Today is Thursday, September 22, 2022. For the first time, a majority of Americans now favor an expanded Supreme Court as a result of a divided court unevenly split between conservative and liberal jurists. The Supreme Court’s approval rating from Americans is very low these days as a consequence of the staggering decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. This poll is covered in an online article for Jezebel by Susan Rinkunas entitled “For the First Time, Majority of Americans Want the Supreme Court Expanded.”

The poll was conducted in August after the court’s ruling in June in which the conservative-leaning court has a net-negative favorability rating for the first time in the 30-year history of the survey.

It now appears that people are ready to suggest a major change in the composition of the court that has seen justices nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote (Donald Trump) and, in many cases, confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans.

“A Marquette University Law School survey found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans support expanding the number of justices on the court, with 51 percent in favor.” When broken down further, majorities of Democrats, Independents, women, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and people between the ages 18 to 44, all support court expansion.

A new bill called the Judiciary Act, if passed, would add four seats to the court, making it one justice for every federal appeals court. It currently has 60 cosponsors in the House and just three in the Senate.

A large percentage, 60 percent, of those surveyed disapproved of the court’s performance and 61 percent oppose the decision overturning Roe. What is surprising about the poll is that Justice Brett Kavanaugh is the least popular justice, even less popular than Justice Clarence Thomas.

Another welcoming sign from the poll is that enthusiasm for voting in the midterm elections, which is 47 days away, is at an all-time high, per NBC News data going back to 2006. The actual number of people rating their voting interest as a nine or 10 on a 10-point scale was a whopping 64 percent.

It would be poetic justice if the stacking of the court with right-wing ideologies spectacularly backfires for repugnicans in November. Rinkunas has some doubt that Democrats could win back the House since it has been “gerrymandered to hell” and it’s not guaranteed that they will hold the Senate even. Here I disagree with the writer of the piece, as I believe there is so much momentum to get the vote out in November that I feel repugnicans will go down in defeat on November 8 (my birthday). That is a good sign, I hope.

I would write more about the Orange Menace’s worsening legal travails, but it’s late here, and there is always tomorrow. Elliot and I now decided to watch Part 1 of a three-part PBS documentary directed by Ken Burns, and that is why I’m cutting short my blog here. We watched the first episode, “The Golden Door,” which is over 2 hours. It first aired on Sunday at 8. We watched a little more than an hour. This documentary is a no-holds-barred examination of the United States’ mostly ineffective response to the rise of Nazism in Germany and its persecution of Jews before the beginning of the Second World War and afterward.

To me, it should be required watching for everyone. It is hard to watch, I must admit, because of the charges of xenophobia and anti-Semitism that was rampant in the country before Hitler came to power and how many prominent figures in industry and politics supported the baseless theory of eugenics that was prevalent at the time. Combining first-person accounts of Holocaust survivors and leading historians and writers, the documentary basically dispels the myths that Americans either were ignorant of the unspeakable persecution that Jews and other targeted minorities faced in Europe or that they looked on with callous indifference. While watching the first episode, I couldn’t help but think how so much that was captured in the hour that we watched echoes what is happening right now in a divided America. The film tackles a range of questions that remain essential to our society today, including how racism influences policies related to immigration and refugees as well as how governments and people respond to the rise of authoritarianism states that manipulate history and facts to consolidate power. What was particularly illuminating to me is the connection Hitler made to this country’s immigration policy and its treatment of indigenous people in the West that molded his own philosophy of anti-Semitism and Aryanism in his own country. Again, I must recommend this series to anyone who is deeply troubled by the same anti-immigration policies followed by a former president who is now being scrutinized as all hell for financial and legal irregularities. We still have two episodes to go, plus over an hour of the first episode still to watch.

Stay safe and be well.