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‘Crisis’: Expert Calls SCOTUS ‘Illegitimate’ and Warns Its ‘Judicial Terrorists’ Are a ‘Threat to Democracy’
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.
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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.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito delivered the keynote address last week at the 2022 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in Rome. #ReligiousLiberty2022
Read a summary of his remarks and watch a video of his full speech here: https://t.co/KuCkdBWbHa pic.twitter.com/uU2pRYFqkt
— Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative (@NDLawRLI) July 28, 2022
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.
“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.”
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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U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of pepper-spraying her in her face while she was at a local Tucson, Arizona restaurant.
Rep. Grijalva in a video on social media said she saw about 40 mostly-masked ICE agents at a restaurant she frequents weekly.
The agents were “in several vehicles that the community had stopped right here, right in the middle of the street, because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”
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She said that the community was “protecting their people” when she was “sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent,” and “pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive.”
“I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she continued. “So, once I introduced myself, once I did, I assumed that it would be a little calmer, but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful, and I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”
Congresswoman Grijalva said she saw “people directly sprayed,” including “members of our press” and staff members.
She blasted President Donald Trump, saying that he “has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution — they’re literally disappearing people from the streets.”
Critics slammed the agents’ action.
READ MORE: Trump: Democrats Are Plotting ‘Total Obliteration’ of Supreme Court
U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote that Rep. Grijalva “was doing her job, standing up for her community.”
“Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period,” he added.
“This is unacceptable and outrageous,” observed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. “Enforcing the rule [of] law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “quite the beginning for Grijalva, who wasn’t seated for weeks, [cast] the decisive vote to get the Epstein files, and now has apparently been pepper sprayed in the face by immigration agents.”
Also calling the action “outrageous,” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote: “We are Members of Congress with oversight authority of ICE. Rep Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents. ICE is completely lawless.”
“First they tackle a sitting Senator,” noted U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). “Now they’re pepper spraying a Representative. It’s clear ICE is spinning out of control. We will hold the agency accountable.”
ICE just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson – a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years.
When I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed-aside and pepper sprayed. pic.twitter.com/gPx0p3IXP2
— Rep. Adelita Grijalva (@Rep_Grijalva) December 5, 2025
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Image via Reuters
A well-known conservative commentator has a warning for the Republican Party: take action now or face a repeat of the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost 41 House seats in a landslide. And this time, he says, the Senate could go to the Democrats as well.
Award-winning writer and journalist Bernard Goldberg reminded readers at The Hill that in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, “Republicans got walloped … and a good chunk of that had President Trump’s name written all over it.”
Trump’s “approval ratings were in the low 40s, and independents — the folks who usually decide elections — had seen enough. They broke hard for the Democrats,” Goldberg noted. “Now here we are, staring down 2026, and you can almost hear history clearing its throat, getting ready to repeat itself.”
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Goldberg noted that Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term.
“Among Republicans, his support dropped from 91 percent right after the 2024 election to 84 percent last month. Among independents, it cratered — from 42 percent to just 25 percent.”
“If the trend continues,” he warned, “Republicans could be headed for another blue wave — and this time, it could wash away not just the House majority, but control of the Senate too.”
Why?
“It’s the economy — still,” he wrote.
“Trump is out there saying the economy is humming. Biden said the same thing before him. But voters didn’t buy it then, and they’re not buying it now. Why? Because it’s not GDP numbers that matter. It’s affordability,” Goldberg noted.
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That’s a word that President Trump continues to call a “con job,” while his own administration tries to claim he is focused on.
He pointed to a Karl Rove Wall Street Journal column and wrote: “The Republicans may have ‘avoided disaster’ in Tennessee, but the result should be a wake-up call for Republicans. He’s right.”
Goldberg asked: “will anyone in the Republican Party actually pick up the phone?”
“Because if Republicans don’t wake up — and fast — they’re going to find out the hard way what happens when you keep rerunning the same movie and expecting a different ending. To lose in 2026, all they have to do is nothing. And right now, that’s pretty much what they’re doing.”
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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.
Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.
“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”
READ MORE: White House Touts Trump’s ‘Track Record’ on Affordability
On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”
“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.
Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.
“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.
“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”
Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.
READ MORE: Trump’s Ballroom Seen as ‘Key Evidence’ He’s Out of Touch as Cost of Living Spikes
Image via Reuters
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