Trump’s Judges Are Just Getting Started

Trump’s Judges Are Just Getting Started

On this week’s episode of The Time of Monsters, Linda Hirshman discusses how the reactionary courts could block progressive governance.

Jeet Heer
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

On September 12, Politico noted that Trump’s appointed judges were “on a tear” and listed “a flurry of controversial decisions by Trump judges in recent months that have been criticized as out of step with longstanding legal principles.” These decisions touched on everything from abortion, to Trump’s handling of classified documents to voting rights. Politico’s reporting was backed up by a strong analysis of the problem of Trump’s judges by New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.

The courts are now a bastion of reactionary activism. The are pushing to not just roll back settled rights but also hamstring the administrative state. To take up this topic, I talked to Linda Hirshman, a former law professor and author of many books on the struggle for civil rights by women, African Americans, and LGBTQ people. Her most recent book is The Color of Abolition. As always, Linda brings an incisive mind to the issues at hand.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

Support independent journalism that does not fall in line

Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth. 

The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more. 

But this journalism is possible only with your support.

This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?

Jeet Heer Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


Ad Policy
x