IT’S OFFICIAL: TRUMP AND ALLIES WANT AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT

Donald Trump and his allies want to abandon democracy and create an authoritarian government in the U.S. This is now the official and explicit plan of the right-wing of the Republican Party. Their “Project 2025” is the culmination of efforts by right-wing, wealthy elitists to control the government’s administrative capacity and its regulation of the private sector. Its plan would give wealthy individuals and corporations unfettered control of the American economy, government, and society. To achieve these goals, they are willing to give the President dictatorial powers.

(Note: If you find my posts too long to read on occasion, please just skim the bolded portions. Special Note: The new, more user-friendly website for my blog presents the Latest Posts chronologically here. The new home page, where posts are presented by topics, is here. Please click on the Subscribe Today button to continue receiving notification of my posts. I plan to retire the old site at some point. Thank you for reading my blog!)

Donald Trump and his allies want to create an authoritarian government in the U.S. Although Trump has rhetorically and through some actions given indications of this in the past, what is new and shocking is that it is now the official and explicit plan of the right-wing of the Republican Party. This has the support (at least tacitly) of the Republican establishment. What has happened is that “businessmen who hated regulation joined with racists who hated federal protection of civil rights and traditionalists who opposed women’s rights” to advocate for upending our democratic government and returning the country to the pre-Franklin Roosevelt, pre-New Deal days of the 1920s. [1]

Their plan would abandon democracy, eliminate the checks and balances of the three branches of government, and create a presidency with dictatorial powers. It would increase presidential authority over every part of the executive branch of government, particularly over employees or agencies that currently have some measure of independence from political control from the White House.

Created by Project 2025, this presidential transition plan is identifying policies and personnel for a transition to a Trump (or other Republican) presidency in 2025. The scale and revolutionary nature of the plan are unprecedented. Project 2025 is being run by a Heritage Foundation-led coalition of over 65 right-wing organizations with a $22 million budget. The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973, a formerly conservative and now revolutionary think tank, has played a leading role in shaping Republican policies and funneling personnel to Republican administrations since the Reagan Administration. It is part of the well-funded network of right-wing, radical, revolutionary groups that have transformed the Republican Party and the Supreme Court. [2] They now want to transform the presidency and all our democratic practices and institutions.

Project 2025’s plan is echoed by information on the Trump campaign website that was primarily written by Trump advisors Vince Haley and Ross Worthington, [3] with input from others, including Trump’s virulent, anti-immigrant advisor, Stephen Miller. The plan has been publicly promoted by Russell Vought, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, and by John McEntee, head of Trump’s Presidential Personnel Office. McEntee, as part of President Trump’s effort to control the government bureaucracy, was working to install Trump loyalists throughout the Executive Branch, even over the objections of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries. The culmination of these efforts was clear in the leadup to the January 6, 2021, insurrection when Trump tried to get these loyalists to assert control at the DOJ, DOD, and other government agencies. [4]

Project 2025’s plan would:

Bring independent agencies under direct presidential control such as the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission (which is the business regulation and antitrust agency), the Postal Regulatory Commission, and probably the Federal Reserve;
Allow the President to refuse to spend (“impound”) funds appropriated by Congress that were for programs or policies he didn’t like and, in general, to emasculate the legislative branch of government and any checks and balances it might exercise over the President;
Strip Civil Service protections from tens of thousands of career federal government employees, including at the intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Department of Defense (DOD), so that they would be political appointees serving at the pleasure of the President and acting at his behest regardless of national security or the best interests of the country; and
Eliminate administrative procedures requiring public hearings and public comment periods for changes in regulations, as well as requirements for information sharing such as open meeting laws.

Project 2025 is the culmination of efforts by right-wing, wealthy elitists to have unfettered control of the American economy, government, and society via a President and Republican Party that they control with their money. To achieve these goals, they are willing to abandon democracy and create an authoritarian presidency with dictatorial powers. [5]

Many of the elements of the plan would be challenged in court if they are implemented. Many of these cases would eventually get to the Supreme Court. Although historically (in 1935 and 1988) the Court has upheld the independence of executive branch agencies and personnel from presidential political meddling, the current Court has already begun to erode those precedents. The Supreme Court’s recent track record would certainly seem to indicate that it would allow much of the concentration of power in the presidency that is being proposed by Project 2025’s plan.

If implemented, Project 2025 would likely end equality before the law, protection of civil rights, investments in programs that allow working people to prosper, and policies that build an economy that reduces economic inequalities. It would allow the President, for example, to:

Have the IRS target political opponents for tax audits and enforcement, while ignoring tax fraud or evasion by political supporters;
Have the DOJ prosecute political opponents, including on trumped up charges (no pun intended), while ignoring crimes by political supporters;
Target business regulations and antitrust actions at companies of political opponents, while letting those of political supporters operate uninhibitedly;
Order the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates before an election;
Target federal spending to states and municipalities led by political supporters while penalizing those of political opponents; and
Harm national security by directing loyalists in intelligence, diplomacy, and defense activities to act on his whims (e.g., friendships with Putin and Kim Jong Un) rather than on expertise and the country’s best interests.

[1] Richardson, H. C., 7/17/23, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-17-2023)

[2] Swan, J., Savage, C., & Haberman, M., 7/17/23, “Trump and allies forged plans to increase presidential power in 2025,” The New York Times

[3] Vince Haley and Ross Worthington were Trump Advisors for Policy, Strategy and Speechwriting and developed Trump’s policies for undermining ethics standards among other things. Both had previously worked for former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich for many years.

[4] Cooper, R., 7/18/23, “Donald Trump is plotting to make himself dictator,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/politics/2023-07-18-donald-trump-plotting-make-himself-dictator/)

[5] Cooper, R., 7/18/23, see above

THE RICH GET RICHER BUT THEY MAY HAVE TO PAY THE TAXES THEY OWE

The wealth of rich Americans is growing by leaps and bounds, but CEO’s pay raises have slowed a bit. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is beginning to crack down on wealthy tax dodgers, but Republicans in Congress are trying to cut the funding for this IRS crackdown.

(Note: If you find my posts too long to read on occasion, please just skim the bolded portions. They present the key points I’m making. Special Note: The new, more user-friendly website for my blog presents the Latest Posts chronologically here: https://www.policyforthepeople.org/blog. The new home page, where posts are presented by topics, is here: https://www.policyforthepeople.org. Please click on the Subscribe Today button on the new site to continue receiving notification of my posts. I plan to retire the old site at some point. Thank you for reading my blog!)

The world’s wealthiest 500 people each added an average of $1.7 billion to their wealth in the first six months of 2023. The world’s wealthiest person added almost $100 billion to his wealth. For the members of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, it was an increase of $14 million a day during the first half of the year. [1]

However, for CEOs, 2022 wasn’t such a great year as their typical compensation rose less than 1%, although median pay was still a wealth-creating $14.8 million. This was the smallest increase since 2015. However, their pay had increased a healthy 17% in 2021. [2]

The small 2022 increase for CEOs meant that the pay ratio when compared to the average worker actually narrowed a tad – for the first time in many years. Median pay for workers rose to just over $77,000, meaning CEO pay was 186 times that of workers. This pay gap is, nonetheless, extremely high by historical standards.

The CEO of Alphabet (the parent corporation of Google) had the top compensation package, which was valued at $226 million. The great majority of this was from a grant of restricted stock options, which Google gives to its CEO every three years. Underscoring that CEO pay is not linked to actual performance, this huge reward was given just before Google laid off tens of thousands of employees and after shareholder returns fell by 39% last year.

Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is showing what it can do if given the resources to audit wealthy tax dodgers. In the past few months, it has collected $38 million of back taxes owed by about 175 wealthy individuals. Many of these individuals are likely to face criminal investigations. This is just the tip of the iceberg. A report in 2021 estimated that the 1% of taxpayers with the highest incomes fail to report and pay taxes on 20% (one-fifth) of their incomes. [3]

The IRS got a new commissioner in March 2023 and was given an additional $80 billion in funding over the next ten years by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, passed by Democrats in Congress and President Biden. This increased funding is for IRS enforcement, customer service, and technology improvements. The IRS reports that with the increased funding it was able to answer 3 million more calls from taxpayers in the 2023 tax-filing season than in 2022, while cutting waiting times to three minutes from 28. In addition, it has processed the backlog of 2022 tax returns.

Republicans in Congress began cutting IRS funding in 2010, cumulatively cutting its annual budget by $2.5 billion (22%) by 2021. As a result, IRS enforcement staff has been reduced by about one-third (15,000 employees). Therefore, the audit rate for taxpayers with incomes over $1 million has fallen by 71% and for large corporations by 54%. The outcome has been systematic tax evasion by wealthy taxpayers and the loss of an estimated $600 – $700 billion of revenue each year that would help fund the federal government’s programs and operations. Overall, in 2021, the IRS had roughly the same number of employees (79,000) as in 1970, despite great growth in the economy and the complexity of tax laws. [4]

Republicans are continuing to work to cut IRS funding. They demanded a $1.4 billion cut to the IRS in the debt ceiling and budget deal recently passed by Congress. In a related agreement, they demanded cuts in IRS funding of another $20 billion over the next two years.

I urge you to contact President Biden and your U.S. Representative and Senators to ask them to oppose any cuts to funding for the IRS. Tell them you support the IRS’s efforts to enforce our tax laws and make everyone pay the taxes they owe. You can email President Biden at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments or you can call the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 or the switchboard at 202-456-1414. You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

[1] Business Talking Points, 7/4/23, “Musk, Zuckerberg lead surge as rich get richer,” The Boston Globe

[2] Olson, A., 6/1/23, “Smaller raises for CEOs, but pay still towers over workers,” The Boston Globe from the Associated Press

[3] Hussein, F., 7/8/23, “IRS says it collected $38 million from more than 175 high-income tax delinquents,” The Boston Globe from the Associated Press

[4] Facundo, J., 1/26/23, “Reanimating the taxman,” The American Prospect (/https://prospect.org/economy/2023-01-/26-reanimating-taxman-internal-revenue-service/)

THE UNCONSTRAINED RADICAL REACTIONARY SUPREME COURT

The six radical reactionary Supreme Court justices have clearly demonstrated that they believe there are no constraints on their decision making. To them, the end justifies the means. Through their invented “major questions” doctrine, they have crowned themselves the rulers over all government policies. Through their rulings, they are returning our society to one where some people are better and have more rights than others. Through their acceptance of contrived cases without true plaintiffs (see this previous post for details), they rule over what is acceptable or not in our society.

(Note: If you find my posts too long to read on occasion, please just skim the bolded portions. They present the key points I’m making. Special Note: The new, more user-friendly website for my blog presents the Latest Posts chronologically here: https://www.policyforthepeople.org/blog. The new home page, where posts are presented by topics, is here: https://www.policyforthepeople.org. Please click on the Subscribe Today button to continue receiving notification of my posts. I plan to retire the old site at some point. Thank you for reading my blog!)

Recent decisions by the Supreme Court clearly show that its radical reactionary six-justice majority (Roberts, Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas) recognizes no constraints on its decision making. They are making up law, precedents, procedures, and conclusions that fit their white supremacist, evangelical Christian, plutocratic ideology. This is not hyperbole or political bias speaking, it is fact. What worries me the most is their decision-making process, not the substance of their decisions, as horrific as that is. Their perversion of the law, their disregard for facts, their rejection of procedural standards and precedents, and their contorted “logic” clearly have no constraints.

Heather Cox Richardson, an historian, in her June 30^th post on her Letters from an American daily blog, writes that in the student loan forgiveness case, Biden v. Nebraska, the six radical reactionary justices based their decision that loan forgiveness was unconstitutional on their “major questions” doctrine. She notes that they invented this new doctrine in 2022 in the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) case. In that case, they stripped the EPA of the authority to regulate some kinds of air pollution based on their assertion that Congress cannot delegate “major questions” to executive branch agencies.

This “major questions” doctrine has no basis in law or the Constitution. The Court itself determines whether an issue is a “major question.” Therefore, the Court has basically taken over the legislative branch’s power and authority to delegate implementation of policy to the executive branch. By deeming an issue a “major question,” the Court can and is blocking any policy it doesn’t like, whether it’s regulation of air pollution or forgiving student loans. As Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent to the Biden v. Nebraska decision, “the Court, by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.”

Robert Hubbell, a retired lawyer, in his Today’s Edition Newsletter on July 5, 2023, “The walls of liberty,” writes that the “major questions” doctrine is a “judge-made doctrine [that] arrogates to the Court the right to overturn any decision by a federal agency with which the reactionary majority disagrees. The pseudo-rationale for the doctrine is that if Congress intends to delegate discretion to federal agencies on “major questions,” it should use a level of specificity that is to the liking of the Supreme Court. … The doctrine was invented from whole cloth to justify judicial activism in service of an anti-government agenda.”

Richardson also writes that recent Supreme Court decisions, particularly the decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis on the ability of a business to refuse to serve LGBTQ people, “continue to push the United States back to the era before the New Deal” and, indeed, back to the mid-1800s’ and the Civil War’s issues of slavery and Black citizenship and voting. The issues of discrimination and segregation from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s are also rekindled by this decision.

She writes that the 303 Creative decision means that the federal government cannot prevent discrimination against LGBTQ people by individuals and their businesses based on the proprietor’s religious beliefs and, moreover, the Court won’t let the states do so either. Richardson writes that this takes the country back to the 1800s when it was acceptable to exclude people from voting based on literacy tests, poll taxes, a criminal conviction, etc. White men were protected from these requirements because they were allowed to vote if their grandfathers had been eligible to vote, so the effect, of course, was to discriminate against Black men.

Richardson writes in her July 3^rd post, “as in the 1850s, we are now, once again, facing a rebellion against our founding principle, as a few people seek to reshape America into a nation in which certain people are better than others.” That founding principle of the United States, which is what made it exceptional, was that all people are created equal – although they really only meant all white men – but that was revolutionary at the time.

As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent on the 303 Creative case, for “the first time in history” the Court has given “a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” This is reminiscent, of course, of the Woolworth lunch counter’s exclusion of Blacks, which was a seminal moment in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Segregation was and is defended as based on deeply held religious beliefs just as is the discrimination against LGBTQ people allowed by the 303 Creative case decision.

The six radical reactionary Supreme Court justices have clearly demonstrated that they are unconstrained by precedents of any kind. They are not in any way conservative. Democracy, the separation of powers, the rule of law, and the Constitution apparently mean nothing to them. To them the end justifies the means. Their decisions are truly radical.

They are reactionary in that they are reversing the trajectory of U.S. history which has continually extended rights and equality to broader groups of people, e.g., Black men, women, and LGBTQ individuals. This trajectory has moved the United States toward its founding principle that all people are created equal. For the first time in the country’s history, the Supreme Court and its six reactionary justices are taking away people’s rights and equality, rather than expanding them. To these six justices, discrimination and inequality are not issues that the government should do anything about.

They apparently will let nothing stand in their way of creating a society based on evangelical Christian religious tenets, where wealthy white men control the government and society.

P.S. There are two new scandals involving Justice Thomas. First, in 2019, an aide to Justice Thomas received cash, apparently for Thomas’s Christmas Party, from at least seven lawyers who have had cases before Thomas and the Supreme Court. The names of seven lawyers are known although the amounts of money are not. [1] Second, shortly after Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991, he was accepted into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, a group made up primarily of extraordinarily wealthy, conservative, male, businessmen. Thomas is an honorary Board Member of the non-profit organization with a roughly $20 million annual budget, $300 million in assets, and a 21-person staff. He provides it unusual access to the Supreme Court’s actual courtroom, where he hosts its annual awards ceremony. Leaders of the organization are major donors to conservative causes with broad interests in Supreme Court decisions, even if they are not actual parties in specific cases. Thomas has received personal hospitality and other undisclosed benefits from some of them. [2]

[1] Stancil, K., 7/12/23, “‘Corruption’: Thomas aide accepted money from lawyers who have had cases before the Supreme Court,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/clarence-thomas-aid-venmo)

[2] Johnson, J., 7/10/23, “‘Clarence Thomas needs to resign’: Report shines more light on Justice’s gifts from the rich,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/clarence-thomas-gifts)

THE OUT-OF-CONTROL RADICAL REACTIONARY SUPREME COURT

The six radical reactionary Supreme Court justices have clearly demonstrated that they are unconstrained by precedents of any kind, i.e., they are truly out-of-control. To them the end justifies the means. Through their invented “major questions” doctrine they have crowned themselves the rulers over all government policies. Through their acceptance of contrived cases without true plaintiffs (i.e., ones with standing to bring a case to court) they rule over what is acceptable or not in all elements of our society. Through their rulings they are returning our society to one where some people are better and have more rights than others.

(Note: If you find my posts too much to read on occasion, please just read the bolded portions. They present the key points I’m making.)

SPECIAL NOTE: The new, more user-friendly website for my blog presents the Latest Posts chronologically here: https://www.policyforthepeople.org/blog. The new home page, where posts are presented by topics, is here: https://www.policyforthepeople.org. If you like the new site, please click on the Subscribe Today button. The old site will continue to be available.

Recent decisions by the Supreme Court clearly show that its radical reactionary six-justice majority (Roberts, Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas) is out-of-control. They are making up law, precedents, procedures, and conclusions that fit their white supremacist, evangelical Christian, plutocratic ideology. This is not hyperbole or political bias speaking, it is fact.

What worries me the most is not the substance of their decisions, as horrific as that is, it’s their process, their perversion of the law, their contorted “logic,” their disregard for facts, and their rejection of procedural standards and precedents. As Norman Ornstein, a respected political scientist and a senior fellow emeritus at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute (where he has been for over 40 years) wrote, “It is not just the rulings the Roberts Court is making. They created out of whole cloth a bogus, major questions doctrine. They made a mockery of standing. They rewrite laws to fit their radical ideological preferences. They have unilaterally blown up the legitimacy of the Court.”

Five recent blog posts or articles from my three favorite sources of intelligent, progressive policy analysis and commentary provide detail that documents the veracity of Ornstein’s statements. They document the radical reactionary nature of recent Supreme Court decisions – not just in terms of the specific outcomes and substance, but in terms of process and perversion of law and history.

David Dayen’s article, “Supreme Court decides fake plaintiffs are good plaintiffs,” on The American Prospect website, focuses on the issue of standing. Normally, for a plaintiff to file a suit in court, the individual(s) or organization(s) bringing the suit must have “standing” to sue, meaning they must have suffered actual harm – physical, financial, or an inability to do something, such as to vote. In both the student loan forgiveness case (Biden v. Nebraska) and the LGBTQ wedding website case (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis) the plaintiffs did NOT have standing to even bring the cases based on traditional definitions of standing or any normal interpretation of law, legal practice, or precedent.

The only rationale for the Supreme Court’s acceptance of these two cases and their granting of standing to the plaintiffs is that the six radical reactionary justices knew the ruling they wanted to make and were eager to accept any case that would allow them to do so. Dayen writes that beyond the ethical and financial corruption of Supreme Court justices that has recently come to light, “there is a subtler corruption, whereby the Court picks up whatever facts, whether true or untrue, [including on standing to sue] and wields them to decide cases that fit their prior beliefs.”

Robert Hubbell, a retired lawyer, in his Today’s Edition Newsletter blog on July 1, 2023, “Brute force in the service of religious nationalism,” also focuses on the Supreme Court’s willingness to accept and rule on cases where the plaintiff lacks standing to bring a lawsuit. Moreover, the “conflicts” underlying Biden v. Nebraska and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis were contrived by right-wing advocates in a conscious and concerted effort to create a case so the Court could make a ruling. The Court was happy to take on these cases and make the ruling the advocates wanted and that fit with their radical, reactionary ideology.

My next post will review the six justices’ invented but powerful “major questions” doctrine and their efforts to turn back the pages of our history, allowing discrimination and asserting that all people are NOT equal, but that some are better, or at least more important before the law, than others.

THE SUPREME COURT PROBABLY DELIVERED THE HOUSE TO THE REPUBLICANS IN 2022

The Supreme Court has been issuing its end of session decisions recently and one of them, Allen v. Mulligan, upheld a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits election district maps that are drawn to dilute minority voting power. The Court, prior to the 2022 elections, blocked the redrawing of districts despite lower courts’ rulings that the districts were unconstitutional. This left districts in place for the election in seven or more states that have now been deemed unconstitutional. This probably delivered at least seven seats to the Republicans that otherwise would have likely gone to Democrats. The shift of five seats from Republicans to Democrats would have changed the control of the House.

(Note: If you find my posts too much to read on occasion, please just read the bolded portions. They present the key points I’m making.)

The Supreme Court has been issuing its end of session decisions recently and they’ve been garnering a lot of attention in the media because some of them have far reaching effects. One of the decisions, Allen v. Mulligan, upheld a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and was heralded as a bit of a surprise because other relatively recent Supreme Court decisions had gutted most of the Voting Rights Act. This decision upheld the section of the Act that prohibits election district maps that are drawn to dilute minority voting power.

Although Allen v. Mulligan has been reported as a very important decision with far reaching implications, the monumental effect of the original ruling in the case, before the 2022 elections, has not been widely reported. [1]

First, a little background on this case and the underlying issue of racial gerrymandering of congressional districts. The Allen v. Mulligan decision reinstates a lower court ruling that will require Alabama to redraw its congressional districts due to the racial gerrymandering of the current districts. A less noticed decision in a case known as Ardoin v. Robinson will similarly require Louisiana to redraw its congressional districts. [2] These two cases set a precedent that will affect racially gerrymandered congressional district maps in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas, and South Carolina, and perhaps elsewhere.

In Alabama, there are seven congressional districts. Twenty-seven percent of the population is Black (and four percent is in other non-white categories), but by packing as many Black voters into one district as possible and splitting up the other Black voters among the other districts, there is only one Black-majority district in the state. In Louisiana, there are six congressional districts. A third of the population is Black, but, again, by packing as many Black voters into one district as possible and splitting up the other Black voters among the other districts, there is only one Black-majority district in the state.

Prior to the 2022 elections, the Supreme Court, through “shadow docket” rulings in cases from Alabama (Allen v. Mulligan) and Louisiana (Ardoin v. Robinson), temporarily blocked the redrawing of districts based on lower courts’ rulings that the state’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. This meant that the 2022 congressional elections used congressional districts in seven or more states that were unconstitutionally gerrymandered. (The “shadow docket” refers to rulings the Supreme Court makes without hearing arguments or soliciting input. The Court issues its “shadow docket” rulings without presenting any rationale for its decision. So, in these “shadow docket” cases, the Court provided “emergency relief” to Louisiana and Alabama to use congressional district maps in the 2022 elections that a lower court had ruled were illegal. See previous posts here and here on the Supreme Court’s use of the “shadow docket.)

Each of the seven (or more) states that had unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts would have most likely had at least one more Democratic leaning congressional district if the lower court rulings had not been blocked by the Supreme Court. Therefore, it’s highly likely that without the Supreme Court’s interference the Democratic Party would have had control of the U.S. House of Representatives rather than Republicans. After the election, there were 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the House. A shift of five seats would have given the Democrats a 218 to 217 majority. A shift in control of the House to Democrats would have had a monumental effect on policy making and the whole tenor of politics in the federal government.

Whether knowingly or not, the Supreme Court’s actions put a heavy thumb on the scales of the 2022 congressional elections. Most probably, the Court’s actions had the dramatic effect of determining who had the majority in the House of Representatives. Ultimately, the Court took away the constitutional right of voters in these states to a fair 2022 election. Furthermore, it did so without hearing arguments or soliciting briefs on the merits of the case and without even explaining its reasoning. [3]

P.S. The latest Supreme Court ethics scandals involve Justice Alito. He took an expensive fishing trip to Alaska, including a flight on a private jet, that was funded by a Republican billionaire and major campaign donor whose hedge fund has had multiple cases before the Court. Alito did not disclose these gifts as required and did not recuse himself on the cases. In addition, Alito’s wife had a business interest in a firm that was affected by a case before the Court from which Alito did not recuse himself. [4] (See previous posts here, here, and here about ethical scandals of Supreme Court justices.)

[1] Thompson, M. W., 6/13/23, “Voting maps throughout the deep South may be redrawn after surprise Supreme Court ruling,” ProPublica (https://www.propublica.org/article/scotus-voting-rights-act-alabama-redistricting-allen-milligan)

[2] Wilkins, B., 6/26/23. “‘Big win for democracy’ as SCOTUS OKs redrawing of rigged Louisiana congressional map,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/louisiana-gerrymandering)

[3] Editorial, 6/13/23, “The shadow docket does clear harm in voting rights case,” The Boston Globe

[4] Wilkins, B., 6/26/23, “Wife’s oil and gas leasing deal raises new ethics concerns about Justice Alito,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/alito)