I dunno about you guys, but even in this moment of profound injustice, there’s something particularly dastardly about the Supreme Court: nine be-robed, unelected individuals making major decisions about American life, with zero accountability and profound consequences… for the rest of their earthly lives. And let’s be clear, it’s six of those justices who really stand out, whose partisan inclinations are so steep that it’s laughable they walk into a building with a statue of Blind Justice out front (granted, it’s a small statue).
Having said that, not much about the Roberts Court surprises me these days. Mostly I just read the news—like this week’s ridiculous emergency court order clearing the way for Trump to build a “likely unlawful” ballroom—and scoff at the absurdity of this “independent branch” of the government, but also wonder how much worse it will get. Trump’s preposterous, obviously unconstitutional executive order of this spring, demanding the Department of Homeland Security conjure lists of “eligible voters” in each state—and barring the Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to people not on each state’s approved lists—is the next frontier in determining how singularly awful the Roberts Court will reveal itself to be.
Today we got the news that the USPS is already concocting what sounds like an utterly insane plan to, according to the AP, “launch a hastily built, error-riddled computer system that could jeopardize the process of mail voting relied upon by one-third of all voters.”
Cool.
It’s now in the hands of the corrupt, 6-seat conservative majority on the Court to decide whether this “system” goes into effect ahead of a midterm election that Trump is obviously keen on stealing. Reason would dictate that this plan is madness. The law dictates that the feds have no role in running elections, the purview of the states. And yet: put nothing past John Roberts and his cohort.
Now I get that the Trump Years of Darkness & Misery™ have turned ordinary men insane etc., etc but we would all be mistaken in thinking that the appropriation of the highest court in the land as an instrument of the right was something that came about at the dawn of the Orange Man, circa 2016. What many folks—and I very much include myself in this group—do not clock is the fact that the conservative project to steal the American judiciary has been, in fact, a decades-long heist, one that kicked off when some of us were still in diapers.
Specifically, during the Reagan revolution of the 1980’s, a group of fringe right-wingers emerged from the shadows with a master plan: their movement had done extraordinarily well seizing the legislative and executive branches … and now it was time to get the judges. They worked behind the scenes and at the grassroots level, organizing a campus student group that dubbed itself the “Federalist Society,” scoring money from deep-pocketed conservative donors to start a think tank called the Heritage Foundation, and working within the bowels of the federal government to reorient the monolith of the Justice Department away from the hard-won civil rights progress of the preceding decades.
Right in middle of this departmental hijacking were two young conservatives named Samuel Alito and John Roberts. The harebrained ideals these men and their brethren rode into town with—ending affirmative action, winding the clock back on women’s rights, establishing an all-powerful executive who answered to no one—became the principles that define the far right wing over the next forty years.
In other words, if you thought John Roberts—Mr. Balls and Strikes—came to this fratparty recently, think again.
The reason I’m all keyed up about the court is well, because it’s a pretty fucked position we citizens now find ourselves in, n’est-ce-pas? But also because (bear with me!) I wrote a book about this strange, dark period when the heist was underway. It’s called The Steal: Four Right-Wing Hardliners, One Republican Presidency and the Raid on America’s Courts. It’s coming out September 15th (!) and you can pre-order it now. I learned a lot about the country and the courts in the process of writing it, and I hope you’ll find something useful, or maybe helpfully enraging in it, too.
And if you’re near New York City (Brooklyn, stand up!), Boston, Los Angeles or San Francisco, I’ll be swinging through talk about the book with some fantastic and super smart friends and colleagues. More info on that below. Sorry this post is ending on a promotional note but also: it’s a good book! I think!
Sept 15th, 7PM with Melissa Murray at BKLYN Studios
Sept 17th, 7:30PM with Jon Lovett at the Writer’s Guild Theater, LA
Sept 21st, 6PM with Kamau Bell at the Commonwealth Club
Sept 22nd, 6pm with Indira Lakshmanan at the Brattle Theater
Thank you for reading and reading! I appreciate you!
All I know is my grandpa didn't almost die in a tank in Germany for all of this to happen. I'm glad you're fighting for us Alex. 😁
David Cay Johnson recently said simply: John Roberts is a white supremecist.
Not known for hyperbole, Johnson was just simply stating a fact.
No sane person would suggest Trump should do anymore tearing down or building.
Aside the money wasted Trump has very bad taste&a long history of shoddy workmanship.
Not a lawyer. That ok to interfere with mail in ballots is way out of SCOTUS purview. Is it something John Roberts could be impeached for?