What’s Happening?

Why, you might wonder, as Alice did, what the heck is going on? Why did the campaigns of Donald Trump and President Joe Biden decide upon Thursday, 27 June, as the date of the initial presidential debate?

Plausible Speculations:

• Trump wished to refocus attention on his campaign and away from recent legal proceedings in New York.

• Democrats wished to get a look at Biden’s debate performance in advance of their convention in August, possibly with an eye to replacing him on the ticket if Biden performed badly.

Whatever the reasons, explains James Piereson in the WSJ, the two factions settled on a day and a weak when the Supreme court will be handing down a series of explosive decisions, several of them bearing upon the presidential campaign. . . .

James Piereson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes in the New Criterion (June 23): 

The granddaddy of them all is the Trump immunity case that may circumscribe Jack Smith’s prosecution of the former president over his alleged role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol. . . .

A decision on this case released on Wednesday or Thursday will land with the force of dynamite in the middle of the presidential debate. The ruling, depending on how it goes, will be exploited in the debate by either Trump or Biden, one of whom will return to it on every possible occasion.

The moderators will ask both to comment on the ruling. Trump, as a defendant in the charges, may be advised by counsel not to comment on the decision, lest he complicate his own situation or perhaps violate the limited gag order imposed by the federal judge in the case. If the decision goes for Trump, then Biden will be given still another opportunity to attack the Supreme Court.

No matter how it goes, the decision will divert attention from inflation, the border, crime, spending, Biden’s age, and other national issues.

Mr. Piereson suspects that the court, bearing this in mind, “will hold its decision on the Trump case until Friday, the day after the debate—or perhaps even beyond this coming week.” The cases before the SCOTUS have far-reaching implications for the “powers of the federal government in relation to the states and the constitutional rights of citizens.”