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Mother Jones: This is All John Roberts' Fault
Another reminder that Mother Jones mag is still one of the best independent voices out there. If you can toss them some bucks, it's a good time to do it.
This is the lead story in the latest Mother Jones mag (Jan/Feb '26 issue). Some snips:
This Is All John Roberts’ Fault
Trump owes his corrupt and abusive reign to one man.
PEMA LEVY AND ARI BERMAN - JANUARY+FEBRUARY 2026 ISSUE
Imagine: You are at a baseball game, but something is off. When the blue team is at bat, the umpire calls every pitch a strike. But when the red team is up, the umpire won’t call a single one. When a red batter hits the ball into a blue player’s glove—out!—the umpire sends him to first base anyway. You can’t believe what you are seeing. This is crazy, right? This is crazy. You look around. Does everyone else see what is happening?
Twenty years ago, John Roberts promised that as chief justice of the Supreme Court, he would be like an umpire, calling balls and strikes. His promise charmed senators and the media, who believed that his predilection for executive power and long-held antipathy for civil rights could be moderated by this commitment to faithfully apply the law. The delusion was so powerful that for two decades, the media defaulted to portraying him as a moderate institutionalist, pointing to high-profile decisions—to uphold parts of the Affordable Care Act or striking down President Donald Trump’s attempt to ask about citizenship in the 2020 census—in which he broke from conservative orthodoxy. But those decisions were always the exception. Today, as the Roberts court rewrites the Constitution in the image of Trumpian autocracy, it’s become clear that Roberts’ promise to be a neutral umpire was a lie. We are watching a rigged game, and Roberts set it up.
snip
The Roberts court has spent Trump’s second term not applying the law so much as clearing it out of his way. In a matter of months, the court’s 6–3 GOP-aligned majority has permitted a long list of lawless actions, including firing independent agency commissioners, using racial profiling in immigration sweeps, disappearing immigrants to authoritarian and war-torn nations, and defying Congress’ power of the purse. But the court’s acquiescence to an antidemocratic America didn’t start in 2025. Roberts has been embedding white-dominant authoritarianism into the country’s source code for two decades. It’s impossible to imagine today’s crisis without the Roberts court having first undermined the foundations of our democracy.
snip
Roberts didn’t just strip political power from ordinary people—he handed it to billionaires. His decisive vote in 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC lifted restrictions on political spending, while ludicrously insisting it would not “lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption.” Political spending by billionaires has since increased 160-fold. There’s a direct line between the ruling and Elon Musk buying Trump the White House with more than $290 million and being given free rein to fire his companies’ regulators in return. We are now operating under a Robertsian reimagining of the separation of powers, in which laws passed by Congress are mere suggestions for a monarchical president. “By creating out of whole cloth this ‘presidents can commit crimes with immunity’ doctrine that is anathema to the Constitution and rule of law, the Roberts court validated Trump’s view of himself as above the law, beholden to no one,” says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court Action Fund, which advocates for adding justices to alter the court’s makeup.
Long before Roberts and his colleagues assented to Trump’s lawless second term, they helped him get one. Not since 2000, when the justices put George W. Bush in the White House, has the court done so much to pick a president. In March 2024, the court overruled Colorado’s decision to keep Trump off its ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars oath-breaking insurrectionists from office. Given that Trump had sicced an armed mob on the US Capitol, Colorado’s Supreme Court found that he fit the bill, but the justices disagreed that the state could remove his name. In an unsigned decision, five conservative justices invented new law by saying only Congress could enforce Section 3, and only in the specific way the court dictated. Meanwhile, as special counsel Jack Smith waited to move Trump’s election interference case forward that spring, the court delayed reaching a decision on presidential immunity that could have allowed a trial. When it did, four months after the Colorado ruling, Roberts’ opinion instead effectively halted the prosecution. That November, Trump won.
Trump owes his corrupt and abusive reign to one man.
PEMA LEVY AND ARI BERMAN - JANUARY+FEBRUARY 2026 ISSUE
Imagine: You are at a baseball game, but something is off. When the blue team is at bat, the umpire calls every pitch a strike. But when the red team is up, the umpire won’t call a single one. When a red batter hits the ball into a blue player’s glove—out!—the umpire sends him to first base anyway. You can’t believe what you are seeing. This is crazy, right? This is crazy. You look around. Does everyone else see what is happening?
Twenty years ago, John Roberts promised that as chief justice of the Supreme Court, he would be like an umpire, calling balls and strikes. His promise charmed senators and the media, who believed that his predilection for executive power and long-held antipathy for civil rights could be moderated by this commitment to faithfully apply the law. The delusion was so powerful that for two decades, the media defaulted to portraying him as a moderate institutionalist, pointing to high-profile decisions—to uphold parts of the Affordable Care Act or striking down President Donald Trump’s attempt to ask about citizenship in the 2020 census—in which he broke from conservative orthodoxy. But those decisions were always the exception. Today, as the Roberts court rewrites the Constitution in the image of Trumpian autocracy, it’s become clear that Roberts’ promise to be a neutral umpire was a lie. We are watching a rigged game, and Roberts set it up.
snip
The Roberts court has spent Trump’s second term not applying the law so much as clearing it out of his way. In a matter of months, the court’s 6–3 GOP-aligned majority has permitted a long list of lawless actions, including firing independent agency commissioners, using racial profiling in immigration sweeps, disappearing immigrants to authoritarian and war-torn nations, and defying Congress’ power of the purse. But the court’s acquiescence to an antidemocratic America didn’t start in 2025. Roberts has been embedding white-dominant authoritarianism into the country’s source code for two decades. It’s impossible to imagine today’s crisis without the Roberts court having first undermined the foundations of our democracy.
snip
Roberts didn’t just strip political power from ordinary people—he handed it to billionaires. His decisive vote in 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC lifted restrictions on political spending, while ludicrously insisting it would not “lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption.” Political spending by billionaires has since increased 160-fold. There’s a direct line between the ruling and Elon Musk buying Trump the White House with more than $290 million and being given free rein to fire his companies’ regulators in return. We are now operating under a Robertsian reimagining of the separation of powers, in which laws passed by Congress are mere suggestions for a monarchical president. “By creating out of whole cloth this ‘presidents can commit crimes with immunity’ doctrine that is anathema to the Constitution and rule of law, the Roberts court validated Trump’s view of himself as above the law, beholden to no one,” says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court Action Fund, which advocates for adding justices to alter the court’s makeup.
Long before Roberts and his colleagues assented to Trump’s lawless second term, they helped him get one. Not since 2000, when the justices put George W. Bush in the White House, has the court done so much to pick a president. In March 2024, the court overruled Colorado’s decision to keep Trump off its ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars oath-breaking insurrectionists from office. Given that Trump had sicced an armed mob on the US Capitol, Colorado’s Supreme Court found that he fit the bill, but the justices disagreed that the state could remove his name. In an unsigned decision, five conservative justices invented new law by saying only Congress could enforce Section 3, and only in the specific way the court dictated. Meanwhile, as special counsel Jack Smith waited to move Trump’s election interference case forward that spring, the court delayed reaching a decision on presidential immunity that could have allowed a trial. When it did, four months after the Colorado ruling, Roberts’ opinion instead effectively halted the prosecution. That November, Trump won.
much more at the Mother Jones link, which I believe is the full, unlocked article.
https://russblib.blogspot.com
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