Satire: A Democrat’s dream of revenge

By Gordon S. Jackson

Sept. 22, 2025

The Supreme Court’s opening session this first Monday in October will culminate an unprecedented and bewildering sequence of events that have dominated President Donald Trump’s first year of his second term – and left Sonia Sotomayor as the only remaining sitting justice. The court will reconvene with the nation facing a constitutional crisis unimagined by the Founding Fathers, triggered by a seemingly irreconcilable showdown between the executive and legislative branches of government – and a split in the Republican-controlled Senate.

But first, a recap. Within three months of Trump’s inauguration last January, the two oldest justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both conservatives, retired. This gave the president the opportunity to replace them with other conservatives. But before Trump could nominate their successors a small group of Republican senators from agricultural states hard hit by the president’s tariffs promised to block any nominations until he lifted the tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Trump adamantly refused.

Then the seven-member court entered an unprecedented summer. The first shock was Brett Kavanaugh’s resignation early in June for health reasons. If three stonewalled nominations were not enough to send constitutional experts into a frenzy, an even more bizarre sequence of Supreme Court departures lay ahead. Next came Amy Coney Barrett’s inexplicable disappearance while on a June family vacation in England, when she never emerged from the maze at Hampton Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts’ death in an Ikea folding chair accident the next month.

That left only four associate justices: Gorsuch, a conservative, and three liberals: Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor.

Despite intense pressure, the anti-tariff Republican senators refused to relent and Trump was unable to secure any replacements for the five vacancies. But more was to come: with a clear liberal majority on the rump court, Kagan felt comfortable resigning to return to academia. Then, in a move that blindsided conservatives, Gorsuch quit too, saying that with the current impasse between Trump and the Senate, “continuing to serve in this role is a farce and a betrayal of our country’s Constitutional principles.” Then Jackson, in a rare moment of agreement with Gorsuch, said she felt the same and quit the same day he did.

To the Republicans’ horror that left the liberal Sonia Sotomayor as the sole remaining justice. She is now receiving heightened protection by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Pro-Trump senators continue to fume about their intransigent Republican colleagues, yet they are all united in their fury over having a lone liberal on the Court. They remain terrified as the stalemate continues, fearing a series of what they would see as unfavorable rulings on the issues due to come before Sotomayor. Because the Constitution doesn’t specify how many judges are required for the court to function, the Democrats contend the current one-judge court is perfectly legal.

In contrast, Republicans and numerous nonpartisan groups argue that the Founding Fathers intended the court to be a deliberative body, which is impossible with only one justice. Pro-Trump Republicans are trying to find a way to secure confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominees but the anti-Trump senators are holding firm in their stand on tariffs.

The constitutional disagreements over aspects of the “one-justice” issue are making their way through the federal courts and several conflicting rulings are being appealed to the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor has agreed to hear the case that most legal observers agree best embodies the key constitutional issue: whether a lone Supreme Court judge can make legitimate rulings.

Now the issue has taken another twist. Several friends of the court briefs have argued that Sotomayor should recuse herself, given her vested interest in the outcome. How, they ask, can she credibly endorse a “one-judge” system, that would give her essentially dictatorial powers?

Sotomayor is expected to begin reviewing the work her clerks are doing on this case upon her return from her skydiving-for-beginners adventure vacation in New Zealand.

Her ruling is expected in the spring.

Gordon S. Jackson is a professor emeritus of journalism at Whitworth University. He is the author of 21 books, three of them satirical novels.