Signals from the Supreme Court on Its High-Stakes Cases

Messaging Mark Meadows: Let’s Have Marshall Law!

Dec 19, 2022

CHARLIE SYKES: Why Just Ban CRT?
JVL: The Republican Civil War Will Be a Culture War 🔐

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KIMBERLY WEHLE: Signals from the Supreme Court on Its High-Stakes Cases.

With the calendar year coming to a close, it’s worth taking stock of how the current Supreme Court term is shaping up. A handful of key cases in which the Court has already heard oral argument this term reveal four themes that will continue to pop up as its conservative majority agrees to hear cases:
(1) Is there a protected constitutional right to illegally discriminate?
(2) Can politicians dictate election outcomes over the will of the voters?
(3) How much power should states have over the federal government?
(4) How much additional Supreme Court precedent will go out the window?
To even state these themes is to underscore the radical nature of what this Court could do to the Constitution on many fronts—which is why it’s especially important to lay out in some detail what could be in store.

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Tim Miller checks in from Turning Point’s event in Phoenix on the role of “Gays Against Groomers” in the culture war. Plus, George Santos as Tom Ripley, and the Musk crowd’s “Free Speech for Me and Not for Thee.” JVL, Sarah, and Tim bring it for today’s Bulwark pod.

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BILL LUEDERS: Messaging Mark Meadows: Let’s Have Marshall Law!

Jim Jordan was just doing his job. That’s what his spokesperson, Russell Dye, told Talking Points Memo regarding the Republican congressman’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as illuminated by a trove of text messages that TPM shared with the world last week.
“Mr. Jordan was carrying out his Constitutional duties as a Member of Congress when he objected to electors on January 6, 2021—just like Democrats did in 2001, 2005, and 2017,” Dye said in a response provided after the article was published. He also said that a text message Jordan sent the day before the Capitol insurrection to Mark Meadows, then chief of staff to President Donald Trump, did not represent Jordan’s own original thinking, such as it might be. Rather, he says it presented, without attribution, a “legal theory” concocted by Joseph Schmitz, former inspector general of the Department of Defense and a 2016 campaign adviser to Trump.

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🚨OVERTIME 🚨

Read the introductory report… Of the January 6th Committee. Even though it’s a holiday week, stay tuned to The Bulwark for coverage in the committee’s waning days as the final report is issued.

Programming note: Overtime will try to publish, internet permitting, this week, and it’ll be a little shorter than usual. I am going to be on a boat. So if it doesn’t come, don’t fret! Sort of like the Washington Post’s old radio jingle: “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it…” Thankfully, the ship has a bulwark and I will try not to go overboard.