It's truly disgusting when one political party decides they have to cheat to win elections. But this truly is what it is. It's election "tampering" for one party over the other. My only hope is that it backfires when it happens. Then and only then will they realize that although you put a patch on something those patches have a way of falling off when people get anger and disgusted about being "ripped" from the process. The thing that really made me angry was that they stopped a primary in the middle of voting and screamed "we NEED a do over." That is NOT the way and election is supposed to work. "Oh we'll just throw away all those votes that have been cast and see what happens with the "new" set up." So wrong on so many levels it isn't right no matter how you look at it.
"That was before Louisiana v. Callais. I can’t give them the 65 anymore."
It's not even close to a 65 anymore, is there a grade of less than zero? Because the corrupt Roberts court jettisoned two fundamental policies they've invoked time and time again to rig the midterm elections.
• They ignored the Purcell Principle without even an excuse.
• They blasted the 30-32 day delay waiting period SCOTUS puts on major decisions before the ruling is enacted giving the lower courts to review and make decisions on the new SCOTUS ruling.
Instead SCOTUS rammed the Louisiana decision through at the last minute while voting in Louisiana was already underway with tens of thousands of votes already cast. Then SCOTUS never even uttered a peep when Louisiana governor Jeff Landry called an emergency to stop the voting and steamroll a new racist map out of his corrupt legislature.
The fix was in, and the MAGAs aren't even trying to hide it. The partisan SCOTUS has made it clear - they'll only use Purcell when it hurts the Dems and helps the Republicans.
On this I totally agree with you. And as a Democrat for over 50 years I am totally disgusted. I don’t even know after just moving to a new state if I want to stay a Democrat or just become an independent. It’s definitely time for new blood that stop trying to be sophisticated and actually get down and dirty and actually in the fight to save democracy!
Thank you for this, but I'll hold off on believing something will happen now that the right-wing justices have tripped over their robes once more. The only evidence that anyone powerful is even paying attention will be the next occasion on which John Roberts again asserts his befuddlement that the ignorant American people have mistakenly concluded he and his colleagues make partisan decisions.
The Court’s next target is Brown, of course, since there is no racism anymore. If all bigotry is in the past, then we don’t need the free exercise clause, too.
I sincerely hope that the reckoning does come. In the meantime, Democrats need to stop bringing a knife to a gunfight. The missed opportunities of expanding the Supreme Court and eliminating lifetime appointments is so frustrating.
Michele, exactly. I don’t even think Democrats bring a knife to a gunfight anymore. These folks bring a blueberry pie to a gunfight and then look shocked when nobody stops shooting long enough to compliment the crust.
That is the problem. Republicans understand power as power. Too many Democrats still treat politics like a manners contest with filing deadlines.
An impressive essay, and spot on describing the hubris of the Republican majority Supreme Court — hubris, the downfall of the Greeks it is said. The MAGA Republican majority on SCOTUS view the Constitution and established law as their personal jig saw puzzles. Through decisions of the Roberts’ court the Supreme Court of the United States has lost the respect in which it was once held.
🎯 Jeanne, I think the hubris point is exactly right. What we are watching now feels less like judicial restraint and more like a Court that believes it is untouchable. And historically, institutions usually get themselves into the most trouble when they stop believing they need public legitimacy at all.
Your “jigsaw puzzle” comparison is also dead on. They are treating constitutional interpretation like they can rearrange pieces depending on the political outcome they want in the moment. That is why the contradictions stand out so much. A Court cannot spend years preaching textualism, precedent, and institutional consistency and then suddenly act like stare decisis is optional whenever voting rights are involved.
And I agree that the Roberts Court has done enormous damage to the Court’s credibility. People can live with decisions they dislike. What becomes corrosive is when the reasoning itself starts feeling openly results-oriented and politically selective.
Brilliant! Thank you so much for putting it all together and making it understandable for a layperson like me. I'm sickened, but take solace in your belief that the reckoning will come. Thank you!
💙 Thank you, LuVoss. And honestly, part of why I write these pieces is because a lot of institutions and media outlets make this stuff intentionally difficult for regular people to follow. The public should not need a law degree to understand when power is being abused in plain sight.
I completely understand the feeling of being sickened by it. A lot of people are exhausted watching institutions they were taught to trust behave in ways that feel openly political and inconsistent. But I do believe reckoning eventually comes for systems that overreach this aggressively. History is full of institutions that confused temporary power with permanent legitimacy.
Thank you for your personal reply. It's really a privilege to read you. That said, I'm putting my money where my so-called mouth is, and going to subscribe right now as a paid subscriber to your substack. ☺️
Thank you for giving such eloquent voice to my rage. I never miss one of your pieces because they never disappoint. This one will be part of the record future historians study as they try to grasp whether we understood what was happening in real time. I wish I could take a class from you sir.
Trent, thank you so much. That genuinely means a lot. I try to give language to what so many of us are feeling while still making the mechanics of power clear. And honestly, if you’re reading the work this closely, you are already in the class. I appreciate you.
This article lends credence to my post that I wrote regarding the article entitled, "How Republicans Are Trying to Make Trump's Two Impeachments Disappear"; specifically, regarding how the Democrats act. Read, and I quote the following from this article:
"The Democrats do not get to leave this room clean either.
This supermajority exists because five of its six members were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. That is a structural problem requiring a structural response. Democrats have known this since at least 2016. What they did with that knowledge was hold committee hearings, write strongly worded letters, and talk about norms as if norms were a force field.
Trump lost in 2020. Democrats had the presidency and briefly the Senate. They did not move to expand the Court. They did not push through voting rights legislation with the urgency the moment demanded. They let Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema function as a two-person veto on democratic governance and called it bipartisanship. They allowed Trump to spend four years after his loss holding rallies, building a grievance infrastructure, and recruiting candidates at every level of government — while Democrats debated the politeness of their messaging and wondered aloud why working people weren’t more grateful.
And then — in one of the most spectacular acts of collective political malpractice in modern American history — they turned on Joe Biden in an election year. I understand the concerns about his age and capacity. What I cannot excuse is how it was done — without a primary process that began a year earlier, without a plan, and without the collective nerve to fully get behind Kamala Harris once they had made that choice. The resistance to Harris was not purely strategic. Some of it was the same rank protection instinct that animates the other side, just wearing better shoes and speaking in complete sentences. The micro-aggressions were not subtle to anyone paying attention. The hedging was not invisible. And the result was a second non-consecutive Trump term and Louisiana v. Callais.
Democrats did not build this Court. But they had chances to stop it and they flinched. Every. Single. Time."
The Democrats keep taking the fucking "high road" and FUCKING LOSING! They just talk, talk, talk and do FUCKING NOTHING when in power because they are so afraid of what their base will think of them - they are so FUCKING WRONG about what the base thinks about them. This is what the base thinks about them - THEY ARE PUSSIES!!! Get some FIGHTING LEADERSHIP in there!!!
🎯 John, I think your larger point about Democrats misunderstanding power is absolutely fair. For years too many Democratic leaders operated as though norms and institutional restraint were self-enforcing, while Republicans were treating the courts, state legislatures, media ecosystems, and local offices like long-term infrastructure projects. One side was building power. The other side was still writing strongly worded letters and hoping shame would kick in.
And I agree that the post-2020 period was a massive missed opportunity. Democrats had the presidency and congressional control, however narrow, and still acted like Manchin and Sinema were forces of nature instead of political obstacles to be pressured, isolated, or worked around. Republicans understand leverage. Democrats too often confuse caution with wisdom.
Where I slightly differ is that I do think some Democrats understood the stakes — I just think the party as an institution lacked the collective nerve and strategic alignment to act at the level the moment required. That is part of why the Biden succession issue became so messy. Once Harris was the nominee, there should have been immediate unity instead of public hedging and backstage panic.
And your broader point about the “high road” resonates with a lot of voters right now because people are watching institutions get captured in real time while Democrats still sound like they are trying to win a student council ethics award. At some point, voters want to know somebody is actually willing to fight for power instead of just describing the danger accurately.
Outstanding article. I've been complaining a long time about the number of justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Worse still is that the republican presidents of my lifetime have managed to do this two (or three if you count 2004) times out of twelve, despite holding office seven times. In other words, they can't win without the electoral college almost a third of the time. Seven out of twelve is close to the 65% mark called out.
I think the part I'm most angry about is that the Democrats had no plan to Biden's succession--you don't elect a 78-year-old (serious, circumspective) man to the hardest job in the world without any real roadmap. And they should never have assumed that SCOTUS would do the right thing (especially after Dobbs.) In fact, the immunity ruling would have given Biden the power to undo much of the damage. It was untested, but they made it clear that overthrowing the government isn't in their list of bad things a president shouldn't do.
And the high road means nothing when a bomb destroys all roads. We need strategists who understand all of this. When the world is gone, we don't get extra credit for joining Pangloss: our civilization is only as good as we make it.
Slagle, I want to add a few things I forgot to address in my previous response.
You are absolutely right that Democrats should never have assumed SCOTUS would “do the right thing,” especially after Dobbs. That was political malpractice. Once the Court showed us it was willing to erase major constitutional protections, nobody should have been operating as if norms, precedent, or institutional shame were going to restrain them.
And your point about the immunity ruling is important too. Democrats were handed a reality where the Court basically expanded presidential power in ways they clearly never expected, but they still acted like using power aggressively was somehow beneath them. That is the problem. Republicans treat power like a weapon. Democrats too often treat it like a group project they are afraid to turn in.
The Pangloss point is exactly right too. We do not get extra credit for optimism after the damage is done. Strategy has to be built around the world as it is, not the world we wish these institutions still belonged to.
🎯 Slagle, I think a lot of Democrats are still wrestling with exactly what you are talking about. Biden was not even my pick in the 2016 primary, but once the party decided he was the guy, I was like, “Cool. I guess he is the guy,” and I would have voted for him twice over Trump without hesitation. My bigger frustration was that there never seemed to be a coherent long-term plan.
Either you tell Biden from the beginning that he is a one-term bridge candidate and spend four years preparing the next generation, or you fully commit and ride the Biden train until the wheels fall off. What Democrats did instead was panic in public after the debate while acting like Trump somehow did well in it when, substantively, he was just lying constantly with confidence and bombast. Unfortunately, to a lot of voters, confidence reads as strength even when it is detached from reality.
And once Harris became the nominee, the entire party should have immediately locked arms behind her. Instead, you had major figures sending mixed signals and operating like they were still trying to workshop alternatives in real time. Pelosi and others did not do Harris — or themselves — any favors there.
But we are here now. The focus has to be on making sure this level of institutional failure never happens again, because having the highest court in the land functionally operated by six Christian nationalist ideologues is about as unethical and dangerous as it gets. This is what ideological capture looks like in real time.
The thirst for power like greed becomes insatiable like a malignant cancer Since the 1980's during the Reagan years of dominance the Nazi Republicans decided it was their time to flip the script of Democratic dominance but they knew because of unpopular policies eg reducing the social safety net, lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations, reducing/elimination of federal control over the states, that the only solution was to rig the electoral system in their favor, at that time gerrymandering
But over at the DOJ a fella named Roberts had another idea Seeing what the VRA had done to the Nazi's ability to control the power dynamic he and his Federalist Society buddies decided that the judicial solution would be to declare that racism was over and the VRA had to go
Now fast forward to today and one can see the result of the rise to power by the fascist Republicans Not only was it labeled legitimate to illegally rig the 2016 and 2024 elections(abundant circumstantial evidence supporting such statements) for the betterment of American society but it was necessary with a malignant narcissist candidate like Cheeto to head a fascist takeover of the government What may have been "cute judicial manipulation" by GW gradually grew over the decades to frank obsession and thirst for power and need to retain it
And voila!! The trifecta achieved!! Now with the governmental levers of power in hand it's time to make hay The antidemocratic Roberts Court as it will go do in the history books is merely a symptom as often the case in these situations of a greater sickness in an organization like the Nazi....and I don't use that word lightly.....party aka CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) What WE the People are witnessing is an organizational thirst/lust for power and survival like a cancer that has gone out of control and metastasized and WE the People must stop it
💯 Dr. Dean, I think what you are getting at is something a lot of people underestimate: institutions do not usually collapse all at once. They erode slowly through normalization, power accumulation, and people convincing themselves each new escalation is temporary or justified. The modern conservative legal movement absolutely spent decades building toward this moment through the courts, the Federalist Society, state legislatures, and judicial appointments. That part is not even speculation anymore — it was an openly stated strategy.
And I agree with you that the Roberts Court will ultimately be remembered less for “constitutional restraint” and more for accelerating institutional distrust by appearing openly results-oriented in cases involving voting rights, executive power, and representation. That is why rulings like this hit so hard. People can tolerate decisions they dislike more easily than they can tolerate decisions that feel internally inconsistent or openly ideological.
The danger now is exactly what you described: when citizens begin to feel that rules only apply selectively, trust in democratic legitimacy starts to break down altogether.
I only hope the American people can take this opportunity to see the handwriting on the wall with the backdrop of the outragesousness of tRUMP and his supreme court, in particular thomas and alito, to vote in people that will make the changes needed in our institutions and laws. This seems to be, with few exceptions, Democrats. Without using the only power we really have by voting to reform the court and our leadership, there is no way forward to see that the arc really does bend toward justice.for all. With control of the Congress by responsible leaders, the people can make sure there is a lock on the rampant corruption happening before our very eyes with the current regime. We should not be afraid, like the republicans, to loose our jobs if we don't do what tRUMP daddy says, but we should be afraid to loose our county and Democracy through inaction.
🎯 Exactly, Tony. That is the point. The only real corrective mechanism left is political power: win elections, control Congress, reform the courts, and put actual guardrails back around these institutions. The corruption around Thomas, Alito, and the broader Trump Court is not going to police itself. And you’re right — we should not be afraid to lose our jobs or comfort by standing up to this. We should be afraid of losing the country because too many people decided inaction was safer.
An absolutely spot on well researched,logical piece with a great comparison. I wonder if they truly believe they’re invincible and will be jurists forever? They clearly are white supremicists, even the pitiful self hating Clarence Thomas. They can’t see the corruption of their own power and ideology. We MUST give them glasses.
❤️💙❤️💙 Thank you, Nansu. That really means a lot. And I agree with you — the corruption is not subtle anymore. They can dress it up in legal language, but the pattern is obvious: power protecting power, ideology pretending to be law, and Clarence Thomas somehow still acting like he is above basic accountability. At this point, glasses may not be enough. They need floodlights
It's truly disgusting when one political party decides they have to cheat to win elections. But this truly is what it is. It's election "tampering" for one party over the other. My only hope is that it backfires when it happens. Then and only then will they realize that although you put a patch on something those patches have a way of falling off when people get anger and disgusted about being "ripped" from the process. The thing that really made me angry was that they stopped a primary in the middle of voting and screamed "we NEED a do over." That is NOT the way and election is supposed to work. "Oh we'll just throw away all those votes that have been cast and see what happens with the "new" set up." So wrong on so many levels it isn't right no matter how you look at it.
"That was before Louisiana v. Callais. I can’t give them the 65 anymore."
It's not even close to a 65 anymore, is there a grade of less than zero? Because the corrupt Roberts court jettisoned two fundamental policies they've invoked time and time again to rig the midterm elections.
• They ignored the Purcell Principle without even an excuse.
• They blasted the 30-32 day delay waiting period SCOTUS puts on major decisions before the ruling is enacted giving the lower courts to review and make decisions on the new SCOTUS ruling.
Instead SCOTUS rammed the Louisiana decision through at the last minute while voting in Louisiana was already underway with tens of thousands of votes already cast. Then SCOTUS never even uttered a peep when Louisiana governor Jeff Landry called an emergency to stop the voting and steamroll a new racist map out of his corrupt legislature.
The fix was in, and the MAGAs aren't even trying to hide it. The partisan SCOTUS has made it clear - they'll only use Purcell when it hurts the Dems and helps the Republicans.
On this I totally agree with you. And as a Democrat for over 50 years I am totally disgusted. I don’t even know after just moving to a new state if I want to stay a Democrat or just become an independent. It’s definitely time for new blood that stop trying to be sophisticated and actually get down and dirty and actually in the fight to save democracy!
Thank you for this, but I'll hold off on believing something will happen now that the right-wing justices have tripped over their robes once more. The only evidence that anyone powerful is even paying attention will be the next occasion on which John Roberts again asserts his befuddlement that the ignorant American people have mistakenly concluded he and his colleagues make partisan decisions.
The Court’s next target is Brown, of course, since there is no racism anymore. If all bigotry is in the past, then we don’t need the free exercise clause, too.
I sincerely hope that the reckoning does come. In the meantime, Democrats need to stop bringing a knife to a gunfight. The missed opportunities of expanding the Supreme Court and eliminating lifetime appointments is so frustrating.
The Dems don't bring knives to the gunfight with the MAGA Republicans.
The Dems bring pillows.
Michele, exactly. I don’t even think Democrats bring a knife to a gunfight anymore. These folks bring a blueberry pie to a gunfight and then look shocked when nobody stops shooting long enough to compliment the crust.
That is the problem. Republicans understand power as power. Too many Democrats still treat politics like a manners contest with filing deadlines.
An impressive essay, and spot on describing the hubris of the Republican majority Supreme Court — hubris, the downfall of the Greeks it is said. The MAGA Republican majority on SCOTUS view the Constitution and established law as their personal jig saw puzzles. Through decisions of the Roberts’ court the Supreme Court of the United States has lost the respect in which it was once held.
🎯 Jeanne, I think the hubris point is exactly right. What we are watching now feels less like judicial restraint and more like a Court that believes it is untouchable. And historically, institutions usually get themselves into the most trouble when they stop believing they need public legitimacy at all.
Your “jigsaw puzzle” comparison is also dead on. They are treating constitutional interpretation like they can rearrange pieces depending on the political outcome they want in the moment. That is why the contradictions stand out so much. A Court cannot spend years preaching textualism, precedent, and institutional consistency and then suddenly act like stare decisis is optional whenever voting rights are involved.
And I agree that the Roberts Court has done enormous damage to the Court’s credibility. People can live with decisions they dislike. What becomes corrosive is when the reasoning itself starts feeling openly results-oriented and politically selective.
Brilliant! Thank you so much for putting it all together and making it understandable for a layperson like me. I'm sickened, but take solace in your belief that the reckoning will come. Thank you!
💙 Thank you, LuVoss. And honestly, part of why I write these pieces is because a lot of institutions and media outlets make this stuff intentionally difficult for regular people to follow. The public should not need a law degree to understand when power is being abused in plain sight.
I completely understand the feeling of being sickened by it. A lot of people are exhausted watching institutions they were taught to trust behave in ways that feel openly political and inconsistent. But I do believe reckoning eventually comes for systems that overreach this aggressively. History is full of institutions that confused temporary power with permanent legitimacy.
Thank you for your personal reply. It's really a privilege to read you. That said, I'm putting my money where my so-called mouth is, and going to subscribe right now as a paid subscriber to your substack. ☺️
Thank you for giving such eloquent voice to my rage. I never miss one of your pieces because they never disappoint. This one will be part of the record future historians study as they try to grasp whether we understood what was happening in real time. I wish I could take a class from you sir.
Trent, thank you so much. That genuinely means a lot. I try to give language to what so many of us are feeling while still making the mechanics of power clear. And honestly, if you’re reading the work this closely, you are already in the class. I appreciate you.
This article lends credence to my post that I wrote regarding the article entitled, "How Republicans Are Trying to Make Trump's Two Impeachments Disappear"; specifically, regarding how the Democrats act. Read, and I quote the following from this article:
"The Democrats do not get to leave this room clean either.
This supermajority exists because five of its six members were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. That is a structural problem requiring a structural response. Democrats have known this since at least 2016. What they did with that knowledge was hold committee hearings, write strongly worded letters, and talk about norms as if norms were a force field.
Trump lost in 2020. Democrats had the presidency and briefly the Senate. They did not move to expand the Court. They did not push through voting rights legislation with the urgency the moment demanded. They let Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema function as a two-person veto on democratic governance and called it bipartisanship. They allowed Trump to spend four years after his loss holding rallies, building a grievance infrastructure, and recruiting candidates at every level of government — while Democrats debated the politeness of their messaging and wondered aloud why working people weren’t more grateful.
And then — in one of the most spectacular acts of collective political malpractice in modern American history — they turned on Joe Biden in an election year. I understand the concerns about his age and capacity. What I cannot excuse is how it was done — without a primary process that began a year earlier, without a plan, and without the collective nerve to fully get behind Kamala Harris once they had made that choice. The resistance to Harris was not purely strategic. Some of it was the same rank protection instinct that animates the other side, just wearing better shoes and speaking in complete sentences. The micro-aggressions were not subtle to anyone paying attention. The hedging was not invisible. And the result was a second non-consecutive Trump term and Louisiana v. Callais.
Democrats did not build this Court. But they had chances to stop it and they flinched. Every. Single. Time."
The Democrats keep taking the fucking "high road" and FUCKING LOSING! They just talk, talk, talk and do FUCKING NOTHING when in power because they are so afraid of what their base will think of them - they are so FUCKING WRONG about what the base thinks about them. This is what the base thinks about them - THEY ARE PUSSIES!!! Get some FIGHTING LEADERSHIP in there!!!
I totally agree with you!!!!
🎯 John, I think your larger point about Democrats misunderstanding power is absolutely fair. For years too many Democratic leaders operated as though norms and institutional restraint were self-enforcing, while Republicans were treating the courts, state legislatures, media ecosystems, and local offices like long-term infrastructure projects. One side was building power. The other side was still writing strongly worded letters and hoping shame would kick in.
And I agree that the post-2020 period was a massive missed opportunity. Democrats had the presidency and congressional control, however narrow, and still acted like Manchin and Sinema were forces of nature instead of political obstacles to be pressured, isolated, or worked around. Republicans understand leverage. Democrats too often confuse caution with wisdom.
Where I slightly differ is that I do think some Democrats understood the stakes — I just think the party as an institution lacked the collective nerve and strategic alignment to act at the level the moment required. That is part of why the Biden succession issue became so messy. Once Harris was the nominee, there should have been immediate unity instead of public hedging and backstage panic.
And your broader point about the “high road” resonates with a lot of voters right now because people are watching institutions get captured in real time while Democrats still sound like they are trying to win a student council ethics award. At some point, voters want to know somebody is actually willing to fight for power instead of just describing the danger accurately.
Outstanding article. I've been complaining a long time about the number of justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Worse still is that the republican presidents of my lifetime have managed to do this two (or three if you count 2004) times out of twelve, despite holding office seven times. In other words, they can't win without the electoral college almost a third of the time. Seven out of twelve is close to the 65% mark called out.
I think the part I'm most angry about is that the Democrats had no plan to Biden's succession--you don't elect a 78-year-old (serious, circumspective) man to the hardest job in the world without any real roadmap. And they should never have assumed that SCOTUS would do the right thing (especially after Dobbs.) In fact, the immunity ruling would have given Biden the power to undo much of the damage. It was untested, but they made it clear that overthrowing the government isn't in their list of bad things a president shouldn't do.
And the high road means nothing when a bomb destroys all roads. We need strategists who understand all of this. When the world is gone, we don't get extra credit for joining Pangloss: our civilization is only as good as we make it.
Slagle, I want to add a few things I forgot to address in my previous response.
You are absolutely right that Democrats should never have assumed SCOTUS would “do the right thing,” especially after Dobbs. That was political malpractice. Once the Court showed us it was willing to erase major constitutional protections, nobody should have been operating as if norms, precedent, or institutional shame were going to restrain them.
And your point about the immunity ruling is important too. Democrats were handed a reality where the Court basically expanded presidential power in ways they clearly never expected, but they still acted like using power aggressively was somehow beneath them. That is the problem. Republicans treat power like a weapon. Democrats too often treat it like a group project they are afraid to turn in.
The Pangloss point is exactly right too. We do not get extra credit for optimism after the damage is done. Strategy has to be built around the world as it is, not the world we wish these institutions still belonged to.
🎯 Slagle, I think a lot of Democrats are still wrestling with exactly what you are talking about. Biden was not even my pick in the 2016 primary, but once the party decided he was the guy, I was like, “Cool. I guess he is the guy,” and I would have voted for him twice over Trump without hesitation. My bigger frustration was that there never seemed to be a coherent long-term plan.
Either you tell Biden from the beginning that he is a one-term bridge candidate and spend four years preparing the next generation, or you fully commit and ride the Biden train until the wheels fall off. What Democrats did instead was panic in public after the debate while acting like Trump somehow did well in it when, substantively, he was just lying constantly with confidence and bombast. Unfortunately, to a lot of voters, confidence reads as strength even when it is detached from reality.
And once Harris became the nominee, the entire party should have immediately locked arms behind her. Instead, you had major figures sending mixed signals and operating like they were still trying to workshop alternatives in real time. Pelosi and others did not do Harris — or themselves — any favors there.
But we are here now. The focus has to be on making sure this level of institutional failure never happens again, because having the highest court in the land functionally operated by six Christian nationalist ideologues is about as unethical and dangerous as it gets. This is what ideological capture looks like in real time.
Great expose of the Antidemocratic Roberts Court
Power And SCOTUS
The thirst for power like greed becomes insatiable like a malignant cancer Since the 1980's during the Reagan years of dominance the Nazi Republicans decided it was their time to flip the script of Democratic dominance but they knew because of unpopular policies eg reducing the social safety net, lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations, reducing/elimination of federal control over the states, that the only solution was to rig the electoral system in their favor, at that time gerrymandering
But over at the DOJ a fella named Roberts had another idea Seeing what the VRA had done to the Nazi's ability to control the power dynamic he and his Federalist Society buddies decided that the judicial solution would be to declare that racism was over and the VRA had to go
Now fast forward to today and one can see the result of the rise to power by the fascist Republicans Not only was it labeled legitimate to illegally rig the 2016 and 2024 elections(abundant circumstantial evidence supporting such statements) for the betterment of American society but it was necessary with a malignant narcissist candidate like Cheeto to head a fascist takeover of the government What may have been "cute judicial manipulation" by GW gradually grew over the decades to frank obsession and thirst for power and need to retain it
And voila!! The trifecta achieved!! Now with the governmental levers of power in hand it's time to make hay The antidemocratic Roberts Court as it will go do in the history books is merely a symptom as often the case in these situations of a greater sickness in an organization like the Nazi....and I don't use that word lightly.....party aka CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) What WE the People are witnessing is an organizational thirst/lust for power and survival like a cancer that has gone out of control and metastasized and WE the People must stop it
Repeal the filibuster and expand SCOTUS
💯 Dr. Dean, I think what you are getting at is something a lot of people underestimate: institutions do not usually collapse all at once. They erode slowly through normalization, power accumulation, and people convincing themselves each new escalation is temporary or justified. The modern conservative legal movement absolutely spent decades building toward this moment through the courts, the Federalist Society, state legislatures, and judicial appointments. That part is not even speculation anymore — it was an openly stated strategy.
And I agree with you that the Roberts Court will ultimately be remembered less for “constitutional restraint” and more for accelerating institutional distrust by appearing openly results-oriented in cases involving voting rights, executive power, and representation. That is why rulings like this hit so hard. People can tolerate decisions they dislike more easily than they can tolerate decisions that feel internally inconsistent or openly ideological.
The danger now is exactly what you described: when citizens begin to feel that rules only apply selectively, trust in democratic legitimacy starts to break down altogether.
Well said and insightful summary Dr Ealy The frog like people don't realize the water has started to boil until it's too late
I only hope the American people can take this opportunity to see the handwriting on the wall with the backdrop of the outragesousness of tRUMP and his supreme court, in particular thomas and alito, to vote in people that will make the changes needed in our institutions and laws. This seems to be, with few exceptions, Democrats. Without using the only power we really have by voting to reform the court and our leadership, there is no way forward to see that the arc really does bend toward justice.for all. With control of the Congress by responsible leaders, the people can make sure there is a lock on the rampant corruption happening before our very eyes with the current regime. We should not be afraid, like the republicans, to loose our jobs if we don't do what tRUMP daddy says, but we should be afraid to loose our county and Democracy through inaction.
🎯 Exactly, Tony. That is the point. The only real corrective mechanism left is political power: win elections, control Congress, reform the courts, and put actual guardrails back around these institutions. The corruption around Thomas, Alito, and the broader Trump Court is not going to police itself. And you’re right — we should not be afraid to lose our jobs or comfort by standing up to this. We should be afraid of losing the country because too many people decided inaction was safer.
An absolutely spot on well researched,logical piece with a great comparison. I wonder if they truly believe they’re invincible and will be jurists forever? They clearly are white supremicists, even the pitiful self hating Clarence Thomas. They can’t see the corruption of their own power and ideology. We MUST give them glasses.
❤️💙❤️💙 Thank you, Nansu. That really means a lot. And I agree with you — the corruption is not subtle anymore. They can dress it up in legal language, but the pattern is obvious: power protecting power, ideology pretending to be law, and Clarence Thomas somehow still acting like he is above basic accountability. At this point, glasses may not be enough. They need floodlights