Legal wonks clash over 'hysterical' Sotomayor dissent: 'That sounds pretty sexist to me'

Two titans of the American legal system had very different takeaways after Monday's Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity.

Former Trump White House counsel Ty Cobb appeared on CNN to undermine Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent for being big on "hysterical... screaming" — but dry on substance.

The court’s conservative majority ruled 6-3 — three justices were Trump-appointed — to allow for official acts to remain immune from prosecution. They left open the possibility that private acts could be prosecutable.

The decision called into question which acts are deemed official, as the 45th president has claimed in his defense of some of his criminal allegations; specifically the attempt to subvert the 2020 election.

Sotomayor's dissent wrote that the decision by the high court armed the president with monarchy powers to order the elimination of a political rival, a military coup or sell bribes to bidders: "Immune. Immune, immune, immune."

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"Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done," she wrote. "The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

Cobb forcefully disagreed.

"Her dissent was a little hysterical and it really offered no analysis," he said. "A lot of a lot of screaming, no analysis. And I think that was unfortunate."

Instead, he openly wished Justice Elena Kagan would have taken on pen duties and written the document.

Harvard University constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe came down like a stack of legal tomes on Cobb for the Sotomayor slight.

"I'm afraid much as I respect Ty Cobb — I couldn't disagree more with his characterization of the dissents as 'hysterical,'" he said in a separate setting outside of the company of Cobb. "That sounds pretty sexist to me. There was plenty of analysis, much more analysis."

Tribe proceeded to grade the dissenting opinions with Sotomayor and fellow liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson an A+ and A, though he didn't say who earned which grade.

In a separate dissent, Jackson wrote that she wanted to lay out the “theoretical nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done today to alter the paradigm of accountability for Presidents of the United States.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Tribe's former student, opposed the dissents and went as far as to accuse the three liberal justices of having misinterpreted the majority's opinion and engaging in "fear mongering."

Roberts wrote that they sought to "strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today."

And he wrote that "like everyone else, the President is subject to prosecution in his unofficial capacity."

Watch the clip below or at this link.

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Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis said on her radio program Wednesday that voters shouldn’t be trusted with electing senators after Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate race, according to Right Wing Watch.

Ellis, who pleaded guilty as part of Georgia's criminal prosecution into the MAGA plot to overturn the 2020 election, argued Republicans need “generational” change and said she backs a Convention of States to propose constitutional amendments. Right Wing Watch reports that senators were originally chosen by state legislatures until the 17th Amendment in 1913 moved to popular elections. Ellis described that as a mistake, saying “the people can be stupid,” and pointed to El-Sayed’s win as proof.

Direct election of senators was a massive good governance reform, as prior to 1913, the process of state legislatures choosing senators was rife with bribery, corruption, and partisan hijinks that could sometimes leave states not properly represented in the Senate for years.

Ellis further said the Trump era had been a barrier against the left, with cracks forming, and that “the dam broke” the night before. Every election can’t just be a reprieve, she said, and the founders created a republic, not simply a democracy.

She said even conservatives assume more access to voting is better, but that “the people can be duped.” She said that is why Republicans may not have a good Senate until 2032.

“If not now, when?” Ellis asked, urging listeners to consider how much America has to lose before it’s time to “shatter the glass.”

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From Washington, D.C. to Anchorage, Alaska, federal courts have been busy with cases related to the Trump administration’s attempts to assert control over state elections. In almost every case, rulings have gone against the administration. But despite the fears of many Democrats, there was no mayhem launched by the Trump administration on Election Day.

One federal judge chastised administration officials for being “engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten and coerce state and local officials and employees who are engaged in administering the ongoing midterm 2026 election.” Another wrote with umbrage that “If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger.” And the nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court, in what The New York Times called “an extraordinary rebuke,” refused to intervene in the administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling that barred federal intervention in California ballot counting.

The Conversation’s politics and legal affairs editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke on Election Day with Dickinson College President John Jones, a former federal judge, about the Trump administration’s actions – and how judges see them.

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Trump Organization executive Donald Trump Jr. was blasted for endorsing a post blaming his father’s Iran war for Republican midterm losses, with one critic calling it the “latest MAGA scam.”

“Every word of this is 💯💯💯,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X on Wednesday, sharing a post by Vice President JD Vance that came after Democrats won control of both the House and Senate on Tuesday.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote, adding that the administration had also not focused enough on the economy, inflation, "America First," and breaking with Israel.

Critics, including many conservatives, immediately attacked the posting as disingenuous.

“‘[A]nti-my-own-war’ is … the latest MAGA scam,” Mark Ames, a co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast, wrote in response. Minutes earlier, he argued that Vance “could’ve resigned if he was at all serious about opposing the Iran War.”

“[P]ut down the coke spoon, grifter boy,” John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, wrote.

In 2023, Donald Trump Jr. denied that he used the drug after some was found at the White House.

“Luckily, I don’t snort cocaine,” he told a conference.

Daniel Horowitz, a senior editor at the conservative outlet TheBlaze, wrote that Donald Trump Jr's Wednesday agreement with Vance was "circling of the wagons. No humility. No responsibility. Arsonists as the firefighters."

“Anyone who can read knows that Vance dumped the s--- buckets over Trump after the election. And then there are those who are just as clever as Daddy,” Thomas Jäger, a professor of international politics at the University of Cologne, wrote in German, according to X’s translation.

“My reading of this is the Vice President is blaming the policy of the President. And the son of the President is tweeting agreement,” Conor Burns, a former British minister for trade policy, wrote. “Is there a really clever play at work here or is someone dense?”

“I don’t think he could make that move on his own,” Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark said of Vance in a clip the outlet posted Wednesday under the line “JVL called it.”

“He would need to have, like, Elon and Tucker and Don Jr. saying, ‘Hey, you gotta do this. We’re gonna ride with you. Don’t worry. We can pull it off,’” Last added.

Corruption appears nowhere in the post the president’s son endorsed, and three critics raised it.

“Don Jr. endorsing an election postmortem that doesn’t mention corruption as a motivating factor for voters,” Jesse Singal, co-host of the Blocked and Reported podcast, wrote.

“Oh, and the ridiculous blatant corruption that many Americans, particularly Republicans with a sense of law and order, see as disqualifying, didn’t get airtime in the VP’s post,” AQR Capital Management co-founder Clifford Asness wrote.

“Vance is never going to be president and Democrats are going to investigate you and your whole family for corruption btw,” writer Pedro L. Gonzalez replied to Donald Trump Jr. The White House has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The Atlantic reported on Oct. 20 that the president’s son had opposed the war from the start and had told his father so, citing two people who spoke with him.

“Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran?” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X in April 2024, as Iran attacked Israel.

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance wrote in the post Donald Trump Jr. endorsed on Wednesday.

Seeming defeated, Donald Trump also agreed with Vance's post on Wednesday.

“Yeah, I thought it was good,” the president said, according to ABC News.

“But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I’d have to do it again because long term, it’s the only answer,” adding that Vance’s analysis was “largely true.”

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