Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks
Judge Amy Coney Barrett speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House on Saturday, September 26, 2020, the day President Trump announced her as his latest nominee to the Supreme Court.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened the hearings on President Trump’s nomination of rightwing zealot Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court by admitting the proceedings were a sham that would confirm Barrett with every committee Republican voting yes and every Democrat voting no. But that didn’t mean the hearings were a waste of time. The politically unpopular Republican power grab days before an election probably increased the likelihood voters will shift Senate control to the Democrats.
Democrats also made it more difficult for Barrett to vote against the Affordable Care Act, a primary reason the Senate is rushing her onto the court before yet another Republican attempt to destroy the ACA on Nov. 10. Barrett kept insisting she wasn’t hostile to the law. We won’t know whether she was lying until the case is decided.
Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse did something even more valuable. He conducted a clear, understandable national seminar exposing the assault on American democracy and the rule of law by a network of little known, rightwing millionaires and billionaires who have spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars corrupting not only the Supreme Court, but the entire national system of federal and state courts.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in fact, is a prime example of the court corruption Whitehouse described. Wisconsinites have been appalled watching a corrupt rightwing majority on their Supreme Court working hand-in-hand with Republican legislators to strip Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul of the powers of their offices voters statewide elected them to exercise. That’s included preventing Evers and state health experts from enforcing safety measures to protect lives in a raging pandemic.
Politicizing Justice
There’s a reason Wisconsin is such a horrible example. Two of the forces Whitehouse identified as working in tandem nationally to destroy the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts are prominent local players who have shaped Republican state legislation as well as the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They are the Federalist Society and Milwaukee’s rightwing Bradley Foundation founded with the Allen-Bradley Company fortune.
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Here’s how they work together nationally. The Federalist Society, which has received millions of dollars from the Bradley Foundation, has long recommended rightwing judges for federal appointments by Republican presidents. Trump gave the group absolute control over his nominees to the Supreme Court. All three of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees were chosen from approved Federalist Society lists and 85% of more than 220 Trump appointees to federal judgeships are members.
Friendly, rightwing judges on the Supreme Court and other courts are then told how to vote on specific cases through “friend of the court” briefs filed by rightwing groups with generic names, but frequently funded with millions of dollars from the Bradley Foundation and/or a “dark money” organization called Donors Trust whose donors are anonymous. In one successful anti-union case, Donors Trust funded all 11 outside groups filing briefs and the Bradley Foundation funded eight of them.
Whitehouse identified 80 different 5-4 decisions by the Roberts court that followed that pattern to undermine voting rights, government regulation of air and water pollution and protections against discrimination. A 5-4 decision written by Roberts forbid courts from intervening to prevent even the most corrupt cases of political gerrymandering that totally distort voting results.
GOP Packs the Court
In a perfect loop back to Wisconsin, the state is one of the worst examples of dishonest Republican gerrymandering that no longer reflects election results in our democracy. In 2018, Republicans retained control of both houses of the Legislature including an almost two-thirds of all Assembly seats even though Democrats received more legislative votes than Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell frantically scheduled Senate confirmation of Barrett’s nomination during the week of Oct. 26 just days before the presidential election. McConnell’s eager to pack the court by stealing another seat as fast as he can. McConnell refused to hold a hearing on President Obama’s highly qualified nominee Merrick Garland for the entire final year of Obama’s presidency after Justice Antonin Scalia died Feb. 13. That was the first Supreme Court seat McConnell stole for Trump to fill with Neil Gorsuch.
Republicans justify their court packing by declaring Barrett’s nomination represents an historic breakthrough putting a previously unknown oppressed minority on the court — a rightwing, white woman who opposes abortion. Apparently, they don’t understand Roe v. Wade gives women that choice. The ugly spectacle of Republicans ramming through Barrett’s nomination immediately before the election won’t stop progressive legislation. Republican presidents have retained a conservative majority on Supreme Court for nearly half a century ever since Richard Nixon appointed four conservative justices by 1972 to demolish the liberal Earl Warren court.
That hasn’t prevented safe, legal abortions, expansion of affordable health care, marriage equality, efforts to limit access to weapons of mass murder or the continuing civil rights movement. And it never will.
