SCOTUSblog Falls Into the MAGA Orbit

It’s not there yet, but danger signs are appearing. Invest in real journalism to stop the bleeding.

Like most law nerds, I often check out SCOTUSblog when I want to see what the Corrupt Six are doing nowadays. But I had not caught one major change that we should all watch out for: it has become a part of the right-wing media ecosystem.

A few months ago, it was purchased by The Dispatch, a very conservative (although not necessarily MAGA) site, and is now being run by Sarah Isgur, a long-time Republican operative who clerked for right-wing fire-breather Edith Jones, served as political director for Ted Cruz’ campaign for Texas Attorney General, and was Jeff Sessions’ spokesperson during Trump I.

Yesterday, Georgetown’s Steve Vladeck noticed a major tell: SCOTUSblog has introduced something it calls the Interim Docket Blog. There is only one problem: there is no such thing as the “Interim Docket.”

It is better described as The Shadow Docket: this Court rules on issues without full briefing or oral argument, and often short-circuit regular appellate review. Vladeck wrote an entire book about it. Just last week, a Shadow Docket ruling effectively overturned (at least for now) a district court’s exhaustive 140-ruling demonstrating Texas’ unconstitutional racial gerrymander with the briefest of orders. It did the same thing with the Central District’s forbidding racial profiling in ICE enforcement. That’s why I created this graphic:

Jay Ellis, the editor-in-chief of Balls and Strikes, commented:

Even for me, this is pretty in the weeds, but the shift in tone in SCOTUSblog’s coverage since Sarah Isgur and The Dispatch took over—more deferential to the Court, more reverential of the justices as celebrities, more credulous and stenographic across the board—has been…notable.

Let’s be clear: I wouldn’t call this being in tank for authoritarianism. Jack Goldsmith, Will Baude, and Daniel Epps, mentioned in the promotion, are all well-regarded scholars, even if (perhaps because!!) I don’t always agree with them. David French writes regularly for them, and I disagree with him a lot, but he has shown himself to be thoughtful and intellectually honest.

We need, however, to be extremely vigilant on such things, as it appears as if the Right is quickly taking over news sources that were previously regarded as mainstream and straightforward (and of course much more influential than SCOTUSblog). Sammy Roth noted that just a couple of days after Bari Weiss took over CBS News, the network gutted its entire climate staff. The current media environment is best described as a 24/7 Information War: it is extremely important to know who is firing at you.

And there is something actionable here: make sure to find good news sources that are not corrupted by Billionaire Octopus. Here is one I particularly like: BOLTS.

Bolts is a shoestring operation run by the indefatigable Daniel Nichanian, who for reasons I can’t quite understand, goes by the Bluesky handle Taniel. If you are looking for environmental reporting, Bolts isn’t your site: it focuses almost exclusively on voting rights issues and criminal justice.

But voting rights – and indeed, anything to do with the law of democracy – is environmental reporting, given the Republican Party’s rampant climate denialism and unremitting war on the environment. And there is no better place to follow the ins and outs of gerrymandering and voter suppression – which underlie that war – than Bolts. It might be the only site doing in-depth reporting on the crucial but overlooked topic of state supreme courts.

It’s a nonprofit, and it isn’t paywalled. Unlike right-wing sites, it doesn’t have billionaire sugar daddies bankrolling it (not coincidentally because progressive billionaires are busy running quarter-billion dollar vanity campaigns). It needs your help.

So do yourself, the country, and the planet a favor this holiday season: drop a few dimes to Bolts. And read SCOTUSblog with an extra grain of salt: like everything else in Supreme Court’s orbit, it is running the risk of corruption.

BOLTS, Daniel Epps, David French, Jack Goldsmith, Jay Willis, Sarah Isgur, SCOTUSBlog, Steve Vladeck, Will Baude