There will come a time, maybe even in the next few days,
when at least some of our top newsroom leaders will acknowledge the growing mountain of evidence before them
and reach the obvious conclusion that Donald Trump’s actions have precipitated a full-fledged constitutional crisis.
They will recognize that through his unconstitutional executive orders,
his rampant law-breaking,
and (new!) his defiance of court orders,
he is acting as if he alone is the government.
And they will see how the other branches are either unwilling or unable to restrain him.
Assuming they are not immediately fired by their corporate bosses for insubordination,
they will then call a #staff #meeting or send out a #memo, to share their conclusion.
But what then?
What will those newsrooms start to do differently
I hope our top journalists have thought this through already, but I fear they have not.
As it happens, I have some ideas.
The first essential step is to fully and intentionally go into crisis mode.
That means constant, round-the-clock, top-of-the-homepage coverage until the crisis is resolved.
#Oliver #Darcy, in his media newsletter #Status, did a marvelous job last week of describing what the media’s response to Trump’s actions should be.
“Think about how it covers natural disasters and terror attacks,” he wrote.
“It’s time to break out those six-column front page headlines and interrupt regular programming with special broadcast news reports.”
Crisis coverage requires clarity and focus:
During a crisis, you don’t argue about whether there is a crisis or not. You focus on getting through it.
Crisis coverage also requires a dramatic change in language.
No more euphemisms and passive voice. It’s time for strong words and active verbs.
It requires authoritative reporting.
No splitting the difference between two sources when one of them is misinformed or deliberately misleading. Accurate information is essential in a crisis.
It requires big-picture thinking:
What are the consequences of this crisis? Who will it affect and how?
It requires profiles of the victims.
It calls for regular assessments of the response.
Who’s helping? Who’s hurting? Who’s proposing solutions?
Whose ideas are just making it worse?
It requires digging into the motives of the people who are making it worse.
And this is minor, but it necessitates calling things by their name:
Bold rubrics like “Democracy in Crisis” or “America Under Siege”
— not “Trump Administration.”
Identifying something as a crisis is the opposite of accepting it as the new normal
— and that’s entirely the point.
This can’t become the new normal. Our democracy won’t survive
https://presswatchers.org/2025/02/step-one-acknowledge-the-constitutional-crisis-whats-step-two/

Chief justice Roberts pushed for quick immunity ruling in Trump’s favor – report

John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme court’s chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly
– and in favor
– of Donald Trump
ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.

The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the country’s highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on
– and generally favoring
– the Republican former president.

Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings, and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts
– who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bush’s presidency
– took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.

In addition to the presidential immunity ruling, the decisions collectively barred states from removing any official
– including Trump
– from a federal ballot as well as declaring the government had overstepped with respect to obstruction of justice charges filed against participants of the 6 January 2021 attack that the former president’s supporters aimed at Congress.

The Times reported that last February, Roberts sent a memo to his fellow supreme court justices regarding the criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.

In the #leaked #memo, the Times reported that he criticized a lower court decision that allowed the case to move forward
– and he argued to the other justices that Trump was protected by presidential immunity.

He reportedly said that the supreme court ought to hear the case and grant Trump greater protection from prosecution.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” the Times said that Roberts wrote to the other supreme court justices in the private memo.

According to the Times, some of the conservative justices wanted to delay the decision on the presidential immunity case until after Trump finished running for a second term in the White House in November.

But Roberts advocated for an early hearing and decision
– and ultimately wrote the majority opinion himself.

Before the opinion and ruling went public, the Times reported that Justice Brett #Kavanaugh had praised Roberts on the ruling,
calling it “extraordinary”.

Their fellow conservative justice Neil #Gorsuch
– who, like Kavanaugh, was appointed to the supreme court during Trump’s presidency
– called it “remarkable”.

The decision came out on 1 July and stated that former presidents are entitled to some degree of #immunity from criminal prosecution.

Both conservatives and liberals saw it as a huge win for Trump, who
– among a spate of legal problems
– is awaiting sentencing for a criminal conviction in May of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.

The supreme court then returned the case to district judge Tanya #Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump for allegedly participating in an illicit effort to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election.

That left her tasked with having to figure out how to apply the US supreme court’s decision.

The Times also reported that in the case about whether individual states could kick Trump off the ballot
based on language in the US constitution which bars insurrections from holding office,
Roberts told his colleagues that he wanted the decision to be #unanimous and #unsigned.

All nine justices initially agreed that Trump should remain on state ballots.

But then, the Times reports, four conservative justices suggested additions to the ruling,
including proposing that Congress would have to approve enforcement of the insurrectionist ban in the constitution.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/16/supreme-court-john-roberts-trump-immunity-ruling?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other