Never mentioning President Donald Trump by name, former U.S. Sen. Bob Casey accused him Thursday of pushing destruction of the nation’s judicial system, press freedom and voting rights.
During a University of Scranton speech, Casey listed each of the president’s goals as “grave concerns” about the country’s future. He cited Congress’ failure to check the president’s behavior, too.
“And there’s some on the right that have this theory — I think it's loopy and dangerous — that somehow the executive (the president) has greater power and is higher than the judicial branch or the legislative branch,” Casey said. “That is wrong.”
Casey spoke not far from his home in Scranton's Hill Section in the latest of the series of lectures known as the Schemel Forum. The three-term Democrat lost to Republican Dave McCormick in 2024, and now serves as as a Leahy Distinguished Fellow in Public Service at the university and practices law for Philadelphia firm Dilworth Paxson.
Casey cited threats to judges’ independence as his great concern. He called out the president’s continuous attacks on the judiciary as leading “awful, awful, almost criminal efforts to undermine judicial independence and to destroy what I think is a crown jewel of American government.”
Besides noting the president called Supreme Court justices rogue judges for ruling against his tariffs, Casey cited a Minnesota federal judge who ruled immigration agents violated orders more than 100 times in a month during a crackdown there.
“But it's worse than that. What it's led to is not just an erosion of our system, our judicial system and our very government, the very nature of a free society, but it's also led to threats,” he said. “Not political threats, death threats (against judges).”
A judge’s decisions “are fair game for criticism, good faith criticism of the decision — the reasoning, or the analysis, all of that is appropriate,” he said.
“But baseless, personal attacks on a judge and/or the judge's motives or suggestions that a judge is corrupt — corrupt because you disagree with the result in the case — is not only wrong, but erodes the foundation of judicial independence,” he said.
Congress failing to check Trump
Casey wants Congress to check the president the way Republican congressional leaders once checked President Richard Nixon, a Republican, during the early 1970s Watergate scandal.
As the Watergate scandal unfolded and Nixon’s involvement in a coverup of the infamous burglary became apparent, Republican senators called for his resignation, Casey reminded.
“People in the Senate of the same party stood up to the president and exercised that kind of independence, instead of the kind of deference we so often see (now),” he said.
'Never been more important'
Casey highlighted Trump’s constant “categorical condemnation of a free press” ... “calling them all different names, but names that engender opposition to them.”
“Obviously, one of the ways that I think we're going to move forward in a positive direction is to support a free press. Never been more important,” he said. “Just think where we'd be as a country lately, especially without a free press and a judiciary.”
Casey said he would vote against the pending Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act.
“The Senate is at loggerheads right now about this so called SAVE Act, which, in my judgment, is bad, bad legislation that should be defeated because it'll erect barriers to voting,” he said.
Time and money
Casey also raised the need to control the exorbitant spending on election campaigns. He pointed out he raised more money for his 2024 Senate campaign than his three previous election campaigns combined.
He said the issue boils down to one word.
“T-I-M-E. Time that candidates, the time that office holders who then are candidates for reelection, the time that even donors have to spend on raising those sums of money has a consequence,” he said. “And you might think it's corruption. It's all about corruption. These big institutions give someone money and they corrupt them. That's certainly there.”
Corruption is less of a problem than time, he said.
“Because every minute that the candidate, especially if you're in office, is spending raising money, guess what they're not doing, right?” he said. “They're not in a meeting with a colleague about a bill. They're not talking to a constituent. They're not explaining to the press what their position is on an issue.”
More concerns
As other grave concerns, he cited a tax code favoring the wealthy, climate change, unaffordable health care and the lack of a strategy to ensure the children’s future.
“If you want to continue to be the most powerful country in the world, you need a strategy for kids,” Casey said. “Every child should have the benefit of five freedoms, the freedom to learn, no matter who they are, very early in their life, early learning, the freedom to be healthy with good quality health care, the freedom to be safe from harm, for those who would do them harm, the freedom from hunger ... and the freedom to be economically secure.”
He urged the audience of about 100 people to stay active and fight for democracy.
“So at the end of our time, let it be said of us that we all labored in the vineyard, so to speak, to ensure that the sun of freedom of rule of law, of democracy, of decency, that sun that warms our great nation, is always, always rising,” he said.
