Teaser - Reform the Supreme Court Now!

The Supreme Court is a cesspool of corruption with three members appointed by a Russian mafia asset. It's also treated in America like a sacred priesthood above the law, allowing Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito to profit from deep pocketed far-right megadonors. The Fox News majority of the Supreme Court has stripped our country of essential rights, condemning people to die from lack of reproductive healthcare with the overturning of Roe v. Wade; allows businesses to proudly discriminate, furthering a genocidal scapegoating culture that drives the Republican Party and its base; struck down student loan debt forigiveness while corporations benefit from the same types of programs and more; and destroyed Affirmative Action for nonwhite people -- the white and rich like Jared Kushner will continue to buy their way into the Ivy League.   These seismic Supreme Court rulings are the bountiful harvest of a far-right long game in America played over decades, as we discussed in our 2022 series Rising Up from the Ashes: Cassandra and Other Experts on Rebuilding Our Democracy. Most notably, historian Nancy Maclean who wrote Democracy in Chains, journalist Anne Nelson who wrote Shadow Network, LGBTQ+ civil rights lawyer Chase Strangio of the ACLU, and Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy of the podcast Boom Lawyered described a far-right long game with zero strategy in response from the Democratic Party. That and our first three episodes examining the 2016 election as a crime scene explain how we got here.   Now what to do about it. The best strategy we have so far to climb out of this black hole of corruption is to stay engaged locally with local races, local candidates and to call out and help clean up corruption where we live; invest in local media; contribute to mutual aid; and demand immediate and urgent judicial reforms from our elected federal leaders.   For that, Senator Edward Markey has reintroduced legislation to expand the Supreme Court, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has introduced legislation for term limits on Supreme Court justices -- both have backing from establishment Democrats and should be fought for by the grassroots. For more on yet another devastating Supreme Court Hunger Games Spring, Elie Mystal, as always, brilliantly sums up what's at stake in his piece on the destruction of affirmative action in The Nation: "The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier."   Show Notes:   You're invited to a Gaslit Nation night out August 5th in NYC to celebrate the launch of Dictatorship: It's Easier Than You Think! Details here.   REUTERS: Reparations: Where slavery's descendants stand https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-slavery-lawmakers/   REUTERS: Slavery's Descendants The ancestral ties to slaveholding of today's political elite https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-slavery/   2022 series Rising Up from the Ashes: Cassandra and Other Experts on Rebuilding Our Democracy. https://twitter.com/gaslitnation/status/1513518421090185222?lang=en