First, obviously, are the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court. Call them 1a and 1b, because I believe they have different motivations. The Republicans in the House and the Senate are mostly just tiny cowards who fear Trump, a possible primary challenger from the right, and most of all the MAGA base. The video clips that I hope they play over and over in future high school civics classes, assuming these thugs can’t fully erase our democracy, will be the ones of GOP legislators scurrying for the elevators as they deny having knowledge of Trump’s latest assault. Against stern competition, House Speaker Mike Johnson, the tiniest coward of them all, is the most pathetic exemplar of this: “I’m not gonna comment on something I haven’t read, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he told reporters this week when they asked him about the DOJ bribe.

The six conservatives on the Supreme Court, in contrast, aren’t cowards. They know what they’re doing, and they have no voters to fear. We must assume that they are consciously creating the America they want. That’s most true of the two deepest reactionaries, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. But to varying degrees, it’s true of the other four conservatives, John Roberts very much included. The record they are leaving behind of these terse, barely explained pro-Trump shadow docket decisions will be their legacy—of shame, if we manage to restore democracy after Trump, or of glory, if we descend into a Hunger Games society.

-Michael Tomasky in The New Republic