First-Ever Preemptive SCOTUS Opposition Campaign Includes Prominent Democratic Pollsters, Communications Professionals, DNC Veterans
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First-Ever Preemptive SCOTUS Opposition Campaign Includes Prominent Democratic Pollsters, Communications Professionals, Progressive Veterans
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Demand Justice today announced the launch of a $3 million campaign to oppose an anticipated Trump Supreme Court nomination this year — before a nominee is even named.
Donald Trump knows there’s a real chance Democrats win the Senate in November. He also knows that if that happens, Justices Thomas and Alito would be in their 80’s by the time any future Republican president could replace them. Which is why he will push for one or both to retire this year.
“Republicans spent 40 years treating the courts as a political project — they funded it, built the infrastructure, and won. Democrats must treat the prospect of Trump filling more Supreme Court vacancies as the grave threat it is,” said Josh Orton, President of Demand Justice. “Trump knows that the court is about raw political power — power to protect himself, power to reward his billionaire allies, and power to enable ICE to intimidate and attack American citizens. He is not going to leave office with his most loyal justices in their eighties and hope for the best. He’s going to act, and we’ll be ready.”
Indivisible will serve as a partner organization, engaging and mobilizing grassroots opposition to a Trump nominee.
The current $3 million campaign will scale up to a $15 million campaign when the vacancy is announced, and it includes prominent pollsters to test which messages Democrats should deploy when a vacancy occurs — including around denying the truth of 2020 and January 6th, demonstrating loyalty to Trump over the Constitution, siding with big corporations over working families, and enabling Trump’s lawlessness and corruption.
The campaign will unite veterans from across the Democratic ideological spectrum. It includes Herbie Ziskend, a veteran of President Biden’s White House, Bill Neidhardt, an adviser to the super PAC for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Michael Pratt and Colleen Coffey, the former finance directors of the Democratic National Committee, and the pollsters Anna Greenberg and Cornell Belcher. They will lead a digital, earned, and paid media effort to begin pushing back against likely nominees.
“Trump has spent years bending the courts to consolidate power, undermine our Constitution, and advance his corrupt, self-serving agenda,” said Ezra Levin, Co-Executive Director of Indivisible. “This Trump-packed Court has already done enough damage — from the outrageous presidential immunity decision to gutting the Voting Rights Act to overturning Roe v. Wade and state protections for LGBTQ youth. If Trump is handed another Supreme Court vacancy, we must be clear-eyed and ready to make it an uphill battle. We know that Trump will try to install another craven loyalist to rubber-stamp his abuses. And if he and his allies think they can do that quietly, they’re in for a fight. This will be a defining political battle, and we intend to make sure the stakes are clear to everyone.”
In Trump’s second term, every single one of his 37 judicial nominees has refused to say who won the 2020 election or what happened on January 6th. Every single nominee retreats to the same rehearsed, evasive non-answers — language designed to peddle Trump’s Big Lie. It is a direct preview of what a Trump Supreme Court nominee will do when Trump moves to create a vacancy this year.
“Trump doesn’t want someone loyal to the Constitution,” Orton said. “He wants someone loyal to him, someone he trusts to peddle his dishonesty about the 2020 election, and someone who will protect him — from accountability, from prosecution, and from the legal consequences of his authoritarianism. That is his only qualification. And it should be disqualifying for everyone else.”
The campaign will aggressively make the case by tying any nominee directly to Trump’s corrupt agenda and ensuring that Senate Republicans in competitive states, and Senate Republicans with a legacy to protect, pay a political price for rubber-stamping a personal loyalist to a lifetime appointment.
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