Why Democrats can’t get a fair shake in the Supreme Court, in one chart

When Donald Trump was president, reading through his Supreme Court nominees’ records felt like attending a dinner party at the unseelie court. The rules were unclear and constantly shifting. Menace lurked behind every corner. And, especially if you are a Democrat, there was an unsettling sense that you would be the dessert.

We are now two weeks from Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement, which means that I have now had sufficient time to explore the records of three of the most likely replacements — federal Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson and Michelle Childs, and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger — and the experience could not be more unlike studying the records of Republican contenders.

Say what you will about Trump’s justices, but before they got on the Court, they were quite open about just how eager they are to abolish foundational principles of American law.

Justice Neil Gorsuch reportedly got his current job because Trump’s advisers admired his plans to gut federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was also a scourge of the EPA, who went out of his way to criticize Roe v. Wade months before his Supreme Court nomination. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. She also called for an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment, and criticized two Supreme Court decisions that largely rejected efforts to sabotage Obamacare.