Trump's extreme makeover of the Supreme Court is now complete

With the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, the Court will be poised to entrench conservative power in America for a long time

Brett Kavanaugh next to President Trump
(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

On Monday night, President Trump, in his now customary practice of turning somber national choices into cheap show business stunts, announced Brett Kavanaugh as his choice to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Kavanaugh, currently serving on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, is a white man from Yale University. His selection wasn't much of a surprise. Court watchers spent the weekend avidly reading the tobacco leaves about which way Trump was leaning. His team reportedly sent out different smoke signals to different conservative groups, to maximize the ratings for Supreme Court Madness. But this choice was never about what kind of meat to have for dinner. It was about what precise cut of dead, originalist cow flesh to put on the grill. President Trump cribbed his shortlist from his arch-conservative paymasters at the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, and it was populated exclusively by hardcore, right-wing fanatics. With Kavanaugh's appointment, the Supreme Court is poised to entrench conservative power in this country for another long generation.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.