Trump's latest SCOTUS shortlist additions have a dangerous lack of judicial experience. Some of them are well known in legal circles (Clement, Landau, Francisco), but there are only two on the list with any real judicial experience, Bade and Lagoa (mostly low level state judge).
Half have no experience. The average is less than 2 years EACH. If you leave off the two experienced outliers, there's only 16.5 years of experience spread across 18 possible nominees: an average of 11 MONTHS of experience each. For a lifetime appointment on the highest court.
This is back of the envelope math AND I may have missed some judicial exp. AND some have other experience, just as I have other objections to, for instance, their openly hostile views towards secular Americans and blatant Christian Nationalism. But this is telling and damning.
Again, this was quick. So if you see an error, please let me know. Either in the original numbers or in my math.
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When I write that Project 2025 is already happening in Okla., I mean that the Heritage Foundation is in bed with Ryan Walters.
Walters is also using state funds to hire Heritage folks "to project a cartoonish image of a macho Christian culture warrior." The details are alarming.
Walters had the state contract with Vought Strategies for his public relations campaign. The president of Vought Strategies is Mary Vought, who’s also VP of Strategic Communications at the Heritage Foundation, which published the Project 2025 handbook.
Mary is/was married to Russ Vought. You know him. He's the guy recently caught on tape admitting that Trump was still very much working toward a Project 2025 future. (We locked this article last week, before that video broke).
Some facts about the Ten Commandments that Louisiana really should have looked up before forcing public schools to display them in classrooms. A thread.🧵
The text of the Louisiana law actually specifies a state-sanctioned version of God's holy writ. It begins “I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shall have no other gods before me.”
The point of this bill is to give the false impression that America is a Christian nation. That's Christian Nationalism.
Historical flags are often adopted by modern political movements. Sometimes this is obvious, like neo-Nazis adopting the Confederate flag. Or less so, like when the Tea Party adopted the Gadsden (Don't Tread on Me) flag.
The Appeal to Heaven flag is even more under the radar.
This flag—which was widely flown during the insurrection—has become like a secret handshake for Christian Nationalist public officials to signal their fealty to the cause, while maintaining plausible deniability about their allegiance. That's literally the point behind the flag.
I explained this to @BradleyOnishi on the latest episode of @StraightWhiteJC.
So this is a huge deal. The Appeal to Heaven flag was all over the insurrection and comes out of explicitly Christian Nationalist spaces. Sam Alito is professing his Christian Nationalism.
🚨We need to talk about this alarming pressure campaign that's happening right now. An attempt to muzzle discussion, criticism, and reporting on the authoritarian Christian Nationalism that is working against American democracy and a free press.
In Dec., journalist @HeidiReports wrote a piece exposing how the dark money network that financed the conservative takeover of the courts is also backing the Christian Nationalist push to dismantle public education, with Oklahoma as a test case. politico.com/news/2023/12/2…
Just days ago, Przybyla wrote a piece about Christian Nationalism in a second Trump administration which broke the internet. The reporting is accurate and terrifying. It shows that American democracy is unlikely to survive a second Trump term.