Donald Trump's weird love affair with eminent domain

If Trump had his way, the Supreme Court would become a rubber stamp of approval for every whim of the state

Donald Trump's past lawsuits have showed his true feelings when it comes to eminent domain.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Molly Riley MR/TZ)

Justice Antonin Scalia is dead. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83. Justice Anthony Kennedy is 80. And Justice Stephen Breyer is 78. With one Supreme Court seat vacant and three more vulnerable to the ravages of time, our next president may well be able to substantially shape American jurisprudence for decades to come.

The legitimately high stakes of the SCOTUS game constitute a difficult argument to dismiss this election cycle. That's particularly so on the right, where a conservative Supreme Court that could overturn Roe v. Wade or throw out some loathed legislation like ObamaCare is something of a white whale. As conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt argued at The Washington Examiner, in the 2016 election, "it's the Supreme Court, stupid." So if you have any sympathy for limited government, any concern for the Constitution and rule of law, Hewitt said, hold your nose and vote Trump.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.