Opinion

SCOTUS Silently Grinds Democracy Into Powder as Trump Distracts America

THE NEW ABNORMAL

While America’s eyes are focused on the ever-evolving life and alleged crimes of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court is eroding democracy and the U.S. justice system.

opinion
A photo illustration of the SCOTUS justices.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

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With all of the focus and attention on Donald Trump, the Supreme Court is quietly taking steps to hasten the end of democracy as we know it.

That’s according to Dahlia Lithwick, author of Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, who joins The New Abnormal this week to put the spotlight back on SCOTUS.

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“It’s very true that this is the thing we shouldn’t take our eyes off,” Lithwick tells co-host Danielle Moodie. “I guess I would just say I’ve never seen a term like the term we’re having now–and I’ve been covering the court for 25 years–and it’s just in part because there are so many bananas cases that we are waiting for.”

Lithwick highlights a number of those cases, including “two abortion cases on the docket, not one, but two Donald Trump election interference cases on the docket,” and, of course, Trump’s blanket immunity case “that was argued on the last day of the term, in which the court overwhelmingly seemed inclined to give him a win on this question of immunity.”

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Plus! Judd Legum, founder and author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism, joins co-host Andy Levy to discuss the right wing’s weaponization of cancel culture.

Legum warns of an “increased aggressiveness on the right, and not just to criticize people that they don’t like, but to seek to, in their own terms, cancel them, get them fired.”

Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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