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‘Disdains Democracy’: Chief Justice’s Role in Trump Immunity Sparks Legal Experts’ Outrage
On the morning of April 25, the nine Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that ultimately decided Presidents have “absolute” immunity for crimes committed while in office if those criminal actions can be considered “official acts.” But, at first, as the attorneys presented their positions, some court watchers felt certain Donald Trump’s position – claiming absolute immunity – would be tossed out. Only after Justices were heard responding to Trump’s lawyer’s argument did legal experts believe the Court would side with the ex-president who had been criminally indicted in four separate cases.
But even some of the less optimistic critics believed the Court would find some middle ground. It did not, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent: “relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom … the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”
CNN in an exclusive report now reveals there was no real attempt by Chief Justice John Roberts to broker some form of agreement, consensus, or compromise among the justices, certainly no outreach to the three liberal jurists, and that from the start there was an immediate split along 6-3 partisan lines. The conservative justices – and especially the Chief Justice – wanted to grant presidents “absolute” immunity.
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“Roberts made no serious effort to entice the three liberal justices for even a modicum of the cross-ideological agreement that distinguished such presidential-powers cases in the past. He believed he could persuade people to look beyond Trump,” CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic reported Tuesday.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Hurley, NBC News’ senior Supreme Court reporter, citing the claim Roberts “believed he could persuade people to look beyond Trump,” says: “Based on the reaction to the ruling, he failed.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who writes about the courts and the law and is the author of a book on the Roberts Supreme Court, responded to Biskupic’s reporting: “Roberts took an extreme view of the presidential immunity case from the start and never bothered to negotiate with the liberals to find a single point of compromise. He was all in for Trump start to finish.”
The CNN report reveals a Chief Justice far different from what court watchers for years have claimed exists, that behind closed doors Roberts is working to smooth out ideological disagreements and find common ground to land the Court somewhere in the center of Americans’ beliefs. That he disdains rulings solely along partisan lines. That he has a strong desire to preserve and protect the institution he heads.
“It was understandable for outsiders, and even some justices inside, to believe that middle ground might be found on some issues in the immunity dispute and that Roberts would work against any resounding victory for Trump,” CNN’s Biskupic wrote.
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“Don’t ever suggest that Roberts ‘tries to be in the ideological middle’ at SCOTUS,” warned MSNBC anchor, and legal contributor and corespondent Katie Phang, responding to the CNN report.
“The chief justice’s institutionalist tendency had been cemented over the past two decades,” Biskupic added. “He often talked it up, famously admonishing Trump in 2018 that jurists shed their political affiliation once they take the robe, ‘We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have it an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.’ “
“The chief justice, now 69 and about to begin his 20th term, appears to have abandoned his usual institutional concerns.”
Alex Aronson, former Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, now Executive Director of the non-profit organization Court Accountability, appears to agree:
“It’s time for the press and lawyer class to *seriously* reconsider their views about John Roberts as an institutionalist. The man disdains democracy and equality. He has covered up his colleagues’ corruption and turned our Supreme Court into an arm of the Republican Party.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
