Elie Mystal: What Kind of Damage Will the Supreme Court Inflict This Term? [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-2024-term-preview/


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To understand the ambitions of the conservative majority, look no farther than Project 2025, which was cooked up by some of the same people who engineered the current court.

The Supreme Court returns from its summer vacation on October 7, four weeks and one day before the November 5 general election. The court’s fingerprints (as well as the fingerprints of the wealthy Republican donors who likely paid for some of the justices’ summer vacations) are already all over the upcoming election. Earlier this year, the court ensured Donald Trump a spot on the ballot when it ruled against an attempt to prevent him from running for president because of his participation in an insurrection against the government; then, in July, the Republican justices granted Trump “absolute immunity” for crimes committed as part of his “official duties,” likely ensuring that he will never face accountability for his worst actions. Thanks to these rulings, Trump can legally run for an office he previously attempted to steal.

Given the court’s demonstrated eagerness to put its thumb on the scale for Trump before the election, we can only imagine what it will do to help him after the election. Trump could lose by millions in the popular vote and by 40 votes in the Electoral College, but if he can get just five Supreme Court justices to rule in his favor, none of those votes will matter. The court will invest him with the power to usher in an age of authoritarianism and permanent one-party rule.

Still, even if Kamala Harris does manage to clear every hurdle to the presidency—if she manages to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College, and those votes are honored—it is important to understand that the Supreme Court’s dread work of dismantling democracy and setting back the rights of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community to the prevailing standards of 1859 will continue apace. The deck has been stacked, and the court’s six conservative justices are not going to let this opportunity go to waste. They have an agenda—a mandate, you could say—and it looks a lot like the one that’s gotten a lot of attention in recent months: Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the conservative plan to take over the federal government and remake the executive branch in a Christofacist image should Trump win.

Project 2025 is the work of the Heritage Foundation. So, in many ways, is the current Supreme Court. Alongside the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation has been one of the big players determining which Republicans end up on the nation’s highest court. For over 50 years, it has worked to pack the judiciary with extremist Republican judges in an attempt to wipe out the civil and social progress of the 20th and early 21st centuries. And it has largely succeeded.

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