How to Save Democracy from the Supreme Court

Jul 11, 2024

Of all the rulings made by conservative justices on the United States Supreme Court this term, none might be as consequential as the decision to make former president Donald Trump immune from criminal prosecution for actions considered “official” while he was in the White House. The ruling has not only upended all of the criminal indictments against him but has rewritten the rules governing the presidency.

Lisa Graves is founder and executive director of the watchdog group True North Research and the host of the Grave Injustice podcast. She spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about what the court’s recent rulings mean and how democratic responses can curb them.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.