Demand Justice launches multi-million dollar campaign to oppose any future Trump Supreme Court nominee
The group’s president called it “an imminent threat to our democracy for that man to appoint anybody to the Supreme Court.”
Demand Justice, an organization devoted to mobilizing “aggressive and steadfast opposition to Donald Trump’s corruption of the federal courts,” on Friday announced a new $3 million campaign in anticipation of there being one or two vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court this year. The campaign will scale up to a $15 million effort when a vacancy is announced, the organization stated in a press release this morning.
Indivisible, fresh off its third No Kings day last weekend, is partnering with Demand Justice on the campaign, which will also lean on prominent Democratic pollsters, communications professionals, and progressive veterans.
John Orton, president of Demand Justice, told reporters on a press call Friday morning that “Donald Trump is no fool when it comes to his own power.”
Two days after Trump visited the Supreme Court to try to intimidate the justices during the birthright citizenship oral arguments, Orton noted that Trump “has been humiliated by them once in the tariff case and is poised to be humiliated again on the birthright citizenship case. And we believe, with a high degree of certainty, that he’s going to look at the Senate map and realize that the opportunity for him to nominate and confirm justices that he wants, and that are loyal to him on the Supreme Court, is right now — between now and the November election.”
In their release, Demand Justice acknowledges that this hinges on whether a sitting justice, likely Justice Clarence Thomas or Justice Samuel Alito, retires. They note that, depending on who wins the next presidential election, both justices could be in their 80s by the time a future Republican president can name their replacement — “which is why [Trump] will push for one or both to retire this year.”
According to Orton, Trump knows that the Senate’s “53-47 margin is going to be the best margin he has to confirm people who may not be the most appealing to the Republican legal establishment,” noting that there are a handful of Republican senators — including Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis — who Trump can’t necessarily count on.
Just last night, Tillis — who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee — said that he wouldn’t support an attorney general nominee “who thought that any element of Jan. 6 was excusable.” It is not clear whether he would apply that same test to a potential Supreme Court nominee, but he has so far voted for every district court and circuit court nominee after they’ve dodged questions about the insurrection.
Already, all 40 lifetime judicial nominees who have appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee since last year have refused to say that Trump lost (or that President Biden won) the 2020 election, and they have all avoided directly answering questions related to what happened on January 6, 2021. This includes 37 nominees who have already responded to written questions for the record and three others who appeared before the committee last week.
“These are not questions of legal interpretation or precedent. This is, essentially, did the sitting president intend to overturn the election of 2020,” Orton said during the press call. “Trump wants people that are loyal to him and not the Constitution. It’s plain as day. We will stop him if he tries to pack the court with two of his cronies between now and the November election.”
Orton stated that “this is not normal times” and that it’s “harder to predict” who the nominee(s) will be. “It is, I think, just as likely that he’s going to nominate a Lindsey Halligan or a Will Scharf type than he will a circuit court judge like James Ho,” he said, noting that Trump’s split with the Federalist Society — and his appointments of personal lawyers like Justin Smith and Todd Blanche — makes it difficult to know who could be nominated.
The point of this campaign, however, is that the nominee doesn’t matter. As Orton stated on the call:
We can’t wait to see who the nominee is, read through their record, and then try and find something that we disagree with. We have an authoritarian leaning president, and we are living in extraordinary times when he does not see the rule of law as something that applies to him. And I think that means that we have to see the Court as an instrument of power that we must fight to preserve and protect from a historically corrupt president. And so that means being ready to oppose a nomination, no matter who it is, immediately.
Trump “will nominate someone that has no other ideological credential besides loyalty to him,” Orton said, saying that people understand that Trump “is essentially consolidating his own power, enriching himself, while they’re paying the price at the gas pump, at the grocery store, and they see their portfolios dropping.” That’s why this campaign intends to make clear to people of all political parties that anyone Trump nominates to the Supreme Court “is only looking out for him, and not them,” Orton said.
Orton claimed that those on the right think of a Supreme Court vacancy not just as an individual person who will fill the seat — but as a vote. “They see the Supreme Court as an instrument of power that makes decisions about how people’s lives are lived, and who controls what,” he said.
In recent years, the Court has deeply impacted how people live their lives — including deciding a number of cases rolling back civil rights and fundamental freedoms.
Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, noted in this morning’s release that “This Trump-packed Court has already done enough damage — from the outrageous presidential immunity decision to gutting the Voting Rights Act to overturning Roe v. Wade and state protections for LGBTQ youth. If Trump is handed another Supreme Court vacancy, we must be clear-eyed and ready to make it an uphill battle. We know that Trump will try to install another craven loyalist to rubber-stamp his abuses.”
Orton underscored this, saying the fight will be about what a nominee will side with — the rights of the American people or the preservation of Donald Trump’s power:
One of the things that I think we’re so intent on doing is that we need to prepare an opposition campaign that talks about the deep concerns about anybody Donald Trump nominates to the Court and who they would side with when they’re there. Are they going to side with working people? Are they going to side with women? Are they going to side with small business owners? No, they’re going to side with Donald Trump and his desire to put armed, masked agents at polling places, and to keep himself out of prison when he leaves office, and to make sure he has a green light to continue using the U.S. government as an agent of corruption for himself and his family.
“There is an imminent threat to our democracy for that man to appoint anybody to the Supreme Court at this point — and we intend to make that case.”