Democrats must make reforming the corrupt GOP Supreme Court a top priority!

The Court is corruptly using the shadow docket to help Trump!

There have been numerous times during the first ten months of the Trump regime that we cheered when federal judges—even those appointed by Republican presidents--stopped Donald Trump from taking what was clearly unconstitutional and illegal actions. Those moments gave us hope that the system of checks and balances was actually working to prevent Trump from becoming the king that he and his regime want to see.

But then—weeks or even just days later—the GOP controlled Supreme Court would overrule those decisions—often using the secretive “shadow docket.” And in many instances, the GOP majority would not even issue an opinion as to why they were lifting stays allowing Trump to inflict irreparable harm on people, agencies and our nation. Potentially worse, the Supreme Court is now poised to gut what is left of the Voting Rights Act which will empower the GOP to erase up to 19 seats held by Black Democratic members of Congress.

That is why Democrats running in 2028 must make reforming this corrupt “Court” one of their top priorities. To be blunt: If a Democratic candidate for President or Congress will not commit to reforming the Supreme Court, they are telling us they are okay with this runaway “court” undermining our freedoms and our democratic Republic.

Reforming the Supreme Court became an issue even in the 2020 race for President. Shortly after being sworn in, President Biden appointed a presidential commission to review court reform--but nothing came from it.

The clamor to reform the Supreme Court, however, grew in 2022 on as the Republican justices reversed Roe v. Wade, overturned state laws to protect people from gun violence, protected in your face corruption by Justice Clarence Thomas and granted Trump immunity for his crimes. In fact, in July 2024, Biden—who had already dropped out of the race—issued a call for wide ranging Supreme Court reform including term limits and binding ethics rules.

The need for such reform is even greater today as we’ve seen the GOP Supreme Court rule in Trump’s favor over and over in the first ten months—empowering him to grab more power. And the reason this has happened so often is because the Supreme Court has granted request after request by Trump’s regime to hear cases on what is known as the “shadow docket.”

These are not the typical cases the Court announces in advance they will be considering--which comes with full legal briefing and oral argument. Rather the “shadow docket” is an expedited process that happens with no public notice or oral argument. It’s more akin to the “Star Chamber” of 1400’s England where the secretive and corrupt court would do the King’s bidding with no checks on their power.

To give you some perspective on how often Trump has used the shadow docket, Obama and Bush made only eight requests combined to the Supreme Court to hear cases via the shadow docket in 16 years. Under Biden, his administration made 19 requests in four years—or about five per year.

How many has Trump’s regime made in just ten months? Twenty-two. Yep, more than Biden did in four years. Worse, the GOP Supreme Court justices have been only to happy to approve Trump’s requests to hear these cases in an expedited, secretive fashion.

Of these 22 cases, how many times has the GOP Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump either in full or in part? Nineteen—yes, 19 out of 22 or nearly 90% in favor of Trump. That is a statistical impossibility if the justices were adhering to the law—especially given so many GOP appointed judges in the lower courts had ruled against Trump. And in seven of these cases, the GOP justices gave us no reasoning at all for why they ruled for Trump—just like the Star Chambers of the 1400’s.

While the Court’s shadow docket decisions are typically not a final ruling on the legal merits, the real-world impact of the GOP justices lifting injunctions is often catastrophic. Some of the most glaring examples over the past few months include the Supreme Court allowing Trump’s ICE agents to target people based on their race or language. In other words, the GOP Supreme Court legalized racial profiling. That prompted Justice Sotomayor to write in her dissent, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost.”

In another shadow docket ruling, the right-wing justices reversed a lower court injunction allowing Trump to fire a member of the FTC without cause. That ruling led to Justice Kagan’s dissent—joined by the other two liberal members—where she wrote that, the “shadow docket” is increasingly being used by the GOP justices “to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers.”

The list goes on of the GOP justices over the objections of the three liberal justices lifting stays that enabled Trump to end funding to programs, deport people, fire people in violation of federal law and more. As Justice Jackson put it in her dissent in the birthright citizenship case, the continued use of the shadow docket by “the Court has cleared a path for the Executive to choose law-free action at this perilous moment for our Constitution — right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints.”

And it’s not just the shadow docket cases, this GOP court has consistently delivered win after win to the Republican party in recent years disguised as legal opinions. You don’t need a law degree to predict what the Supreme Court will do. Just look at the GOP’s position and that is what these so-called GOP justices will decide.

That is why we must make taking control of the Supreme Court a goal just like we talk about winning back the Senate and House. All three are simply political institutions.

Keep in mind that even if Democrats win the White House, Senate and House in 2028 and pass laws to address issues from big money in politics to guaranteeing women reproductive freedom to banning racial profiling, this GOP court will strike it down. That is unless the court is reformed.

Between now and the 2028 presidential election, many issues will pop up that demand attention. But reforming the Supreme Court—from adding seats to term limits and more—must remain a priority. If not these six GOP Justices will continue to wield unchecked power to deliver the GOP agenda for decades to come!

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