Republicans are suffering from a pretty acute—and possibly terminal—case of onstage/backstage disorder. That’s the disease that allows them to say things aloud among themselves when they are at events like Federalist Society gatherings or fundraisers for big money donors—only to be forced to disavow them when they find themselves “onstage,” which is to say visible to the voters they purport to represent. Last week’s laughable claims came from Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who insisted that the current U.S. Supreme Court is a temperate band of merry centrists. It’s a perfect example of how trying to deny in public the very same things you give out awards for in private simply can’t be sustained. Eventually, folks figure out that you’ve spent many decades and billions of dollars to manufacture a wildly authoritarian Supreme Court. You bought it, you broke it. Deal.
The problem with the onstage/backstage approach to politics is that at some point enough voters catch on that what’s happening to them—be it climate disasters, gun violence, student debt, racist voter suppression, reproductive injustice, or labor union-gutting barricades to fair pay—emerges as the result of a clear, ruthlessly orchestrated plan. When presidents campaigned around these goals, red-state legislatures enacted them, court procedures were broken for them, and the right-wing six-justice supermajority spent two terms obliterating precedent to deliver them, voters do figure out this really is the plan. Which is why this precise instant was a very bad moment for the chief justice and Republican officials to make their claims that the Supreme Court is too holy to be subject to investigation and reform.
Over the past few months it has been reported—thanks to dogged investigations conducted by ProPublica and Politico and the Washington Post among other places—that billionaires with business before the court have also instituted a kind of oligarch foster care service whereby they are twinned with underprivileged justices who seem to offer up their gavels in order to be able to live like oligarchs. It turns out that the assorted defenses, ranging from “we’re fabulous” to “we’re friends” to “but the seat on the plane was going to be empty” are not working. That’s why the Senate Judiciary hearing Thursday to mark up an ethics bill was debated as about anything but ethics reform.
Sen. Lindsey Graham gave a long incoherent speech about court packing (though this bill ads no justices) and Sens. John Kennedy and John Cornyn—slavish fans of one Donald Trump—condemned Senate Democrats for a “long campaign of intimidation and harassment” toward right-wing Supreme Court justices. Their argument was that speaking about court ethics reforms will inevitably lead those with unstable minds to attack justices. John Cornyn sought to add an amendment to the ethics bill that would allow federal judges to carry firearms to protect themselves. (Presumably so they can shoot the ethics violations.) Graham won the day with his declaration that “I don’t begrudge them this travel! I wish I could go to some of these places!” And Kennedy wanted an amendment to condemn racist insults directed at Clarence Thomas—but nobody else. To hear Senate Republicans tell it, this is about, as Kennedy says, “Dobbs, and Bruen, and Elonis …” But what they don’t understand is that each of those freedom-seizing decisions is ineluctably connected to the fact that over the course of several decades the Supreme Court was sold to the highest bidder.
Unfortunately for Senate Republicans, distractions and delusions about how Democratic efforts to enforce ethics rules will somehow foment attacks on the children of justices don’t change the fact that a large majority of Americans recognize self-dealing and corruption and want a court that’s actually just.
It’s not even a partisan position. In a recent poll of 1,220 voters that one of us fielded with the Research Collaborative and Data for Progress, 80 percent of voters, among them 73 percent of Republicans, after hearing “Justices Thomas and Alito accepted and failed to disclose gifts from wealthy individuals who also had cases before the Supreme Court” agreed that “the Senate judiciary committee has a duty to investigate these actions.” Even when respondents got explicit partisan cues, specifically that “Democrats, who make up the majority of the Senate, should proceed with investigations, regardless of whether Republican Senators support them,” (emphasis added) 72 percent of voters agreed—including nearly half, at 49 percent, of Republicans and three-quarters of independents.
By a 72–28 margin, voters agreed that “Democratic Senators on the judiciary should conduct a transparent, public investigation into how billionaires have channeled dark money to influence the Supreme Court,” rejecting the argument that this type of an investigation would be a “waste of taxpayer money on a political witch hunt.” What this forced choice question illustrates is that the standard right-wing talking points on this topic aren’t credible. Further, tapping into the ire voters have over billionaires buying political outcomes is clear and effective framing. Money in politics has always proved a cross-cutting issue for voters and the Federalist Society lackeys on the Supreme Court have now extended its applicability to the life-tenured judicial branch.
The high levels of support for these propositions, and alarm over various Supreme Court justice misdeeds, is especially clear among women. While the sample size for subgroups are admittedly small, the gender differences in these groups are so massive they retain statistical significance: independent women are 20 or more points apart from the men of this ideology on many of these questions. Given that references to the Supreme Court abortion decision of last year come up unprompted in weekly focus groups across demographics, it’s a good bet women view any court-related revelation through the lens of their (warranted) Roe rage. In short, they see the majority of this body as taking away our freedoms and ruling for a wealthy few.
It’s not just ethics investigations that earn high approval from voters. They also favor real changes to the makeup and operating structure of the Supreme Court. A Navigator survey earlier this month showed 65 percent of voters believe that the Supreme Court should establish an independent investigative ethics body. The same number of voters support term limits for justices, including a clear majority of Republican voters at 59 percent. Among a list of positive and negative potential descriptors for the Supreme Court, the most apt term was deemed to be “corrupt” followed closely by “unaccountable.”
As we saw at Thursday’s Senate markup hearing, Republican leaders like to cloak their willful blindness to court corruption in the language of wanting to heal purportedly Democratic-driven division—be it Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s alleged call for physical violence against justices or imaginary racism directed against Thomas but only Thomas. They insist that ethics reforms are a partisan effort to “destroy” and “delegitimize the court.” But voters who may not have fully registered that Clarence Thomas’s wife pitched in on the violent January 6th attempted overthrow of election results, appear to recognize that taking trips with billionaires on planes and yachts, and hunting with rich guys who have cases before the court, and hanging out with those who pour millions of dollars into legal outcomes, is just gross. It would be gross if a judge in traffic court did it and it’s gross when Supreme Court jurists do it; it’s more vile still when they lie about it and tell us to stop bothering them because they are “independent.” And women—who are perhaps less fond of glacier martinis and the recreational hunting of small animals—see this even more clearly it appears.
Prior to Thursday’s hearings, many Democratic leaders have often appeared loath to address judicial malfeasance, motivated by a more earnest version of concerns around creating discord. By holding hearings, it seems that they are in fact starting to catch up to their own voters. If it’s unity these political leaders want, it seems clear that doing the bidding of the vast majority of Americans—Democratic, independent and Republican—and addressing the fact that the unpopular court rulings are a product of corrupt and hidden conduct, is a pretty good way to achieve it.
