All posts tagged "john roberts"

One man has done more to destroy our democracy than Donald Trump

Chief Justice John Roberts is smart and skilled. He will be remembered, however, as a historic failure.

This is not a claim to make lightly, but his record compels it, because Roberts’ legacy will be defined by two catastrophic roles he played.

First, Roberts has played the lead role in destroying indispensable rules of our democracy.

Second, Roberts has played the lead judicial role in serving as the handmaiden to President Trump’s efforts to turn our democracy into an autocracy. This historic failure will be detailed next week in Part II.

Destroying essential rules of democracy

Roberts has taken the lead in writing a series of opinions that have destroyed essential rules governing our democracy. They deal with:

The sacred right of every eligible citizen to vote.
The integrity and honesty of the political system.
The right of citizens to have an unrigged opportunity to choose their representatives.
The idea that public officials should not be allowed to sell influence with their office.
The foundational principle that no person is above the law.

The following opinions, written by Roberts and joined in all but one case only by the Republican-appointed majority on the Court, have done unprecedented harm to our democracy.

Shelby County v. Holder

Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013). It declared key sections of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most consequential voting rights law ever enacted, to be unconstitutional. The Act was reenacted periodically over decades until the Shelby County decision.

The Roberts opinion unleashed a wave of regressive and discriminatory voting changes by states and local jurisdictions that disadvantaged minority voters and impeded their voting rights and their ability to fully participate in the democratic process.

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014) which struck down the aggregate limit on all contributions by a donor in an election cycle, a provision previously held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976.

In Buckley, the Supreme Court had found that unlimited contributions given to support candidates were inherently corrupt. The McCutcheon decision, however, eviscerated the limits on individual contributions to candidates by unleashing billionaires, millionaires, and other big money donors to give unlimited, often huge, contributions to Super PACs to benefit specific candidates.

Rucho v. Common Cause

Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 Court decision in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), in which the Court decided that it could not act on challenges to partisan redistricting plans. The decision claimed that the Court is incapable of establishing standards for determining when partisan maps become unconstitutional, no matter how extreme.

The Rucho decision means that there are no constitutional restrictions on partisan gerrymandering, no matter how rigged the plans are. The result is that politicians get to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives.

McDonnell v. United States

Roberts wrote the unanimous opinion in McDonnell v. United States, (2016), which vacated the conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell for honest services fraud and extortion. In his opinion, Roberts said that McDonnell’s actions did not constitute “official acts” under the applicable laws, including the bribery law.

In its decision, the Court adopted a narrow, unrealistic construction of the term “official act” to exclude various acts of an officeholder that should be covered, even when those acts are done in direct exchange for gifts or other benefits. For all practical purposes, the Court has left the country without effective bribery laws to prevent public officials from selling their office for financial benefits.

Trump v. United States

Roberts wrote the opinion for a 6–3 majority in Trump v. United States (2024), which gave Trump presidential criminal immunity.

The decision violated a guiding principle of our Founders that no person is above the law. The Roberts opinion placing Trump above the law and also giving him personal control of the Justice Department and FBI can be seen in such outrageous Trump pronouncements as the statement that he has “The right to do anything I want to. I’m the president of the United States,” and “I run the country and the world.”

It is unlikely that any Chief Justice in history played more of a role in destroying more of our nation’s democracy rules than Roberts. And that is how he will be remembered.

'Invitation to villainy': Chief Justice John Roberts accused of causing huge political war

The current war over gerrymandering in Texas, California, and other states is the result of Chief Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court, according to a legal expert.

James Sample, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University, appeared on MSNBC on Saturday to discuss Texas GOP "re-redistricting," and other key topics.

Sample described what he called an "underemphasized" point regarding the current "chaos": the Supreme Court caused it.

"The current chaos is a product of the U.S. Supreme Court," he elaborated. "In 2019, in a case called Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court essentially said, 'You know what? Partisan gerrymandering is anti-democratic. It is bad for democracy, but there's nothing we can do.' And saying that there was nothing that the court could do was a departure from prior practice," Sample said. "If you think about it this way, shoplifting is illegal, right? Very few shoplifters get caught, but you don't see shop owners putting up a sign in the window that says the police will never arrest you if you shoplift from our store."

He continued:

"In 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States put up that sign. The Texas GOP here is they're acting like villains. But the invitation to that villainy came from One First Street, NE, in Washington, DC, at the hands of the Roberts court."

Watch below or click the link here.

This Trump enabler has done more damage than the rest of them combined

John Roberts came to the U.S. Supreme Court professing the best of intentions. In his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, he promised to serve as chief justice in the fashion of a baseball umpire, calling only “balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” Two years later, in an interview with law professor Jeffrey Rosen, he mused that the court’s many acrimonious 5-to-4 decisions could lead to “a steady wasting away of the notion of the rule of law” and ultimately undermine the court’s perceived legitimacy as a nonpartisan institution.

Roberts said that as the court’s leader, he would stress a “team dynamic,” encouraging his colleagues to join narrow, unanimous decisions rather than sweeping split rulings.

“You do have to put [the Justices] in a situation where they will appreciate, from their own point of view, having the court acquire more legitimacy, credibility, that they will benefit from the shared commitment to unanimity in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise,” he reasoned.

Today, that reasoning is on the cutting-room floor. Although the court’s conservatives today outnumber its liberals by a 6-to-3 margin, the tribunal remains fractured and is widely regarded as just another political branch of government. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in mid-June, neither Republicans nor Democrats see the nation’s top judicial body as neutral. Just 20% of respondents to the poll agreed that the Supreme Court is unbiased while 58% disagreed.

Instead of healing divisions on the bench, Roberts and his Republican confederates old and new, including three justices nominated by Donald Trump, have issued a blistering succession of polarizing and reactionary majority opinions on voting rights, gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, gun control, abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance, the use of dark money in politics, equality for LGBTQ+ people, and perhaps most disastrous of all, presidential immunity.

The court’s reputation has also been tainted by a series of ethics scandals involving its two most right-wing members, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, over the receipt of unreported gifts from Republican megadonors. Alito came under added fire for flying an American flag upside down (sometimes used as a symbol of distress at mostly left-wing protests) outside his Virginia home just a few months after the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

The court’s lurch to the far-right accelerated in the recently concluded 2024-2025 term, driven in large part by the immunity ruling — Trump v. United States, penned by Roberts himself — and the authoritarian power grab that it has unleashed. The decision effectively killed special counsel Jack Smith’s election-subversion case against Trump. It also altered the landscape of constitutional law and the separation of powers, endowing presidents with absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken pursuant to their enumerated constitutional powers, such as pardoning federal offenses and removing executive officers from their departments; and presumptive immunity for all other “official acts” undertaken within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.

Seemingly emboldened by the ruling, Trump has made good on his boast to be a “dictator on day one” of his second stint in the White House, releasing a torrent of executive orders and proclamations aimed at dismantling federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; eviscerating environmental regulations; imposing sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities; creating the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); authorizing mass deportations; and ending birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, among dozens of other edicts.

Trump’s executive orders have generated a myriad of legal challenges, some of which reached the Supreme Court this past term as emergency, or “shadow docket,” appeals. The challenges placed Roberts and his conservative benchmates in the uncomfortable but entirely predictable position of balancing the judiciary’s independence as a co-equal branch of government with their fundamental ideological support of Trump’s policy agenda. By the term’s end, it was clear that ideology had won the day.

One of the first signs that Trump 2.0 would cause renewed headaches for the court occurred at the outset of the president’s March 4, 2025, address to a joint session of Congress. As he made his way to the podium, Trump shook hands with retired Justice Anthony Kennedy and with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Elena Kagan. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary until he approached Chief Justice Roberts, whose hand he took, and with a pat on the shoulder could be heard saying, “Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget.”

Trump and Roberts Donald Trump greets John Roberts at the U.S. Capitol. Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS

Whether Trump was thanking Roberts for his immunity ruling was ambiguous, but on March 18, Roberts was compelled to issue a rare public rebuke of the president after Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for issuing two temporary restraining orders (TROs) that halted the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in a statement released by the court.

The rebuke, however, came too late to stop the removal of two planeloads of Venezuelans to El Salvador in apparent defiance of Boasberg’s TROs, sparking concerns that Trump might ultimately defy the high court as well, and trigger a full-scale constitutional crisis.

The deportation controversy, along with several others, quickly came before the Supreme Court. On April 7, by a 5-to-4 vote with Justice Barrett in dissent, the majority granted the administration’s request to lift Boasberg’s TROs and remove the cases for further proceedings to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, where the named plaintiffs and other potential class members in the litigation (who had not yet been deported) were being detained under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The court’s four-page per curiam order (Trump v. J.G.G.) was unsigned, and, in a small defeat for the administration, also instructed that the detainees had the right to receive advance “notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal” by means of habeas corpus petitions.

In a related unsigned eight-page ruling (A.A.R.P. v. Trump) issued on May 16, this time by a 7-to-2 vote with Justices Thomas and Alito in dissent, the court blocked the administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members held in northern Texas under the AEA, but also held that the detainees could be deported “under other lawful authorities.”

In another unsigned immigration decision released on April 10 (Noem v. Abrego Garcia), the court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a resident of Maryland married to a U.S. citizen who had been sent to his native El Salvador because of an “administrative error.” Ábrego García was brought back to the United States in early June, and was indicted on charges of smuggling migrants and conspiracy.

The court waited until June 23 to release its most draconian immigration decision of the term (DHS v. D.V.D.), holding 6 to 3 that noncitizens under final orders of removal can be deported to third-party countries, even ones with records of severe human-rights violations. And on June 27, in a highly technical but very important procedural ruling (Trump v. CASA) on Trump’s birthright citizenship order, the court held 6 to 3 that district court judges generally lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions. Although the decision did not address the constitutionality of the executive order or the substantive scope of the 14th Amendment’s provision extending citizenship to virtually all persons born in the country, it sent three legal challenges to the order back to three district court judges who had blocked the order from taking effect. The litigation continues.

The immigration cases were decided on the court’s “shadow docket,” a term of art coined by University of Chicago professor William Baude in a 2015 law review article. It describes emergency appeals that come before the court outside of its standard “merits” docket that are typically resolved rapidly, without complete briefing, detailed opinions, or, except in the CASA case, oral arguments.

The Supreme Court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals—such as last-minute requests for stays of execution in death penalty cases—but emergency requests in high-profile cases proliferated during Trump’s first presidency. According to Georgetown University law professor and shadow-docket scholar Steve Vladeck, the first Trump Administration sought emergency relief 41 times, with the Supreme Court granting relief in 28 of those cases. By comparison, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations filed a combined total of eight emergency relief requests over a16-year period while the Biden administration filed 19 applications across four years.

Fueled by Trump’s authoritarian overreach, the court’s shadow docket exploded to more than 100 cases in 2024-2025 while the merits docket shrank to 56. Not surprisingly, the upsurge has generated significant pushback, with a variety of critics contending the shadow docket diminishes the court’s already limited transparency, and yields hastily written and poorly reasoned decisions that are often used by the conservative wing of the bench to expand presidential power, essentially adopting the “unitary executive” theory as a basic principle of constitutional law. Popularized in the 1980s, the unitary theory posits that all executive power is concentrated in the person of the president, and that the president should be free to act with minimal congressional and judicial oversight.

Although shadow-docket rulings are preliminary in nature, they sometimes have the same practical effect as final decisions on the merits. For example, on May 22, in an unsigned two-page decision (Trump v. Wilcox), the Supreme Court stayed two separate judgments issued by two different U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judges that had blocked the Trump administration from firing members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) without cause. The decision remanded the cases back to the D.C. Circuit and the district courts, but even as the board members continue to litigate their unlawful discharge claims, they remain out of work.

Shadow-docket rulings also have an impact on Supreme Court precedents, often foreshadowing how the court will ultimately rule on the merits of important issues. The Wilcox decision called into question the precedential effect of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, decided in 1935, which held that Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws limiting a president’s authority to fire executive officers of independent agencies like the NLRB, which oversees private-sector collective bargaining, and the MSPB, which adjudicates federal employee adverse-action claims.

The three appointed to the court by Democrats dissented. Writing for herself and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Kagan accused the Republican-appointed majority of political bias and acting in bad faith. “For 90 years,” she charged, “Humphrey’s Executor v. United States... has stood as a precedent of this court. And not just any precedent. Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control.”

Quoting Alexander Hamilton, she added, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents.” She castigated the majority for recklessly rushing to judgment, writing, “Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.”

The court also issued other pro-Trump emergency shadow-docket rulings in the 2024-2025 term, permitting the administration to bar transgender people from serving in the military and to withhold $65 million in teacher training grants to states that include DEI initiatives in their operations and curriculums. The court similarly used shadow-docket rulings to endorse DOGE’s access to Social Security Administration records and to insulate DOGE from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Yet despite the court’s deference, Trump complained about his treatment at critical junctures throughout the term. After the shadow-docket ruling blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in May, he took to Truth Social, his social media platform, writing in all caps, “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” It also has been widely reported that Trump has raged in private against his own appointees—especially Justice Barrett—for not being sufficiently supportive of his executive orders and initiatives, and his personal interests.

Meanwhile, back on the merits docket, with Roberts at the helm and with Barrett and the conservatives united, the court has continued to tack mostly to the right, giving Trump nearly everything he wants. On June 18, Roberts delivered a resounding victory to the Make America Great Again movement with a 6-to-3 opinion (United States v. Skrmetti) that upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender transition medical care for minors. The decision will have wide-ranging implications for 26 other states that have enacted similar bans. Echoing the sentiments of many liberal legal commentators, Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern described the ruling as “an incoherent mess of contradiction and casuistry, a travesty of legal writing that injects immense, gratuitous confusion into the law of equal protection.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson and Joe Biden Joe Biden delivers remarks on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In other high-stakes merits cases, the court, by a vote of 6 to 3, approved South Carolina’s plan to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program because of the group’s status as an abortion provider; and held 6 to 3 that parents have a religious right to withdraw their children from instruction on days that “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks are read.

Progressives searching for a thin ray of hope for the future might take some solace in the spirited performance of Justice Jackson, the panel’s most junior member, who has become a dominant force in oral arguments, and a consistent voice in support of social justice. Dissenting from a 7-to-2 decision (Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. Environmental Protection Agency) that weakened the Clean Air Act, she ripped the majority for giving “fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens.”

Eras of Supreme Court history are generally defined by the accomplishments of the court’s chief justices. The court of John Marshall, the longest-serving chief justice who held office from 1801 to 1835, is remembered for establishing the principle of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. The Court of Earl Warren, whose tenure stretched from 1953 to 1969, is remembered for expanding constitutional rights and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The Roberts Court will be remembered for reversing many of the Warren era’s advances. But unless it suddenly changes course, it will also be remembered as the court that surrendered its independence and neutrality to an authoritarian president.

Bill Blum is a former California administrative law judge. As an attorney prior to becoming a judge, he was one of the state's best-known death-penalty litigators. He is also an award-winning writer and legal journalist, and the author of three popular legal thrillers published by Penguin/Putnam as well as scores of features and book reviews published in a broad array of magazines and newspapers. His non-fiction work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, ranging from Common Dreams and The Nation to the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly and Los Angeles Magazine.

'It's always been nonsense': John Roberts' long-running claim blown up by editor

Chief Justice John Roberts claims to be a moderate but is in fact in Donald Trump's pocket, according to a Salon editor.

Alex Galbraith, Salon's nights and weekends editor, is also author of the outlet's free daily newsletter, Crash Course. On Thursday, Crash Course took aim at Roberts, whom it says "has overseen the death of the Voting Rights Act, the end of abortion protections in the United States and the last semblance of potential consequences for criminal American presidents."

If you don't believe Roberts is a moderate, just ask Roberts himself, according to Galbraith.

"Roberts has spent decades saying he’s a truth-teller and objective interpreter of the U.S. Constitution. In semi-annual public addresses, Roberts comes off as a neutral party willing to weigh new legal theories and laws against the rock-ribbed document that established our system of government. Reports of secret memos to whip court support for Republican presidents or clandestine phone calls with high-level federal judges have yet to outrun the story Roberts tells about himself," he wrote. "It’s always been nonsense."

The newsletter goes on to take aim at the other conservative justices.

"Sure, Roberts might seem level-headed compared to the seance-holding Originalist Samuel Alito, tantrum-throwing boozer Brett Kavanaugh and bribe-taking Cone of Silence resident Clarence Thomas. But’s he’s as much of an operative for the Republican Party as any of them. Perhaps more so, as his hard-won reputation as an honest dealer provides a sheen of legitimacy to the blatantly partisan rulings of his court," according to the editor. "No need to dig through the last few decades of Roberts court decisions, just take a look back on the term that just ended. Making heavy use of the court’s 'shadow docket,' the court has dodged the question of birthright citizenship, allowed the president to gut the federal government and generally shown support for lawlessness in the executive branch, provided the president wears a red tie."

He then concluded, saying, "The purpose of a system, famously, is what it does. John Roberts’ court turns the right’s most hare-brained and hateful schemes into legal precedent."

"What do you think? Will the public conception of John Roberts stand up to his obvious bias toward Trump?" he asks the readers.

Trump's treason has just one thing blocking its path — and it's taking a battering

On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts, in a not-so-veiled swipe at Donald Trump , stressed that the U.S. Constitution’s “main innovation” was the creation of an independent judiciary. Our constitutional system of government only works, he emphasized, if power shared between the three branches of federal government remains equal and balanced, and it is up to the courts, not Trump, to decide what makes it so.

Roberts’ remarks followed the Trump regime’s astonishing flurry of attacks against the judiciary. On April 25, Attorney General Pam Bondi called judges who refused to legitimize Trump’s power grabs “deranged,” then, with characteristic bombast, warned the judiciary, “we will come after you and we will prosecute you.” That same day, Kash Patel had a Wisconsin judge perp-walked out of the courthouse in handcuffs because she allowed a defendant to exit from a side door to the main hall where everyone else, including the FBI, was waiting. Three days later, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt intimated that Trump could have Supreme Court justices arrested.

Roberts can well see that Trump’s henchmen are attacking the judiciary as the last line of defense against an authoritarian coup. Perhaps more difficult to see is that Trump’s attacks, in concert with his deliberate weakening of national security, are acts of sabotage. He is wrecking our constitutional form of government in an effort to replace it with something else. From this perspective, it is difficult to see Trump’s strategy as anything short of treasonous.

A president who projects his own criminality

Throughout his first 100 days, Trump engaged in wild and unprecedented acts of retribution against the rule of law and anyone who tried to make him answer to it. Last week, describing Trump’s executive order to punish and extort lawyers who represented his political adversaries, a federal judge noted, “No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue” in an attempt to march the country toward totalitarianism.

Aside from metastasizing power grabs, the most common thread running through Trump’s EOs — announced through a series of White House propaganda papers issued every other day — is Trump’s projection of his own crimes and misdeeds onto others. Anyone trying to map Trump’s elusive plan of governance need only look at what he purports to attack in his orders, because those are his true intentions. On his first day in office, for example, Trump issued an EO “Ending the weaponization of the federal government,” dialing weaponization of government power to levels not seen since King George.

Freighted with propaganda, the White House memo regurgitated Trump’s grievances about efforts to hold him legally accountable for his actions, falsely proclaiming as “fact,” under seal of the White House, that, “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power.”

Trump then turned these accusations into a plan of action never before seen in American history, ordering the AG, DOJ and FBI to conduct political investigations, arrests and prosecutions.

On brand, Trump accuses others of treason

Determined to rule by fiat in order to bypass both legislative and judicial branches, Trump has issued a slew of incongruent declarations and EOs too wide-ranging to list. To squelch dissent and criticism of those orders, he describes critics as ‘enemies of the state,’ and accuses them of treason.

Trump’s presidential memorandum about “leakers” of government information describes as “treasonous” any disclosure of sensitive information for the purposes of undermining foreign policy, national security, or government effectiveness. ‘Undermining,’ of course, is whatever Trump says it is, which means any criticism can be deemed ‘treason.’

It’s a bold intimidation campaign meant to facilitate prosecution and imprisonment of critics in the near future, modeled on authoritarians like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. While his left hand attempts to silence critics Putin-style, Trump’s right hand is actively sabotaging national security, by:

Exposing secrets of the US intelligence community on easily hacked commercial messaging apps
Making threats to NATO that serve and align with Russian interests
Purging career civil servants and replacing them with incompetent loyalists to destabilize the government
Pausing or ceasing federal enforcement of foreign bribery laws
Trashing security alliances by threatening allies
Ending the Justice Department’s task force on covert foreign influence even as threats from foreign influence are rising.

Step by step, agency by federal agency, Trump is systematically disabling institutions that could interfere with his acquisition of domestic power, while at the same time inviting a foreign attack. Standing alone, each act weakens national security in ways that can’t be measured because the consequences have not yet materialized. Taken in concert, they reflect Trump’s intentional subversion of our national security interests.

'Levying war' against the nation

Treason, a federal crime, is defined by the Constitution as ‘levying war’ against the nation; it also includes “giving aid and comfort” to our enemies. Trump credibly has been accused of treason for aiding Russia’s interests over our own. In 2023, his actions in fomenting the Jan. 6 attack were also deemed treasonous when the Colorado Supreme Court found that he engaged in insurrection, a decision with roots in the Constitution’s definition of treason. The U.S. Supreme Court found a workaround to avoid Colorado’s application of the 14th Amendment on grounds that had nothing to do with — and did not disturb — Colorado’s finding of insurrection.

Treason is defined as the betrayal of one’s country. It is hard to imagine a deeper betrayal than an American president questioning the basic rule of the US Constitution while he actively subverts it.

I have no illusion that the spineless Republican party is prepared to rein Trump in; as one senator admitted, they are all too “frightened” of retribution to do their constitutional duty. So for now, thanks to a partisan Supreme Court and cowardly federal legislators, we are a nation held hostage by a lawless president of questionable sanity and his power-drunk sycophants.

As America wonders how bad it will get before he is stopped, at least we are learning a shared civics lesson: we are learning why the Constitution prohibits traitors from being elected into federal office.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

'Don’t look too much into it': Expert downplays SCOTUS ruling as MAGA cheers 'huge win!'

A legal expert added some much-needed context to a ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts regarding a Maryland man mistakenly deported as a "criminal" to a prison in El Salvador, despite evidence.

Roberts ruled Monday to temporarily block a court order that would have required the Trump administration to return 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego García to the U.S. by 11:59 p.m. Monday. The Justice Department then filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, leading to the Roberts decision.

For now, Garcia will remain in El Salvador.

New York Civil Rights attorney Andrew C. Laufer, Esq. explained on X, "It’s a typical procedural stay. Don’t look too much into it," but some social media users on the left expressed their outrage.

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MeidasTouch journalist Suri Crowe posted, "the john roberts SCOTUS will go down in the history books as responsible for the downfall of american democracy. roberts is grossly corrupt. i cannot… an innocent man is in a death camp and roberts pauses his return?! WTAF?"

And Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) wrote, "Donald Trump condemned an innocent man to a violent foreign prison, and the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice won’t lift a finger to stop him. Checks and balances, due process, the rule of law – these are all relics of America’s past under the watch of yes men like John Roberts."

MAGA world took the opportunity to celebrate the order keeping what they called an "MS-13" gang member in El Salvador, even though U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis found that the Trump administration offered “no evidence” to prove the allegation.

MAGA attorney Mike Davis wrote, "This is a crucial decision by the Chief Justice. Activist judges are lawlessly and dangerously sabotaging the President’s core Article II powers, including his duty to conduct our foreign affairs. This order correctly slaps down these judicial saboteurs."

Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson also put his spin on the order, writing, "Chief Justice John Roberts has BLOCKED the rogue activist judge who demanded the Trump Administration return MS-13 terrorist Kilmar Garcia to the United States by tonight."

"Chief Justice John Roberts blocked a Rogue Judges unconstitutional order forcing Trump to bring back an alleged MS 13 Gang member THIS IS ANOTHER HUGE WIN FOR AMERICA Keep them in El Salvador," wrote MAGA Voice, while conservative podcaster Steve Grubner posted, "Its about damned time that John Roberts grew a pair and defended America!"

Justice John Roberts poised to give go-ahead to 'MAGA vision of the law': legal expert

A review of Chief Justice John Roberts' actions during the last Supreme Court session would seem to indicate that he has stopped attempting to rein in both his more rabidly conservative colleagues and chosen to go along with their far-right vision of America, according to an expert's analysis.

That is the opinion of Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern who claimed the jurist, once considered an institutionalist, now appears to be "taking the path of least resistance" by going along with Trump and avoiding blowback from the volatile former president once again headed to the White House.

"it’s easy to imagine an earlier version of the chief justice spending the next four years losing his grasp on the court’s direction and drawing Trump’s public ire. Today’s iteration of John Roberts need not fear this fate. His position of appeasement, if not outright capitulation, to a MAGA vision of the law is about to pay off in spades," he wrote.

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According to Stern, having forestalled future Trump attacks by being the guiding force behind the startling presidential immunity ruling that, in essence, gives current and former presidents freedom to do as they please, Roberts has set himself up for an easier session while making it look like he has regained control.

"At the dawn of Trump’s next term, Roberts will arguably hold more power than ever. He has reestablished himself as the leader of the court, the justice with the greatest influence over the most important opinions. The question now is how he’ll use that power in a second Trump term. Will there be a limit to what he’ll seek to allow from the second Trump administration?" Stern asked before suggesting, "How far will he and the rest of the court’s conservatives allow Trump to go? Even if no other conservative will stand athwart Trump, will the chief justice sound the alarm in dissent? Or will he rubber-stamp the White House’s most authoritarian ambitions? Roberts himself may not even know the answers yet. But his decision to take the path of least resistance to Trumpism over the past four years suggests that he will not pose an obstacle to it in the four years ahead."

You can read more here.

Democrats are running away from ‘packing’ the Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — Republicans continue lambasting Democrats for wanting to “pack” the Supreme Court with additional justices.

But GOP rhetoric is distorting reality.

Most vulnerable Senate Democrats are actually running away from progressive calls to expand the court beyond its current nine justices. Even President Joe Biden, who last month unveiled a Supreme Court reform proposal, excluded the addition of additional justices.

“Curious your thoughts on expanding the size of the Supreme Court?” Raw Story asked Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).

“We’re commencing on an important discussion, and of course we've heard the president's proposal,” Baldwin — who’s facing Republican businessman Eric Hovde this fall — told Raw Story. “There's often been discussion about what you're asking about. I'm at the very early stages of evaluation.”

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“Yeah?” Raw Story pushed. “But you’re supportive of ethics reform?”

“Ethics for sure,” Baldwin said after casting one of her last votes before the Senate broke for its August recess last week.

Baldwin is with most every other Senate Democrat, as they unite around an ethics reform proposal for the Supreme Court.

Reform within the high court has been of particular Democratic interest since ProPublica first broke the news of Justice Clarence Thomas living a lavish lifestyle — one filled with free private jets, exclusive resorts and luxury yachts — on billionaire donor Harlan Crow’s dime.

But most Democrats in power have also stopped short of outrightly calling for expanding the court to, say, 12 or 13 or 15 justices — a move that would ostensibly give a Democratic president the power to fundamentally alter the court’s ideological balance of power.

This isn’t something they’re particularly keen on advertising, however, as they tip-toe around the topic so as not to alienate the progressive — and energized — wing of the Democratic Party, which would love to see Biden, or Kamala Harris were she to win the White House, nominate a slate of new liberal justices.

Democratic divisions

Biden’s package of potential Supreme Court reforms includes capping justices’ careers on the court at 18 years and the installation of an enforceable code of ethics.

While you wouldn’t know it based on Republican rhetoric — from former President Donald Trump on down to the conservative pundit class — Biden has squarely rejected calls to expand the Supreme Court.

So unenthused are most congressional Democrats about expanding the court that one congressional proposal to expand the size of the Supreme Court to 12 justices — the Judiciary Act of 2023 from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) — has sat collecting dust for months, not even gaining a single new supporter in the past year.

Besides Markey, it’s supported by Sens. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), but that’s it at present. If Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) wins his race to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, the measure to expand the court could gain a new sponsor.

“Right now, people recognize that we've got to do something, and so there's a lot of negotiation about what's the right way to reform the Supreme Court,” Warren told Raw Story as she was walking to her car outside the U.S. Capitol. “But on our side, we recognize that we're not going to save our Constitution and our nation if the United States Supreme Court is going to make declarations that presidents get to be kings and Congress can't do their business.”

Added Warren: “We're still talking.”

If they’re talking, it’s not to their vulnerable colleagues, such as Baldwin.

‘Have not even looked at it’

Before Congress kicked off its August recess, Raw Story interviewed 12 Senate Democrats — including the chair of the Judiciary Committee, three of the Senate’s most embattled incumbents and, arguably, the chamber’s fiercest proponents of ethics reform — about so-called court packing proposals for the Supreme Court.

All told, they reveal the vacuousness of the right’s Supreme Court-packing rhetoric, such as in July, when a Trump campaign statement — reacting to Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 election — declared: “It’s all part of Kamala’s scheme to pack the Supreme Court with far-left radical judges who will render decisions based on politics, not the law.”

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But that’s far from reality. Democrats aren’t just divided over the topic of court packing — many run away from it altogether.

Inside the Democratic Caucus, most senators aren’t interested in discussing it or plead ignorance about it.

“Have you looked at Markey's measure to expand the size of the Supreme Court?” Raw Story asked.

“I haven’t,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) — who’s facing former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy in November — told Raw Story.

“Haven’t even looked at it?”

“I have not even looked at it,” Tester said of the decades-old debate that stretches back to the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “The question I have is, where’s it stop? Look, accountability is really important, I don't care what branch of the government you're in, and I'm all about accountability transparency.”

Raw Story asked Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA): “Are the calls in your party to expand the size of the court – like Ed Markey’s bill — are those unhelpful? Because when you watch Fox or Newsmax, the whole party gets pegged as ‘progressive’ on the issue.”

“Look, the president made a really thoughtful proposal on a range of issues,” said Casey — who’s running against Republican businessman Dave McCormick this cycle. “The question of the makeup of the court, that's a question that I've got to take a closer look at. I just haven't spent the time to examine that.”

Casey has company.

“No I have not looked at it,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) — who squeaked out her reelection victory by some 8,000 votes in 2022 — told Raw Story. “It really doesn't take the politics out of it.”

Before coming to Congress, Cortez Masto served as Nevada’s attorney general. She says that these days, she’s hearing about the judiciary from more than angry base voters, including from many bewildered lawyers.

“Because they've also seen under a Trump administration the caliber of the [judges] from the Ninth Circuit, which is outrageous. And so they're having to deal with it, so there's a lot at stake,” Cortez Masto said.

Cortez Masto was especially enraged when the John Roberts-led Supreme Court did away with “Chevron deference” — a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that enabled Congress to pass broad bills before experts in federal agencies wrote out the rules and regulations needed to implement those statutes.

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“It's a matter of getting it right, and watching what's coming out of the court now and watching not just rights being eroded, l also recognize that the executive branch agencies have a role to play in discretion in how they implement our programs is very important,” Cortez Masto said. “And for them to overturn Chevron is not just impacting at the federal level, but it is impacting at the state level.”

She says the bubble the nation’s top justices inhabit is having real world consequences beyond Democrats’ fight to restore nationally recognized abortion rights, which seems to get the most attention since Roe v. Wade was wiped away. Cortez Masto says the justices are daft when it comes to the art of legislating.

“You're not going to get it right on the first try — any legislation. You're hopeful, you bring all the stakeholders together, you're there, everybody solving the problem. Everybody has input, but sometimes it's so complex that it takes two or three times to get it,” Cortez Masto said. “That's why it is important that you have that flexibility with those agencies to hear what they're saying, to work with them to implement the ratio. I just think we need to take them out of that process. And what the court has done is injected themselves into the process.”

That’s why Cortez Masto and other Democrats are focusing on ethics reform and not even entertaining proposals to expand the court.

It’s not just vulnerable lawmakers. Even party leaders are staying away from the proposed “packing.”

“I haven’t come out for it,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) acknowledged to Raw Story.

‘Term limits are where the mainstream is’

Some progressive Democrats still want to expand the court. But they largely acknowledge that they likely won’t get their way — at least not yet.

“Term limits are where the mainstream is right now. I think it's very clear that the court is out of control and operating in a totally partisan, in some cases unlawful, way,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story. “There's a recognition that there are three branches of government and these guys shouldn't be permitted to operate with total impunity.”

For many in Congress, it’s started to feel like this Supreme Court is slowly taking power away from the legislative branch, which Schatz bemoans.

“Doesn't mean we should interfere with their individual decisions, but the structure of the court, the ethical standards of the court, how many justices there are, how many circuits there are — all of those are subject to congressional action,” Schatz said. “These particular justices have decided that any exertions of article one power is some sort of obscene transgression and I think the public is wise to that.”

“But expanding the court just goes too far?” Raw Story pressed.

“I don’t know if it goes too far. I just think we should start the conversation where everyone is,” Schatz said.

Biden’s court reform package is uniting the Democratic Party where Chief Justice John Roberts has failed to, because while Roberts convinced justices to adopt an ethics measure, there’s no current mechanism to enforce it.

While Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have fought all year for ethics reform Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — the author of the SCERT or Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 — says it’s helpful to have the president on board, too.

“I'm very happy about it. I'm particularly happy with his recommendations aligned with my bill,” Whitehouse told Raw Story.

As for expanding the court?

“Investigation comes first,” Whitehouse said. “I think the aperture for that is not there yet.”

The clock’s ticking, so Dems say keep it bipartisan

Another loud reform advocate agrees. Before Biden came out in favor of an 18-year term for justices, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) proposed as much with his TERM — Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization — Act.

“So whatever tact we've taken, this is why I think the president's measures were so solid, it should be things that objectively are not partisan,” Booker told Raw Story. “And that really helped to restore the prestige and faith to the court.”

Booker says there’s little time to waste.

“This is a real crisis for the Supreme Court right now that the legitimacy of the court is being called into question by people across the political spectrum. We have individuals who are receiving literally millions of dollars in gifts from people that have matters before the court order or fighting logical preferences of the court,” Booker said. “This is very problematic.”

As for calls by Markey and other progressives to expand the size of the court, Booker says it alienates the very Republicans they need to win over to pass any reform measures.

“I haven't looked at the specifics of this proposal. It's like, when does that stop when both sides are trying to do that for political advantage? I think it could be that they could fall into partisanship,” Booker said. “I'm not criticizing the measure. I just know that I have resisted calls to do things that don't have wide bipartisan support.”

In spite of all the accusations that Democrats want to pack the court, most Democrats, including Georgetown educated lawyer Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), have rejected those calls from the party’s leftward flank.

“We should start with the fact that they should have a code of ethics. It’s nuts that you can have a Supreme Court justice or justices accepting millions of dollars in entertainment. Like, what the heck is that?” Hirono told Raw Story. “None of us get to do it, and thank goodness not!”

Don’t be fooled: Project 2025 is already happening

Project 2025, Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook on Christian nationalism, is already in motion. While the media debates Trump’s disingenuous disavowals of the masterplan, the real story is the extent to which the Supreme Court has already begun implementing it.

Project 2025 seeks to degrade civil rights nationwide by outlawing abortion, mandating Christianity and reducing LGBT+ citizens to second class status.

But these culture war flashpoints are merely a ruse, a distraction for the media to consume while its backers disguise their real objective. Project 2025 is a massive undertaking financed by fossil fuel wealth to protect fossil fuels, abetted by Supreme Court justices with ties to Big Oil.

Trump’s connection to — and disavowal of — Project 2025

Project 2025 was launched by the rightwing Heritage Foundation with Trump’s blessing.

In 2022, Trump described Project 2025 as “the groundwork,” a detailed plan “for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

Despite Trump’s embrace, emerging details about Project 2025 have become so unpopular that Trump now claims to know nothing about it, and says he has “no idea” who is behind it.

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Trump can’t plausibly claim ignorance, at least not outside the MAGA bubble.

As Politico reported, Project 2025 is the brainchild of Trump’s closest advisers, who helped write the plan’s main components to protect fossil fuels: Bernard McNamee, who served in Trump’s Energy Department, urges the repeal of climate laws; Perry Pendley, who led Trump’s Bureau of Land Management, argues that fossil fuel extraction is more important than preserving federal lands and monuments; and Mandy Gunasekara, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff, wrote the plan to gut EPA staff and reduce EPA enforcement of environmental regulations.

Supreme Court advances Project 2025’s agenda

While many pundits have acknowledged the implausibility of Trump’s “lack of knowledge” about Project 2025, few (none?) have noted that the Supreme Court has already begun to implement its key objectives.

This is the hidden reality of Project 2025: Trump’s remaking of the Supreme Court in his authoritarian image has already enabled the Court’s majority to adopt key components of the plan:

Abortion: The high court facilitated Project 2025’s anti-abortion goals with the Dobbs decision. In overturning Roe v. Wade after 50 years of protected abortion access, Justice Samuel Alito summarily declared that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause could no longer protect women’s medical privacy, because the Supreme Court previously determined “that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification.” After Roe deemed abortion access a “liberty” protected by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Alito and his Catholic colleagues ruled that “classification precedent” and ancient common law history were more important.

Bribery: SCOTUS implemented Project 2025’s deference to a strong (and crooked) chief executive in Snyder v. the United States. Republicans on the Supreme Court declared in Snyder that bribing an elected official isn’t bribery if it’s paid to the official after the fact, because then it’s really more of a “gratuity.” Despite (because of?) two justices facing backlash for accepting lavish gifts from donors with cases before the Supreme Court, the majority in Snyder weakened the federal anti-corruption statute, 18 U.S. Code § 666, which made it a crime for officials to corruptly solicit, accept or agree to accept “anything of value intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with” any business or transaction worth $5,000 or more.

Weakening federal regulations: The Supreme Court continued implementing Project 2025’s goal of killing the administrative state and stopping “the war on oil and gas” in Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo. In Loper, Republicans on the Court overturned the well-established Chevron doctrine, the law of administrative agencies for the last 40 years, ruling outrageously that judges should not rely on federal experts’ scientific or medical expertise, but should rely instead on their own personal opinion, bias and scientific ignorance in interpreting statutory ambiguities. This ruling, coupled with other recent cases eviscerating the regulatory power of the EPA, will cripple climate initiatives in service to Project 2025 donors for years to come if this rogue court is not stopped.

Advancing Christian nationalism: The Supreme Court helped advance Project 2025’s Christian nationalism in 303 Creative LLC and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In 303 Creative, the conservative majority designated the right to refuse to do business with gay people not as discriminatory conduct but as “free speech,” and held that requiring web designers to serve same sex couples was “coercing” them to make “statements” with which their Christian religion disagreed.

In Kennedy, the court’s religious bloc ruled that a football coach could lead his team in prayer on a public school football field despite Establishment Clause precedent dating back to the 1940s. Until Kennedy, courts prohibited school prayer because of the coercive pressure it put on atheist, Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian students to either pray along or be ostracized. In both 303 Creative and Kennedy, the court’s extreme bloc distorted the 1st Amendment’s shield – freedom of religion – into a sword: Christians’ freedom to impose their religion on others.

Biden’s extraordinary response to a rogue court

Each of these decisions, punctuated with the shocking presidential immunity ruling that presidents can break criminal laws with impunity, is in lockstep with the authoritarian goals of Project 2025.

This Trump-packed Supreme Court is so extreme, its roughshod violation of legal precedent so dangerous, that even President Joe Biden, an avowed institutionalist who has long resisted Supreme Court reform, now urges it.

Last week, Biden wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post outlining the Biden-Harris proposal to rein in the court, starting with term limits of 18 years.

He correctly noted that the United States “is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court,” and attributed the court’s current dysfunction to lifetime appointments. Biden’s candid observation that “what is happening now is not normal” was an understatement many Americans won’t understand for years, after the damage is evident.

Biden, like many Americans, was aghast when the Supreme Court’s Republican majority granted Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. As Biden put it, “If a future president incites a violent mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power — like we saw on Jan. 6, 2021 — there may be no legal consequences.”

Or, for Trump extremists on the Supreme Court, that was exactly the point.

Without recusal, justices in bed with Big Oil will impede climate action

Term limits must be accompanied by an enforceable Code of Ethics requiring justices to recuse from all cases in which they are conflicted. This last point will continue to stick, because each of the six Republican-nominated justices is in bed with fossil fuels.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s father was a “highly active and respected member of the American Petroleum Institute for more than two decades.”

Justice Samuel Alito’s family leases over 100 acres of land for oil and gas private development.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has accepted over $4 million in “gifts” from conservative donors, has been in fossil fuel investor Harlan Crow’s pocket for years.

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Not only do Coney Barrett, Alito and Thomas have direct, personal ties to fossil fuels, all six conservative justices belong to the Federalist Society, and are backed by the Heritage Foundation.

Both of these organizations, funded in large part by secret money, are driven by fossil fuel wealth, and it is no mere coincidence that Big Oil affiliated Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News amplifies their false messaging. Although they use non-stop culture wars to distract the voting public, they and Project 2025 exist largely to advance climate change denial to protect their own formidable, private wealth.

Project 2025 and its uber-wealthy puppeteers aren’t going away, regardless of what happens in November, because climate wars to hold Big Oil accountable for climate destruction are just getting started. Voters need to understand that American, Russian and Hungarian authoritarians are weaponizing Christianity in a coordinated attack to distract from their true efforts to protect fossil fuels.

Court reform, as embraced by Kamala Harris but deemed “dead on arrival” by Trump republicans, has now become an election imperative. The media needs to step up, expose the dark money ties between Project 2025, Trump and the six conflicted justices defending fossil fuels. Most critically, anyone concerned about rising temperatures and disappearing water sources needs to vote in November as if their lives depend on it.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.