It’s a six-word maxim coined by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen: “Not the odds, but the stakes.” The phrase is intended to remind news organizations and media professionals that when covering an election, it’s important not just to tell the public who’s likely to win, but also to explain to voters what’s at stake in the race.
With this in mind, Americans need to know that in the 2024 elections, the stakes related to the courts couldn’t be much higher. It’s a point Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz appeared eager to emphasize during a campaign rally in Wisconsin.
“It’s already Donald Trump’s Supreme Court,” the Minnesota governor said. “[The justices] have effectively given him total immunity to do whatever he wants as president. Think about this: In the next four years, if he gets elected, he could appoint up to three more justices. ... That would mean that Donald Trump will have appointed six of the nine Supreme Court justices.”
It’s not just Democrats who are thinking along these lines.
Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News late last week and said that if the GOP fares well on Election Day, “it changes the future of the Supreme Court.” In the same on-air appearance, the South Carolina Republican added that if Trump returns to power and works with a GOP-led Senate, “we can have a generation of conservatives on The Supreme Court. This is a very big deal to shape the court for the next generation.”
On this, the senator and I agree: This is a very big deal.
Graham’s presidential candidate has been unsubtle about his ambitions in this area. This was the message Trump delivered to a group of politically conservative Christian activists in North Carolina on Monday: “I will once again appoint rock-solid, pro-constitutional judges to faithfully interpret the law and the Constitution. The 300 judges that we appointed changed the whole — I mean, it was so bad.”
To be sure, the former president exaggerated the number of jurists he successfully added to the judiciary, but the underlying point remains the same: Trump appointed a brutal number of far-right ideologues — including many young and inexperienced conservatives of dubious qualifications — to the high court, the appellate courts and the district courts.
He’s also eager to add to that record. The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago:
A rising faction within the conservative legal movement is laying the groundwork for Donald Trump to appoint judges who prioritize loyalty to him and aggressively advocate for dismantling the federal government should he win a second term. ... Trump has gravitated to more-combative lawyers outside the conservative legal establishment who have said they want to hobble regulatory agencies and concentrate power in the White House.
It was against this backdrop that the Republican candidate boasted over the summer about his plans to “totally transform the federal bench.”
I’m mindful of the fact that the number of voters nationwide who consider the future of the courts a top voting priority is very small. But whether the electorate prioritizes the issue or not, the more Trump succeeds in pushing the judiciary even further to the right, the more it will affect Americans’ lives in direct and meaningful ways.