Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 9.5% (100 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0.5% (5 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 3.6% (38 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 0.7% (7 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 0%
• Overconfidence Bias - 6.6% (69 hits)
• Framing Effect - 1% (10 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 0%
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 6% (63 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 5.5% (58 hits)

Article text

Meet the freaks Trump may tap for the Supreme Court

It’s tough to imagine a Supreme Court with justices worse than the current crop of conservatives, but the folks who are currently vying to replace whichever justice steps down first are definitively, openly, gleefully *much* more terrible.

To be fair, sources have said that neither Justice Samuel Alito nor Justice Clarence Thomas are planning on stepping down, despite recent reporting and then retracting from NPR on Alito, but that reporting overlooks the careful verbiage Alito is using, which is that he is “not stepping down this term.”

Notice he said this term.

Terms end on the Sunday before the first Monday in October, so this term ends Oct.

4.

Alito’s statement says nothing about the upcoming term that starts the next day.

But what we do know is that Alito is planning on dropping his no-doubt-scintillating book on his originalist philosophy on Oct. 6, and might be gearing up for a book tour rather than another year on the court.

The fact that there might not actually be a spot to fill isn’t stopping the most craven jurists from doing everything to make sure President Donald Trump notices just how willing they are to ensure that the Supreme Court doesn’t get all caught up in stupid things like the law and precedent.

That’s for suckers.

Trump believes his Supreme Court appointees are not allowed to rule against him and that the only purpose of the nation’s highest court is to give him treats.

All of these potential candidates absolutely understand that is the assignment.

So, let’s run down the judges who are the most likely—and most awful—candidates who could ascend if Alito or Thomas steps down.

Judge James Ho is arguably the worst judge on the worst federal appeals court, the Fifth Circuit.

Ho has genuinely lost the plot, arguing that the Supreme Court is not there to “check the excesses of other branches.”

Perhaps being a fancy federal appeals judge and a former clerk to Justice Thomas rots your brain and sense of civic duty, because being a check on the excesses of other branches is kind of the whole job description for the Supreme Court.

Ho also fretted about how the current Supreme Court showed “disrespect” to Trump when it ruled that detainees had to be allowed to challenge their detentions rather than being summarily deported.

Another Trump appointee to the Fifth Circuit, Andrew Oldham, is also busy treating his current position as a way to show Trump that he has no intention of ever ruling against him.

According to Judge Oldham, a former Alito clerk, if Trump declares that there is a terrible invasion by Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, no court can ever review it, and Trump can therefore deport all Venezuelan citizens.

He even came right out and said that any detainees Trump says are members of Tren de Aragua also cannot challenge that, period.

So, if Trump says that every Venezuelan in the United States is a TdA member, no matter how absurd a lie that is, the courts just have to nod and agree.

The only recourse in this situation, said Oldham, would be to “challenge whether they are Venezuelan.”

Imagine thinking that, much less putting it in writing.

Just like the Fifth Circuit, the D.C.

Circuit Court of Appeals boasts not one, but two, possible Trump appointees who are currently doing everything in their power to protect Trump from any adverse lower court rulings.

Judge Neomi Rao has made sure to let her colleagues know how incandescently angry she was when they didn’t treat a Supreme Court shadow docket ruling as a permission slip for Trump to fire whoever he wants.

There’s also Gregory Katsas, who believes that courts cannot impose any consequences on Trump or the executive branch.

So, per Katsas, Judge James Boasberg’s order requiring the government to turn two planes full of deportees around was just somehow not clear and therefore Judge Boasberg couldn’t open an inquiry as to whether the Department of Justice lawyers who simply ignored that order should be subject to criminal contempt.

Over in the Second Circuit, Judge Steven Menashi is showing what a loyal justice he would be by haranguing his colleagues about Trump’s attempt to throw out the jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing E.

Jean Carroll.

Katsas whined about how unfair the lower court was in not letting Trump provide evidence that he believed her lawsuit was “concocted by his political opposition” and therefore he could not have defamed her.

Yes, how dare the rest of the Second Circuit not buy the notion that they are required to entertain Trump’s conspiracy theories.

Emil Bove, formerly one of many personal attorneys who represented Trump in criminal cases, was rewarded for his efforts with an appointment to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

You would think that normally, being the subject of multiple whistleblower complaints about refusing to follow court orders would be a bit of a hindrance to a lifetime seat, but for Trump, Bove’s actions were a feature, not a bug.

And then there’s U.S.

District Judge Aileen Cannon.

Cannon’s efforts at protecting Trump from any criminal consequences are truly unparalleled.

She didn’t just throw out the criminal case over Trump’s retention of top secret documents after he left office, documents which he stashed in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.

She also came up with a very … unique theory that former Special Counsel Jack Smith could never release the report of his investigation and that even writing up the investigation was somehow illegal.

However, Trump doesn’t seem to gush about Cannon nearly as much as one might expect, given her willingness to lend him a helping hand.

There could be some dark horses in the crop of Trump’s second-term appointees, as they haven’t had much time to show him their absolute fealty.

However, since it is clear that every appointee realized they were required to refuse to say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump can no doubt count on their unquestioning support.

In the end, perhaps it doesn’t matter who Trump picks.

If Trump gets a chance to install another Supreme Court justice, every one of these choices is bad for the court and bad for democracy.