When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush in 2000’s landmark Bush v. Gore decision, effectively handing the presidency to the Republican, it was widely seen as a nakedly partisan, ad hoc undertaking meant to install a conservative kindred spirit.
Twenty-two years later, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, “Hold my beer. No, not the one in the Solo cup. The one on the bar that looks like a crew team’s communal footbath. I like beer.” And just like that, nearly 50 years of settled precedent went up in a cloud of liturgical incense and Axe body spray.
That decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was seismic, marking a rare occasion when the Supreme Court explicitly sought to strip away a right—in this case, the right to abortion—that Americans had relied on for decades.
It’s against this backdrop that a new survey on Americans’ trust in the Supreme Court yielded perhaps the least-surprising “bombshell” in recent memory. Spoiler alert: Many Americans think the court is largely acting on behalf of Republican Jesus, not the United States.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 7 in 10 Americans think the high court’s justices are more influenced by ideology, while only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults think the justices are more likely to provide an independent check on other branches of government by being fair and impartial.
The poll reflects the continued erosion of confidence in the Supreme Court, which enjoyed broader trust as recently as a decade ago. It underscores the challenge faced by the nine justices — six appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats — of being seen as something other than just another element of Washington’s hyper-partisanship.
The justices are expected to decide soon whether [Donald] Trump is immune from criminal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection defeat, but the poll suggests that many Americans are already uneasy about the justices’ ability to rule impartially.
What? People think the court is too partisan? Where’d they ever get that idea? Could it be practically everything we’ve learned about them over the past two years—including their egregious extracurriculars?
Of course, the evidence of the court’s far-right bias is too voluminous to cite in full, but suffice to say, the Dobbs decision was just a hearty appetizer for the pestiferous paella that was yet to come.
But here’s a quick tight five:
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Justice Clarence Thomas, whose nomination was nearly derailed 33 years ago simply because he was (allegedly) a weirdo creep who flagrantly disrespected women, has been up to his neck in scandal lately. Not only was his wife, Ginni Thomas, fully onboard the “end democracy on behalf of Pumpkin Spice Putin” train, he’s also been taking goodies under the table from billionaires, including billionaires who have vested interests in specific Supreme Court decisions. That’s essentially the definition of corruption, but Thomas remains as obstinate as ever in the face of these outrages.
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Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, flew an American flag upside-down in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, ostensibly in solidarity with the insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow democracy and turn Mike Pence a whiter shade of ecru. Alito was also caught on tape claiming there’s no sense compromising with the secular rabble: “One side or the other is going to win,” Alito told documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor. “I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
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The Supreme Court agreed to take up Trump’s absurd presidential immunity claims, delaying a trial in special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case indefinitely, and making it far more likely Trump’s shambolic coup attempt will go permanently unpunished.
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In the somewhat under-the-radar Biden v. Nebraska ruling, the court’s conservatives twisted the plain language of a law that authorized President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program—in order to strike down a policy favored by Democrats and the administration.
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NEW! On Thursday, the court put on hold an EPA decision that would have limited the amount of air pollution that drifts across state lines. According to The New York Times, “The ruling followed recent decisions chipping away at the agency’s authority to address climate change and water pollution.” Because those aren’t existential crises or anything. Under the now-suspended proposal, “factories and power plants in Western and Midwestern states [would have been required to] cut ozone pollution that drifts into Eastern ones. The emissions cause smog and are linked to asthma, lung disease and premature death,” the Times wrote. Pfft, premature death. Whatevs. Why shouldn’t people in states that vote for Democrats have the same lowered life expectancy as people who live in red states? It’s only fair.
Of course, this is all awful news for anyone who wants to decide for themselves how many children to have, when to have them, and how many ears will grow out of their foreheads as they gestate adjacent to red states, but it also could be an opportunity.
Dobbs appears to have reset the table in this country, electorally speaking. The decision likely helped turn what should have been a 2022 midterm red tsunami into a rosé rivulet in the House and an outright Democratic win in the Senate, and we’ve seen Democratic victories—and polling overperformances—across the country in special elections ever since the polarizing decision dropped.
But as Negative Nellies continue to remind us, most polling currently points to a tight, neck-and-neck presidential race. And if Donald Trump—the proud papa of the Dobbs decision—secures another term, few progressives will take comfort in the special election they won in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
So, well, it’s time to scaremonger. Not like Republicans do, about things that aren’t happening, but in response to the very real possibility that Trump will appoint more Leonard Leo-approved justices who will seek to strip away even more rights for the glorification of a god most of us plebs have trouble recognizing. Think birth control and gay marriage are safe? Well, not according to Justice Thomas, they ain’t.
In fact, this is an easy pitch to make to a weary public. You might even call it a layup. Or whatever curling or log-tossing metaphor you might prefer. If you hate the Dobbs decision—and, clearly, most of you do—the only way to avoid such future fuckery is to vote for Joe Biden. And to give him a Congress that will allow him to enshrine Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for an even more radicalized Supreme Court—one that has already shown a willingness to go out of its way to force women to give birth, not to mention unravel every actual pro-life policy (like the EPA air pollution rule) that comes down the pike.
Do you want the right to contraception taken away, too? Then by all means, give Trump the opportunity to appoint a few more Clarence Thomases. This court has already gobsmacked us over and over again. Just imagine if Chief Justice John Roberts were replaced by Judge Jeanine Pirro. And if you think that’s a joke and couldn’t possibly happen, you clearly haven’t been paying attention.
Of course, voters are far more aware of the stakes now than they were in 2016, when Trump promised to put forced-birth-supporting judges on the Supreme Court but no one really believed Roe was in danger. But it doesn’t hurt to remind them the stakes are arguably even higher now. If they hate the court now, imagine how much they’ll hate it after Trump is through finger-painting the federal judiciary with his Lilliputian digits.
It’s not like they’ll get the straight dope from Republicans. Republicans love to lie—it’s their favorite—and they especially love to lie about court decisions like Roe being settled law.
The Cassandras who, in 2016, foresaw the Supreme Court-engendered tragedies to come were apparently not loud, forceful, or convincing enough then. We can’t repeat that mistake now—because if we do, “The Handmaid’s Tale” may start to look like a fun ‘n’ breezy summer church picnic.
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