Progressives are mobilizing to undo President Donald Trump’s judicial legacy through a new dark money initiative.
The effort, called Unrig the Courts, is spearheaded by a coalition of eight left-wing groups: Demand Justice, Take Back the Courts, People’s Parity Project, 51 for 51, Demos Action, Indivisible, Just Democracy Coalition, and Stand Up America. The coalition will push to add seats to the Supreme Court, impose term limits on its justices, expand the lower courts, and create “improved ethics and transparency requirements.”
Demand Justice, led by former Hillary Clinton aide Brian Fallon, is perhaps the best-known member in the coalition. Fallon’s group is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money fiscal sponsor managed by D.C.-based consulting firm Arabella Advisors, whose funds raked in $715 million for liberal groups and causes in 2019.
The coalition hopes to build popular support for the overhauls as it lobbies Biden and Congress. The public largely opposes adding seats to the bench, but Biden, who said he is “not a fan” of court packing, is moving to create a bipartisan commission to study judicial reforms.
Trump rankled liberal activists by appointing 226 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices, during his four years in office. Fifty-four of those judges were appointed to the federal appeals bench—just one shy of the 55 President Barack Obama appointed over his eight years in office.