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Why aren't most Republicans doing something to curtail all of the damage Donald Trump is to their brand, if not to the nation and globe? Because they're playing the long game, as they have for decades. This is the culmination of their decades of work to take over local, then state, then federal government. They created a bench of local politicians who became state elected officials who gerrymandered their states to take over congress. They've cheated their way to the top, to the White House and have their end goal in their grasp—the complete take over of the federal judiciary. That's the ultimate prize because they have to have the courts. An independent judiciary is the only thing standing in the way of totally remaking government and society for the kleptocrats.
Senate Republicans lied and cheated to get Trump's man on the Supreme Court by refusing for nearly a year to even allow a hearing for President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland. And they're poised to fill the courts within the next year, including by trying to create hundreds of new seats to overwhelm the current courts.
If conservatives get their way, President Trump will add twice as many lifetime members to the federal judiciary in the next 12 months (650) as Barack Obama named in eight years (325). American law will never be the same. [...]
Trump is wasting no time in filling the 103 judicial vacancies he inherited. In the first nine months of Obama’s tenure, he nominated 20 judges to the federal trial and appellate courts; in Trump’s first nine months, he named 58. Senate Republicans are racing these nominees through confirmation; last week, breaking a 100-year-old tradition, they eliminated the “blue slip” rule that allowed home-state senators to object to particularly problematic nominees. The rush to Trumpify the judiciary includes nominees rated unqualified by the American Bar Association, nominees with outrageously conservative views and nominees significantly younger (and, therefore, likely to serve longer) than those of previous presidents. As a result, by sometime next year, 1 in 8 cases filed in federal court will be heard by a judge picked by Trump. Many of these judges will likely still be serving in 2050. [...]
Enter the next element of the court-packing turducken: a new plan written by the crafty co-founder of the Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi. In a paper that deserves credit for its transparency (it features a section titled “Undoing President Barack Obama’s Judicial Legacy”), Calabresi proposes to pack the federal courts with a “minimum” of 260 — and possibly as many as 447—newly created judicial positions. Under this plan, the 228-year-old federal judiciary would increase—in a single year—by 30 to 50 percent.
They want this done in the next 12 months—hundreds of new judges by the end of 2018, just in case Republicans lose the majority in the Senate and confirmations slow to a trickle, as they did under Obama. This is explicitly stated in the Calabresi paper: “President Trump and the Republican Senate will need to fill all of these new judgeships in 2018, before the next session of Congress.” If this plan works, the federal judiciary will have almost as many Trump judges as the previous 9 presidents’ judges combined. Trump’s almost completely white and male picks—many of whom are young—would claw back the diversification of the judiciary of the last few decades.
But that’s not even the end of the plan. Calibresi also proposes “that Congress abolish 158 administrative law judgeships in federal regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission, and replace these impartial fact-finders with a new corps of 158 Trump-selected judges who—unlike current administrative law judges—would serve for life.” It’s not enough to cripple these agencies by putting in cabinet officials whose main job is to dismantle them—they need to remove this check on them.
Calibresi is ambitious—he wants Republicans to do this in the tax cuts bill that they can pass with just 51 votes. This is an existential threat to our democracy—every horrible thing Trump does can at least still be fought in the courts, but this plan would end that. Even were Democrats to take back Congress in 2018, if this is already done Trump can trample our rights unfettered.
It’d be nice to think that Calibresi and the Federalist Society are just a bunch of kooks that the Republicans will wave off. Don’t think that. Four sitting members of the Supreme Court—Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—are either members of or were approved by the Federalist Society. They provide the roadmap that elected Republicans follow. As of now, every Republican has been a rubber stamp for Trump’s judicial nominees.
If McConnell even hints at doing this, Senate Democrats have no choice. They’ve got to shut the whole damn thing down. No votes on anything.