After the Blue Tsunami blew through even the reddest parts of the country, blatantly rejecting MAGA and Trumpism, conservative figures and MAGA allies are raising the alarm about Trump failing to lock in a multi-decade 6-3 or expanded conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Daily is fighting for democracy for all Americans. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.
They’ve been pressuring senior conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas (78) and Samuel Alito (76) to retire before the new Democratic majority Senate is seated.
The New York Times reported that Justice Alito has told friends that he will not retire immediately, but that hasn’t stopped the Republicans from having ideas.
Another way of looking at this is they want Trump to appoint MAGA successors for a country that despises the anti-American and anti-democratic authoritarianism of Trump.
Yes, they just want to make us take it, as if Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett weren’t enough of an impact for Trump to make on the Supreme Court.
This might seem far-fetched, but you know better.
We all remember how then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (now currently voting as a person we are not sure is functioning) blocked then President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for 293 days.
McConnell and Senate Republicans argued that an open Supreme Court seat should not be filled during a presidential election year because — and I need you to remember this — they claimed the American people should have a voice in selecting the next justice through the outcome of the upcoming 2016 presidential election.
Neil Gorsuch took that seat.
But now, the American people made their voice so well known that Republicans are fighting for their life in Mississippi and Texas is blue. The American people want nothing more to do with Donald Trump or his style of judges. Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ and abused American citizens with petty vindictive charges against people he views as opponents.
Using Republicans’ own logic, Donald Trump has less of a right to choose a Supreme Court justice than Barack Obama did — AND Obama chose a moderate who was well respected by everyone (at that time). Obama chose someone more than competent and fit for the job, unlike Trump’s history of judicial picks.
Given how clearly Republicans laid out the rules to deny Obama a SCOTUS pick, surely they will see the lame duck session of a massively rejected president like a perfect time to shove another Trump nominee through their appeasement pipeline.