Here's a thing to fuel your nightmares all the way through Halloween: Trump reshaping the Supreme Court. He's absolutely giddy at the prospect that by the end of his first term, he might have four Supreme Court appointments. One—Neil Gorsuch—is already done. Anthony Kennedy, he predicts, will retire? The others, he has reportedly told insiders?
"Ok," one source told Trump, "so that's two. Who are the others?"
"Ginsburg," Trump replied. "What does she weigh? 60 pounds?"
"Who's the fourth?" the source asked.
"Sotomayor," Trump said, referring to the relatively recently-appointed Obama justice, whose name is rarely, if ever, mentioned in speculation about the next justice to be replaced. "Her health," Trump explained. "No good. Diabetes."
"It's all about the numbers for him," one source told Axios. And he's doing his level worst to rack up those numbers.
President Donald Trump has nominated 50 candidates to lifetime appointments to the federal bench — including a man who asserted transgender children were evidence of "Satan’s plan," one deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association and a handful of prolific bloggers. […]
"The judge story is an untold story," Trump said Monday at a news conference with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "When you think about it, Mitch and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge, but 40 years out."
So there's your nightmares laid out for the remainder of your existence. Trump—and Republican Senate leaders—aren't even giving lip service to the idea that men and women in line for a lifetime appointment should be actually qualified. The only qualifications they need are a willingness to vow obeisance to the NRA and the Koch brothers and the Susan B. Anthony Society and every extremist group who would be happy dispense with every constitutional amendment but the Second.
There really is nothing more important in our political, social life, than the courts. Every aspect of our lives—the most personal life and health decision 50 percent of the population will make, our clean air and water, our right to not be mowed down by a maniac with assault weapons, or to have clean air to breathe and water to drink and a planet to live out our lives on—is dependent upon a federal judiciary which would safeguard it. There's only one option for Democrats. Stop as many of his horror shows as they can, by whatever means they must.