In concurring with the SCOTUS ruling striking down Trump’s emergency tariffs, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in part, “most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason…the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design…Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not that of one faction or man…Deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions” and we all “will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.”
Gorsuch's words are a wake-up call, a plea to a Congress seemingly asleep at the switch to rediscover its spine and to reassert its Constitutional powers, to remember they were elected to legislate, not capitulate. Elected to stand tall once again as a bulwark of liberty. Will they or won’t they? How sad that we even have to ask the question. Gorsuch is urgently reminding us that conservative members of Congress are abdicating their Constitutional obligations, cravenly yielding their powers to one man, a bullying usurper, their sworn oaths to the Constitution notwithstanding. So it’s up to Democrats to have the courage and determination to call them out, to heed Gorsuch’s call and reclaim the deliberative legislative process, a process that can lead to workable solutions that work best for the American people, not the president and his apologists and apparatchiks.