Republicans have turned on judges. Imagine who they would pick for SCOTUS. | Opinion
There is a chance that President Donald Trump will get another Supreme Court pick. Will it be MAGA?
President Donald Trump’s second term has been defined by his disdain for judges telling him no. As a result, his allies are calling for district court judges to be impeached, criticizing conservative justices who go against Trump and even suggesting that the president ignore court orders.
The U.S. Supreme Court and the judiciary were once core pieces of the Republican plans to restore conservative values to this country. But now, judges are criticized when they don’t give Trump whatever he wants.
Here is one reason that matters:
There is a chance that Trump will get the opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court Justice before the end of his term. Justice Clarence Thomas, 76, has his fair share of health concerns. He and Justice Samuel Alito, 74, are aging, making them candidates to step down and allow for a younger justice.
The question is, will Republicans remain committed to originalism, or will they abandon those principles in favor of a justice who is more likely to rule in favor of the MAGA agenda, regardless of what that means for the text of the Constitution? SCOTUS is the only branch of government that MAGA hasn't consumed, and conservatives should worry that Trump will deviate from his first-term SCOTUS nominations.
Trump's team is forgetting what made his judicial picks great
In recent weeks, Justice Amy Coney Barrett has found herself in the crosshairs of the MAGA movement for rulings that have gone against Trump’s agenda. Since her nomination to the Supreme Court, Barrett has remained one of the most independent from the conservative majority. That's not because she's a saboteur. It's because of her originalist interpretation of the Constitution.
The MAGA camp, though, views Barrett as betraying Trump out of a desire to destroy his agenda. Trump has remained quiet about the Supreme Court, likely to preserve his crowning achievement as a conservative president who created the 6-3 majority. However, if they rule against him in upcoming cases, his tirade against America’s judiciary could be elevated to the highest court in the land.
In his first term, Trump's judicial picks were curated very tightly by Leonard Leo at the Federalist Society. As a result, Trump's contributions to the federal judiciary were excellent, and his Supreme Court justice selections are all valuable voices in the court.
However, Politico has reported that this time around, the Federalist Society is not directly involved in the process. Instead, the Trump administration is bringing in a wide array of advisers to find judges who are "battle-tested" on the issues important to the Trump administration.
We see that Republicans have abandoned conservative values in the interest of justifying the MAGA agenda, which has crept into how the GOP sees the judicial arena. The second Trump administration is not a conservative one, but rather one interested in enacting his will by any means necessary.
It's easy to see that this could spill into how Republicans pick their next Supreme Court judge.
Americans should be concerned about the changes within the right's approach to the judiciary. Another Supreme Court justice from Trump is unlikely to meet the same high standard set by his nominations of Justices Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Instead, they will likely be judges who will blindly rule in Trump's favor and concern themselves with the reasoning later.
Republicans are undermining faith in the judicial system
For several years, the left was the primary political force undermining faith in the judiciary. Activists labeled the Supreme Court illegitimate, claimed that the justices were corrupt, and claimed that the institution would blindly rule in favor of Trump.
The Supreme Court reached record-low approval ratings following these attacks from the Democrats, with approval ratings bottoming out at 40%. Now, Republicans are doing that damage.
Trump’s fury toward judges who block his administration’s actions has begun fueling an anti-judiciary movement on the right. When nobody in America trusts the courts, it becomes more likely that politicians will ignore their authority. I hope the Supreme Court doesn't go MAGA.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for Paste BN and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.