How Democrats and Their Media Allies Cooked Up a Phony Supreme Court ‘Legitimacy Crisis’

The legacy media has signaled that it’s all in on the Left’s cooked-up Supreme Court “legitimacy crisis.”

This week, Senate Democrats plan to vote on Supreme Court ethics rules that are clearly meant to give them the ability to hector and harass the court to get the decisions they want. The vote coincides with an increasingly aggressive media campaign to create the appearance that the Supreme Court is mired in scandal.

There’s no question the Left has launched this scheme because it is infuriated by the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.

A Supreme Court leaker struck the first big blow in 2022, releasing the upcoming draft opinion that would ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade. The opinion did not mark an aggressive change—it merely overturned the badly reasoned Roe decision, which had effectively outlawed abortion restrictions across America. That leak inspired death threats against justices, alongside political threats from Democrats in Congress.

More defeats this year, on affirmative action and the student loan bailout, have sent the left-wing media machine into overdrive.

The loss on affirmative action was particularly stinging given how unpopular racial preferences in admissions are. Without elite institutional backing, the issue is a dead letter with the American people.

The Left had become so accustomed to every institution doing its bidding that its only strategy in the face of defeat revolves around putting a metaphorical stick of dynamite under the Supreme Court and setting it off.

Every scheme Democrats have drawn up to deal with this challenge—like court packing—has come off as obviously partisan and downright reckless.

They need the media to step in and make this all seem serious and noble. As you would expect, their friends in the media have been happy to oblige.

Politico basically acknowledged that the legacy media en masse is all too eager to carry water for the Democrats’ crusade to pulverize a Supreme Court they no longer control. This was from Monday’s Politico Playbook—a widely read media newsletter:

Fourteen months ago, our colleagues Josh Gerstein and Alex Ward’s revelation of the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion didn’t just upend American politics and abortion policy — it also ushered in a new era for the media’s coverage of the court.

No longer do SCOTUS reporters principally cover only the cases before the high court. Now they’re focused more regularly and aggressively on ‘the justices’ business dealings, relationships, and ethical issues,’ as well as the broader politics around the high court, Vanity Fair’s Charlotte Klein reports in a new story that interviews Josh about the shift.

The “new era” that they are referring to is one in which those on the Left must endure Supreme Court decisions they don’t like. Therefore, they will now do anything to smear the court and delegitimize it until they get decisions they like again.

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