How Broken is the Supreme Court? STEVEN BESCHLOSS APR 27 I had the opportunity yesterday to talk to Tristan Snell, a former Assistant Attorney General for New York State and author of the excellent Taking Down Trump about his successful prosecution of Donald Trump and Trump University. He was as disturbed as I was about the Trump-friendly questioning by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority during oral arguments Thursday over the issue of absolute presidential immunity. “Yesterday really knocked me sideways,” he said. I’ve got to be honest, I think I finally might have had the blinkers removed from my eyes on the Supreme Court. I’m somebody who grew up very much respecting the court system. I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years. When I grew up, the Supreme Court meant something and it was an establishment that had a lot of credibility. And even when you didn’t agree with them, there was a gravitas there…The residual respect that some of us have for the Supreme Court needs to be tossed away completely. I keep thinking we’ve seen the bottom of what they’re doing and then they go lower. While Snell anticipated a clear 7-2 or 6-3 majority saying that Trump is not immune, now he’s not so sure. “I never thought this would go the wrong way,” he said. “I thought the problem was the delay.” And he now worries that a decision coming at the end of the court’s term in late June could cause the Jack Smith prosecution of Trump’s role on January 6 to “go away”—and maybe even undermine the state-level prosecutions. This has strengthened his recognition that, ultimately, it’s up to voters to hold Trump accountable at the ballot box. As for the court? Snell was sickened (as was I) by Justice Gorsuch insisting their task is to write “a rule for the ages.” Federalist Society conservatives who used to rail against legislating from the bench are now exploiting their power to do exactly that. We already saw that when they rejected settled law (and the will of the public) by stripping away women’s reproductive rights and overturning Roe v. Wade. What do you think? How broken is the Supreme Court? How did their questioning on Thursday or their overturning of Roe or other actions—including the unethical conduct of Clarence Thomas and his refusal to recuse himself in cases involving January 6—affect your thinking about the court? And do you think short-term change is possible, be it from new appointments in a second Biden term or an expanded number of justices? Or are we looking at decades to repair the damage caused by this Supreme Court? As always, I look forward to your observations and the opportunity for this community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful. Trolling will not be tolerated.