A few weeks ago, I was enraptured by the news of the day, as former President Donald J. Trump, dismissively referred to as Mr. Trump by members of the federal judiciary, awaited his inevitable fate. It was the fourth Indictment Watch of the season, perceived by this writer as the rough equivalent of Independence Day.
As the news flooded the digital wires, I kept refreshing the pages belonging to my favorite online news organizations, the most preferable being The Guardian. Every few minutes or so, writers updated the page with new information concerning the machinations of the Fulton County grand jury, a group of ordinary citizens tasked with reviewing conspiracy charges against Mr. Trump. At one point during that exciting day, I was pressing the refresh symbol every few minutes, yielding tantalizing new updates.
The Guardian is a wonderful online newspaper, brimming with talented reporters who assiduously report on the news of the day. So, in addition to reading blurbs about the upcoming indictment of Donald Trump, I read other interesting articles I came across. One of these articles concerned a thirteen-year-old girl, Ashley, a resident of Clarksdale Mississippi.
According to the article, what began as a nondescript day for young Ashley quickly changed, as she became prey for an adult stranger. This individual absconded with Ashley, raped, and impregnated her when she was twelve. Ashley was unable to keep the rape a secret from her mother, as her depressive behavior — she no longer preferred going outdoors — and incessant vomiting gave her condition away. During a trip to the local clinic, the attending doctor notified Ashley’s mother of the advanced pregnancy.
If not for the decision handed down by the Supreme Court in May 2022, denying women and girls the constitutional right to an abortion, Ashley’s mother, Regina, would have immediately escorted her daughter to the nearest Mississippi-based abortion clinic, formerly situated three hours from their home. Unfortunately, the Dobbs decision precipitated a legislative ban on the abortion procedure across the entire state, facilitating the abrupt shuttering of all abortion clinics in Mississippi. Ashley’s mom considered seeking care in a different state, but the closest clinic was located in Chicago Illinois, approximately nine hours away by car. Help was too expensive and too far, leaving Ashley and Regina with a singular option.
Ashley eventually delivered the baby, a healthy boy affectionately referred to as Peanut. Ashley’s life will become even more difficult, requiring her to process and recover from the trauma inherent in rape while taking on the responsibilities that come with motherhood.
As is the case for millions of school-aged children, Ashley still harbors big dreams. She has aspirations to become a clinical nurse one day, a caretaker of the sick. Fortunately, for Ashley, she has a mother who is willing to help manage her complicated life. Let us hope that Ashley, Regina, and Peanut can carve out a viable existence as they move forward.
After I finished reading the profile on Ashley, my fingers involuntarily clenched to become fists. It took a good five minutes for my anger to subside. Once I arrived at my baseline, I began a search for a composite photo of the six conservatives currently serving on the Supreme Court. I found the perfect photo, and immediately uploaded it, making it the title image for this essay.
As I scanned the photo of these six sour revanchists, the conservative block of the Supreme Court bent on destroying rights and freedoms under the guise of jurisprudence, a nickname sprang to my mind: The Sinister Six. The conservatives currently occupying the role of Supreme Court Justice, egregiously out-of-touch practitioners of antiquated law, deserve all of the enmity being directed towards them.
Because those six Supreme Court justices were instrumental in ruining young Ashley’s erstwhile childhood.
Recently, as I took in another episode of The Last Word, Chief Justice John Roberts, the lead conservative serving on the court, stood before a sympathetic crowd and said the following, which I am paraphrasing: “the hardest thing I ever had to do was close off the Supreme Court to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic”. The bottom half of my mouth fell to the floor, as I was utterly flabbergasted by Roberts’s abject obtuseness. In addition to ruining Ashley’s life, Roberts’s Supreme Court was partly responsible for compounding the trauma suffered by a rape victim in Ohio, a prepubescent — she was ten years old — who had to flee her home state to receive an abortion because of a near-total abortion ban that existed.
Thanks to Roberts and the other federalist society conservative justices, teenagers and pre-teen girls across the country, a significant portion of whom are rape victims, are having to make existential decisions concerning their mental, emotional, and physical well-being. These young girls, victims of violent sexual attacks, are forced to carry their rapists’ babies to term. The offspring are reminders of the violence that was brutally exacted upon their parents. Nevertheless, John Roberts is feigning intense excruciation over allowing strangers into the Supreme Court’s hallowed halls.
It makes me want to spit.
ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, has written some expansive and trenchant articles about Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, expertly and assiduously chronicling their mutually beneficial relationships with wealthy billionaires. The billionaires have an expressed interest in court, as do millions of women across the country. Unfortunately, Ashley, a poor unfortunate teenager from Mississippi, does not have the financial means to effectuate favorable court decisions. As for those billionaires I have briefly spoken of, they have spent years greasing the palms of two of the most senior justices, yielding court decisions that buttress their bottom lines.
This is especially true of Justice Clarence Thomas, quite possibly the most conservative member of the Sinister Six. Clarence Thomas is the second black man to serve on the Supreme Court, the successor to Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice. Black people had high hopes for Justice Thomas, as we thought he could adjudicate from our perspective, even if he was a conservative. Nevertheless, Clarence Thomas, quite possibly the worst racist serving on the Supreme Court, quickly and immutably extinguished our faith in him. Thomas revels in self-hatred and venal nastiness, often exceeding his conservative contemporaries as they exact cruelty onto the rest of the world.
Clarence Thomas, who has espoused his respect for the common folk, loves money. His job pays him close to three hundred thousand dollars a year, a sizeable amount of money for the average American citizen. However, Thomas has a taste for a lifestyle that his formidable salary cannot subsidize. Thus, he has actively cultivated friendships with these billionaires, conservatives who are more than willing to satiate Thomas’s lust for an extremely exorbitant lifestyle. Over the years, these billionaires have gifted Thomas thirty-eight destination vacations, twenty-six private jet flights, six helicopter flights, a yacht voyage, and VIP and sporting events. Eccentric billionaire Harlan Crowe — I refer to him as eccentric because he owned a bible that previously belonged to Frederick Douglas, the abolitionist, while also collecting memorabilia of some of the worst dictators — purchased the house Clarence Thomas’s mom lives in. Indeed, Justice Clarence Thomas has become adept and highly comfortable with accepting questionable fetes from rich white men, individuals who have launched a concerted effort to lionize the sketchy seventy-five-year-old justice. I must also mention that Clarence Thomas has neglected to formally disclose these gifts, a severe violation of federal ethics rules. Justice Alito is also guilty of similar sketchy behavior, albeit on a much lower scale.
As he is ever cognizant of the Supreme Court’s image, John Roberts should be appalled and disgusted by the behavior exhibited by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. And yet, Roberts needed their votes to end affirmative action, his long sought-after white whale. Thus, John Roberts, who routinely extols his probity, just looked away.
Defendant Trump is unquestionably a failed president, although his imprint on the federal judiciary will endure for decades. He was able to push three conservative Supreme Court justices through the nomination process, cementing a rightwing stranglehold on the Supreme Court for at least another generation.
One of these newer justices, Bret Kavanaugh, was credibly accused of sexually assaulting multiple women as a privileged teenager. Apart from Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, all of the Republican senators voted to confirm this individual, as a few of the male senators regarded his behavior as simple youthful indiscretion. Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, an action made more pernicious because of Kavanagh’s purported criminal past. An accused rapist handed down a decision that forced a teenage victim to have her rapist’sbaby. As I contemplate the cruel irony, I shake my head.
Amy Coney Barrett, a member of People of Praise, a Catholic organization devoted to relegating women to secondary status, voted to end Roe v. Wade. Justice Barrett has seven children, with two of them being adopted black Haitian children. During her confirmation hearing, she sang praises for her biological children, referring to them as smart, inquisitive, and compassionate, and extolling their long-term potential.
When talking about her Haitian children, Justice Barrett did not extend similar praise. She described Vivian, sixteen years old at the time, as miraculous and inordinately strong, and John Peter, the younger Haitian, was just a happy boy. After spending multiple years with her Haitian children, observing and rearing them, Justice Barrett could not come up with more elaborate praise for these kids. Justice Barret, along with the five other conservative justices, voted to end affirmative action programs, effectively cutting off an avenue toward elite colleges for thousands of black children. She also sided with the state of Alabama in denying black Alabamians the option of voting for their preferred candidate. Justice Barrett is raising black children, while seeking to undermine the rights and programs that benefit the very people that look like her kids.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, hailing from my home state of Colorado, probably should not be serving on the court. If not for Senator Mitch McConnell’s maneuvering to block the ascension of an Obama court pick in 2014, the court’s composition would have been balanced. Instead, we have five right-wing justices plus Gorsuch, a rock-ribbed conservative libertarian who is against any kind of government regulation. In addition to voting to end Roe v. Wade, curtail voting rights, and hamstring environmental policy, he wrote the majority option allowing a Colorado proprietor to refuse services to LGBTQ folk — a curious vote since Gorsuch had voted to affirm LGBTQ rights in the workplace in 2020.
Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh are in their fifties. Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito are in their seventies, albeit full of enough anger and spite to extend their lives in perpetuity. John Roberts is sixty-eight, and he will continue to hand down rulings that reveal his blind spots. There is no doubt that these six Supreme Court justices will continue to enact policies that strip away rights and freedoms, making life harder for the traditionally marginalized. This is what Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and other conservatives have been waiting on, an opportunity to strike back against the progress that we have made as a society. Moreover, in their quest to bring about their conservative utopia, where the traditionally marginalized and annoying rabble know their place, the lives of innocent children are forever destroyed.