🏛️ A MAGA-fied Supreme Court
Our highest court might be about to turn American democracy upside down, Republicans release a laughably shambolic healthcare plan, and Bari Weiss crowns the next 'mediocre' star of CBS News.
🇿🇦 On this day in 1996, President Nelson Mandela signed a new constitution that completed a transition from a long, violent period of white minority Apartheid rule to full-fledged democracy in South Africa. (Is Elon Musk celebrating today? Or no?)
Good morning! Peter here, with a recommendation. Yesterday, Variety named Tony Gilroy’s award-winning, anti-fascist series ‘Andor’ as not only the single best television show of 2025 but also perhaps the top television show of the decade! All of us here at Zeteo adore Andor; you don’t need to be a Star Wars super fan, like me, to fall in love with it. Check it out – and also watch Mehdi’s interview with ‘Andor’ star Denise Gough!
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the Supreme Court wants to know if JD Vance is already running for president, there are new updates in the Epstein files saga, a close ally of Zohran Mamdani launches a bid for Congress, and transgender troops get thrown under the bus yet again.
🪄SCOTUS MAGA Hocus Pocus
This week, the United States Supreme Court signposted its intention to expand the executive powers of our current Republican president to such an extent that the Constitution itself is moot. What’s more, it made gestures to suggest it is readily preparing to accommodate JD Vance as the heir to the MAGA movement.
All to say, things are oh-so swell in the land of the free and the home of the brave!
“If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach,” legendary conservative Supreme Court Justice and infamous homophobe Antonin Scalia proclaimed to students at Chapman Law School in 2005, “if you like them all the time, you’re probably doing something wrong.”
If only Scalia’s contemporaries, the six robed reactionaries seated on the bench today, observed his sage (albeit almost certainly bad-faith) advice.
A 2025 Court Accountability report on rulings from different levels of the US judiciary indicates Donald Trump has enjoyed far, far more favorable results out of the Supreme Court than from both district and circuit courts, which suggests that while most judges around the country tend to blindly weigh the scales of justice, John Roberts and his conservative compatriots appear to be playing an “ideologically driven” game.
The report found that by late October, individuals or groups who challenged the Trump administration secured legal victories in approximately 60% of the 240 rulings judges had handed down. Notably, that total included winning 55% of cases before Trump-appointed judges. Not too shabby, Lady Justice!
The win-rate for folks who challenged the administration at the circuit court level was similar, with them coming out on top 59% of the time in the 90 cases analyzed by Court Accountability.
Our ol’ alphabet soup friend, known as SCOTUS, was a far different story, however. Of the 23 temporary orders and rulings passed down by the body that in some way related to direct actions by the Trump administration, Cheeto Benito luxuriated in a whopping 90% win rate. (During his first term, Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, cementing its 6-3 ultra-conservative supermajority.)
Pardon all the statistical gobbledygook, but this context matters. This term, the Court is in the process of hearing a slate of cases that would, in any normal, sane, functioning democracy, be treated like the constitutional equivalent of a five-alarm fire.