Courting Disaster, Con't

Well ahead of the very real possibility that in June, the Roberts Court ends both legalized abortion and the separation between church and state, the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court are already doing the Trump regime's bidding openly, and Justice Sotomayor is calling them out on it.

On Friday evening, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration’s wealth test for immigrants to take effect in Illinois. All four liberal justices dissented from the order, which changes relatively little: Thanks to the conservative justices’ intervention in January, the wealth test was poised to take effect in 49 states, and Friday’s vote lets the government apply it in the last state left. What’s most remarkable about the decision is Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s withering dissent, which calls out—with startling candor—a distressing pattern: The court’s Republican appointees have a clear bias toward the Trump administration.

Trump’s wealth test marks a brazen attempt to limit legal immigration by forcing immigrants to prove their financial status to enter, or remain in, the United States. It goes far beyond any statute passed by Congress, forcing immigrants to demonstrate that they will be not a “public charge”—that is, they won’t rely on any public assistance, including Medicaid, housing vouchers, and food stamps. Because the policy departs so dramatically from federal law, several courts blocked its implementation in 2019. In January, however, the Supreme Court allowed the wealth test to take effect over the dissent of all four liberals. The majority did not explain its reasoning. But Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote a concurrence complaining that a district court had blocked it across the country, decrying the “rise of nationwide injunctions.”

Gorsuch’s opinion raised the possibility that the conservative justices disapproved of the scope of the district court’s injunction, not the reasoning behind it. If that were true, the conservatives should not have unsettled a narrower injunction limited to Illinois. But they did just that on Friday, once again without explaining themselves. Once again, the liberals dissented, but only Sotomayor wrote separately, in an opinion notable for its caustic tone and candid assessment of her colleague’s prejudices. “Today’s decision follows a now-familiar pattern,” Sotomayor began. “The Government seeks emergency relief from this Court, asking it to grant a stay where two lower courts have not. The Government insists—even though review in a court of appeals is imminent—that it will suffer irreparable harm if this Court does not grant a stay. And the Court yields.” In other words, SCOTUS rewarded the Department of Justice for short-circuiting the appellate process and demanding immediate relief.

“But this application is perhaps even more concerning than past ones,” Sotomayor continued. Previously, the DOJ “professed urgency because of the form of relief granted in the prior case—a nationwide injunction.” Now there’s no nationwide injunction, so there’s no apparent “urgency.” The DOJ “cannot state with precision any of the supposed harm that would come from the Illinois-specific injunction, and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has scheduled oral argument for next week.” Yet SCOTUS lifted the injunction anyway. “It is hard,” Sotomayor wrote, “to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it.”

Normally, “to justify upending the normal rules,” the government “must also show a likelihood of irreparable harm.” And “it has not made that showing here.” But this shortcut to SCOTUS has become “the new normal”; it has happened over and over and over again, as the DOJ leapfrogs over the lower courts to seize a victory at the Supreme Court. Sotomayor explained:

Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited Court resources in each. And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.

But the Supreme Court’s conservatives repeatedly accept the DOJ’s declarations of an “emergency,” giving Donald Trump whatever he wants.

Expect a lot more of this in the future, and then, well, a lot less of it as it won't be necessary to enjoin federal judges who are all working for Trump.  The damage to the Ninth Circuit, for example, has turned it into one of the most conservative appellate courts in the nation in just three years.

When President Trump ticks off his accomplishments since taking office, he frequently mentions his aggressive makeover of a key sector of the federal judiciary — the circuit courts of appeal, where he has appointed 51 judges to lifetime jobs in three years.

In few places has the effect been felt more powerfully than in the sprawling 9th Circuit, which covers California and eight other states. Because of Trump’s success in filling vacancies, the San Francisco-based circuit, long dominated by Democratic appointees, has suddenly shifted to the right, with an even more pronounced tilt expected in the years ahead.

Trump has now named 10 judges to the 9th Circuit — more than one-third of its active judges — compared with seven appointed by President Obama over eight years.

“Trump has effectively flipped the circuit,” said 9th Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., an appointee of President George W. Bush.

Here's the biggest problem:

Democratic appointees still make up the majority of active judges — 16 to 13. But the court also has judges on “senior status” who continue to sit on panels that decide cases. Senior status rank gives judges more flexibility but allows them to continue to work, even full time.

Of the senior judges who will be deciding cases on “merits” panels — reading briefs and issuing rulings — 10 are Republicans and only three are Democratic appointees, Smith said.

“You will see a sea change in the 9th Circuit on day-to-day decisions,” Smith predicted.

The biggest change will come in controversial cases that test the constitutionality of laws and the legal ability of presidents to establish contentious new rules. The 9th Circuit is weighing challenges to Trump on a wide array of issues, from immigration to reproductive rights, and the rightward tilt is likely to make it easier for the president to prevail.

And eight of the ten federal judges Trump has appointed have no experience being judges at all.  None.

It'll take the rest of my lifetime to fix the damage Trump has done, and that will take the miracle of getting him out of office in November.  Most likely America as we know it is lost, headed back to a functional autocracy based on white supremacy and where everyone else is considered an optional citizen.