Republicans Really Don't Want Journalists Talking About How They've Captured the Courts - Balls and Strikes

[In It to Win It]

Balls and Strikes

On Thursday, ProPublica published an explosive investigative report into the rise of Paul Newby, the chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and a right-wing crusader who believes God called him to lead the court and deliver “biblical justice.”

The report, written by the journalist Doug Bock Clark, exposes the lengths Newby has gone to over the past 20 years in order to transform the state’s judiciary into an instrument of the GOP, including overturning precedent to facilitate Republican priorities, demoting judges who don’t share his agenda, and weaponizing the judicial ethics commission to harass Black colleagues. When Newby was running for office in 2004, judicial elections were nonpartisan, and state law provided for a public funding option for campaigns, which most judicial candidates chose to use. But Newby sought and received the endorsement of the state Republican party anyway. And after Republicans won control of the state legislature in 2010, Newby began working with them behind the scenes to enact more changes to judicial elections. Sure enough, in 2013, lawmakers got rid of the public financing option—a move, Clark says, that Newby supported.

You should read the article, if for no other reason than the state’s Republican officials really, really don’t want you to. Not only did they decline to answer Clark’s questions for the record, they threatened him for daring to ask.

In his report, Clark writes that he repeatedly reached out to Newby and the court system’s communications team, as is standard practice, but received no comment. When Clark went to a judicial conference to try to ask Newby questions in person, Newby had him escorted from the event. Clark also sent questions to Sarah Newby, who is both the finance director for the state Republican Party and also Paul Newby’s daughter. At this point, Clark received an email from the state GOP’s communications director, Matt Mercer, accusing ProPublica of waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” and insinuating that President Donald Trump would take action against ProPublica if it didn’t end its investigation.

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” wrote Mercer. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration,” the North Carolina Republican Party's communications director wrote in an email response to us. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”

We didn't. Read the story that he wanted dropped:

— ProPublica (@propublica.org) 2025-11-02T03:00:07.107004766Z

[Igel]

1. It's complicated.

https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_federal_courts breaks things down (R) v (D).

Circuit courts:
R 91
D 86

Not a huge difference, under Biden they were barely (D) majority (by appointing president), but (R) narrowly "wins".
They give a breakdown by circuit court: 1st district, with 5 judges, has 0 R-appointed judges, for instance. The 8th circuit, with 11 judges, has 1 D-appointed judge. Which district is "captured" and the margin of said "capture" depends on the district, right?


District judges:
R 254
D 381
That 128 judge difference is fairly striking, compared esp. to the circuit courts. (D) win by a wide margin.
The same unbalanced dynamic by district also plays out--some districts are 0 D-appointed, some are 0 R-appointed.

What we really mean is just the utter humanity-ending catastrophe of the SCOTUS, at 6-3, R v D as appointing president, which makes us see red when looking at everything in the inferior courts. The district courts are "R captured" by a 2.8% margin, flip 3 judges and the "capture" is flipped. The district courts are "D captured" by 34.8% margin, and they'd need to "flip" 64 judgeships to reverse the "capture". Before I think it was Trump 1.0 SCOTUS and the district courts were firmly majority D appointed. (Nobody used the word 'capture' who wanted to claim being (D), that would be offensive.)

Note that in one case, the president was clearly and explicitly hobbled: to get judges through he had a compromise arrangement the party in opposition to him. Senators from the not-the-president's party from a state or circuit would send him a short list of 3 judges for that jurisdiction and he would pick his nominee from the opposing party's short list. The short-listing senators, on the other hand, had a motivation to not make their picks so partisan that their 'suggestions' would be dismissed out of hand because then their judiciaries would be understaffed and that would hurt their constituents since most decisions are not decided on party line (just the ones we notice). That president's nominees couldn't be 100% described as appointed by solely the party of the president in the WH.

Like I said, it's complicated. And that doesn't include the few *other* Art. III judges or the moderately numerous non-Art. III judges.