bowing

WACO, Texas — Justice Brett Kavanaugh says the genius of the American system of government is that no one should have too much power, even as he and other conservatives on the Supreme Court are facing criticism for deferring repeatedly to President Trump.

Invoking the list of grievances against King George III that the nation’s founders included in the Declaration of Independence, Kavanaugh said Thursday the framers of the Constitution were set on avoiding the concentration of power.

“And the framers recognized in a way that I think is brilliant, that preserving liberty requires separating the power. No one person or group of people should have too much power in our system,” Kavanaugh said at an event honoring his onetime boss, Kenneth Starr, a former federal judge and solicitor general celebrated by conservatives who died in 2022.

Trump’s aggressive effort to remake the federal government did not come up inside a gymnasium on the campus of McLennan Community College in Waco.

Across the street from the event, though, several dozen protesters offered a different view of Kavanaugh and Trump.

“Basically, the Supreme Court has handed the country to Trump,” said J.W. LaStrape, the head of the Baylor University Democrats who was among the protesters.

“BK- Trump Flunky,” one banner said. “Shame on You. No One is Above the Law,” a placard read in a reference to the court’s 2024 decision, which Kavanaugh joined, that helped Trump avoid prosecution for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The court’s liberal justices also have objected to the conservatives’ repeated votes in favor of Trump’s emergency appeals to the Supreme Court, including the most decision this week to allow the resumption of sweeping immigration operations in Southern California.

Kavanaugh’s appearance in Waco highlighted Kavanaugh’s long history with Starr, most notably his stint as a prosecutor in Starr’s independent counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton.

Starr became a household name in the late 1990s because of his investigation of Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Kavanaugh pushed Starr to ask Clinton in graphic detail about phone sex and specific sexual acts, according to a 1998 memo.

“The President has disgraced his office, the legal system and the American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her life into a shambles – callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Starr followed Kavanaugh’s advice and his report, filled with the salacious details, was released in full by House Republicans, who ultimately impeached Clinton for lying under oath. The Senate acquitted him.

At a dinner honoring Starr a year later, Kavanaugh said Starr deserved a seat on the Supreme Court, though he acknowledged it was unlikely. Still, he called Starr a hero who did not let attacks dissuade him from doing what he thought was right.

“Be sorry for his critics because they were the ones who sacrificed law and principle for politics and expediency,” Kavanaugh said. “Ken Starr never did that.”

In 2018, Starr was among those who publicly defended Kavanaugh, then a Supreme Court nominee, as he faced sexual misconduct allegations, including from Christine Blasey Ford, who said he groped her at a party when they were teenagers and tried to remove her clothes.

Kavanaugh forcefully denied the allegations in an emotional statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, harking back to Starr’s investigation when he said “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” was part of the motivation for what he termed a “calculated and orchestrated political hit.”

Starr’s widow, Alice, introduced the justice Thursday, saying she was distraught when Kavanaugh’s character was called into question.

“Not one bit of negative press was true,” she said, adding that she was well familiar with such criticism from her husband’s time as independent counsel.

Ken Starr did varied work after the Whitewater investigation. He represented Jeffrey Epstein when the financier was first accused of having sex with underage girls. Epstein pleaded guilty to minor charges and accepted a light sentence in Florida in 2008, in a deal that avoided a more serious federal prosecution.

Starr served as dean of the Pepperdine University law school in the Los Angeles area and then as president of Baylor University, also in Waco. But he was forced out of the Baylor job in 2016 in the midst of a sexual assault scandal involving players on the school’s football team. A school-commissioned report found that under Starr’s leadership, Baylor did little to respond to the allegations.

Then in 2020, Starr joined Trump’s defense team that won Senate acquittal of the president after his first impeachment.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

They groveled at his feet when they visited him at the White House in April, owner Mark Walter applauding when he lied about egg prices and team president Stan Kasten laughing at his attempts at humor.

They remained silent when he flooded their city with federal agents, chief marketing officer Lon Rosen refusing to comment on the racist kidnapping sweeps terrorizing the very community that helped them break attendance records.

And what did the Dodgers receive in exchange for betraying their fans and sucking up to President Trump?

A knock at the door from immigration enforcement.

The Dodgers learned what many Trump voters already learned, which is that Agent Orange doesn’t always reward subservience.

So much for all of their front-office genius. So much for staying out of politics.

Federal agents in unmarked vehicles formed a line at Dodger Stadium’s main entrance on Thursday, apparently with the intention of using a section of the parking lot as a processing center for detainees who were picked up during a morning immigration raid.

The Dodgers could look away when ICE was causing havoc in other parts of town, but even the morally compromised have limits. More than 40% of Dodgers fans are Latino. Transforming Dodger Stadium into ground zero for the administration’s war on brown people would be financial suicide for the franchise.

The agents were denied entry, according to the team.

There was speculation in and around the organization about whether the presence of the federal agents was a form of retaliation by a notoriously vindictive administration. Just a day earlier, the Dodgers said they would announce on Thursday plans to assist immigrant communities affected by the recent raids. In the wake of the visit, the announcement was delayed.

Ultimately, what did the Dodgers gain from their silent complicity with Trump?

They further diminished their stature as vehicles of inclusion, a tradition that included the breaking of baseball’s color barrier by Jackie Robinson and the expansion of the sport’s borders with the likes of Fernando Valenzuela, Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park.

They broke their sacred bond with the Latino community that was forged over Valenzuela’s career and passed down for multiple generations.

They at least resisted immigration agents’ efforts to annex their parking lot, but how much damage was already done? How much trust was already lost?

Consider this: When photographs of the unmarked vehicles in front of Dodger Stadium started circulating online, the widespread suspicion was that federal agents were permitted by the Dodgers to be there.

That was later revealed to be untrue, but what does that say about how the Dodgers were perceived?

Federal agents stand outside Gate E of Dodger Stadium on Thursday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Their announcement about their impending announcement looked like a cynical effort to reverse a recent wave of negative publicity, which started with Rosen refusing to comment on the immigration sweeps.

Asked if the Dodgers regretted visiting the White House, Rosen said, “We’re not going to comment on anything.”

On the day of the “No Kings” demonstrations, a 30-year-old performer named Nezza sang a version of the national anthem in Spanish that was commissioned in 1945 by the U.S. State Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Nezza, whose full name is Vanessa Hernández, later posted a video on her TikTok account showing a Dodgers employee directing her to sing in English. She disobeyed the order, explaining that because of what was happening in Los Angeles, “I just felt like I needed to do it.”

In subsequent interviews, Nezza said her agent was called by a Dodgers employee, who said Nezza was to never return to Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers later clarified that Nezza wasn’t banned from the ballpark, but the incident nonetheless struck a chord. Reports of American citizens being detained or harassed have surfaced, creating a feeling the raids are as much about making brown-skinned people feel unwelcome as they are about deporting undocumented migrants. Nezza’s experience symbolized this feeling.

The incident resulted in widespread calls for a Dodgers boycott, which, coincidentally or not, was followed by the Dodgers teasing their announcement of support for immigrants.

The divisive environment created by Trump forced the Dodgers to take a side, however passively. Now, they have to win back angry fans who pledged allegiance to them only to be let down. Now, they have to deal with potential retaliation from the Mad King they pathetically tried to appease.