Politics USA
The US Supreme Court and questions of justice
Tony Bennett
In the UK we are used to Parliament being the law-making body for the nation. But a recent ruling by the UK Supreme Court on the meaning of “sex” for the purposes of gender discrimination showed that sometimes it’s the Supreme Court that has the final word.
How the US Supreme Court works
Our Supreme Court is not yet 20 years old and is only just beginning to make its mark. The United States Supreme Court, on the other hand, was created back in 1789 as a coequal branch of the federal government, alongside Congress and the Presidency. It even has the power to declare Acts of Congress unconstitutional, and thereby null and void. (The UK Supreme Court has no comparable power.) Through this power, the US Supreme Court has become the final arbiter of what the laws mean and, most importantly, what the Constitution means. That’s why most important cases of legal and constitutional importance end up there.
Politics USA
Trump and 'the most important issue': Immigration
Tony Bennett
Rather like studying Scripture, context is so important.
In 2015, having glided down that gold escalator in Trump Tower in New York to announce his first presidential bid, Donald Trump was not a minute into the speech when he delivered this broadside against immigrants: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
President Lazarus? Understanding US politics
Tony Bennett
Having spent a lifetime teaching and writing about American politics, I’m often asked this question by bemused church friends: “Why did 82% of white evangelical men vote for Donald Trump in 2024?” And the first thing that I want them to understand is that both they and those American voters are using the word “evangelical” to mean two different things.
My friends use the word to refer to something spiritual centring on the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning man’s sinfulness, Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, the empowering of the Holy Spirit to live God-honouring lives, and the need to preach that gospel to those as yet unsaved.
Reflecting on Marjorie Taylor Greene's change
One of the most ardent of President Trump’s supporters in Congress for the past five years has been the Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. But in the first week of January she abruptly resigned from the House of Representatives having publicly split with President Trump on a number of issues as vocally as she had supported him for most of those five years.
When she was first elected to the House in 2020, her politics were regarded by many as so extreme that within a month of her arrival she was removed from all her committee positions in the House after she had publicly endorsed the use of political violence.