As is always the case, the media obsession with President Trump will never end. This time it is a bit different, in that both the left and the right agree on a part of Trump’s legacy in their year-end round-up stories.  Democrats and Republicans in the media agree that President Trump, combined with a Republican Senate led by Mitch McConnell, remade the Judiciary. 

From the left, Professor Noah Feldman does the typical frothing at the month unhinged liberal attack on conservative judges, President Trump, and Republicans in the Senate.  But putting aside the irrational hatred and mischaracterization, Feldman states something surprising:

2022 turned out to be the most consequential year of Donald Trump’s presidency. This year, the Supreme Court proved that its hard-right turn will be the most enduring legacy of his sorry four years in office.

Trump’s three Supreme Court appointments — the most by any president since Herbert Hoover, thanks to Mitch McConnell holding Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat open for Justice Neil Gorsuch — have launched a conservative judicial revolution that has only begun to repeal many of the major constitutional advances of the last 50-plus years. The new conservative majority is issuing decisions geared at restoring a nostalgic, never-was version of constitutional history, in place of long-established precedent. (Emphasis added.)

The far left’s efforts to intimidate, harass, and even do harm to Supreme Court justices have taken another nasty turn: 

A group offering bounty payments for sightings of conservative Supreme Court justices is the latest harassment campaign prompting Republican lawmakers to call for immediate action by the Justice Department.

While it is definitely the right thing to do to protect Supreme Court justices and all judges, it may also be what the law demands:

In what many believe to be the most momentous term in decades, the Supreme Court delivered a multitude of wins for originalism. This term's historic decisions should come with a great sense of pride for Justice Clarence Thomas. After years of fighting an uphill battle, Justice Thomas finally has enough support from other Justices on the Court to be in the majority. 

Justice Kavanaugh’s would-be assassin is in part the result of a problem created by Democrats who have called for violence against the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices for their support for overruling Roe v. Wade, which was confirmed by the recent Dobbs draft opinion leak.

But worse yet, Democrats not only refuse to condemn the would-be assassin’s actions and other violence against the justices, they are intentionally blocking legislation that would provide the justices clearly needed protection. As Republican Leader Mitch McConnell stated:  

This is exactly why the Senate passed legislation very shortly after the leak to enhance the police protection for the Justices and their families. This is commonsense, noncontroversial legislation that passed this chamber unanimously. 

But House Democrats have spent weeks blocking it. The House Democratic majority has refused to take it up.  That needs to change. Right now. House Democrats must pass this bill and they must do it today. House Democrats need to stop their multi-week blockade against the Supreme Court security bill and pass it before the sun sets today.

Although much of the world was focused on Ukraine, Republicans “won” some points with independent voters during the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.  According to polling after the hearing, independent and conservatives voter are less likely to support a vote for Judge Brown Jackson.  Other liberals are mad at Democrats for the handling of the hearing, for not playing the race card enough.  So Democrats and liberals went back to their tried and true attacks on black conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.  However, this attack was extreme even for them.  They are calling for Justice Thomas to recuse himself or even resign because of texts his wife, Ginni Thomas, sent.  As RNLA Chair Harmeet Dhillon stated:

“Ginni Thomas is a private citizen who is entitled to her own opinions independent of her husband,” Harmeet Dhillon, chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association, told the DCNF. “To impart to a spouse his wife’s private conversations as a recusal factor is both unprecedented and grossly sexist.”

“Ms. Thomas is neither a litigant, nor a lawyer, nor even a material witness, to any case presently before the court, nor is she likely to be, despite how hard the left is straining to make this sexist trope into an issue,” Dhillon continued.

Since the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, we've heard about the extensive support she has received from leftist "dark money" groups like Demand Justice. But where did this support originate? Earlier today, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained how a "politically charged" opinion she issued while serving as a District Court judge seems to have boosted her profile with the "dark money" Left:

“Before the 2020 election, one far-left dark-money group put Judge Jackson on their Supreme Court shortlist.

“Well, not at first. She was left off their first version. But shortly thereafter, the Judge published a fiery 118-page opinion in a politically-charged case that won attention and praise from liberal pundits.

On Tuesday, Senators Angus King, Amy Klobuchar, and Dick Durbin announced their proposal for reforming the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the Electoral Count Modernization Act. Before we begin on the actual bill, we must give the Democrats credit for actually making a proposal on the ECA. After massive "voting rights" bills that had little to do with making elections better or voting rights and more to do with their re-elections and a federal takeover of elections, the Democrats are actually focused on the subject of the bill's title this time. We are hopeful that this is sign the Democrats' dreams of partisan election "reform" outside the ECA are dead.

The Senate debated the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act all day yesterday and well into the night. This is the latest effort by Democrats on Capitol Hill to take over election regulation, ensure Washington bureaucrats control election rules, violate donor privacy, infringe on First Amendment rights, fund campaigns with federal dollars, and entrench Democrat power for decades to come.

On Tuesday, the Senate officially began consideration of the Democrats' latest partisan power grab, the "Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act."

12 noon, Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Senate begins consideration of the House Message to accompany #HR5746, Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act https://t.co/7iScGvjuI5

— U.S. Senate Floor (@SenateFloor) January 18, 2022

On Wednesday, Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer continued his campaign against the filibuster in the name of passing a federal takeover of elections. But Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are not buying Chuck Schumer's filibuster hysterics. Manchin expressed his continued hesitancy with making changes to the filibuster to a pool of reporters on Tuesday: "To being open to a rules change that would create a nuclear option, that's very, very difficult. That's a heavy lift… Anytime there's a carveout, you eat the whole turkey."