The United States Supreme Court, under the Constitution, is intended to be one of three coequal branches of government. Most recently, however, it has played an outsized role. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky has been the chief architect in pushing the federal judiciary in a more conservative direction and nowhere more so than on the United States Supreme Court. This chapter presents a view of how the Supreme Court is intended to operate and argues that today’s Court is exceedingly political. McConnell engineered the placement of three very conservative justices on the Court giving the Court its current 6-3 conservative majority. By reviewing key cases and arguing that the current Court is rejecting much of Supreme Court and constitutional law history, we demonstrate the Court’s rightward shift. As an ideal, we like the Court to be as politically neutral as possible, and we would like it to find and not make the law. However, as we discuss, given the role the Court plays in constitutional interpretation, it is inevitable that it will make the law and that politics will influence its decision-making. This chapter also argues that today’s Court may be the most politicized Court in our lifetimes, if not in our history.

The chapter singles out two senators, two governors, and four Fox News heavyweights as having played especially important parts among the president’s enablers. The two senators – Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and inveterate Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham – were remarkable for the prominence, persistence, and importance of their fealty. The two governors – Florida’s Mike DeSantis and Georgia’s Brian Kemp – were standouts for standing strong in Trump’s corner, no matter the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases in their respective states. And the four Fox News heavyweights – Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity – were striking for their staunch and some would say slavish clinging to the president’s coattails. As with every enabler, most notably those singled out by name in this book, Trump’s presidency, and even his subsequent electoral viability, would not have been possible without them.