6th Amendment
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Is this the moment American democracy finally broke?
Thom Hartmann April 11, 2025
The highest form of freedom in a democracy isn’t just the right to vote or protest — it’s the right to speak truth to power. To call out corruption. To challenge lies. To stand firm when the powerful demand silence. This is the freedom that sustains all others.
And it’s the one Donald Trump tried to crush yesterday with the stroke of a pen.
When he signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — two public servants whose only crime was telling the truth — Trump didn’t just abuse his office. He weaponized the government against honesty itself.
This wasn’t law enforcement: It was political vengeance. This wasn’t democracy: It was a warning shot from the edge of autocracy.
And if we let this slide — if we treat it as just another Trump headline — we are inviting the next strongman to do the same, only worse.
The freedom to speak truth to power is either sacred, or it’s gone.
Thus, Donald Trump just moved America miles down the road toward our becoming a police state. There’s no other way to describe it.
His Executive Order (EO) signed yesterday demanding criminal investigations into Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — and his public statement that Taylor is a “traitor” guilty of “treason” — are nothing short of a blatant assault on the rule of law and a perilous step toward turning America into a dictatorship.
This isn't just about settling personal scores; it's a calculated move to instill fear, silence dissent, and dismantle the very foundations of our democratic institutions.
Can you imagine yourself being called a traitor by the president of the United States and thus facing prison? Having to hire expensive attorneys that may well force you to sell your home to pay for, just to defend yourself? Not to mention having to protect yourself and your family from the rightwing enforcers who are probably at this moment doxxing and threatening Krebs and Taylor?
This echoes tactics used by autocrats throughout history: Stalin’s purges, Nixon’s enemies list (though less successfully executed), and more recently, Orbán in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, or Putin in Russia. If normalized, it risks further turning the U.S. into an illiberal democracy or autocracy, where elections occur but power is retained through fear, manipulation, and coercion. Or worse, a violent kleptocracy like Russia.
Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), had the audacity to do his job by ensuring the integrity of our elections and debunking Trump’s baseless lies of fraud in the 2020 election. Miles Taylor, who served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, dared to speak out against the administration's reckless policies and wrote a book.
Their “crime”? Upholding their oaths to the Constitution and telling the truth.
By weaponizing the Department of Justice to pursue these individuals, Trump is not only abusing presidential power but also sending a chilling message to current and future whistleblowers: “Cross me, and you’ll pay.” This is the hallmark of a despot, not a democratically elected leader.
But Trump isn’t stopping there. He’s extending his vendetta to the very institutions that safeguard our legal system and might defend Taylor and Krebs.
Law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block are being targeted with punitive measures — revoked security clearances, terminated federal contracts, and restricted access to federal buildings including courthouses — all because they’ve had the courage to represent clients like these two who have challenged Trump’s overreaches.
In addition to signing an executive order targeting two former employees yesterday, Trump also signed one attacking yet another law firm, this time Susman Godfrey, which helped Dominion Voting Systems get millions from Fox for their 2020 election lies.
This is a direct attack on the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to legal representation. When the government intimidates law firms into submission, it erodes the adversarial system that is essential for justice.
The implications are dire. If attorneys fear retribution for taking on cases that oppose the administration, who will hold the government accountable? Who will defend people like Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor?
This orchestrated campaign of intimidation is designed to create a chilling effect, deterring legal professionals from defending those who dare to speak truth to power.
This EO is a tactic ripped straight from the playbook of violent, authoritarian regimes like Putin’s, Erdoğan’s, and Orbán’s, where the law becomes a tool of oppression rather than justice.
Moreover, this politicization of the Department of Justice undermines its very mission. The DOJ is meant to operate independently, free from political influence, to uphold the law impartially.
Yet, under Trump’s directive, it is being transformed before our eyes into his personal enforcer, pursuing baseless investigations to settle political scores in ways Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. This perversion of justice not only delegitimizes the department but also erodes public trust in our legal institutions.
Let’s be clear: This isn’t just about Krebs, Taylor, or the targeted law firms: It’s about the survival of our democracy. When a president can wield power to punish dissent and dismantle checks and balances without consequence, we are treading dangerous waters.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Trump’s actions are a direct assault on these freedoms, aiming to silence opposition and consolidate power.
The legal community is beginning to push back. Over 500 law firms have united to challenge these types of executive orders, recognizing them as a grave threat to our constitutional governance. Former top lawyers from major corporations have also voiced their opposition, understanding that this isn’t just a legal issue but a fundamental attack on the principles that underpin our society.
However, resistance must extend beyond the legal profession: we all must speak out. Every American who values democracy, justice, and freedom should be alarmed by these developments.
This is a moment that demands vigilance and action. We cannot afford to be complacent as the pillars of our democracy are systematically dismantled. The phone number for Congress is 202-224-3121, and another set of demonstrations are scheduled for a week from this coming Saturday, April 19th.
If there was ever any doubt, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are now laid bare. His actions are not those of a leader who respects the Constitution or the people he serves: They are the actions of a man desperate to exploit and cling to power by any means necessary, even if it means destroying the very fabric of our nation.
This executive order is more than just a scandal — it’s a frontal assault on democracy. It shows Trump’s willingness to use the machinery of state as a weapon against truth and accountability, and underscores the urgent need to safeguard democratic institutions, enforce accountability, and reaffirm the independence of the rule of law in America.
If we fail to hold Trump accountable for turning the justice system into a tool of revenge, we are not just rewriting the rules — we're erasing them.
Democracy doesn’t “die in darkness.” It dies when truth becomes a crime and silence becomes survival. The time to speak up is now—while we still can.
NOW READ: The sickening secret sauce to Trump's political success
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thom h 10 22
...But that’s just the beginning of the out-of-control and dangerous behavior of the far-right radicals on today’s court. Since there’s been a conservative majority on the Court it has, among other things:
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*Handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush
*Radically cut back the rights of unions to organize and represent workers
*Declared that billionaires buying politicians is merely “free speech”
*Gutted the power of the EPA to regulate planet-destroying carbon pollution
*And ripped the heart out of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
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In just the past year this Court, now stacked with 3 new and deeply unqualified (but young!) hard-right Trump-humping activists, has already ruled to:
*End the 6th Amendment right of prisoners to challenge convictions when their lawyers were demonstrably corrupt or incompetent (Shinn v Ramirez. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “The Court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.”
*Further gut Americans’ right to vote. In 3 separate cases, Merrill v Milligan, Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, and Ardoin v. Robinson the six rightwing justices endorsed three separate Republican gerrymanders and voting maps in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Alabama that were each unabashedly based on efforts to enhance the electoral power of white voters.
*Remove from US citizens who move to (or live in) Puerto Rico the right to receive certain Social Security benefitsin their US v Vaello-Madero case. Whacking the rights of over 300,000 Americans living in PR, the six crazies on the Court ruled that only Congress could fix the damage they themselves were doing. The problem with that, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, is that because PR isn’t yet a state and has no member of Congress to fight on their behalf the Court was simply “punishing disparities suffered by citizen residents of Puerto Rico under Congress’ unequal treatment.”
*Take away your Miranda rights to remain silent, avoid self-incrimination, and know you have access to a lawyer. Americans cannot, the 6 “conservatives” on the Court ruled in Vega v. Tekoh, sue police officers who fail to tell them their Miranda rights.
*Eliminate many non-citizens’ rights under the Constitution when abused by the federal government. While the Constitution refers to “persons” rather than “citizens” in most critical places (like the 14th Amendment guaranteeingequal protection under the law), the Court decided in two cases, Garland v. Gonzalez and in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, that noncitizens often are not entitled to bond hearings or class-wide injunctive relief when screwed by the feds.
*Rip away 4th Amendment privacy rights against unreasonable search and seizure for all persons living within 100 miles of an ocean or our borders with Mexico or Canada (that’s two out of three American citizens – even here in Portland, I’m within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean). In Egbert v Boule, the six rightwingers on the Court ruled that border patrol and other federal officers can search you, your home, or your vehicle for any old reason they want because you live in the vicinity of a border or ocean and they consider you suspicious. No warrant necessary anymore.
*Give police officers who use excessive force immunity from accountability. In Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna and City of Tahlequah, OK v. Bond the Court upheld its own invention, the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” that makes it almost impossible to sue cops when they wail on you or even kill you (in the Tahlequah case they killed a man in his own garage) for little or no reason.
*Kill the power of the EPA under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon pollution or protect communities from having their water supplies poisoned by industry seeking profits. West Virginia v EPA ended that agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and Louisiana v American Rivers handed polluters, overturning 50 years of precedent, the power to overrule states’ and tribes’ rules against pollution of their waterways.
That was last year, and apparently it was just a warm-up:
*Now the Court, in addition to taking on Moore v Harper that could guarantee no Democrat in our lifetimes will ever again become president, is planning to take a second large bite out of the Voting Rights Act in Merrill v Mulligan.
*In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina the 6-judge majority will probably end affirmative action.
*In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District the Court allowed a coach to impose prayer on public school students because “religious liberty.”
*Even as guns have become the leading cause of death among American children and gun-related crime is washing over our country like a poisonous bloody tide, the Court is preparing to unleash even more weapons on our nation by gutting gun owner licensure laws in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Virtually every one of these decisions are or will be based on the power the Court gave itself to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed by the President in its 1803 Marbury v Madison case.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment
sixth Amendment
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including the right to a public trial without unnecessary delay, the right to a lawyer, the right to an impartial jury, and the right to know who your accusers are and the nature of the charges and evidence against you. It has been most visibly tested in a series of cases involving terrorism, but much more often figures in cases that involve (for example) jury selection or the protection of witnesses, including victims of sex crimes as well as witnesses in need of protection from retaliation.
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Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense
an 5 22
A ruling handed down by the right-wing United States Supreme Court on Monday that strips convicted felons of the opportunity to present evidence in federal court that they had ineffective counsel is facing ferocious condemnation by legal experts.
The 6-3 majority decision in Shinn versus Ramirez and Jones, authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, denied the petitions of two death row inmates in Arizona – David Martinez Ramirez and Barry Lee Jones – to submit proof that their attorneys had failed them at trial. Martinez and Jones argued that as a result, their Sixth Amendment rights to due process and habeas corpus were violated.
Because their appeals were denied at the state level, Thomas declared that Ramirez and Jones had no legal standing to sue federally.
“[O]nly rarely may a federal habeas court hear a claim or consider evidence that a prisoner did not previously present to the state courts in compliance with state procedural rules,” Thomas wrote.
"Such intervention is also an affront to the State and its citizens who returned a verdict of guilt after considering the evidence before them," he said. "Federal courts, years later, lack the competence and authority to relitigate a State’s criminal case."
The Court's three liberal jurists dissented.
"This decision is perverse," Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor opined on behalf of the minority."It is illogical: It makes no sense to excuse a habeas petitioner’s counsel’s failure to raise a claim altogether because of ineffective assistance in postconviction proceedings ... but to fault the same petitioner for that postconviction counsel’s failure to develop evidence in support of the trial-ineffectiveness claim."
She said that "the Court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.”
Numerous legal experts concurred with Sotomayor, stressing that Monday's precedent-reversing ruling guts the 6th Amendment.
"You can't meaningfully enforce the Sixth Amendment in a state post-conviction proceeding unless you have an ounce of seriousness about the lawyer they are getting in that forum," University of Texas Law Professor Lee Kovarsky tweeted. "And since representation in state post-conviction proceedings is a national embarrassment, it means that it's not a really useful site of Sixth Amendment enforcement."
Kovarsky expanded upon what that means for defendants.
"You can have your claim decided on the merits in federal court, but you cannot INTRODUCE EVIDENCE to prove that claim," he said. "There's a million ways to pick this opinion apart, but here's a simple one. If you get to federal court with incontrovertible evidence of innocence, you can disable procedural bars but that evidence can't be considered on the merits. Your modern Supreme Court, people."
Read his thread below [twt]
university of Texas Law Professor and CNN contributor Steve Vladeck noted that "Thomas holds that habeas courts can't expand the record to take new evidence showing ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel."
Leah Litman, an associate professor of law at the University of Michigan, agreed.
"It's bad," she Tweeted. "If the state appoints you a lawyer who is constitutionally ineffective at your trial; and then appoints you ANOTHER lawyer who is constitutionally ineffective to argue your trial lawyer was ineffective ... you're screwed. This is just a horrific decision that will close the Martinez exception that allowed litigants to enforce the 6th amendment right to counsel."
Others were far less cordial in her critique.
"HOLY. SHIT," New York City Public Defender Eliza Orleans said. "This decision effectively ensures that innocent people will remain imprisoned. This is radical. This is horrifying. This is extremely scary."
Commercial litigator Akiva Cohen pointed out the obscure insidiousness embedded within Thomas' annotations.
"I don't think I've ever been angrier about a footnote. Context: this is in a SCOTUS decision holding that a state prisoner on death row can be executed because of his appellate counsel's negligence, because district courts CANNOT 'forgive' the forfeiture due to that negligence," he said. "I mean holy fuck. 'Oops, sorry your lawyers suck, but it would cost too much to make sure you're actually guilty before we electrocute you'??"
Slate correspondent Mark Joseph Stern was equally as outraged.
"The Supreme Court's second and final opinion of the day is an absolutely atrocious 6–3 ruling in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, a habeas case. I will say more but this decision effectively ensures that innocent people will remain imprisoned," he tweeted. "The Supreme Court has previously said that habeas petitioners can bring ineffective assistance of counsel claims for the first time in federal court. But today, it says they *can't develop evidence to support these claims.* In doing so, it turns that 'right' into an illusion."
Stern added that "everything about Thomas' opinion is repulsive."