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federalist society
When Covering Trump, Pay More Attention to the Team Behind the Curtain
While we’re kept dizzy and disoriented by Trump's onslaught, a behind-the-scenes team, which consists of players like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the tech broletariat, are quietly busy with the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
May 06, 2026
I’m old enough to have been politically cognizant, admittedly less so for a couple of the earliest, of 13 presidents (14 if you count one of them twice). Through all of those decades and all of those administrations nothing comes close to the way the current regime takes up ALL THE AIR IN THE ROOM! In fact, dare I say, no one has ever seen anything like it. The fire hose is so voluminous, ubiquitous, and inescapable that it literally takes one’s breath away.
How is this gargantuan enterprise sustained? I have a theory that President Donald Trump (or whoever are the real masters puling the strings on the public puppet) has at least two teams at work constantly. One team is in charge of producing the daily (or hourly or minute-to-minute) outrage and distraction. This is the team that has given us the Gulf of America, the takeover of Greenland, the cancer-causing windmills, the never-ending toilet flushing and never-working showers, the fight with the pope, etc., and then the really crazy stuff like the current war.
While we’re kept dizzy and disoriented by this onslaught, the other team, which consists of players like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the tech broletariat, and other bastions of the oligarchic overlords, are quietly busy with the “deconstruction of the administrative state” (as Steve Bannon put it so aptly early on). At least those parts of the administrative state that serve the more general public interests. The parts that serve elite interests, however, like the military and their domestic adjuncts in the militarized police, the repressive courts and “justice” system, and the subservient elements of the media, are richly endowed and strengthened.
For just a moment, I’d like to dwell on the central role of the media (in its legacy and social forms) both in amplifying and downplaying the crazy as well as ignoring, minimizing, or trivializing the serious. Right now, both of these outcomes are accomplished through one certain mechanism, which I’ll name presently. One way that I try to keep up with the sometimes subtle changes in the inflections in the news cycle is by maintaining an evolving and revolving list of key words or phrases that become especially annoying, but through their (over)use capture an essential dominant characterization of events. Over the course of the past several months, and particularly at the height of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement invasions, the phrase du jour was “appears to contradict,” almost always in the circumstance of video footage putting the lie to the lies of administrative officials.
What might happen if serious journalists finally said enough is enough with the spectacle and distraction?
In a similar vein, and most often in the context of displaying the utter incompetence and buffoonery of administrative nominees or officials facing congressional “oversight,” we were repeatedly subjected to the slight variant phrase, “And he (or sometimes she) brought the receipts.” And finally, along these same lines, the now ubiquitous, “He (and again, sometimes she) said the quiet part out loud.”
What all of these anodyne formulations have in common is that they all highlight the crazy or horrendous without really calling them out explicitly. Which brings me to the current term of art, which because of its complete inadequacy is the most dangerous and enabling of all: sanewashing. This flaccid, hand-wringing, bland lament is now so easily deployed that those uttering it seem completely oblivious to its actual implications. Here the more “conscious” in the media have the opportunity to lodge a complaint against their less aware colleagues or competitors without themselves then having the obligation to call things out as they really are.
But do things have to be this way? I understand the exigencies that accompany access-requiring reporting, and I also understand the necessity for profit maximization for “news” organizations. But what might happen if serious journalists finally said enough is enough with the spectacle and distraction, and stopped covering the non-stop shit show that Team One puts out, and instead started to provide in-depth, relentless coverage of the activities of Team Two. The outrage and tantrums that would come from the main inhabitant of the White House at not being given constant attention, which could be covered as the lunacy they are, would produce enough controversy to guarantee viewer- and readership and healthy profits. And we could all use this breath of fresh air.
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The Supreme Court Is 1 Small Step From Infamy
If defending democracy and the constitutional separation of power is not enough to motivate them to push back against Trump’s authoritarian actions, perhaps their certain condemnation by history will be.
Dec 06, 2025
The losers in political battles often insist that history will prove them right and their opponents wrong. As comforting a thought as this may be for people licking their political wounds, it is rarely true. History forgets far more than it remembers. Apart from a few major players, even people who gain a degree of prominence in the politics of their time will eventually disappear into the black hole of advancing years. Their victories, defeats, glories, and disgraces—all blown away by the wind of time like dust on their gravestones.
If there is any group today who deserve the censure of history, it is the Republican members of Congress. Faced with the existential threat that President Donald Trump poses to our democracy, their nearly unanimous response has been to worshipfully give him whatever he wants—reducing their role to little more than handmaidens to a would-be tyrant. These people have been given the honor of serving as representatives in the United States Congress. And all the Constitution asks of them in return is to take and honor an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
One by one these Republicans raise their right hands and take the oath of office. Then one by one they quickly throw that oath away.
But as deserving as these Republican politicians are of history’s censure, most will likely escape it. There are just too many of them—535 total senators and representatives with approximately 272 of them currently Republican. Donald Trump will, of course, be remembered and judged severely. The same goes for a few prominent congressional leaders. But as for the rest, within a relatively brief time as measured by the long view of history, they will be forgotten, their sins forever interred with them in their graves.
This court isn’t about judicial philosophy and legal principles. It is about the raw application of power for political ends.
But for justices of the United States Supreme Court, it is a different story. Unlike the Congress, the Supreme Court is made up of only nine justices. And of those 9 current justices, only 6 have consistently supported Trump’s authoritarian actions. When it comes to the judgment of history, these few justices will have no place to hide and no crowd to be lost in. If they continue to support Trump’s ever-growing list of power grabs, their treachery, and yes it would be treachery, will never be forgotten and certainly never be forgiven.
The origin story of the current far-right Supreme Court majority begins 43 years ago in 1982, when Ronald Reagan was president and car radios blasted out songs like “Eye of the Tiger” and “I Love Rock and Roll.” That was also the year the Federalist Society was born. Best described as a breeding ground for right-wing judges, it has led a decades-long quest by wealthy conservatives to produce a dependably right-wing Supreme Court.
They knew doing this would take time, and they were prepared to play the long game. The Federalist Society’s core strategy is to embrace and groom conservative law students. With easy access to almost limitless funding from their wealthy conservative patrons, the society has had no need to pinch pennies.
They have helped to establish Federalist Society chapters in law schools across the country, financed scholarships to Federalist Society seminars, arranged social opportunities for student members to meet and converse with prominent judicial conservatives, and much more. Later, after law school, the group works to connect prized prospects with leading right-wing judges for prestigious clerkships, putting them on the path to future judicial appointments of their own.
All six of the current far-right justices have strong connections with the group. They grew up as lawyers in an environment that strongly encourages use of the law as a weapon to remake America into a far-right paradise. These six far-right justices are called conservatives, but this is true only in the political sense of the word. They are anything but conservative in the judicial sense. Traditional judicial conservatism is based upon things like respect for precedent and a commitment to judicial restraint, neither of which in any way describes the actions of these six justices. Not only have they repeatedly overruled well-established precedents; they have shown no consistent judicial philosophy in doing so. And even when they do purport to follow a particular judicial philosophy, such as originalism, it is often little more than a smokescreen.
One “good” example from an earlier time is District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, in which the Supreme Court, for the first time, held that the Second Amendment creates a private right to gun possession. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia claimed to follow an originalist view of the Constitution and that history supported this view. The audaciousness of this claim led to a number of conservative as well as liberal constitutional scholars rejecting the court’s rationale.
Even then, it was the political result that mattered, not the jurisprudence. This court isn’t about judicial philosophy and legal principles. It is about the raw application of power for political ends—political ends that are largely contrary to the preferences of a majority of the American public.
But then, why would it be otherwise? Does anyone believe that the small collection of massively wealthy families who funded this conservative judicial revolution did so out of concern for judicial philosophy? Of course not. These wealthy families spent their hard-earned money—or perhaps more accurately in many cases their hard-inherited money—for concrete political ends. They wanted to increase their wealth and power even further by reducing government regulation, destroying labor unions, cutting worker protections, ending government protection of the environment, force feeding right-wing religious dogma, and the rest of the fat catalog of the daydreams of the greed-is-good crowd.
And if these ends can best be achieved by flushing functioning democracy down the toilet, they will shed few tears. And if one is to judge by their actions since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, the current right-wing justices seem ready to drive the train.
But there is a tenuous basis for hope. One characteristic shared by almost all Supreme Court justices is a profound concern over their historical legacy. These are smart people. Even living within the isolating fog of the far-right, at least a few of these justices must recognize they are dancing with a legacy of infamy. If defending democracy and the constitutional separation of power is not enough to motivate them to push back against Trump’s authoritarian actions, perhaps their certain condemnation by history will be.
The Dred Scott opinion was handed down almost 170 years ago, but the shame of the decision hasn’t lessened with time. The primarily legacy Chief Justice Roger B. Taney left behind was a full-throated defense of the evil of slavery and racism. And that is how history remembers and damns him.
Few things are guaranteed in this world, but one thing seems certain. If the Supreme Court majority continues down the road of aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s quest for dictatorial power, they are inviting an infamy far worse than Taney’s.
This is something the six justices should remember, because history will never forget.
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34 US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Pardon Steven Donziger
"We are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice."
Dec 11, 2024
More than 30 Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday called on outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who endured nearly 1,000 days in prison and house arrest after successfully representing Ecuadoreans harmed by Big Oil's pollution of the Amazon rainforest.
In a
letter to Biden led by Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Mass.), 33 House and Senate Democrats plus Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont noted the "troubling legal irregularities" in Donziger's case, which have been "criticized as unconstitutional or illegal by three federal judges, 68 Nobel laureates, and five high-level jurists from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations."
Donziger represented a group of Ecuadorean farmers and Indigenous people in a 1990s lawsuit against Texaco—which was later acquired by Chevron—over the oil company's deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of carcinogenic waste into the Amazon. He played a key role in winning a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron in Ecuadorian courts.
However, Chevron fought Donziger in the U.S. court system, and when the attorney refused to disclose privileged client information to the company, federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan—who was invested in Chevron—held him in misdemeanor contempt of court. Loretta Preska, Kaplan's handpicked judge to preside over Donziger's contempt trial, is affiliated with the Chevron-funded Federalist Society.
Donziger's case drew worldwide attention and solidarity, with human rights experts and free speech groups joining progressive U.S. lawmakers in demanding his release. He was released in April 2022 after 993 days in prison and house arrest.
"Donziger is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge," the 34 lawmakers wrote. "We believe that the legal case against Mr. Donziger, as well as the excessively harsh nature of the punishment against him, are directly tied to his prior work against Chevron. We do not make this accusation lightly or without evidentiary support."
The legislators warned:
Notwithstanding the personal hardship, this unprecedented legal process has imposed on Mr. Donziger and his family, we are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice. Those who try to help vulnerable communities will feel as though tactics of intimidation—at the hands of powerful corporate interests, and, most troublingly, the U.S. courts—can succeed in stifling robust legal representation when it is needed most. This is a dangerous signal to send.
"Pardoning Mr. Donziger," the lawmakers added, "would send a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest."
The lawmakers join more than 100 environmental and human rights groups that have urged Biden to pardon Donziger.
In an April opinion piece published by Common Dreams, Donziger contended that "I need this pardon because I am the only person in U.S. history to be privately prosecuted by a corporation."
"More specifically, the government (via a pro-corporate judge) gave a giant oil company (Chevron) the power to prosecute and lock up its leading critic," he continued. "As a result of this unprecedented and frightening private prosecution, I still cannot travel out of the country and I have been prohibited from meeting with clients I have represented for over three decades. Nor can I practice law, maintain a bank account, or earn a livelihood."
"No matter where one stands on the political spectrum," Donziger added, "we should all be able to agree that what happened to me should not happen to anybody in any country that adheres to the rule of law."
The appeal for a Donziger pardon comes amid a
wave of eleventh-hour pleas from lawmakers for Biden to grant clemency to figures ranging from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier—often described as the nation's longest-jailed political prisoner—and federal death row inmates including Billie Jerome Allen, who advocates say was wrongly convicted of murder.
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