Many media observers hate Axios for being a shallow, horse-race obsessed bastion of the bothsiderism normalizing the radical assault on constitutional order and amping up the “all politicians are the same” cynicism greasing the wheels of the Republic’s collapse through supercharged low turnout apathy. Its devotion to bold-faced type headings and conclusory sound byte “analysis” at once is ironically difficult to read and so childish that USA Today throws side eye.
Which is all fair, but it’s also so clumsily bad at this effort that it’s always good for at least a couple laughs.
Yesterday, the outlet waded into legal waters discussing Trump judges auditioning for future Supreme Court perches. But it couldn’t just print this ground-breaking observation that readers of this website understood years ago because it had to throw in something for “balance.” And this was a doozy.
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After detailing Trump’s impact on the judiciary and walking through Judge James Ho wading into the “lesser Black women” discussion and Lawrence VanDyke denigrating his colleagues (though, weirdly, not the opinions where he compared the rest of the Ninth Circuit to criminals or suggested they were possessed), readers are treated to this visual (hat tip to Professor Steve Vladeck who flagged this on Twitter because… I’m certainly not reading Axios):
There are culture jammers whose heads spun at that juxtaposition. We’ve got judges jumping in to back the idea that Black women aren’t worthy of the Supreme Court, grandstanding in opinions to bash their colleagues, and turning opinions over to gratuitous anti-Trans hate takes, but Ketanji Brown Jackson said Don McGahn has to comply with his subpoena with a quote that cites The Federalist Papers and de Tocqueville.
Totally responsible media coverage.
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Trump judges audition for Supreme Court [Axios]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.