Washington
The Bad King, the incumbent president of the United States, has just returned to Washington after a four-city tour of Southern red-states friendly to him and his campaign. His ardent MAGA hat supporters still clamor to crowd into arenas where he schedules his rallies. He is, though, still under siege by the Democrats. And, embarrassingly, holed up in the White House residence (in the bedroom of his private quarters, his wife, Melania, has her own separate bedroom) texting to friends and supporters—like the clownish and egregious Rudy Giuliani, who is currently under investigation in the Southern District of New York for various financial and campaign finance irregularities. Surprisingly, no one has seen fit yet to arrest the enterprising, criminal TV lawyer.
The Bad King has been—as he fervently proclaims to all who will listen—completely “exonerated” in his Senate impeachment trial concluded back in January. But—like a deranged despot desperately clutching at the last vestiges of a dissolving power—he is still seething at the Democrat leaders in the House and Senate who he believes tried to mount a coup to overturn the 2016 election and have him removed from office.
The president now—in his bitterness and seclusion—is deeply paranoid, like the beleaguered Claudius, the haunted Roman emperor, he skulks about and cowers in the corridors of the palace, imagines enemies—all conspiring to unseat him—hidden in every shadow and around every corner, is kept duly informed on their unholy machinations by his friends on Fox News. In his fear and interminable rage, he Tweets now daily against the crimes and conspiracies of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Democrats in general. Not surprisingly, he demonstrates his willingness to seek vengeance—extract his political pound of flesh from his opponents—by firing the patriotic Colonel Vindman from his White House job, recalling his toady EU representative Gordon Sondland, and personally attacking two House committee witnesses who had the temerity to testify (tell the truth) against him in the impeachment hearings. The president publicly defends his ouster of the patriotic Vindman by calling him: “insubordinate.”
Just to further excite and anger his base, The Bad King is Tweeting that his campaign has a copy of a taped conversation between a liberal (unnamed) billionaire financier (George Soros is always the usual suspect) and a high-level intelligence official about assassinating him at one of his rallies. Fox & Friends has turned this into a cause celeb with both Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity (heavy TV traffickers in all MAGA conspiracy theories) claiming in prime time, without the slightest qualification or thoughtful demur, that the plot is real and the allegation credible. The ironically named “liberal media” in Washington, however, is characterizing it as just more Republican gas lighting.
This has caused a small firestorm in official Washington and throughout red-state America with his rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth supporters, threatening to form urban and rural (minuteman) white nationalist militias to protect their embattled president. The Bad King delights—revels, in fact—in the political acrimony, the divisive, bitter partisanship his incendiary Tweets have touched off. Thus, the recurring chant at bellicose MAGA rallies has now become:
“No coup! No coup!”
This, of course, is Fake News; and nobody knows it better than the man with the spray-on orange tan—the country’s blustering, carnival-barking, serially-lying, con man par-excellence, politically opportunistic incumbent president of the United States.
Rosie talks at length about the raucous MAGA campaign events. “They are even more deliberately racist and homophobic than in 2016, and the lies grow in number and just get bigger.”
Billy is matter of fact, “Republicans must be adept liars,” he casually observes to Rosie. “How else could they get so many people to trust their corrupt politicians, accept their essential dishonesty, and excuse all their lies and ethical/moral transgressions?”
The much acclaimed “swamp” now is everywhere in Washington, much of it imported by The Bad King from Wall Street. He has in his cabinet Betsy Devos (whose family accrued billions in the Amway pyramid scheme) and the two vulture capitalists Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin.
Democrats (as usual) are split, suffering an identity crisis of their own making. They argue and bicker, attack each other in their endless debates over incremental differences on the same fundamental issues of policy instead of being united to defeat their political enemies. Republicans, however, are united—unanimous in their support of a lawless, dictatorial, criminal president whose principal goal is enriching himself and his family and aggrandizing to himself all power in the government.
Billy is frank in his disgust with the Republicans in the Senate who now (following the acquittal)—in total subservience to their impeached president— shamelessly echo his claim of complete exoneration.
“They are petty criminals and traitors, all on the pay of the Kremlin.”
And he marvels at the partisanship shown by the Republicans during the impeachment trial, the open venality and hypocrisy of senators like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and others in supporting the president just to insure their own re-elections to office and the furtherance of an imperial presidency. Mostly though he is alarmed at the sheer effrontery and undisguised lawlessness of the attorney general, Bill Barr. He is like some Star Court magistrate—using the powers of his office like a cudgel to investigate and bludgeon the president’s enemies—who has rather illegally turned the power of the so-called, ironically named, Justice Department onto The Bad King’s political opponents by opening an investigation of the Bidens. And he will, shortly, stop six different SDNY (Southern District of New York) investigations into The Bad King’s tax and financial irregularities.
Billy and Rosie, too, are back in Washington—in the bar/lounge at the Dupont Circle Hotel near the Capitol. The talk of the town (putting aside the phony assassination plot) is politics and the coming election. The Republican convention, to be held in Miami, is now less than three weeks away. The conservative Federalist Society lawyers and judges who act as gatekeeper to the Republican establishment are in celebration. Not only have they been the principal player in the packing of the federal bench (judiciary) with totally unqualified, alt-right conservative judges, but they now have on the Supreme Court (thanks to the palsy and moral/political turpitude of Susan Collins), their hand-picked, hand-maiden appointee, known around official Washington as The Judge, The Bad Kings second Supreme Court appointment. In the fall in 2019, before the winter recess, he was instrumental, as the fifth conservative vote, in setting the Court’s agenda for the coming 2020 session.
Notwithstanding the town’s preoccupation with politics and the upcoming election—Rosie is mostly focused on the campaign of The Bad King and the coming 2020 election—Billy is now wholly concentrated on the Court and the ongoing judicial session. He has been explaining to Rosie (over a quiet dinner and drinks) the Court’s grants of certiorari in the last session, and what he sees coming.
Rosie understands, and reminds Billy in her gentle way, “I went to college, too, Billy. I’m a national reporter, and I know certiorari.”
Billy smiles indulgently. “I know—but this is serious, Rosie. You may know the term, but you don’t understand the importance of what it means in the current Court, and how it will negatively impact the lives of millions of poor and disenfranchised Americans—particularly women and the LGBTQ community.”
Patiently, he explains. “Only four of the nine justices are required to grant “cert’ and put a case on the docket for the coming session. Before (with Judge Kennedy still on the Court) the three justices—Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch—formed the usually predictable conservative bloc on the Court. But they could not always count on Chief Justice Roberts to vote with them to get the necessary four votes to grant cert on a particular case. And Kennedy—a center/right judge—was not a dependable conservative vote, abjuring, as he often did, to accept cases purely on ideological or political reasons.”
“I know all that, Billy.”
He continues. “Now, Rosie, that’s all changed. With this new appointment on the Court last fall in 2019, the conservatives have chosen an aggressively, anti-progressive docket of cases that they have been hearing and will be voting to decide before the summer recess. These cases—wrongly decided—could turn the clock back on fifty years of progressive social legislation and, as I said, impact negatively the lives of tens of millions of vulnerable people. And they will be particularly targeting Roe v. Wade.”
Billy pauses, looks meaningfully across the table at Rosie. “For many women, especially those who are poor, access to a legal abortion is a matter of survival. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the Court’s majority opinion in Roe. And since the seventies Roe has been the precedent on abortion and a woman’s right to choose. But there is one case, June Medical Services v. Gee, waiting a vote, that is anti-choice and could make a woman’s right to access health services and have a safe abortion more problematic. And there are other pending and important cases that are pro-gun and pro-death, that are anti-immigration that target and will deliberately damage and put at risk the rights and civil liberties of the LGBTQ community and racial minorities, that could end DACA and the protections it provides children and young adults born in the United States to undocumented immigrants.”
“A law like this could block a woman’s right to a legal abortion,” Billy further explains. “And the Court already decided in an earlier 2016 case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt that such laws are an unconstitutional burden that unduly restrict a woman’s right to have access to a legal abortion.”
Billy stares back at Rosie. “Now, with this new judge on the Court, the Hellerstedt decision could be reversed. Republicans, in their troglodyte way, want to take women back to the dark ages, force on them unwanted pregnancies, and put their lives at risk with illegal, back-alley abortions.”
Billy is firm. “That should not be allowed to happen, Rosie!”
He also brings up the always hot-button issue of prayer in the schools, cites the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which, as it has been interpreted in major precedent setting decisions, provides that the government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” He explains to Rosie that the Engel and Schemp cases restricting school prayer—decided in the early sixties—have been settled law now for sixty years.
Billy’s face is grave. “This is serious, Rosie,” he says again. “With this extreme ultra right-wing Court, the earlier decisions in these critical, precedent setting cases could all be reversed and the laws they support, like Roe, overturned.”
“And most ominous for voting rights,” he continues, “gerrymandering could be made easier in states with Republican controlled legislatures just to gain an electoral advantage in contested state and national elections. Voter suppression laws that now prevent redistricting could be reversed to make it harder for blacks, students, and other minorities to have their vote count.”
Billy cites an example. “Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that an Indiana law requiring voters to provide photographic identification did not produce an undue burden on potential voters and violate the United States constitution because they could—by showing up at a prescribed polling place, with the proper paperwork (birth certificate and proof of residence)—secure a provisional ballot to vote in the election.”
Rosie makes a face, rolls her eyes, stares back in wonderment. “Now you’re talking like a lawyer.”
Billy sadly shakes his head “I am a lawyer, Rosie,” he replies. “I was a clerk on the Supreme Court for Justice John Paul Stevens—remember?”
Rosie is bland. “I know, but I like you better as a fisherman.”
Billy’s face is grave. “It’s a crime Rosie, and a gross perversion of the “equal justice and equal protection” provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment’ and a woman’s right to privacy, for one wrong-headed, ideologically driven, conservative judge to put at risk—by knocking down Hellerstedt, making access to legal abortion harder, and possibly reversing the Roe decision—the lives of potentially millions of young women.”
Rosie frowns, breathes a heavy sigh. “I agree, of course, Billy. But the president appointed him, and the Senate confirmed him for a life term. That’s how the system works. He’s now a justice on the Supreme Court, and you’ve told me yourself that the Supreme Court is the final decider of what the law is,” she says, with a sense of resignation and exasperation. “That means there’s nothing anyone can do if it, the Supreme Court, decides—in its infinite wisdom—to suddenly change the law.”
Billy is matter of fact, “I don’t necessarily agree, Rosie, that there’s nothing anyone can do.” This is a bit cryptic. Normally, Rosie might have followed up and asked him to explain what he meant. But she has other, more immediate, and personal, thoughts on her mind—is no longer thinking about The Bad King and his recent conservative Supreme Court appointment.
She smiles a secret smile, reaches across the table to Billy, and traces her fingertips suggestively back and forth on the top of his hand. Earlier that afternoon she had stopped in the hotel boutique to do some lingerie shopping.
“I have an idea,” she says.
Her eyes meet Billy’s. “Let’s order a bottle of champagne and go upstairs to bed. I’ve got a little surprise for you,” she says, floating out a little tease.
Rosie takes out her credit card, signals for the waiter to come to the table with the check.
Billy is up early the next morning. He tells Rosie—as he is going out the door—that he is again going running at the park in Georgetown. Rosie thinks nothing of it and goes back to sleep for another hour before she must get up and get ready for work. Now that she’s back in the City, she has two hits (TV spots) to do at the studio that day—one with Andrea Mitchell on her show at 1:00, and the other with Nicole Wallace on Deadline Washington at 4:00—otherwise she is planning to spend most of the day at her desk in the White House Correspondent’s room working on a couple of stories she has been reporting on (based mostly off classified intelligence purposefully provided to her by CIA chief Shane McGregor) about the depth and breadth of Russia meddling in the upcoming 2020 election, how it is again being manipulated in favor of The Bad King by the Kremlin.