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‘Crisis’: Expert Calls SCOTUS ‘Illegitimate’ and Warns Its ‘Judicial Terrorists’ Are a ‘Threat to Democracy’

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Well-known political expert, author, journalist, and CEO David Rothkopf is blasting conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court after their disastrous rulings last week, warning the Court is now a “threat to democracy” and suggesting some justices should be “considered” for impeachment.

Rothkopf, also a national security and foreign policy commentator, is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the author at least seven books, including American Resistance.

“Watching debates about Supreme Court here and elsewhere is the latest study in GOP efforts to normalize the unconscionable, the corrupt, and the contra-constitutional. This is a court in which a majority of those on the right took their seats under questionable circumstances,” Rothkopf said at the start of a lengthy thread on Twitter.

“Of them, a cloud of corruption hangs over Thomas & Alito. Kavanaugh took [his] seat despite allegations against him that were not properly investigated. Questions surround his payoff of personal debts. Gorsuch’s ascension is also clouded by questions surrounding Kennedy’s departure,” he says.

READ MORE: ‘Treacherous March of Normalization’: ABC News Slammed for ‘Puff Piece’ Profile on Moms for Liberty

Justice Clarence Thomas has been under fire for months over his relationship with billionaire GOP donor and businessman Harlan Crow, who reportedly has had business before the high court. The far-right wing justice and his wife, Ginni Thomas, (who has been accused of working to undermine the 2020 presidential election results,) may have received gifts totaling over $1 million in luxury vacations, travel, food, lodging, and clothing. Experts say Thomas was required to disclose portions of those gifts and that he did not.

Justice Samuel Alito is also the beneficiary of luxury travel, including a fishing trip to Alaska courtesy of another billionaire, and a trip to Rome during which he delivered a highly-criticized speech just days after delivering his opinion striking down Roe v. Wade. That trip was reportedly paid for by a religious liberty organization whose leader reportedly bought Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Indiana home.

Indeed, Rothkopf also skewers Justice Barrett, or at least her confirmation.

“Barrett received her seat in a rush to judgment that was unlike any we have ever seen and completely contrary to the way the GOP Senate treated prior Dem nominees (Garland). In the time since the majority took over, they have cast aside one core principle after another,” he observes.

READ MORE: ‘Tyranny’: Legal Expert Says Ruling in Favor of Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination Makes It ‘Impossible’ to Respect Supreme Court

“Stare decisis went out the window. (Precedents were ignored without any sound justification.) Promises to honor past decisions as established law (like Roe) proved worthless. Past claims that the right valued originalism and condemned judicial activism were wholly ignored,” Rothkopf charges.

“When precedent went against them, absurd arguments drawing on ancient and irrelevant legal decisions were used to supersede the clear intent of the framers and decades, sometimes centuries of legal precedent.”

Last week, he says, we saw “a decision on affirmative action that ignored precedent, reality, and justice and contained, in its carve-out for military academies, a sub-decision that refuted the logic of the main opinion. In the case of reversing the Biden student loan decision,” Rothkopf writes, “a brand new doctrine was presented out of whole cloth. The decision regarding the ‘right’ of a website designer to refuse to do work for a ‘gay’ couple was based on both a lie and a hypothetical, should never have been taken on as a case and was grossly wrong on the law,” he adds.

Rothkopf appears to believe the conservative justices will not stop.

“These judges are acting with impunity because they believe a GOP controlled Senate will never challenge them and that a fundamental flaw in the way the Constitution grants power to underpopulated states assures that the document that was created to evolve never will,” he writes.

And he suggests some of the Supreme Court’s justices might need to be impeached.

“They also know that Senate rules essentially mean they can act with impunity despite their wholesale corruption and the fact that several of them should, in all likelihood, be seriously considered for impeachment.”

READ MORE: Sotomayor Slams ‘Embarrassing’ SCOTUS Anti-LGBTQ Decision That Marks ‘Gays and Lesbians for Second-Class Status’

Pointing to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, he adds: “This is, as [she] has said a constitutional crisis. This is an illegitimate, rogue institution that is seeking to reverse decades of progress and impose the will of a white, wealthy, Christian, male, straight minority on the majority of Americans.”

“This is a moment that calls for action on the part of Democrats in power to use their ability to call Senate hearings and to challenge this extremist cluster of judicial terrorists wherever possible. But more than that, it demands absolutely clarity from the voting public,” he says.

Rothkopf warns conservatives in the Court are poised to do even more damage to democracy and the American people.

“Unless Democrats win the presidency, hold and increase their majority in the Senate and retake the House, this tiny band of malevolent and dangerous actors will gut many of the most important provisions of the past century and a half of American law.”

“They will destroy lives and put millions of others at risk. Next year’s election must be in part, about this threat to democracy even as it is also about the threat posed by GOP presidential candidates. Stop. Consider the consequences.”

He warns minority Americans will continue to see their civil rights “stripped” away.

“Consider the basic rights that will be stripped away from women, people of color, our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, voters, and all who believe in the ideals that have guided American leaders as we have struggled to perfect our nation,” he says. “The only people who can save us are you and your fellow voters. The only way to do so is to mobilize, be active, donate to candidates and remain committed to defending our country against the threat posed by the MAGA GOP in our legislature and our judiciary. Starting right now.”

Image: Adam Parent/Shutterstock

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News

Trump: ‘We’re Bringing Back God’

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3 hours ago

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January 23, 2026

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President Donald Trump delivered a forceful message to attendees at the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.

In pre-recorded remarks, the president told the anti-abortion gathering, “under the Trump administration, we’re strongly defending religious liberty, we’re bringing back faith in America.”

“We bringing back God,” Trump declared.

Having praised the end of the constitutional right to abortion, Trump said, “the work to rebuild a culture that supports life continues in every state, every community, and every part of our beautiful land.”

“This is a battle that must be fought, must be won, not only in the corridors of power, but, above all, in the hearts and souls of the people,” he continued, suggesting a desire to end all abortion in the United States.

“We have stopped forced taxpayer funding of abortion at home and abroad, we’re championing faith-based adoption and foster care, and supporting our parents by investing $1,000 into an account that will grow over time for every newborn baby.”

READ MORE: ‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

Vice President JD Vance told attendees, “let the record show you have a vice president who practices what he preaches,” before announcing that he and his wife Usha are expecting their fourth child, as Fox News reported. “And it will be our third baby boy. So, we’ll take whatever prayers you can give. We certainly need them.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also spoke at the rally, declaring that Republican policies “support” American families.

“Republicans are working hard to deliver on the mandate you gave us in the last election, to make it easier than ever before, to raise a family in this great country of ours. And because we know that support for American families doesn’t end at birth, our policies reflect this.”

Critics challenged Johnson’s claim.

Health care activist Melanie D’Arrigo remarked that Republicans offer no universal health care, paid family leave, universal childcare, a living wage as a minimum wage, affordable housing, or tuition-free public college, but, she said, they have rolled back labor laws, gutted food assistance, and deregulated food safety.

READ MORE: Trump Promotes His Triumphal Arch as Millions Face Massive Storm

 

Image via Reuters 

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Trump Promotes His Triumphal Arch as Millions Face Massive Storm

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5 hours ago

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January 23, 2026

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Americans in more than half the country are bracing for “hazardous ice, heavy snow and brutal cold” from a storm that a National Weather Service forecaster has predicted will be “crippling.” A potentially “catastrophic” ice storm is headed for the Southeast, and at least 14 states across the country have already declared a state of emergency.

The “potentially historic, massive winter storm will slam more than half of the United States today, moving east as it brings heavy snow, widespread ice accumulation and dangerous cold,” NBC News reported. “Up to a foot of snow is likely on the northern side of the system from Oklahoma to Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service.”

About 1,300 flights have already been canceled ahead of the storm that is expected to hit 40 states across the nation.

Business Insider reported, “Americans strip store shelves bare as millions brace for a potentially historic storm.”

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Friday morning took the opportunity to mock what he called “Environmental Insurrectionists,” as he asked, “whatever happened to global warming???”

READ MORE: ‘Blitzkrieg Against Public Opinion’: Columnist Calls Trump’s Agenda a ‘Cry for Help’

Hours later, Trump posted to Truth Social artist’s renderings of his Triumphal Arch, which he wants built in Washington, D.C, near the Lincoln Memorial — with a start date of sometime in February. He wants it completed by Independence Day for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.

“It hasn’t started yet. It starts sometime in the next two months. It’ll be great. Everyone loves it,” Trump told Politico in December. “They love the ballroom too. But they love the Triumphal Arch.”

Last month, President Trump revealed what the White House’s top domestic policy goal is. The president shared with attendees at a Sunday holiday party that the “primary thing” for the head of his Domestic Policy Council, Vince Haley, is building Trump’s dream arch in Washington, D.C.

“Vince is unbelievable on policy. And we have a policy thing that’s going to be unbelievable happening,” Trump said of the proposed arch, as The Daily Beast reported.

READ MORE: ‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

“It’s something that is so special. Uh, it will be like the one in, in Paris, but to be honest with you, it blows it away. Blows it away in every way,” Trump said. “And Vince came in one day and his eyes were teeming. I mean, he couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. He saw it and he wanted to do that. That’s your primary thing.”

Critics slammed the president for focusing on his arch while ordinary Americans are struggling.

Patriot Takes, a social media account with nearly half a million followers, blasted the president, sarcastically saying he “is laser focused on things that matter to the American people.”

READ MORE: Sean Duffy’s DC IndyCar Grand Prix Dream Is Stalling
Image via Reuters 

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‘Blitzkrieg Against Public Opinion’: Columnist Calls Trump’s Agenda a ‘Cry for Help’

Published

7 hours ago

on

January 23, 2026

By

President Donald Trump’s coalition is “falling apart,” according to columnist Matt K. Lewis, who writes at The Hill that Trump’s list of accomplishments seems more like “a cry for help.”

Pointing to Trump’s rapid subject-changing, Lewis noted that the president kicked off the new year by invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro.

“From there, things escalated briskly,” he wrote. “He defended an ICE agent who shot and killed a protester in Minneapolis named Renee Good. He threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. He threatened to take Greenland — possibly by force. He threatened to slap tariffs on European allies over Greenland. He suggested his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize justified taking Greenland. And he almost failed to issue any acknowledgment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, waiting until bedtime to do so.”

Lewis says that while somewhere there is a “constituency” for each of these individual actions, “taken together, they resemble a blitzkrieg against public opinion.”

READ MORE: Sean Duffy’s DC IndyCar Grand Prix Dream Is Stalling

He summed up Trump’s low poll numbers and concluded, “America has seen this movie before, has been reminded of how it ends, and is already edging toward the exit.”

So, if the 2024 election held today, it’s “not at all clear” that Trump would win. he said, in part because “Trump’s winning coalition was so sprawling and incoherent that pleasing one group would automatically enrage another.”

So what’s happened in the past year?

“Trump is very good at campaigning and very bad at governing. This explains almost everything that has happened since he took office one year ago this week, including the nation’s rising consumption of Rolaids.”

Disappointment from the “newer members of his coalition” came from “the ultimate realization that Trump’s most electorally appealing promises — such as lowering grocery prices on day one — are never actually going to happen. Indeed, Trump’s policies — tariffs, for example — were almost custom-made to increase grocery prices, which is generally frowned upon by people who eat.”

As it turns out, “Trump’s true superpower … only works when he is not actually in charge.”

READ MORE: ‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

 

Image via Reuters 

 

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