If you’re not yet familiar with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Wickard v. Filburn in 1942, you should check it out because the Court may get a chance to revisit its logic in that case.
To recap: Filburn, a farmer in Ohio, raised crops to feed to animals that he was going to eat. The Department of Agriculture claimed the power to limit how much of various crops he could plant, and claimed that he had exceeded those limits. The Supreme Court ruled that, even though none of the crops and none of the meat left the farm — let alone the state! — the fact that he didn’t have to purchase those things meant that his activity had an effect on interstate commerce, and therefore it was within the government’s power to restrict his activities.
So by not engaging in interstate commerce, he was actually engaging in interstate commerce.
It’s truly one of the wackiest rulings the Court has ever handed down, which is saying something.
But compare this to the reasoning now being put forth by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is trying to indict Donald Trump for… well, does it really matter?
Setting aside problems with jurisdiction, and statutes of limitations, and separation of powers, and a number of other issues that have been raised, Bragg’s argument seems to boil down to this: Trump misused campaign funds because he did not pay Stormy Daniels using campaign funds.
As the t-shirts and bumper stickers say, 1984 was supposed to be fiction, not an instruction manual.
