The NYT exposé on the shadow docket reveals John Roberts as the partisan actor he’s always been — despite his reputation as a serious institutionalist that outlets like the Times have long helped him cultivate.
The essential @thelisagraves.bsky.social helps me unpack the story:
In February 1777, General George Washington ordered the first mass immunization campaign in American history by mandating that his troops be inoculated against smallpox. He protected the Continental Army from an epidemic that was deadlier than British forces.
249 years later, we have this idiot.
Who paid the tariffs? Consumers who gets the refund? Businesses who pays for the refund? Taxpayers this has all been so much fun. I’m so glad we all get to keep winning like this.
So, we didn’t just pay for the tariffs, we paid for the tariffs twice?
The very attorneys who have spent years protecting Trump from accountability are now charged with protecting us. Under the Trump regime, their job description is unchanged from their time as his personal attorneys.
Our latest newsletter: courtaccountability.substack.com/p/trump-mcco...
When John Roberts agrees with a Republican policy he will "conclude ... as a matter of law" he has "a solemn obligation to preserve it." If he doesn't like (most likely a Democratic) policy he will "conclude ... as a matter of law" that he needs to "stuff it in the garbage."
He pitches & hits.
In my view, John Roberts's most impressive PR accomplishment is persuading an entire generation of Supreme Court commentators that he is anything other than a Republican politician who uses legalese to implement policies that Republican voters want
Trump pressured Republican states to rig their electoral maps, because he saw a midterm disaster coming for his party. He knows they will lose big without rigged districts. Virginia can level the playing field and stop his newest scam tomorrow by voting YES for fair election maps. #VoteYesVirginia
ICYMI - really important bombshell story + breakdown of how Peter Thiel is misleading black voters in Virginia about this week's redistricting ballot measure election by @couriernewsroom.bsky.social Contributor @thelisagraves.bsky.social
www.graveinjustice.news/p/billionair...
I learned this from @thelisagraves.bsky.social's book
Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts And His Accomplices Rewrote The Constitution And Dismantled Our Rights.
More details on @nicolesandler.bsky.social show about the the harm Roberts has done to #SCOTUS www.youtube.com/live/t4-_1yl...
@thelisagraves.bsky.social
Always think of you when SCOTUS comes up and then wonder what you think🤓
Hope spring finds you well✊
This tracks with @thelisagraves.bsky.social book Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts And His Accomplices Rewrote The Constitution And Dismantled Our Rights.
She talked to @nicolesandler.bsky.social about how Roberts enabled Trump's irreparable harm to the US. www.youtube.com/live/t4-_1yl...
All of his businesses and property should be nationalized and dissolved and he should be stripped of literally every single asset and dollar. Put him in public housing and let him live off of whatever UBI the next Congress passes.
Tremendous reporting: The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
The 25th Amendment already gives Congress the tool to remove Trump.
Raskin’s bill would finally create the independent commission to make it happen.
This is one more real shot to protect the country. Tell Congress to pass it. actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...
The rise of the shadow docket in 2016 was followed in 2017 by another procedural trick from the Roberts Court, known as "Munsingwear vacatur," which they weaponized to wipe out progressive precedent without having to explain why. Profs. Lisa Tucker (my wife) and Michael Risch (he's not) explain. 1/2
I’m so excited about this. I hope people keep starting newsrooms. There’s appetite for the truth.
Your vote in Virginia can flip the scales in Congress today.
This critical window slams shut on April 21.
Don't let this chance for real change slip away.
Act now and vote YES while it still counts.
#VoteYesForVirginiaLive
Report: Peter Thiel is spending big against Redistricting in VA- targeting Black voters with racial messages
open.substack.com/pub/graveinj...
🚨BREAKING: The California Supreme Court permanently disbarred John Eastman — a key architect in President Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election — delivering one of the most consequential professional penalties yet for an election denier. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
Billionaires & corporate interests are buying influence.
Voting rights are under attack. Extremists are dismantling democratic norms.
VOTE like our democratic freedoms depend on it.
Fight to end corruption & build a federal gov't to benefit all of us.
Go to IWillVote.com to find out everything you need to know to vote in your state’s next election!
#VoteYesVirginia
Democrats for the win —
LFG!! 💙🇺🇸
Colorful print of the Statue of Liberty with boxing gloves, with the caption: MAGA IS Rigging the Midterm Election FIGHT BACK VOTE YES APRIL 21
Republicans started this fight,
Democrats are finishing it.
This is about fairness.
#VoteYesVirginia
Pass it on!
Donald Trump and his MAGA administration are trying to rig (and steal) the Midterm elections (see: Texas Gerrymandering)… But we are fighting back, state-by-state one election at a time. #VoteYesVirginia
Donald Trump and his MAGA administration are trying to rig (and steal) the Midterm elections (see: Texas Gerrymandering)…
But we are fighting back, state-by-state one election at a time.
#VoteYesVirginia
Lesson for our future in the US 👇
Financial Times part 3 transcript.
How Opus Dei recruits at elite college to fill a “pipeline” to Heritage and other DC power jobs.
archive.ph/eBY65
It's really something to be living through the worst President, the worst Supreme Court, and the worst Congress all at once
🚀
“Graves: Yes. This case that was issued by John Roberts — it was a 6-to-3 decision right before the election in 2024, and it invented immunity from criminal prosecution for a president. That’s never been the law in America. Ever. Not since the beginning. And that’s why there was a reaction to that decision, in part to have the introduction of the No Kings Act, because that immunity decision basically made Donald Trump king-like in his powers, by saying that he and any future president could not be held accountable for any crimes they committed. When John Roberts wrote that opinion, he basically effectively pardoned Trump for the crimes he had committed. But he larded that opinion with additional assertions, trying to set the pardon power beyond any judicial or congressional review, asserting that there’s no limit on how a president can direct the Justice Department in its prosecutions, even though there have been longstanding limits in order to protect from the weaponization, the politicization, of the Justice Department to go after political enemies. And so you have a situation now where you have a president who can commit crimes—and has committed crimes, in my view, and in the view of Jack Smith—who can commit crimes under John Roberts’ opinion. Hopefully this will be ultimately repudiated. He can pardon his co-conspirators, which is what he did when he pardoned the January 6th people who were convicted. But in essence, he could pardon any of his cabinet members or others—people on the ground in Minneapolis, for example—if he wanted to. He could pardon people who were engaging in illegal activity at his behest in foreign policy, war crimes, or domestically. And that would be okay under John Roberts. That is the essence of the destruction of the rule of law. If a president can break the laws, and he can order people to break the laws, and he can then give them immunity or pardon them for doing so, basically no law can hold.”
💡The Roberts #SCOTUS immunity decision “made Donald Trump king-like in his powers”enabling Trump’s “destruction of the rule of law” through immunity and pardons in a landscape where “basically no law can hold.” - @thelisagraves.bsky.social + @pkrugman.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
Could not agree more!
@thelisagraves.bsky.social 👏🏻 👏🏻
Thank you so much, David!!
