The US Supreme Court’s new conservative majority, within one week, revoked a constitutional right to an abortion, delivered a devastating blow to government efforts to combat the climate crisis, strengthened Second Amendment protections, and ruled in two cases that the court’s liberal justices warned have blown up the firewall between church and state.
Donald Trump’s three appointments – Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch – join conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, moving the Supreme Court significantly further to the right, and, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, wielding that power by substituting “a rule by judges for the rule of law”.
