QS is itself proposing a reduction in immigration, lending credence to the lie that “excessive” levels of immigration are responsible for the collapse of public services, skyrocketing rents, and a surge in homelessness.

At the federal level, the Trudeau government, which is presented as a “progressive” and “immigrant-friendly” government by its allies in the NDP and the union bureaucracy, has demagogically declared that Legault’s demands are “unreasonable.”

But after a meeting with Michel Barnier, the new prime minister of France chosen undemocratically by Macron and the RN, Legault displayed a document from the Trudeau government showing that it too has referred to “European asylum models” in its discussions with the provinces.

In recent months, the Trudeau government has announced a series of measures to restrict immigration, while maintaining Canada’s reactionary temporary foreign worker program, which the UN Special Rapporteur has described as “fertile ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”

French PM abandons New Caledonia’s contentious voting reform

John Braddock

New Caledonia’s contentious constitutional reform, which triggered violent unrest after a vote in the French National Assembly in May, will not now go ahead according to French Prime Minister Michel Barnier.

French Prime Minister Michel Barnier [AP Photo/Stephane de Sakutin]

Delivering his inaugural speech on October 1 outlining the incoming right-wing government’s agenda, Barnier said the constitutional amendment endorsed by both the Senate and National Assembly “will not be submitted to the Congress.” The Congress, a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament, is required for the measure to be enacted.

The change to voting eligibility at New Caledonia’s local elections was the immediate trigger for months of riots. The move was designed to “unfreeze” the current electoral roll, which only allows people born in the colony or residing there before 1998 to vote. The change meant recent residents, up to 25,000 people largely from France, would gain voting rights. Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would further marginalise them politically as they face worsening economic and social conditions.

French President Emmanuel Macron initially declared that due to France’s snap elections, held in June and early July, the measure would be “suspended” but not withdrawn. While New Caledonia’s pro-independence parties were demanding clarifications from Macron, the political impasse fueled tensions. Widespread unrest, largely by the colony’s alienated Kanak youth, intensified despite a brutal police-military crackdown by the French state.

The decision to withdraw the amendment was clearly taken at the highest level to buy time to engage the various factions of New Caledonia’s political establishment, including the pro-independence parties, to negotiate a way to still meet the requirements of French imperialism.

Barnier confirmed that the territory’s provincial elections, initially scheduled by mid-December, will be postponed until late 2025. He also announced that a “concertation and dialogue” mission consisting of French MPs from the National Assembly and Senate, plus officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Overseas, would travel to Nouméa to begin talks.

Paris is demanding that the ongoing uprising be brought to heel—and that the official pro-independence leaders play a role. Macron has repeatedly insisted on a “full restoration of law and order” as the precondition for a return to the negotiating table.

Ahead of the visit, due next week, Overseas Minister François-Noël Buffet said he would hold discussions with New Caledonia’s “key players, including in the political, economic and social areas,” to reaffirm “our government’s will to bring fast and pragmatic responses to the crisis this territory is going through.”

Macron will then host New Caledonia’s political “stakeholders” in Paris next month for negotiations with both pro-independence and pro-France parties to find a successor political agreement to the 26-year-old Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.

The accord, which ended a decade of civil war, set up a “power-sharing” mechanism that established a series of referenda on independence while creating a privileged layer of indigenous business and political leaders to help administer the territory and forestall any further rebellions.

Barnier, installed by Macron to lead France’s far-right government, has previously sided with anti-independence “Loyalists” in the territory, who applauded his appointment. During the elections, fascistic Rassemblement National (RN) leader Marine Le Pen, who openly demanded that Barnier accommodate the RN platform, bluntly declared that New Caledonia was “French” and would not see independence for “30 or 40 years.”

Visiting Nouméa in July 2023, Macron underscored France’s geo-strategic aims amid the escalating US-led build-up to war against China. He bluntly demanded that those seeking “separatism” accept the result of the third and final independence referendum, pushed through in December 2021 despite a boycott by the independence movement, which saw a 96 percent vote in favour of remaining with France.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on October 6, Hippolyte Sinewami Htamuma, a Kanak chief of the La Roche district, provided an insight into the deep social roots of the uprising.

Condemning recent police killings of three activists in the Saint Louis area, Htamumu declared “It’s only the Kanaks who are targeted. It’s only young people who are targeted.” Describing the social situation as “inhumane,” he said: “They’re young people who have stood up for the struggle, who believe in the fight, who have faith that tomorrow can be a better day.”

Htamumu emphasised: “Every day we are fed up, fed up of social inequality, fed up with the marginalisation of youth, of families who don’t have a job, that don’t even have the minimum.”

Referring to the colony as built on “stolen land,” Htamuma declared: “France caused all this. We are all victims of history.” Macron, he said, had already decided that New Caledonia must “remain French, and it’s here for its interests,” including the “Indo-Pacific axis,” and with the territory’s wealth—particularly its nickel reserves—“not for the population.”

The brutal police-military crackdown imposing “republican order” remains in place. Since the Paris Olympic games, the number of security personnel in the colony has escalated to some 7,000. Kanak villages such as Saint Louis, which are targeted as pockets of ongoing resistance, are subject to permanent roadblocks, body searches including children and police harassment.

The crisis has seen the death of 13 people—11 civilians and two French gendarmes—damage to over 800 businesses that have been burnt and looted, the loss of about 20,000 jobs and damage estimated at 2.2 billion Euros. According to the Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (ISSE), New Caledonia’s economic and social fabric has been brought “to its knees and to the brink of collapse.”

The vital nickel industry, facing competition from Indonesian suppliers, is also in sharp decline. Koniambo (KNS) recently began sacking 1,200 workers after failing to find a buyer. Operations were idled following an announcement in February that its financier, Anglo-Swiss Glencore, wanted out. Some 600 contractors have already lost their jobs. August figures for nickel exports were $US36.7 million, compared with $US193 million for the same month last year.

Jimmy Naouna of the Kanak Liberation Party (PALIKA), part of the “moderate” wing of the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), told the ABC he welcomed Paris’s move, saying dropping the reform bill and sending a “high level mission” was what the FLNKS leaders had been requesting “for the past six months.” PALIKA president Jean-Pierre Djaïwe told local media it was “an opportunity for New Caledonia’s partners to come back and sit at the table to find a political agreement.”

Pro-France Calédonie Ensemble party leader Philippe Gomès, a member of a bipartisan delegation currently in Paris that welcomed the announcement, declared: “Now we have more time, this will bring hope to New Caledonians and allow us to start rebuilding the country.”

Talks on the territory’s long-term future are likely to be fraught. Loyalist MP in the National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, criticised Barnier’s statements, saying they were “disconnected from reality” and did not “grasp the reality of the situation on the ground.” Les Loyalistes party leader Sonia Backès, another staunch supporter of the electoral reform, declared Barnier’s speech “did not address New Caledonia’s expectations.”

Any deals reached by the political elites in Paris and Nouméa will do nothing to resolve the fundamental issues behind the unrest triggered by poverty, inequality, unemployment and social desperation. The rebellion has brought a substantial section of Kanak youth into conflict, not only with French colonial oppression, but with the territory’s establishment, which includes the local government and the FLNKS.

Pacific governments are concerned that if the situation is not brought under control, unrest in New Caledonia could be a spark for protests and riots across the impoverished region, where living standards are being ground down by inflation.

Addressing the UN Decolonisation Committee last week, French Polynesia president Moetai Brotherson called on France to “finally co-operate” in creating a timeline for decolonization, including its Pacific territory centred on Tahiti. He warned the New Caledonia unrest “reminds us of the delicate balance that peace requires.”

US Supreme Court term opens with the stench of a democracy in shambles

John Burton

The US Supreme Court opened its current term, as customary, on the first Monday of October, with a docket consisting of cases accumulated over the summer recess, followed by oral arguments in pending cases. The pretense of normalcy could not conceal the reality of a high court facing corruption scandals, particularly involving its most senior justice, Clarence Thomas, and a loss of public confidence not seen since the notorious Dred Scott v. Sanford decision of 1857 that helped trigger the Civil War.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, right, attend a memorial service for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at the National Cathedral in Washington, Tuesday, December 19, 2023. [AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

Two weeks earlier, the Court refused to stop Missouri from executing Marcellus Williams, despite DNA evidence that established his innocence. Two weeks before that the Court sanctioned Nevada’s barring of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein from the ballot despite her having submitted over double the required number of petition signatures.

Those recess orders followed last year’s right-wing rampage, in which the Supreme Court criminalized homelessness and sanctioned the arbitrary separation of families of mixed nationalities by the State Department, while deciding a series of cases that effectively stripped federal agencies of the authority to regulate businesses.

The Court’s assault on democratic rights culminated in its July 1 ruling granting US presidents, including Donald Trump, presumptive immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. The ruling, placing the president above the law, overturned an appeals court ruling denying Trump’s bid for immunity in relation to his attempted overthrow of the 2020 election.

Last month The New York Times reported, based on discussions and memoranda usually kept confidential, how Chief Justice John Roberts personally guided each of three blockbuster cases arising from Donald Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election and attempted coup d’etat, to conclusions that protected Trump and his fascist cohorts at the expense of American democracy.

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts speaks at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. [AP Photo/ Nati Harnik]

First, Roberts drafted the unsigned “per curiam” ruling that states cannot bar Trump from the ballot despite the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification of insurrectionists. Although nominally unanimous, the decision was 5-4 on the important question of whether an act of Congress is required to give the clause legal effect, an absurd negation of the constitutional text.

Second, Roberts suddenly took over from Justice Samuel Alito the decision whether January 6 insurrectionists generally could be charged with the federal crime of “obstructing” a proceeding four days after news reports emerged that an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Alito home in sympathy with the attempt to disrupt the electoral vote count and transfer of power.

Roberts’ unprecedented reassignment of the opinion to himself underscores that Alito had no business sitting in judgment on any of the Trump election cases in the first place and should have been recused altogether. The same goes for Thomas, whose right-wing activist spouse Virginia Thomas participated in plots with Trump lawyers, including Sidney Powell, to concoct phony electors.

Third, the Times reported that the justices discussed among themselves how the timing of their ruling on Trump’s appeal from the Court of Appeals’ denial of his immunity claim would affect the upcoming criminal trial for his role in the January 6 insurrection and the November 2024 election itself. Roberts personally insured, over the objection of Thomas, who wanted it delayed more, that the decision granting Trump broad presidential immunity from prosecution for crimes while in office would be published before the July 4 recess—but still too late for the case to go to trial before the election.

While Roberts’ majority decision was widely, and correctly, denounced as a shabbily drafted assault on the fundamental democratic principle that no one is above the law, internally, Trump-nominated justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch praised Roberts for an “extraordinary opinion” and “remarkable work.”

So far, the Supreme Court has about 40 cases on its docket for the new term, many raising significant questions regarding immigrants, prisoners, environmental protection and other issues, but few “hot button” issues, aside from a case that challenges Tennessee’s law banning “gender-affirming” medical care for patients under eighteen.

The first week included an argument related to gun control. In what would have seemed obvious during earlier historic periods, a majority of justices seemed inclined to uphold a US Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms (ATF) regulation that treats “ghost guns”—kits that can be assembled into functioning weapons without serial numbers—as “firearms” subject to the Gun Control Act of 1968. The regulation had been blocked nationally, however, by a fascistic federal judge in Texas before the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 earlier this year that the regulation could remain in effect until the case is decided.

The justices also heard arguments on whether plaintiffs suing under public-interest laws are entitled to awards of statutory attorneys’ fees as prevailing parties when the defendants modify their challenged conduct after a case is filed, but before final judgment. While normally the six-vote right-wing majority would reflexively line up against civil-rights lawyers, recently many such cases have been brought by reactionary legal foundations, which are not infrequently the beneficiaries of substantial fee awards.

In a rare instance of a capital case being argued, on Wednesday October 9, eight justices—Neil Gorsuch recused himself—considered whether Richard Glossip will be put to death for the 1997 Oklahoma City murder of Barry Van Treese. No one questions that another man, Justin Sneed, beat Van Treese to death with a baseball bat, but Sneed parlayed his uncorroborated testimony that Glossip paid him for the killing in exchange for a life sentence.

Glossip, now 61, has maintained his innocence throughout 25 years on death row, and has been involved in multiple legal proceedings, including challenges to the injection of toxins as a mode of execution. A state legislative report found “grave doubt as to the integrity of Glossip’s murder conviction and death sentence,” as did a separate investigation commissioned by Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general.

Glossip appealed for a new trial on the basis that the prosecutor failed to turn over notes referring to evidence that Sneed was bipolar and under psychiatric care, and then lied about it on the stand. The attorney general agreed that Glossip was denied due process and has refused to defend the conviction and death sentence, which were nevertheless upheld by the Oklahoma appellate court.

When Glossip petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari to review Oklahoma’s denial of a new trial despite the due-process violation, Christopher Michel, a former Roberts law clerk, was appointed to represent Oklahoma in lieu of the attorney general. While the other seven justices nitpicked for almost two hours over whether they had jurisdiction to review the decision of a state court, the usually quiet Thomas repeatedly interrupted with complaints that the prosecutors’ “reputations are being impugned” without being “given an opportunity to give detailed accounts of what those notes meant.”

Thomas’ sudden concern for due process is odd. It is Glossip’s head in the noose, not those of the prosecutors.

There are no election cases under review at the moment, but there can be little doubt that the ultra-right Supreme Court majority is poised to intervene on behalf of the increasingly fascistic Republican Party if the need arises over the next several weeks or months to help overturn a possible Democratic victory in the presidential race.