The New York Times’ chief reporter in Washington has produced an indispensable guide to an epochal shift in US politics

Confirmation Bias lifts the curtain on Republican efforts to make the federal bench a black-robed adjunct. When it comes to the judiciary, the GOP is portrayed as disciplined and relentless. By contrast, the Democrats, from Barack Obama down, appear as little more than enraged bystanders, ill-prepared for the events of the past 40 months.

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The Senate’s shift in 2014 to Republican hands was a game-changer. Looking back, Obamacare extracted a hefty and lasting political price, far beyond what was contemplated in the heat of the moment.

Carl Hulse has produced an engrossing take on America’s judicial wars, a highly informed deep dive, not a whodunnit. We know how the story ends but Confirmation Bias remains essential reading. The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent fills his book with interviews and history, which people readily share.

Hulse recalls how Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell hatched his strategy of owning the supreme court seat opened by the sudden death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Within hours of Scalia passing into history, McConnell declared that any Obama nominee would effectively be DOA.

The Democrats had their own history that gave cover to the GOP’s bare-knuckle tactics

McConnell would not cede the Senate’s prerogatives sooner than he was forced to. As he put it, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next supreme court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

As the saying goes, “elections have consequences”. So did the GOP presidential primaries. Hulse captures how the nominating process fused with broad-based disdain for Senator Ted Cruz helped force McConnell’s hand.

Josh Holmes, McConnell’s former chief of staff, tells Hulse that with the South Carolina GOP debate to be held almost moments after Scalia’s death, the Republicans could ill-afford Cruz, Texas’ widely reviled junior senator, being first to announce a blockade on whoever Obama picked. Holmes was “absolutely sure that Cruz was going to take the furthest position”, which was seen as possessing crippling consequences for the party once the confirmation process was actually under way.

Specifically, Holmes believed that if Cruz emerged as the leader in the expected confirmation fight, the GOP “could lose half the conference”. Still, as Hulse makes clear, McConnell was not operating on a blank slate.

The Democrats had their own history that gave cover to the GOP’s bare-knuckle tactics. For years they had shaped the judicial landscape, and it wasn’t just about Robert Bork crashing and burning or Clarence Thomas’ alleged penchant for pornography.

In June 1992, in the midst of a presidential election, Senator Joe Biden announced that that if a supreme court vacancy emerged prior to the election, “the Senate judiciary committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over”. Welcome to the now-christened “Biden Rule”, which would come to kill any chance Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick, ever had.

On a similar note, Confirmation Bias reviews how changes to Senate rules of debate driven by the Democrats and Harry Reid, McConnell’s predecessor as majority leader, helped pave the way for the GOP pulling out all stops to preserve the court’s conservative majority. Long story short, Team Reid killed the filibuster on lower court nominations in reaction to Republican resistance to Obama’s judicial selections, which in turn was payback for earlier skirmishes.

In Hulse’ telling, McConnell and Don McGahn, Trump’s now jettisoned White House counsel, were the key players in the battle for the courts, bolstered by a network of nonprofits and dark-money adjuncts. As for connective tissue, Leonard Leo, his deep-pocketed Federalist Society and the opaque, equally deep-pocketed and informally related Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) all fall under the author’s watchful gaze.

The Federalist Society’s latest filing with the Internal Revenue Service reported more than $22m in income in the fiscal year ending 30 September 2018. Its board is graced by two former attorneys general, Ronald Reagan’s Ed Meese and George W Bush’s Michael Mukasey. They are joined by C Boyden Gray, George HW Bush’s White House counsel and a mentor to Bill Barr, the current attorney general, and Brent Hatch, whose father was Utah’s former senator Orrin Hatch, who chaired the Senate judiciary committee – just like Biden.

Grandma’s social security check is in potential jeopardy. The scrum is no longer just about abortion and Obamacare

As for JCN, its latest IRS filings showed $22m in income, unsourced $17m and $2.5m donations, along with eight anonymous gifts of no less than $100,000, none of them tax deductible. Beyond that, in her pre-Trump days, Kellyanne Conway was a JCN consultant.

Taken together, that’s a lot of money and influence.

Confirmation Bias granularly records what came after Trump’s electoral college win. During the transition, Trump insiders knew it was “Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, back to back … the play was called”.

Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were credentialed Ivy League graduates. Gorsuch attended Columbia and Harvard Law School, Kavanaugh went to Yale straight through. But they also bore the Federalist Society seal of approval, which loosely translated as lacking a disqualifying paper trail while perceived as being dependably anti-Roe and skeptical, if not hostile, toward the “administrative state”, aka FDR’s New Deal and its aftermath.

Indeed, in the run-up to the court’s latest three-month taxpayer-funded vacation, its conservative flank signaled an interest in undoing the legislative legacy of the Great Depression as unconstitutionally broad delegations of congressional authority. In the words of justice Samuel Alito, a former colleague of Donald Trump’s ethically embroiled sister: “If a majority of this court were willing to reconsider the approach we have taken for the past 84 years, I would support that effort.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters gather outside the court on Brett Kavanaugh’s first day on the bench. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

Winter may be coming, grandma’s social security check is in potential jeopardy. The scrum is no longer just about abortion and Obamacare. Originalism, a central tenet of the right, comes with a hefty price tag. Trump’s “forgotten men and women” may again be compelled to bear an unexpected cost.

The president’s faith in Gorsuch’s and Kavanaugh’s loyalty has been amply rewarded. In the much awaited census decision, the two voted that the commerce department’s decision to add a “citizenship” question was subject to minimal review.

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The pair joined with Thomas who wrote: “Our only role in this case is to decide whether the Secretary complied with the law and gave a reasoned explanation for his decision. The Court correctly answers these questions in the affirmative … That ought to end our inquiry.” For the record, it did not.

Recently, McConnell announced that if a seat on the supreme court came open between now and the 2020 elections he would do his best to confirm Trump’s pick. In his view, the Democrats would have acted the same. Not surprisingly, McConnell’s visage hovered over the Democrats’ first round of presidential debates.

Scalia’s death and McConnell’s response altered the trajectory of US politics. Combined, they enabled evangelicals to rally around Trump, a serial sexual predator and proud roué, cemented McConnell’s standing as an unlikely political rock star, and focused America as never before on the nominating process. Beer, PJ and Squee will be remembered for years to come. Confirmation Bias pays attention to all of this and gets the story right, however disconcerting it may be.