Connect with us

News

Loyalty Litmus Test? Trump Allies Quietly Prep SCOTUS Short List

Published

on

Multiple allies close to President Donald Trump are preparing short lists of potential Supreme Court nominees should any of the nine justices retire or pass away. This time, the Trump administration is hoping to ensure none of the self-inflicted errors or challenges it faced during his first term arise again.

Justice Clarence Thomas, widely regarded as the most far-right member of the Court, is 77. Justice Samuel Alito, another staunch conservative, is 75. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor is 71. And Chief Justice John Roberts—who has arguably expanded presidential power more than any other figure in modern judicial history—is 70, and facing mounting scrutiny.

While none are approaching the age of early 20th-century Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who retired at 90, it’s likely that at least one may opt to hang up his or her robe within the next three and a half years.

According to a TIME magazine exclusive, several conservative and right-wing allies have the ear of the Trump administration, even if it is not actively preparing for a vacancy.

READ MORE: Ex-Pence Chief Scorches Tariff Rebates—Likens Them to Soviet-Style Central Planning

The current guidelines for the next Trump Supreme Court nominee appear to favor a jurist in the mold of Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, or the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But according to Benjamin Wittes, the editor of Lawfare, loyalty may rule the day.

“I assume the competition here would be to have shown greatest loyalty to Trump,” Wittes told TIME. “I think one would worry that this person would be guided by loyalty rather than guided by something like principle.”

TIME says one of the leading names on the short lists is Washington, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by Trump to replace now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in 2019. Rao clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, and if nominated and confirmed would become the first Asian American justice on the Court. At 52, she would be among the youngest. (Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, the youngest on the Court, is 53. Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson is 54.)

Justice Thomas secretly lobbied to get Rao confirmed after she was nominated, The Washington Post reported in 2019.

READ MORE: ‘Adios’ to GOP House Control if Trump Can’t Fix Issue That Got Him Elected: CNN Analyst

A former Professor of Law, Rao served in the first Trump administration as well as in the Bush 43 administration.

During her confirmation hearing, Rao refused to say if she believed same-sex relationships are a sin.

As an appeals court judge, Rao has written, in a dissenting opinion, that “allegations of illegal conduct against the president cannot be investigated by Congress except through impeachment.”

Another “front runner,” TIME reported, is Fifth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Andrew Oldham, another Trump appointee. Oldham clerked for Justice Alito, served in the Bush 43 administration’s Office of Legal Counsel, and served as general counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Mentioned as having been previously suggested for the short lists is Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who infamously delayed and ultimately dismissed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of President Trump in the Espionage Act and classified materials case.

READ MORE: Ghislaine Maxwell Files SCOTUS Appeal as Trump Again Leaves Door Open to Possible Pardon

 

Image via Reuters

There's a reason 10,000 people subscribe to NCRM. You can get the news before it breaks just by subscribing, plus you can learn something new every day.
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Carville Says There’s Only ‘One Thing’ Trump Is Thinking About on His China Trip

Published

on

Democratic strategist and political commentator James Carville is blasting what he says is the “one thing” President Donald Trump is thinking about on his trip to China, and it has nothing to do with diplomacy, the U.S. economy, or the war in Iran.

Carville told Al Hunt on their Politicon podcast that it was “really interesting” that all the people he took to China were essentially the people who were in the “first three rows” from his inaugural address. He “put them on Air Force One, and he took Eric — who handles the business end of his business.”

“You’re going to watch a grift and graft over there, like you can’t imagine,” Carville continued. “That’s all this trip is about, and I got news for you, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack, or whoever you are out there, he doesn’t give a s—— about you, your future, your finances, your retirement, your anything.”

“He just cares about making all the money he can as fast as he can, and people [who] don’t realize that are just, just woefully stupid.”

Hunt reminded Carville that earlier this week Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

“Oh, you don’t, Donald,” Hunt responded. “Well, you know something? I think a lot of Americans think about their financial situation, and I’m sure those billionaire oligarchs you’re traveling with don’t, but a lot of voters do, and, uh, you’re gonna pay, you’re gonna pay a price.”

Carville added that Trump also said that he doesn’t even think of Iran.

“I think there’s only one thing that he’s thinking about in his trip to China. And that is a big grift,” Carville said. “Look at who he’s taking with him.”

Carville said there would be “economic exchanges” and “investment opportunities” during the China trip.

“You can see, this is where this is going,” he continued. “They just buy him off. He does not care.”

“He doesn’t care if he, as long as he can go there and make as much money, as fast as he can make it, that’s all what he cares about.”

READ MORE: ‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

Continue Reading

News

Christian Content Creator Fighting Sin Is Teaching Others How to Eat Biblically: NYT

Published

on

27-year-old Michigan-raised Kayla Bundy is a Christian content creator who turned to the Bible for ways to eat healthy — but her lifestyle is also part of a “higher calling,” The New York Times reports, explaining that she is “a biblical eater, someone who consumes mostly foods mentioned in the Bible.”

“Sin entered into the world through food,” Bundy told the Times, “and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food, for me, is really like a weapon of how I can fight back.”

According to the Times, a “diet inspired by the Bible has found new audiences online in the Make America Healthy Again era.”

Bundy, who has over 500,000 followers on TikTok, and has been eating biblically for eight years, “claims that her diet ‘fixed’ her skin, her hair and her depression, and she sells coaching sessions to help others with their diets,” The Times reports. She “is open about not having nutrition credentials, but she sells a $28 digital guide to biblical superfoods, as well as coaching sessions that start around $700 for a month, she said.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

She buys raw milk, eats sardines and authentic sourdough bread without commercial yeast, and tries to cook with locally sourced foods.

“I had never really thought to look to the Bible for a recipe book,” said Bundy, who now lives in Bali. Cutting out refined sugar made her feel good, and she started “studying scripture from that lens of noticing what they are eating.”

32-year old Georgia stay-at-home mom Annalies Xaviera “posts biblical eating tips,” and “said her Facebook following had jumped from scant thousands to over 300,000 in just a few weeks this spring. She sells a digital cookbook.”

“The Bible says that God appreciates and celebrates small steps of obedience,” Xaviera told the Times.

“When you’re in a craving,” she said, “have you ever thought to stop and pray?”

READ MORE: ‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

 

Image via Shutterstock

Continue Reading

News

‘Rededicating the Country to God’: Trump White House Hosts Evangelical Christian Festival

Published

on

The Trump White House is hosting an unprecedented Christian prayer festival Sunday on the National Mall — a nine-hour event that a Trump advisor describes as “rededicating the country to God.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and House Speaker Mike Johnson are all expected to appear.

The funding for “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” comes in part from taxpayer dollars earmarked for America’s 250th birthday celebration, organizers say, according to The Washington Post.

The speakers are almost all Christian, and expected to largely be evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, “many of whom have embraced the message that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian,” the Post reports. The event will have a “focus on American identity as aligned with a specific slice of conservative Protestantism.”

Pastor Paula White-Cain, Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office who delivered the invocation at President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, said the Jubilee “is about the history and the foundations of our nation, which was built on Christian values, on the Bible.”

“This is really truly rededicating the country to God,” she added.

READ MORE: Republicans Are Now Doing to Trump What Few in the GOP Have Ever Dared to Do

According to The Guardian, the invited speakers include those who experts have been “characterized as Christian nationalist or extremist.”

Among them, a pastor who has called the Democratic platform “demonic,” the Guardian says, along with “a rabbi who has defended the use of torture,” and “a Christian author and radio host who said in 2020 he would die in the fight to keep Joe Biden out of the White House and was later named in a defamation suit over 2020 election fraud claims.”

Scholars have deemed the event unprecedented in the modern era.

“I’m unaware of anything like this, with this involvement of senior government officials, on this scale, trying to paint this false picture of the United States as a quote unquote Christian nation,” Amanda Tyler told the Post. Tyler is executive director of BJC, a Baptist group that promotes religious liberty through church-state separation. “Trump’s rhetoric in the past 18 months is how he’s ‘going to make America Christian again,’ that it’s his job to push religion. This is all part of that piece.”

Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse told the Post, “There’s a difference between saying America is a nation with many Christians in it and that America is a nation dedicated to Christianity and defined by it.”

“Those are very different things,” he said.

Kruse also noted that the only rules about religion that the framers of the Constitution wrote “were ones that keep religion at arm’s length. No establishment, no limits on free exercise, no religious test for office.”

But the Trump White House defended the event, its focus, and its list of speakers.

Brittany Baldwin, executive director of the White House’s 250 Task Force, in an April webinar, said: “We worked very hard with the faith leaders we trust … to ensure that we hear their concerns and we have the right focus for our community of believers, across the country. So I think if you do see another religion represented, it would probably be in a modest way.”

Paula White-Cain went even further, saying that the jubilee would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods.”

READ MORE: Republicans Are Using a Secret Super PAC to Pour $1 Million Into Democratic Primaries

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2026 AlterNet Media.