The Supreme Court has been captured by partisan extremists. It's time to restore balance and accountability.
A Stolen Court: How the Supreme Court Lost Its Legitimacy and Why Reform Is Overdue The United States Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics. It’s supposed to represent the rule of law, not the rule of party. But here’s a fact that should make every American’s blood boil: six of the nine current justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, and three were confirmed by senators representing less than half the American population. ...
No Explanation. No Vote Count. No Accountability. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned, unexplained emergency order keeping New York’s 11th Congressional District map in place — almost certainly through the 2026 midterm elections. A state court had ruled that map unconstitutional because it diluted the voting power of Black and Latino residents. The Supreme Court stepped in and blocked the fix. We don’t know how many justices voted for it. We don’t know what legal standard was applied. We don’t know why the Court acted before New York’s own highest court had a chance to weigh in. We know only the outcome: the Republican-drawn district survives, and the voters whose power it dilutes will have to wait. This is the shadow docket — and this time, it is being used to pick election winners. ...
The Surveillance Grid You Never Voted For: Flock Cameras, ICE, and the Courts’ Failure to Catch Up Sometime in the past few years, a camera appeared on a pole near your home. You probably did not vote on it. Your city council may have approved a contract you never heard about. The company that makes the camera — a Georgia-based firm called Flock Safety — now operates an estimated 80,000 license plate readers across more than 5,000 communities in 49 states. And the data those cameras collect, recording every vehicle that passes with a timestamp and location, is being shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ...
The Supreme Court ruled today — February 20, 2026 — that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the President the power to impose tariffs. The vote was 6-3. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority. The Court’s most sweeping executive trade action in modern history has been struck down as unconstitutional overreach. The case is Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, consolidated with V.O.S. Selections v. United States. The ruling vacates the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs — the sweeping duties imposed in April 2025 on imports from dozens of countries — and remands the question of refunds to the U.S. Court of International Trade. More than $160 billion in IEEPA tariff revenue has been collected since January 2025. The fight over who gets it back, and how, is now just beginning. ...
On February 19, 2026, a federal judge in West Virginia released a 21-year-old Salvadoran man from immigration detention and, in doing so, produced one of the most searingly direct opinions in recent American legal history. Anderson Jesus Urquilla-Ramos had come to the United States fleeing violence in El Salvador. He had a pending asylum case. He had valid work authorization. He had a valid driver’s license. On a West Virginia highway, a traffic stop — pretextual, for a license plate cover — became the occasion for his arrest by federal agents who wore masks, carried military-style weapons, drove unmarked vehicles, and presented no warrant of any kind. ...
A Court Divided: LGBTQ Rights and Minority Protections in the Balance The Supreme Court does not move in a straight line. Over the past six years, it has handed down decisions that protected LGBTQ workers from job discrimination, then carved out a constitutional escape hatch for businesses that do not want to serve same-sex couples. It has eliminated the federal right to abortion, while a Justice in the majority hinted that marriage equality might be next. Now a new wave of cases is approaching, and the question is no longer hypothetical: what kind of court is this, and who is it for? ...
On February 19, 1923, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that declared South Asians ineligible for U.S. citizenship. Nine unelected judges, in a single decision, stripped the legal standing of an entire people from the fabric of American law — and their ruling set off a cascade of consequences that ruined businesses, seized property, and drove at least one man to his death. Today is the 103rd anniversary of that decision. It deserves to be remembered — not just as a historical injustice, but as a precise illustration of why unchecked judicial power is dangerous, why the Court’s institutional consensus is no guarantee of moral correctness, and why structural reform is not optional. ...
Who Owns the Machine’s Work? AI, Copyright, and the Supreme Court’s Coming Reckoning The legal system is struggling to answer a question that would have seemed like science fiction just a decade ago: when an artificial intelligence creates something — a painting, a news article, a piece of code — who owns it? And when an AI system trains itself by reading millions of copyrighted works without permission, has it stolen something? ...
The Supreme Court announced this week that it will begin using conflict-of-interest detection software to identify when justices should recuse themselves from cases. Parties filing before the Court will now be required to list stock ticker symbols in their filings to help the software flag potential conflicts. It sounds like progress. It isn’t—or at least, it isn’t nearly enough. The announcement is the latest example of the Court responding to legitimate ethics crises with the minimum possible action: a technical workaround that avoids confronting the actual problem. The actual problem is that two Supreme Court justices are still holding individual company stocks while deciding cases that affect American corporations, their shareholders, and the broader economy. ...
Two weeks after Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election, Chief Justice John Roberts summoned Supreme Court employees to a grand conference room and made them sign nondisclosure agreements threatening legal action if they revealed what happens behind the Court’s closed doors. This wasn’t a response to national security concerns. It was a response to the American public learning the truth about how the Court operates. According to a new report from The New York Times, the Supreme Court has converted what was once an informal expectation of confidentiality into formal legal contracts—complete with threats of litigation. The timing and circumstances reveal everything wrong with the Court’s approach to accountability. ...
On January 30, 2026, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill expanding the state’s Supreme Court from five to seven justices. The Republican-controlled legislature passed it on a party-line vote. After filling the new seats, Cox will have appointed five of the seven justices on Utah’s highest court. This is the same Republican Party that calls expanding the U.S. Supreme Court “unconstitutional,” “radical court packing,” and “a direct assault on our Constitution.” ...
The Supreme Court’s continued delay in ruling on the legality of President Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) isn’t just about trade policy—it’s a troubling sign of how willing this Court may be to hand unchecked power to the executive branch. The Case That Should Be Simple The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on November 5, 2025, in V.O.S. Selections v. Trump and a companion case. The legal question is straightforward: Did Congress authorize the President to impose tariffs under IEEPA, a law designed for national security emergencies? ...
Conservative media is questioning whether a federal judge should recuse himself from a case because he once donated to a legal aid nonprofit. Meanwhile, Supreme Court justices have accepted millions in undisclosed gifts from billionaires with cases before the Court—and faced no consequences. The disparity reveals everything wrong with our current approach to judicial ethics. The “Scandal” That Isn’t Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota is facing scrutiny for threatening to hold ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons in contempt of court. The case involves whether an Ecuadoran national detained by ICE should have received a bond hearing within seven days. ...
The Numbers Don’t Lie There’s a difference between a conservative court and a partisan one. A conservative court applies consistent principles regardless of which party benefits. A partisan court shifts its reasoning to serve one party’s interests. The shadow docket proves which kind of court we have. ...
When Justice Looks Away On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, on a Minneapolis street. The shooting was captured on video. Within days, the Department of Justice announced it would not investigate whether Ross violated Good’s civil rights. Instead, the DOJ launched investigations into Good’s widow, Minnesota’s governor, and the Minneapolis mayor. ...
Court Reform Across Generations Supreme Court reform isn’t a new idea invented by frustrated progressives. It’s a recurring response to judicial overreach that spans American history. 1937: FDR’s court-packing plan threatened to add up to six justices to break conservative obstruction of New Deal programs. The plan failed legislatively but succeeded politically—the Court reversed course. 1960s-70s: Conservative frustration with Warren Court civil rights decisions led to calls for impeachment, jurisdiction stripping, and constitutional amendments. 2020s: Progressive proposals for term limits, court expansion, ethics codes, and jurisdiction stripping respond to the Federalist Society’s capture of the Court. ...
Court Reform Is American Tradition Throughout American history, when the Supreme Court has overreached, threatened democracy, or blocked necessary reforms, presidents and Congress have acted to check judicial power. Thomas Jefferson led the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase and refused to enforce certain court orders. Abraham Lincoln defied the Dred Scott decision and appointed five new justices to ensure the Court would uphold Civil War measures. Franklin Roosevelt threatened court-packing in 1937, forcing the Court to reverse course and uphold New Deal legislation. ...
Corporations as Super-Citizens Citizens United v. FEC (2010) gets all the attention for allowing unlimited corporate political spending. But it’s just one decision in a systematic judicial project to expand corporate power while shrinking worker, consumer, and citizen rights. ...
The Court’s Religion Problem The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has systematically expanded religious liberty for Christians while diminishing everyone else’s rights. 303 Creative (2023): Businesses can refuse service to LGBTQ customers based on religious beliefs. Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022): Public school coaches can lead prayer at school events. Hobby Lobby (2014): Corporations have religious freedom to deny contraception coverage. ...
Democracy Dies in the Shadows The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—emergency orders issued without full briefing, oral argument, or signed opinions—has become a weapon for dismantling rights and enabling executive overreach. Between 2017-2021, the Trump administration filed emergency applications at unprecedented rates, and the conservative majority granted them with alarming frequency. ...