U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Have at it.

I nominate AOC

i nominate tom cotton, a good guy with a gun

get in here, goons

Can Trump nominate himself?

and continuing the SCOTUS term limit discussion, reposting the explainer
https://fixthecourt.com/2019/11/myth-facts-scotus-term-limits/

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/09/ted-cruz-supreme-court-donald-trump/

No idea if these proposed changes are ideal or if they could ever plausibly come to pass, but I like that they are being put out there. It's a good step to start getting people used to the idea of major changes to the court.

Bryant Johnson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal trainer, does push-ups as Justice Ginsburg lies in state in the U.S. Capitol.

Full video: https://t.co/vri1sJcUV6 pic.twitter.com/C11uVFeQlQ

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 25, 2020

He isn’t stupid so wtf is he thinking https://t.co/uyEcGDZRIy

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) September 25, 2020

I'm very sorry but if the pushup video is real it's extremely funny

CNN reporting that it's Barrett:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/donald-trump-amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court/index.html

South Bend is really knocking it out of the park this year.

Whoever Trump was going to pick was going to be a horror story, so I expect soon to be reading about the many horrors of Ms. Barrett, which no doubt will be many and hair-raising. Lindsey Graham will love her.

democrats will have grave concerns and strongly worded appeals to decency

democratic fundraising will go through the roof, blood will boil, the election will be won (eventually) by democrats. and at the end, it'll be a 6-3 conservative court for the forseeable future, and possible a 5-4 majority for another 20-30 years, unless the golden boy or gorsuch unexpectedly croak, which would be a tragedy

those are impressive lifespans you're projecting for thomas and alito imo

They get magic life drugs injected in their butts

haha, well it also builds in known unknowns, like republicans preserving a seat in a future GOP presidency. let's role play it

2020 (the present. you are in hell)
barrett is confirmed before election. fuck you liberals
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 65
thomas is 72
alito is 70
gorsuch is 53
the golden boy is 55
barrett is 48

breyer is 82
sotomayor is 66
kagan is 60

2021 (biden is elected. you are in tartarus)
biden wins. breyer tags out for a younger replacement. i will create SC justice names using this thread Fighting Baseball for Super Famicom: A League of Fake Americans POLL
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 66
thomas is 73
alito is 71
gorsuch is 54
the golden boy is 56
barrett is 49

sotomayor is 67
kagan is 61
willie dustice is 50

EVENT
2024 election. The democrat has a 70% chance of victory (same as clinton v trump), due to me running this simulation. RNG: no joke, i rolled a random number from 1 to 10, with 1-7 being democratic victory and 8-10 being republican, and i rolled an 8. REPUBLICANS WIN

2025 (tom cotton is the president of the united states. you have killed 2 people now and haven't talked in weeks.)
tom cotton casts Executive Righteousness on thomas, 77 years old, who is replaced by Sleve McDichael
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 70
alito is 75
the golden boy is 60
barrett is 53
sleve mcdichael is 50

sotomayor is 71
kagan is 65
gorsuch is 58
willie dustice is 54

EVENT
World War III, totally started by tom cotton. 2028 election. The democrat has a 80% chance of victory, due to me running this simulation. RNG: 3, democratic victory

2029 (first influencers on mars)
AOC is the president of the united states of america, fuck yeah. sotomayor, the second oldest justice at 75, taps out. bobsun dugnutt is the new junior united states supreme court justice.
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 74
alito is 79
gorsuch is 62
the golden boy is 64
barrett is 57
sleve mcdichael is 54

kagan is 69
willie dustice is 58
bobsun dognutt is 50

EVENT
in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

2031 (VR sex surpasses videogames in revenue generation)
brett kavanaugh fucking dies out of nowhere, best thing that's happened in a generation. president AOC appoints a justice so left-leaning that she's impeached by sergeant ivanka trump, leader of the paramilitary republican subcommittee known as Gold Team. Onson Sweemey, the first justice with a normal name in 11 years, takes the golden boy's spot and shifts the balance toward a near-balance.

5-4 conservative majority

roberts is 76
alito is 81
gorsuch is 64
barrett is 59
sleve mcdichael is 56

kagan is 71
willie dustice is 60
bobsun dognutt is 52
onson sweemey is 50

EVENT
2032 Election. there's no more random numbers, it's just me making it up. the democrats win again. AOC is on the wheaties box.

then, near the end of her second term, the unspeakable happens. Samuel Alito, at the age of 85, just fucking dies out of nowhere.
2035
some observers expect the krang-like brain of mitch mcconnell to somehow delay a democratic confirmation in his spot, but AOC casts total victory and again appoints an extremely-left greatest of time justice named Todd Bonzalez.
5-4 liberal majority

roberts is 80
gorsuch is 68
barrett is 63
sleve mcdichael is 60

kagan is 75
willie dustice is 64
bobsun dognutt is 56
onson sweemey is 54
todd bonzalez is 50

EVENT
2036 Election. it's been 8 years of supreme relaxation and greatness. even gum is genuinely _better_. everything's great. something has to change, so somehow it's time for PRESIDENT CHARLIE KIRK

2037
under PRESIDENT CHARLIE KIRK, roberts immediately resigns. the new chief justice of the united states is SCOTT DOURQUE, 50 years old, catholic conservative
5-4 liberal majority

chief justice scott dourque, 50
gorsuch is 70
barrett is 65
sleve mcdichael is 62

kagan is 77
willie dustice is 66
bobsun dognutt is 58
onson sweemey is 56
todd bonzalez is 52

I actually think that’s not a terrible way of gaming things out. The arc of the moral universe is long. We fight the fights that we have today, and we train our young folks. Good post KM.

DOGNUTT

https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--QTcxwhPT--/t_Preview/b_rgb:ffffff,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1495739359/production/designs/1624926_1.jpg

in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

whoa how did he die?!

Shot by one of Dick Cheney's grandkids

Karl, that was perfect (ly horrifying).

Shot by one of Dick Cheney's grandkids

― LaRusso Auto (Neanderthal), Friday, September 25, 2020 6:49 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

At a UB40 reunion concert

in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

whoa how did he die?!

he dies of doing a kegstand in the kitchen of amy klobuchar's wake

karl this is some excellent scenario running and first rate use of the Fighting Baseball thread and i applaud it

i have a rejoinder percolating but it may take a while to get around to crunching the hard numbers so i just wanted to say that for now

_in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM_

whoa how did he die?!

xp thanks doctor c! your questioning of that was really valid, and i don't think my answer is any sort of proof of anything. i got lazy and didn't project it out to 2045 (my original goal), but even though i ended with a slim 5-4 liberal majority by 2037, i don't think it takes much to keep it at a 5-4 conservative majority either. then again, maybe the republicans will truly never win again (lol) and it will be 6-3 liberal by 2040, who knows

So we get 40 some years of this...from an article Barrett co-wrote as quoted by SCOTUS blog

The article also noted that, when the late Justice William Brennan was asked about potential conflict between his Catholic faith and his duties as a justice, he responded that he would be governed by “the oath I took to support the Constitution and laws of the United States”; Barrett and Garvey observed that they did not “defend this position as the proper response for a Catholic judge to take with respect to abortion or the death penalty.”

https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/potential-nominee-profile-amy-coney-barrett/

Can't wait for her book, "Jesus is the Speaker of MY House"

@ Karl - okay! you've already gotten there, but yeah basically my rejoinder would be that you didn't actually end up showing "a 6-3 conservative court for the forseeable future, and possible a 5-4 majority for another 20-30 years." but the scenario was worth it anyway. a quibble: you don't game out the Senate, which i respect because that would be even more absurd fanfic work, but it's worth allowing at least dice-roll possibilities that the Dems control the Senate during your Republican admins, AND that they stand firm against prematurely ghoulish ideologues like Sleve McDichael, whose pasty-faced appearance and hot-mic comments during the nominations process turn the public against him. i would not put money on that chance myself, but it's at least possible.

also though, a fair bit hinges on that first d10 roll and some choices about the EVENTS - suppose Biden rolls a 6 in 2024, and is re-elected to a foggy but popular second term, his "Reagan in the late 80s" zone, AND ALSO that during that term, Thomas has a health scare and decides to retire. i don't know that the odds are so heavily stacked against something like that.

obviously in that event, Biden's replacement pick would be the mushy, not-all-that liberal Rey McSriff (48), a former bank-industry lobbyist, seen as a move back in the direction of racial and gender diversity on the court who will at least be a reliable liberal vote in civil-rights and abortion cases.

so in january 2029, we've got:

roberts is 74
alito is 79
gorsuch is 62
the golden boy is 64
barrett is 57

kagan is 69
willie dustice is 58
bobsun dognutt is 50
rey mcsriff is 50

eight years of the biden administration have left many festering wounds unaddressed, but thankfully the republican "gold team" have been mostly braying in the margins without control of either congress or the executive to formally empower them. on the other hand, in the absence of the Cotton presidency, World War III has not happened, but let's say AOC wins in 2028 anyway. why not?!

thus, following B.K.'s horrible death in 2031, AOC's super left-wing appointee is able to remain in office. you didn't name them but it's pretty obvious you had Shown Furcotte in mind. maybe kagan is worried enough about the next election, and spooked by what is by then a Sunday-morning-show conventional wisdom about "the Tragedy of Ginsburg," that she retires too. by this point AOC is not fucking around at all and appoints millennial twitter SJW Raul Chamgerlain, 44. if AOC goes on to win a second term and also grabs the Alito seat, then in 2035 we have:

roberts is 80
gorsuch is 68
barrett is 63

raul chamgerlain is 49
willie dustice is 64
bobsun dognutt is 56
rey mcscriff is 56
shown furcotte is 53
todd bonzalez is 50

... and our biggest problem is that sometimes McSriff aligns with the conservatives to dissent in 5-4 corporate-law decisions, and we see a lot of online left grousing about how Biden wasted a pick on her.

now yes, i admit........... this depends on the democrats winning four straight national elections. IMPOSSIBLE you say? or merely... improbable???! depends how much faith you put in changing demographics etc. but if none of the Dem-appointed justices die in office, they can also afford to lose one of those elections! because it might be that the Republicans can only replace Thomas or Alito with McDichael or Dorque, giving them an edge in age but not a leg up in the balance of the court.

todd bonzalez makes history as the first male latino justice

is there a relevant quote linking Barrett's sect to The Handmaid's Tale?

there must be. ominous lord, truth is stranger than fiction

xp

doc casino, first of all, obviously i had Shown Furcotte in mind. but secondly, the rest of your scenario seems plausible!

obviously gaming it out like that is a goof, but i did actually learn a few things. or maybe not. i feel like just laying out their ages, combined with the fact that they have lifetime appointments, explains 99% of the game:

christmas near-future:

roberts is 65
thomas is 72
alito is 70
gorsuch is 53
the golden boy is 55
barrett is 48

breyer is 82
sotomayor is 66
kagan is 60

that there is a stacked deck, combined with republican weakness (in terms of what we might expect, possibly overoptimistically, from their presidential chances for the next few decades after elevating a white supremacist fascist to the presidency and then ripping the country to shreds in an attempt to keep him there). even with a couple 2-term democratic administrations in a row, through 2036, there is still a decent chance that at least 5 or even all 6 of the conservative majority stays right where they are, their ass-molds worn deep

in unrelated news, just before i fell asleep face down on the couch last night, i ran across a disturbing headline about increasing the maximum human lifespans beyond its current soft limit of 125. apparently the consensus is that it will soon (10 years?) be possible to extend human lifespans using genetic modifiers, physical devices, and secret codes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension jfc

agreed, it's a useful exercise to grasp exactly how much the age advantage of the GWB and DJT appointees presses on into the future. but also, focusing too much on that just takes us into a zone of gloom, so unless it's directly useful for motivating present-day action and the long-term fight, i think it's also useful to bear in mind all the ways that the scenario could suddenly break down. nobody saw Scalia's death coming, for example, even though he was 79. that ended up working out horribly for the cause of justice and freedom, but it could have gone differently. so long as our rights are subject to these bizarre matters of fate and circumstance, we may as well remind ourselves that there are ways the probabilistic parts could break our way.

and the stacked deck there does look better the moment Biden can replace Breyer, which i think we all do need to be praying for (or whatever equivalent practice).

and... all these scenarios also presume a successful barrett confirmation. tbh, i'm pretty doom-and-gloom about that, seems like there's no reason to think it won't happen. but it's still probably not good for my head to already accept her as a solid number until 2049 or w/e. like if i'm driving myself crazy with all the bad things that have already happened, and the ones that could probably happen, and the ones that are near-certainties, that's a lot to do to my head, if i'm not also considering the good equivalents of all of those things.

there's also some non-zero chance that, in the event that a Democrat wins the presidential race four times in a row and this permanent 5-4 Court keeps shutting down every exciting thing the people are turning out to vote for, then a mandate for court-packing develops much much more quickly than we might expect right now.

so long as our rights are subject to these bizarre matters of fate and circumstance, we may as well remind ourselves that there are ways the probabilistic parts could break our way.

otm

i know that's not a convincing or comforting thought for everyone, but to me that really is what gives me hope

NEW: Senate Democrats say they will press President Trump’s SCOTUS nominee to commit to recuse herself if the justices hear a case that could impact the outcome of the fall elections, @mkraju reports.

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) September 25, 2020

That seems a little dumb

I mean it makes sense but they'd still have a 5-3 advantage anyway

"Will you commit to not doing the exact thing you were hired for" is a dumb question

and... all these scenarios also presume a successful barrett confirmation. tbh, i'm pretty doom-and-gloom about that, seems like there's no reason to think it won't happen

i will continue to return to my dumb "we simulate the future and then experience it in real time, somehow diminished, as something that was already familiar" theory, until someone or something convinces me that it's not accurate. in that line of thinking, you can already see the barrett confirmation and how it happens. i already saw a headline, last night, talking about how barrett was confirmed in October. i looked at the calendar and it was september 25th, then re-read the headline and it still said that she was confirmed in October, past tense. i can't remember where i saw it, and i had a socially distanced hangout with a friend last night and got way too drunk. but still, it was there all the same.

that was just a drunken horror, but i woke up today and it's still there. the republicans have the votes. 2 have been allowed to deviate (murkowski and collins), which just so happens to allow exactly enough remaining republicans to unilaterally install barrett. what a coincidence. this outcome has already been focus-grouped on a national scale - it turns out that most republicans think it's a great idea, most democrats think it's a bad idea, and the majority of "independents" think it's a bad idea. it sounds like most ideas these days. so they'll do it, because they can.

we're currently simulating the outraged response, right now. at least, i am. and then, when it happens, it won't be the first time.

---

^i think all of that is a very bad way to go about thinking about life, believe it or not. but that's what i see happening over and over, lately.

xpost they're not asking her to not be a justice, they're saying 'Hey, you were literally just nominated by one of the President candidates in this election 5 minutes before the election, maybe it's a conflict of interest for you ruling on a case challenging his results".

But this is the primary reason they are in such a rush. If she can't guarantee to hand over the election, it's pointless for Trump. Surely he already told her she needs to deliver that vote, or there would be a different pick.

lol of course it's not going to actually happen but would you rather the Democrats not try it first so that they can frame it as "Justice Coney Barrett refused to recuse, she and Trump win, while Americans lose!"

I mean, compared to other things they should be trying, this is VERY low on my list of importance and I wouldn't want it to take the place of promising to pack the fuck out of courts, but we're kinda fucked unless someone has a McCain surprise during the vote.

Those notes sound like the "when a mommy and daddy love each other very much" of Internet porn explanations.

Oh no, I just read a George Will editorial and another one by someone else in the Washington Post both dismissing the Kagan dissent. They claim that the Voting Rights Act was simply about allowing Black people to vote (and that Black people now have that), and not about having a chance for Black or Black supported candidates to win elections, or for Black people having a role in the creation of districts or redistricting. They also push the Alito view that partisan gerrymandering by white Republicans is just simply "politics" and is not based at all on race.

Which is total nonsense, especially when you factor in the 1982 law that reinforced it. Protecting minority representation has been the understanding and the practice under the VRA, as reinforced by court rulings up and down including at the Supreme Court. Now the racists are all running to say that white folks in the South have been disenfranchised under the VRA, even white officials still hold most of the elected positions. It really is up-is-down time. Different parts of the Trump era recall different bad periods of history, but this feels very Compromise of 1876, or Plessy v. Ferguson. The federal courts just totally abandoning protection of minority rights.

Justice Alito has entered a brief, administrative stay in the Louisiana Mifepristone case, until May 11 to allow for briefing. The ultra-right wing 5th Circuit had banned the delivery of Mifepristone via the mail in the 5th Circuit.

On Bluesky legal commenter Steve Vladeck wrote :

One of the most amusingly petty things Justice Alito does is to put deadlines on administrative stays *only* when he is deeply *unsympathetic* to the applicants.

He did it in the 2023 mife case and the 2024 SB4 immigration case; and he did it today.

In all other cases, his stays are indefinite:

In other Supreme Court news , Justice Gorsuch was on Fox & Friends touting his new book Heroes of 1776 that includes his take on the religious roots of the US. Somehow not mentioned is his vote against the Voting Rights Act

https://bsky.app/profile/douglindner.bsky.social/post/3mkzxpkprqc2d

https://bsky.app/profile/akalhan.bsky.social/post/3mlcqi2nxt227

Some things are hard to laugh at

Sez you!

Some things are hard to laugh at

yes mcsweeney’s is rarely funny

https://bsky.app/profile/akalhan.bsky.social/post/3mlcqi2nxt227

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 8, 2026 1:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This author has chosen to make their posts visible only to people who are signed in.

i need to know how hard this is to laugh at

the usual borowitz level humor from mcsweeney’s

a sharp but quiet exhalation of warm air from the nostrils, expressing mild amusement: "hmph!"

This author has chosen to make their posts visible only to people who are signed in.

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Saturday, May 9, 2026 1:16 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think that means you need to make an account

Borowitz sucked, Hague level

I think that means you need to make an account

― k3vin k., Saturday, May 9, 2026 10:19 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If I want to read the posts. I stopped using imgur for British posters here, don't see why it's too much to ask for things that are shared to be accessible 2 all

you don't want to read jokes about the U.S. Supreme Court.

Agreed with Cattedrale, very weird attitude people have about this issue.

prepare to have your sides split:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/excerpts-from-chief-justice-john-roberts-high-school-english-essays

fully 50% of the other "comedic" pieces are about being a new parent

i dont know mcsweeneys much but arent all those people like 60 y/o

their humor is

well, fuck. this corrupt court isnt even trying to appear ashamed of this bullshit.

Why would they be ashamed? They are achieving everything their conservative sugar daddies ever wanted.

indeed, and they have been, and will continue to be, handsomely rewarded

https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisgeidner/p/scotus-majority-gives-alabama-gop?r=2ck8a&utm_medium=ios

Supreme Court in unsigned majority order over objections of signed liberal dissent lets Alabama use a district gerrymandering plan that lower courts had found intentionally violated the 14th amendment as well as the Voting Rights Act. Also Supreme Court did this action while voting is already in process ( as they recently did in Louisiana case as well) despite earlier Purcell court holding saying they shouldn’t intervene like this around election time. Dissent is especially annoyed at unsigned majority failure to address the 14th amendment intention violation here .

Why the fuck does Trump have access to SCOTUS over a civil case that has NOTHING to do with his time in office? fucking bullshit... I want SCOTUS to rule on my 1990 fine for urinating in public

A federal appeals court has ruled that Donald Trump will not have to pay the $83.3m defamation award to writer E Jean Carroll until the US supreme court either reviews the case or rejects an appeal.

The second US circuit court of appeals in New York issued the order on Monday, granting a request by the president’s lawyers to delay the payment while he seeks supreme court review.

Hideous.

I hope he dies soon, his estate loses the case and Carroll snatches the money away from his fuckhole children.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a widely used abortion medication could continue to be prescribed by telehealth and sent to patients by mail.

Two manufacturers of mifepristone had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit restricted access to the medication.

The Supreme Court’s brief order means that the Fifth Circuit’s decision will remain blocked, perhaps for months, while litigation continues in the lower courts. The issue could eventually return to the high court.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the two most conservative justices, dissented.

The Fifth Circuit ruled on May 1, in response to a lawsuit filed by the State of Louisiana seeking to reimpose a requirement that patients obtain the medication only after seeing a provider in person. The F.D.A. first lifted that regulation in 2021, making it possible for people in Louisiana and other states with strict abortion bans to receive the pills through the mail….

From NY Times

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the two most conservative justices, dissented.

fuck you!!!

coupla dudes who very much shoulda been aborted

From Mark J Stern bluesky:

More fallout from Callais: SCOTUS wipes out two decisions involving the rights of private plaintiffs (rather than the DOJ) to bring a claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. KBJ dissents.

These are less important now that Section 2 has been gutted... But if SCOTUS holds that private plaintiffs can't enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, then it would mean that ONLY Trump's Justice Department can do so.

KBJ is objectively correct in dissent: Callais didn't address this question at all, so today's decisions are inexplicable and strange.

Only inexplicable or strange if you expect some sort of legal process, which the Supreme Court has ceased to be.

there's this one now as well

The Supreme Court on Thursday let stand an appeals court decision that barred Alabama from executing a man that lower courts found is likely intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, took the unusual step of dismissing an appeal, filed by Alabama, after it heard arguments in the case. A lower court decision barring the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith will stand, and the Supreme Court will save for another day the questions about intellectual disability that the appeal raised.

Four justices dissented from the decision: Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Usha Vance who had clerked for Justice Roberts brought her husband the VP to a private dinner with Roberts and his former clerks. Yes , the Trump admin has ongoing cases with this Court and this is ethically troubling, but Republicans don’t care.

somehow i didnt know that connection, but i’m now pretty q anon, they all know each other are in cahoots and corrupt as fuck.

Somehow Amy Chua is behind it all

Thomas, joined by Alito, dissents from SCOTUS' refusal to consider Florida's legal attack on California and Washington for policies providing commercial truck driver's licenses "to illegal aliens who cannot read English." (California and Washington do not have these policies.)

Mark Joseph Stern: It's true that, from time to time, California and Washington have inadvertently given commercial driver's licenses to immigrations who lack work authorization and don't speak English. Guess which other state has, too? Florida. Which is suing CA and WA over this.

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito: California's issuance of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants would justify Florida going to war with California if they weren't part of the same country.

https://bsky.app/profile/joedudekjd.bsky.social/post/3mmr5auxt3s2z

Thomas and Alito are so wrapped up in right-wing Fox news bubble they ignore facts presented in the case regarding immigrant truck drivers in red state Florida

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito: California's issuance of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants would justify Florida going to war with California if they weren't part of the same country.

Reminds me of that time two American territories went to war with one another

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/The_Texas-Israeli_War-_1999.jpg

xp

they ignore it because the only law for them is the law of conservative cultural grievances

Yep

https://www.rawstory.com/samuel-alito-conflict-of-interest/

Samuel Alito's son Phillip apparently works at Treasury as a lawyer there now, but Treasury is keeping it low profile, and his Dad didn't think it was worth acknowledging regarding a case involving Treasury .

Tuesday night Republican racism at work on the shadow docket. Sotomayor wrote a dissent

BREAKING: In an unsigned, per curiam opinion on the shadow docket, the SCOTUS conservatives allow Alabama to use a congressional map held repeatedly by a lower court to have been enacted with discriminatory intent.- Chris Geidner on Bluesky

This heinous ruling confirms a worst-case-scenario reading of Callais as an all-purpose shield for racist lawmakers who want to gerrymander Black communities into electoral oblivion. And it’s outrageously partisan—a totally unprincipled gift to the GOP - Mark Joseph Stern on Bluesky

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a1314_7m58.pdf

part of dissent -

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly
election, held under a tried-and-tested congressional map
that protects Black Alabamians’ right to vote and with
which all voters, elections officials, and candidates alike are
familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under
a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally
discriminates against Black Alabamians, that Alabama
adopted in unashamed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this Court, and that will require officials
to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands
of voters in just days at best, a task that Alabama previously represented would take months.
The majority chooses the second path and disregards
both democratic values and the rule of law. I respectfully
dissent.
I
This is now the third time these cases have come before
the Court. See Merrill v. Milligan, 595 U. S. ___ (2022); Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1 (2023); Allen v. Caster, 608 U. S.
___ (2026). Each turn reveals just how unconscionable the
Court’s action is today.

Sotomayor dissent for the 3 liberal Justices concludes:

Weeks ago, I warned that vacating the District Court’s
injunction in these cases would “unleash chaos and . . . confuse voters.” Caster, 608 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion)
(slip op., at 4). Nevertheless, the Court forged ahead. Now
the Court is squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it
has caused and the harm it has wrought. Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos. Because I choose to defend the
rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate
equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.

The majority’s opinion accompanying the ruling is astounding, and in fact is potentially just as significant as Callais despite its brevity and tentative nature given that it is a shadow docket ruling.

Building upon J Alito’s opinion in Abbott v. Perez, there’s now practically an unrebuttable presumption that a legislature is acting in good faith and therefore is not acting in a racially discriminatory way so long as the state can assert some pretextual nonracial reason for enacting its plan

- Rick Hasen, UCLA law Professor from his thread on Bluesky regarding the Alabama case shadow docket decision tonight

The usual Supreme Court observers are decrying that Alabama shadow court decision from last night I mentioned above but it's gotten lost in the news cycle with elections, Iran, Lebanon, etc

Yeah that decision ratified or solidified the Callais decision, more or less saying there is almost no set of facts that you could use to assert racial discrimination in districting short of the N-word being written into the law or something. The district court that found the Alabama map plainly discriminatory even in light of the Callais ruling was made up of two Trump appointees and a Democratic appointee. These were conservative white Alabama judges, and SCOTUS was still like "Nah."