2/n
Twelve months ago, I believed that a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives like Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would never license a full-out power grab by Donald Trump.
In my latest @slate column, I explain why I’ve changed my
2/n
Pessimists—like me!—claimed that Trump would slowly take over the Republican Party after a protracted civil war.
3/n
To be part of the conservative tribe today is to go wherever the resentment—and its leader—takes you.
4/n
The Supreme Court is not a nonpartisan court of law. It is a realm to do partisan battle by other means.
5/n
6/n
A partisan who needs plausible deniability can skew the playing field by allowing gerrymandering and voter purges, as Roberts et al. have done over the past year. But he cannot allow a naked power grab by a co-partisan president.
7n
This has consequences. It’s no longer unimaginable that SCOTUS will allow attacks on the F.B.I. or tolerate the politically motivated prosecution of a Dem candidate.
8/n
The evidence from other countries suggests that this depends on Trump’s popularity. As political scientists have long known, in most democracies, popular support for the government is a good predictor of court behavior.
9/n
Doom is by no means foreordained.
10/n