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Bombshell report deals another blow to the Supreme Court’s reputation

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3 years ago

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By Mary Zeigler  — Culled from the CNN

The Supreme Court’s reputation was already in question when The New York Times released an exposé over the weekend about another alleged breach at the high court.

Earlier this year, there had been revelations that Ginni Thomas, a conservative operative married to Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly urged former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Some legal experts suggested that Clarence Thomas should have recused himself from cases involving the 2020 election, but he did not. (In a statement before meeting with the January 6 committee, Ginni Thomas said she never discussed her campaign activities regarding the 2020 election with her husband.)

In May came the unprecedented leak of a full draft of an opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization dismantling federal protection of abortion rights.

The Dobbs leak set off an internal investigation — which is still ongoing — and reportedly poisoned the atmosphere at the court; another round of leaks soon followed around the possibility that some wavering had occurred from within on overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights case.

The leak prompted fierce criticism, especially from within the court. Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Dobbs majority, recently called the leak a quote, “grave betrayal,” in an appearance before the conservative Heritage Foundation, suggesting that it put the lives of some of the high court’s conservative justices at risk.

By the end of the summer, it seemed that two things were true. First, this series of revelations had wreaked havoc on the court’s public image, convincing many Americans that it was a profoundly partisan institution.

And, second, members of the court’s conservative supermajority did not much seem to care.

Just look at what happened with Dobbs: Despite months of controversy and plummeting poll numbers, the court released an opinion reversing Roe that was functionally identical to the one leaked in May. Alito, author of the Dobbs opinion, even dropped in a paragraph about the court’s legitimacy, suggesting that it was not his job to worry about what the American people think.

This latest bombshell about anti-abortion groups allegedly getting tipped off in 2014 about a yet-to-be-released blockbuster ruling will test if the justices have to care about the court’s legitimacy after all.

The New York Times reported that the Rev. Rob Schenck, a former anti-abortion activist, had spent years seeking influence at the Supreme Court, developing a network of top donors and court insiders. Schenck alleges that his sources formed close relationships with Thomas, Alito and Justice Antonin Scalia — bonds so close that one couple allegedly received a tipoff about the result in a major case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., at a dinner with Alito and his wife.

The Hobby Lobby case involved a challenge to the so-called contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which required employers to cover all female contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The owners of some for-profit businesses argued that these forms of birth control were actually abortion-inducing drugs — and that forcing employers to cover them violated employers’ rights.

According to the Times, Schenck said he was told that the employers would win the case from a conservative donor who had close social ties to Alito and his wife — and that Alito had written the majority opinion.

Schenck wasn’t present when his sources allegedly received news about the ruling, but several acquaintances report his telling the same story about the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, the Times reported. Schenck’s emails from 2014 and beyond also reinforce that he had some kind of inside information about the case and expected his side to win it, according to the Times.

In a statement the Supreme Court provided to CNN on Saturday, Alito called the tipoff allegations concerning the dinner conversation “completely false.”

In an interview with CNN, the donor cited by Schenck also denied allegations of receiving information about the Hobby Lobby ruling, though she admitted that she and her husband dined at Alito’s home.

But this report is the last thing the court needed with its approval ratings already at an all-time low.

It hasn’t always been this way. In the 1970s, Americans’ trust in government institutions shattered in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and revelations about then-President Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, a break-in to the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and subsequent cover-up. But the Supreme Court long seemed to be an exception.

On former President Donald Trump’s watch, that view was to change dramatically. Trump kicked things off by promising not just that his nominees would be conservative originalists but that they would guarantee the reversal of Roe.

With three Trump nominees on the court, the justices delivered the most conservative wins since 1931, according to an NPR report, citing statistics compiled by professors at Washington University and the University of Michigan.

And it wasn’t just the number of wins — it was how far to the right the court moved. The justices opened the door to displays of religious faith from public school teachers and coaches, and an expansion of public funding for religious schools.

The court also hamstrung the Environmental Protection Agency and cast doubt on the power of other agencies, created a super-right to bear arms that would make it hard to pass any gun regulations and eliminated the right to abortion, even rejecting the argument that abortion restrictions constituted sex discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause — a claim that neither the petitioners nor the respondents in the case had raised.

The message was clear: The court’s conservative majority was here to stay — and making no apologies for the revolution it was working in the law, no matter how deeply unpopular it was becoming.

By the end of the summer, the court’s reputation had taken a nosedive, but the conservative justices hardly seemed to care. They seemed convinced that they truly were insulated from the will of the people.

It’s true that the justices hold lifetime appointments — and that no justice has ever been successfully removed through impeachment. But historically, there were other ways to hold the court accountable — threats to strip the court of jurisdiction, changing the number of justices or even just ignoring the justices’ rulings.

The current conservative majority seems poised to continue making major changes. The court could end affirmative action, further gut the Voting Rights Act, give state legislatures the power to upend federal elections, further curb the power of the EPA and allow religious business owners to refuse service to LBGTQ customers.

The New York Times article on the court’s alleged leak will deal the court’s reputation another blow. Americans want the court to be above partisan politics (less than 20% polled recently by Pew think that the court should bring their political views into decision making), but a growing number of voters think that the court is a partisan institution.

Now, it seems the justices are not just delivering policy wins to one side of the aisle but have developed inside relationships with conservative organizations.

At a minimum, doing so creates a horrible impression for Americans promised that the justices will be neutral arbiters of the law. At worst, it’s a sign of deep corruption. (The Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides ethical guidance for lower court judges but specifically does not cover Supreme Court justices.)

The court seems convinced that it can continue on its current trajectory no matter how unhappy Americans are. If that’s true, Americans will lose trust in yet another institution, and the court will lose touch with the will of the people.

Both of those things would be dangerous for American democracy. And so, for everyone’s sake, we have to hope that there is some accountability for the court after all.

Mary Ziegler is the Martin Luther King Jr. professor of law at the University of California, Davis and author of the book “Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment.” The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

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Anthony Obi Ogbo

When Air Power Becomes a Christmas Performance: The Illusion of Success in Trump’s Nigerian Strike

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2 weeks ago

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December 28, 2025

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“Bombs alone do not defeat ideology. Precision without intelligence is noise.“ —Anthony Obi Ogbo

When President Trump announced his authorized United States air strike against ISIL (ISIS) fighters in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day, there was an immediate burst of celebration on Nigerian social media. For a country exhausted by years of kidnappings, massacres, and territorial insecurity, the announcement sounded like long-awaited international support. Memes circulated, praise poured in, and some Nigerians hailed Trump as a decisive global sheriff finally willing to act where others hesitated.

But after the initial euphoria settled, a sobering assessment emerged: the strike appeared less like a strategic military intervention and more like a made-for-television spectacle designed to burnish Trump’s international strongman image.

This was not the first time the United States has launched air strikes in Africa or the Sahel under the banner of counterterrorism. From Libya to Somalia, from Syria to Yemen, U.S. “precision strikes” have often been announced with confidence and celebrated with press briefings—only for the targeted groups to regroup, mutate, and, in some cases, expand their reach. In Nigeria itself, years of foreign-backed security assistance have failed to decisively neutralize Boko Haram or its ISIS-affiliated offshoots. Instead, violence has fragmented, spread, and grown more complex.

No verifiable evidence has been produced to confirm high-value ISIS targets were eliminated

The Nigerian strike followed a familiar pattern. U.S. officials framed it as a blow against ISIS-West Africa Province (ISWAP), a group aligned with the global ISIS network. Trump’s language suggested a decisive intervention—an act of muscular diplomacy signaling that America still projects power where it chooses. Yet no verifiable evidence has been produced to confirm high-value ISIS targets were eliminated, leadership structures dismantled, or operational capacity degraded.

What followed was a digital smokescreen. Social media accounts, many anonymous and unverified, began circulating gruesome images of dead bodies and destroyed villages—photos long associated with banditry in Nigeria’s northwest. These images were quickly repurposed to “prove” the success of Trump’s strike. However, this is where the narrative falls apart under scrutiny.

Trump’s mission, as publicly stated, was to target ISIS. Not bandits. Not kidnappers. Not rural criminal gangs. ISIS is a transnational terrorist organization with ideological, financial, and operational links across continents. Bandits, by contrast, are primarily armed criminal groups—motivated by ransom, cattle theft, and territorial control, not global jihad. Conflating the two may be politically convenient, but it is analytically dishonest.

Killing or displacing bandits does not equate to dismantling ISIS. In fact, indiscriminate or poorly targeted air strikes often worsen the situation, pushing criminal groups to radicalize, splinter, or align with extremist factions for protection and legitimacy. This pattern has been observed repeatedly in conflict zones where military force substitutes for intelligence-driven strategy.

A truly successful counterterrorism raid is not measured by dramatic announcements or viral images. It is measured by clear, verifiable outcomes, including the confirmed elimination of high-ranking commanders, disruption of recruitment and financing networks, seizure of weapons caches, and—most importantly—sustained reductions in civilian attacks. None of these benchmarks has been credibly demonstrated in the aftermath of Trump’s Nigerian air strike.

Instead, Nigeria wakes up to the same grim reality: villages remain vulnerable, highways unsafe, and communities terrorized. The strike did not change the security equation. It did not empower Nigerian forces. It did not restore civilian confidence. And it certainly did not neutralize ISIS as a strategic threat.

This air strike offered Nigerians symbolism, not security.

In that sense, the air strike was not merely ineffective—it was a failure dressed in the language of strength, executed for optics, and amplified for political gain. It offered Nigerians symbolism, not security.

If the goal is truly to eliminate ISIS and its affiliates in West Africa, the path is neither theatrical nor unilateral. It requires robust intelligence sharing, sustained training, and real-time coordination with Nigerian and regional forces. It demands targeted arms assistance, logistical support, and investments in surveillance capabilities that allow local militaries to act decisively and lawfully. Above all, it requires a long-term commitment to strengthening state capacity—not fleeting air shows announced from afar.

Bombs alone do not defeat ideology. Precision without intelligence is noise. And celebration without results is self-deception. Trump’s Nigerian air strike may have produced headlines, but history will remember it for what it was: a failed mission masquerading as success.

♦ Publisher of the Guardian News, Professor Anthony Obi Ogbo, Ph.D., is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of the Influence of Leadership (2015)  and the Maxims of Political Leadership (2019). Contact: anthony@guardiannews.us

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Trump’s Nigeria Strike: Bombs, Boasts, and the Illusion of Victory

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3 weeks ago

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December 26, 2025

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“With Obama, Al-Qaeda was not eliminated by noise; it was suffocated by intelligence.“ —Anthony Obi Ogbo

It has now been confirmed that the United States acted in collaboration with Nigeria in the recent strike on Islamic State elements in northwest Nigeria. That cooperation deserves recognition. Intelligence-sharing between Washington and Abuja is necessary, overdue, and welcome. Terrorism is transnational; defeating it requires allies, not isolation.

But let us be clear: bombs alone do not defeat terror. And Donald Trump’s strike—trumpeted loudly on social media before facts, casualties, or strategy were disclosed—was less a turning point than a performance.

Trump’s announcement was a classic spectacle: “powerful,” “deadly,” “perfect strikes.” No numbers. No clarity. No accountability. Just noise. It was the same choreography America has deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia—places where U.S. airpower landed hard, headlines screamed victory, and instability deepened afterward. Violence escalated. Militancy adapted. Civilians paid the price.

History is unkind to airstrikes sold as solutions.

Nigeria knows this better than anyone. Long before Trump’s tweet, the Nigerian military had already conducted multiple operations in the same terror corridor. At least five major strikes and offensives stand out:

  • First, Operation Hadarin Daji, launched to dismantle bandit and terror camps across Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto, involving sustained air and ground assaults.
  • Second, Operation Tsaftan Daji, which targeted terrorist hideouts in the Kamuku and Sububu forests—precisely the terrain now in the headlines.
  • Third, repeated Nigerian Air Force precision strikes in the Zurmi–Shinkafi axis, neutralizing commanders and destroying logistics hubs.
  • Fourth, joint operations with Nigerien forces, disrupting cross-border supply routes used by ISIS-linked groups.
  • Fifth, recent coordinated offensives involving intelligence-led raids, special forces insertions, and follow-up ground clearing in the northwest.

These were not symbolic gestures. They were Nigerian-led, Nigerian-funded, Nigerian-executed. And yet, there were no fireworks on social media. No flag-waving hysteria. No intoxicated praise of Nigerian commanders as saviors of civilization.

Why? Because there is a dangerous segment of Nigerians who suffer from what can only be called the American Wonder mentality—a colonial hangover that applauds anything louder simply because it comes from Washington. The same Nigerians who ignore their own soldiers dying in silence suddenly abandon Christmas meals to celebrate Trump’s tweets, typing incoherent praise, mangling grammar, and mistaking spectacle for substance.

It is embarrassing. And it is intellectually lazy.

Terrorism is not defeated by volume or virality. It is defeated by intelligence—quiet, patient, unglamorous work. The United States knows this. Barack Obama understood it. Al-Qaeda was not dismantled through social media theatrics or chest-thumping declarations. It was weakened through intelligence fusion, financial disruption, targeted operations, local partnerships, and relentless pressure on leadership networks—mostly without fanfare.

Obama did not tweet. He acted. So what actually works against groups like ISIS in Nigeria?

First, intelligence supremacy. Human intelligence from local communities, defectors, and infiltrators matters more than bombs. Terror groups survive on secrecy. Break that, and they collapse.

Second, financial and logistical strangulation. Terrorists run on money, fuel, arms, and food. Cut access to smuggling routes, illicit mining, ransom flows, and cross-border trade, and their operational capacity withers.

Third, community stabilization and governance. Terrorism thrives where the state is absent. Roads, schools, policing, and justice systems matter. People who trust the state do not shelter terrorists.

Fourth, regional coordination, not episodic strikes. Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso must sustain joint pressure, not reactive operations driven by headlines.

Airstrikes can support these strategies—but only as tools, never as substitutes.

Trump’s strike may have killed militants. It may have disrupted camps. That is commendable. But it is not a solution. It is a moment. And moments, without strategy, fade.

If Nigerians truly want terror defeated, they should stop worshiping foreign loudness and start demanding disciplined intelligence, consistent policy, and respect for the men and women already fighting on the ground.

Real victories are quiet. Real security is built, not tweeted.

♦ Publisher of the Guardian News, Professor Anthony Obi Ogbo, Ph.D., is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of the Influence of Leadership (2015)  and the Maxims of Political Leadership (2019). Contact: anthony@guardiannews.us

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Texas’ 18th Congressional District Runoff: Amanda Edwards Deserves This Seat

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4 weeks ago

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December 18, 2025

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“Her persistence and long-term investment make a clear case: she has earned this opportunity.“ —Anthony Obi Ogbo

In the special election to fill Texas’s 18th Congressional District, no candidate won a majority on November 4, 2025, leading to a January 31, 2026, runoff between Democratic frontrunners Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards. Menefee, Harris County Attorney, led the field with roughly 29% of the vote, while former Houston City Council member Edwards finished second with about 26%. Both are vying to represent a district left vacant after the death of U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner.

The 18th Congressional District is far more than a geographic area. Anchored in Houston’s historic Black communities, it is a political and cultural stronghold shaped by civil rights history, faith institutions, and grassroots activism. Sheila Jackson Lee represented this district for nearly three decades (1995–2024), becoming more than a legislator—she was a constant presence at churches, funerals, protests, and community milestones. For residents, her leadership carried spiritual weight, reflecting stewardship, protection, and a deep, almost pastoral guardianship of the district. Her tenure symbolized continuity, cultural pride, and a profound connection with the people she served.

Houstonians watched as Jackson Lee entered the 2023 Houston mayoral race, attempting to transition from Congress to city leadership. Despite high-profile endorsements, including outgoing Mayor Sylvester Turner and national Democratic figures, she lost the December 9, 2023, runoff to State Senator John Whitmire by a wide margin. Following that defeat, Jackson Lee filed to run for re-election to her U.S. House seat, even as Edwards—who had briefly joined the mayoral race before withdrawing—remained in the congressional primary.

At that time, Jackson Lee’s health was visibly declining, yet voters still supported her, honoring decades of service. She defeated Edwards in the 2024 Democratic primary before announcing her battle with pancreatic cancer. Her passing in July 2024 left the seat vacant.

Edwards, already a candidate, sought to fill the seat, but timing and party rules intervened. Because Jackson Lee died too late for a regular primary, Harris County Democratic Party precinct chairs selected a replacement nominee. Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a retired but widely respected figure, narrowly edged out Edwards for the nomination, effectively blocking her despite her prior campaigning efforts. Turner won the general election but died in March 2025, triggering a special election in 2025, in which Edwards advanced to a runoff.

The January 31, 2026, runoff will hinge on turnout, coalition-building, and key endorsements. Both candidates led a crowded November field but fell short of a majority, with Menefee narrowly ahead. Endorsements such as State Rep. Jolanda Jones’ support for Edwards could consolidate key Democratic blocs, particularly among Black women and progressive voters. In a heavily Democratic district where voter confusion and turnout patterns have been inconsistent, the candidate who best mobilizes supporters and unites constituencies is likely to prevail.

Amanda Edwards’ case is compelling. Although both candidates share similar values and qualifications, her claim rests on dedication, consistency, and timing that have been repeatedly denied. She pursued this seat with focus and purpose, maintaining a steady commitment to the district and its future. Her path was interrupted by the prolonged political ambitions of Jackson Lee and Turner—figures whose stature reshaped the race but delayed generational transition. Edwards did not step aside; she remained visible, engaged, and prepared. In a moment demanding both continuity and renewal, her persistence and long-term investment make a clear case: she has earned this opportunity.

This race comes down to trust, perseverance, and demonstrated commitment. Amanda Edwards has consistently shown up for the district, even when political circumstances repeatedly delayed her chance. Her dedication reflects readiness, respect for the electorate, and an unwavering commitment to service. Voting for Amanda Edwards is not only justified—it is the right choice for Houston’s 18th Congressional District.

♦Publisher of the Guardian News, Professor Anthony Obi Ogbo, Ph.D., is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of the Influence of Leadership (2015)  and the Maxims of Political Leadership (2019). Contact: anthony@guardiannews.us

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