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Try to take this in for a moment. Only recently, as ProPublica reported, a Chicago electronics mogul gave the largest political donation in American history, $1.6 billion. (Yes, you read that right!) To put such a sum in perspective " if that's even conceivable " the New York Times pointed out that it's "slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats." As it happens (don't be shocked!), that gift didn't go to the Democrats. It was given to the Marble Freedom Trust, a new nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, a key adviser to Donald Trump. Long involved in trying to create a deeply conservative court system, Leo helped The Donald definitively shape a right-wing super-majority from hell on the Supreme Court, one that's slated to be in place for years to come and is now moving to transform our country in a staggering fashion, starting, of course, with abortion rights.
Once upon a time, such a donation would have been inconceivable. However, thanks to a series of court decisions, chiefly the Supreme Court's 5-4 2010 Citizens United one that wiped out century-old campaign finance restric tions, corpor a tions and other outside " or as they're known, "dark-money" " groups can now essentially sink unlim ited funds into elec ting those they believe will benefit them most. In this case, that money will assumedly help Leo and his nonprofit further reshape both American politics and our courts.
In such a context, TomDispatch regular and historian Steve Fraser reminds us of something that's been all too easily forgotten by those (like me) who grew up in the years of a Supreme Court run by liberal justice Earl Warren. Historically speaking, Trump's Supremes are anything but an extreme aberration. In fact, they're eerily closer to the norm of American history when it comes to the top court in the land. In the end, you'll have to decide whether knowing that offers you a kind of grim relief or a sense of even deeper horror. But first take a little trip through time with Fraser and consider the long history of America's rogue court. Tom
The Trump Supreme Court Is Nothing New
A History of the Tyranny of the Supremes
By Steve Fraser
Has the Trump Supreme Court gone rogue? The evidence mounts. Certainly, its recent judicial blitzkrieg has run roughshod over a century's worth of settled law.
A woman's right to get an abortion? Gone (at least as a constitutionally protected civil right). Meanwhile, voting rights are barely hanging on, along with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave them life. State legislatures, so the court ruled, may no longer rein in the wanton availability of firearms and so the bloodshed will inevitably follow. Climate catastrophe will only get closer as the Supremes have moved to disarm the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Religion, excluded from the public arena since the nation's founding, can now invade the classroom, thanks to the court's latest pronouncement.
This renegade court is anything but finished doing its mischief. Affirmative action may be next on the chopping block. Gerrymandering, long an ignoble tradition in American political life, could become unconstrained if the Supremes decide to exempt such practices from state court judicial review. And who knows what they are likely to rule when every election not won by the Republican Party may be liable to a lawsuit.
Donald Trump's three appointments to the court " Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett " cemented in place a rightward shift in its center of gravity that had begun decades earlier. Ever since, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed William Rehnquist, a staunch conservative, as chief justice, the court has only become ever more averse to regulating business, even as it worked to reduce the power of the Federal government.
Don't forget that it essentially appointed George W. Bush president in 2000 by ruling that Florida couldn't conduct a recount of the vote, though it seemed likely that Al Gore would prevail and enter the Oval Office. And even after Rehnquist passed away, the court's 2010 Citizens United decision granted corporations the same free speech rights as people, further eroding democracy by removing limitations on their campaign contributions.
This march to the right was in stark contrast to the earlier deliberations of the court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren court was, of course, best known for its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision striking down public school segregation. It would also become the judicial centerpiece of a post-World War II liberal order that favored labor unions, civil rights, government oversight of business, and the welfare state.
Historically speaking, however, the Warren Court was the exception, not the one cobbled together by Donald Trump and effectively, if not officially, presided over by Justice Clarence Thomas. The Supremes were born to be bad.
Enshrined in the Constitution
From the beginning, the Supreme Court was conceived as a bulwark against excessive democracy, as indeed was the Constitution itself.
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