Washington Whispers: The Shameful Collaboration of the Scotus Six
- andreasachs1
- Sep 19
- 4 min read
By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C.
At the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, the German judges who had enforced Adolph Hitler’s laws argued that they were merely following the law as set out within the framework of the existing legal system. Of course, that legal system had been constructed by Hitler’s Nazi regime.
The ultra-conservative six-member majority on the Supreme Court, comprised of Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett are, in their way, even worse than those Nazi judges because they are active architects and equal partners in the destruction of the U.S. Constitution. They are deliberately and fully collaborating in its replacement by the autocratic Project 2025 regime being constructed by Donald Trump and his cabal.
The Scotus Six fully embraced dictatorship by one-man rule the moment they gave Trump constitutional immunity in Trump v. U.S., making him exempt from accountability for violating laws enacted by Congress. “The President is the only person who alone composes a branch of government,” Roberts even declared during oral argument in a different case in 2020. Based on the Court’s decisions since then, Roberts must have meant that the president is a law unto himself.
The Court has taken to issuing decisions in their so-called shadow docket, in which they ensure that Trump’s violations of the Constitution remain in place. While these ostensibly are interim decisions, effective only while cases wind their way through the appellate process, in reality, they permit Trump’s actions to become fait accompli.
These six right-wing justices have accomplished this by choosing to allow Trump’s lawless efforts to eliminate constitutional guarantees to stand pending appeal rather than act to protect those guarantees during that period. They have done so in cases involving birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment; arbitrary deporting of immigrants to dangerous countries with which they have no ties without the due process required by the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment ; and violation of the Constitution’s posse comitatus prohibition against using the military within the United States.
Furthermore, the Court’s shadow docket decisions have almost all been issued with no stated rationale. Apparently, the Scotus Six have decided that the law is whatever they say it is, no justification or reasoning needed. And never mind what the Constitution says.
Most recently, they have shredded the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure by the government, including searches without a legal warrant signed by a judge, and arrest without probable cause that the arrested person has committed, is committing, or will commit a crime.
A federal district court in California found that ICE raids in Los Angeles likely violated the Fourth Amendment because ICE was stopping people based solely on their apparent race or ethnicity, whether they spoke Spanish, or English with an accent, the type of location at which they were found (like a car wash, a bus stop, or a Home Depot parking lot), and the type of job they do. The district court concluded that stops based on these four factors alone could not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonable suspicion. So, it temporarily barred the Government from continuing its unlawful mass arrests while it considered whether longer-term relief was appropriate.
But five of the Scotus Six—without brief, argument or explanation--stayed the district court’s order and determined that the ICE raids could continue unabated. One of them—Justice Kavanaugh—wrote a concurring opinion that, adding insult to injury, was worse than writing nothing.
Kavanaugh argued in essence that targeting those who speak Spanish, do a certain kind of work and so on, is no big deal. Disingenuously, he wrote: “Reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status. If the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”
And exactly how are any of us—of any race or ethnicity—supposed to prove we are citizens in that “brief encounter?” Are we now supposed to carry our birth certificates with us at all times? Not that papers matter to ICE since they have been seen grabbing people and spiriting them away without giving any reason, let alone asking for documents.
Kavanaugh also wrote: “[I]t is also important to stress the proper role of the Judiciary. The Judiciary does not set immigration policy or decide enforcement priorities.” So, this Justice is arguing that Trump’s illegal policies trump the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
This piece-by-piece shredding of the foundation of American law by the Scotus Six is no accident. All six right-wing justices have strong connections to the Federalist Society, a network of Republican lawyers aimed at capturing American judgeships for ultra-conservatives. The six have been involved as members, affiliates, speakers, or through participation in Federalist Society events and the judicial nomination process.
The Federalist Society, hand in hand with the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing think tank that authored Project 2025) have been working towards this moment for decades. The creation of an autocracy is what Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is all about. And the Federalist Society’s carefully selected right-wing justices were maneuvered onto the Court to accomplish that goal. It appears that they have succeeded.
Jessie Seigel’s journalistic career began with the political Washington Whispers column, written for The Insider. Since The Insider ended its run in 2023, Seigel has continued the column as My Washington Whispers,
www.mywashingtonwhispers.com. In addition, Seigel has had a long career as a government attorney, has received two Artist’s Fellowships from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, has been a finalist for several literary awards, and has had two professional staged readings of her play Tinker's Damn, with another play, The Three Jessies. More on Seigel can be found at https://www.jessieseigel.com.
Thank you for another well researched incisive argument on what has happened to the Supreme Court. I only hope that this tragic abuse of democracy will soon be remedied.
Oh, Jessie!!! i just keep thinking we will prevail and somewhere in the not so distant future the history books will reflect on this whole kit and kaboodle -- it will be at the chapter on how American democracy was perverted to the desires of a self-deluded, egomaniacal idiot, and his avaricious, power hungry quislings. The justices will be presented as the most dangerously effective facilitators of the attempted overthrow of our government. At least that's how I soothe myself.