Breaking: Justice Kennedy Retires

Donald Trump will get a second SCOTUS pick, GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has dropped all pretense of "the people must get a voice in this nomination" and assures the vote will come in the fall before midterm elections.

Democrats of course cannot filibuster, as McConnell ended that months ago.  There's nothing they can do.  Any Republican senator who defies Trump on this will have Trump calling for their blood.  Literally.

By the way, kiss abortion, affirmative action, same-sex marriage and a whole lot else goodbye.

What will change are rulings on issues where Kennedy has helped maintain a shaky 5-4 center-left consensus. Because of the court’s longstanding principle of stare decisis, or obeying past precedent barring a compelling reason not to do so, some liberal Court achievements are likely to stay. But a Court without Kennedy is substantially more likely to:

• Overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states (and maybe the federal government too) to ban most or all abortions.
• Reject challenges to capital punishment and solitary confinement.
• Rule in favor of religious challenges to anti-discrimination law, and perhaps, in an extreme case, reverse some past Supreme Court rulings on gay rights.
• Bar government actors from engaging in explicit race-based affirmative action.

And there are likely to be more aftershocks that are hard to anticipate this far in advance.

At this point, we tried to warn you.