from #PaulStarr https://prospect.org/justice/2024-07-17-supreme-courts-license-presidential-vengeance/
Text: Trump and other Republicans have made no secret about the many people and institutions they consider to be their enemies. Journalists, Trump has often said, are “the enemy of the people.” With much of the media in a precarious financial position, they make an easy target. Colleges and universities make another vulnerable target. Many are also in financial straits, and even if they are private, they are vulnerable to government pressure because they depend on government funds for research that can be cut off. The whole nonprofit sector, especially nonprofits that are active on political issues, is vulnerable because of potential jeopardy to their tax exemptions, as my colleague Robert Kuttner explains in this issue. We have lived in a relatively free society because of legal and normative restraints on the power of the government. The commentators who have talked about the Court’s decision as a prescription for dictatorship are not overstating the case. That is what the Court has produced. If Trump has a second term, the institutions and the people who stand up against him should be prepared for a full-fledged attack with all the powers of the government arrayed against them. We have already seen the entire Republican Party cowed and brought under Trump’s thumb. The rest of the country could soon face the test of courage that the Republicans have failed.