With CHARLIE HARPER

The latest public spat between US President Trump and one of his key cabinet members has involved a superficially unlikely but perhaps predictable cabinet secretary.

That would be Attorney General Bill Barr, a veteran of previous Republican administrations who reportedly caught Trump’s eye during the untidy tenure of former Alabama senator Jeff Sessions.

Sessions outraged Trump by recusing himself from independent counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 American election. Despite Sessions’ ostentatiously obsequious obeisance to Trump in virtually every other matter, the president clearly never forgave Sessions and finally fired him last year.

Enter Barr, who had caught the President’s eye partly by writing a memorandum that embraced executive privilege to an almost unprecedented degree. In so doing, Barr appeared to agree with Trump’s campaign boast in 2016 that he could shoot dead someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

Barr basically asserted that everything a president does is inherently legal. Trump, who clearly admires and envies the autocratic authority wielded by Russian President Putin, Chinese President Xi and even North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un, liked what he read and hired Barr.

Barr has up to now repaid Trump’s confidence by seeming to bend the US Department of Justice to Trump’s will. But in the case of the sentence for convicted felon and longtime Trump pal Roger Stone, Barr may have had enough. He complained publicly over the weekend that Trump should stop tweeting about court cases.

In the Stone case, Justice Department lawyers had sought a nine-year sentence for Trump’s crony. The president complained in several tweets about the unfairness of the prospective penalty. Barr, in a step most unusual at the Justice Department, seemed to intervene. The prosecutors took the unusual step of resigning from the case in protest.

Over 1,000 former DoJ professionals called for Barr’s resignation. A professional organisation of US federal judges called an emergency conference to consider the implications of the Attorney General’s behaviour. Pundits and commentators became indignant.

The Attorney General’s complaint about Trump’s tweets may have simply been that Trump was spotlighting for otherwise dazed and anaesthetized American voters the apparent corruption of justice perpetrated by Barr in support of the president. There are rumours that Barr is considering resignation, as he said the tweets impaired his ability to do his job.

Maybe Barr will leave the administration. Maybe he won’t. But in any case, Trump will not change his view that the Attorney General should function as his personal attorney and should offer commensurately consistent support and allegiance.

If exposing the molesters is anything to go by, then women have made progress

2020 is the centennial year for women’s suffrage in the United States. Events are planned to commemorate this milestone throughout the country, all throughout the year. In theory, this year should witness pride and satisfaction in the progress American women have undeniably made in recent years as well as over the long arc of US history.

But what do the headlines actually tell us?

Well, MeToo poster boy and one-time heavyweight Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, right, is pictured on the daily TV news shows dragging his tired, old-looking body into federal court on sexual assault charges.

Iconic actor and comedian Bill Cosby, whose portrayal of Cliff Huxtable on television probably helped as much as anything to promote in American minds the notion that upstanding black professionals could inhabit their neighbourhoods, similarly paid a heavy price for his alleged sexual predation.

The current president of the United States is a man who has boasted repeatedly about his caveman tactics toward women who interested him sexually. And he was elected nonetheless. Enough has surely already been said about Donald Trump and his views on women.

Former Democratic senator Al Franken from Minnesota is now a former senator after women charged him with inappropriate conduct toward them. Senate Democrats, led by several women in its caucus, ushered him unceremoniously out of office.

Garrulous Joe Biden has been in hot water for months because some women felt he touched them and generally behaved inappropriately.

Insurgent and possibly resurgent Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who may just be someone who can beat Trump at his own game, has long been the subject of criticism for his espousal of misogynistic locker room banter in his business environment. Bloomberg will continue to draw ire and fire from opponents for numerous non-disclosure agreements he has signed with women who have credibly complained about his behaviour toward them.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has long been dogged by charges that he and his campaign this year and in 2016 did not sufficiently respect women. He also allegedly told his liberal colleague and presidential nomination rival senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts that a woman could not beat Trump this year. Many believe Warren’s account over Sanders’ repeated denials.

And so on. It can certainly be argued that the fact these significant public figures have been indicted or pilloried in the court of public opinion represents progress. After all, that’s ultimately what MeToo was and is all about. Women felt a spotlight should shine on the bad behaviour and general misconduct of powerful men toward females.

If public ridicule is one weapon in the fight for women’s rights in the US, it is largely one that hopes for and relies upon a response from courts and legislatures. While the charges hurled toward Democrats are taken seriously and often result in dire consequences, Trump appears to lose very little support among Republican voters for his outrageous behaviour and apparent attitudes.

We will see in November if the consequences for the President are ultimately dire or not.

Meanwhile, largely behind the scenes, the Equal Rights Amendment is rising from the ashes. Remember the ERA? Essentially outlawing discrimination based upon gender, the ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1923, but only passed in 1972. The ERA was then remitted, as ordained by the US constitution, to the states for ratification. There was a 1979 ratification deadline originally attached to the enabling legislation. It was later extended to 1982.

But 38 (at least three-quarters of all) states have to ratify a constitutional amendment for it to become law, and by 1982, only 35 states had signed on. Did the ERA amendment therefore die for lack of support? The issue is now almost certainly headed for the courts, because in this centennial women’s suffrage year, the ERA is back.

Since 1982, the Illinois and Nevada legislatures have ratified the ERA and earlier this year, Virginia’s newly Democratic-majority legislature did the same. So now the ERA has the required 38 votes, right?

Not so fast, it turns out. First, there is the matter of the 1982 deadline, which passed nearly four decades ago.

Secondly, since that date several states including South Dakota, Alabama and Louisiana have rescinded their support for the ERA.

Law and precedent are murky on whether the original ratification deadline was legal or even appropriate, and whether states can subsequently rescind their vote to ratify a constitutional amendment.

Attorneys General in several states have now filed suit on the matter, and it is expected the US Supreme Court will eventually choose to hear one of them. Many observers anticipate the American high court will also soon hear a case on the social conservative touchstone issue of abortion, with particular reference to its own 1973 decision in the landmark Roe v Wade case.

The debate rages on: Are American women making irreversible progress, or do powerful social and political forces threaten a retrenchment which might actually result in fewer rights for women?

Maybe it’s appropriate all this is happening in the Year of the Woman.