The High Court, of Course | Winners & Losers

The Loser of the Quarter-Millennium has been crowned.

You have chosen a winning Loser! And it wasn’t even close. I’ll reveal your choice in a second. But first, let’s set the table.

Donald Trump is actively working to disrupt the midterms because he knows MAGA candidates are going to get trounced (generally speaking). Since January 2025, Donald Trump has demolished American soft power abroad by cutting aid to the most needy populations on Earth. The death toll from those early cuts is skyrocketing, although actual numbers are hard to pin down.

He has terrorized communities of color by sending a mostly masked, militarized federal police force into American cities to hunt down anyone he believes doesn’t belong here. Families have been torn apart. Children taken from their parents. Men and women remain stuffed into inhumane facilities, away from the eyes of other Americans. The suffering — and death — he has caused here is immeasurable. Astronomical, even. It will be among the most difficult reckonings we will face when this is all over.

He invaded a foreign country and kidnapped its president.

He ordered the execution-by-bombing of foreign fishermen off the coasts of their countries.

He committed one of the greatest acts of national self-sabotage in the history of civilization by entering a war of choice with Iran. It’s a war we’re losing and that has profound effects on the global economy, the century-old system of alliances, and, of course, American power. As Bobby Jones says: we aren’t the world’s superpower anymore. It only took a few months to erase a hundred years of hegemony.

Trump made $2,000,000,000 while in office. So far.

But here’s the thing: Trump might be a supervillain, but he’s not a genius. This mess does not belong to him alone. He had help.

Last week, your vote was between two of Trump’s most effective and culpable co-conspirators: Stephen Miller and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

And the Loser of the Quarter Millennium, by a 3-to-1 vote, is …

Interestingly enough, in the initial ranked-choice vote, Miller was the leader. But head-to-head, it was no contest. So let’s talk about the Supreme Court.

When Trump swept into office for his second term, the question on everyone’s mind was: would our system hold? Would the checks and balances we’ve built into our democracy offset the potential havoc a second Trump administration would wreak?

We got our answer almost immediately: no. Not really. Congress abdicated its role almost instantly. The executive branch, having already amassed increasing power over the last 40 years, became a runaway train.

The resistance sued. A lot. And we won. A lot. But the wins were mostly limited to the lower courts. The funnel of appeals upward resulted in more consolidation of power in the executive. But even beyond appeals, the Supreme Court cleared the way for racist gerrymanders across the country, particularly in the South, where black voters are facing disenfranchisement, erasing gains 60 years in the making.

SCOTUS doubled down on the flush of money in politics. Billionaires now have virtually unfettered power to influence our elections, elected leaders, and, well, everything else that matters. You and me? We can kick rocks.

In their Birthright Citizens decision (Trump v. Barbara), three of them said that the sentence, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens …” should be interpreted as meaning “NOT all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens …”

You picked SCOTUS because the effects of these decisions are durable over time. They will be incredibly difficult to untangle, and they will have massive — virtually unimaginable — effects on our politics, democracy, and society.

You nailed it. Here’s what you had to say.

Team: you chose wisely.

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Next week, we’ll be back to the Winner and Loser of the week. You might be asking, “But what about the Winner of the Quarter-Millennium?”

I’m glad you asked! I thought long and hard about this. We are living through history. In ten or twenty or fifty years, we will look back on this period and the ensuing years as if the outcomes were a foregone conclusion. But right now they aren’t. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

And we don’t know who will lead us out of the wilderness yet. If I had to guess, there will not be a single Winner of the Quarter-Millennium. We don’t even know if we will win, at least in the course of our own lifetimes. I believe we will.

I believe we will build an equitable democracy. I believe we will stop the white Christian nationalists. I believe we will hold the fascists accountable. I believe we will transition out of fossil fuels and mitigate the worst effects of climate change. I believe we’ll get through this.

And if I’m right, then humanity will be the Winner of the Quarter-Millennium.

What do you think?