Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
At
the National Conservatism Conference, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt of
Missouri shared a shockingly white nationalist vision of American
identity and history. Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project,
tells Ali Velshi that, in contrast to years of racist “dog whistles”
from politicians on the right, Schmitt’s openness is almost
“refreshing.” His far-right viewpoint, Hannah-Jones says, isn’t “just
about who is being allowed to immigrate into our country now, but what
is the very essence of who is an American and therefore who should have
the protections of the Constitution and full rights as citizens.”
Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, and the Power of Resistance
Trump
returns to the U.S. Open, the scene of his previous crimes, and is
promptly booed by the crowd, which is turning on him for his fascist
overreach and numerous failed economic policies. Donald Trump wants to
be remembered as a strongman, but his legacy is increasingly one of
fragility. Whether in courtrooms, at sporting events, or on the world
stage, he cannot escape the reality that he is disliked, distrusted, and
discredited by millions.
Stacey
Abrams, former Democratic Party leader in the Georgia House of
Representatives, says autocracy is on the rise in the U.S., with key
indicators including the curtailing of the press, mass firings of civil
servants and the use of the military against American citizens. This
weekend, President Trump threatened to deploy troops to Chicago in the
days ahead, following weeks of National Guard patrolling of Washington,
D.C. Abrams joins the show to lay out what she says is happening right
now in America, and what might be done to stop it.
She’s
a voting rights activist, a prominent voice in the Democratic party and
a three-time New York Times best-selling novelist; but more than
anything else, Stacey Abrams is a bonafide badass according to MSNBC’s
Nicolle Wallace. Abrams calls out the political cowardice that’s taken
hold of Trump’s MAGA Republicans and calls on Democrats to find their
voice and their spine. Never forget, says Abrams, that being in the
minority doesn’t make you powerless.
"The Freedom Suite" - 19:17 "Someday I'll Find You" - 4:35 "Will You Still Be Mine?" - 2:54 "Till There Was You" - 4:54 "Till There Was You" [alternate take] - 4:55 "Shadow Waltz" - 4:08 Recorded - February 11 & March 7, 1958
In the incredibly rich pantheon of African American art and culture there have been many legendary musical artists from the Jazz tradition who through their prodigious art have dramatically changed the very course of cultural history in the modern world. These astonishing and truly revolutionary figures: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillispie. Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Sarah Vaughn, Betty Carter, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Joe Henderson, Horace Silver, Roy Haynes, Kenny Clarke, Herbie Nichols, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean and Archie Shepp-- just to name a few icons from a HUGE collection of truly extraordinary artists in this always fecund tradition--have played a major role in our fundamental understanding of what exactly constitutes "GREAT ART" in the world. It is this grand, profound, and tirelessly powerful legacy that the living legend and saxophone genius SONNY ROLLINS (b. September 7, 1930) embodies and epitomizes in every improvisational gesture that he expresses and is the very source of his magisterial command of his instrument. A consummate master who continues at age 81 (!) to enthrall and captivate his many listeners around the world, Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins was one of five Kennedy Center Honorees for 2011 on December 3, 2011 (broadcast on CBS television this past tuesday night December 27, 2011). It is in direct response to and heartfelt appreciation for this great honor that the following TRIBUTE TO THE SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS is made. Long May this GIANT continue to grace our lives with the depth, courage, insight, clarity, beauty, and creative authority that marks his tremendous artistry and his eloquent, humble and generous humanity. SONNYMOON FOR US ALL INDEED...
Kofi
"America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humor, its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as its own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in its very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity."
--Sonny Rollins
--Liner Notes to "Freedom Suite” 1958
SONNYMOON FOR US ALL (For the greatest saxophonist in the world: Sonny Rollins) by Kofi Natambu
WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON WE HEAR SUCH A GLORIOUS TUNE IT'S ALWAYS A BIT OF A SWOON WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON
THE SONG COULD BE AUGUST OR JUNE A HELL OF A BURST OR A BOON WAILING AT MIDNIGHT OR NOON WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON
TRANSVERSING HARMONIC LAGOONS HE PLAYS THRU OUR FEARS AND OUR WOUNDS HIS HORN IS A RHYTHMIC PLATOON WHEN SONNY STANDS IN FOR THE MOON
I THINK I WILL SOON BE A LOON OR AT LEAST A RAVING BABOON IF I DON'T GET TO HEAR SOME MORE TUNES FROM THAT SOARING MELODIC BALLOON
O ROLLINS BLOWS HEAT CAN BE FIERCE OR SO SWEET
YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON YEAH SONNY SWINGS FULL LIKE THE MOON…
Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins. After early discovery of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, he started out on alto saxophone, inspired by Louis Jordan. At the age of sixteen, he switched to tenor, trying to emulate Hawkins. He also fell under the spell of the musical revolution that surrounded him, Bebop.
He began to follow Charlie Parker, and soon came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his musical mentor and guru. Living in Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Sonny who was first out of the pack, working and recording with Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.
"Of course, these people are there to be called on because I think I represent them in a way," Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors. "They're not here now so I feel like I'm sort of representing all of them, all of the guys. Remember, I'm one of the last guys left, as I'm constantly being told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke these people."
In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene, through his work with Miles, Monk, and the MJQ.
Miles Davis was an early Sonny Rollins fan and in his autobiography wrote that he "began to hang out with Sonny Rollins and his Sugar Hill Harlem crowd...anyway, Sonny had a big reputation among a lot of the younger musicians in Harlem. People loved Sonny Rollins up in Harlem and everywhere else. He was a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians. Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird. I know one thing--he was close. He was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas. I loved him back then as a player and he could also write his ass off..."
With Clifford Brown and Max Roach, 1956
Sonny moved to Chicago for a few years to remove himself from the surrounding elements of negativity around the Jazz scene. He reemerged at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation.
It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,"Newk." As Miles Davis explains in his autobiography: "Sonny had just got back from playing a gig out in Chicago. He knew Bird, and Bird really liked Sonny, or "Newk" as we called him, because he looked like the Brooklyn Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe. One day, me and Sonny were in a cab...when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you're Don Newcombe!'' Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn't thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening..."
In 1956, Sonny began recording the first of a series of landmark recordings issued under his own name: Valse Hot introduced the practice, now common, of playing bop in 3/4 meter; St. Thomas initiated his explorations of calypso patterns; and Blue 7 was hailed by Gunther Schuller as demonstrating a new manner of "thematic improvisation," in which the soloist develops motifs extracted from his theme. Way Out West (1957), Rollins's first album using a trio of saxophone, double bass, and drums, offered a solution to his longstanding difficulties with incompatible pianists, and exemplified his witty ability to improvise on hackneyed material (Wagon Wheels, I'm an Old Cowhand). It Could Happen to You (also 1957) was the first in a long series of unaccompanied solo recordings, and The Freedom Suite (1958) foreshadowed the political stances taken in jazz in the 1960s. During the years 1956 to 1958 Rollins was widely regarded as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz.
Rollins's first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late `61 withdrew from public performance.
Sonny remembers that he took his leave of absence from the scene because "I was getting very famous at the time and I felt I needed to brush up on various aspects of my craft. I felt I was getting too much, too soon, so I said, wait a minute, I'm going to do it my way. I wasn't going to let people push me out there, so I could fall down. I wanted to get myself together, on my own. I used to practice on the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge because I was living on the Lower East Side at the time."
When he returned to action in early `62, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid 60's, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and `66 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and started yet another sabbatical in `66. "I was getting into eastern religions," he remembers. "I've always been my own man. I've always done, tried to do, what I wanted to do for myself. So these are things I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the Bridge. I wanted to get into religion. But also, the Jazz music business is always bad. It's never good. So that led me to stop playing in public for a while, again. During the second sabbatical, I worked in Japan a little bit, and went to India after that and spent a lot of time in a monastery. I resurfaced in the early 70s, and made my first record in `72. I took some time off to get myself together and I think it's a good thing for anybody to do."
Lucille and Sonny
In 1972, with the encouragement and support of his wife Lucille, who had become his business manager, Rollins returned to performing and recording, signing with Milestone and releasing Next Album. (Working at first with Orrin Keepnews, Sonny was by the early ’80s producing his own Milestone sessions with Lucille.) His lengthy association with the Berkeley-based label produced two dozen albums in various settings – from his working groups to all-star ensembles (Tommy Flanagan, Jack DeJohnette, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams); from a solo recital to tour recordings with the Milestone Jazzstars (Ron Carter, McCoy Tyner); in the studio and on the concert stage (Montreux, San Francisco, New York, Boston). Sonny was also the subject of a mid-’80s documentary by Robert Mugge entitled Saxophone Colossus; part of its soundtrack is available as G-Man.
He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000), and his second for 2004’s Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert), in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category (for “Why Was I Born”). In addition, Sonny received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.
In June 2006 Rollins was inducted into the Academy of Achievement – and gave a solo performance – at the International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and attended by world leaders as well as distinguished figures in the arts and sciences.
Rollins was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, in November 2009. The award is one of Austria’s highest honors, given to leading international figures for distinguished achievements. The only other American artists who have received this recognition are Frank Sinatra and Jessye Norman.
In 2010 on the eve of his 80th birthday, Sonny Rollins is one of 229 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, business, and public affairs who have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A center for independent policy research, the Academy is among the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and celebrates the 230th anniversary of its founding this year.
In August 2010, Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medalist, the first jazz composer to be so honored. The Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field.
Sonny Rollins Receiving National Medal of Arts Award from President Obama at White House in 2010
Photo: Ruth David
Yet another major award was bestowed on Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. Rollins accepted the award, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, “on behalf of the gods of our music.”
Since 2006, Rollins has been releasing his music on his own label, Doxy Records (with distribution from the Decca Label Group). The first Doxy album was Sonny, Please, Rollins’s first studio recording since This Is What I Do. That was followed by the acclaimed Road Shows, vol. 1 (2008), the first in a planned series of recordings from Rollins’s audio archives.
Mr. Rollins released Road Shows, vol. 2 in the fall of 2011. In addition to material recorded in Sapporo and Tokyo, Japan during an October 2010 tour, the recording contains several tracks from Sonny’s September 2010 80th birthday concert in New York—including the historic and electrifying encounter with Ornette Coleman.
On December 3, 2011 Sonny Rollins was one of five 2011 Kennedy Center honorees, alongside actress Meryl Streep, singer Barbara Cook, singer/songwriter Neil Diamond, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Rollins said of the honor, “I am deeply appreciative of this great honor. In honoring me, the Kennedy Center honors jazz, America’s classical music. For that, I am very grateful.”
Road Shows, vol. 3, released by Doxy/OKeh/Sony in 2014, drew its six tracks from concerts recorded between 2001 and 2012 in Sitama, Japan; Toulouse, Marseille, and Marciac, France; and St. Louis, Missouri. “Patanjali,” a recent-vintage Rollins composition, was given its debut recording on the disc.
Rollins followed this up in 2016 with Holding the Stage: Road Shows, vol. 4 (Doxy/OKeh/Sony). The album’s seven tracks encompass some 33 years (1979-2012) and include a previously unreleased 23-minute medley (and concert closer) from his September 15, 2001 Boston performance, most of which had been immortalized in Rollins’s final Milestone album, Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert.
In 2017, the Schomburg Center in New York City acquired Rollins's personal archive.
In late 2020, the saxophonist released Rollins in Holland, a 2-CD/3-LP deluxe set via Resonance Records. The collection of unheard live and studio trio recordings from Rollins’s 1967 Netherlands tour feature “take no prisoners” performances with bassist Ruud Jacobs and drummer Han Bennink.
SONNY ROLLINSIS ONE OF 10 RECIPIENTS OF 2010 NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS
Saxophonist Sonny Rollins was one of ten honorees who received the 2010 National Medal of Arts for outstanding achievements and support of the arts. The presentation was made on March 2 by President Barack Obama in an East Room ceremony at the White House.
“I’m very happy that jazz, the greatest American music, is being recognized through this honor, and I’m grateful to accept this award on behalf of the gods of our music,” Mr. Rollins said of the award.
The National Medal of Arts recipients represent the many vibrant and diverse art forms thriving in America,” said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. “Sonny Rollins’ melodic sensibilities, playing style, and solos have delighted audiences and influenced generations of musicians for over fifty years and I join the President and the country in saluting him.”
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 2:47 PM
Labels: 2011 Kennedy Center Honors, African American Art, Composition, Improvisation, Jazz history, Sonny Rollins, Tenor Saxophone
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus--1956:
Sonny Rollins (tenor sax), Tommy Flanagan (piano), Doug Watkins (bass), Max Roach (drums)
From the album 'SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS' (Prestige Records)
Sonny Rollins - "St. Thomas" (composition by Sonny Rollins)--Live Performance from 1968:
Tenor Sax : Sonny Rollins Piano : Kenny Drew Bass : Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen Drums : Albert "Tootie" Heath
Sonny Rollins - "G-Man" (composition by Sonny Rollins. In live performance in Japan in 1986. From famed Jazz documentary film 'SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS'. Directed by Robert Mugge:
In a few weeks the government’s funding will run out. If Democrats vote for a new spending bill, they will be funding Trump’s autocratic takeover. How can they? Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/op... You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...
In this Weekly Wrap Up, Eddie reflects on personal matters before diving into pressing global and domestic issues. He discusses the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, critiques the current political landscape in the U.S., and addresses public health concerns related to vaccines. Glaude also analyzes economic trends, the implications of political spectacles, and the rise of nationalism, urging listeners to remain vigilant and courageous in the face of these challenges.
Vice President JD Vance gave a speech recently that deserved more attention than it got. Accepting an award at a right-wing think tank, he argued that there’s a fundamental brokenness in how we define who is an American. He explained that this is the root of many of our country’s problems: a national identity that has become too broad. That was also a core idea of the 2018 book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” which caused a sensation on the right. Its author, the Israeli political theorist Yoram Hazony, went on to build a movement. For years, he has hosted NatCon — short for National Conservatism — conferences.
Those events have featured speakers like Marco Rubio, who is now the secretary of state, and Senator Josh Hawley. And one of the most reliable speakers, year after year, has been Vance. I wanted to talk to Hazony. What exactly is his argument, his worldview? And are the Trump administration’s policies putting it into practice?
0:00Intro 8:38 What is a nation? 18:00 The future that NatCons fear 25:00 A history of division 30:00 ‘Who are you arguing with?’ 37:14 The ‘kooky Nazi right’ 44:41 ‘MAGA is a very broad alliance’ 49:25 Why Vance matters 55:04 The sources of ‘cohesion’ 1:03:43 What is multiculturalism? 1:11:03 Rebuilding ‘a dominant center’ 1:15:03 NatCons and tolerance
Trump was losing in the courts. He’s not anymore.
In the early months of the administration, the courts were proving a powerful check on President Trump, blocking many of his boldest actions. But those were the lower courts. In the past few months, the Supreme Court has weighed in, and it has handed Trump win after win after win.
So what do these decisions enable the president to do? And why is the Supreme Court giving Trump what he wants?
To pull all this apart, I’m joined by Kate Shaw. She is a former Supreme Court law clerk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast.
Note: This episode was recorded on Aug. 21, before Trump announced his intention to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and before Immigration and Customs Enforcement re-arrested Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and began processing him for deportation to Uganda.
Leading Journalist, Activist, Attorney, Social Critic, Legal Theorist, Public Intellectual, and Author Elie Mystal On The Clear and Present Danger of Trump Remaking and Expanding the Fascist Authority and Power of the Supreme Court and the Absolute Terror That His Utterly Corrupt, Tyrannical, and Oppressive Political, Legal, and Ideological Regime Is Certain To Inflict On This Society and the World If We Don't Stop This Looming Catastrophe
How Trump Could Remake the Supreme Court for a Generation
Donald Trump is poised to become the first president since FDR to have appointed the majority of high-court justices. His potential picks are terrifying
by Elie Mystal February 11, 2025 The Nation
Illustration by Brian Stauffer.
[This article appears in the March 2025 issue, with the headline “The Supreme Trump Court.”]
Donald Trump’s first term as president gave the republicans control over the most dangerous body of the most dangerous branch of government: the Supreme Court. With the help of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, along with timely retirements and untimely deaths, Trump was able to secure a 6–3 hard-right majority on the court and use it to make the Republicans’ least-popular policy dreams come true. In the brief years since, the court has undermined labor rights, stripped back voting rights, and reduced pregnant people to the status of second-class citizens whose bodies can be controlled by Republican state legislatures eager to use them for labor without compensation.
The Democrats might have used Joe Biden’s four-year interregnum to begin to claw back the Supreme Court from the Republicans’ grip. Particularly during the first two years, with the Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, they could have added additional justices to the court. Had they done so, abortion rights could have been saved, voting rights could have been protected, and Trump may have been ruled ineligible to ever run for office again.
Instead, the Democrats did nothing. As the Supreme Court revealed its full moral turpitude to a disgusted public, Congress failed to impose even minimal ethical standards on the justices or cut the court’s funding, while Biden sent court expansion to die in a useless commission.
Now we will experience a time of consequences. Vulnerable communities will pay the price for the Democrats’ inaction—and as bad as the court’s rulings have been in recent years, they are likely to get worse. When the justices are inevitably asked to weigh in on whether Trump can actually revoke birthright citizenship, don’t expect them to stop the guy they literally helped get elected from violating the Constitution. When they hear a lawsuit on whether Elon Musk and his apartheid-adjacent DOGE bros can resegregate the workforce, don’t expect them to honor the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. As for writing trans kids out of existence while citing the writings of J.K. Rowling as precedent, well, this court has already signaled it’s eager to do that.
In the balance: People demonstrate in support of trans youth as the current court debates a law banning puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans teens.(Michael Brochstein / SiPA via AP Images)
Still, all of this represents just the opening salvo in a GOP reign of terror that could outlive Trump and most of the people reading this, because Trump’s reelection gives the Republicans a chance to do something even more extreme with the Supreme Court: to make their judicial control permanent. Backed by a healthy majority in the Senate, the Republicans can swap out their oldest justices for younger blood, entrenching their dystopian view that the Constitution confers unlimited rights to gun owners and nobody else. And if the feckless gods decree that one of the Democratic justices should succumb to the ultimate law of nature during the next four years, the Republicans will be able to appoint their replacement as well, giving them a 7–2 majority.
In the case of either of these events, the Supreme Court will not just have a Republican majority by 2029, when Trump leaves office; it will likely have a Trump majority. Trump is now poised to become the first president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to have appointed a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court. His justices will outlive him, and their impact on law and policy will outlast whatever temporary tragedies Trump brings forth through his executive orders.
To have that kind of decades-long impact, Trump will require some help from the current Republican justices who are past their sell-by date. Clarence Thomas is 76. Sam Alito is 74. John Roberts just turned 70, and while he is unlikely to retire, life starts to get a bit less certain when you hit your eighth decade. Republican lawmakers and Trump himself will actively pressure these Republican justices to retire and offer them golden parachutes or whatever else their corrupt little hearts desire.
The one most likely to leave voluntarily is Alito. While he enjoys the power of being a Supreme Court justice, Alito is also partisan to his very core and is fully capable of reading the room and an actuary table. By retiring while Trump is in the White House and Republicans control the Senate, he could help out his beloved Republican Party, and that is Alito’s greatest mission in life. Alito (and his wife) are rumored to hate Washington, DC. When Trump gives him the opportunity to be replaced by one of his former law clerks, I reckon he’ll take it.
Practicing for retirement? Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito attend a private event together.(Jacquelyn Martin / Getty Images)
Clarence Thomas, by contrast, will take some convincing. If his health holds, he’s on track to break William O. Douglas’s record as the longest-serving Supreme Court justice—a milestone he’ll reach sometime in 2028. Thomas will never get a spot in the Museum of African American History (unless it opens up a “Sometimes It Be Your Own People” wing), but breaking Douglas’s record is a legacy in itself. And Thomas (and his wife), unlike Alito (and his wife), is believed to really enjoy DC—to say nothing of the many perks that come with being a Supreme Court justice on real estate baron Harlan Crow’s payroll.
Thomas is also an iconoclast, which means that while the pleas for him to retire will get very loud in Republican circles, especially as we approach the 2028 presidential election, he might well resist them. I’ve always thought that, of all the justices on the court, Thomas is the one most likely to die at his desk while doing what he loves, which is taking away rights from Black people and women. Still, I think the raw power of his partisan allegiances will win out in the end—assuming, that is, that Republicans find a university or think tank willing to write Thomas a blank check for the rest of his life.
If Trump does get the opportunity to replace some Supreme Court justices, it’s unclear who will mastermind the actual appointments. Last time, conservative archvillain Leonard Leo called the shots, albeit through his sock puppet, then–White House counsel Don McGahn. Trump’s picks of Neil Gorsuch, alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were straight out of Federalist Society central casting.
This time, we don’t know if Leo and his ilk will hold the same kind of power over Trump. Trump’s cabinet appointments show that he values loyal sycophants over competent officials, and there’s every reason to think he’ll try to fill the Supreme Court with people loyal to himself, not Leo. There’s also a new voice in Trump’s ear that wasn’t there the last time: that of shadow president Elon Musk. We don’t know whom he wants to see on the court, but given the amount of litigation that Musk and his businesses are involved in, one expects he’ll have his opinions on Supreme Court appointments, and those opinions will carry weight.
The fluid power dynamics among Trump, Musk, Leo, and the Senate confirmation process—ostensibly under the control of the new Senate majority leader, John Thune—mean that there’s more uncertainty about Trump’s likely Supreme Court nominees than for any incoming president in my lifetime. Indeed, the only thing I can be 100 percent sure of is that whoever Trump picks (and the Senate confirms) will be a deplorable jurist, dedicated to a far-right political agenda masquerading as law, and determined to inject more bigotry, discrimination, and sexism into the Constitution.
Still, in the cauldron of contenders for the nation’s highest court, there are a few names that keep bubbling to the top. Let’s discuss the five most likely people Trump could nominate to entrench one-party Republican rule on the court.
This time, we don’t know if Leo and his ilk will hold the same kind of power over Trump. Trump’s cabinet appointments show that he values loyal sycophants over competent officials, and there’s every reason to think he’ll try to fill the Supreme Court with people loyal to himself, not Leo. There’s also a new voice in Trump’s ear that wasn’t there the last time: that of shadow president Elon Musk. We don’t know whom he wants to see on the court, but given the amount of litigation that Musk and his businesses are involved in, one expects he’ll have his opinions on Supreme Court appointments, and those opinions will carry weight.
The fluid power dynamics among Trump, Musk, Leo, and the Senate confirmation process—ostensibly under the control of the new Senate majority leader, John Thune—mean that there’s more uncertainty about Trump’s likely Supreme Court nominees than for any incoming president in my lifetime. Indeed, the only thing I can be 100 percent sure of is that whoever Trump picks (and the Senate confirms) will be a deplorable jurist, dedicated to a far-right political agenda masquerading as law, and determined to inject more bigotry, discrimination, and sexism into the Constitution.
Still, in the cauldron of contenders for the nation’s highest court, there are a few names that keep bubbling to the top. Let’s discuss the five most likely people Trump could nominate to entrench one-party Republican rule on the court.
(left to right: Shuran Huang / The Washington Post via Getty Images; CC 4.0: Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call; Ed Reinke / AP; Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call)
ANDREW OLDHAM fifth circuit court of appeals
Most people were concerned that Texas’s litigious and nefarious attorney general, Ken Paxton, would be given some kind of federal appointment in the new Trump administration. But the real threat coming from the Lone Star State is Andy Oldham, a circuit court judge who was appointed to his post by, yes, Donald Trump.
Oldham began making his bones as Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s right-hand lawman. As deputy solicitor general of Texas, he served as what the Alliance for Justice called the “architect” of Texas’s strategy to block Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) order. He also took strong stances against environmental protections and reproductive rights—and in favor of gun access. He did so well as deputy SG that Abbott elevated him to serve as his chief legal counsel in 2018.
Oldham didn’t stay in that position very long, however. A few weeks in, Trump nominated him to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. There, Oldham has done what Trump expected him to do: He has issued opinions overturning the federal ban on ghost guns and defending Texas’s draconian immigration laws and, in one particularly curious ruling, appeared to support vigilante justice. He has also been an outspoken opponent of what the white wing now calls “DEI.”
But none of that is what makes Oldham stand out, as white male judges who like guns and hate women and Mexicans are a dime a dozen these days. The most interesting thing about Oldham is how poorly written his opinions are. He front-loads his overlong musings with enough amateur-historian babble to make Dan Brown blush, then sermonizes with the kind of conservative zeal that recalls John Lithgow’s character in the movie Footloose. The law, if discussed at all, is relegated to afterthoughts and footnotes.
That doesn’t seem to be a problem for people in Trump world, particularly since Oldham has other qualities they like, among them being against the counting of all eligible ballots—and in favor of presidents being free to commit crimes without prosecution. In October 2024, Oldham wrote an opinion in a case about whether Mississippi could count absentee ballots received after Election Day. He argued that federal law preempted the state from counting such ballots—which was a key part of Trump’s strategy to steal the election should he have lost it—but he did grant that the court shouldn’t block Mississippi from counting those ballots unless they were dispositive.
Of course, Trump won the election fairly, and in November, a week after the election, Oldham headlined a Federalist Society event to crow about it. In his speech, Oldham said that we need to make sure that no one is ever charged “on the basis of their politics” (which, again, is the false narrative Trump has been pushing to explain his multiple felony indictments), and also that the judiciary must be protected from “reprisals” from the legislative branch. According to Oldham, those reprisals include commonsense reforms like court expansion and ethics laws.
While Oldham checks all of Trump’s boxes, it’s unclear whether he can count on the support of the shadow president, Musk. Oldham joined the unanimous opinion in NetChoice v. Paxton, a case that explored whether Texas could regulate social media platforms when they censor content. The opinion rejects “the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.” That opinion was later reversed by the Supreme Court, 9–0.
We know Elon Musk likes to pretend that he’s in favor of free speech and against censorship. We also know that Musk likes to reserve the right to throttle content and shadow-ban people who are not tweeting out pro-Republican messages. Oldham’s minority viewpoint on the right of states to regulate these platforms might well be a strike against him.
Oldham is only 46 years old. If elevated to the Supreme Court, he could wield power for 30 years or more. Replacing Samuel Alito with a Samuel Alito clone who writes worse, and then forcing us to suffer under his legal yoke indefinitely, sounds like the kind of torment the gods might have debated for Sisyphus before ultimately going with the rock.
The honest truth: A woman demonstrates outside the Supreme Court on the day it ruled in favor of a former police officer who participated in the January 6 coup attempt.(Michael A. McCoy / Getty Images)
JAMES HO fifth circuit court of appeals
As I said, it can always get worse. James C. Ho is a former clerk for Clarence Thomas and, as with Oldham for Alito, is being mentioned as a potential enticement for Thomas to retire and pass the torch to the next generation.
Ho is from Taiwan (he was naturalized as a US citizen at the age of 9) and, if elevated, would become the first Asian American justice on the Supreme Court. For all of the Republicans’ bluster and vitriol about DEI, they are happy to play identity politics when it suits them. Amy Coney Barrett, for instance, is on the court in part because Trump promised to appoint a woman (who would overturn Roe v. Wade) to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Replacing the second Black justice, who happens to hate Black people, with an immigrant justice who happens to hate immigrants sounds exactly like Republican thinking to me.
Ho is well qualified to perform what Republicans call jurisprudence these days. After law school at the University of Chicago, he was part of the Bush v. Gore team and helped to get George W. Bush appointed president by the court. Ho was rewarded for these efforts with various positions in the Bush Department of Justice. He then served as chief legal counsel for Senator John Cornyn on the Senate Judiciary Committee before clerking for Thomas. After his clerkship, Ho was appointed to be the solicitor general of Texas in 2008, succeeding Senator Ted Cruz in that job. Trump nominated Ho to the Fifth Circuit in 2017, and after he was confirmed, he was sworn in to his seat by Thomas in Harlan Crow’s library. If you designed the career trajectory of a Republican Supreme Court justice in a laboratory, it would look a lot like the path Ho has traveled.
On the Fifth Circuit, Ho has been involved in nearly all of the hot-button culture war issues that have come before his court, and he has staked out extremist positions with unnecessary concurrences almost every time. He’s concurred in numerous gun cases, always arguing that the Second Amendment essentially prevents any restriction or regulation on gun ownership. He concurred in the case that attempted to ban the abortion pill, mifepristone, and gave the wildest justification on record for why the plaintiffs deserved to have standing in the case: He argued that people like dentists have the right to sue abortion-pill makers because they like seeing pregnant women in the wild.
Ho’s father was an ob-gyn, by the way. Reading his opinions is like going to a wildlife reserve with the Trump children instead of David Attenborough: Everything exists for his personal amusement and enjoyment; any natural beauty and tranquility is pierced by insufferable pseudo-scientific chatter; and something is probably going to get shot.
Ho’s opinions are risible, and some commentators have pointed out that this has had the unintentional effect of making him more powerful and popular in Republican circles. In their world, where “owning the libs” is the most valuable currency, Ho is wealthy. Ian Millhiser has written that “if you could breathe life into 4chan” and give that life form the powers and privileges of a federal judge with a lifetime appointment, “you would have created Judge James Ho.”
If Ho were a man of consistent beliefs, that would be one thing, but he’s really just a guy willing to say anything to get his next job. That’s been on full display since Trump’s election. One of Ho’s longest-standing legal opinions is that birthright citizenship is sacrosanct in the Constitution and cannot be undone absent a constitutional amendment. He’s been on record with that belief for nearly 20 years—until it became apparent that Trump was interested in revoking the right. At that point, Ho changed his tune. In an interview he gave a week after Trump’s election, he said, “No one to my knowledge has ever argued that the children of invading aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship…. And I can’t imagine what the legal argument for that would be.”
James Ho is only 51, and he’s not about to let one bedrock constitutional principle get in the way of his next gig. He has already measured the windows in Thomas’s office, and Harlan Crow is ready to buy him new drapes. If Thomas gets struck by a bolt of lightning in the next four years, it will just mean that Ho has learned how to control the weather.
The proto-Trump court: The nine justices of the current Supreme Court; six were appointed by Republican presidents, including three by Trump during his first term.(Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images)
AILEEN MERCEDES CANNON us district court for the southern district of florida
Aileen Cannon is a mediocrity in the world of judges. She is common, banal. If you threw a dart into any Federalist Society luncheon at any of the top 15 law schools in the country, you’d most likely end up hitting Aileen Cannon or someone just like her. She has no business being on any list of potential Supreme Court nominees, but she likely will be, for one simple reason: Trump likes surrounding himself with mediocrities who owe their careers and status to him.
Cannon was born in Colombia but grew up in Miami. Her mother is Cuban—she left after the revolution—while her father hails from Indiana. After prep school in Miami, Cannon got her undergraduate degree from Duke University. She was a member of the Tri Delta sorority and wrote for Miami’s Spanish-language newspaper, El Nuevo Herald.
From there, Cannon took a bog-standard path to becoming a federal judge on the Republican side. She went to the University of Michigan Law School, where she joined the Federalist Society, but according to a New York Times profile, “she was not an especially visible presence.” She graduated in 2007, and in 2008 she clerked for Judge Steven Colloton, a George W. Bush appointee, on the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, out in Iowa.
Rather than getting a Supreme Court clerkship, which is what the alleged bright lights in the Federalist Society firmament usually do, Cannon opted for private practice. She went to the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which has a reputation for being an intellectually safe space for conservative-aligned corporate lawyers. She spent three years making money, and then in 2013 she moved to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, as an assistant United States attorney.
It is, again, not uncommon for AUSAs to make the jump to becoming a federal judge in the district they serve in, and that’s what Cannon did. In 2019, she was contacted by Florida Senator (and fellow member of the conservative Cuban diaspora) Marco Rubio about a potential elevation to the federal bench. After a series of interviews, she was nominated by Trump to the district court in May 2020, at the age of just 39.
Cannon was confirmed to her post on November 12, 2020, during the lame-duck session of Congress after Trump lost the election but before his forces attacked the Capitol. Her confirmation vote was 56–21, so in addition to inexplicably gaining some Democratic support, she also benefited from the Democrats, once again, just not taking judicial appointments all that seriously.
Nobody outside of a few trial lawyers in Miami would know who Cannon is save for the fact that she was randomly assigned the Trump v. United States case after FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago and found Trump in possession of stolen classified material. Over the course of that litigation, Cannon took Trump’s side at nearly every turn, issuing bizarre rulings that were criticized as wrong and craven readings of the law by other Federalist Society lawyers—and, in some cases, were overturned by the 11th Circuit on appeal. Nonetheless, Cannon dutifully helped Trump delay the prosecution of the case until he was once again the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Then, in July, she dismissed the case outright.
The stolen-documents case was, in many ways, the greatest threat to Trump’s physical freedom, but Cannon made his problems essentially go away. She did not merely slip Trump a bobby pin so he could unlock his handcuffs; she did him one better and effectively hid him in her house so the state could never put the manacles on him in the first place. An AI judge programmed by Musk and Don Jr. to help Trump wouldn’t be as obvious about its intentions as Cannon.
Trump could reward her for her service without putting her all the way on the Supreme Court. She is, after all, only a district court judge, and so the next logical step in her career would be an appointment to the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (which oversees Alabama, Florida, and Georgia). Giving Cannon a vote on how federal election laws are applied in Florida and Georgia should be enough of a reward for bootlicking. She’s only 43, and so she has more than enough time to use the 11th Circuit to prove that she belongs on the Supreme Court.
But these are not normal times. Fast-tracking Cannon to the Supreme Court would send a shock wave through the conservative legal establishment and tell every career-minded Federalist Society judge that there’s a new sheriff in town—and that loyalty to Trump is even more important than loyalty to Leonard Leo. Close call: Healthcare workers protest outside the Supreme Court during oral argments for a case challenging a law requiring hospitals to perform emergency abortions. The court ultimately punted.(Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
NEOMI RAO dc circuit court of appeals
To paraphrase the character bane as he famously explains in The Dark Knight Rises that Batman is not hard-core enough to defeat him: Aileen Cannon merely adopted the dark; Neomi Rao was born in it and molded by it. Rao has been my pick for the most dangerous person who could be appointed to the Supreme Court for eight years running, and I see no objective reason to demote her in my nightmares.
Rao has expressed vile beliefs since she was very young. While in college at Yale, she wrote in The Yale Herald: “Unless someone made her drinks undetectably strong or forced them down her throat, a woman, like a man, decides when and how much to drink. And if she drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice.” That statement alone should be disqualifying for a person entrusted with the lifetime power of judging other people’s actions.
Of course, Rao’s statements on rape have not been considered disqualifying by the Republicans. In 2018, she was nominated by Trump to the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to fill the seat vacated by (wait for it) alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh. During her confirmation hearing, when she was questioned about her college writings, Rao said that some of them made her “cringe” and that there were “certainly some sentences and phrases” that she “wouldn’t use today”—and that was enough for the Republicans. She was confirmed 53–46, with every single Republican senator voting for her.
Putting the rape stuff aside (which is apparently a grace we’re required to extend to Republicans in our society), Rao has a long record. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 1999, she clerked for Clarence Thomas and then worked in the George W. Bush administration as an associate White House counsel. In 2006, she became a law professor at George Mason University, which has become a kind of breeding ground for conservative judicial groupthink. She was instrumental in getting the law school’s name changed to the Antonin Scalia School of Law (or “ASSlaw,” as I dubbed it, until they again changed the name to the Antonin Scalia Law School to avoid my acronym). There, she staked out strong positions against Roe v. Wade and the administrative state and in favor of the practice of dwarf-tossing for money. She briefly served in the Trump administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs before he elevated her to the bench.
Since she’s been on the DC Circuit, Rao has been Trump’s most stalwart defender, often writing as the lone dissenter on panels that go 2–1 against him. She was the only one to dissent in three separate cases involving whether the government could subpoena Trump’s records and financial documents. In a fourth case, Rao argued that special prosecutor Jack Smith should not have been able to subpoena records from Twitter involving Trump’s deleted tweets during the January 6 riot. Rao’s rulings should make Shadow President Musk very happy.
When she’s not busy defending Trump, Rao is busy defending his cronies. She voted to dismiss the case that charged former national security adviser Michael Flynn with being an unregistered foreign agent. She was again in dissent, and Flynn eventually pleaded guilty, which led to Trump pardoning him. But, hey, at least she tried.
Perhaps most troubling of all, Rao has a real love for executions. In the last half of Trump’s first term, his administration ramped up the killing of people on death row. When lawsuits trying to stem the tide of death ended up in front of Rao, she consistently ruled on the side of the executioner.
So when I say Rao is dangerous, I mean it literally. We’re talking about a judge who wants to give everybody from Trump to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the common hangman a new set of boots.
As they’re both 51-year-old nonwhite former Clarence Thomas clerks, one could view Rao and Ho as competing for the same seat, should it open up. They have certainly been vying over the past few years to see who can produce the most ludicrous opinions. I’d say Ho has just barely “won” this infernal race, but that’s only because Rao hasn’t had an opportunity to write anything about rape or abortion, where she can truly let her freak flag fly. Rao also seems a little gun-shy when talking to the press, perhaps because of the rough confirmation battle over her college articles, while the most dangerous place in Dallas is between James Ho and a camera.
At 51, Rao is young enough that she doesn’t need to be picked for the first seat that becomes available. But should anything happen to one of the three liberal women justices, then I imagine that under the Republicans’ DEI logic, Rao’s gender would make her an appealing replacement for any of them. Indeed, Rao has done every single thing a conservative woman would do if she wanted to be nominated to the Supreme Court by a misogynistic sexual predator like Donald Trump. That’s what makes her terrifying.
Gang of six: Cardboard cutouts of the conservative justices lean aganst a wall in front of the Supreme Court.(Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
AMUL ROGER THAPAR sixth circuit court of appeals
Amul Thapar’s appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 2017 was Trump’s second judicial nomination, following right behind that of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. What that should tell you is that Thapar had someone powerful looking out for him—and that person was former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell plucked Thapar from his role as US attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky back in 2008 and got him appointed as a district court judge under President George W. Bush. Almost a decade later, McConnell pushed for Thapar to make the jump straight from the district court to the Supreme Court for the seat that eventually went to Gorsuch; Thapar’s appointment to the Sixth Circuit was his consolation prize. McConnell again pushed for Thapar when Justice Anthony Kennedy resigned, but that seat ultimately went to Brett Kavanaugh.
Given that McConnell couldn’t get Thapar onto the Supreme Court from his perch as Senate majority leader, I doubt that he can get Thapar there now, given that McConnell is no longer all-powerful and needs to be rebooted halfway through most of his speeches. There must be something between Thapar and Trump that just doesn’t vibe. My (uninformed) guess as to Thapar’s problem is that he’s smart, hardworking, not openly corrupt, and not as intellectually bankrupt as some of the other potential Supreme Court nominees. These are not qualities that Trump values.
So why is he on this list? Because in any normal Republican administration, Amul Thapar would be the first person nominated to the Supreme Court. Ho and Rao are toxic legal lunatics; Oldham can barely pretend to be concerned about “the law”; and Cannon is a golf caddy dressed in ill-fitting judicial garb. Thapar, by contrast, is just a normal extremist Republican interested in doing normal evil Republican things.
Thapar has gotten to the cusp of supreme lifetime power the long way. Born in Michigan to immigrant parents from India and raised in Ohio, Thapar drove a truck for his father’s HVAC business while in high school. He went to Boston College for his undergraduate years and eventually made his way to Berkeley for law school. But he didn’t get a Supreme Court clerkship and instead worked his way into elite legal circles through private practice, a few adjunct professor gigs, and eventually the US attorney’s office. Along the way, he got married and converted from Hinduism to Catholicism.
Compare Thapar’s backstory with those of the men who beat him out for the Supreme Court job. Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are scions of wealth and privilege. They both attended the same elite DC prep school; both went on to Ivy League colleges followed by Ivy League law schools; and both spent time working for the Bush administration. They’re pretty much the same guy, and their petty (fascist)-nerd-versus-(attempted-rapist)-jock squabbles belie the fact that they’re experientially indistinguishable.
If it sounds as though I almost like Thapar, don’t get it twisted. Despite his more humble beginnings, Thapar has spent his career trying to make the world safe for privileged white men. On the Sixth Circuit, he’s been a ruthless defender of white patriarchy, with all of the usual Republican outbursts against women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration, diversity, and the poor.
Thapar’s most notable cases involved Covid. He dissented from a ruling that allowed President Biden’s vaccination mandates to proceed. He joined an opinion saying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had no power to impose an eviction moratorium to protect renters during the pandemic. And he wrote a majority opinion denying the fast-tracking of Covid relief funds to women and minority restaurant owners, saying that the law in question unconstitutionally discriminated against white people.
The Republican legal brain trust loves him because Thapar acts like originalism is the one true gospel. He lectures incessantly about originalism; argues that people should withhold funding from law schools that don’t teach it (notwithstanding the fact that every law school makes you read Antonin Scalia’s opinions and forces you to pretend they’re reasonable); and even wrote a sycophantic book praising Clarence Thomas that I won’t read until I’m consigned to Hell. Thapar (along with Gorsuch) is particularly in favor of the “nondelegation doctrine,” which is a thing conservatives made up to essentially argue that executive agencies don’t have a right to exist because James Madison told them so when they asked him with their Ouija board.
Still, for all his best efforts, Thapar is unlikely to get the job. He’s 55, and when Trump didn’t swap him in for Kavanaugh when the attempted-rape allegations dropped (which is what any normal, non-predator president would have done), that was probably his last, best shot at a Supreme Court gig.
But don’t worry too much about him. With bird flu on the rise, Thapar will likely have many more opportunities to make sure that people suffer and die.
An “evolving” relationship: Donald Trump shakes hands with John Thune, who has replaced Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader.(Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
There are a host of other judges who could be in competition for Supreme Court seats as they open up, but if Alito or Thomas should retire tomorrow, these are the people who I believe will get a first look from the Trump administration. The astute reader will note that on this list of potential nominees, four of the five contestants are not white; four are either immigrants or the children of immigrants; and two are women. The conservative legal bench is deep with immigrant and first-generation jurists who are eager to yank away the ladder that their own families used to pull themselves up, and replete with women who are happy to stand in the way of progress for women’s rights.
For all of that, you’ll notice that the basic, standard, Harvard-educated white guy, Andy Oldham, remains at the top of the list and is by far the most likely person to get the first Supreme Court appointment that becomes available. Some of the others might have a shot should Thomas get raptured or otherwise relinquish his “Black job,” but if Alito retires first, it’s going to be a like-for-like switch.
For my part, I hope Aileen Cannon gets nominated. Yes, I’m serious. Of the poisons arrayed before me, I’ll choose the mediocre partisan hack over the experienced and well-trained evildoer.
I learned this lesson the hard way, back in 2005, when George W. Bush nominated one of his longtime friends, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. The elite legal-industrial complex, including both Senate Republicans and Democrats and expensively educated lawyers like me, were appalled. Miers lacked the august qualifications of traditional Supreme Court justices and was nominated only because she was a Bush crony. Movement Republicans threw a hissy fit, and Bush withdrew Miers’s nomination and then replaced her with… Samuel Alito.
What I’ve learned in the intervening years is that there are far more malign and monstrous things lurking in the bowels of the Federalist Society than mediocre partisan hacks. Cannon would be an awful Supreme Court justice, but she’d be awful in simple, predictable ways. Yes, she’d do whatever democracy-destroying thing Trump wants her to do, but in case you haven’t realized it yet, Trump has already won. The damage he’ll do cannot be mitigated by nine law dorks in robes. If the Supreme Court doesn’t rubber-stamp whatever it is that Trump wants to do, he will do it anyway. The battle for the 2020s has been fought, and the bad guys won.
What matters now are the battles of the 2030s and ’40s, when we will (with any luck) be struggling to undo the damage of the white ethnocentric Trump era. The judges and justices Trump picks this term will be the people we have to overcome in that future. I think my children will be better off trying to overturn some Trump-serving gobbledygook penned by Cannon than trying to de-Klan entire doctrines of racist insanity laid down by Oldham or Ho or Rao.
Whomever Trump picks, though, we are in for hard times. The five people on this list are what Americans voted for when they voted for Trump. People will get what they asked for, and they’ll keep getting it until they learn not to want it anymore.
So if you’re looking for hope over these next terrible years, please do not look to the Supreme Court. Please understand that it has been fully captured by MAGA forces. Even if the court blocks one or two of Trump’s policies, there will be countless others it allows to stand. Trump cannot be fought through the courts, because he has already won the courts.
My hope is that Democrats someday realize that the Supreme Court is their enemy. My hope is that the legacy of the Trump court finally and forever weans the Democrats off their nostalgic memories of the Warren court. My hope is that, should the Democrats ever be allowed to take power again, they will reform and disempower the Supreme Court on Day 1, because that will be the first step toward undoing the damage caused by the Trump era, should any of us survive to see the other side of this nightmare.
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
