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Ian Explains: The US Supreme Court's history of political influence
Has the Supreme Court become too politicized? American confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low. Just 25% of US adults have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court, a low in Gallup’s 50 years of polling.
In our "Ian Explains" segment on GZERO World, Ian Bremmer looks back at the history of SCOTUS and the idea that justices are supposed to be impartial “umpires” that stay above the fray of politics.
Major rulings from the conservative supermajority, like the 2022 Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion after 50 years of precedent, have many Americans arguing the court is enacting a political agenda by quickly moving the law to the right.
But if you look back at history, the idea of nonpartisan Supreme Court justices is a relatively new phenomenon. From the first ever chief justice, John Jay, to Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 nominee, Abe Fortas, plenty of judges have a history of blurring the line between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Recent ethics scandals involving Clarence Thomas––his wife Ginni pressed lawmakers to overturn the 2020 election, and revelations he accepted undisclosed gifts from a billionaire Republican donor––have critics calling for major changes on the Supreme Court.
Only in the last half-century has the court formed its identity as a neutral referee, which makes calls for reform by either party feel politically motivated. But the truth is, the court has always been political.
Tune into GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television stations nationwide. Check local listings.
For more on the Supreme Court and what to expect from anticipated rulings this year, watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: "Who polices the Supreme Court?"
Ian Explains: Has a US president ever been arrested before Trump?
The recent indictment of former President Trump has created an unprecedented legal situation that is polarizing the country. While other US presidents, such as Nixon and Clinton, have faced criminal investigations, no president has been arrested since Ulysses S. Grant, Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
In 1872, Grant was arrested for the crime of racing his horses and buggy down a Washington DC street. He was let off with a warning. The incident was not widely reported at the time, but in 1908, retired police officer William West recounted the story in an interview with The Sunday Star of Washington.
The arrest of Trump is a different situation because the trial is taking place at a time when the defendant is also running for reelection, which adds to the political tension. It remains to be seen if New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has the goods to win a conviction, or if his indictment will be the last that Trump faces. At least we can take heart in knowing that in one very specific way, history won’t be repeating itself: President Trump doesn’t go anywhere without a chauffeur.
Indictment boosts Trump GOP standing and strengthens Democrats
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
Former President Trump has been indicted. Now what?
This week, a jury in Manhattan indicted for former President Trump for allegations related to hush money payments that he made during his presidential campaign to a woman that he allegedly had an affair with. And the question is: what's next? So there's probably two major political fallout implications from this action. The first is that every other Republican in the country, including those running against Donald Trump in the presidential primary, are going to likely take Trump's line, that this is a political persecution, and it's being done by a hostile progressive prosecutor in Manhattan who's against him. And there's no way that Trump can get a fair trial. This probably helps Trump standing inside the Republican Party and could be a major tailwind to push him over the finish line in the Republican nomination.
The second implication is that this is probably pretty good for Democrats. If Trump wins the nomination, then there's going to be a lot of centrist voters and even moderate Republicans who have a hard time holding their nose and voting for him in the 2024 presidential cycle. And if he loses the nomination, then we have this hardcore group of Trump supporters who are fundamentally disaffected by the party and may not show up to vote for him, which could help Biden in his reelection no matter how bad the economy is. Either way, the next 18 to 24 months of this campaign cycle are going to be dominated by this and potentially several other criminal prosecutions against a former president. An unprecedented action in US history.
Explaining the long history of US debt (& which other countries are saddled with debt)
Sovereign debt is, simply put, the money a country owes to its creditors around the world. Ian Bremmer explains a few more fun facts about debt on GZERO World.
Good old Ben Franklin once quipped, “Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.” Well, America didn’t exactly heed that advice, because never in its history did the US hit the hay hungry. In fact, the nation ended the Revolutionary War years about $75 million in debt.
US debt hit the billions by the time the Civil War was over, and was at $22 billion after World War One.
Nowadays, we’re talking trillions with a “T” of course, and public debt was at 115% of GDP last year in America. You don’t have to be an accountant to know…there’s a fair amount of red ink on that balance sheet.
America isn’t alone on Debtors Island. Based on the International Monetary Fund’s 2021 data on the top six global economies in 2021, Japan leads the pack with debt standing at 221 percent of their GDP, followed by Italy, and then the U.S-of A. The UK comes in 4th, followed by France and Germany. China is probably somewhere high in that mix, but the IMF can’t say for sure because, unsurprisingly, Beijing isn’t too forthcoming with their data.
And if the COVID pandemic taught us anything, it’s that when China pretends a problem doesn’t exist, everything works out just fine.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Sen. Mitt Romney on DC dysfunction, Russian attacks, and banning TikTok
- US debt hits record: Should you worry? ›
- Who will cave on raising US debt ceiling (again?) ›
- The state of the global economy is … not good ›
- Welcome to the global economy in 2023 ›
- Podcast: Fix the global debt crisis before it's too late, warns World Bank's David Malpass - GZERO Media ›
- US government shutdown: No end in sight - GZERO Media ›
The history of Black voting rights in America
Until 1965, Black Americans who wanted to vote first faced faces unanswerable poll questions, and later equally tough literacy tests.
The Voting Rights Act banned these and other forms of overt voter suppression. But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the law, requiring states to get prior federal approval to tweak their voting laws for racial discrimination.
The ruling has allowed dozens of states to pass increasingly restrictive voting laws targeting minority groups with measures like bolstering voter ID, eliminating polling places, and rolling back mail-in voting.
But things aren’t always so black and white, or blue and red, Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World. Georgia is now ahead of New York on expanding early voting and no-excuse absentee ballots.
There are many reasons why Black voters turn out less than white Americans, and not all have to do with voter suppression. Still, progressive leaders worry restrictive laws will (further) widen the gap.
The upcoming 2022 midterm elections will be the first major test of these new voting laws. That is, unless Democrats pass new voting rights legislation — but the bill will die on the Senate floor.
The 1619 Project’s creator Nikole Hannah-Jones discusses its cultural impact
Today, we take a fresh look at US history—and the role Black people have played in it—with a woman who is reshaping that national conversation. When Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones published the “1619 Project” in 2019, not even she could have predicted its cultural impact. It’s hard to think of another piece of modern journalism that has garnered such praise while also sparking such intense outrage. Now, her new book, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, expands upon her initial work. She joins Ian Bremmer for an in-depth look at how she’s trying to reshape US history, and the backlash it has caused.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Counter narrative: Black Americans, the 1619 Project, and Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones blames backlash against 1619 Project, CRT on the myth of US "exceptionalism"
Why is there such a strong conservative reaction to the 1619 Project and critical race theory?
For Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work as creator of the 1619 Project, a big part of the problem is that we, "as Americans, are deeply, deeply invested in this mythology of exceptionalism.
"We really are indoctrinated into this idea that these intrepid colonists broke off from [...] Great Britain so that they could advance the ideas of liberty and individual rights. And to believe in that, then you have to downplay the role of slavery."
In other words, she adds, you must gloss over the fact that America has been "plagued by racism and inequality from our beginning."
What Hannah-Jones calls the white backlash against that narrative, she says, should not surprise us. Even after the horrific killing of George Floyd, which could have been an inflection point, Hannah-Jones laments, some politicians seized the opportunity to divide us even further on race.
"How do we divide these people who were finding common cause in Black equality? And you do that by saying, you know, we, we believe, you know, what happened to George Floyd was wrong, but it's gone too far now. Now they're trying to make you feel like there's something wrong with your whiteness. Now they're taking away your icons, they're knocking down your statues and they want to tell your children that your children are evil."
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Counter narrative: Black Americans, the 1619 Project, and Nikole Hannah-Jones
Was modern America built on slavery?
At the start of the Revolutionary War, slaves made up 20 percent of the population in British North America. They later built iconic buildings of US democracy like the Capitol and the White House in Washington.
But what if slavery was more than just America’s original sin? What if the institution of slavery itself was foundational to modern America?
That's what Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones defends — in very simple terms — in the 1619 Project. This sprawling collection of essays, short stories, and poetry published in 2019 argues that American history begins not in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence but rather 157 years earlier, when the first slave ship arrived in the British colonies on the other side of the Atlantic.
The 1619 Project landed like a cultural atom bomb. And soon later, the formerly obscure academic field known as “critical race theory” or CRT took center stage at conservative rallies and school board meetings.
What's the relationship, if any, between the two? Ian Bremmer explains.