Donald Trump has been a busy bee when it comes to appointing federal judges. Nevertheless, the federal judiciary is split about evenly between the parties, with 51 percent of active judges appointed by Democrats and 49 percent appointed by Republicans:

There’s a bigger difference at the top of the judiciary. Among circuit court judges, which in practice are the final arbiters of most case law, Republicans have appointed 55 percent of all active judges and Democrats only 45 percent. However, the DC circuit—often considered a “farm team” for the Supreme Court because it deals largely with key cases involving federal agencies—is safely in Democratic hands despite strenuous efforts of Republicans to keep this from happening. At the highest level, 67 percent of Supreme Court judges will be Republican-appointed once Trump’s replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg is confirmed. With the exception of a couple of years in the early ’90s, this will be the first time in decades that the Supreme Court wasn’t balanced 5-4 (or 4½-4½, depending on how you view things). Here’s a breakdown of what the federal judiciary currently looks like:

Finally, here’s a chart from the Economist that estimates the ideology of the Supreme Court over the past 70 years:

As you can see, aside from a short and small liberal tilt during the Obama administration, the Supreme Court has been conservative ever since the Nixon era. It’s now conservative again, and replacing Ginsburg with a conservative justice will make it even more so.

This is a milk thistle, so named because it has a milky white interior, I suppose. Apparently it’s also a wonder drug, sold in capsule form at a drug store near you. According to the Mayo Clinic, milk thistle seeds contain silymarin, which might be good for diabetes, indigestion, and liver problems. But then again, it might not be. Caveat emptor.

At a rally in Minnesota last weekend, Trump mocked Rep. Ilhan Omar and told the white crowd they had "good genes."Chris Juhn/ZUMA

Politico reports that although Donald Trump has gained ground slightly with Black and Latino voters this year, his support among white voters is cratering:

In Minnesota, where the contest between Trump and Joe Biden had seemed to tighten in recent weeks — and where both candidates stumped on Friday — a CBS News/YouGov survey last week had Trump running 2 percentage points behind Biden with white voters, after carrying them by 7 points in 2016….It’s the same story in Wisconsin, where Trump won noncollege-educated white women by 16 percentage points four years ago but is now losing them by 9 percentage points, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. In Pennsylvania, Biden has now pulled even with Trump among white voters, according to an NBC News/Marist Poll.

….The erosion of Trump’s white support — and its significance to the November outcome — was never more obvious than in Trump’s messaging in recent days….But Trump’s rhetoric does not appear to be resonating with white America to the degree it did in 2016. That year, whites cast nearly three-quarters of the vote nationally, and Trump won those voters by about 15 percentage points, according to Pew Research. Four years later, Biden has torn into that advantage, though to what degree is uncertain. The latest Morning Consult poll showed Trump now beating Biden among white likely voters nationally by just 5 percentage points. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Sunday put Trump up among white voters by 9 percentage points, while a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll on Friday showed Biden and Trump essentially tied with white voters.

This is Trump’s fundamental problem. In 2016 he squeezed a bit more support out of the white-non-college vote than Hillary Clinton got from the white-college vote, and along with a few other factors that was enough to eke out a victory. Trump accomplished this with a campaign that was more openly racist than any Republican had dared to run in recent memory, so now he’s trying the same strategy again.

But there’s only so much water you can squeeze from a rock. Over the past few weeks Trump’s appeals to the white vote have become more and more demagogic, but it’s not doing him any good. It might get him a few more votes from white bigots, but that demographic is already fully behind him. Like a campaign rally in Tulsa, the Trump Train has little hope of filling more seats for his Whites First cause. And in any case, for every vote he wins among that group, he probably loses two or three from white voters who aren’t bigots and are increasingly disgusted with him.

If Trump keeps this up, it’s doubtful that he has a road to victory. And he probably will keep it up, since he seems to know no other playbook. In a weird sort of way, that’s kind of a relief.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through September 22. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Liu Jie/Xinhua via ZUMA

I imagine that a lot of Republicans are getting a good laugh at Jamelle Bouie’s column in the New York Times this morning:

If Democrats are willing to treat a Republican-dominated Supreme Court as a partisan and ideological foe, if they’re willing to change or transform it rather than accede to its view of the Constitution — two very big ifs — then they’re one important step along the path to challenging judicial supremacy, the idea that the courts, and the courts alone, determine constitutional meaning.

The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution and establish its meaning for federal, state and local government alike. But this power wasn’t enumerated in the Constitution and isn’t inherent in the court as an institution. Instead, the court’s power to interpret and bind others to that interpretation was constructed over time by political and legal actors throughout the system, from presidents and lawmakers to the judges and justices themselves.

Bouie gives two examples of presidents fighting judicial supremacy, but neither is convincing. The first happened more than 200 years ago and was little more than a squabble between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson when the country was barely out of its toddler stage. The second is a brief complaint from Abraham Lincoln that was never followed up.

It might be more pointed to mention that conservatives have been complaining about the broad powers of the judiciary ever since the Warren Court of the ’60s uprooted the law dozens of times, always in a liberal direction and always—in their opinion—with little actual grounding in the Constitution. If you’re unsure of this, just ask one of them what they think about Griswold v. Connecticut, a seminal decision on privacy that depended on William O. Douglas, a liberal jurist, finding new rights in the “penumbras” and “emanations” of various constitutional provisions.

But then again, there’s Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted an important provision of the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative jurist, writing in the majority opinion, agreed that Congress had carefully studied reauthorization of the Act in 2006 and left behind a voluminous textual record that justified its decision not to change anything. But he nevertheless insisted that it was literally impossible that members of Congress really meant to make no changes. Antonin Scalia went further during oral arguments, claiming that the reauthorization’s nearly unanimous support was—wait for it—not evidence of strong support but evidence that everyone was just afraid to vote against it. Both voted to overturn the provisions of the VRA that were under consideration.

In other words, it’s safe to say that both sides are happy to make strained arguments that pit them against both Congress and state legislatures. And both sides hate it when the other side does it, accusing them of judicial overreach and insisting that laws passed by duly elected legislators should be overturned only in extremis.

And yet, no one ever does anything about this. Partly this is because although it’s technically true that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly give courts the right to overturn laws, the founders knew perfectly well what courts were for. That’s why, when the Supreme Court overturned a law for the first time in 1803, it was accepted with only a little grumbling. You can quibble with Marbury v. Madison’s specific reasoning, but it’s hard to mount any sensible counterargument suggesting that courts can’t interpret the law, up to and including overturning them.

This gets to the heart of the issue. If you dislike judicial supremacy, you need to offer up a solution. But what is it? Should laws that pass with 55 percent or 60 percent majorities be immune from Supreme Court review? That would demolish the idea of courts acting as protectors of the minority. Perhaps Congress should use its jurisdiction stripping power more often, adding language to laws that specifically limits the Supreme Court’s scope to review them? Maybe, but that’s an arms race that would quickly turn the Supreme Court into a charade.

Conservatives have made suggestions from time to time, but they’re mostly unpersuasive. Perhaps the president should just ignore the courts if they issue a ruling that’s really, really outrageous. Maybe Congress should pass laws contradicting the Supreme Court if it feels really strongly. Perhaps we should conduct a big PR campaign. Or pass legislation that would bury the Supreme Court in cases so they wouldn’t have time for so much mischief. Or simply add to the list of “political questions” that are out of bounds for courts to rule on.

These are all pretty impotent responses to judicial supremacy. The only real answer, if we’re serious about it, lies in the Constitution’s stricture that the Supreme Court’s power is subject to “Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” This is the source of “jurisdiction stripping,” a favorite of ultra-conservative members of Congress who periodically include it in their bills in an effort to make it impossible for courts to even hear relevant cases, let alone overturn anything. Cooler heads in both parties have rightfully opposed these bills and they’ve almost always gone nowhere. But it still offers a possible solution to the question of a too-powerful court. A serious and bipartisan bill that set up some carefully worded regulations might constrain the court without leading to chaos. IANAL and I have no idea just what kind of statutory language might be both reasonable and suitably precise. But for those who are serious about attacking judicial supremacy, it’s probably the only starting point that has any chance of meaningful success.

I am continuing to play around with Photoshop’s panorama capability, mainly to figure where it works best and how best to use it. The picture below shows Frank Gehry’s famous Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles on the right, along with the ongoing construction of The Grand, a billion-dollar mega-development, on the left.

As a photo this isn’t much, but as a demonstration it’s great. This is a full 180-degree view taken from the middle of the crosswalk on Grand Avenue looking south, and there’s no other way to get this view. If you back up—which you can’t anyway—you’ll lose the angle that shows the fronts of both buildings. If you don’t back up, you can’t include the whole scene even with an extreme wide-angle lens. You could do it from the Goodyear blimp, I suppose, but only if you happen to have the pull to get a ride.¹

As always with any extreme wide-angle shot, the price you pay is distortion. You can fix a lot of it, but never all of it. Grand Avenue, for example, is a straight line but displays as curved. The near building under construction is obviously distorted even though I corrected much of it. And the concert hall—well, it’s such a mish-mash of curves and angles that you can’t tell if it’s distorted or not. In any case, this picture provides a good view of what’s actually going on, something that’s all but impossible to get any other way.

¹If you do, please let me know. I’d love to get a ride on the Goodyear blimp.

The annual American Family Survey is out, and it’s full of interesting results. For example, it turns out that both Democrats and Republicans couldn’t care less about drug and alcohol use, crime rates, and sexual permissiveness. The only thing that voters considered (slightly) less important was gay marriage, which apparently has simply faded from everyone’s minds now that a few years have gone by and the institution of marriage has survived.

In the “not surprising” category, here are the two questions that elicited the biggest partisan differences:

It’s not surprising that white Republicans are less concerned about racism than white Democrats, but you’d think that even white Republicans could muster more than 23 percent who are at least willing to admit that Black families might a have a few problems they don’t. Maybe in the past there were more. But not in the Trump era, apparently.

As for religion, Democrats really and truly couldn’t care less about its decline. I guess this explains why it’s so easy for Donald Trump to convince conservative evangelicals that liberals are little more than atheistic degenerates who are out to destroy the country.

Brian Cahn/ZUMA

Is there any way to stop Republicans from filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat? Probably not. There are plenty of ideas floating around, but most of them require the support of either three or four Republicans, which Democrats aren’t likely to get.¹ No one should take this as a counsel of despair, though. Even if the odds favor Republicans in this battle, there’s still the question of how they can be made to pay the biggest price for it.

And they can be. For a long time, many voters have vaguely assumed that Republicans were all talk. Sure, they’re always yakking about eliminating the income tax or getting rid of the EPA or some other kind of nutbaggery. But Republicans have been yakking like this for so long—and not delivering—that it seems more like a secret password than a genuine expression of what they want to accomplish. It’s just the price of admission for a career in Republican politics.

But now all these voters are going to wake up. Republicans are finally within reach of one of their longtime goals and people are suddenly going to have to take all the nutbaggery seriously. Do they want to vote for a party that might really and truly eliminate the right to an abortion? Because now it’s right in front of their faces.

We liberals like to gripe about how Republicans are always appealing to fear. But we can do it too—and we do when the subject is, say, cuts to Medicare. This is what’s called for now: a massive campaign based on stoking fear about abortion being banned once and for all. Sure, it would stay legal in some states even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, but in plenty of others it would almost instantly be made illegal. That’s scary. Even in conservative Southern states there are lots of middle-class women who are going to think twice when they’re faced squarely with that—and their numbers have been growing for decades.

As for the party bases, the Republican base (1) already votes, and (2) has been energized about Supreme Court appointments for a long time. It’s unlikely that the Ginsburg replacement will increase their turnout much. On the Democratic side, it’s just the opposite. The base has been more concerned with other things for a long time and is not all that thrilled with Joe Biden and his moderate talking points. But now? With abortion about to go the way of the dodo bird? They are going to be energized into action like you’ve rarely seen. At a guess, this affair will boost Democratic turnout by three or four points.

This is turning into a Republican habit. They tried passing photo ID laws but that had little effect, possibly because publicity surrounding the laws increased turnout enough to wash out the reduced turnout from the laws themselves. Donald Trump has been amping up the racism, but it’s likely that he’s losing more votes than he’s gaining from it. Abortion, if Democrats play it right, will be a lot like that. The net effect will be Democratic gains and Republican losses.

But only if it’s played right. The Democratic base needs to finally be as energized about this stuff as they should have been all along, and center-right voters need to be punched in the gut with fear about what the Republican nutbags are finally going to actually do.

¹There’s also the idea of the House voting out impeachment charges on a daily basis and sending them over to the Senate, which is required to act on them before other business. However, this is basically the trillion-dollar coin of partisan obstruction, and it’s just not going to happen.

My usual daily look at COVID-19 deaths was posted a few minutes ago, but I thought it might be worthwhile to also give you a quick look at COVID-19 cases. As you can see, they’re going up all over the place. Spain, France, and the Netherlands are skyrocketing. The United States skyrocketed back in July and looks like it’s now turning upward for a third time. The UK is going up, and so was Switzerland until a week ago, when it suddenly slammed the brakes on. Even Germany is rising a bit.

I’m not quite sure what conclusion to draw from this, but it sure looks as if even a modest re-opening quickly causes cases to boil over. On the brighter side, a combination of better care for COVID-19 cases and fewer cases among the elderly means that an increase in cases probably won’t translate into a gigantic increase in deaths. That’s been our experience, and it appears (so far) to be the experience in Spain and France too.

Still, it’s obvious that we shouldn’t let up. The only way to keep cases and deaths down is to rigorously maintain social distancing precautions. If only we could get our president to agree.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through September 21. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.