The Courts

 Two things are true. The Court system has been unusually able to check some of the Trumpist Right's worst abuses of the truth, and Republicans have made a fairly successful effort to pack the courts with unqualified ideologues who will undermine that ability.

At the root of the Trumpist's problem is the idea of perjury and contempt of court. You can't behave in court the way you behave at your rallies or on your radio show, as Alex Jones is finding out. During Trump's unsuccessful effort to undermine the results of the 2020 election, the things Rudy Giuliani and the Krakken "legal" team could say in a landscaping company's parking lot are very different than what they can say in front of a judge. Trump has successfully used the expense of legal proceedings throughout his life to bully business partners with the threat of lawsuits, but that won't work when he's up against a government - whether state or national - who has the resources to counter. 

We also saw this dynamic is the way Trump was beaten about the head and neck by both the special master and the 11th circuit. His claims of executive privilege or the ability to declassify documents just by thinking about it are patently absurd. They have zero legal merit. It might work on Fox News, but it's not going to work in front of a judge.

However, the Dobbs ruling (and others) has people legitimately worried about whether we can trust the continued impartiality of the Courts. Right now, the median justice on the Supreme Court is Brett Kavanaugh. If it were John Roberts, I might be a little less worried, but overturning Roe was just brazen manufacturing of a decision for partisan gain. Courts already skew in favor of those with material resources - that's how Trump has avoided prosecution for so long - and if they just start making shit up, we are in deep trouble.

A bellwether case is the Independent State Legislature theory. Taken to its illogical extreme, it would end democracy in certain states and sow chaos in our elections. 

Biden has done a very good job of adding judges to the bench, but if Democrats retain control of the House and get to over 52 seats in the Senate, there needs to be some sort of reform of the judiciary. The Trump years have proven both how valuable the Courts are when the act as servants of the law and how fragile that construct really is.