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MERRI OK

see 3 horseman

see amicus

some neglect, trust fund baby API?!

AN 726

MAGA risks losing its edge on the Supreme Court with relentless attacks on Trump judge - Alternet.org

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TRUTHOUT

Two Years After Barrett’s Confirmation, Let’s Be Blunt: The Point Was to End Roe | Truthout

*Truthout’s December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we will be able to do in 2026. Please support us with atax-deductible donationtoday.

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court on the eve of the 2020 election. For two years, she has proven to be an ongoing disaster for democracy.

Barrett was chosen because she secures the extreme agenda of the right-wing faction now in control of the United States’ highest court. The spin by right-wing dark money groups during her nomination hearings that she would set aside her personal views, follow settled law, and rule fairly has been refuted by the repressive dictates from the court that her installation has made possible. (Recent revelations of Samuel Alito’s express assurance to former Sen. Ted Kennedy that he would not overturn Roe further demonstrate that such promises are empty.)

Barrett is a destructive force aimed at 20th-century legal precedents that belatedly made some of the U.S. Constitution’s promises real for many Americans rather than mere parchment that served the elite.

If voters decide to elect a much more progressive Congress this November, lawmakers could expand the number of justices on the court and set term limits on the current appointees, as Demand Justice and other progressive groups have suggested. An emboldened House could even begin impeachment proceedings, where evidence supports such action, as with Brett Kavanaugh’s perjury and Clarence Thomas’s ethical failures.

On this inglorious anniversary, it is worth remembering that but for the 2020 installation of Barrett — as Donald Trump was literally being voted out of the White House — there would not have been enough votes for the Supreme Court to fully overturn Roe v. Wade.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s time on the court before Barrett was on board has been marked by the hollowing out of Americans’ rights, while he was pretending to follow precedent — and garnering some fawning press with his claim that he would be a humble umpire calling balls and strikes rather than a player on a team. Think, where Roberts deputized Justice Anthony Kennedy to write a majority opinion that reinterpreted the First Amendment and destroyed Congress’s power to limit dark money. The ruling unleashed a tsunami of secret cash that has engulfed U.S. elections and the court.

And recall Shelby County, where Roberts himself wrote the ruling gutting key protections of the Voting Rights Act (which he had attacked as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration) by claiming that U.S. society had transcended the anti-Black racism of the 1960s, despite congressional findings to the contrary. He thus enabled 21st century-style anti-Black racism through voting restrictions schemed by the GOP and its id, Donald Trump. A federal court, for example, found that a 2013 law that restricted voter IDs and more in North Carolina “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.” That measure would not have been allowed to proceed without pre-clearance by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act before Roberts gutted it. A similar Texas measure that had been held back due to pre-clearance because the state could not prove it would not harm Black and Latino voters became binding law immediately after Roberts’ ruling. Some Republican legislators adopting voter restrictions schemes even said the quiet part out loud.

But with Barrett on the Court, Justice Alito did not have to bend to Roberts’ artifice of gradualism to get a fifth vote to destroy the protections guaranteed by Roeand Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

So, Alito was unrestrained in advancing the kind of religious decree he had seemingly coveted to impose with his longtime ally, Justice Clarence Thomas.

Alito’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization rescinded the constitutional right to have an abortion without state interference in the early months of a pregnancy. It is larded with so much bombastic rhetoric that it’s almost as if the court that is entrusted with protecting the rights of “We the People” is actually a partisan editorial board housed inside the nation’s most ornate government building — Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journaleditorial page but with neoclassical columns outside, plus life tenure. Unlike the right-wing rantings of the Journal’s editorial board however, Alito’s tirade carries the force of law and is forcing people into crises that threaten their lives, their mental health and their future ability to start a family when and if they choose.

In my view, Roberts is too politically attuned to have overturned Roe all at once in an election year that could hurt the political party that enthroned him. Before Barrett’s appointment, Roberts was the swing vote in a five-GOP majority, so he could set the pace for the reversals of legal precedents that right-wing lawyers had selected to target.

Most Americans don’t realize that almost all of the cases heard by the Supreme Court are discretionary and not part of any mandatory jurisdiction under the Constitution. The right-wing faction in control of the court is able to handpick which legal precedents it wants to overturn and it is busy inventing new supposed legal “doctrines” like the “major questions” theory put forward by Charles Koch-funded groups, for example, to give a veneer of legitimacy to what is in reality a dramatic power grab. The newest democracy-destructive gimmick right-wing groups are advancing is the utterly discredited “independent state legislature” theory that suddenly bars courts from any oversight over what state legislatures can do in elections, including setting aside the popular vote.

Notably, in the 2021-22 term, the court heard just 66 cases of more than 8,000 petitions, choosing cases to limit commonsense protections against gun violence, to expand prayer in public schools, to restrict the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to mitigate climate change, and to overturn Roe, while also signaling that limiting constitutional rights to access to contraception and restricting LGBTQ+ rights may be next.

On the surface, Dobbs overturned decades of Supreme Court rulings in order to ratify a Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But the aim of the Dobbsruling was to attack access to abortion care well beyond one state’s borders. Mississippi has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the U.S., which has the world’s highest maternal mortality rate among economically developed countries, and it has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.

Barrett’s vote in Dobbs put abortion on the ballot in every major state and federal election this November.

The good news is that the voter registration of women since Dobbs is up — way up — as seen in the massive pushback shown in the Kansas election this summer.

In response, right-wing groups like the so-called Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) are right now targeting women voters in swing states to downplay the reversal of Roe. IWV and its related group, the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), state they have no position on abortion, but they have backed every justice who voted to overturnRoe, starting with Thomas and including Barrett.

IWV previously backed U.S. Senate candidates who made outlandish and grotesque claims that women could not get pregnant from rape or that pregnancies that resulted from rape were “something that God intended,” as arguments for abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest. Its ad campaign targeting this year’s midterm elections does not disclose who is bankrolling it but, notably, that woman’s “voice” group has thrown the voices of very rich men. Under old disclosure rules, IWV had to reveal that one of its biggest funders was the late Foster Friess, the multimillionaire Trump donor who once thought it was funny to remark: “You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

It should come as no surprise that IWV CEO and IWF Board Chair Heather Higgins was part of the elite throng invited to celebrate Barrett’s nomination at Trump’s Rose Garden event. Higgins is the heir to the Vicks VapoRub fortune — brought to you by the same corporation that was the sole U.S. distributor of thalidomide, the anti-morning sickness drug that maimed thousands of children. IWF opposed a Senate vote to confirm Obama nominee Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court vacancy that arose when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, because it was an election year. But when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died less than two months before the 2020 election, they were all-in for Barrett.

When you look closely at that Rose Garden event that practically anointed Barrett — and infected dozens with COVID-19 — what you see is a sea of right-wing groups celebrating what Barrett herself would later deny under oath. That is that Barrett was chosen not because she would faithfully follow legal precedents but because she was seen as a sure vote for overturning them, in Roe and more.

Which other very special interests were there to celebrate this new era of regression?

*Carrie Severino, a former Thomas clerk who is the public face of the Judicial Crisis Network, which is a core lever in the court-packing operation of the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo;

*Gary Marx, president of Madison Strategies and co-creator of the Judicial Crisis Network;

*Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, which also has ties to Leo;

*Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, which Leo helps steer;

*Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which focuses on getting anti-choice candidates into positions of political power (and she also is a member of the Council for National Policy where Leo touted how the Trump appointees to the court, before Barrett, were at the precipice of changing the interpretation of the Constitution in ways not seen in a century since the robber baron era);

*William Mumma of the Becket Fund, which has given Leo its highest award;

*Maureen Ferguson, senior fellow at the “Catholic Association,” a dark money group that Leo has been on the board of and that is part of his cadre of groups administered by the anti-choice and anti-marriage equality money man Neil Corkery;

*C. Boyden Gray, a long-time ally of Leo’s in packing the courts with anti-choice and anti-regulation appointees (and a Big Tobacco heir);

*Ed Whelan, president of the “Ethics and Public Policy Center” where Leo has served on the board (Whelan infamously attacked Christine Blasey Ford in aid of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination by audaciously claiming she was sexually assaulted by someone else.);

*Alex and Jill Vogel and their son. (The Vogel law firm is a core ally in Leo’s umbrella of court-packing groups; Jill Vogel, heir of the Liberty gas station chain, is an elected representative in Virginia.)

Twelve other vehemently anti-choice groups were represented at the ceremony by: Carol Tobias (president of the National Right to Life), Jeanne Mancini (president of March for Life), Penny Nance (leader of “Concerned Women for America”), Tony Perkins (president of the Family Research Council, Ralph Reed (chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and former head of the Christian Coalition), Michael Farris (president of Alliance Defending Freedom, which helped orchestrate the Dobbs case and other attacks on reproductive rights), Kelly Shackelford (president of the First Liberty Institute), Kay Coles James and John Malcolm (of the Heritage Foundation), Matt Schlapp (leader of the American Conservative Union), Tom Fitton (president of Judicial Watch), David Bossie (president of the group called “Citizens United”) and Jenny Beth Martin (head of the Tea Party Patriots).

In all, more than 30 special interest groups with an agenda to have the court to reverse Roeand other major legal precedents were there. There were so many operatives against Roe that it’s almost as though they knew something Barrett would deny under oath.

In addition to numerous Trump appointees, a group of anti-choice senators was there, including Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia). Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Pete Hegseth were also in attendance. There were also some intriguing lesser-known attendees, such as Anthony De Nicola, a partner at a hedge fund, and Maureen Blum, the president of “Strategic Coalitions and Initiatives,” who describes her work as “strategic political warfare.”

Next to Heather Higgins at the Rose Garden festivities sat Cleta Mitchell, one of the lawyers now infamous for aiding Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Mitchell was on the call with Trump when he seemingly tried to extort the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to just find more votes for him. Though she lost her job at a big law firm, the ongoing investigation into that call has not deterred Mitchell from continuing to attack the election and trying to change state laws to make it harder for Americans to vote. She’s also been caught on tape telling Republican legislators to destroy their notes about her advice on how to redraw voting district maps as part of extreme partisan redistricting schemes to control state power.

There were also 10 big church reps who backed Trump and his anti-abortion stance, including Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, and Jerry Prevo, acting president of the right-wing Liberty University.

As could be expected, the event also included Barrett’s family and former colleagues from Notre Dame Law School, including law professor O. Carter Snead. Snead was one of several attendees to submit amicus briefs that called for Roe to be overturned to the court after Barrett’s confirmation . Barrett did not recuse herself for her lack of impartiality and her documented history of attacking Roe. Senators Josh Hawley and Mike Lee, who were at the Rose Garden event, also submitted an amicus brief with Sen. Ted Cruz calling for Roe to be overturned. Erin Hawley — who is married to the and insurrectionist senator who shares her surname — helped Alliance Defending Freedom coordinate the legal assault on *Roe*through the Mississippi case and other vehicles.

What few knew back then, despite the spirited opposition to Barrett’s confirmation, was how the Federalist Society’s Co-Chairman Leonard Leo maneuvered Barrett onto the Supreme Court. As I previously noted in testimony to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

According to a new book co-authored by Severino — who worked closely with Leo on the pressure campaigns to block Garland and install Gorsuch — Leo met with then-White House Counsel Don McGahn in April 2017 about expanding Trump’s Supreme Court list to include Barrett. At that time, Barrett had been a law professor for 15 years and had no judicial experience, but Leo and the White House Counsel’s Office were going to remedy that by getting her some time sitting on a federal circuit court. In May of that year, Trump nominated Barrett to a vacancy on the Seventh Circuit created by [Sen. Mitch] McConnell’s refusal to allow President Obama’s nominee, Myra S. Powell (the first black woman appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court), a hearing for nearly a year….

Leo met for dinner twice, in June and September 2017, with Trump to discuss nominations including Barrett a candidate on Trump’s list for the next vacancy on the Supreme Court, which was expected to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett was confirmed to the Seventh Circuit on Halloween of 2017. [Then] on November 17, McGahn announced that Trump had added Barrett to his short list. That announcement came during the Federalist Society’s National Convention, where Barrett spoke…

Before Barrett could be nominated to the Supreme Court though, another vacancy arose with Anthony Kennedy’s announcement that he would be stepping down in 2018. Leo mobilized groups to which he steered funding to support Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the seat despite evidence that Kavanaugh had previously lied under oath to Congress and in spite of the compelling testimony of Ford about his attempt to assault her, which he denied. IWV was one of the groups that flanked Kavanaugh; along with its 501(c)(3) arm, IWF, it had received substantial funds from Leo-tied groups and dark money entities as Trump began packing the court with Leo’s assistance.

After millions in dark money spending helped propel Kavanaugh onto the court, the Washington Post began an in-depth investigation of Leo’s court-packing operation, culminating in a story by Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Shawn Bobergin May 2019. That investigation tallied the money raised by Leo’s umbrella groups at more than $250 million, along with revealing that Leo’s personal assets seemingly increased dramatically in 2018. (True North Research updated that figure to nearly $600 million, earlier this year.)

As a “volunteer” for Trump, Leo was not required to file any financial disclosure forms about his sources of income while he chose the list of Supreme Court candidates from which Trump chose. The Post’s story sparked a firestorm of controversy around Leo, who claimed to the paper’s documentary crew that he was uninterested in money. By the year’s end, Leo had left his day job at the Federalist Society to form a for-profit group called CRC Advisors with his longtime ally Greg Mueller. He continues to be a co-chair on the Federalist Society’s board and aid in its finances.

So when Ginsburg died, Leo was operating under the rubric of CRC, which was deploying the Judicial Crisis Network. That dark money group had been given a new operational name: the Concord Fund, presumably named after the first battle in the Revolutionary War.

But what was not publicly known then was that behind the scenes, Leo had secretly been staked by a right-wing Chicago billionaire, Barre Seid. As Barrett’s nomination was pending Seid was in the process of selling his company and giving the assets to Leo in what was dubbed the “Marble Freedom Trust.” As the The New York Times and ProPublica with The Lever wrote a few weeks ago, Seid was able to use tax lawyers and loopholes to transfer $1.6 billion into Leo’s hands as the sole operative trustee of Marble, tax-free.

Despite this mammoth infusion of cash to fund Leo’s extreme agenda for the Supreme Court, other courts and political offices, Marble has no real address, no website and not even its own phone number. The phone number listed on its first tax filing goes to Corkery, Leo’s longtime collaborator on dark money operations.

What kind of shadowy institution has that much wealth and that little public information? It’s basically just a bank account — a huge one. Some of the other core Leo groups, like Rule of Law Trust and the BH Group/BH Fund, have the same indicia: no real operating address even before the pandemic, no website and no independent phone number (or one that just goes to Corkery), but millions and millions of dollars.

That’s not all.

The Marble Freedom Trust tax filing for 2020 reveals that there are two other men close to Leo involved. One is Tyler Green, whose home in Utah is listed as Marble’s address. He’s the “administrative” trustee, who ostensibly holds the paperwork for the dark money behemoth. Green previously clerked for Thomas and is another Federalist Society brethren appointed previously to a high post in Utah legal circles. The other is Jonathan Bunch, a “successor” trustee in case anything were to happen to Leo. Bunch has a business with Leo and has been helping him with court-packing since before Leo helped launch the Judicial Crisis Network at a dinner with Scalia held just after the 2004 election.

A new book by David Enrich reveals how Bunch reached out to the Trump campaign to help pack the Supreme Court with Leo after Scalia’s death in 2016. According to Enrich, Bunch called Trump adviser McGahn who deadpanned that he had already tapped John Sununu for judicial selection because he had played such an instrumental role in choosing David Souter for the Supreme Court during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Bunch was apparently taken aback because right-wing operatives had vowed “No More Souters,” which was shorthand for no more independent justices whom the right-wing could not count on to do its bidding in destroying Roeand other legal precedents they dislike.

But it was a joke. McGahn was joking and Bunch was reportedly relieved that Trump would not make the same “mistake” in appointing justices like Souter to the nation’s highest court.

And the joke is on us, except it’s not funny at all.

Instead, the U.S. now faces a Supreme Court packed with right-wing extremists like Barrett. Not only did she vote for overturning Roe, she also refused to recuse herself from a climate liability case involving Shell even though she was raised on Shell money through her father’s work expanding drilling for oil.

And she has refused to reveal her husband’s clients and whether they have any business before the Court. In this Barrett is taking a page from Clarence Thomas, who has not revealed Ginni Thomas’s revenue or clients even though Jane Mayer uncovered that Ginni has been paid by those filing briefs to the court where her husband sits in judgment. (He has also refused to recuse himself from cases implicating his wife, who was demonstrably involved in efforts to stop the counting of the 2020 presidential vote.) Barrett refused to step back from rulings like Dobbs despite her personal agenda to overturn Roe, as evidenced by her signature on a 2006 anti-abortion ad.

With Barrett and the other Trump judicial appointees, the U.S. now has five Supreme Court justices who appear to have no concerns with imposing their personal views as law, such as ruling that the government can regulate the most intimate personal health choices about if and when to start a family but that the EPA cannot regulate corporations to require more alternative energy to mitigate climate change.

The anniversary of Barrett’s confirmation is a travesty. And her tenure will continue to do damage to our rights and our democracy until we have a Congress willing to rein in the radical reactionary justices arrogantly imposing their religious beliefs and partisan political agenda as binding law on the rest of us.

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AN 11 25

SAUER FLAILS?

Wednesday, November 5 was an important day for the U.S. Supreme Court, whose justices listened to oral arguments in Learning Resources v. Trump.The nine justices are examining President Donald Trump's ability to unilaterally impose, by executive order, steep new tariffs invoking a Jimmy Carter-era law: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA).

The legal analyst Lisa Rubin weighed in on the hearing — and she thought that conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett was especially tough when questioning Trump's allies.

Conservative host Joe Scarborough noted that when Solicitor General John Sauer gave evasive answers to Barrett's questions, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor jumped in and chastised him for it.

Scarborough told Rubin and "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski, "I got to say, Lisa, that the most remarkable part of that hearing was when Amy Coney Barrett had the solicitor general on the line, and he kept trying to pull away — and she kept reeling him in, and he kept trying to pull away. He kept pulling away. She just — she was tenacious. And finally, Justice Sotomayor, I think, in an act of mercy, said: Just answer her question. You're not answering her question. We all know you can't answer her question. Just admit it, basically, is what Justice Sotomayor was saying."

Rubin agreed with Scarborough's analysis, emphasizing that Barrett was tenacious in her questioning of Sauer.

"Pity the person who comes on the other side of Amy Coney Barrett, who is precise, pragmatic and the mother of seven children," Rubin told Scarborough and Brzezinski. "So, if anybody is well prepared for that kind of questioning, I would venture a guess, it's Amy Coney Barrett. And you're right to say that she was completely fixated on the plain text of the statute. The argument that the (Trump) administration is relying upon is that the words 'regulate importation' somehow include the power to impose tariffs."

Rubin continued, "But of course, not only is the word tariff not present ... there is nothing in the string of verbs there, as Justice (Elena) Kagan mentioned, that gets to where John Sauer, the solicitor general, wants to see the argument go. There's nothing in all of the things that the president can do under this Emergency Powers Act that has anything to do with raising revenue, much less imposing taxes or duties. And that's where you get to the question of the larger constitutional issues about whose responsibilities really are these?"

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AN 11 25

Wednesday's Supreme Court "showdown" over President Donald Trump's tarriffs is putting America's highest court in a major bind, Politico reports.

Trump is asking the justices to overturn lower-court decisions that declared many of his tariffs "an illegal overreach" as they found that a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not authorize the president to impose such broad tariffs.

“Nowhere does it say tariffs, taxes, duties,” noted Elizabeth Goitein, who studies emergency powers at New York University’s Brennan Center.

This showdown, Politico says, is an "epic clash between two of the most deeply ingrained tenets of the conservative legal movement."

One of those tenets, Politico explains, "is that presidents need and are entitled to extreme deference on matters of national security and foreign policy," suggesting that "the six conservative justices may be willing to uphold Trump’s unprecedented move to bypass Congress and unilaterally impose sweeping global tariffs."

IFrame Content

Chief Justice Roberts, however, has made a name for himself opposing "government meddling in the free market," they explain, which "could prompt the court’s conservatives to view Trump’s tariffs more skeptically than they view many of his other, non-economic policies."

Jonathan Adler, a professor at William and Mary Law School, says that the justices are going to be conflicted.

“I think that some of the justices that matter are going to feel a bit torn,” he said. “What’s interesting here is that this case requires some of the conservative justices to confront a conflict between different strands of their own jurisprudence.”

The court, Politico explains, must differentiate between whether the tariffs are just part of the president's economic policy or a "core part" of his management of national security and international relations.

“How this case comes out will depend in large part on what the frame or the lens on it is,” said Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California at Davis. “Is this a case about unbridled, unauthorized — at least not explicitly authorized — broad executive authority, or is this a case about presidential ability to discharge foreign affairs and national security responsibilities?”

These questions, Politico says, is "most acute" for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is "the high court’s most outspoken voice for the president’s need for flexibility and dexterity in response to international challenges. But he is also highly skeptical of government power in the economic realm."

"If an agency wants to exercise expansive regulatory authority over some major social or economic activity … an ambiguous grant of statutory authority is not enough,” Kavanaugh wrote in a nod to his "fealty" to the conservative theory known as the “major questions doctrine."

That doctrine says that "courts should block executive branch actions of widespread impact when their legal basis is ambiguous," Politico explains.

“Congress must clearly authorize an agency to take such a major regulatory action," Kavanaugh added.

Experts see Kavanaugh "likely to lean towards blessing the tariffs," Politico says, while "Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch are thought by court watchers to be even more likely to uphold the tariffs."

Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett are the ones to watch, they say.

“The center of the court is going to be especially interesting to watch,” Roman Martinez, a former law clerk to Kavanaugh and Roberts, said about them during a discussion at Georgetown Law.

“I think this case will probably split the conservatives,” said Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law school professor who specializes in administrative law and regulatory processes.

Whatever they rule, Politico writes, the conservative justices will likely emerge unscathed.

"While a ruling against the tariffs would surely infuriate Trump, it wouldn’t do much if anything to hurt the conservative justices’ standing in their legal, political and social circles," they note.

Goitein disagrees, saying, "This will be a true test of the Supreme Court in many, many ways."

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rww

07/16/2025

Peter Montgomery

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans while voters were in the process of removing Trump from office in 2020. Barrett cemented the right-wing majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, gave Trump virtually complete immunity for lawbreaking he commits as president, and has generally backed Trump’s assault on the rule of law and the federal government. But all that hasn’t been enough for MAGA hardliners.

Earlier this year, far-right commentators were furious that Barrett did not back Trump 100 percent of the time. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in January, right-wing judicial activist Mike Davis viciously attacked Barrett, repeatedly saying she had her “head up her ass” and calling on her to resign.

After Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts voted in March not to immediately overturn a judge’s ruling overturning Trump’s freeze on nearly $2 billion in foreign aid work that had been approved by Congress and already performed, MAGA activist Mike Cernovich denounced her as “evil” and a “DEI hire,” the latter charge echoed by MAGA influencers Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec. Davis went back on Bannon’s show to repeat his vulgar “head up her ass” comment.

In April, when Barrett partially joined more liberal justices’ dissent over Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants to a gulag in El Salvador, the right-wing hate poured in, with Trump’s online pal “catturd” calling her a “commie” and “an ungrateful POS.”

In recent high-profile cases, Barrett has sided with the rest of the MAGA justices to allow mass firings of federal employees and limit federal judges’ ability to halt lawbreaking policies, including Trump’s assertion that he can by executive order overturn the 150-year-old doctrine of birthright citizenship.

Those votes encouraged right-wing radio host John Frederick to ask MAGA lawyer John Eastman this week whether Barrett is “finally coming around.”

“Well, I think there are a lot of plays going on here,” Eastman responded. “One,” he said with a chuckle, “I think she and her family were being threatened. That was serious. I think as a new justice she’s wanting to make sure that everybody knows she’s her own person, so that was serious.”

Eastman said Barrett has “come around” because “the left has gone so far off the rails” with injunctions against Trump administration actions. He said “the greater the absurdity the more she realized that she needed to join” the MAGA majority.

“These judges who disagree with the agenda that the American people voted for don’t have any authority to block the agenda that the American people voted for unless it’s clearly unconstitutional, and it is not.”

Of course, right-wing legal groups had no issue with nationwide injunctions against Biden administration policies, and in fact actively pursued them. Eastman and the Court’s MAGA justices seem to have discovered a new constitutional doctrine now that judges are ruling against Trump’s policies.

Eastman complained that Democrats in the Senate would block any effort to strip federal courts of their jurisdiction over whole classes of cases and that therefore “it’s up to the Supreme Court to get control of the lower courts under its authority.”

Eastman went further in his criticism of the Court’s liberal justices. When Fredericks asked if Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has written powerful dissents, is “becoming a clown,” Eastman suggested that she has been a clown since her confirmation hearing. Even worse, he accused the dissenting justices who defended the constitutional doctrine of birthright citizenship of using “an old Nazi propaganda tactic” by repeatedly noting that it is long-established law.

Eastman said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the Supreme Court will adopt his opposition to birthright citizenship—and overturn more than 150 years of precedent—when it takes up the substance of the issue during its next term.

Eastman, long associated with the hard-right Claremont Institute, was disbarred in California for what judges have deemed his unethical actions in helping Trump try to subvertthe 2020 election. Eastman helped challenge results in swing states and promoted a strategy to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Eastman helped Trump rile up the crowd at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

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note disobedience = sin gratitude/ disrespect thx Zelenski WH ambush; note hype/ anger, that is HIS FEELINGS ARE JUSTIFIED RIGHTEOUS AND MANLY

mma

Benny Johnson calls Amy Coney Barrett a “repulsive lizard” and a “sick witch”

Johnson: “She didn't deserve to be on the Supreme Court. I disown her.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 04/08/25

Video

Citation

From the April 8, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

:{:{BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Amy Coney Barrett is a real problem. Amy Commie Barrett is what some, users on the Internet are calling her. I am sickened about her. I want to -- we didn't have time today, but I wanna have a full conversation with Mike Davis about this this week. What the hell is going on with her? Donald Trump put his — stuck his neck out, used all of his political capital to get her into the Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat at the very end of his presidency. }:

Donald Trump said so many nice things about her, advocated for her, fought for her, did all these lavish and wonderful events where he, like, talked about how great she is. Then she has betrayed him time and time and time again on the court. You know, there are some warning signs. There are definitely some warning signs about Amy Commie Barrett, but, it is a despicable thing that this has happened again. You know, there's this — Sandra Day O'Connor was this Ronald Reagan appointee to the court, and she was supposed to be this, like, rock ribbed conservative, and they all go left. They all swing left.}:

What happened yesterday was that five justices who are men voted in favor of the law, which is that the president has the right to deport criminal aliens, and four women voted their feelings. They don't like it. Amy Coney Barrett, she doesn't like it. It hurts their feelings. So Amy Coney Barrett, who I think has like seven kids, two them are adopted from Haiti if I'm remembering this correctly. She has seven kids. Amy Coney Barrett is voting in favor of the terrorists who murder American children and put her children's lives at risk and my children's lives at risk. She is a repulsive lizard. You can see it in this clip. You can see it. Look at the way that she looked at Trump. Sickening. Sickening. So ungrateful, so despicable, spitting in the face of the Constitution, our movement, of the people who fought to get her on the supreme court.

She didn't deserve to be on the Supreme Court. I disown her. I disown it. I disavow. I worked very hard to get her elected. We did a lot of, you know, pushing for her on the seat. We thought this would swing the court to just rational constitutionalism for the rest of my life. And now we get sabotaged by Amy Coney Barrett. Amy Coney Barrett who voted with this, the DEI faculty, in order to bring terrorists back to America. That was what they were voting on. They were voting on an order by the judge to bring the turn the planes around and bring terrorists back to America. Every deportation was supposed to go through Judge Boasberg. Judge Boasberg was gonna sit there as president— they might as well just put a little presidential seal at the end of his gavel, because he was just essentially gifting himself the presidential powers. Amy Commie Barrett.

Now, of course, the three liberal justices voted you know, oh, feelings for the gang members. Amy Commie Barrett voted to bring in terrorists that threaten her children, her seven children, and their lives to bring the terrorists back to America so that we could have a Laken Riley 2.0. What a sick witch. Everybody pray for Amy Commie Barrett, man. Something's going wrong with her. Something's gone horribly, horribly wrong. I'm just — it's sickening. It's disgusting to watch. There's nothing worse in this life than betrayal. There's nothing worse in this life than — on the ingratitude for the people who brought you and made you. And this is a spitting in the face to the movement that picked her and said that she was gonna be good. So I'm pretty angry about all of this.

### Benny Johnson on Trump's tariffs crashing markets: “Nobody ever had their net worth carved onto their tombstone. Doesn't even matter when you're on your deathbed. Who cares?”

:{04/04/25

### Benny Johnson on crashing markets: “Losing money costs you absolutely nothing”

04/04/25 5:19 PM EDT

### MAGA and manosphere podcasts helped Andrew Tate reach millions while he was stateside

03/31/25

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an 7 24

// dissent

On Monday morning, July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its anxiously awaited decision on former President Donald Trump's claim that he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith's federal election interference case.

The 6-3 decision came down along party lines, with the dissent from Democrat-appointed justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor was especially scathing in her dissent, arguing that the ruling gives presidents way too much authority.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was part of the GOP majority in the ruling. But journalist Jonathan Allen noted that there is some nuance in her reasoning.

On X, formerly Twitter, Allen posted, "This SCOTUS opinion is near-total victory for Trump legally and a total win in terms of delaying/possibly vitiating prosecution. A president enjoys *presumptive immunity* for any acts inside and extending to the outer perimeter of his official duties Also big win for prez power."

But in a separate tweet, Allen also pointed out that "Barrett's partial concurrence is worth reading."

Allen noted, "She takes issue specifically with the idea that protected conduct can't be introduced as evidence at trial of a president. Also says it is hard to see pressuring state legislators - namely AZ House speaker — as an official act."

In an article published by Newsweek on July 1, reporter Katherine Fung said of Barrett, "While she agreed with the Court's opinion at large, she disagreed with one part of the ruling that held the Constitution prevents protected conduct from being introduced as evidence in a criminal prosecution against a former president, siding with the bench's three liberals instead."

Barrett wrote, "The Constitution does not require blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which Presidents can be held liable. To make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo, the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quo, even if the quo, standing alone, could not be a basis for the President's criminal liability."

Some MAGA Republicans are highly critical of Barrett's concurrence.

Trump supporter Sharon Cooper tweeted, " What is going on with Amy Coney Barrett? Who is she? She is a Supreme Court Justice, with a misguided view of our justice system."

Hans Mahncke posted, "Of course, Amy Coney Barrett had to disagree with something (she thinks that it should be allowable for a jury to be presented with official presidential acts as evidence of crimes having been committed)."

@GingerAmero wrote, "ACB is horrible and whoever recommended her should never be taken seriously ever, again." And @HoneywellNTodd attacked Barrett as "Justice Karen."

Meanwhile, legal expert Steve Vladeck

said of Barrett, " There's an important sub-part of the Trump immunity ruling in which #SCOTUS holds that "protected conduct" (that can't be prosecuted) also can't be used as *evidence* to establish other charges.

---

1 24 no lnx

Amy Coney Barrett’s father is now legal counsel for controversial far-right fundamentalist group

Alex Henderson

January 29, 2024

When Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, her participation in the far-right Christian group People of Praise received a great deal of scrutiny.

People of Praise, which has been dogged by sexual abuse allegations, favor a severe, ultra-strict form of Catholicism that incorporates elements of evangelical fundamentalist Protestantism. Most members are Catholic, although Protestants are also allowed to join.

According to The Guardian's Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Justice Barrett's father, Louisiana-based attorney Michael Coney, is now serving as legal counsel for People of Praise.

"Coney is also taking the helm of a 'consultation team' that, internal correspondence seen by the Guardian shows, has been dealing with 'issues of concern' to the group's 1100 members, including 'misuse of authority' inside the PoP, 'lack of accountable leadership,' and 'mistrust of the board,'" Kirchgaessner explains in an article published on January 29. "Coney's appointment is part of a broader shake-up inside the PoP, whose leadership has been consumed by a contentious debate over the legitimacy of the 2021 election of its current leader, Charlie Fraga. Known as the 'overall coordinator,' Fraga has said the bitter fight has emerged as an 'urgent threat to the unity of the community.'"

Kirchgaessner continues, "For survivors of alleged childhood sexual and physical abuse inside the PoP, Coney's elevation is deeply troubling. PoP Survivors, as the group is known, has, for years, called for the PoP to be investigated and held accountable for its handling of historic claims of abuse."

People of Praise Survivors, a group consisting of ex-members, is vehemently critical of the decision to hire Michael Coney as legal counsel. Coney is a long-time member who worked for Shell in the past.

A spokesperson for People of Praise Survivors told The Guardian, "Elevating Amy Coney Barrett's father to a position where he can influence what goes public is a huge conflict of interest. It gives him the power to block information that might be embarrassing to her. Yet public scrutiny is exactly what’s needed in order to protect children in the group."

READ MORE: FBI interviews ex-members of extreme Christian group associated with Amy Coney Barrett

Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

From Your Site Articles

Legal expert reveals how Trump’s SCOTUS justices benefit by disqualifying him from ballot ›

Here's why Republicans are so obsessed with Amy Coney Barrett's kids ›

Meet People of Praise: Here's why this far-right cult shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Supreme Court ›

Supreme Court has three lawyers who worked on Bush v. Gore

Justices Clarence Thomas voted to suspend the vote count in Florida that ended up with George Bush Jr. as president. Three other justices worked on the Bush team including John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett. All three were later appointed to the Supreme Court! Roberts was appointed by Bush

---

just after pale reform

'Shady and corrupt': Barrett real estate deal added to list of Supreme Court ethics scandals - Alternet.org 11 23

---

an 6 23

Amy Coney Barrett was one of the conservative justices who struck down Biden's loan forgiveness plan, but her explanation as to why included talk of babysitters and amusement parks left some people scratching their heads in confusion.

Barrett used the opinion, which ruled that the Biden administration didn't have the authority to authorize the forgiveness, to push for the "major questions doctrine," according to CNN.

"The so-called major questions doctrine says that executive branch agencies only have authority to take aggressive unilateral action of significant political or economic importance if Congress explicitly gives it such power," the news network reported. "The Supreme Court’s use of the major questions doctrine to throw out Biden’s loan forgiveness program struck a nerve that went beyond educational policy – with the conservative justices and liberal justices sparring over how the controversial legal theory that has been used, with increasing frequency, to strike down unilateral acts of executive branch authority."

In order to explain how this particular legal theory comes into play with student loans, Barrett took us all back to elementary school with a unique analogy about a babysitter spending the parents' money on kids she's watching.

According to CNN's report:

"A second hypothetical centered on a babysitter who took the kids to an amusement park for the weekend, having been given a parent’s credit card and told: 'Make sure the kids have fun,'" CNN reported. "Emboldened, the concurring babysitter takes the kids on a road trip to an amusement park, where they spend two days on rollercoasters and one night in a hotel."

This, Barrett suggests, is the equivalent of the government cancelling those student loans. Because the law didn't give explicit authority to do so, she reasons, it would be unreasonable to assume it has that power.

---

https://www.alternet.org/barrett-real-estate-deal-ethics/

---

~ cruz pac leg

an 11 22

...Justice Amy Coney Barrett again decided, late Friday afternoon, to not weigh in on the Biden plan. Barrett "denied an emergency application brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation to block federal student loan forgiveness," CNBC reports.

Unfortunately for those 16 million Americans, a GOP lawsuit, at least temporarily, is causing the forgiveness to be put on hold.

Insider on Thursday reported, "the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily paused the relief, in response to a lawsuit filed by six Republican-led states who argued the policy would hurt their states' tax revenues, along with those of loan company MOHELA."...

---

~ cruz?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/amy-coney-barrett-student-loan/

---

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/01/roe-amazon-google-facebook-independent-womens-forum/

WHEN THE Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the country’s top internet companies quickly responded with commitments to help employees in states that moved to ban abortion. In an implicit signal of support for abortion rights, the companies said they would help those employees seek abortions in states where the procedure remains legal.

In the years leading up to the seismic reproductive rights decision, however, the tech giants sponsored a controversial group that’s worked tirelessly to put the Supreme Court under conservative control, setting the stage for Roe’s reversal.

The Independent Women’s Forum traces its origins back to the 1991 fight to confirm the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. Since then, the group has expanded into promoting a litany of perennial right-wing causes like climate denial, immigration alarmism, and deregulation, but a conservative-dominated Supreme Court remained a focus.

public relations plays a key role in its operation. With savvy self-branding as a pro-woman organization, the group fought for the appointment of conservative justices to the Supreme Court. The IWF couched support for Brett Kavanaugh as good feminism and any opposition to Amy Coney Barrett as sexism — despite well-founded concerns that their ascensions to the court would spell the end of Roe. The IWF wields a skillful mix of media placement, op-eds, television punditry, and other contributions to the conservative content ecosystem.

The group also takes advantage of quieter influence peddling as well. In 2020,IWF chief and Vicks VapoRub heiress Heather Higgins boasted to a closed audience of Virginia conservatives about how instrumental the group was in rallying congressional support for Kavanaugh’s nomination. Higgins told the group that the IWF circulated a confidential strategy memo on the Hill. “Most important,” Higgins said, “Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him,” referring to the Republican senator from Maine.

The Dark Money-Funded Women’s Group Rallying Behind Amy Coney Barrett

Independent Women’s Forum and its sister organization, Independent Women’s Voice, draw on donations from right-wing financial mainstays like the Koch brothers, but in recent years the groups have enjoyed financial support from Facebook’s parent company, Meta; Google; and Amazon. In 2017, Google sponsored an IWF gala at the “gold” donor level, according to brochures provided to The Intercept by True North Research, a progressive watchdog group. Other brochures show that Meta (which at the time still using the name Facebook) sponsored IWF galas in 2018, alongside Google, and 2019. Honorees at IWF events have included notable anti-abortion figures like Rep. Lynne Cheney, R-Wy.; top Trump administration official Kellyanne Conway; and Vice President Mike Pence.

Corporate disclosures from Amazon show that the company donated undisclosed sums to the IWF in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Amazon, Google, Meta, and the IWF did not respond to a request for comment.

True North founder Lisa Graves characterized the IWF’s efforts as an attempt to launder conservative ideology. “They act as a distaff,” she said in an interview, “in essence providing a woman’s face for the right wing’s critique or attack on progressives and its advance of this extreme and regressive, repressive agenda.”

DESPITE THE PUBLIC perception of Silicon Valley’s alignment with progressive values and liberal causes, tech companies, particularly those fearing state regulation, have long funneled money to right-wing groups like the IWF. At the same time, the IWF routinely pushes policy positions that are highly favorable to its corporate donors.

The IWF has consistently espoused tech industry-friendly positions on labor, antitrust, and other issues, without disclosing its donors’ interests. Take, for example, an April IWF blog post that warned that antitrust enforcement against Big Tech would prove disastrous. “Tech innovation has been nothing short of miraculous over the past few decades,” wrote Patrice Onwuka,director of IWF’s Center for Economic Opportunity and its go-to defender of powerful tech firms.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe End of Roe

Few issues in tech have galvanized the IWF and Onwuka like the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would block tech companies from leveraging their enormous reach to favor their own services over competitors. In a December 2021 piece titled “Amazon Prime may not be around to save the day next Christmas,” Onwuka claimed, “Senator Amy Klobuchar and others are on a path to end services like Prime’s fast and free shipping and other services that we depend upon.” Onwuka then linked to a blog post by the Amazon-funded Chamber of Progress that claimed, dubiously, that the law would “ban Amazon Prime.”

In June, Onwuka wrote a jeremiad against congressional antitrust efforts:“The conveniences that make life and work easier and faster and save consumers money may disappear.” Later that day, Onwuka appeared on Fox Business, again protesting antitrust enforcement against the tech industry. “I’m more worried about the impact on small business owners and on women and families that rely on some of the benefits that some of these big four tech companies provide,” she said.

While shielding Big Tech from antitrust scrutiny has proven a priority for the IWF, the group also stands up directly for its benefactors. In 2019, Onwuka wrote an entire post dedicated sticking up for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after Politico reported that he had attended dinners with notable conservative commentators and lawmakers. “Zuckerberg is a private citizen who can eat dinner with whomever he wants,” Onwuka wrote. “His dinner has a clear business purpose and that’s part of doing business.”

“Institutionally they have no position on abortion, that’s their stated position. But organizationally, they have backed the most aggressive anti-choice slate of judges we’ve ever seen.”

The cordial treatment of industry giants is of course a linchpin of conservatism, and the IWF would almost certainly be warning that antitrust will bring us back to the Bronze Age even without Google sponsoring its gala dinners. But fueling the right-wing punditry mill is a large, ever-expanding facet of Big Tech’s political strategy.

While there’s no evidence that Zuckerberg or Google CEO Sundar Pichai have any personal opposition to abortion access, their companies no doubt benefit from their support of a broad, thriving conservative discourse ecosystem in which any government regulation is anathema. For tech company leadership, the reality that this ecosystem pushes not just Facebook-friendly laissez-faire economics, but also climate denial and abortion bans is considered a perhaps unfortunate but worthwhile byproduct.

Silicon Valley’s patronage of right-wing think tanks and campaigns is an arrangement in which there is ample plausible deniability to go around. When The Guardian reported in 2019 that Google was donating to some of the nation’s most notorious climate-denial organizations, a company spokesperson retorted, “We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organizations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy.”

The multitude of topics on which the IWF engages, and its careful avoidance of publicly opposing abortion access have helped it avoid a reputation as an anti-abortion group. “Institutionally they have no position on abortion, that’s their stated position,” explained Graves, of True North. “But organizationally, they have backed the most aggressive anti-choice slate of judges we’ve ever seen.”

---

ref

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/24/amy-coney-barrett-women-group-dark-money/

oct 202 greta m

MARCH 4, the Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that trains conservative political leaders, hosted its monthly “Wednesday Wake-Up Club Breakfast” at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The headliner of this event was Heather Higgins, an heiress to the Vicks VapoRub fortune, as well as the chair of the Independent Women’s Forum and the CEO of its political advocacy arm, the Independent Women’s Voice, right-wing nonprofits that self-describe as nonpartisan. For most of the event, Higgins stood before a clear podium and fielded questions on how to build conservative political influence — at one point revealing that IWF came up with a memo, used by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, on how to support Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court confirmation without alienating the #MeToo movement.

“I will tell you that I’m extraordinarily proud of IWF,”. “We wrote a memo. It was used by a lot of members of the Senate and the House, Fox News, and elsewhere. Most important, Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him. And if you look atthe speech she gave on the Senate floor, it’s entirely the playing out and architecture of how we said to structure the argument — what to say and how to say it, which is just so gratifying. We’re watching TV and we’re like, ‘That’s ours! That’s ours!’” After Collins’s hourlong speech, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., announced that he would vote for Kavanaugh, helping achieve the threshold of votes necessary to confirm Kavanaugh.

It’s not the first time the IWF and IWV have sought to exert conservative influence over the Supreme Court, often by leveraging their positions as women’s nonprofits. IWF rose out of “Women for Judge Thomas,” which was formed in 1991 to support Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas amid Anita Hill’s accusation of sexual harassment. In 2016, IWF and IWV werevocal opponents of President Obama’s Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland and in 2017 pushed for Neil Gorsuch’s quick, quiet confirmation, including by sharingmisleading quizzes on the Supreme Court.

Now, IWF and IWV have turned their attention to pushing for the rapid confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, including staging an “I’m With Her” rally outside of the Supreme Court on October 17, at the same time as a Women’s March. They have been quick to place op-eds in support of Barrett for the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, and the National Review. On Fox News,where IWF and IWV are regular commentators, Kelsey Bolar, a senior policy analyst at IWF,criticized the Women’s March for “advocating against women, protesting a highly qualified female nominee to the Supreme Court” — part of a broader strategy of casting criticism of Barrett as anti-woman. IWF and IWV did not return a request for comment.

iWF and IWV are carefully branded as independent nonprofits supporting women, regardless of their policy positions, which include opposing Title IX, employer and tax-funded paid leave, and the Violence Against Women’s Act. “Being branded as neutral, but actually having people who know know that you’re actually conservative puts us in a unique position,” Higginstold donors in 2015, a quote unearthed by the Center for Media and Democracy. Beyond this neutral front, the groups are financially tied to an anonymously funded nonprofit network advancing conservative control of the courts, which could set the stage for dismantling the Affordable Care Act, the constitutional right to an abortion, marriage equality, and the regulation of pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and block future progressive (or moderate) legislation.

The central architect behind this ultraconservative vision is Leonard Leo, former vice president of theKoch-funded Federalist Society and President Donald Trump’s adviser responsible for coming witha list of potential Supreme Court nominees. In 2019, aninvestigation by the Washington Post described Leo as “the maestro of anetwork of interlocking nonprofits working on media campaigns and other initiatives to sway lawmakers by generating public support for conservative judges,” which has received $250 million from anonymous donors. IRS rules do not require 501(c)(4) nonprofits to disclose corporate funders, allowing corporations to exert an unlimited amount of financial influence behind a veil of nonprofits, which golargely unregulated.

iWF and IWV are not controlled by Leo, but they receive funding from organizations in his network. The Freedom and Opportunity Fund, which Leo founded in 2016, gave a total of $4 million in 2016 and 2017 to the Independent Women’s Voice, based ontax filings. In 2018, the Judicial Education Project, the research arm of the Leo-tied Judicial Crisis Network, gave $300,000 to Independent Women’s Forum. (We don’t yet know whether IWF or IWV received another influx of money from the Leo-tied network of dark-money nonprofits, coinciding with the current Supreme Court vacancy; the 990 tax forms for this year won’t be publicly available until November 2021.) Donors Trust, which Mother Jonescalled “the dark money ATM machine of the conservative movement,” also gave $792,000 in 2017 and $625,000 in 2018 to IWF, according to tax filingscompiled by DeSmog.

Lisa Graves, a researcher on the influence of dark money in U.S. politics and the founder of True North Research, notes that the influx of money from Leo-tied nonprofits to IWF and IWV coincides with the period when they were working to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacancy open, while ultimately pushing forward with confirming Gorsuch in 2017 and Kavanaugh in 2018 to the Supreme Court. “We do know that IWF is playing a significant role within this right-wing infrastructure and that includes defending Trump’s nominees, no matter their record,” said Graves.

Another key strategy to influence the courts by IWF and the broader network of Leo-tied nonprofits has been filingamicus briefs, which can make it appear like there is a wider-ranging support or opposition for an issue than in reality. “A small number of donors are trying to orchestrate this legal revolution, but it looks broader than it is because they are throwing their voices through aflotilla of groups, and IWF is one of them,” said Graves.

To push Kavanaugh’s and Gorsuch’s nominations forward, staff of IWF and IWV made appearances on Fox News, wrote blog posts, and placed op-eds, including in the Boston Globe, and praised Gorsuch on IWF’s “Working for Women” podcast. On Tucker Carlson’s talk show, Tammy Bruce, the president of IWV, referred to the sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh as a “political stunt.” Erin Hawley, a legal fellow at IWF, was quoted in a slideshow published by Refinery21 on what women think about Kavanaugh, which also included quotes from high-profile politicians, like Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They hosted an “I stand with Brett” rally on Capitol Hill, along with other groups, including and the Leo-tied Judicial Crisis Network and the anti-LGBTQConcerned Women for America.

The Fight for Reproductive Justice in a Post-Ginsburg World

Any victory for Barrett does not fully belong to Higgins and the women of IWF and IWV, but to the long shadow of the private donors for IWF, IWV, and others — right-wing donors that remain largely concealed while wielding increasing power over the most vital decisions, from who we can marry to the quality of the air we breathe. The brochure from the IWF and IWV’s 2019 gala, which lists its private and nonprofit sponsors, offers a partial window into the private corporations funding it. These include Facebook, Juul, Marathon Petroleum Corporation, the American Beverage Association, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart), Karen Wright (the CEO of the Ariel Corporation, the largest global manufacturer of gas compressors), Amway, and Dick DeVos (former Amway CEO and the husband of Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education). Who won the gala’s “Woman of Valor” Award? None other than Betsy DeVos.

This money isn’t all funneled into IWF and IWV’s efforts to restructure the courts; it could also go to their work advocating for a range of issues that seemingly have little to do with women. In the past few years, this has included downplaying therisks of pesticides and e-cigarettes, spreading climate disinformation by arguing the science on climate change is not settled, andarguing for the privatization of school lunch programs.

A 2016article by Joan Walsh in The Nation describes how IWF and IWV have come to take on a platform increasingly aligned with the Koch brothers. Walsh traces this shift to 2001, whenNancy Pfotenhauer, the former top lobbyist for Koch Industries, became the president of IWF. In 2003, Pfotenhauer also became president ofAmericans for Prosperity, a right-wing political advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers. While Pfotenhauer has since left IWF, the ties remain: Sixteen of the current staff and board members of IWF and IWV have worked for organizations that have received Koch funding, according to an analysis provided to The Intercept by True North Research.

In her acceptance speech at IWF and IWV’s gala, DeVos described her goal of chipping away at Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that protects from gender-based discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funding. “So, we are working to dismantle the government social engineering in education, including the previous administration’s staggering overreach on Title IX,” said DeVos, which then credits this policy position to IWF. “You were among the first to sound the alarm decades ago about the downstream unintended consequences of that 1972 law.” Now, as Barrett’s confirmation looms, they are closer than ever to this goal.

---

an 7 22

The Indiana abortion doctor at the center of the report involving a procedure performed on a 10-year-old rape victim is reportedly facing an onslaught of threats, according to The Guardian.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) previously warned Planned Parenthood that it had received intel about a potential threat against Dr. Caitlin Bernard and her child. The nonprofit organization, in turn, warned Bernard of the threats.The bureau indicated that Bernard had been called out on a website run by the anti-abortion group Right to Life Michiana.

Bernard was one of several doctors listed under the site's Local Abortion Threat section. Last year, Bernard testified that she was forced to "stop providing first-trimester abortions at a clinic in South Bend."

The latest development comes months after the initial report back in January. That report included a detailed explanation of Barrett's ties to the site.Back in 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was employed as a Notre Dame professor at the time, reportedly endorsed one of the group's advertisements opposing abortion.

"Barrett, who voted to overturn Roe v Wade last month, signed a two-page advertisement published by the group in 2006, while she was working as a professor at Notre Dame. It stated that those who signed 'oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death,'" The Guardian reported.

"The second page of the ad called Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, 'barbaric,'" the news outlet added. "The advertisement was published in the South Bend Tribune by St Joseph County Right to Life, which merged with Right to Life Michiana in 2020."

According to the report, "Bernard is still listed on the Right to Life Michiana website," with the Guardian's Stephanie Kirchgaessner adding, "It is a common tactic employed by anti-abortion groups that supporters of abortion rights have said invites threats of violence and intimidation against abortion providers."

---

ref

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, one of the socially conservative justices who is almost certain to vote in favor of that is Justice Amy Coney Barrett — who has made no secret of her anti-abortion views. Barrett expressed her opposition to abortion during her pre-Supreme Court days when she signed a letter by what became Right to Life Michiana, an anti-abortion group. And according to Guardian reporter Stephanie Kirchgaessner, that has been accused of promoting harassment of abortion doctors GUK in Indiana — including a female doctor who was warned of a kidnapping threat against her daughter.

Right to Life Michiana, Kirchgaessner reports in a Guardian article published this week, “keeps a published list of abortion providers and their place of work on its website, in what some experts say is an invitation to harass and intimidate the doctors and their staff.”

According to Kirchgaessner, “In one case, court records show, a doctor whose name was published by the group, which is called Right to Life Michiana, was warned by the FBI of a kidnapping threat that had been made online against her daughter. The threat prompted the doctor to temporarily stop providing abortion services at the Whole Woman’s Health Care clinic in South Bend, which is also named on the Michiana group’s website. The doctor said, in the court document, that the clinic regularly attracts large gatherings of protesters, who she feared could identify her.”

The anti-abortion ad that Barrett signed was published in 2006, when she was teaching at Notre Dame University and was 14 years away from joining the U.S. Supreme Court. Kirchgaessner notes that the group that sponsored that ad, St. Joseph County Right to Life, “merged with another anti-abortion group in 2020 and is now called Right to Life Michiana.”

READ: The radical right's takeover of the Supreme Court is complete

The 2006 ad described Roe v. Wade as “barbaric.” During her Senate confirmation hearing in 2020, Barrett said she signed the ad as a private citizen and claimed that her own personal views on abortion would not influence her from a judicial standpoint.

Barrett said of the ad, “It was consistent with the views of my church…. I do see as distinct my personal, moral, religious views and my task of applying the law as a judge.”

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, Indiana is among the Republican-dominated red states where abortion is likely to be outlawed. But abortion, thanks to Roe, remains legal in Indiana for now — and Right to Life Michiana’s website, according to Kirchgaessner, “urges supporters to ‘take action’ against what it calls a ‘local abortion threat.’”

“In one section of the website, which is titled Local Abortion Threat: The Abortionist, the group lists the names and educational background of six doctors that it claims performs abortions at the Whole Woman’s Health Clinic in South Bend,” Kirchgaessner notes. “Among them is a doctor — who the Guardian is declining to name — who testified, in 2021, in a case involving abortion restrictions in Indiana, that she started traveling to South Bend once a month, beginning in 2020, in order to perform first trimester abortions at the South Bend clinic. She stopped making the trip, a 2.5-hour car trip each way from her home, after she was alerted by Planned Parenthood — who had been alerted by the FBI — that a kidnapping threat had been made against her daughter online.”

READ: Here's what it would really mean to prosecute Trump

In 2021, that doctor testified, “I felt it would be best for me to limit my travel and exposure during that time. I was concerned that there may be people who would be able to identify me during that travel, as well as it’s a very small clinic without any privacy for the people who are driving in and out — and so therefore, people could directly see me.”

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drilled SW says waited for acb for X case (outrageous one) and did it Jan 8 for cover?

YIKES SEE AMICUS

attempt to use NAACP v Ala/14th to make corp dark $ CONST PROTECTED?!

...

The negative effects that these new amicus campaigns have on our democ-

racy are twofold. The wealthy few fund the campaigns, excluding the majority

of Americans from the process and exacerbating preexisting countermajoritarian

and inequality concerns. And without a mechanism for disclosure, the general

public currently does not, and cannot, know how judicial reasoning is influenced

by masked private actors.

...

Donors have reaped enormous returns on their investments. As I have doc-

umented, the Roberts Court has handed down over eighty partisan Republican

5-4 decisions87 that benefit an easily identifiable Republican Party-donor inter-

est.88

These include decisions that remove constraints on anonymous giving

(e.g., Citizens United v. FEC,89 Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta90), as

well as decisions that weaken the power of countervailing institutions like labor

unions (e.g., Janus v. American Federation of State, City & Municipal Employees,

158

Council 3191), regulatory agencies (e.g., Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection

Bureau92), and the civil jury (e.g., Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis93).

The effects of this litigation strategy on our democracy are frightening: the

courts are becoming an arena for enacting policies by judicial decree that are too

unpopular to pass through democratically elected legislatures. These coordi-

nated efforts warp the judiciary toward anonymous, ultrawealthy donor inter-

ests, all without the public ever learning about the role of dark-money interests

in shaping the law. The Supreme Court was already, by its nature, an avenue for

countermajoritarian ideas and policies to prosper.

But as Barry Friedman ex-

plains, especially when the Court is acting during a period of judicial suprem-

acy—as it arguably is now—the countermajoritarian aspect of the institution will

flourish.94 Alongside those concerns, the emergence of the dark-money amicus

machine increases the probability that the Court’s rulings will run counter to the

will of the American people (i.e., counter to democracy), and instead for the

benefit of the hidden interests that had a secret hand in putting Justices on the

Court and then filed masked amicus briefs...

151

:{:{Sure enough, Chief Justice Roberts’s ruling in favor of the Koch network—a}::{6-3 decision with all Republican-appointed Justices in the majority—cast doubt}:

on the constitutionality of disclosure requirements of any kind, turbocharging

the kind of secretive influence through which the Koch operation and its allies

already dominate the public sphere.56}:

:{:{}:

:{:{Significantly, many of the donors behind these amici lobbied for the confir-}:

mation of the Justices hearing the case. For instance, Americans for Prosperity,

the 501(c)(4) group directly affiliated with the plaintiff Foundation, spent “mil-

lions” of dollars on a “Full Scale Campaign” to confirm Justice Barrett to the

bench while AFPF’s cert petition was pending before the Court.57}:

Yet, in spite of all this lobbying on her behalf by an affiliate of one of the parties, Justice Barrett

rebuffed calls for her recusal in this matter by me and others—a recusal seem-

ingly required under the Court’s own due-process precedent58—and heard the

case anyway.59

:{:{}:

D. Amicus Briefs and Dark-Money Influence on the Courts

:{:{}:

Amicus briefs play an important role in the appellate process. Indeed, I have

filed many myself.60 Interested parties should be able to use amicus briefs to ad-

vance their view of the law or their conception of the public interest or to educate

...

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/F7.WhitehouseFinalDraftWeb_v4zwakx5.pdf

---

west va v epa

7 22 intercept

...Today’s Supreme Court decision marks perhaps the biggest payoff yet for Koch’s decades of plotting against environmental regulations — and the most devastating loss for everyone else. Three of the extremist judges who joined the decision — Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh — wound up on the Supreme Court in large part because of Koch’s activism and contributions.

Americans for Prosperity, an astroturf political group founded by Charles Koch and his brother David, conducted extraordinary campaigns to put all three judges on the highest bench. To support Kavanaugh’s nomination, the group reached out to more than 1.2 million Americans through mail, phone calls, and knocking on doors, according to a flyer released by the organization. The group also pushed hard for Barrett, whose father worked forShell and the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful trade group for the oil and gas industry. And it campaigned for Gorsuch, whose mother presided — disastrously — over the EPA under President Ronald Reagan. Charles Koch is also closely connected to Leonard Leo, co-chair of the Federalist Society, a conservative organization Koch has supported directly and through his family foundation.

The case itself can also be tied directly to Koch. The challengers are27 Republican attorneys general, who were supported by the Koch-funded Republican Attorneys General Association. At least four Koch-funded entities have filed amicus briefs in the case: the Cato Institute, which was co-founded by Charles Koch; the Competitive Enterprise Institute; the New Civil Liberties Alliance; and Americans for Prosperity. Another foundation that filed an amicus brief, the Landmark Legal Foundation, denied receiving Koch funding, though Jane Mayer reports in her book “Dark Money” that Koch helped subsidize it....

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an 6 22

the founder of a Christian sect to which Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett belongs was described in court documents as exerting total control over the group's women and girls.

A sworn affidavit filed by a former member in the 1990s described a sexualized atmosphere in the home of People of Praise founder Kevin Ranaghan and his wife Dorothy Ranaghan -- where Barrett stayed while attending law school at Notre Dame -- and alleges instances of abuse and inappropriate sexual behavior, reported The Guardian. GUK

“When I was part of the People of Praise I was in full life submission to Kevin Ranaghan, under full obedience to him and he exercised this authority over most areas of my life," wrote former member Colette Humphrey, who supported the claims in the affidavit. "For example, we were ‘in common’ financially, which meant that I had to hand over my paycheck to Kevin Ranaghan and he would decide on how that paycheck would be used. Kevin Ranaghan controlled my dating relationships, deciding who and when I should date.”

The original affidavit was submitted in 1993 by a woman named Cynthia Carnick, who said she did not want her five children to have visitations with their father John Roger Carnick, who was then a member of People of Praise, at the the Ranaghan or in their presence.

Carnick stated that she had witnessed Dorothy Ranaghan tying the arms of two of her daughters, then 2 and 5 years old, to their crib with a necktie, and she also said they practiced "sexual displays" in front of the children and other adults, saying that she saw Dorothy Ranaghan lying with her clothes on and "rocking" on top of her husband in their TV room.

Barrett, 50, lived in the Ranaghans' nine-bedroom home in South Bend, Indiana, while she attended law school and two years after graduating in 1997 married her husband Jesse Barrett, who also appears to have lived in the family's household, although there's no indication she lived there at the time the Carnick children were visiting or witnessed any of the behavior described in the affidavit.

---

ok gerry again?!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/scotus-voting-rights/

---

mcc rammed her thru in 27 days, dems vow to // but AA BS

life sent no parole juvenile strict fr?

---

scotus dismiss relig vax exemption 1 sent? (relly very settled law?]

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/judge-amy-coney-barrett/

where she stands?

---

venue mitch mcc ctr?! ct is nonpartisan

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/amy-coney-barrett/

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/capital/

Judge Loretta Preska, an advisor to the conservative Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a major donor, sentenced human rights attorney and Chevron nemesis Steven Donziger to six months in prison Friday for misdemeanor contempt of court after he had already spent 787 days under house arrest in New York.

This article originally appeared on ScheerPost.]

Preska's caustic outbursts — she said at the sentencing, "It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law"— capped a judicial farce worthy of the antics of Vasiliy Vasilievich, the presiding judge at the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi judge Roland Freisler who once shouted at a defendant,"You really are a lousy piece of trash!"

Donziger, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has been fighting against polluting American oil companies for nearly three decades on behalf of indigenous communities and peasant farmers in Ecuador. His only "crime" was winning a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011 against Chevron for thousands of plaintiffs. The oil giant had bought Texaco oil company holdings in Ecuador, inheriting a lawsuit alleging it deliberately discharged 16 billion gallons of toxic waste from its oil sites into rivers, groundwater, and farmland. Since the verdict, Chevron has come after him, weaponizing litigation to destroy him economically, professionally, and personally.

The sentencing came a day after Donziger petitioned the court to consider an opinion by the United Nations human rights council that found his house arrest a violation of international human rights law. The U.N human rights council said his house arrest counted as detention under international law and it was therefore illegal for Judge Preska to demand an additional six months in jail. Amnesty International also called for Donziger's immediate release.

Donziger and his lawyers have two weeks to appeal the judge's order that Donziger be sent immediately to jail. Preska denied Donziger bail claiming he is a flight risk. If the Federal Court of Appeals turns down Donziger's appeal he will go to jail for six months. The irony, not lost on Donziger and his lawyers, is that the higher court may overturn Preska's ruling against him, but by the time that decision is made he will potentially have already spent six months in jail.

"What Judge Preska is trying to do is force me to serve the entirety of my sentence before the appellate court can rule," Donziger told me by phone on Monday. "If the appellate court rules in my favor, I will still have served my sentence, although I am innocent in the eyes of the law."

Donziger, his lawyers have pointed out, is the first person under U.S. law charged with a "B" misdemeanor to be placed on home confinement, prior to trial, with an ankle monitor. He is the first person charged with any misdemeanor to be held under home confinement for over two years. He is the first attorney ever to be charged with criminal contempt over a discovery dispute in a civil case where the attorney went into voluntary contempt to pursue an appeal. He is the first person to be prosecuted under Rule 42 (criminal contempt) by a private prosecutor with financial ties to the entity and industry that was a litigantin the underlying civil dispute that gave rise to the orders. He is the first person tried by a private prosecutor who had ex parte communications with the charging judge while that judge remained (and remains) unrecused on the criminal case.

"No lawyer in New York for my level of offense ever has served more than 90 days and that was in home confinement," Donziger told the court. "I have now been in home confinement eight times that period of time. I have been disbarred without a hearing where I have been unable to present factual evidence; thus, I am unable to earn an income in my profession. I have no passport. I can't travel; can't do human rights work the normal way which I believe I am reasonably good at; can't see my clients in Ecuador; can't visit the affected communities to hear the latest news of cancer deaths or struggles to maintain life in face of constant exposure to oil pollution.

In addition, and this is little known,Judge [Lewis A.] Kaplan has imposed millions and millions of dollars of fines and courts costs on me. [Kaplan is the judge for Chevron's lawsuit against Donziger; Preska is his handpicked judge for the contempt charges.] He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life's savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees. That's where things stand today. I ask you humbly: might that be enough punishment already for a Class B misdemeanor?"

Judge Preska was unmoved.

"Mr. Donziger has spent the last seven years thumbing his nose at the U.S. judicial system," Preska said at his sentencing hearing. "Now it's time to pay the piper."

The six-month sentence was the maximum the judge was allowed to impose;she ruled that his house arrest cannot be counted as part of his detention. From start to finish, this has been a burlesque. It is emblematic of a court system that has been turned over to lackies of corporate power, who use the veneer of jurisprudence, decorum, and civility to make a mockery of the rule of law.

When the law is neutered, judges become the enforcers of injustice. These corporate judges, who epitomize what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, now routinely make war on workers, civil liberties, unions, and environmental regulations.

Preska sent Jeremy Hammond to prison for a decade for hacking into the computers of a private security firmthat works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical. In 2011, Hammond released to the website WikiLeaks and Rolling Stone and other publications some three million emails from the Texas-based company Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The sentence was one of the longest in U.S. history for hacking and the maximum Preska could impose under a plea agreement in the case. I sat through the. I watched Preska spew her bile and contempt at Hammond from the bench with the same vitriol she used to attack Donziger.

Preska is also infamous for her long judicial crusade to force New York public schools to provide tax-subsidized free space for evangelical churches based on blatantly illogical readings of the Constitution.

The persecution of Donziger fits a pattern familiar to millions of poor Americans who are coerced into accepting plea deals, many for crimes they did not commit, and sent to prison for decades. It fits the pattern of the judicial lynching and prolonged psychological torture of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. It fits the pattern of those denied habeas corpus and due process at Guantánamo Bay or in CIA black sites. It fits the pattern of those charged under terrorism laws, many held at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan, who cannot see the evidence used to indict them. It fits the pattern of the widespread use of Special Administrative Measures, known as SAMs, imposed to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media, and people outside the jail. It fits the pattern of the extreme sensory deprivation and prolonged isolation used on those in our black sites and prisons, a form of psychological torture,the refinement of torture as science. By the time a "terrorist" is dragged into our secretive courts the bewildered suspect no longer has the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves. If they can do this legally to the demonized they can, and one day will, do it to the rest of us. The Donziger case is an ominous warning that the American legal system is broken.

Ralph Nader, who graduated from Harvard Law School, has long decried the capture of the courts and law schools by corporate power, calling the nation's attorneys and judges "lucrative cogs in the corporate wheel." He notes that law school curriculums are "built around corporate law, and corporate power, and corporate perpetration, and corporate defense."

Victor Klemperer, who was dismissed from his post as a professor of Romance languages at the University of Dresden in 1935 because of his Jewish ancestry, astutely noted how at first theNazis "changed the values, the frequency of words, [and] made them into common property, words that had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and sentence forms with their poison. They made language serve their terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools [Werebemittle], at once the most public and most secret." And, Klemperer noted, as the redefinition of old concepts took place the public was oblivious.

This redefinition of words and concepts has, as Klemperer witnessed during the rise of fascism, allowed the courts to twist the law into an instrument of injustice, revoking our rights by judicial fiat. It has seen the courts permit unlimited dark money into political campaigns under Citizens United, defending our money-saturated elections as the right to petition the government and a form of free speech. The courts have revoked our right to privacy and legalized wholesale government surveillance in the name of national security. The courts grant corporations the rights of individuals, while rarely holding the individuals who run the corporations accountable for corporate crimes.

Very few of the legal rulings that benefit corporate power have popular support. The corporate disemboweling of the country, therefore, is increasingly given cover by Christian fascists, who energize their base around abortion, prayer in schools, guns and breaking down the separation of church and state. These issues are rarely addressed in cases before federal courts. But they distract the base from the slew of pro-corporate rulings that dominate most court dockets.

Corporations such as Tyson Foods, Purdue, Walmart, and Sam's Warehouse have poured millions into institutions that indoctrinate [incubators] these Christian fascists, including Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. They fund the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which campaigned for Amy Coney Barrett's appointment to the Supreme Court. Barrett opposes abortion and belongs to People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices "speaking in tongues." She and the other far-right ideologues are hostile to LGBTQ rights. But this is not why she is so beloved by corporations, who are not interested in abortion, LGBTQ equality or gun rights.

Barrett and the Christian fascists embrace an ideology that believes that God will take care of the righteous. Those who are poor, those who are sick, those who go to prison, those who are unemployed, those who cannot succeed in society do so because they have failed to please God. In this worldview there is no need for unions, universal health care, a social safety net or prison reform. Barrett has ruled consistently in favor of corporations to cheat gig workers out of overtime, green-light fossil fuel extraction and pollution and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. The watchdog group Accountable.US found that as a circuit court judge,Barrett "faced at least 55 cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations."

The Christian fascists, allied with organizations such as the Federalist Society, under the Trump administration gave lifetime appointments to nearly 200 judges, roughly 23 percent of all federal judgeships. That included 53 to the nation's appellate courts, the court immediately under the Supreme Court. The American Bar Association, the country's largest nonpartisan coalition of lawyers, has rated many of these appointments as unqualified. There are currently six Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, who Nader calls "a corporation masquerading as a human being." Two Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, who was an original faculty advisor to the organization founded by conservative law students in 1982, were supported in the nomination process by Joe Biden.

The stacking of the courts with corporate puppets, however, began long before Trump. It was carried out by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Preska was appointed by Republican President G.W. Bush. However, the judge who preceded Preska in the Donziger case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a former lawyer for the tobacco industry who had undisclosed investments in funds with Chevron holdings, according to his public financial disclosure statement, was appointed by Democratic President Clinton.

The targeting of the courts was one of the key goals of Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer later elevated to the Supreme Court by President Nixon. In Powell's 1971 memo to the Chamber of Commerce, a blueprint for the slow-motion corporate coup that has taken place,he called on business interests to pack the judiciary with corporate-friendly judges.

The courts in all tyrannies are dominated by mediocrities and buffoons. They make up for their intellectual and moral vacuity with a zealous subservience to power. They turn courtroom trials into opera buffa, at least until the victim is shackled and pushed out the door to a prison cell. They fulminate in caustic tirades at the condemned, whose sentence is never in doubt and whose guilt is never in question.

"It started when Texaco went into Ecuador in the Amazon in the 1960s and cut a sweetheart deal with the military government then ruling Ecuador," Donziger told me for a column I wrote about his case a year ago. "Over the next 25 years, Texaco was the exclusive operator of a very large area of the Amazon that had several oil fields within this area, 1500 square miles. They drilled hundreds of wells. They created thousands of open-air, unlined toxic waste pits where they dumped the heavy metals and toxins that came up from the ground when they drilled. They ran pipes from the pits into rivers and streams that local people relied on for their drinking water, their fishing, and their sustenance. They poisoned this pristine ecosystem, in which lived five indigenous peoples, as well as a lot of other nonindigenous rural communities. There was a mass industrial poisoning."

"The verdict came down, about $18 billion in favor of the affected communities, which is what it would take at a minimum to clean up the actual damage and compensate the people for some of their injuries," Donziger told me. "That eventually got reduced on appeal in Ecuador to $9.5 billion, but it was affirmed by three appellate courts, including the highest court of Ecuador. It was affirmed by the Canadian Supreme Court, where the Ecuadorians went to enforce their judgment in a unanimous opinion in 2015."

Chevron promptly sold its assets and left Ecuador. It refused to pay the fees to clean up its environmental damage. It invested an estimated $2 million to destroy Danziger. Chevron sued him, using a civil courts portion of the federal law famous for breaking the New York Mafia in the 1970s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO Act. Chevron, which has more than $260 billion in assets, hired an estimated 2,000 lawyers from 60 law firms to carry out its campaign, according to court documents. But the oil giant, which did not want a jury to hear the case, dropped its demand for financial damages, which would have allowed Donziger to request a jury trial. This allowed Judge Kaplan to decide the RICO case against Donziger alone. He found credible a witness named Alberto Guerra, an Ecuadorian judge, relocated to the US by Chevron at a cost of some $2 million, who claimed the verdict in Ecuador was the product of a bribe. Kaplan used Guerra's testimony as primary evidence for the racketeering charge, although Guerra, a former judge, later admitted to an international tribunal that he had falsified his testimony.

John Keker of San Francisco, one of Donziger's lawyers on that case, said he was up against 160 lawyers for Chevron and during the trial he felt "like a goat tethered to a stake." He called the court proceedings under Kaplan "a Dickensian farce" and a "show trial."

In the end, Kaplan ruled that the judgment in the Ecuadorean court against Chevron was the result of fraud. He also ordered Donziger to turn over decades of all client communication to Chevron, in effect eradicating attorney-client privilege, a backbone of the Anglo-American legal system with roots dating to ancient Rome. Donziger appealed what was, according to legal experts following the case, an unprecedented and illegal order. While Donziger's appeal was pending, Kaplan charged him with misdemeanor criminal contempt for this principled stance — carrying a maximum sentence of six months — as well as his refusal to turn over his passport, his personal electronics and to refrain from seeking the collection of the original award against Chevron. When the U.S. attorney's office declined for five years to prosecute his criminal contempt charges against the environmental lawyer, Kaplan, using an exceedingly rare judicial maneuver, appointed the private law firm of Seward & Kissel, to act in the name of the government to prosecute Donziger. Neither the judge nor the law firm disclosed that Chevron has been a client of Seward & Kissel.

Kaplan also violated the established random case assignment protocol to personally assign Preska, who had served on an advisory board of the Federalist Society, a group to which Chevron has been a lavish donor, to hear the case. Kaplan had Preska demand Donziger post an $800,000 bond on the misdemeanor charge. Preska placed him under house arrest and confiscated his passport, which he has used to meet with attorneys around the world attempting to enforce the judgment against Chevron.Kaplan managed to have Donziger disbarred. He allowed Chevron to freeze Donziger's bank accounts, slapped Donziger with millions in fines without allowing him a jury, forced him to wear an ankle monitor 24 hours a day and effectively shut down his ability to earn a living. Kaplan allowed Chevron to impose a lien on Donziger's apartment in Manhattan where he lives with his wife and teenage son.

None of this would surprise those targeted by the tyrannies of the past. What would be surprising, perhaps, to many Americans is how advanced our own corporate tyranny has become. Donziger never stood a chance. Neither does Julian Assange. These judges are not, in the end, focused on Donziger or Assange, but on us. The show trials they preside over are meant to be transparently biased. They are designed to send a message. All who defy corporate power and the national security state will be lynched. There will be no reprieve because there is no justice.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/supreme-court-2655063879/

It is a central principle of law: Courts are supposed to follow earlier decisions – precedent – to resolve current disputes. But it's inevitable that sometimes, the precedent has to go, and a court has to overrule another court, or even its own decision from an earlier case.

In its upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court faces the question of whether to overrule itself on abortion rights. Recent laws in Texas and Mississippi restrict the right of women to terminate pregnancies in ways that appear to challenge the long-standing precedent of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which allowed women to have abortions in most circumstances.

Over the centuries, courts have stated many reasons they should adhere to precedent. First is the idea of equity or justice, under which “ like cases should be decided alike," as one senior federal judge put it. If a court in the past reviewed a particular set of facts and decided a case in a specific way, fairness dictates it should decide another similar case the same way. Precedent promotes uniformity and consistency in the law.

In addition, precedent promotes judicial efficiency: Courts do not have to decide from scratch every time. Finally, following precedent promotes predictability in the law and protects people who have come to rely on past decisions as a guide for their behavior.

But not all precedents are equal, and several current Supreme Court justices have signaled that they might be open to overturning even long-standing rulings that interpret the Constitution.

Reversing precedent is unusual

The Supreme Court rarely overturns its past decisions or precedents.

In my forthcoming book, “Constitutional Precedent in Supreme Court Reasoning," I point out that from 1789 to 2020 there were 25,544 Supreme Court opinions and judgments after oral arguments. The court has reversed its own constitutional precedents only 145 times – barely one-half of one percent.

The court's historic periods are often characterized by who led it as chief justice. It was not until the 1930s under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes that it started to overturn precedents with any frequency. These were cases such as United States v. Darby, in which the court began to affirm President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal economic policies after previously rejecting them as unconstitutional.

Before then, of course, many cases asked the court to interpret clauses of the Constitution for the first time, so there were often no precedents to confront or overturn.

Under Chief Justices Earl Warren, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist and now John Roberts, the court overturned constitutional precedent 32, 32, 30 and 15 times, respectively. That is well under 1% of decisions handled during each period in the court's history.

When is precedent overturned?

For most of its history the court changed its mind only when it thought past precedent was unworkable or no longer viable, perhaps eroded by its subsequent opinions or by changing social conditions.

This happened in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, a 1938 Supreme Court case overturning a 96-year-old precedent in which the court had constructed rules about how federal courts should handle cases involving parties from different states. The court in Erie said that the original decision proved to be unworkable and had been undermined by the court's own later decisions.

The court has also said that its precedents based on constitutional grounds deserve less respect than those in which the court interprets statutes or laws. The reason is that if Congress thinks the court has erred in a matter of interpreting a statute or law, it is relatively easy for them to overturn it by passing a new law. But it's quite hard to pass a constitutional amendment, so the only real way to update the judicial understanding of the Constitution is to overrule a precedent.

Of course the most famous reversal of precedent is the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education under the Warren Court, in which it reversed Plessy v. Ferguson and struck down segregation under the “separate but equal" doctrine.

Roe v. Wade is an important precedent. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that women have a right to terminate their pregnancies. That right was reaffirmed in 1991 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter noting that an entire generation of women came of age relying upon their right to control their bodies and terminate pregnancies in most circumstances. The justices said it would be wrong to upset that expectation.

Roe has also spurred opposition, with many wanting to overturn it. For years, presidents including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump sought to appoint justices to the Supreme Court with the goal of overturning Roe and, with it, abortion rights. Now with a 6-3 conservative majority, the court may be poised to do that.

Justices get more comfortable reversing precedent

Beginning with the Rehnquist court, justices have become more willing to reject precedents they think were badly reasoned, simply wrong, or inconsistent with their own senses of the constitutional framers' intentions. Justice Clarence Thomashas taken this position on abortion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her Senate confirmation hearing argued that Roe is not a so-called superprecedent, a decision so important or foundational that it cannot be overturned.

Chief Justice Roberts has been willing to overturn settled law when he thinks the original opinion was not well argued. He did so in Citizens United, a 2010 decisionoverturning two major campaign finance decisions, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and part of McConnell v. FEC.

In 2020, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in Ramos v. Louisiana went out of their way to explain and justify their views on when constitutional precedent may be overturned. They echoed Justice Samuel Alito's discussion in 2018 in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council Number 31. All three justices said constitutional precedent is merely a matter of court policy or discretion, more easily overturned than a precedent about a law. Sometimes, they said, constitutional precedents can be overruled if later judges view them as wrongly decided or reasoned.

Abortion foes have been preparing practically since Roe was decided to overturn it. They have set both the political conditions and legal justification to overturn Roe, and perhaps this year it will be the time when it finally happens.

David Schultz, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota; Professor of Political Science, Hamline University

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/amy-coney-barrett/

alexh

Although Donald Trump went down in history as a one-term president when he was voted out of office in 2020, he accomplished something that the United States' last two one-term presidents—Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican George H.W. Bush — didn't: Trump appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 were all Trump nominees. In an article published by CNN's website on May 5, legal analyst Joan Biskupic lays out some reasons why Barrett has been more of a game-changer on the High Court than Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh was a game-changer in that he replaced a libertarian: former Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired in 2018. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Kennedy was a right-wing libertarian who was fiscally conservative but socially liberal and often sided with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg over far-right social conservatives such as Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia when it came to abortion or gay rights. And Trump replaced a libertarian with a social conservative.

But the change from Ginsburg to Barrett was more dramatic, as Trump replaced Ginsburg — the High Court's most famous liberal — with a severe social conservative who is even more to the right than Kavanaugh. Barrett is very much in the Scalia/Thomas vein.

Yet Barrett, as Biskupic explains in her article, is more low-key in her demeanor than Scalia.

Biskupic explains, "Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett hasaligned most often with Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in her first months on the bench…. As she has adopted the legal method of her mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett has avoided the flamethrower rhetoric that defined him and some followers on the bench today. Of the cases heard in oral arguments and resolved already this term,she has voted 100% of the time with Thomas and Gorsuch."

Comparing Kavanaugh and Barrett, Biskupic observes, "Barrett's pattern so far contrasts with that of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who in the conservative bloc, has sided mainly with Roberts on the center-right. Differences between the newest appointees of former President Donald Trump could play out in major cases to be decided in the next two months over the Affordable Care Act, voting rights, and religious liberties when tested against LGBTQ interests, as well as next session in a 2nd Amendment gun rights case already on the calendar. The justices are also considering an abortion rights case for the 2021-22 term that would further illuminate Barrett's brand of conservatism."

Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, has been right-wing in his judicial philosophy but more nuanced than Thomas or Scalia. And Biskupic notes that when Kavanaugh and Barrett are compared, Kavanaugh has been more likely to agree with Roberts.

"Kavanaugh has sidled since his 2018 appointment toward Roberts," Biskupic observes. "The chief and Kavanaugh have shared among the highest voting alignments for the past three years, according to statistics compiled by SCOTUSblog. Yet patterns of statistical togetherness go only so far. In several important cases when Roberts joined the liberal side, Kavanaugh remained with the right wing…. Barrett has voted so far in only a dozen cases that have been argued. That's where she has consistently been with Thomas and Gorsuch."

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Comey Barrett has right-wing activists 'disappointed' and 'despondent' so far: report

Matthew Chapman Raw Story

March 24, 2021

On Wednesday, CNN reported that some right-wing legal activists are nervous that recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett isn't delivering on her conservative credentials in Supreme...

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omg 1st act is to kill ppl (soon to f/u by kill acac which will kill more ppl, ~ sotomayor

deadly game’: Legal experts blast Supreme Court’s dead-of-night decision enshrining ‘religious rights’ over all others

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

November 26, 2020

At 11:57 PM Wednesday, three minutes before the country tries to celebrate Thanksgiving during a pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for a group of Catholics and Jews who sued to prevent the State of New York from imposing restrictions in the...

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fawns on trump and clarence

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/majority-of-supreme-court-now-confirmed-by-senates-where-republicans-represented-fewer-americans-than-dems/

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amy Coney Barrett's husband plans to continue private practice — raising serious ethical concerns

Meaghan Ellis

November 18, 2020

Jesse Barrett, husband of newly confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, recently said he will continue private practice despite the ethical concerns that may arise due to his wife's new position.

On the SouthBake Legal website, there is a...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-conservative-groups-will-advance-their-agendas-before-a-supreme-court-with-amy-coney-barrett/

Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court has highlighted the ways interest groups use the legal system to pursue their goals. Barrett is closely tied to the conservative Federalist Society, whose members have played a major role in President Donald Trump's judicial appointments. Organizations who support and oppose her confirmation are intensely lobbying senators and the public.

Like other justices, if confirmed, Barrett will continually face pressure campaigns from groups trying to shape the direction of American law.

I have extensively studied how special interests use the court as a public policy battleground, including in my book, “Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making." Here's what to expect from interest groups before a Supreme Court with a Justice Barrett.

Friends of the court

The main way special interests participate in the courts is by filing amicus curiae (“friend of the court") briefs in cases that intersect with their interests. In these legal documents, groups take positions to persuade the justices to endorse their economic, political and social interests.

Although amicus briefs are filed in almost all appellate courts in the United States, they are especially prevalent in the U.S. Supreme Court. Almost every case before the court has at least one amicus brief, and there is an average of about 12 briefs per case. High-profile disputes, such as those involving abortion, affirmative action, health care and same-sex marriage, have neared or topped 100 amicus briefs.

Amicus briefs are not cheap – they can cost up to US$100,000 because of the fees related to attorneys' time and expenses to research and prepare them. And the court's rules can be manipulated to obscure who pays for these briefs. This has led to allegations that groups are purposely hiding the wealthy donors who fund these briefs to further the donors' political agendas in the court.

For example, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a charity that promotes conservative causes, funded many of the interest groups who filed amicus briefs in Janus v. AFSCME.This 2018 decision weakened the power of labor unions by severely limiting their ability to collect fees from nonunion members used for collective bargaining.

Amicus briefs work. Justices are more likely to decide to review cases accompanied by amicus briefs. Justices tend to decide in favor of the litigant with the most amicus briefs on its side when deciding cases. In their opinions, justices frequently cite and borrow language from amicus briefs.

Importantly, some organizations who file amicus briefs are more privileged than others. The justices are deferential to high-profile, elite interest groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Chamber of Commerce, particularly if those groups share their ideological preferences. The justices tend to vote in favor of the positions advocated by these organizations and adopt their legal arguments more often than lesser-known groups.

The conservative wishlist

If confirmed, the addition of Amy Coney Barrett will give conservative justices a 6-3 majority on the court. Although both liberal and conservative groups file amicus briefs in roughly equal numbers, this will motivate conservative interest groups to push their agendas before a sympathetic court. Liberal groups will be left trying to defend their past victories.

What does this conservative agenda look like? First up will be dismantling the Affordable Care Act and the Voting Rights Act, which are already on the court's docket.

More long-term goalswill include restricting access to abortion, limiting the rights of the criminally accused, halting the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights, increasing the power of business and expanding the scope of the Second Amendment, which protects an individual's right to bear arms.

High-profile groups leading this conservative charge will include Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, the Cato Institute, the Chamber of Commerce, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and the Washington Legal Foundation.

What are the tactics?

The first step toward achieving these goals will be to influence the Supreme Court's agenda.

Each year, the court receives petitions to review about 8,000 cases, but hears fewer than 80 cases. To shape the docket, interest and advocacy groups will orchestrate test cases by carefully selecting individuals to challenge policies they oppose. Once those cases are appealed to the Supreme Court, some groups file amicus briefs at the agenda-setting stage urging the justices to review a case.

Then these groups typically file a second brief at the decision-making stage. At this point, other organizations also file amicus briefs to lobby the justices to support the conservative outcome in the case, often working with the attorneys representing the conservative litigant. This provides the attorneys with the opportunity to coordinate their legal arguments to appeal to the conservative justices on the court.

For example, in District of Columbia v. Heller, which established the individual right to keep and bear arms in 2008, Heller's lawyers coordinated with conservative interest groups on the content of their amicus briefs. These briefs contained arguments from historical, legal, linguistic and statistical perspectives, among others.

Liberals follow this playbook, too. One example: Before she was on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed an amicus brief on behalf of the liberal American Civil Liberties Union in Craig v. Boren and advised Craig's attorneys. This led to the landmark 1976 precedent that established how the court evaluates claims of gender discrimination.

In their briefs, conservative groups will advance theories of judging known as textualism and originalism. These closely linked approaches hold that the best way to interpret the Constitution is according to how it was understood at the time of its ratification.

For example, a judge might ask herself: How would the informed public in 1791 understand what “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" means? With a majority of justices on the court sympathetic to these theories of constitutional interpretation, textualist and originalist amicus briefs are likely to be particularly effective.

If successful, this process will repeat itself over the years and in many different cases. This is necessary for interest groups because it takes a long time to achieve legal change, since the justices are generally reluctant to overturn their previous decisions. Instead, the justices tend to chip away at them over time.

For example, the American Civil Liberties Union was successful convincing the court to apply the exclusionary rule to the states in Mapp v. Ohio in 1961. This rule holds that evidence police gather illegally is inadmissible in a trial. Subsequently, conservative Supreme Court justices have followed conservative groups' arguments by carving out numerous exceptions to the exclusionary rule. Although Mapp is still the law of the land, it is a shell of its former self.

With a 6-3 majority of conservative justices on the court – five of whom are 70 years old or younger – this strategy can be expected to continue for decades to come. This will give conservative groups and the justices who agree with them plenty of time to mold American law in their image.

Paul M. Collins, Jr., Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/a-relativist-dressed-in-originalist-drag-catholic-publication-urges-the-senate-to-reject-amy-coney-barrett-in-a-scathing-editorial/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/why-trumps-supreme-court-nominee-believes-all-civil-rights-legislation-is-illegitimate/

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an 10/21/20

Progressives unite for last-ditch effort to delay Amy Coney Barrett vote — by impeaching Bill Barr

Bob Brigham Raw Story

October 21, 2020

Progressive activists are urging House Democrats to essentially kill two birds with one stone by impeaching Attorney General Bill Barr — which would delay the confirmation vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett

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4-4 voting rights

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/democrats-may-never-win-another-national-election-scotus-mail-in-voting-ruling-raises-alarm/

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no lnx

Serving oligarchs: Republicans have installed judges to cement minority rules

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/serving-oligarchs-republicans-have-installed-judges-to-cement-minority-rules/

Common Dreams October 18, 2020

The analogy of judges being like umpires calling balls and strikes has been used to argue that judges merely apply the law according to the rules, leaving no room for bias. The misleading nature of this claim has never been more apparent.

Objectivity in judging is a myth. As Justice Cardozo noted, "We (judges) may try to see things as objectively as we please, nonetheless we can never see them with any eyes except our own." A test of principled judging is doctrinal consistency. As Ryan Grim and others argue, Judge Barrett fails that test, notably regarding the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

When Sonia Sotomayor said at her Supreme Court confirmation hearings that her experience as a Latina woman informs her judging, she broke the rules of the game and had to recant in support of the guise of neutrality. The charade continues.

Serving oligarchs, the Republicans have installed judges to cement minority rule.Dahlia Lithwick notes that Barrett "has clothed herself in a cloak of neutrality" contending that this posture will free her to do "pernicious work that will undercut the very ideals she is sworn to uphold."

Barrett proudly claims to be a constitutional originalist, as if this is beyond reproach, which it most certainly is not. Originalism is both historically and logically problematic. Purportedly constraining judges, it may actually serve to unleash them.

Ronald Dworkin's responsibility theory posits that judging with integrity demands honest and transparent inquiry, analysis and reasoning. Dworkin asserts that any honest consideration of judging must recognize the centrality of interpretation. Under the common law judges do make law, unlike the civil law tradition where law is "found". The making of judicial law can be as corrupted as the making of legislation, and as unappetizing as seeing sausage made.

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's presentation on Dark Money shed light on the anti-democratic influences distorting the law. The Court lacks basic disclosure requirements fundamental to judicial integrity. Litigants appearing before the Court should wear badges demanding an end to the flow of dark money. As this would be disallowed, the public must fight secret plutocratic law.

The unprecedented rush to confirm Barrett denied an opportunity to fully investigate Barrett's record and conflicts. It was pathetic that Senator Whitehouse could only conclude his remarks with a plea to Barrett to "please think about these things" when she is on the Court. With hypocrite in chief Lindsay Graham presiding over Barrett's confirmation hearing precedent and principle were, unsurprisingly, conveniently discarded.

Sandra O'Connor decried unseemly law, by which she meant that which went against public opinion. Today's Court cares little about public sentiment as it routinely rules against it. When McConnell stole the seat from Merrick Garland in 2016 to install Neil Gorsuch in 2017 a nail was put in the coffin of the venerable Court. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett's confirmation process further stained the Court. The disrespect shown to RBG following her death is abhorrent, and with Trump's overt politicization of Barrett's seat marks a new low point for the Court.

Right wing court-packing has been going on for decades, as has judicial activism by Republican appointed judges. Barrett is a prime example.

Serving oligarchs, the Republicans have installed judges to cement minority rule.

Welcome to the new judicial order where stare decisis and neutrality are (ab)used as swords for the rich. Know the rules and play by them. Stop going to a knife fight with an olive branch. Pack the court if you can democrats. If you fail to do so you will be rendered impotent by the right wing activist federal courts.

http://www.takebackthecourt.today/antidemocracy-scorecard

Team Trump's plan to steal the election using the Court to seal the deal is in plain sight.

In 2000, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett all worked for George W Bush to stop the recount. They may soon vote together to stop the actual counting. Senator Feinstein will surely thank them for their excellent leadership if they do.

Barrett's cagey responses to the senate judiciary committee further expose the discrepancy between judicial theory vs practice. Her refusal to abstain from potential upcoming election challenges before the Court evince a false understanding of the recusal standard. Like her mentor Scalia in Bush v. Gore, she speaks only to actual bias, wearing her robe as a shield, ignoring that the standard for recusal is the appearance of bias. The purpose is to uphold public confidence in the independence and integrity of judicial decision making. There is now little reason for the people to have such confidence.

As the judiciary heads further to the right it is evident it no longer serves the values of the majority of the people. Equal justice under the law is now just a reminder of how wildly the federal judiciary misses the strike zone.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett/

no lnx

Ralph Nader breaks down 'travesty' of Barrett's confirmation as Senate ensures 'corporate supremacy' reigns

Ralph Nader and Common Dreams October 18, 2020

In a 1995 book review published in the University of Chicago Law Review, Elena Kagan (now Justice Kagan) wrote about judicial nominees avoiding disclosing their views on legal issues. She said, "[T]he safest and surest route to the prize lay in alternating platitudinous statement and judicious silence. Who would have done anything different, in the absence of pressure from members of Congress?"

This week, nominee to the High Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett followed the "say-nothing" playbook, through injudicious and repetitious filibustering, essentially claiming that it was improper for a judge "to opine" on matters outside the judicial process.

Really? Judge Barrett "opined" in lectures, interviews, and articles as a judge as have many sitting Supreme Court Justices. Her mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia regularly made controversial declarations at law school addresses and all kinds of other public appearances.

Judge Barrett's hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee were consistently defiant. She refused to answer questions about the legality of intimidating voters, or whether all losing presidents should commit to a peaceful transition of power. Judge Barrett even refused to say whether she accepts the science on the climate crisis because she lacks the expertise on this issue and because it is a controversial topic.

Senator Pat Leahy said, "President Trump claims he has an absolute right to pardon himself. Would you agree, first, that nobody is above the law — not the president, not you, not me — is that correct?" Judge Barrett said she agreed no one is above the law but could not answer the question about a president's pardon powers because "it had never been litigated."

She would not even say that a President cannot unilaterally change the date of the election. Perhaps Judge Barrett should review Article II of the Constitution which empowers Congress to choose the timing of the general election and a law enacted by Congress that requires the election to be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The hearings were truly a travesty. Too few hearing days, exclusion of prominent civic and scholarly critics of her record and statements, and remarkably, the defeatist position by the Democrats. Their repetitive political campaign-related focus on Roe v. Wade and access to abortions, Obamacare, and the Second Amendment was directed to the voters back home. The Republicans did their things for the elections too, led by Chair Lindsey Graham. (This is an important reason why nomination hearings should not be conducted close to elections).

It gets worse. Chair Lindsey Graham pronounced victory for the judge in his opening statement and by their behavior the Democrats largely agreed, using the occasion to share their political views without exposing how a Judge's corporatist ideology can let corporations prevail over workers, consumers, the environment, and the electoral process.Republican Justices on the Supreme Court, most notoriously, in the Citizens United case opened the floodgates to corporate cash further corrupting our elections.

As constitutional law expert, Bruce Fein noted, Judge Barrett maintained no distance between her and her nominator, President Trump, who stunningly has said, "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." As a presidential tyrant, Trump knew how to choose a judicial nominee who is not likely to reject tyranny.

Except for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Democrats, as they have in previous Supreme Court nomination hearings, declined to question Judge Barrett about rampant corporate crime, and corporate personhood harming all Americans. Corporate power and control are scraping the rule of law with worsening brazenness, privileges, and immunities.

A 6 to 3 corporatist Court will install an era of corporate supremacy over real people that has no foundation in our Constitution.There is no mention, whatsoever, of the words "corporation" or "company" in the Constitution, the juridical foundation of our Republic. Treating corporations as artificial entities – as "persons" is based on a headnote in the 1886 Supreme Court case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road. The headnote that was not even part of the Court's opinion. This judicial unfortunate and legally suspect twist has been relied on and expanded by generations of corporatist Supreme Court Justices.

Senator Whitehouse went to the root of the choice of Judge Barrett. It's about power by the few over the many. The long-driven goal of the Koch Brothers and the Bradley Foundation.

The Democratic Party should have avoided all these losing nomination battles over Trump's, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and now Amy Barrett. How? By handily winning half a dozen Senate seats in 2016 and 2018 that they botched big time. They even lost seats of sitting Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and Bill Nelson (D-FL) the latter to then-Governor Rick Scott. Rick Scott, prior to being governor, was the CEO of Columbia/HCA which under Scott engaged in one of the largest Medicare frauds in history. The federal government fined Columbia/HCA $1.7 billion for this outrageous behavior.

In their own ways, these Senators tried to be Republican-lite by avoiding front-burner issues such as higher minimum wages, law and order for corporate outlaws, full Medicare for All, and the creation of good community-based jobs to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. These and other much-needed programs could be paid for by restoring corporate taxes to the level they were in the more prosperous nineteen sixties.

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Because of the two-party duopoly, our country has been cornered with the "choice of the lesser of two evils" as both parties were dialing for the same corporate/commercial campaign dollars. In 2016, Bernie Sanders showed that big amounts of money can come from many small donors. The Democrats are outspending the Republicans in many races, but more than money is needed to win elections. What's their excuse for letting the worst Republican in Party history win, again and again, control the Congress with one or both Houses, and entrench their clenched-teeth judges for decades?

Look in the mirror Democrats. Start self-examining why collectively you've let the American people down? It's time for the rising movement of elected and grassroots progressive to take over.

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why Trump's Supreme Court nominee believes all Civil Rights legislation is 'illegitimate'

Mark Sumner Daily Kos

September 27, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett regards herself as an "originalist," that is, someone who believes that all legal decisions must be based on the "original understanding" of the Constitution. This is often put forward as a straightforward, consistent lens through whic...

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rbg

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/23/heidi_schlumpf_amy_coney_barrett

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people of Praise: Former member of group tied to SCOTUS front-runner calls it a ‘cult’

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now

As President Trump appears poised to announce a nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, we speak with a former member of the secretive Catholic group.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/here-are-the-most-extreme-far-right-judges-pushed-through-by-the-trump-administration/

no lnx

Here are the most extreme far-right judges pushed through by the Trump administration

Written by Alex Henderson September 18, 2019

President Donald Trump has not only appointed two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court — Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 — he has also appointed a long list of federal appeals court and district court judges. And Jennifer Bendery, in an in-depth report for HuffPost, outlines who some of the worst ones are.

In addition to his U.S. Supreme Court appointments, Bendery notes, Trump has nominated“a record-breaking 43 appeals court judges and 99 district court judges” — and he clearly has a preference for those on the far right.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, explained to HuffPost why these nominations are so consequential: “It is important for the public to appreciate that appeals court appointees serve on courts that are the courts of last resort for 99.9% of cases in their regions of the U.S. on issues like capital punishment, abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, etc. The key is: they resolve 50,000 cases per year, and the Supreme Court resolves 100.”

In her article, Bendery cites some Trump-appointed judges who “have records of being anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion” or “anti-voting rights.” One of them is Judge Leonard Steven Grasz, who thanks to Trump, now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit and has a “record of opposing LGBTQ and abortion rights.” Other Trump-appointed extremists Bendery discusses in her piece include, among many others, Judge Jonathan Kobes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, Judge Neomi Rao on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Judge Eric Murphy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Judge John Bush on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

Bush, Bendery notes, has compared abortion to slavery, while Rao has criticized “special treatment for minority students.” Barrett, who was mentioned as a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee in 2018 before Trump decided to nominate Kavanaugh, has been with an extreme Christianist group called People of Praise and described the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit as an “attack on religious liberty.”

Another extremist Bendery discusses is Judge Kyle Duncan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Duncan, she observes, has been avigorous defender of voter suppression.And Judge Kenneth Lee, a Trump nominee who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, has described multiculturalism as a “malodorous sickness” and asserted that gays are more promiscuous than heterosexuals.

Bendery’s article not only makes a strong case for voting Trump out of office in 2020 but also, for Democrats retaking the U.S. Senate: she stresses that Senate Republicans voted in lockstep to confirm the extremist judges Trump nominated.

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/meet-people-praise-why-far-right-cult-shouldnt-be-allowed-anywhere-near-supreme

Trump is scheduled to announce his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court—and one of the possible nominees is 46-year-old Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appellate judge. Trump has made it clear that he plans to nominate someone who is not only fiscally conservative, but a severe social conservative who would have no problem overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973. Barrett fits the bill, especially in light of her reported association with an extremist, predominantly Catholic group called People of Praise.

When Trump nominated Barrett for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit last year, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California was concerned about her extreme social conservatism and asserted, “Dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.” Feinstein didn’t bring up People of Praise, but the New York Times’ Laurie Goodstein did in a September 28, 2017 article. And the group’s history is disturbing.

People of Praise are quite controversial within Catholicism. Founded in 1971, the group incorporates elements of fundamentalist Pentecostal Protestantism (such as speaking in tongues) and is considered a cult in mainstream Catholicism. Its practices include requiring members to swear an oath of loyalty to the group and teaching that wives must be submissive to their husbands, and in the past, People of Praise called its female leaders “handmaidens”—which is downright chilling if one is familiar with Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the 1990 film and 2017/2018 television series it has inspired. People of Praise embrace a highly patriarchal ideology, believing that while women can have some leadership positions, they ultimately must submit to male authority.

Although most of its members are Catholic, some Catholics argue that the group’s philosophy and practices have more in common with Protestant fundamentalism than traditional Catholicism. And in fact, People of Praise has some non-Catholic members, including fundamentalist Pentecostals.

In a July 5 article, the National Review’s Mona Charen asserted that criticism of Barrett and People of Praise in the media reflected an “anti-Catholic bigotry” and a “broader anti-religious bias”—which is nonsense. Within Catholicism, People of Praise are hardly mainstream and represent the lunatic fringe.

The U.K.’s Telegraph has reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is encouraging Trump to nominate someone other than Barrett and that McConnell would prefer Raymond Kethledge or Thomas Hardiman—both said to be on the president’s short list—instead. Trump, however, reportedly likes the idea of nominating a woman to the Supreme Court because he believes it would help the Republican Party attract more female voters in the November midterms and counter widespread assertions that he is a misogynist.

And Trump no doubt likes the fact that Barrett is only 46, which makes her almost 40 years younger than the 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If Barrett were to replace Justice Kennedy and lived as long as Ginsburg, she could be handing down far-right Supreme Court decisions well after 2055. And considering that those decisions might be influenced by People of Praise, that is a most disturbing possibility.

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ACB BAK

Benny Johnson calls Amy Coney Barrett a “repulsive lizard” and a “sick witch”

Supreme Court has three lawyers who worked on Bush v. Gore

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Justices get more comfortable reversing precedent

Comey Barrett has right-wing activists 'disappointed' and 'despondent' so far: report

deadly game’: Legal experts blast Supreme Court’s dead-of-night decision enshrining ‘religious rights’ over all others

amy Coney Barrett's husband plans to continue private practice — raising serious ethical concerns

Friends of the court

The conservative wishlist

What are the tactics?

Progressives unite for last-ditch effort to delay Amy Coney Barrett vote — by impeaching Bill Barr

why Trump's Supreme Court nominee believes all Civil Rights legislation is 'illegitimate'