05/02/2025
BREAKING: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounds the alarm about Donald Trump — says our nation's founders were "hellbent on ensuring that we don't have a monarchy" and we could "lose our democracy."
She really didn't hold back this time...
Sotomayor said that the "first way" the founders devised to avoid the ascent of a monarch was "to give Congress the power of the purse."
She made the remarks at Miami Dade College in Florida.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been working around the clock to undermine our system of checks and balances by unilaterally gutting agencies and systems that Congress voted to fund. It's a blatantly illegal power grab.
Sotomayor said that she maintains hope "that other actors in the system, whether it’s Congress or others, will follow the law, because it’s what we all take an oath of office to do."
However, she's understandably concerned that court orders will be ignored in the short term. By ramming through illegal executive orders, Trump can cripple and gut federal organizations while the legality is battled out — or he could try to outright ignore the decisions of the courts.
"Court decisions stand whether one particular person chooses to abide by them or not," said Sotomayor. "It doesn’t change the foundation that it’s still a court order that someone will respect at some point."
She said that the court has faced challenges in the past and the system has been "tested" but thankfully the country "by and large" has "understood that the rule of law has helped us maintain our democracy."
She also warned against the Supreme Court overturning well-established precedents — something that the right-wing justices have become more willing to do, with the very notable example of overturning Roe v. Wade.
"We must be cognizant that every time we upset precedent, we upset people’s expectations and the stability of law," said Sotomayor. "It rocks the boat in a way that makes people uneasy about whether they’re protected or not protected by the law."
"We’re going to lose our democracy," said Sotomayor, unless Americans and "particularly" young people take steps to inform themselves well and combat the misinformation chaos created by the rise of the internet.
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